Life has been good.  Short of the recent health scares that have given me some much needed perspective, everything else has been going well.  Everyone is happy.  I don’t know if you are like me and hesitant to put that sentence (or something like it) out in the universe for fear that you are jinxing it somehow, but at the moment I’m rife with confidence that my writing isn’t going in endanger the balance of the universe.

N is well (love her).  Everyone else that touches my life is doing well and considering the hell that the past few years have been for some of them, that is pretty good.  This vacation has been as well timed as any I’ve ever taken, and although I made no exotic trips this time, I enjoyed it greatly.

I’ve had time to read.  I’ve had time to cook.  I’ve had time to listen to the entire collection of music I’ve gotten - I’ve even converted some albums (yes, I’m old enough to have them) over to MP3.   This has been a relaxing week.  I am amazingly unstressed and smiling more than I’ve ever done.

I would tell you that it is because I’m not stressed and no longer in touch with my inner angst, that is why I’m not writing, but indeed, I didn’t write when I was in the middle of my own personal hell.   This is the first time I’ve felt the urge to write and its because I’m back to feeling like myself.  I’m back to being the rock.

This year looks to bring me a lot of good things.  It started badly, but its looking up.

I hope yours is as well.  I’ll get back to writing more, but alas, the weather outside has awakened my inner grilling beast.  Steaks, my place.  Can you feel my smile?

I was waiting to see if I had cancer.

It’s funny, you see, this concept of something going on without my permission because, I control everything on some level.  I would have said that I control my body with equal ruthlessness, but in all truth, this has made it clear that I do not.  I guide it, help it, with a regimine that determines its shape, but not its potential.

And like anything else, it can turn on you.

The test itself was clear, but the taste of its potential hasn’t left my mouth.  I’ve watched someone die from it.  I’ve seen it destroy everything and finally take what was left of the rubble.  I’ve seen its hand of violence and can’t stomach the idea of seeing it again - especially first hand.

And it’s caused this pause.  I am in reflection.

This is sadly no-where near the much more salicious on-goings of my relationship with N.  Or sex.  Or my slight razor fetish, dominance or any of the other things I speak to you about day to day, or lately week-to-week.

and it isn’t as if I haven’t lived my life.  I think this just gave me pause to remind me, in the midst of whining about jogging, that I am not ready to give it up.

Tonight however, I’m thinking of the man who smiled through it all even as the rest of us were crying.

I long for the vapor to tickle the hairs on my legs, my forearms.

This imposed stillness has created and fed a demon who battles for freedom from my invisible noose.  It wants to see me self-destruct, gone down in my own version of flame and glory.  It whispers in my ear of laziness and sends me to the mirror to see if my vanity, my pride, has dimmed without the rigor of daily exercise.

Sex with N, notwithstanding.

This restlessness, this ennui, fills me like water does a tank.  My demon heats it until pressure builds and builds.  I am sick of doctors, and curse myself for once again, being my own enemy, the one whose influence I should want to eliminate.  How, exactly, does one eliminate the self, I ask you?

Energy is directed outward as a vent.  I’ve tamed my lethal tongue successfully thus far, my temper with equal success, but discontentment is written across me as if tattooed upon my chest.  It’s consuming to my thought process and books, my food, have lost their luster and appeal.

I think of running.  I dream of running.  I can taste the flavor of running on my tongue when I wake, still as I do, at 4 am, though permission is given for 6 because of its absence.  So I fuck.

I wake N and crawl upon her and inside her like I wanted the fog this morning to do to me.  I invade, I coat, I devour.  I fuck with energy that feeds off that demon, that pressure.  I sweat, I bleed and I leave bite marks upon her skin that mirror the footprint I would have left on the dewy grass and dead leaves of the path outside.  I consume.

And N empties me.  I feed upon her open thighs.  And her mouth.  Her tits.  Her cunt.  I taste her and it stills and quiets the want of ….. anything else.

Still, when I walk out to my car, and look at the gray sky, the traces of fog that linger, I want.  And my fingers itch to feel the laces of my running shoes again.

It’s 2a.m.  Just about when I am ready to go to bed because I can’t justify another sleepless night, just when I’m ready to pop some pain meds to kill the MIND NUMBING pain, I find inspiration hitting me.

Fucking brain, would you work right for a change?

Inspiration will have to wait.  Oblivion awaits in the form of little tiny ovals.

Its better, its getting better.