“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”–E.L. Doctorow

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”–Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”–Ray Bradbury

I stare into my coffee. It looks like any other coffee that I have ever drank. I stare at the wall in front of me; the wall is the same as yesterday. I play songs that are familiar. My dog is at my feet, where he usually is. Governments are still corrupt. Corporations are still screwing people, but I choose to focus on what I can do about the world. I can feed my cats, walk my dogs, turn on the heat lamp to my turtles’ aquarium. We don’t need another hero. I can do Yoga. I can make my bed, at least once a week. What good is it if I champion the revolution, but am an asshole to my neighbor? I’m speaking to me. I’m speaking to you.

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Here’s another tidbit from my book/memoir, “Baking Banana Bread From Scratch”):

I’m tired but I don’t want to take a nap, so I drink a cup of coffee. Sometimes, a cup of coffee will wake me up, and sometimes I can sleep on it, and it wakes me up later.

I baked sugar cookies, last night for the first time in my life. They certainly are not the best sugar cookies to ever be pulled out of someone’s oven. The recipe said to bake them at 350 for ten minutes. I think that the cooking time should have been longer. The cookies were soft, dough-like. They weren’t bad to the taste for me, but I don’t have a gourmet palet. I will eat most anything, except for lima beans. I have even gotten to where I eat, and mostly enjoy broccoli, which I used to find positively nasty.

I guess that is maturity, is it not: liking a vegetable that you used to hate? How mature will I be then when I start loving me some lima beans. It ain’t gonna happen.

When I was a kid, my momma used to feed me peanut butter, and jelly, sandwiches, and her jelly of choice was mostly grape jelly. I used to munch out, happily, on pb and grape jelly, until one day I got a headache while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I was never able to eat grape jelly again. I was about seven years old when that happened. I am now 52, and I haven’t touched grape jelly since that day. It is important that you know some things; I’m not sure if this is one of them.

My daughter, Scout, got busted awhile back for text messaging in her math. class. It makes sense that it happened in her math. class because Scout hates math. This was the second time, during school hours, that she had gotten busted for using her cell phone. The penalty, this time was a two day suspension from school, and her mother had to pay a twenty five dollar fine.

Anyway, now, Scout comes by my house in the morning, and drops her phone off. This sets Bundy off, for some reason, for even though Scout comes over here almost every day, Bundy still freaks out and barks at her as though she was breaking into the house. Scout just came home from school, and interrupted my train of thought. It seems stupid, also, to be writing about Scout when Scout is here, and I could be interacting with her, instead of interacting with this computer.

****

The dogs are itching themselves furiously, and I am scratching my head, wondering what I am going to do about it. I’m out of work, waiting to get a new hip put in, living on a prayer. The vet won’t take prayers: I know her; she’s a friend of mine, but prayers, and “friends” who don’t pay her, don’t help her keep her lights on, and Lord knows that she needs to keep her lighs on. That woman has given more homeless dogs, and cats, a place to stay than my dogs have fleas.

Of course, I don’t know that my dogs have fleas. It could be just itchy skin. I started feeding them the cheap dog food, again, about a month ago, and, maybe, this is the result of doing such. I couldn’t afford the good food anymore; I really couldn’t. I was eating rice, and macaroni myself for lunch and dinner, and I wasn’t putting much else into either dish: no corn in the rice, no salmon in the rice, just rice, and no sauce, or shrimp in the pasta, just pasta in mayonnaise, and the mayonnaise was alway running out.

I’m not complaining. I chose this life style. I chose to be a writer. I chose to starve for my art, but the thing that is not fair is that the dogs did not choose to be writers, yet they feel the ramifications of my behavior.

*******
The possum was frozen in a tree next to our house, seemingly unsure of why it was in that tree. He appeared to feel vulnerable and stared at us, trying to gauge how much of a threat we were.

I was as scared of him as he was of me. I had never been that close to a possum, and was not sure if I liked being that close to him. Before this, I had always seen possums scurrying off into the distance, or laying dead in the road. It was weird to be up close to one that seemed to be going nowhere.

