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Watching Eddie Izzard’s “Dress To Kill”. It’s some funny shit. When I realize that what I write in here really isn’t very interesting, I confirm to myself that what I write in here is really only for me. That’s what my original concept was when I started writing in here and since then I’ve gone through some phases where I felt I was writing for more than my originally intended audience. Let’s just say I’m still happy when I take the time to write in here.

right now i’m totally distracted watching this movie.

K… what have I been up to… Working, Hanging out with Lorea, Spending too much time on my computer, Reading interesting articles on Wikipedia, Reading the Satanic Bible (still, I’m a slow reader), Running everyday still, Eating out and eating at home, Writing songs on my guitar, Trying hard to write vocal melodies for the songs I am writing, Envisioning the guitar, bass and drum tracks all in my head at the same time while I’m writing the song, Trying to determine what I want to communicate to the world through the music I am working on, Feeling vulnerable about the music I am writing – more so than any other “art project” I’ve done. I feel convered in judgement or potentially so. It’s really just a voice in my head telling me I’m no good, telling me I have no ability to write a good song. The voice sounds like a lot of people I know and the voice is asking me to play the song for them and then me just saying “I have nothing to show you.” then I feel guilty and sad that I am not accomplishing what I have wanted for so long… To just be able to freely write songs wihout the judgement that exists in my head. I just need everyone to back off of my artistic agenda. I’ve only ever created things for me, and when people ask about any artistic vision i have or may have it’s like that vision goes running scared in to the far recesses of my brain like a dog under a hose. I never made any art to be understood and i won’t make any music because YOU want me to or because YOU think iut shoudl sound a certain way. How come I can write pages and pages of meaningless posts in this blog, but when it comes to writing lyrics i feel so stuck right now. i beat myself up over it. why do i do that? when i was a kid i had a huge imagination. i imagines whole movies out of picture books and whole worlds out of my lego pieces. i never did it for anyone else. i had nothing to prove to anyone. i was just doing it to escape… to escape to a place that I created that YOU don’t know about, that YOU can’t find. there i was perfectly happy in my solitude of abundant imaginary stories. i need to go back there. that is my place i need to be. don’t talk to me about this stuff. it makes me shy.

Just like to say that without ever intending this exercise to become competitive, I have beat my previous record and today for the first time ran 6km in 24 minutes. That’s 4 minutes a kilometer. I love passing bicycles on the sidewalk and the eyes of little old ladies smiling at me – some fucking kidpunk not breaking stuff and killing himself but actually being proactive. Or maybe that’s just how i interpret it.

One of those moments I frequently have when I look at my current state and smile to myself thinking, “This is my life.” I just made dinner and am now eating it. I’m eating more of that banana sauce I made last week, on brown rice and steamed asparagus and brocoli. I’m listening to The Cult, drinking San Pellegrino out of a clear glass. I’m reading Plato’s Republic while I eat.

What did I do today?

Woke up alone. Felt alone. Immediately felt guilty for not getting anything done cause it was a Saturday and this is supposed to be one of those days where ordinary people are supposed to rest or something. Saturday is pretty much the only day I can get any chores done that I need to get done. Woke up with the sun in my eyes when I tore back the sarong, pinned up, filtering the window light. Glorious day. Dripping with Glory as I would imagine glory to be used in a sentence to describe a very sunny day that makes everything crisper and fuller of life, or some semblance of God. It told me not to be miserable and to just start living today like you’ve done every other day. So, today I listened.

