¶Friday started as slow and somber as possible, full of empty promises and unreceptive to sobriety. This was every morning, but sometimes it started much earlier.  This seeemed differnt somehow, some strange amalgamation of lost humanity, innocence and perspective.  Never before had nadirs and abyssmal reconnaisance been so bitterly or potent.  ¶  For a new beginning, this sounded and smelled much shittier than you could have ever expected and you didn't know how to be sorry or even anything less than removed.  You need more than anything to tell the truth and come proverbially clean.  Reach out and grab what's left of your supersoaked reality and anyone not too scared to love you.  That's where the Barossa Valley comes in and you search for that holy grail of a third middle finger.¶ The worst part of this relapse/bender is that I can I already see it unfolding in my mind.  There's atleast eight ounces of Shiraz between me and the 30-pack of Yeungling in the basement, but I know myself and I have absolutely nothing to lose.  I usually write about loss and the dealing with such, but to-night I am going to go out of my way and describe the finding, how it makes loss so very inconsequential.  I've lost a lot of friends of late and they count for a minute, at least here.  ¶ I can't write an obituary.  I am trying too hard and recompense falls short in this forum. 

   At worst, I am ecstatic and I've exhausted the point of looking for reasons that aren't there.  My proverbial ninth cloud is still floating of its own accord and I refuse to get off.  I am in love for the first time in a while and it feels just as good as I could have hoped.  Everything looks, smells, tastes and sounds better, even as I am overwhelmed and powerless to completely feel.  Life seems easier just like it did after we jumped out of that plane two summers ago.  My day has begun with a new splash of brilliance and I almost could not care less if I have to work at the restaurant to-night or not.  I have a bottle of King Estate Chardonnay in the freezer and sunshine in a glass is right around the corner. ¶ I am doing my best to stick with my strict vow not to overthink or analyze this hard-fought new plane of content and so I will talk of quotidian concerns so my brain can take a rest for the first time in five days and eleven hours.  I am finally doing what I am best at for all intents and purposes and I'm glad I waited as long as I did so the timing meshed with all other tangibles.  I have met some great people already and there is certainly more to come.  I officially feel as if I am ready for my own restaurant at whatever next juncture I arrive and my new sense of learning is nothing short of charmed.  That said, all of my recent reconnections have rounded out this precious mania and I need only maintain and avoid the "unthinkable" with intense prejudice. ¶ I can't thank my boy enough for having me out to visit last month and quite unknowingly facilitate the attitude that has led to this liberation.  Those really weren't the droids that they were looking for. 

   I should probably just begin with the realities and start from there, but I'm not so certain that I am even aware of where they left off and this fantasy began.  I have been in a perpetually hazy daze for just under a month now and has done quite a number on what I now count as important.  All my time here seems uncharacteristically temporary and that is not so good of a notion for a transitional searcher that refuses to come down. ¶ My real problem is that I am drinking warm Chardonnay and learning the ins and outs of eBay the hardest way possible.  I did manage to sell another item, a Beatles "White" album that I must now figure out how to package to-morrow morning before I head downtown for my ABCC recertification class.  I don't know what any of it means, but I must persevere and keep my sights on that golden shore, wherever on this planet it may be.  I finally bundled some of the comics into lots attractive enough to sell and I just took a few blurry pictures that will certainly force me to drop my price even further.  It used to be so fucking easy to have no idea what you are doing and still get away with it, probably the biggest downside to innocence lost other than swollen joints.  ¶ My latest and most frustrating dilemma is that of Outlook 2007 and why it will not communicate nicely with my Exchange Server.  I can get all of my email through my phone or through a website, but it makes it very difficult to create new messages.  I won't even mention the difficulties of sending my resume along with a nice little paragraph or two.  I've been waiting for a response from the company's support team and it is apparent that they either don't give a fuck or have no idea what the problem is.  In that vein, I stare at eBay and myspace, drink chardonnay and look forward to to-morrow.  How brilliant it had better be.¶ Oh, I put the lot of my pictures on Facebook and it was much, much easier, not to mention that are so easily viewable there, albeit sans captions. 

