on a small island with a fragile ecosystem

I don't get the crooked signs and things that look like people but really aren't. It's frustrating if I try to swim against the currents, thinking I have to swim in my own direction, but if I just let go and let myself be carried down river it frees up a large portion of my brain to do other things.

 Where is it gonna carry me if I just let go? It won't be right in this spot, it'll be in some different spot.
If I try to struggle and make the path, who am I struggling against?  Reality? Other people? Myself?
It never feels right, if I hold some idea in my head of where I want to go, then try to make a path that leads there. The parts never meet up. I end up with a bunch of places I wanna plug things, but no wires. The ropes don't stretch all the way. The pieces don't fit together. There's all these gaps where the juices leak out.

Sleeping outside is easy, in parks, in forests, among the rocks and dirt. In the trees on the side of the highway with lights and low rumbles tumbling by ever couple seconds, swollen clouds spitting now and then. Stumbling exhausted into bushes near a park, kicking all the shit and trash out of the way so I can have room to throw out my tarp and sleeping bag. Listening to some tweaked out homebum screaming while I fall asleep.

I enjoy having nothing to do, or getting around to the shit that needs done on my own time. I like having no expectations, not needing to worry about anything. Worrying and struggling seem like a waste of effort, when you can just wait around until its time to do stuff instead.

Calling strangers on the phone to discuss made up stuff like bills or credit or interviews, with its maze of invisible rules, is agony. I get so tired of it that I just decide to crash through the walls blindly not even thinking what the next step might be, let the chips fall where they may, and usually things turn out better that way. I have to fool myself to get there, though. Distract my mind for a second then jump.

I'm fine growing my own food, I'm fine pulling food out of dumpsters, fermenting veggies, salting meat, baking sourdough bread, cooking over a fire, I'm fine stealing food.
I'm happy begging, I'm okay sometimes working if the work doesn't demand too much of my brain function. I'd rather be cooking or sewing or building for friends and trade, but you make due with what you can get.

There's nothing wrong with being lazy. People are supposed to be lazy. Ancient man goofed off and did whatever seemed like the thing they should do all day and it worked out for them. Doing that in the real world works out too. You end up getting exactly as much as you need and no extra. If you don't need much then it doesn't take much effort and you might even be able to put a little away for down the road. If you store up a bunch of biosurvival things (money, friends, favors etc) then you have surplus you can coast on. If everybody still lived this way we probably wouldn't have all the excess technology stress and diseases we do.

There's forces that pressurize every system, and things usually want to stabilize at a place of equal pressure. Think of osmosis in cells, or magnetism, or gravity, thermodynamics, or population ecology, or lift on an airplane wing. You can spend energy to push yourself up that hill, but then coast down. If you put in a little energy on that coast down you can manipulate it so that you don't have to spend as much energy coasting up into that next hill. You can find a groove and surf on your input/outputs. Balancing work and play until they become synonymous, like halves of the same whole, ya dig?

People's names fly through one ear and out the other the minute they say them. Probably because I'm too busy being anxious and trying to make all the right gestures and facial expressions to not appear like a robot. Knowing this about myself I usually tell people my name several times during an introductory conversation, and then again at the end. I don't know if it works, but I feel like they don't usually forget my name.

I still can't shit

The days drift by in both agonizing slowness, and with bewildering speed. My waking life seems one long stretch of empty corridors, while the past recedes in piles of lost years. The mind is a maze without end, furious piles of stares and locked windows painted black, and jammed doors that must be forced and only open onto more stairs and frantic nests of empty rooms.

I can't escape from it. When I'm alone, I'm lonesome. Around people, I'm practically paralyzed in the fear of making social faux pas. Or else I dare to make a fool of myself, only to end up regretting it.

I'm disappointed every day I wake up. By noon I feel totally reborn and powerful, ready to take on the world in all its challenges and ring every drop from life. By 3:30 PM the crushing weight is back.

If everything is doomed to death then life itself is an absurdity. Anything can be done because we're free from consequences. This logic works in the world of fantasy, but not in the world of flesh and blood. Adventures are filled with mostly waiting. The worker is the victim of a vampire, whether he knows it or not. The difference is that the ignorant one isn't aware of his pain. The worker who can feel his blood being drained but is powerless to stop it is at a much worse place.

Unless he can find a way to rebel, and stay there. Or otherwise weaken the vampire's grasp.

I don't know how to do that. I tried living without a house, traveling the country. I tried making friends and building something. Each endeavor burns and crashes with no satisfying resolution.

++++++

Upon writing all this out I can even devise arguments against each and every statement. I've grown and developed into a totally different person in the few years I've been on the road. I've learned social skills, I've developed a form of self-esteem, I've destroyed and replaced just about every barricade to my development. I've learned to survive on nothing, how to manage money, how to let go of painful emotions.

The insidious power of depression is that it makes you forget the times you weren't depressed. It never leaves, though. It's always waiting around the corner, to catch you alone. I need a bell and a hammer to crash away it's intrusions. Maybe that's what art & writing is for. Just clench and squeeze and fuck out all the words, all the feelings, all the terror and useless crap and wad it all up and burn it.

There's a fine balance to be struck between effort and no effort. If you push too hard or try to force it the whole thing stops up. This goes for everything. If you let your eyes kind of cross and loosen your grip a bit and steer intuitively, using your peripherals to guide you, it becomes easier.

You have to push gently.

My lungs hurt.

++++++

The biggest predicament is that I struggle with what it means to feel. I want to be able to feel with my whole body, to know deep in my bones a resonating vibration. I want to smile uncontrollably, to laugh until it hurts, to have my skin crawl, a cool breeze on a warm evening to bristle my hair. I want fear to strike like a bolt from the blue. I want icy chills, and grumbles, and triumphs, and passion, and fervor, and humility, and idolatry. I want to be stunned senseless, struck speechless, enraptured, nurtured. I want the world to be real, to affect me as I effect it.

How do I find feeling? Inside me there is only cold dull grey static, loud as the pounding of the ocean, that drives away life. There is a bruised and swollen ache which isn't so much a feeling as a smothering voidness. I can feel the lack of feeling, a clenching in my guts, the sinking of my shoulders, an ache in my neck, the shortness of my breath. I can feel my body full of cysts and tumors, my spirit malignant and infected, my soul shriveled and fearful. I can awaken to the feeling of an exposed insect in the bright light of god's damning gaze.

The nerves are dead.

INFINITE LIGHTNING DEATH SUNDAE

This is how you do it right:

1 banana, cut in half
two big fat scoops of the best quality vanilla ice cream you can find

Necessary toppings:
shaved dark chocolate
minced candied ginger
You can stop right there if you want. It's simplicity lets every flavor shine through. The ginger adds a bit of spice that melts well with all the sweet. If you're XTREME read on:

chopped strawberries
a drizzle of honey
sunflower seeds

Optional, but recommended: crushed potato chips (try pickle flavor!), a dash of Louisiana hot sauce, chocolate cake, cookie dough, maraschino cherries

If you're truly brave use a slice of pepperoni-jalapeno pizza as a bowl.

Eat with chop sticks, or blend it all up into a milk shake.