Walked to Reno’s intending to eat a breakfast in solitude, maybe get to read the paper. Stopped in at Dadabase to say hi to Ignacio and cause when I ran in to Mo and Ignacio last week they told me to come in and sign their “manifesto” and join the Main St. community of people that are all on this “Main Street for Peace” kick. They told me they want my name on the back of their shirts – my artist name, nokin. They are printing these shirts that say “Main Street for Peace” with a pretty line art picture of a peace dove on the front and the names of some 60 artists and Main St. merchants. They said they’d add my name to the list and give me a shirt with a donation of 5 bucks next run they do. I thought in my head that when they give me one I’ll cross out the ‘peace’ with a jiffee marker and write war. If you know me at all you would know what that means. It doesn’t mean I am for war. It doesn’t mean I am against peace. Sure, I like peace. We also live in the luxury of a society where peace is at already here at home while war is discretly hidden from our ignorant eyes across an ocean, on the other side of the world and the only thing that gives it away is the headlines on the newspapers saying 8billion more tax dollars going to fund a war most don’t care to know about. It just all seems so absurd. It intices the apathy in me… If we’re gonna turn a blind eye, if there really is nothing we can do to stop our government and the government of other nations from participating in an unjust war then why bother… let’s join em. Then on the other hand there is the side of me that shouts for slaughter and war and to bleed the earth and all it’s inhabitants quicker than we already are. Like watching a rodeo and while the inner child in me is crying over the death of another calf I am cheering with the rest of the stadium for death and more death and more entertainment watched safely from up here in my nosebleed seats with my popcorn and peanut enema.

Had breakfast at Reno’s. Not in solitude. Devitt was there with his loyal herd of fellows. Felt pushed down – 2 feet small. The younger brother. I never liked my brother’s friends anyway. I just felt so alone.

After breakfast of pancakes and mash I journeyed by foot up Main Street. I looked in the Salvation Army for cowboy boots for me but I found some for you. I couldn’t figure out what size you’d fit. I know you’re a 9 and a half but you never know with leather. you never know at all. I have two pairs of jeans by the same brand and the same size ans the same model and they fit entirely differently. so you never know at all. i called you just to tell you i wanted to buy you boots but will have to wait for your feet to be there but i just got your recording. i wanna do nice things for you. i wanna treat you nice. i wanna buy you things. i wanna dress you up pretty and i’m making a conscious effort every day to be a better person for you. for us.

i kept walking all the way to the bank up on 27th Avenue. It was as sunny a day I can remember in a while. A glorious day. My eyes bled tears from the cold wind and prying light. Cashed the cheque. The pavement was dry enough so that the skaters and bikers were all out with the dog walkers and sunday perusers doing their perusing a day early. To the next bank, and payment of 600 dollars to my Visa bill. If it was sunny all the time I would never need to bus. I could just walk always. Took the side streets to admire the architecture. Saw some bay windows and thought of you. And the way I like to act so smart. I was thinking it’s about time for me to realize that you are already impressed enough. Made a journey to Broadway and Heather, to the London Drugs to fill a prescription for antibiotics. I have a staph infection, if I hadn’t told you. It’s a common bacteria. It’s an infection that can kill. That’s why I waited a week and 4 days to fill my prescription. Death is never quick enough for some.

Talked to my sister and my mom and my dad on the phone. I thought I would never enjoy talking to them again. But things are changing. I’m growing to love them again. I like talking to my mom about things that interest her like cooking and gardening and for some reason I can actually get in to conversations about things i have no interest in but enjoy the act of being unified in conversation with her about things. My dad isn’t going to be around many more years and I am grateful to have these last few years in this frame of mind to remember him and be remembered by. Everyday I notive ways I am like him, much to my disappointment at time how incredibly similar we are. I will always remember the things he has taught me and the ways I aspire to be more like him everyday. Those things I always resented when younger are the things that make him strong and the things I admire. Simplified heroic.

Practiced bass and guitar at home for about 6 hours straight. Learned the bass parts for The Patient and Lateralis by Tool and the bass part for Professor Nutbutter by Primus. Those are some really complicated and strenuous basslines to play and it was really satisfying learning them. Remembering how to play them is a whole nuther thing. But I know how to play them at least. Also learned the acoustic guitar part for Young Pilgrims by The Shins. As well, I programmed about 6 new bass presets in Guitar Rig. Guitar Rig is this piece of software by Native Instuments that emulates a whole shitload of amps, cabs, effects and mic placements. I create presets that sound good and then save them so that when I start recording I can just select one of the sounds I’ve created and get on with the creative process rather than getting held up by not having an inspiring sound.

