Kamikaze Vesper

Day IV:

Ciggies: Only second hand. Nothing beats running outside to the smokers deck every fifteen minutes and deeply inhaling.

Coffee: Only one venti coffee so far.

Booze: Not even an issue.

Health: The right side of my face is still a vibrant orange swirl, although it's detumesced much since last night.

I started the Kamikaze blogg as a gauge for personal growth. I know that sounds a little too posh and individual-oriented and solipsistic. Last weekend I had a sad, autumnal catharsis that things in my life aren't changing and that I'm not growing. Worse than that, things are exactly the same as they were four years ago. In an eerie sense they are almost exactly the same, only the thin, polaroid film of reality seems to shift.

Four years ago, I was working third shift in a library, living in a nest of abandoned manuscripts and flapped open Vintage Contemporaries, living hardcore off of my trinity of vices. This year same thing.

Four years ago I had a hot, studious prose prof. who, no matter how hard I tried, would not give me an "A." It was always a B. This year, same thing, same young beautiful intelligent female prof., only different school. And I still don't have the balls to accost her and bitch.

Four years ago my heart was carelessly tossed out the passengers window by an older woman. This year, the ironies are similar.

Four years ago my cousin commited suicide. He was eleven.

Last night, exactly four years to the date of his suicide, I break out with volcanic rashes all over my body. Every patch of skin I would touch I would itch. My neck. My feet. My genitals. My ear started to bleed and there's a mail slot welt on my lower chin. It was like I was wrestling against my skin. Like a snake who has lingered too long in the dust, trying to slough it's oily garment.

Human beings have the amazing capacity of change. Unlike our fellow mammalian cousins, fellow bipeds who eat, procreate, defecate, search for food and die; human beings can change their thinking. They can change their attitudes, their ideologies. They can alter their notion of what is capable. What is achievable.

I'm trying so hard to change. It's hard at times. I wish I didn't have to work so many crazy shifts. I don't know why it seems that my mom wants nothing to do with me and Uncle Mike wants too much to do with me. Most of the time, I don't even know if it's a.m./p.m, autumn or spring, or if I'm seventeen or twenty-seven....

But I know I can change. Four years ago George Bush was running for president, the Yankee's were headed toward the World Series victory cigar and I was doing exactly the same thing that I am doing right now....

We learn from previous cycles. We learn what to avoid and what to fall in love with...

And I know that if I can change; I can tread through this linguistic mire of life singing songs and writing stories, than anyone can.