Oh, reclusive night. Or is this morning?
Vanilla aura inhaled, my mind seems to speak so loud and clear in the silence.
The meager stash of nag champa that traveled with me during the move to Virginia has been just enough to suit. Before fleeing the burgh I made sure to stock up at nick's imports and after three years of my faithful business I feel almost guilty going elsewhere to replenish my supply. His genuine greetings on the street each day just one more thing I miss about the steel city.
My supply has dwindled and for quite some time now I have been clinging to my final stick not wanting to burn it down on any moment that wasn't fitting or meant to be paired with that soothing earthy aroma.
My mind and soul have been writhing since July and lately for the first time I have sensed that I was lingering on the brink of enlightenment. The reason, the only one thing I’ve been waiting for, so long in fact I’d begun to doubt its existence. Although, silly me, I have always believed there is a reason for everything, and self doubt paves only a road of self destruction. But I have to be ready to receive the reasons I suppose. Close my mind even a smidge and freedom is not able to set me free,
"before you can see the light you must learn to deal with the darkness"
since right after the accident that fortune has been sitting on my dresser. Every day if not more than once I have looked at it. Maybe today will be the day but have I not BEEN dealing? So much darkness maybe everything I have ever believed is nothing. No darling you weren't dealing with anything you were putting it off and closing your mind. Through trial and error and sleepless nights and bouts of depression and neglecting company and doubting all that you are, and you just wanted to know WHY. But you had to learn. And you were learning the entire time and now that light is finally there and everything makes sense and the hands of understanding are working the knots from your back and its relief like you have never known.
I feared that this had all been for nothing, even all along, my whole existence so far.
I have been draining myself continually but it was as though I was just draining right back into myself and suffering this miserable standstill and only to drain and redrain again and again and again and now in this ordinary of nights and the final stick burning and my senses feeling different I realize it has finally come and why so long is a mystery of sorts and I’m finally draining OUT instead of recycling that filth.
all these months depraved, up so high and down so low, snorting mental and emotional rails of doubt and negativity and letting that pride the fucking monster cut itself into the drug. I became the unlikely addict of this meaningless world that will suck you in so hard and so fast you don't realize you have let it because it waits patiently to sting until you are at your most vulnerable and then the venom is oozing in your veins and you didn't even realize you had become so weak to let this happen.
oh god the denial all this time and I knew it had to stop but I kept snorting it all in only to fall back down and this happened over and over until months later it smacks me in the fucking head like a shit-ton of bricks. And now the venom starts to drain and I’m not feeling that drip anymore, it had become comfortable, welcome, with it I knew would come escape from what is real. And now it is gone and they all still love it, but baby you know you never liked it anyhow, that god awful drip that all addicts seem to adore, and did I actually convince myself that I did too?
the last nag champic ember releases its red glow and the ash falls into my little ceramic thrift store bowl and the smell permeates the room and I realize that last stick is now gone. But its three a.m. and the dancing flame on the wick of the vanilla candle beside it is sticking it out with me and now that the drain has begun I can smell it for the first time. and be aware, it is plentiful and has burned for hours so many times since the move and tonight I mean I can really fucking smell it and I swear to god every other time I have thought it to be the worst candle because it had no smell but it was kind of pretty and burned so long so I kept on. and I’m feeling so free from all these burdens that I can finally smell that smell and I can feel that smell and I can see that smell and my relief right now is so great I think I may even hear that smell.
And it is all so good.
My heart races randomly. I sensed the healing properties of the night tonight upon the arrival, start, and completion, of lonesome traveler and have been working on a pot of coffee I brewed around midnight. I’ve had too much I’m getting anxious and writing feverishly and my heart is beating way too fast. But I need the night sometimes. I am able to feel so alone (and good alone, mind you) in a house full of heavy sleepers with my bed and my books and my little flame and the silence playing in the darkness out there. And I can't even feel that alone when physically, in an empty house in the day, I am really alone, if you get what I’m saying...