She’s out at a meathead festival called the Elite Fighting Championship and the more it happens the more I am becoming okay with letting that piece of me go; that uncomfortable attachment to the idea that I am the only one that can find her attractive. She’s the main course. The fight is jsut the side dish. Of course entree’s are smaller these days and sides are a good filler. I could feel lonely. I could feel disapointed. While a mass of other guys are gawking at her, fulfilling their vague juvenile sexual fantasies with superficial images of her body and nulifying the insides, i am searching for freedom from the haunting attachment to the need to protect her from such a situation. Perhaps if eyes threw punches I could feel the need to protect her, to defend her position. But they are not indellable I have no argument when she comes home to me everynight and puts her arms around me and can tell me everything cause she knows I love her. That is more than any other can dream about, and I am so fortunate to have found love.

I was cooking experimentally tonight. What started out as just frying a chicken breast and making a salad turned in to this:

1 white onion chopped
2 cloves of garlic finely minced
1 tablespoon of minced
some olive oil and some sesame oil to sautee
1 potato chopped up in to small chunks
1 chicken breast cut in chunks
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon tumeric
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 very ripe banana mashed up good
1 little can of tomato paste
some water to bring to a slight boil

served over steamed brocoli and asparagus with spinach salad on its side

that’s the sauce. it tastes like there’s red wine in it, but there’s not. it’s an interesting flavor. the tomato taste is a little overpowering so use less next time. the sharpness of the onion and the sweetness of the banana add a tangy sweet/sour appeal to the sauce. the potato chunks flatten out the sauce a bit so it is not so overpowering but could have been chopped even smaller or mashed into the sauce.

next time serve the sauce over top of basmati rice, with the chicken not in the sauce but sliced length wise and sitting on top of the sauce. Replace potatos or chicken or both with mushrooms. Would be good over pasta as a sauce. Asparagus and Brocoli on the side. Garnished with stuffed orange peppers.
Given the intensity of the flavour, might be good as a sauce for a side (broiled over a splayed baked potato?)
Would go well with cheese.

Ran 6km in 26 minutes today. that works out to 4.3 minutes a kilometer… meaning if i ran 10km at that rate I would run it in 43 minutes. That’s fast. And I wasn’t even trying to run my fastest. Last time I remember running a 10k was the Sun Run when I was 17 or so. My time was 1:07.

Jealousy is ripping me apart. It is truly bothersome. I didn’t really ever think of myself as jealous but the past while it has been made painfully obvious to be how devestating this character defect is in my life. I just wrote character defect and that phrase is resonating in my head and I don’t really like the sound of ‘defect’. I think ‘maladjustment’ is a better term, and one that i can live with. So, as I was saying, jealousy is proving to be a pretty devestating maladjustment in my life. Through recent events that have occured in several different relationships, I have determined my self-esteem, security and sex instincts are still very volatile in engagements with females in my life. That is to say, my self-esteem, sense of security and my sexual instincts are fuct. If I feel I am not getting attention, if i feel another guy is getting attention, if i feel i am losing intimacy I feel hurt in the same way and react with the same response time and time again, every single fucking time. I feel hurt… I feel scared… I act out selfishly or angrily at the ones who most often were’nt making any effort to hurt me in such a way. It needs to stop. I need this reaction to stop. It is pissing me off and I know I can change. I will change. I have tried and I know that squelching the reactionary emotions that come up for me – feelings of abandonment, loss, pain and loneliness is not the answer. Supressing those feelings after they have come up doesn’t work and just leads to quiet resentment that grows in to something more vicious and vile than the pain I feel.

So… I need help. I need to know how to get out of this cyclic misery.

Life’s really not that miserable. That is my biggest problem today and that’s really amazing.

Started reading The Satanic Bible by Anton Lavey.
Oogidy Boogidy, Satan’s going to kill your babies.

