I've been looking for something bad

340) I've been looking for something terrible to fix my life and make it real.

341) I was asked about the best photo I've ever taken, and the answer was the photos of the beginning of the Fire of 2002. The Ute Pass Fire then the Missionary Ridge fire and the people who prayed in front of me and who still had their house the next morning.

342) I had a series of highs and lows today: my wife cried, upset that I was leaving again and was distant; she then slept; then the birthday bbq in the park, where I won at croquet and probably pulled a muscle playing catch. But the big boy warmed back up to me after my absence this last week, as we ran in circles and I dropped him on his head. And the argument over TV on the Internet, and not caring, and the whole thing, the whole fucked up thing.

343) I read through some of the original posts on this blog today. What a great thing to have documented the formation of so much energy. That ball of fire did indeed lead to something great, no doubt.

344) I poured my whiskey neat and I sat down to write out a few sentences. Does that make this chapter two? My legs, frail and useless, and my mind, mushy. My emotions subdued, my energy, gone. My bank account full, my computer screen bright, my car, functional. My stocks are up and my body is soft but nothing hurts.

345) I'm afraid that the easier it gets the less chance I'll have to dig out.

346) We free-loaded the party today, We showed up with nothing more than three PBRs cold in cans and we had a sip of port wine and a PBR and a vodka drink between us. Dawson learned how to get the chips out of the bag for himself.

347) The real aphorisms rarely come to me these days. For example, my observation lately is that all these people around me, want nice cars and want to show off their money. That's too simple and obvious. My brain barely moves beyond these simplistic observations. It's like there's some solution in the tap water I drink trying to make me dumb. I have nothing to say to anyone and I don't care about anything. I have no energy when I wake up and I'm not much faster than everybody else. My face sags and I can't see out of my eye-holes.

348) "I've got pockets full of kleenex and lint and holes, where everything that's put into me, seems to fall right down onto the floor. My closest friend, linoleum. Linoleum supports my head, gives me something to believed." The song has the answer. I live a fantasy life, where every fantasy happens, and happens all the time, and nothing changes anything, because that's not what it's about. It's not about achieving some constant high, it's not about success of any kind. It's about sitting here, with a neat whiskey and the right song or sound, and getting that feeling of being high that no drug will even do for you, even pure.