Death.

Me? I prefer to drink until I feel that irreversible feeling that my head is about to fall off. I dream of a day this feeling goes away.

As for my father. I hate to think this is where I get out all my demons. I always think about how he never met any of the women I've dated. For all he knew I could have grown up a fruit. Or someone of the homosexual persuasion. I'm an atheist. I believe that when someone dies, it is a tragic thing. What's worse, is it becomes more tragic to an atheist. The death of a person is also a death of a life, a legacy, a story. So my father could never see the women I've dated. He will never see the children I bear. He will never see the beginning of their stories. So I think that is tragic. What is saddest is most beautiful. I know a girl. Her father died in a hospital about a mile from here. In the waiting room, she held his glasses in her hand. She cries now because she could never give them to him. I tell her this is beautiful but she doesn't understand me. I don't even understand anymore. Maybe this life isn't beautiful after all. Maybe it just begins, and it ends. Sometimes abruptly, sometimes late. My great grandmother died in her nineties. Far after her siblings had died, I remember her saying,

Sometimes I think God has forgotten about me.

Something That Happened Tonight

I don't know what happened.

My Mother has been going through a trunk full of family records. Pictures and letters mostly. I read a note written down on fragile yellow paper from my father to my mother while undergoing his treatments. His handwriting was terrible.

"I hope you can read this because I am very nervous."

He asked how I was. He said I was growing like a weed. It's hard to imagine my father saying that. I don't remember his mannerisms. Or his voice.

I put the note back where I found it and decided to investigate pictures. Pictures of Eric, pictures of Aaron, Christopher, Ashley. Some of them brought me back just as memories do. I came across a picture of my father holding Eric. It moved me. I moved on to a picture of our first dog Penny, a Black Labrador. Like my father, she seems like a memory from an entirely different life. Sometimes it doesn't even seem like my life. Like a movie I saw one afternoon in my old room, at my old house. A dead father, a dead black dog.

These things moved me so much. I had to write something down. A poem. In my head the words kept repeating: a dead father, a dead black dog.

I sat down and opened up my laptop but the words stopped there. How can that happen? How can something move me that much I can't put it into words? Maybe words can be said but they could never resemble any decent articulation. A dead father, a dead black dog. A dead father, a dead black dog.

Eleven.

I'm sitting here. I'm watching Lynch's Mulholland Dr. with my younger brother and I don't think he quite understands it. Besides this, I'm aimlessly wandering the internet. I have an interest. Something I want to read about, but I don't know what it is and have no idea where I'm going to find it. I stopped a moment ago when I read an article called "The Three Traits of a Writer..." by this idiot, K.M Weiland.

Weiland begins her list of the most important of her three traits every writer must have with talent. Talent is an abstract concept. What one person views as talent is not what another may view as talent.

...I'm attacking an article posted on the internet. What am I eleven?

taPe.

"You aren't an artist until you find a crumpled wad of tape in your supplies and you exclaim, 'this is exactly what i need.'"

Today

I have work in 45 minutes. I haven't done anything productive all day. I mean, I picked up a little bit around my girlfriends apartment. I've been here since Saturday. The reason being is that I'm broke. She lives twenty minutes away as opposed to the hour and a half drive I typically make to work each day. To save gas and money I'm here. I miss being creative. I have this painting sitting in my room collecting dust because I haven't worked on it since Friday night.

Today I remembered something my 8th grade Geometry teacher said to me. She knew I hated math and I didn't take her class all that seriously so consequently, my grades were suffering. One day after school I'd gotten in a fight with some kid and was sitting in the office waiting for a ride. She noticed me, asked what had happened and I explained it to her. She asked me if I needed any help with Geometry and I explained her my utter disdain for Math. She told me there would be a lot of things in life that I just don't want to do, but I should do them anyway because of their outcome. She got real with me. She went past the babbling of a typical 8th grade teacher and bestowed on me some advice she thought I would benefit from. And I have. So today, I'm gonna keep her in mind. Wish I remembered her name.