My neighbors found him entertaining, as my heart skipped several beats. I said, “Oh isn’t that something,” big smile on my face, and then I headed inside, my pace a bit faster than it usually was, when I was entering the abode.

I was thankful, when I came out later, and the possum was gone. I didn’t know where he went, and I didn’t care. There was something alien about being that close to a possum, and I now know that I am scared of aliens.

“Shoo alien; go away!”

*******
I worry about things, still, but not like I used to worry about them. My father used to worry about things. Worry killed him. I am on pills that help me with worry. Without the pills, I, too, would worry myself to death.

*******

I have gotten used to putting peanut butter in my oatmeal, and I ran out of peanut butter, several days ago, so I have not been having any oatmeal. I may have to have some oatmeal without peanut butter, today, as I won’t have the where with all, errrr foodstamps, to buy peanut butter until Monday, and today is Friday.

When I am a successful writer, one day, i.e. one who can buy peanut butter on Friday, and not wait until Monday, I will look back on this period of my life and smile.

*******
Often I am hungry in the morning(as many of you are!)but I try not to eat, because eating zaps my urge to write. I think that I read somewhere that there is blood in your brain that help you write, and that blood rushes to your stomach when you put food in there. My morning meal makes me sleepy, and, often, leads me back into the bed for my morning nap, which I don’t feel guilty about taking, because I am often up at five am, or so, to feed the animals, and write for a few hours.

*******

“Don’t quit before the miracle,” was a slogan that I often heard while I was getting sober. I understood the sentiment, but didn’t relate to what I felt was The Grateful Dead aspect to it, as far as getting sober went. I mean, The Grateful Dead certainly didn’t seem like the poster boys of sobriety who I should have hanging on my wall.

“Looking for a miracle,” Deadheads would say to all gathered outside a concert venue where their band, The Grateful Dead, were about to play. What they were looking for was a way in to the show, a ticket. They had one finger in the air, and the miracle was that another dead head would often give the miracle seeker a free ticket.

There are no free tickets to sobriety. The key is to opening your ears, and shutting your mouth.

******

My email was selected from a lottery. Can you imagine that? I didn’t even open it. How possibly could there be anything good inside it for me? The people who open that email must be desperate. They must think that there is a pot of gold waiting for them at the end of the rainbow, and that the sky has just opened up and sent the rainbow to them.

My state, the great state of Georgia, USA, not the one formerly attached to Russia, has a lottery. Ticket sales are brisk at liquor stores; just spend a buck with us, and your life might change. You might wind up with room service, by your own pool, instead of waking up in a trash dumpster, smelling like Mad Dog, or Listerine.

I get food stamps. I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but I do. Twenty percent of the American people are getting food stamps, at the time that I write this. I don’t like being a bum. I don’t like bumming money off of the government, but what can a poor boy do, at times?

More on this later, perhaps. I’m turning red, right now, with embarrassment, and I can’t carry on.

(You can buy an E Copy of this book, by donating at least $10 to The K. Instructions below.)

(You can buy a copy of, “The Delivery Guy,” by Mikel K, or a K poem book  at www.lulu.com/mikelkpoet)

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This is an ability that now home should be without.
How to levitate: http://www.levitation.org/

Wikipedia on levitation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitation

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Music that you will happily go mad to:

Mudcat http://www.mudcatblues.com/

Mudcat is playing at The Northside Tavern for the 17th New Year’s Eve in a row, tonight.

Snave and The Grass http://www.reverbnation.com/snaveandthegrass

Snave and The Grass are bringing in The New Year, tonight, at Atkins Park in Smyrna.

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The Daily K Yoga Pose of The Day

Shoulder Stand: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OeRz62g5rw

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The Daily K Poem

Strip

You take your clothes off, when you make love,
but you don’t leave your bad attitude behind.

by Mikel K

Namaste
Peace and Love
Peace and Love

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I’m living on a prayer…

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Mikel K (58 Posts)