Numbered Days

As I get older the thing that weighs most on the mind is all the wasted time, the hours watching television shows, hanging out drinking in bars, hallucinating on drugs, and wandering through dangerous streets of foriegn countries looking for something, experience, wisdom, or connection. Not sure this idea, object, or person ever surfaced, the only thing left to do is sort through the catalouge of adventures in an attempt to discover a common thread, a bridge connecting such a wide assortment of pursuits that very few would bother to spend a lifetime undertaking. So here I am 40 years later with all this raw data spread out through twenty years of writing and photography. A countercultural collection of rumors, short hand, and over exposed images, left to become nothing more than a barfly of the 21st century gathering wrinkles, opting for polyester clothing, where alcohol does nothing more than pass the time between the early hours before the rising sun.

But why the sudden compulsion to do what so many others in Las Vegas already spending their early evenings formulating into ritual. Is this when it starts? The down slide into death. Am I doing nothing more than priming the body for delivery into the afterlife or just foregoing the sleeping pills to embrace an easier as well as somewhat more social method of getting some rest. All the binging of the past 25 years has finally peaked, not in a sense that the spirit of indulging in such bustle has dissapated, no in fact the strength of personal conviction in regards to living like Jim Morrison only seems to grow. Most 40 year olds do not experience narcotic induced blackouts, my life appears to embrace a few a month and when the xanax flowed freely, more like a few a week. A current relapse into the arms of this particular sedative made me realize how easy it is for my reckless nature to take over the steering wheel and drive the bus with blind fold properly placed over the eyes. Lucky to still be alive, more like lucky to have friends who care enough about me while enjoying my antics to make sure safe passage back to a hotel, friends house or my home has been attained. There have been a few moments of waking up in hotels without recollection of how my arrival had taken place, disgusting acts of instinct subconscious might which if harnesses could potentially be the active agent in conducting mental telepathy amongst human beings. No different than a chain of ants communicating during a ground swell of industrious nature, a living system disassembling organic matter at one end of the chain to arrive at the low end of stream like barges on a river.

The most difficult part is to get over the guilt of waste, of the constant desire to continue dashing away the days as if I had achieved some secret immortality, kept to myself as the acts of self abuse continue to increase with such a level of intentional harm those around would be entirely convinced I had made a pact with the devil over some base desire of achievement that was nothing more than a ruse for my soul, to be tormented day after day inacting animalistic commotions as payment for series of the catstrophes strewn throughout my existence. The hard dollar has arrived, a cash reward that will never be fully earned, just dangled about as an exit, as a tropical oasis, as a means to an end. The ability to wake in the morning with no plans, no commitments, no expectations, to drink, fuck, and do whatever I please, which is kind of what I do now, but with a job mixed in.

I have not found a way to seperate complete rigid dedication to the ebb and flow of living in the work moment, isolated from the bars, restuarants, and any sort of fun. Why, can't there be both? But, allowing the good times to spill over into the job has rapidly declined into an impassible mountain range that only grows in height exponential height with each passing year. Recovery is like voodoo, sometimes it is there, other times it completely abandons you and all hope of ever returning which makes life like one big drug junkie come down, the complex range of emotions in that time has corroded my sanity, drawing the well to a status of emptiness. The super bouts of multi day free for alls have become nothing more than beat downs from invisible aggressors who take pleasure on watching me suffer the long road back to sobriety. Thankfully, there is a insoluable substance inside that keeps me going through all the pain receptors working on overload to break me, a mind fighting, trying to tell me to get straight, kick all this boozing, pill popping, and drug sniffing, at this point the battle is still up in the air.