book work

if i could bottle this breeze i would, it is the lightest most comforting, invigorating feeling, something that shouldnt even really be talked about or written down, but felt, because there are really no words. for me, this is a break through. for me, today, i lay in the sun and get a sun burn, get hot, feel alive, feel like, maybe im not in some country so far away from home, but maybe, just maybe, this country is strong enough to hold me, to allow me to make a home in it. or maybe im tough enough to try, to put some roots down, to stop acting like im running, because right now, i dont have anywhere in particular to run to.
i spend the day writing on the book and its hard work. im going somewhere that i thought i was outside of, some place i thought i had lived enough since, loved and fucked and learned enough since that i could look at it objectively but it is hard work. it is bringing me back to that person that i was, some of the hardest times i ever had in SF and i am not there, not physically, but mentally, im remembering and im embarrassed in a way, ashamed, disgusted even some times, that i was so cruel, that the world made me that way, that i lived so recklessly, that i wasnt learning. and then i notice that i AM looking at it objectively, i am different now, i can see how i was living as different than i am living now, and its not any place that i want to go back to. those dark dark depressing nights are being carved out, im giving them a place and however difficult it might be to admit them, to write about them and make them more real than i ever let them be, might do just what i want it to. free me from a lot of guilt, allow me to really live how i want to, and let other people know that they are not alone on those streets. san francisco is a glorious place, but i know at any given time there were many other people who were leaving their house as soon as the liquor stores opened up just to refuel, just too avoid the comedown. i know i wasnt the only one. but im writing about it now and its fucking hard.

so i play songs that are new, and stare out at santiago and think about how many of the people im writing about arent in my life anymore for whatever reason. i think about a time when i will write about right now, when i will be able to, if ever, write about how i got here, how i moved here, what im doing now, how incredibly high and low i feel here. that will be for the next book, i guess...lets hope i get there. lets hope this current work doesnt drag me down. its difficult, no, its nearly impossible, to stay present when you are sorting through the past. but its the work i must do right now. its calling to me and its coming and its been waiting to burst out and so i must give it a home. i know, more than anyone, how important that home is.