Lucky 13

Thus begins the 13th edition of the Lounge. It was on this day thirteen years ago that i began this little experiment with a Declaration of Impotence. Little did i know how fitting the title of that first post would be. Of course it takes a special sort of masochist to keep up this endeavour over so long a period of time. I'm not sure what that speaks to? mental illness? lack of a social life? the existence of a suburban loner tucked away in a downstairs room and pondering the nooks and crannies of his own navel? I don't know. All i do know is that i keep doing it and most likely will keep doing it even though better ones than moi have gone by the wayside. I'd like to think i've somehow gotten a little better at this stuff but let's face the brutal and honest facts of it. 90% of the posts on here are absolute dog shit, the other 10% qualify as decent and mildly amusing, but fret not dear reader. I'm still standing.

So what exactly has taken place over the last 13 years? Well i like to call it life. There have been births and deaths and re-births, when this whole thing started my boy Nick Disaster hadn't been born and the I-mac was 6 months old, i was a 36 year old coming off a couple year stint with blow and soon to be sliding toward a mild but manageable bout with pills. I was still having wicked hangovers and wondering on certain mornings if that wasn't my liver staring back at me from the toilet, the head pounding and the body shaking and the ever present thought that i was never going to learn. Ah but learn i did and some six odd years ago i told myself i would never have another hangover again... and i haven't. I basically quit drinking except for the odd beer and got back to my psychedelic roots of cannabis and shrooms, and that as Bobby Frost once said, has made all the difference. I understand that i'm a completely different animal than the one who began this gig, where once i had an almost pathological need to run the streets i now have this burning desire to be close to my boyos. To walk the house and listen to the ruckus they make before seeing them off to bed and sitting in my little room, smiling at the thought of them. There are not two humans alive that i've ever loved more than the boyos, i'm a fucking cream puff when it comes to them, i get pissed and they drive me crazy but it's almost impossible for me to stay angry for more than five minutes, i often find myself watching in awe as they do the simplest of things, i find myself gazing at them and smiling and thinking, them there is me boyos and i understand the full circle that has taken place from my father to me to my sons. And it blows my fucking mind and bursts my chest with what the shrinks would call unconditional love. 

Over the last thirteen years i've lost cats and friends (both physically and metaphorically) and my father. Each and every loss has taught me something and in each and every loss there is a light that goes with the darkness. I'm coming to a better understanding of how shit works... or at least i like to pretend i am, i can understand and accept my failures, can work on my flaws while knowing that i'll most likely never correct them all, but it's not perfection that i'm after, it's the process as they say, the effort in doing and not sitting idly by (while all the while doing my best to sit idly by while the world rushes around) and whining about the state of this or that or the other because when it all comes down and that void is waiting for you to slide into it nothing will matter except, to steal some Hank, how well you walked through the fire. Did you live the time you had or did you just exist? Like Mark Renton i've chosen life, to make each and every day an art, the art of living, be it washing the floors or pissing around at the typer, be it conversations with the boyos or wiggling my toes, watching the clouds, admiring the stars, listening to the leaves in the trees, being kind to my cats and the animals of the world while doing my best to tolerate the humans who chronically fuck up the planet and their lives, i attempt to do my best knowing full well that i will not always be able to do so and that's okay. I'm a human too.

And so i begin Lucky 13. What that means? i have no idea. There's no use looking into the future as i can only worry about the now, my ass in this seat and the little blinking light. If there were ever delusions of grandeur in this exercise they have long since faded. It's most likely why i'm still here. When this goes dark you can look for my obit but until then i will document the thoughts and life of an ordinary man. It will be boring and riveting and happy and sad, there will by joy and pain, blissful highs and crushing lows. There is nothing perfect in this world and as a deeply flawed and fucked up human being i know that all too well, but i'm trying Ringo, i'm trying real hard to be the shepherd. For anyone still reading, thanks, i do appreciate it... Now on with the show.