existential dilemma.

plot device! is upon me once again and i'm
surrounded by the people that i know, holding drinks, wearing cocktail dresses or ties. they've been talking amongst themselves, conferring with my secrets, plotting against me, asking me on dates, leading me on. i am at a party and a co-worker approaches. somehow i've found out that he said something he shouldn't have. this is big trouble for me. i'm doing my best to dodge out of a sticky situation, but

girls start pouring in the doors. they are asking me to explain the nature of our relationship. some i've slept with, some i have not. this is particularly pressing to them, i can tell. they start to tug at my shirtsleeves and pantlegs. they want to know what i mean to them. i can feel my clothes about to rip and come off. instead of thinking a group of girls undressing me to be a good thing, i'm worried that once they get my clothes off they'll tear the flesh from my bones or maybe eat me alive.

i get another drink and dash out the back door. my car is low on oil and i'm afraid to drive it, but girls are starting to catch on and follow. i'm afraid i might get busted with an open container, so i finish the drink as quickly as possible. no sooner have i done that than i realise that i will be more susceptible to these obviously dangerous women now that i am drunk. the world spirals into an irrational haze.

i am at work now and i am sweating bullets. i can smell the alcohol running out of my pores. i have a terrible headache, but i am still drunk as hell. loud and angry jazz has come into my life in a profound way. now i don't feel like running; i feel violent and insane and i'm sure the girls feel the same way. well, it's obvious that they won't be able to stop me. i climb on top of something tall and wait for them to come. i think i will probably be fired from my job, but this will be pretty okay. for the moment i'll just have to focus on the task at hand.

soon i am surrounded once again. they offer me drinks and ask me to come sit on the couch with them. but i won't let them get their little hooks in. i ask, 'what the hell do you want from me?'

and one steps up and says, 'you feel pretty cool, don't you?'

and another, 'i wouldn't answer her if i were you!'

she shakes her fingers to warn me.

i am feeling pretty confident as they press in closer. suddenly i am having lots of fun. i am ready to lash out tooth and nail in some sort of desperate frenzy completely mad and self-assured right before i wake up.

kind of blue.

without a sound the world went all miles davis on me quick and certain in a twist of my neck, but i was thinking in line drawings of my hands. i stood up and thought better of it, made generalisations to myself about my life, considered the effects of smoking, stuttered a bit, sat down and stared. i was here to listen to music and write my thoughts, that much i was sure of, but beyond that i would not even attempt a guess.

it was the sound of glass and the sudden idea of me by myself interpreting things and what good could that lead to? my sleeves were torn and stained and i ran my finger along one- or maybe it was my face? - but i wasn't too sure about anything anymore. or at least i had become aware of it this time.

it was all just contours everything revolving around this line drawing of hands in my head. so many contours and the spaces between, my fingers lingering in the soft yielding crevice of a thigh or a heel. my hands wrapped around my own neck, or a cigarette, or a steering wheel. it was all so obvious for a moment but i couldn't really grasp it. a fleeting thought that was just a tease. or a pressing need.

and my god when did i get so broken down? my hands turning purple with the lack of circulation all arthritic and numb, my legs aching and stretching as solid as rock, my bones brittle and resistant and my head full of my hands wondering how i got here but pretty sure i didn't regret any of it. and this was the moment that the piano kicked in. and i felt soothed. and i felt all that tension in my back take a temporary respite as i sat there looking at my hands and trying to get my head together.

with the hands on my back slowly kneading and pushing my vagrant thoughts wandered through abandoned streets and dangerous times when i got so caught up i could never even remember anything. i was stagnating, deranged and desperate, winding up in the up and down, places i'd forgotten only moments before come around swinging. days when i'd wake up and ask around if i'd only dreamed what happened. stepping cautiously around what i feared to be true and

just rolling around my temples these distorted thoughts light and echoing the sounds of a piano somewhere or other i could hear the humidity and my own body ripping itself apart. it felt like joy or chaos or an emotion i could not characterise by name or even if it was positive or negative. i could hear the cool reassured summer ramblings filtering into my head, the bass rolling in, dying down. i stopped and i looked up and sure enough

it was all still kind of blue. and the walk home, and the flurry of things that you said, and what was maybe my fault (i thought maybe you were accusing me), the simple gestures i couldn't understand, my mouthful of teeth, and a frantic and scratchy set of hands in dark ink subsided for just a minute as i hit my cigarette.

i felt like god, i felt pure and renewed as i sat there with my cigarette and my sketchbook and enjoyed my solitude.