I am gonna run out of time this week.

Tired. Happy. Confused.

Happy Birthday, America!

I'm not waking up refreshed, but exhausted and lethargic. Well dammit.

I didn't have the second drink last night in the hope that I would wake up earlier this morning feeling more refreshed. It's nearly noon and I feel about how I did yesterday. Sounds like it's time to let the booze flow.

So three days in a row waking up and feeling awful. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I'm looking at some pictures here today, thinking about what remains. About what is and is not a part of your life. What your life was and what it becomes.

Most everyone I know has that ache. That unnamable, unclassifiable ache. This is where the art comes from and this is what we build our lives on and this is the tie that binds.

Without clear and specific tasks for me to accomplish, my productivity goes way down.

I can imagine in my mind many possible evenings. That is to say I can configure the idea of my home life in many ways. With this girl or that one. With a yard with a dog in it. A studio apartment. East coast or west. Eurpoe, whatever, wherever. But my days, when I leave this home I am always headed out to the theatre. Either this theatre here or that one there. Never any desks and cubes and the like. Just pipes and dust and marley.

I am older than graduate students. I mean, I suppose that shouldn't be any surprise. It did take me seven years to finish undergrad. But, still, even with a five year stint in undergrad and a year meandering about and then back to grad school I think I'd be graduating with a masters right about now. But here I am, ticking away at this art form. I'd like to thing I grabbed my life like an over-ripe fruit and bit hard into it, the sticky juices running down my chin. That's one metaphor I like. I also like the one of taking a pick-axe to this mountain of art and going to town. Other ladder-type metaphors might exist, too. But here I am, back home from another night at the theatre. Aching, sore, tired and feeling pretty damn good about it.

When I was younger I had balls the size of Cadillacs. Unbelievably large things that I had to card around in a wheelbarrow. I didn't know enough to be embarrassed. Not about the size of my balls nor about the errors I made. I was young, alright? Mistakes are going to happen. I raised my hand and said clearly and loudly, "I do not understand." And if there were snickers from elsewhere in the class, what did I care? There were no expectations of understanding. No soft voice in the back of my head saying, "You should have learned this by now." I was young, I was ignorant, and I wore it on my sleeve.

I received my iPod touch today. Let's see how this works.

I have decided to become a woman.

Back in Chicago for a bit. Pretty amazing stuff. A long stretch here.

I'm still a little bit bothered when I wake up in the morning and spit blood.

Bought a car today.

And the best moment of the day was pulling into that parking lot and being early. The weather warm enough that I could kill the engine and not freeze, my head reasing against the glass, my lids heavy. Just ten minutes alone in the car, no where to go, no where to be. No option to do anything but relax.

I wrote a poem for you. Full of greens and blues and references to the sea.

Off the road (briefly), and for one glorious evening I felt some of that pressure dissipate and had a couple of glasses of wine and walked home. This morning, of course, I feel quite behind.

I've spent some time in my life away from my v-balls. And every time I get by, and I think I can get by without them. And then I get them back. The two of them there, like soldiers, standing guard in my pocket. And when they're fresh, when they're straight-out-of-the-box new and the ink comes spilling out like the black life blood of some hellish creature, well then I know how much I've missed them, and how this has always been the pen for me.

Some days, you know, you just run out of gas. I, however, seem to expereince that everyday.

Funny, but I just wondered if Steve logs when I update this page. And if he reads it when I do. And I wonder if I sound somehow silly to him.

I had a bit of a moment to take stock of my life today. Long drive back. Back from my mother's retirement. Her milestone, not mine, but still, when one passes a milestone one takes note. Or a photo. When that one is me. I'm surrounded by dreamers and fools. But what else is new? All dreamers are fools, so that might be redundant. But writers, I think, some of them. Climbing that impossible mountain to ink spilled on a page. For money, no less. Parents, now, a few of them. A man "about my age." I've crossed over. Despite my college hoodie (maybe because of it?) and my hip haircut (!) and nerd glasses, I guess I just don't look like a college kid. Maybe it's the bags under my eyes; more understated but more permanent. Maybe it's the look of cold calculation in my cold blue eyes as I look at nearly everyone and know that after this moment my life will go careening off into the wilderness without them; I'm not going to be seeing you in my math class on Tuesday. The cock-sure swagger that I know myself that I try to put on in order not to surrender to the doubt that is always knocking on the door. Or maybe it was the bar, the little-too-early for drinking, the older crowd time. I was at Steak 'n Shake on a Tuesday afternoon, packed with a demographic I didn't remember in high school. But that demographic was the 1am crowd. The one order of cheese fries for three crowd. You can't go back again, and we all know it. But that bundle of joy comes along, and all of the mistakes we've learned to forgive our parents for but promised ourselves that we'd never make, they come knocking too. The road was clear enough, and the drive long enough. Listened to the talk, talk, talk that I fill up my time with. I remember I used to listen to music. But it's after one in the morning and I've made it "home." The quotations around that word make me want to vomit.

It's been snowing for the past few days. Winter in Chicago. I'm about to take a jet plane to NYC, see some old friends, do a couple of shows. The actual new year. Am I ready? Are we ever?

My hands are cold and I feel powerful today. I don't believe those two things are related.