Henry Miller's Typewriter

I drink a glass of red wine, maybe with eggs, or should I settle for the protein bar whose ingredients I know nothing about? It sustains me, like oil sustains an engine, despite the smell.

I turn on the lights, the dog looks at me and whines she thinks it’s bedtime grumpily she scuffles up the stairs, only to stick her head down moments later resigning to the fact that the downstairs floor will have to do for now.

I sit listening to the silence of the house, the sound of the once busy house it’s full of old ghosts and new apparitions.

I suddenly remember Henry Miller's typewriter, the Redwoods and the feel of creative souls, tortured souls trying to find bliss in their made up hell, I remember the feeling of happiness, the silence accompanying the headstrong pain that had been my companion. I left it in that river, sitting on a stone, all alone.

And then there is a sound, an apparatus that I am not sure exists, it is screeching somewhere, a digital notification and it’s not mine. Oh I hope ghosts have iPhones nowadays! Or is this just my brain’s way of letting me know that time almost is up and that I’m on a short leash?

I still see his eager eyes on me, Still feel the urge to stop time and tell him to be mine, I wanted to reach out with my hand, he was so close, oh so close, and it wasn’t much of a stretch at all, just the flick of a wrist and I would have touched him except now it’s too late the moment was short and strange and now it’s gone.

I read a poem by Charles Bukowski his existential anxt always makes me feel better, his hardcore pessimism and his resignation to loneliness, to raw love and to wine is awe inspiring and yet he had a bluebird in his heart. I wish I had one in mine, bouncing in the hollow of my brain tweeting and twittering and I sigh with distain when I realise I have one of those except it’s full of twisted lies and contempt, friends and enemies, firelights and broken souls.

Am I one of the broken souls? Bound to sit in the corner forevermore because I am who I am?

I stand up and take a step forward, and then another and it is excruciating, like walking in quicksand, like breathing under water, like hating the dead, like reaching out to strangers you like, like doing what others think you should do. And I hope at the end of the path the stranger is waiting.