as i started to contemplate opening lines to this blog post, framing the scene -- monday morning, gray sky, someone else's manhattan apartment, coming down off a buzzing week into earth speed and sad kindness and shaky heart -- one of my old favorite johnny cash songs started playing through my head. back when i was a daily drinker and before it kicked my ass, I used to love the song Sunday Morning Coming Down. I can still croon a pretty good version if you get me in the right mood. here's the first bit of it:

Well, I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
Then I washed my face and combed my hair
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.

I'd smoked my mind the night before
With cigarettes and songs I'd been picking.
But I lit my first and watched a small kid
Playing with a can that he was kicking.
Then I walked across the street
And caught the Sunday smell of someone frying chicken.
And Lord, it took me back to something that I'd lost
Somewhere, somehow along the way.

On a Sunday morning sidewalk,
I'm wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
'Cause there's something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothing short a' dying
That's half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalk
And Sunday morning coming down.

--------------

i ate a lot of fried chicken as a kid. and did a lot of feeling alone.

(and a lot of smoking my mind out the night before on songs and drama...)

anyway. it's monday morning. but that's kinda how I feel. spent the weekend doing a really intense meditation course, 9 hours a day, and when I left last night -- feeling all raw and open to the early spring sky between all the buildings, people everywhere, trillions of characters milling about -- i called the woman i'm so excited about in London, and she told me about her wild weekend in Germany, the whole crew of activists she runs around with, the woman she sees when she's there, the various love affairs and meetings and parties and whirlwind of it all -- and i did that old human thing i do, that old alcoholic thing, of wishing i had someone else's life, someone else's nervous system, feeling like my way of doing things is not enough, and on and on into all kinds of self-pity and fear and jealousy and lots of way strong emotions that are such a goddamn paradox... all painful and shook up, but also suddenly full of words and images and poems and beautiful things, the way it all comes spilling out when you actually care and something touches on the core of being alive.

stayed up late eating chocolate, listening to music, binging on murky nostalgia and  old heartaches, trying to write, trying to sort out the huge constellation of things that are coming up for me right now -- my birthday, my dead mother's birthday, the way i've started my it's March wake-up-at-dawn-no-matter-when-i-go-to-bed and become sleep deprived pattern that seems to start every year on the anniversary of when i catastrophically broke someone's heart in 2002, the current relationship and its unfolding triggers, the mysteriousness of love and sharing the person you love with the world,  the things i'm learning about myself in meditation and sobriety, the maelstrom of dazzling and difficult icaruslandia, the way i can't really believe winter will end, the way i don't want to be a crazy alcoholic with so many sensitivities that seem to demand my respect despite my intermittent penchant for denial, the way sugar calls out like a siren in the void, the re-opening in my life of fiction and literature and other people's stories... the work i want to do, the fears i have, the adventures i hope for, the life i'm actually living, the risks i am and am not willing to take...

eventually i gave up, around 1:30, and neither finished the poem nor sent the melodramatic e-mails. realized i wasn't thinking so straight and it would probably do me much better to go to bed and see how life felt in the morning. so I did. sleep came, and ended early, but my head was clear. i'd watched myself flirt with that old rabbit hole, and let it go before i descended too far... i'm getting better at that, watching what i'm actually doing, seeing how it's actually affecting me, and making a decision at a certain point to let the self-destruction go and return to what works for me. it takes a lot of self-awareness and some faith that's getting drilled into my bones by days and months of practice, and i gotta say that the dark blurry places have a certain kind of seduction, a certain sick familiarity which calls out with this promise of less effort, less friction, a lure to go backwards into the cocoon... it's hard to resist. Some part of me has wanted to believe in that cocoon all my life. But that's not the part i want to feed. That's not the seed I want to water. I get it. And I don't. And then I get it. And then I don't.

But some part of me knows that freedom doesn't actually have so much to do with getting whatever I want, whenever I want it. Some part of me knows that freedom has a lot more to do with acceptance and honesty and living the life I'm actually in instead of waiting for some parallel reality with better circumstances to unfold. Getting information from the restless, jealous, desiring part of me and asking -- are there ways i'm closing down now? risks i could be chancing now, instead of waiting for some far off future or someone else's fantasy? things I'm not listening to in my heart that erupt in other ways? what is happening here, in this room, in this city, with these people, with the life I've got, instead of what could or should be happening somewhere else.

It's really really hard to let go. and honor this pesky heart, and all its hopes and agonies.