mess

i'm a mess. no getting around it. been wandering around in said mess, playing solitaire like it's my job. saw something tonight that made me realize something... can't explain more than that. sent me back to some old journals, knew i needed to find something there. at the moment, the thing seems to be the following, from charles simic's 'the unemployed fortune teller:' "it's your birthday. the child you were appears on the street wearing a stupid grin. he wants to take you by the hand, but you won't let him. 'you've forgotten something,' he whispers. and you, quiet as a mutt around an undertaker, since, of course, he (the child) doesn't exist." and from the same essay ("the necessity of poetry," appropriately enough): "i tiptoed so as not to wake the dead man." wish me luck wandering out of the mess. and for the courage to step off the cliff that, according to my notes, i've been hovering above for about a decade.