Watching My Life in Something Like High-Speed Slow-Motion

Dreamed of the Watchmen last night. Saw the movie at midnight. I was pleased with it. I think most people might be. Everything is a blur right now. Watchmen. Medicine. Waking. Trashmen outside roaring through the neighborhood. I'm sick without the luxury of lying in bed. Doctors found low oxygen in me. My heart and lungs may be failing, finally. I have oxygen tanks strewn about the house. I can't hear in my left ear. Mucinex box on the floor beside me. Ultrasound Monday. Lung specialist Wednesday. Hematologist two weeks from Monday. Cardiologist two weeks from Wednesday. Spent 4.5 hours in doctors offices last Friday. Came home to friends that stayed until after I left. Had a class Saturday out in Otisville that started at 8 AM. I was out the door before 7. Class didn't break for lunch until 2:30. Class was over at 6 PM. Saw my niece. Got picked up. Went to eat. Didn't get home until after midnight. I'm still recovering. Went downtown yesterday. It's a week later now and it's all a blur. Like watching my life outside of myself in something like high-speed slow-motion.

Toby wants a script. Brandon wants a script. I want a script. I want to type up more of Silent Nights today. I won't. I want to sell something and pay off a bill. I won't. Not any time soon. Today I'll watch TV, maybe play some video games. I should get back to Fallout 3, but I won't. Too much thought. Too much thinking. Will most likely play Forza 2 all day instead. Mindless.

Making friends recently. Making friends makes me want to write. Making friends makes me realize the use of making friends. Friends are escape. Escape from self. From reality. From troubles. Friends are a good movie. An enjoyable distraction. "Human coupling", as Dr. Manhattan would say. I don't want to run from myself with these friends, with any friends. I want reassurance. I want love. I want to love and be loved. I could live in squalor the rest of my life, but not if JoJo's at my side. I write for her. I write to get us out of here, out of debt. Not that our debt is immense by most standards, but still. Though she is still my purpose, there are others. Come gather 'round friends, wherever you roam. Let me tell you a story. A good story well told has incredible value. Every day the streets of the cities and towns and dirty villages across the globe play out tales never to be told. Some are good. Some horribly boring and unsatisfying. I am a mythmaker. But I recognize my smallness in the face of the universe. I tell true tales. My mind cannot compete. Everything I write has some depth of reality in it. Silent Nights, for instance, draws from a conversation I had more than a decade ago, a conversation about God. But not everything within is reality. Within us. Within my stories. Within my life. I am delusional about events in my life. Mediocre roles play out as poignant moments in my head. We are our myths.

I love through my words. It's all I know. They are the footprints I'll leave behind. When humanity is at the brink of its destruction, my words will call out through time and space and say, "We were here. And though we've hurt one another immensely, it was largely good. Let me tell you a story."

I want my words to love as I have and will love. I want my words to live as I have and will live. I want my friends not for escape. I want friends for reflections. For ruminations. For purpose.

"The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth." -- Jospeh Campbell

Today I will not write. I must rest. But tomorrow will be a new day.