Thinking Almost Makes Me Crazy

I'm downstairs in the office of the Spot, with Roberto, signing form after form. I'm just signing away, and I'm not reading shit. You're probably saying, 'you should at least take a moment to LOOK and see what it was you were signing.' I did. I LOOKED, at the stacks of paperwork being filed in my behalf. It's the work involved in getting Section 8 vouchers. Meaning: I can move from here into an apartment with keys and a lease and everything. Like a real apartment, with a bathroom and a tub behind your front door.

It also means that I might be able to find a job, do the nine to five....or maybe a Twelve to nine. Or maybe I might have a few freelance gigs that pay and then, who knows?! The Presidency! Why look at a half filled glass? Go for it all. I'm greedy. I was always told, from when I was a kid, that my eyes were always too big for my head. Maybe that's what I need now. Big eyes to look at big things. To reach for the unreachable, touch the untouchable, see the unseeable, know the unknowable!

Whatever, I just keep scribbling my name down. Roberto thanks me and I leave. I step outside to the Duane Reade across street and it is cold. Yeah, summer have given way to the cold. Wintertime is racing it's way towards us in New York. I know what life is like on the streets right now. Trepidation. A dim, dark fear is beginning to creep upon the streeters. I had a chance to talk to Electra after all of these months, and she tells me that the streeters are heading into the Manhattan Branch of the Public library because they stay open until 11:00pm. Night at the onset of winter is the hardest for a streeter. You have no clothes yet. Your winter gear is not yet put together. So the cold hits...it bites, with inhuman ferocity.

I havent' heard a word from the women of WECARE. I'm looking forward to dealing with them once more. They are just going to be so much fun. My days have become like gelatin. They move slowly, marshmallow gears against candlewax pinions. Nothing is actually moving although there is still plenty of motion. For the first time in eons, I am faced with a great fear, a terror that I cannot seem to shake. I am bored.

Music cannot help me to escape its incredible maw. It keeps on inhaling and I keep on falling backwards into it. I went to my therapy today. I'm certain you're glad to hear about that. I look at Dr. D in class and he gets a real kick out of my being there. He's quick to smile when he hears about our strange problems. I notice that, but then again, I question that I notice that now. Why didn't I notice it before. When you notice something is everything, not just some of the thing. Why Am I just noticing about this now? Let me think about it.

But we talk. As a group I mean. He has one of his new students in the classroom. She just sits there and doesn't say a word. Dr. D. is beating us with questions. No one is really all that come forward. The table is very quiet. It's hard to get us all stirred up. The only person that seems to be full of life is Socko, one of the punch clowns that I will name now because he is such a smiley, happy people that you just want to haul off and plant five square in the jaw piece.

He's just that lovable a character, you want to shake his hand and smash a chair over his head. And it's not because he his just a cool dude and I happen to be a bitter, lonely cuss and a half. He's sincerely annoying. He's got to be in everything that is your business, in your bag, in your book that you're reading, in your head if there was a door with a knob against the side of it. And he doesn't shut up. He must be under the impression that Dr. D. shares his paycheck with him because he does as much damn therapy as the doctor.

Suffice it to say, he makes an hour go by so slow that you just want to cry. Why do I sit next to him constantly is beyond me. I think that people are already appreciative of the sacrifice that I have made sitting next to him that they leave me without any other option. Poor hobo. Yeah, poor hobo alright. There just may come a day that I'll rest a garbage pail over his head and use his skull as a clapper. Let me leave Socko alone. He has enough problems...I guess that's why he's in group therapy and I'm...well. I'm here too.

I'm not there long though. I move on, heading home through the rush hour, a mote of dust in a windstorm. New York is alive and bustling, whatever bustling means. I'm just passing through. A single, solitary form of life. I have no past and no future. No beginning and no end. I'm just taking up space on this ball of dust. I'm just going through the motions, imitating life in still life. Have you ever thought about that? That you are just falling down a flight of stairs, rolling and rolling and rolling. You could stop if you'd want to, but there'd be nothing but a long flight of stairs above, and a long flight of stairs below. So you keep on rolling. Hoping that something stops you. Hoping that something brings it to an end.

"I've been thinking about you baby,
you see it almost makes me crazy
Nothing is right
if you ain't here
I'd give all that I have
just to keep you near
I wrote you a letter
and tried to make it clear
but you just don't believe
that I'm sincere!
I've been thinkin' about you baby!
I want you to live with me."


I need to stop rolling down the stairs,
I really do.

Hobobob