Cold

I overslept. I wasn’t late for class, but I had to forgo my shower. I felt like hell. It’s chemical. I’m a pretty classic case of manic-depression.

It’s dark. There’s lots of positive things going on. People seem to be giving me compliments that I don’t feel I deserve. I’ve received e-mails from people I haven’t heard from in a long while, saying that they miss me. My ex-wife tells me that I can’t handle success. She says I shoot myself in the foot every time things start to look good. Someone cast a spell on me. But it’s not working. I still feel horrible. But there’s no reason for it. It’s chemical.

Sleep sounds good, but I know if I lay down I won’t be able to stop thinking. William Styron got it right in his book, Darkness Visible. It’s like noise. I struggle to find ways to cut through the noise. Studying complex things helps. I bought three more books today, a Cambridge textbook on discourse pragmatics, a philosophy book on the Sophists, and Kurt Vonnegut’s latest book of short stories. Bad chemicals. Vonnegut knows a lot about that.

I need to finish the entry on Pennebaker’s book. I need to write an essay for a class on Monday. But all I can think about is an essay, or a blog entry, that I want to write about switch plates and outlet covers. It’s hard to explain; it’s just one of those ghosts of incomplete experiences. Maybe tomorrow. Tonight, I think I’ll just watch a newly downloaded copy of Barbarella. I think I’ll just roll around in the noise for a while. I know it will lift.

I appreciate the comments from new readers lately. I’m sorry I’m not more entertaining right now. It’s chemical. It will change, it always does. I know myself pretty well. I surf a chemical roller-coaster; I’ve done it all my life. But when things are good, they are damn good. That’s why I learn to live with the noise, and skip the chemical levelers.

At the bottom of every hill there are old lovers. Reading “Lovers Anonymous” by Vonnegut, I laughed when he described a club made up of guys in love with the same woman, Sheila Hinkley, that was formed when she married another man. Old lovers become emblems, but lose their urgency. I like the way Vonnegut describes it:

“Sheila Hinkley is now a spare whitewall tire on the Thunderbird of my dreams”