I am convinced, at least as of this evening, that the lack of any type of preparation for this trip we’re about to take is the right call. There was something scratched out of a sticky note, but we’re just going to pretend that doesn’t exist.

It helps that this has become regular again. The mechanics of act are running more efficiently. Well, as efficiently as this hack can muster. I never learned how to properly type. I’m all right hand, with a few accidentals on the left. All heart with barely the technique of an amateur. Here, and in probably so many other areas far beyond this.

Was thinking before about how I’m not as learned as think myself to be. Hell, my bachelor’s degree was in communications. TV and radio, no less. A decade ago, where charm (or more likely arrogance) got me a lot of the way through.

Stacks of unread books. A room full of instruments not nearly played enough. And notes and scribblings of ideas, maybe whole worlds of stories, left rotting on the vine, in damn near, if not entirely scribed illegibly.

But that really only weighs down the present, I suppose. The itch of more is an infection that if is not permanent, I certainly aim unconscious or otherwise to keep reinstating the affliction. As I often think myself more middle aged than I might admit, the heft of failure both actualized and imagined seems shrouded in something much more grim than as had it once before. The imposing dimness at the periphery of experience, peering and pacing ever closer. The timeline shackles my being to the impending sense of that which will be left unaccomplished. And something must be left behind, right?

Talked about blame not that long ago. With a friend regarding the same occurrence we both took part in. Each of us blaming ourselves in near entirety for the lack of outright success being wrought from a portion of the aforementioned event. Thankfully, with neither of us relenting our blame, when managed to chalk it up to a sense of overtly able agency that we believe, but certainly cannot possess in this life. Can’t think everything is your fault without also thinking yourself almighty, and that line of thinking. And, because this personal compatriot of mine and me, we happen to feed and conspire inspiration from one another- the whole thing wrapped with a resolution, felt unanimously between us two, that better can be got at for the next attempt.

It is easy enough to look back on whatever life has been gone through thus far and see a vast waste of missteps, mistakes and mismanagement of the precious (or poisonous) gift of sentience. After all, those poor, idiot fish in the tank a few rooms over don’t seem all that bothered by any much of anything. Perhaps we are the fools, for ever crawling out of the ocean. We, the fools, always thinking and thinking about what it is we’re doing, and the even more asinine question of why.

But I think I only let my thoughts drift in such ways as an act of increasing ideological fortitude. Doubt is the key to finding the more resolute replies that the universe might provide. The essence of both poetry and science, that the doubt of what is explained must be got at to find a more solid explanation of why it even is to begin with. An explanation within itself that is never guaranteed its throne, at least not in perpetuity.

The pressure of time though, what a dozy, huh? And if you’ve got a nice visual to coincide with that forward march through this fourth dimension, how that pressure can build. Even if only in the neurotically produced anxieties associated.

But I know better than to let such anatomical existential skeletons rule my being. Or at least, I believe it so. The countdown wins if panic ensues. And if failure is all that might ever be found, at least we should approach with the grace due to ourselves, if never a hint towards that great enemy.

Might be that I’ve been feeling an air about of encroaching transformation. Something akin to paradigm shift. And though I’ve been through at least a few before, and some of the bigger ones that humans even get to experience, it is that unknown that imposes fear in an unparalleled way. And I worry that the only change left for me is submission to all the impossibilities I once felt so sure were possible. No shelves will ever house my words. No ears to hear how I chose to shape frequency. No eyes or mind or hearts will ever see the projections I choose to imitate within the stories of woe and wonder regarding the human condition. And on, and on, and on.

And just as those emotions and ideas condense and construct a cavalcade to crush me, I smirk to myself.

It was never about all that. Even this, it isn’t about you. Don’t get me wrong, I hope there is something for everyone in all the things I do- that’s just not why I do it. This, or the music I still need to express out in person and recorded. Or the stories I still need to scratch out until I bleed their meaning. And whatever else from all this outward energy of expression I cannot help but feel. The truth is, that I do this because I must. Because without sitting here and writing out the self-spawned rambles of an otherwise not particularly noteworthy evening- something within your humble narrator begins to wither and die. Might seem selfish, for sure, but you get a better me out of it. And if you read this, I’d imagine that matters, at least a little bit.

I know there are folks who do these sort of things, you know, the creative nonsense type of stuff, because they seek adoration. And although I am not totally void of that, there is something besides. Something potent and unavoidable. It is natural for me to ponder out loud. Done it my whole life, as far as I can remember. And the rhythm is within me, for sure, even if it doesn’t always match a metronome. Sometimes, that’s the best beat anyway. Even something as a steady heartbeat fluctuates. Just takes something profound to occur in our perception. Something drastic or dire, perhaps. You know, like rappelling down the side of building, or the smile of a beautiful woman. And I don’t imagine myself amiss is assuming the times of cardiac fluctuation are the prime example of the type of instances that make keeping the old ticker in working order worthwhile at all.

A steady heartbeat your whole life makes you little more than a machine. Something I certainly am not. Nor do I have any desire to be. I rather like being this ape-like electric meat bag. Far more interesting than anything else I think I might have been being. I pity the machine, nothing but structure and form. Too bad the machine likely couldn’t comprehend all that. Something us pitiable humans can know, oh so well.

I’ll be off onto the next impulse now. Until we meet here again, even if it is only you and I. Or even just me.