january man (crawling from the wreckage)

I have a friend who has coined this term: a bad case of the "Januaries". Fucking eh! Let's talk about this. I'll talk, you listen. And bear in mind I generally won't waste my time, or yours, writing about material that I deem to be less than universally relative. As in you can relate...

Understand so far?

Both of my eyes feel like they need to be sent to a spa. Separate spas. Each eye is so itchy and sore and wants so badly to close that I am beginning to suspect they need a good cry.

Well, there is no such thing as eye spas, so let's examine what my eyes may need to cry about, or over, or for. On whose behalf should mine eyes weep? For little Johnny Maudlin, of course...

Little Johnny Maudlin, who, just like little Margaret and Mark, and Ted and Ann, and Bruce and Davy and Doug and all the people Johnny would love if only he could find the time he's lost...

Do you see how I lost control of that sentence? I lost control of my own life just the same way. I went too fast. I spent too much. I said yes so many times when I really wanted to say no. And now my eyes, both the right eye and the left one, are sore and exhausted and they fill with water but the water won't spill over.
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How do we lose control of something so precious as a life? Is there a manual I was supposed to read? The Bible, perchance? Did it have the answers? Pish. And posh. And piffle. The Bible, like the Koran and all the others is just pages gathering mold and rage, collecting the madness that comes seeping out of the skulls of impotent potentates everywhere.

How did this happen? And why must I make this passage each and every goddamn January, with the pelting rain that turns into mist by late afternoon, through which I race homeward, to crawl under a blanket, like my life itself is on the line, and read The Godfather's Revenge, as if it were a good healthy shot of heroin, something to make the pain of this fucking dull soul deadness recede.

How did my soul die? Is it truly dead? Wait a minute, while I check for it's pulse. There was a poem, when I was a child, a school child, called Rocking Horse Winner, with a line about the walls that cried, "Money."

And that, my dear friends of dark rainy January, is how I murdered my own soul. In the pursuit of sickening things that only weigh me down and now I'm drowning and my eyes, the left eye and the right eye, are sore and they itch and they want to close or cry.

And my cell phone! Shall we speak of my cell phone? My cell phone rings, not with messages of love and fun and adventure, but with messages: can you work here, can you work there, can you work everywhere Sam I am?

My boss calls me on the cell phone, and he does not pay for the access. He is a desperate bastard who can only hear, in his mind, the sounds of the ideas about what it is he NEEDS! And he needs to call me on my cellphone and ask: can you do this, can you drive there, can you drive here and there and do this and do that, Sam I am?

And I want to smash the sad look off his face and I want to hammer my cell phone into silver jewelry and wear it around my neck. Why, do you remember why, I needed a cell phone?

Because you had one, you bastard! And I had to have what you have...

Now the sound of it makes me want to rush to the bathroom and puke. I just changed the number, by the way, and cut the world off and out. So that I can think, in peace, for a moment.

Think about what?

Think about how I got from brown hair and brown eyes to grey hair and red eyes. So fast. If I sit down, in my own quiet living room, and actually concentrate, can I be twelve again? Flexible in my body? Flexible in my belief? I took this ship into these troubled waters, and I am in the wheelhouse and I will take it to other waters. On that you may rest assured.
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