the layout doesn't matter.

the enemy is at the gates.

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i spent today with a sawzall in my hands. three of my five right hand fingers have cuts on them. i never called Molly back.

this blog goes in and out of routine for me but never does very long go by without me thinking of it. it is a time capsule by now, a way of keeping track of what i've been doing and thinking and writing and being. i read a new blog of a friend of mine and it reminded me of this; reminded me of a time when I was struck out so firm and decided about environmentalism, that I was never going to drive a car again, that I would never eat meat.

and then i used to write much more thinking too, i would write with a great intention, i would choose the words carefully. then i would write drunkenly, but on purpose. trying to let things fall out, but only in the same way that they fell out for Jack Kerouac.

and who am I now? a carpenter boy. some days I spend getting yelled at by men that are older than me. i can't seem to get anything right, my cats paw is fumbling in my hands and someone watches me over my shoulder, impatient. Dave screams my name into my face and I call off a six foot ladder while its raining. i think about quitting my job over and over and over. but for what?

my hands are calloused. when i have a few days off of work i scrub them really hard and then put lotion on, trying to smooth away my work for a few days. it lets me relax to remember what it felt like to have normal, unworn hands. this in itself is a dramatization.

i do not want to meet girls in bars. i almost never go out now - i sit in my room. i read books for the library. i recently fixed the speakers for my stereo and so sometimes I'll burn a CD and listen to it in my room while I make calendars for christmas. i almost never write letters any more.

in two weeks i will go to Mexico. i hope it snaps me out of something. i hope that having Pat with me won't prevent it from doing so. looking for an affirmation or a refusal: i am thinking of getting an apartment on the peninsula and continuing my education as a carpenter. life is very confusing and nothing else seems much very sure or very real. and the tuggings at my heart corners? are those something I've learned or something that I made up somehow?

i don't know what else i might like to do. except go to patagonia. to run 100 miles at once, without stopping. i want to lock myself up in some studio garage in Montana and play the piano for hours and hours and hours and not talk to anybody when i'm sad, to embrace what is madness about me. and what else would I do? work for another non-profit. build a garden. buy a piece of land.


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god damnit i think i have more writing in me but not the discipline it takes to get it out.