last night, too much to drink

back to camel lights? marlboros make my lungs hurt. i need to quit smoking.

THERAPIST
...I think, I think that you're...searching for something, and ... whenever you don't find it, you get frustrated and turn to using. or abusing."

ME
... it's funny ...

THERAPIST
What's funny?

ME
the prefix "ab" on the word "using" is the only thing making the word negative. the prefix "ab" means, away from. Away from using? Ab-use. Use away from.

THERAPIST
What does "using" mean, then?

ME
When you ... damn, it really is one of those words. When you.. um, are acquiring? No. Taking... Using .. see? damn. When you ... are trying to achieve something, when you're ...okay. Let's say: When you need to get to a goal, and something aids you. No - see, that's not it either.
(pause)
I don't know.

THERAPIST
So when you "ab"-use something, you're taking that thing's function and using it away from the goal.

ME
But... what is the goal?

THERAPIST
It's something different for everyone, isn't it.

********static*********

my dreams last night: the color red, predominant. red tongues, red walls. red dress on the red-eyed woman. firestone jewelry, glittering white fire. fire leaping out of the totaled car, leaping licking flames against the black skin of night - the girl with blood sliding like a hand down her face, half in, half out of the metal wreck. her dress had fallen over her body and i could see her cunt, now just another gory slash in the company of so many others. like a child with a pair of scissors snipping idly at a piece of paper. you know, to make a snowflake.

a party, a veritable gala. huge chandelier. big old house with a lot of people crammed into its foyer. the wings lay empty, almost eerily so. what would it sound like if there had been no house built there. in the middle of the forest.

someone at the party jumps off a cliff and splashes soundlessly into the sea. then they all start doing it. from my view on the third floor: penguins, hustling themselves off of an ice floe. the house inches closer to the edge, picks itself up and shuffles towards them in ashamed lemming-fashion. i run out of the room and try to escape before it hurls itself to the pitch-dark sea. i am successful, though by only a stuttering toe-hold on the edge of the cliff as it plunges down to the waves behind me. it's one of those instances when i feel that logically, i should have plunged with it, but because it is a dream, i allow myself to suspend logic and continue on living. most of the time in dream, i am a camera behind my own head. i am a brilliant cinematographer in my dreams: i work all the angles.

**************

plaid shirt to work tonight? warmish weather. maybe rain tomorrow. wash away the dirty snow. ryan says: "one more blizzard before spring, i guarantee it." he "grew-up-around-here." i said we should put a wager on what date the huge snowdrift in front of the museum would melt by. i was joking. there was no bet. but now i'll be watching.

big band of green and pink coming westward, crawling in on the edges of the radar like moss, vanishing, and doing it all over again. i am watching for green grass. i am on the lookout for that first warm day. the sun and the birds. the surrender of winter, snow plunging heedlessly from roofs and impacting the ground in huge heavy splashes. the thaw's begun, i'm waiting for the capitulation.

sometimes i feel inordinately crazed, of a sudden, spasming with fury, frenzy, and desperation - like a dog that's been poked one too many times with a stick. then i settle down and realize it's nothing.

such big words from such a little mongrel.

such dramatics, such histrionics, from such a little man.

it's a wonder people like me. i am unable to see how.

cigarette.