L:

i’m happy that you were alright with me needing a night off. i actually was really on the fence with whether i was going to call you and ask you to sleep over or whether i thought it best if we had a night apart. i’ve felt nervous in my interactions with you as of late… not sure why… just totally overthinking everything instead of jsut letting things happen… which i think is indicative of my life in the larger scale lately where i think i have been really clutching on to controlling everything and trying to driect the whole show instead of shutting the fuck up and letting someone else drive.

maybe that’s it… just a thought i had… not sure… i’ll know after i think about it some more…

I live in suite with a shared bathroom. I share a bathroom and a small corridor with a headjob named Lutz. Lutz is a fucking cocksmoker.

he left some bitch note under my door with a fucking bag of hair he pulled out of the drain bitching all about how he is the only one who cleans the bathroom. which is true. so then i went to talk to him to agree on a cleaning schedule, and we got in an altercation. well, more accurately, he got irate and threatening all yelling and flapping his arms around. i was calm and cool and just wanted to agree on a fucking schedule so i could go for my run. he started bitching about everything so i just filled out a bunch of dates and when who was cleaning what and dropped it at his door and went back in my suite. he got really fucking mad… and was yelling.

fuck him

i fucking hate that psychopath…. god, how can i be of fucking service to this fucking sick fucking man.

god please fucking help me to not be fucking resentful against this poor sick fuck.

blah blah blah… in this instance trying to follow a spiritual solution seems like the stupidist thing in the world. everything in me wants to just ruin him.

anyway… so, i REALLLY am going to move, get a new place, a bigger place, out of this shithole.

talked to my mom, went to her place for dinner and talked it out with her… i was really pretty upset byt the whole crazy-fuck-living-next-door-to-me thing. still am.it’s unnerving. makes me anxious. takes up space in my head that i wish it wouldn’t. so i coped… i ran for a long ways. i lost track of time and space. i ran 6km in about 30 minutes.

anyway. probably will be dead on the phone if you call later than midnight. working man bullshit. i have a hard time accepting that if i work fulltime, i have little energy to give to you during the week.

it’s something i can’t yet accept, and so it pisses me off. makes me grumpy pants.

*this is a kiss*

love you. you know that. you better know that.

fuck… it’s comforting knowing that you are willing to stick by through my bullshit nights of being a dick and being tired and me going through my moments of insanity… comforting knowing that you love me through all that… but it’s hard to trust it. hard to accept it. it’ll take time. it’s something i’m learning… to not split the moment i feel uncomfortable… to work through what is going on with me… and you seem to be willing to sit there with me through it and not sketch out… i appreciate it.

nite.

When I got home from work today I was so exhausted I could not even think. On my way home I was thinking about how similar that feeling was to being stoned all the time. Back when I was a daily ganj smoker my high was always accompanied by a dragging lethargy that hung around my neck like an evil dwarf (wtf?).

When I got home from work today I went for a run. My usualk routine. I didn’t want to run but i did, because it’s my routine. I actually spent all afternoon thinking about how much i would enjoy running and releasing the burden in my head. I ran because to not run on the basis that I “just didn’t want to” would set a precident so that everytime i “just don’t want to” I won’t. That would lead to me not having running in my routine anymore. Ran 4k, came home and did 50 situps till I felt like puking. Trust me, it’s healthy. What’s unhealthy is that I can’t do 100 situps without puking. Those people with the ripped abs? They don’t get them from eating shit food, sitting on the couch and popping a pill they ordered from an ad they saw on tv and hoping for the best. They didn’t get them from sitting around hoping and wishing they could have what they are not willing to work for. They got them from doing situps everyday, whether they want to or not. The last 10 of the 50 are the hardest. I count outloud and envision myself in the military. The last 5 sound like this: 45.. 46… 47…. 48….. 49…… FUCK YOU!!!! I say fuck you to no one in particular. I say fuck you to the part of me that makes me think the last five can’t be done. That the pain of the lactic acid coursing through my abdomen is too great to go on. To the part of me that used to have me convinced I should have to live a compromised life and actually has the nerve to think it still has that control over me. Well… fuck you Mr. Loserface. Fuck you.