I was a creature of the night even at nine years old. Sitting in front of the shrink and not knowing how to explain to her why I, this poor scrawny little child, was not sleeping at all for so many years. Up all night until dawn the mind so alive and when that dawn is about to break I guess I dozed off most times around then until the Winnie the Pooh alarm clock is wailing for school. , the daily grind. the conformist force-fed societal regime that I can't escape and I’m only in third grade and I have so, so long to go it seemed and that night is all I have but when I am hitting the snooze button I never know what to think. for the journey to sleep was so long and so exhausting for me and I was unsure whether I had ever really been sleeping at all...
well now that I have babbled myself completely off track... all I have wanted is the reason for the accident and all the trouble that has followed. Why I had to fall and get back up only to fall right back down again. Blessings disguised as curses perhaps is what they all have been. And the gift had to keep on giving until I recognized it has such.
Minimalism. Get back to what you need. I became over-indulgent somewhere. I lost track. Worrying myself to misery over all this debt and it doesn't matter and it never did because I had all I needed. And it was so much at once (and I was never used to being so on top of things) I wasted it and I let it eat away at me like every other drooling hyena of this world. At any given point and time in your life (and if you do this wrong you won't realize it until you look back and retrace your steps and now I know this) you have everything you need. There is enough. Or there is the resource to acquire enough. And don't worry about the future if you are being resourceful and wise with what you have and not materialistic, not blind, as I became. Don’t worry about the future because in the future if you aren't worrying yourself with all the shiny objects then at that time you will also have what you need. So live in the now and do it right. If I had only been more humble and not so over indulgent when deep down I knew it was wrong and not myself, I would have had every penny I needed to pay this debt before it became so. I would have had just the amount I needed each time another expense arose. but I took for granted the helping hand and the line of credit and I threw it all away on nothing tangible because I don't even remember what and now I see why this all happened and its ok. And now the money has been coming in the smallest of spurts and each time it comes another little expense or trouble arrives at my door. and I huff and puff and then I stop because why am I doing so when I have everything that I NEED and I will pay with this small trickle of money that is just enough with just enough left over to sustain and I will STILL have just what I NEED.
Jesus fucking christ am I even making sense because sometimes these thoughts come at me so fast and I start writing so fast I can't even read it then I start typing but it is coming out so fast my thoughts run over themselves then its a big heaping plate of everything but the kitchen sink and does it make sense like it makes sense in my head?
I drank way too much fucking coffee. I feel like I’m going to die.
Last night. Hours at the dive and its last call and we carry on the drink at home and
"you just described yourself and everything you hate and its all the same"
a very, very late night conversation on the meaning of life, a debacle of sorts, the mind coaxed open by just the right dose of the drink, and finally! My conversee catches my bluff. And in one sentence pulled from my own mouth and shown back to myself in its falsehood due to the way I had been living. And I was exposed to myself and the faults of late. Finally. and this is why I didn't understand all this time.
some days later and I’m not at home and I have to awake in an hour and I shouldn't fall asleep because I’ll be late for my appointment. My appointment which I am having to attend each month because of the accident because I was an irresponsible drunk behind the wheel all those years. And it is so much fucking money for nothing and if I’m late it is that much more. I’m complaining even though it is all a result of my own carelessness and my own faults and my own over indulgence.and now the alarm has been blasting for an hour and I’m late and I’m angry because I just received this small amount of money after I have had none for weeks and now that I’m late even more is going to be gone and why am I angry when I still have enough and will still have just enough left over and its all I need and knowing good and well I would do nothing but drink the late fee I’m now paying in the nights to come anyhow...
my god this is it, my bluff called not only a day or maybe two prior. And here it is in my sober face bright and early and head throbbing. So I go and I’m late and I fork it over and it is all so strange and beautiful to me at last, this life of mine.
Solitary night following (which is still now in progress) and it cost me nothing more than I already did not have before and I realize that I have alas LEARNED to DEAL with the darkness. I was simply EXISTING in the darkness before and I thought my misery was somehow "dealing with". There are unavoidable things and one cannot complain or you will miss out on all life is offering and I have been missing out but now I understand it all. I was a hypocrite and now the boozy haze gone and the reflection of the statement of another and the test that followed settles in. and now all the pieces of the past four months fit and I had started to think they never would.
I lost my trust in sustaining simply through lust for life. I guess this is the reason why everything since the move has occurred not just the accident. because now I understand the who and the what the how and the when and the where and the WHY of all these things that have happened to me and why these people have come and gone and why they happened and came and went when they did.
One always has just what one needs and from there life is in your hands and no one else's.
My world feels whole again, for now. It is 4:08 a.m. and there is no more space in this notebook at all. I'm already scribbling in the very last margin. goodnight.
