television eyeballs

Sober for a week now but I've been glued to the television. J points out that I rarely read anymore. I laugh condescendingly and she says, "You don't, you sit sipping your tea and crack a book for 15 minutes in a scholarly pose and then let it lay there. I've run my finger along books that I think you are reading and there's a layer of dust on them."

"Maybe I'm trying to dumb myself down so I can fit in better."

"You've succeeded. That's pretty dumb."

"I don't think it's conscious."

"Evverything boils down to whether it "on purpose" with you. If you don't do good things on purpose, then you will do bad things accidentally."

"I'm reading Conrad."

"No you're not."

"Yes, I am." This is a lie. I cracked Conrad during my bender and read part of the The Secret Sharer and it's now lying open on my desk at home, with a layer of dust on it.

But there is still the sobriety, a week of it, that I have attained with her help since she has let me recover in her motel room. During the day we run the dogs and paint and then I turn on the TV. Just another form of substance abuse, in this case non-substance substance abuse.

Studio 60 perked my ears up though and I can see TV beginning to waken to its potential, although it will remain to be seen if this remarkable beginning will turn into just a clever soap opera. Probably.

At least I've finally been reinstated to ebay and have already brought my numbers up to when I first started. Hopefully they will climb steadily upward as they did before (see the link to my art at right).


Meanwhile I am smoke
a fistul of programs
suck my mind
cameras shooting cameras shooting
cameras
in the lab the versatile
sequencing magic
that splits photons and spits them streaming
at me
creating dream awake state
feeding vicarious
thingwant
eyes closed
I grasp for words
the energy it took
to get to this point
of confusion is astounding