   My own private indifference has caught up with me and I am mildy euphoric in spite of myself.  The kids are still rumbling upstairs and I am left with the shallow shell of my former intentions as it gets later and later.  I brought home two whites from Moore Brothers, a Burgundy and a Bordeaux, and I'm torn between finishing what I started and having a prayer at to-morrow's finality.  I've made this speech before and it has now grown tired even in my own ears because I've realized who is kidding whom.  Or vice versa.  The good news is that I finally booked my trip to Eugene and it was harder than necessary and I still feel uncertain.  The good news is that I splurged for a rental car so I can at least shoot about as I like and be less of a burden to my hosts.  I try not to get to excited in light of the two week buffer and the great onus that it is 1207 duPont.  The real kick in the ass is that I am completely open to any and all dates and I am secretly hoping to stay in Oregon as long as possible.  I would love to make a friend in the viticulture end just to shoot the shit, but I secretly pray for a job offer so I can extricate myself from this mid-Atlantic vortex of cynical indifference.  I eat at Boston Market every day and it has worn me down.  ¶ I am scared to death that I don't know how to be myself anymore, without this terrible pall of insetion that I've created.  It has affected my persona and my output and I am nimble at best.  I guess that I'm scared to death of a second wind because I am so wholly petrified of what to-morrow has to offer.  I will probably get over it, but we will see how that pans out as usual.  I know that I am getting old becuase I don't even like to drink anymore.  My spirits took a serious slide downward when I saw that it was officially past my bedtime.

I'm in some unenviable place between joy and exasperation and all I know to do is drink and write.  I could tuck myself in and fall asleep to Conan or sort out some of my animosity and jeopardize an early morning.  I'm still jittery from all of to-day's caffeine and the climax of the latest leak in the ceiling.  The wine is just reactivating all of the squirrels in my brain and giving me a false second wind.  At heart, I am a tremendously organized individual despite, or perhaps because of, my ADHD.  I'm not even sure that is a correct diagnosis, but that's what an ex once told me and it sounded a little more pinpointed than ADD.  In any case, I very often get too far ahead of myself, ergo behind, and I have to clear my chi by breathing, taking a moment and reevaluating my situation analytically.  When in doubt, I clean up, reorganize and start fresh.  It works fine until something like the ceiling becomes compromised.  Yet again, I will begin with a to-morrow's fundamentally clean slate, make sure the ceiling is dry and cut, patch and paint my way back to where I started.  If all goes well, I will only be another sixteen hours behind schedule.  ¶ So I just took a quick 101 question online Brain System Test and it diagnosed me with Cingulate System Hyperactivity.  After a cursory search for this "condition," I'm now convinced that it doesn't really exist.  Maybe there just aren't enough hours in the day for me and I need to prioritize my time in a better fashion.  I wanted to write about going to Oregon or something positive, but I'm finding it harder and harder to speculate or even enjoy the breeze until this burden has been lifted.  I'm surprised there wasn't a direct link to a site sponsored medication, though there was mention of St. John's Wort.  Now I need to figure out which Syrah goes with SJW.

