On occasion, I wonder if my voice is really being heard. Don't use it that often, but when I do, it's nice to get feedback. Hell, even an echo off the back wall would be good enough. It's easy enough to Like, Comment, or Share in this modern age. But, y'know, sometimes I also have to wonder if either I'm being technologically walled-off into my own silo, or if what I'm saying just doesn't warrant response, or if others who would typically respond -- were they to hear me -- are otherwise distracted with their own lives.

You just have to wonder sometimes, right?

I guess I could listen to my friends and their talk about who’s who. That’s usually how most knowledge is passed around. But with so many people in my life (most of them at a distant orbit), trying to pick one voice from the din and follow their suggestions without wasting effort, attention, and resources on a new band is something I’m not really in the mood to do these days.

My trepidations in finding new entertainment is kinda like my mother’s trepidation in learning anything about computers. There’s just too much to pick up. Any one thing to cling on to is enough, but what if it’s a thin thread that will snap?

Is this what growing into middle age is like?

I wish I knew where the handle was to this mental state, so I could grab it and pull it off of myself.

It’s too bad that I can’t see to focus on one particular thing; can’t see the plan to follow one thing through to completion. One thing, that’s all I ask. Finish something. Anything. With a cloud of what-ifs, possibilities, permutations, expected unpredicted changes, dawdling to see what path is the best, it’s no wonder I don’t want to push forward. Onward through the fog, they say, but that means moving in some direction and living with it.

Honestly, I think that’s an allegory for my life. I’ve dawdled, waiting on the best option, saving myself for the right whatever that might be down the line if I could only make the right decisions. I’m too old for that now. The branches and possibilities that youth provided are no longer consequential. If I would only settle, take the brave step to become something, to put that dent in my untarnished exterior and change my character into something interesting, not something that doesn’t fit everything, but something that fits something important. Too much with the abstaining. I need to get involved with my life.

Turning back a decade of pain and avoidance. Cleaning out the insults and downward voices that have gummed up my ears. Removing the deadened heart that’s been in my mouth like a ball gag. To breathe and listen and speak again.

Tonight, I saw stars. I saw the Old Man. He nodded and smiled, as permanent as the sky. His belt and scabbard bisecting the trapezoid of his life. Uneven, off-kilter, forever moving, forever in action. I’m perpetually drawn to him, gasping in awe when I see him, standing agape in bliss to see that, twenty years since those night fields of my college years, he is still there, still making his appearance during the cold months to nod his head and do cartwheels through the sky.

I miss the stars. I miss the sky. I miss the night. I feel, right now, that I need to reclaim my inner voice and scream into the cosmos. That connection with the Others. The Live Transmission to those who would hear and listen. I miss them. I miss myself. I miss the night.

Coffee shops. Coffee shops are killing me. I do my best work in solitude. Alone, undistracted. The pretty girls, the pressure boys. The crush of crowds and tables and chairs and parking. Difficult to focus.

My best work? Alone in my sodden bedroom. In the corner of an unfurnished apartment. Dim light, orange night, inner sight, willing fight. Arkadelphia. Greensboro. Texarkana. Before the mean-mouthed faceless few. Before the shat rooms. Before the hate boards. I was me myself before I listened to their dead transmissions. I wrote crap but felt it gold. Decades hence, I’d be glad to return to that dross-coated trash. It had yearning. Desire. Need. Transmission. It’s a lot better than being deaf-mute. Better than retention. Better than withdrawal.

If it requires being on the edge of insanity, then I would dive through the windows of the cuckoo’s nest. Creators are touched with the hand of insanity. The Creator of all this is obviously touched. Obviously. I myself have been touched, and I am obviously crazy for staying silent.

Sliding sideways is still motion. Still motion.

The Old Man is still in motion. He misses me. I miss the stars. Austin has plenty of bright stars, but to see them you have to look below the sky. My soul needs them back above the horizon.