I mde Butter Chicken tonight. It took me from the time I got out of the shower around 5:45 till now, 9pm to get the ingredients and make it. It’s actually quite easy to make. I’m always shocked when I make something that tastes really good. Now that I have the ingredients I could make this dish again in probably 45 minutes, cause that’s how long the rice takes. I always burn brown rice. I need to know the secret to making rice without killing it. I also have leftovers, which I’ve gotten in to the habit of doing lately. When I make dinner I cook for two. That way if someone drops by and is hungry they can eat my leftovers, or else I can throw it in the fridge and have it for lunch the next day. It’s funny, cause I know I have heard people talking about simple concepts like ‘leftovers’ for years, but not until now have I learned this principal and tried applying it to my life. It’s a good one. Almost as good as to-go mugs with tea.

I love Lorea so much, and am not ashamed or scared to say it. The ways are endless and it is shocking to have found someone so understanding, so in harmony with my own existence.
We started talking about moving in together. We want a clawfoot bathtub. We want lots of light. Hardwood floors would be nice. I told her she can decorate, cause I don’t have the patience for it. The idea of her nesting is a great one. She’d make a good nest. It’s early yet, and I think it would be sound to sit on the idea a bit more before we commit on the domestic partnership thang.

so, all those pictures you gave me of you right before you left for mexico? I just stuck them all over my apartment. Looking at you is comforting but at the same time painful, cause i wanna reach out and touch you.

just wanna post this pid of my bod for jeff’s benefit to show him how ripped i’m getting. atleast i think, if my memory serves me that i was not quite as toned a few months ago. i guess i’m just surprised that doing something as simple as running everyday and eating properly most of the time and generally not being harsh to my body actually precipitates change – change that i can see visibly. without further adieu:

I’ve not really been that in to AA meetings the past month or so. My attendance began to dwindle and by this time last week i had not been to a meeting in two weeks. Over the weekend in San Fran, I went to several meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and spoke with many recovering and recovered alcoholics/addicts. I have had a change of perspective this past week regarding meetings. I came to a realization that it is important for me to attend meetings to be of service to those addicts and alcholics that are as fucked up as I once was. I am feeling pretty fucking fortunate to be where I am today. There was a long time where I thought I was just terminally defective and that nothing i did would ever return my life to a semblance of normalcy. today i find myself in a very different spot. I am in a spot where I don’t hate myself, I wake up most days loving life, I work hard in a job i love, i like my employer and do my best to be of service to him, i have a wonderful girl whom I am in love with, i love my family truly and genuinely, financial troubles are a thing of the past because money really doesn’t concern me much anymore. I feel like anything I want to do, i can do, and that is a fucking amazing thing. I remember looking at my good friend Jeff maybe 8 months ago and thinking to myself, “that guy can do whatever the fuck he wants to do – he has confidence.” what i didn’t know at the time was that I saw in him something that I wanted and i have worked towards over the past while. and i think i am getting closer. my journey of becoming a better person will not end until i die, as with everyone. but the difference today is that I am actually interested in pursuing that journey, that i am not actively killing myself today.
anyway, back to the service thing… what changed in me over the weekend was that i came to a realization that I want to be of maximum service to my family, my friends, the people around me, my community and my world. that’s not something i would have said even two months ago. of course, words are one thing and action is what really matters. i also believe strongly that there on the path to the successful consummation of any thought or idea there is necessarily the inclusion of willingness. that is, a thought leads to words, which lead to willingness which lead to action. a thought will remain a thought and cannot become action without the willingness to do so. and that is where i am right now. immediately preceding action, in a state of willingness to be of service. and I am so totally alright with that. It is a fulfilling place to be in and of itself. I’ve spent almost a year fucking obsessed with my own recovery and now i feel compelled to help someone else, someone who might be struggling the way i struggled for two years before i finally found a path of recovery that worked for me.

i have 355 consecutive days without taking a drug or drinking.