I got done riding the Zoloft wave a month ago. It's more like the Zoloft dumb and numb wave, not exhilarating but not dangerous either. Like lying on a float in a wave pool with a blindfold on. I did it to avoid going mad, but then when I got too close to the opposite end of the spectrum, that is, going dumb, I was forced to stop. Now I'm finding my way back to how I want to feel, but I've slightly changed, so I have more to work with now.
All I have to worry about now is the dull ache on the left side of my abdomen. I've been downing these old antibiotics and drinking cranberry juice and doing whatever else I can think of to alleviate this problem. I try to keep the worries distant when I wake up nauseous and wonder if my liver is doing what it is supposed to. Liver, bladder, kidneys, who knows what the hell it is. The absence of health insurance takes its toll on the psyche. Having no control over your health is a scary feeling and is probably useful in securing an overall feeling of personal impotence. I am beginning to see glimpses of what it really is to be poor.
I'm a little unsatisfied with house-sitting. I'm staying in someone else's house and I still haven't found steady work and I begin to wonder if the leech feels guilt as it sucks on its host. All that will end soon, I imagine. Nothing to get too worked up about.
I haven't truly loved throughout the course of my life. That is, romantically. I have been in love with...well really just two people. The first interest was a bit misplaced, and the second was with someone whom I have never met. But the second still lingers in my head, I have to admit, even after the several years that have passed. No one thus far has been able to replicate this. A louder, denser, more forceful sound can resonate for a long time, especially if the surfaces around it are of a nature to sustain this. So goes the imprint of her that was left behind to resound in my head. After a while I forget and am perfectly content and then suddenly I have a vivid dream and the echoes of her memory make me hurt in the chest all morning. This morning was like this. And so I get up and write again, then watch the stirred dust dance in the sun rays.
Despite all of these bitter and semi-bitter, or bitter-sweet (whatever you may prefer) reflections, I'd have to say that for the most part I feel content.
I feel content because I have music, or more accurately, I have the means to make it with other people. It has brought my brother and I together, and two other unlikely people whom I have just met as well. It is the process of production, production as a family, producing something that we actually believe in. It is a simpler, more fundamental means of communication. Why is music universal? Because the meaning conveyed in music is more fundamental than words themselves. Notes and groups of notes. Melodies and harmonies. All arguments and events and states of affairs are rising in the sonic soup and sometimes I can feel my face get all twisted up as I'm playing a passage.
It is harder to lie. It is harder to cover up the truth, as ugly as it can sometimes be to the mind's eye. Your fingers do the talking and after that it is all up in the air, pretty literally.
It's like telling the bitter truth to someone you love.
