The time of year thou mayest in me behold

Solid writing day. Not a ten pager but two and half single space isn't bad considering that the library closes early. Patiencearya should have mentioned that these blogs are addictive (they should have been called Starbucks). All day I had a vision of a derby capped slim shirted individual cornering me in an alleyway bribing me with an illicit Blog, holding a little ziplock bag in front of me, chanting "Come, you know you want it. You know you need." And all day I wrote on the novel, planted corn row sentences on the page, put up with yuppie rich kids at work....geez, now I feel like Anne Frank. Maybe I'll call my diary entry Kitty and go home and see if my apartment has an attic and scribble about how people are really good at heart, which of course, we really are, even with all the shit that's happening in the world, floods in the Carribean, bodies in Iraq, social apathy here on the home front, you gotta believe that there is a universal oneness and that we are (somehow) a part of it and each individual needs to somehow strive and find out what there role is...what they can do...who they are as a human being verses a marketable material commodity. It's our duty, our dharma, and God (which writer was it, Rick Moody?? Dave Wallace???) who talked about hating enough to love enough to try to chancge the world enough. I think it was Dave wallace in "Girl w. Curious Hair" but don't quote me....

It's the end of May which means that its been almost eight years since I exited the salmon-flavored hallways of Manual High school, located in the south side of Peoria, an academic stye, school of demons that still need to be extinguished, highest teenage pregnancy rate in the Nation (three girls in the top ten of '96 had kids...seriously, they had a Bring you Kid to School my senior year...when I was wearing berets and listening to the Cure and writing quote "deep" horrible poetry pretending to be Kerouac...I think my first great so--called deep hit was, "In a world so sad, so inane, to put it's trust in Kurt Cobain" Oh well, even Shakespeare had to go out and pluck his muse in order to get a quill....

I spent the week before graduation hospitalized. I wore the flowery hospital smock and received a sponge bath from an old Black lady named Bertha who would leave the room while I attened to my "Mens Parts" as she labeled them as if they were located in the back of a shed or inside a tackel box, at Lowes on sale.

I was pretty messed up in high school and did alotta things to glean attention (in addition to having the Highest teenage pregnancy rate in the nation, my high school also boasted the loweset I-sat scores in the state. Ironically they one the state basketball championship three-out-of-the four years I attended and a big scam was evinced after I left becasue several of the district administrators confessed that grades were in fact manipulated for athletes)...I was an anal valium plug my senior year strung out on antidepressants when all I really needed (all most people really just need) is an occasionally F&&&&ing aye. An occasion yeah, life's shit, but we're here and we're resilient. There's always been and always will be people who seemed to hurt you but there's a glory that comes just through living. From having gone through something and come out and find yourself planted in fornt of an twelve-inch pixillation jotting down your memoirs....

I was in the hospital and they never found out what spawned the pancreatic flareup. I'm almost certain that it was spawned from tossing around my 'ample' girlfriend at prom, beautiful Kristina Rock from East Peoria. (I'd always pantomine that her name was CHRIS ROCK, and her face would tinge to the color of cheap wine coolers and she'd give me the finger)...anyway, becasue I was trying to see what artery did what with a potato peeler my senior year, my GPA sunk like an anchor in the Atlantic and I found myself donning the cap and gown and being surrounded by similar donned cap and gowned individuals that I didn't know--almost like I was in a mock foliage. Kristina came from across town and had her golden hair pinned up and her fair movie screen forehead just sort of looked at my class in awe as we stomped past in mock pomp and circumstance. After the ceremony the superintendant who knocked up a student teacher in lieu of a wife gave me a hug and complement and insisted that he pose for a picture with me. I remember being shouldered in the procession and seeing Mr. Washer (God Bless his soul!) telling me to have a wonderful life. I remember my father (God bless his soul!) giving me a hug...God love him!!!!!

And after the graduation we got drunk. We went home and I uncorked a bottle of wine from the Rhine valley in Germany. White Trash Pat had already been drinking for something like forty-hours, oblivious that his brother Allan was kickin' it with Amber Steele (Like her heart)....and Jackie was there and Nicke was there and Crazy Strickler wore sunglasses and a beret and started calling everyone 'Vinny' and I had a hard time opening up the wine so we eventually toated chalices to the future with little shards of cork bobbing like little corky buoys in the middle of our libations. Saying salut-tay. Chin-chin!!! and in the neck year both Jackie and Nickie would have kids and Strickler would be doing more shrooms than a Mario brother and Kristina would leave me becasue I behaved like Ted Hughes, behaved like how I though male poets were supposed to behave, so she left me and after my last college final first semester freshman year, I felt a pause and wished I could pick her up and we could bery-berry cobbler and swig cheap-coffee at Steak and Shake and just chill.......

But now, years later after graduation, I still toeast an empty chalice that is fraught with the future. For each of us. Drink up...each of us have our own cup that is full of something sweet, of is it sweet.

Chin-chin.....

(sorry fraught with errors, library is closing