35 degrees 8'27" N 89 degrees 59'54" W

She is asleep, or passed out depending on how one defines the term. She should be, I poured enough booze into her to knock out a bull moose, and she is happily unconscious. Lying next to me and snoring ever so gently, and in sole possession of the only blanket. She is a blanket thief, an accusation that I will level at her when she wakes up in the morning, but for now I will lie here sans blanket. Her blanket theft would be cute in a way, after all she's half my size and almost a foot shorter than I am so you would think I'd be able to fend the thieving off, but it is cold as fuck in here, and without a blanket (or clothes) it is an unpleasant way to spend the night. She also seems to find lying cross ways in the middle of the bed the most comfortable way to sleep, and who am I to argue? Dead weight which in the strictest sense of the word she is at this point, is really hard to move, and I decide to accept my cold, restricted space fate for the night. After all, it pays to be a gentleman even if they are unconscious, wrapped in your only blanket, and in the middle of your bed.

She is correct in her assessment of my lack of sleeping, it seems that as Coleridge tells us "sleep the wide blessing, seemed to me distemper's worst calamity. They (whomever they are) tell us you can sleep when you're dead, well that is not the most warm fuzzy thought to have running through your head at 2 am on a random Tuesday, as you watch the numbers of your life slowly change on the clock next to your bed.  Dead is not something I've ever been, and in spite of what some people think, it is not something I'm in a hurry to be. It seems, as far as I can tell, to be a rather permanent condition, and I have enough conditions already, even if they are almost all temporary. One would think that with all this "extra" conscious time on my hands, I would finally achieve something in my life, well one would be wrong. I have recently been told that "you are very intelligent, too much for your own good, and it is a pity that you've not accomplished nearly as much as you should have with that intelligence." The cliche of damning with faint praise sprang to mind when I heard that assessment of the waste of my lungs that I call my life, but in fairness it is correct. I have squandered my youth, wasted my prime, pissed away my middle age, and am aimless in my pending old age. I am not sure which is worse the doing of it, or the hearing about it from people.

However, it is not Tuesday at 2 a.m., the days of me celebrating Tuesday like a Roman Emperor have passed, and it is better that way. It is Saturday, the day that we all get a little tipsy, and listen to bad bands play terrible music in a bar that has seen better days. Which, according to some people, is part of my problem, one of many that I possess, and the only one they were right to complain about. Even though they never offered me an alternative. My day to day life is as predictable as Arsenal losing soccer matches in the most embarrassing way possible, and it doesn't take a troop of Boy Scouts, or a bloodhound to find me on any given day. The bulk of my life is spent in one of eight places all in the same city, and within about 4 miles of each other. My whereabouts, if they are important enough for anyone to want to know, are easily ascertained. I am not skulking in some alley with a weighted cosh in hand, and evil intent in my heart against anyone. It's not that I don't have evil intent, for a lot of things/people I do, it's just that alleys aren't the place to express it.

 When I kissed her, I didn't lose my St. Christopher, my St. Christopher lost me. More than likely she will leave me high and dry when someone with a steadier paycheck comes along. That is not a large R Romantic idea,but rather one posited by the small r rationalist, and the rationalist, as much as we hate him, is usually right when he starts placing his money down on people and how they will act. She knows about the death of the Romantic, she heard him state his fears that the rationalist was going to kill him, and she may have been an eye witness to the actual killing, but none of that seems to have bothered her overmuch. Which is good, because as far as I can tell, the only good Romantic is a dead Romantic, and his overdue demise is not something that anyone should mourn.

When tomorrow makes its awful entrance, I will wake her up (too early for her tastes), and send her on her way to face her day. My predictable day starts early, and the three things I do every Sunday are best done early. She won't like it, she never likes it, but we all do things we don't like on a daily basis. Some we have to in order to keep body and soul together, some we are forced to by the conventions of society, and some we do in order to keep the peace. It is said that peace starts at home, that is a lovely idea, but I've found it to be generally untrue. How many fights start over whose turn it is to take out the dog/trash? How many screaming matches begin with the toilet seat being left in the upright position? Home is not exactly the peaceful fortress of solitude that it is made out to be. It is a war zone that, on occasion, has sporadic moments of peace that keep the entire company from being slaughtered.  Her Sunday is also predictable, or so she has told me. It consists of something that I do not particularly like her doing, but it is not my place to either tell her that, or stop her from the doing of it.  She tells me she loves me (as a person, not sure what exactly that means guess it beats being loved as a kumquat), and her body does (when she's not stealing the fucking blanket) keep me warm, but she does what she does, and I am not in the position to stop it, even if I wanted to try, which I am not sure that I do.

She is also correct that I get lost in my own head a lot, and usually at some awkward times. It is not a pleasant lost. Not the purposeful lost of the man who is a thousand miles from nowhere, and to whom time no longer matters.  Not the lost of a fellow who has managed to postpone his duties to the human race for a while, and is now looking up at a mountain with the grim determination to climb it no matter the cost, but the fear that he will have a damn heart attack on the way up. Only to discover that the view from the top shows him the easier path to the summit that a 80 year old woman could make with ease. The tallest mountains are the most fun to climb, and heights (if you have the fear of them) are to be conquered, not avoided. Certainly, there is a war going on inside my head, and it is also certain that there can only be one real casualty, me. I understand this, I know this just like I know that Salem is the capitol of Oregon. It is also all too true that I can do the square root of fuck all about either one of these things. Oregon doesn't seem inclined to move its capitol to Portland or Eugene, and the war inside my head continues to rage with no end in sight.

It is my one attempt at kindness to the world, a world that I don't think has enough kindness in it, and a world that doesn't really deserve much kindness, that I keep this war on the inside of my head. There need not be any other casualties, one is enough. Even if they may or may not deserve it, no one else on this rock that is circling the Sun needs to be collateral damage to the war in my head. It might be a war that never ends, this latest campaign might just be one of  many in the long term war that is going to rage up there for the rest of my life. I don't know, I can't know, and the not knowing of things (as many people can tell you) is only making the war worse. I don't know if that is irony or not, because I am not that clever, but it sure as fuck smarts a bit when I realize it. Like all wars, things will get blown up, bridge will be built, and then burnt, and things will need to be buried in the graveyard(s) that will be created.

But for the nonce, I will lie here shivering from the cold, and listen to her breathing next to me, while I construct bridges in my head that I know I will have to burn down later. Bridges that lead to nowhere, but will burn just as merrily despite that problem. No one likes to be the backing vocals in a two man band, and I will lie here and wonder what song is to be sung in the morning that will make everything good enough for a return engagement. Songs of farewell and departure are generally my specialty, but maybe one should try to sing a different tune for a change it can't really be that complicated can it? Wish me luck, I've a feeling I am going to need it.