Making it a Day at a Time

OBSIDIAN and I sit in Starbucks, ordering coffee with a fist full of quarters that I scooped from my savings. My computer is acting up, not booting, booting up slow. Just being a pain in the ass. I work around it, I have to blog. I get online slowly and get busy. I do this and do that, emails, blogging, and something snaps. SNAPS! I start writing poetry. Not my best, but SOMETHING! Wow! I'm running one after another, knocking them out.

The future. That's what I'm thinking about now. How uncertain it is for me. How uncertain it is for all of us. Life is tough, very tough, but we struggle on. What's the plan for me tonight? What am I to do other than grow sober and hate the day? Nothing to do tonight. Nothing. Nothing to watch without the Internet, nothing to write, no one to write to. But I stay hopeful. I stay wakeful.

Hope. Such a useless emotion. It does nothing. It is powerless. It looks for only disappoint- ment. Opens you up for it. The only true and useful emotion seems to be resolute hate. A steadfastness based on anger and determination. I care not for much. I have nothing. I just struggle, and struggle and nothing changes, but let me stop, slow down, ease up on the fight, and I am immediately overtaken. This is pointless. This is a fight that I'm growing weary of.

What is my plan? Write poetry. Or just write. I am invited to a show in Brooklyn tonight, but I'm so broke I can't even scrape up train fare down to it. Tomorrow, OBSIDIAN is coming into money. Which is good. Maybe I can bum a few dollars to be able to make appointments and go to things. Maybe. Or just stay home and drink. Tomorrow. Always another tomorrow. I am growing tired of one gray day after another.

Tomorrow, I also have my appointment with the female psychiatrist here in the building. Dr. G. I wonder how this is going to go? I wonder how things are going to settle between us. I need a therapist, and I realize she is a psychiatrist. They only want to see you once a month and dole out meds. This might not work for me. Might not at all. This is not what I think I need, so I might be barking up the wrong tree. Beautiful.

We are told by the young men at Starbucks that they are closing early today. Perfect. We have ten minutes. We pack up our gear. OBSIDIAN is hungry and would like to go home first and eat before coming back down and going to a Starbucks further uptown. Sure. I have no problem with this. His only problem is that he is downloading a program, and he ends the download just two minutes before the time to leave. Now he has to install it, so he does so, and while the program is installing, he carries the laptop open with him so as not to shut it down during the installation process. We head home, heading upstairs and to the room. He sits down, and notices that he is on the Internet.

What? I look at him. Do you have that right? "Dude," he says. "I'm on the Internet." I hook up my system and boot up. Firefox loads and jumps right on the Internet immediately. What the fuck? I am stunned. So is OBSIDIAN. We sit down and start to surf, and get work done, sending out emails and generally making Internet hogs of each other. We get much done and while I'm on IM, chatting with a friend, everything hangs. All of a sudden, my system freezes up. I turn to OBSIDIAN, are you still online? He checks. No.

I reboot, and Firefox comes up, but this time it cannot find the webpage. We have been booted offline a second time today. Well, the good thing is that we were allowed to work for a period of time before losing the connection altogether. That was good. I nod. It was fun while it lasted. Now we are cast adrift once more, without the Internet and nothing to do. I am both sad and hurt. I wanted to stay online all night. I was hoping that maybe they gave me a respite for the month. But no. Life isn't like that. Life does not care to give out breaks. Life does not care to do well by us. Just abuse us.

About an hour later, I click on Yahoo IM, and to my over- whelming surprise, it comes up! We are once again back online. We jump, getting busy once more, and I start IMing friends. The connection stays up dutifully all night long. I fall asleep listening to Internet radio. I find it hard to believe. I wonder if it will be up in the morning.

I fall asleep and dream about tickets out of town.

Hobobob