May cause drowsiness: day 1

Ring Apollo. Tell him I’ve sus­tained a broken fourth fin­ger on my right hand. This might not be the moment for fool­ish endeav­ours. This is cer­tainly not the moment to be typ­ing. Still.

I blame an obsess­ive nature that was simply com­pelled to find a non-essential some­thing which I’d pre­vi­ously draf­ted and saved in a corner of my dis­used fact­ory, deep in the cogs and guts that used to power this once self-loved site. I blame my lousy memory for hav­ing almost for­got­ten that this place exis­ted, so that three attempts at the pass­word were required before I finally gained entry. I blame you and I blame the world. Me? I’m entirely blameless.

It wasn’t my fault, you see. The inter­net just moved on to the next cheap thrill. That’s what hap­pens. It’s over there now, at the other end of the room, chat­ting up social net­work­ing, drib­bling seduct­ively and rub­bing its crotch while show­ing every last moment of its private life to any­one who cares to take a look. Go on, join in, you know you want to. Log in, click on and jerk off to the array of blurry digital pho­tos of the internet’s gen­it­als, taken at some barely remembered drunken party and now dis­played for all to see.

Good. While everyone’s atten­tion is diver­ted, I’ve skulked back here.

As I reac­quain­ted myself with this old haunt, I sucked on what’s become my drug of choice these days: an effer­ves­cent Vit­amin C tab­let. I get my kicks from the way it sizzles on my tongue. Knock your­self out, son; get off your head and lose con­trol. In the res­ult­ing chem­ical rush, I came up with a crazy scheme that will either reac­quaint me with writ­ing and with the words I sup­posedly love so much, or will make me sick of the very sight of them and hope­fully provide the final shove into doing some­thing reas­sur­ingly dull and sens­ible with the rest of my life.

I’ve been count­ing. In 2009 I man­aged to write fifty-two things here — posts, entries, erratically-sprayed piss­ings, bowls of verbal vomit, call them what you will. That’s one a week. Not too shabby, or at least it wouldn’t be if the major­ity hadn’t been packed into the first part of the year. In the first four months of 2010, I have man­aged just one brief appear­ance back in Janu­ary, then nothing.

There are thirty-one days in May. That’s thirty-one pieces of writ­ing, if you’re / I’m lucky. Altern­at­ively, if you’re / I’m unlucky, that means thirty-one attempts at redis­cov­er­ing a battered and bruised muse by giv­ing her a few more slaps; thirty-one rounds in the ring with a bloated, viol­ent thug who is way past his prime; thirty-one streams of self-hating con­scious­ness; thirty-one of I don’t know what because I haven’t thought of it yet and I might not ever think of it.

There is no plan. This is doomed to fail­ure. I give it three days.