¶  This is in honor of my new inability to find a way not to make the time.  Now that I spend most of my waking hours alone and in self-conference, I enjoy the unfortunate perk of bouncing all of my silly rationalizations, justifications and premeditated horseshit off an alterego of myself before they go public.  That said, I feel as if most things that I'm going to say have already been said, edited or otherwise dismissed and irrelevant before they ever truly exist.  It takes a slow infusion of grape juice to get up the guile, not to mention some popped cherries, but I finally feel human enough to write again.  I just hope it doesn't take all fucking night.¶¶  So, life is inviting at least and the horizon his bright, albeit more than a little too distant and fractured for my impatienience.  I'm doing my best to hold it together for just a little longer and put off the inevitables with meticulous precision.  "The Money Pit" and the whole "two weeks" schtick really hits home every day, though I believe that the end is drawing near.  Last night, I ripped out the front door jamb (and door), but we also purchased a new one to-day, prehung at that, so the obstacles are becoming more minor in their respective girths even as their frequency seems to double.  In any case, I must now be my strongest and most focused for this will carry me through.  I still don't know what lies ahead and I hesitate to even investigate anything but the most imminent of realities.  I finally booked my trip to Eugene for the first week of March, presumably a safe enough bit into the future.  Nothing really hinges on it, but it will certainly be an odd amalgamation of satisfied R&R and new thought.  I've been busting my ass polishing up this proposal for CC, but it is so difficult to project indeterminate figures on a fictitious location with uncertain financing.  Thankfully, I'm not building (or flying) the shuttle.  The ubiquitous undercurrent of void has been numbed, displaced or otherwise fed by my constant pursuit of new and different ventures, but it catches up with me every now and again .  I guess that's where the wine and decompression come in, too few and extremely far between.  The good news is that I'm doing everything necessary other than writing, but that is par for this silly course and I can catch up real quick with a little downtine (four hour layover in Phoenix!) and my increasingly copious notes.  ¶  Now that the kitchen is over 90%, all that is left of any major heft are the baseboards and shoes.  I guess I'm most disenchanted that I'm just fixing all of my original errors instead of proceeding along with the finishing that could surely have the place rent ready by V-Day.  The funny thing about the light at the end of the tunnel is that it comes into sight and that's when you realize exactly how far away it really is.  I've been talking to myself for so long now that I'm tired of my own rhetoric and doubling up on high test in the morning only aggravates my condition.  On a great note, I had the most pleasant of afternoon breaks to-day when I stopped by the north triangle to see DS and all of her babies.  I actually felt like a human being again having a conversation with an adult, not to mention a loved one, and it reanchored me in whatever new phase of being I have entered since I left the slugs.  ¶  The scariest possibility of all is that I'm too far into my groove again and I will be unable to make the necessary adjustments and sacrifices when the ride needs maintenance.  I'm probably crossing bridges that I've yet to burn, but I'm newly aware of my hypomaniacal tendencies and the inherent path they lead me on.  Secretly, I have to wonder if this isn't just the beginning of the longest trip of my life and it is supposed to feel this way.  Most hypomaniacs probably echo that statement at the advent of their respective spirals.  Fuck it.  I can't worry about, at least not to-night.  ¶

    Do you have to hold my hand?  I'm at the challenging end of verspackle. Jesus' on the left and the Devil's under the hood.  I-95, eight lanes wide, you're getting high, so am I.  Turn on headlights, turn on hazards.  On my own divine.

    Fuck.  The ceiling fell in to-day.  The cabinets came and so all is told.  I should have taken a picture.  Thankfully I have Laurent Combier to come home to, albeit briefly.  I had two smatterings of disthought.  First, came when Brad was "suctioning" the sanding of my doubt amd I could only recall that little suction tank attached to my head in the accident days.  It was a little pump of obvious efficiency that sucked the blood out of my head, but the fact that I had to wear it as a badge of infirmary gave it significant animose.  I wish I had pictures and/or a better memory.  I keep forgetting that it saved my life in all it's sorry stead. 

     You'll never ever fade.  I need to gather my faith in me and stop shuffling the reconsideration at last. 

     Somehow I reconvened (props to D&B) for whatever that is worth.  I also ate something near a banana walnut energy bar laden with low-grade marijuana.  Bless my eyes this morning!.  I also opened the second bottle of Syrah.  I have postponed my venture West, but only subsequentially and in realistic expectation of 1207's completion.  The ceiling killed me.  To divide and rule should tear us apart. 

    People are really on my nerves lately and it doesn't seem to be letting up.  I can deal with the incompetent folks at Boston Market, the morons who flat out refuse to employ their turn signals and the same two assholes that ask me for change or a cigarette every single day.  I write that off to general intolerance exacerbated by an especially stressful workload and some days are worse than others.  My new issue hits a little closer to home, because now my friends are starting to turn on me and I'm powerless to act.  I guess I just need to let them go by the wayside like all the other losers that have let me down, but that doesn't make it any easier.  It is too difficult to unumerate the crimes, so suffice it to say that some people just don't give a shit about anyone but theirself.  It will always be that way and I don't expect to be special, though I do find it too difficult to turn off my "giving" valve and so I need just move on in search of decent human beings.  They're out there; I'm certain of it.  I've met a few.  My favorite person in the whole world went Left six years ago and I haven't been the same since.  He's out in Eugene at a wonderful organic spot named King Estate Winery and I have to wonder if I'm not supposed to be back out there with kind people who revolve around alternate suns.  I guess that the entirety of my new existence has become far too reliant on outside forces and I'm still swaying in the breeze and waiting for a sign.  Perhaps 2007 will afford me a bit of gumption and I can focus on some particulars instead of trying to play the whole field all at once and coming up with new and different takes on disappointment.