Poetry & Blindfolds

 

I am on a dark little cycle of late.  Sadness, boredom, hopelessness creep in.  I buy a pack of cigarettes.  I have one or two.  When I feel better, I throw the pack out.  Repeat.

 

That rascally Chantix, the pill I took to stop smoking, has replaced me with a guy I don’t really know and, frankly, I’m not all that keen to know.  My creativity – the airship I have boarded for years to elevate me above dull ol’ reality – is spotty at best now.  When I was filming some stuff with my friend Ricky, a stand-up comic and all around genius, I felt like the least funny person on the planet.  I know I’m less funny than he is – and so are you – but I really felt like comedy’s version of The Other Sister.

 

And yet I continue to flail as flail I must – I’m two-thirds done with a play, I’m considering digging my old sketch group out of the mothballs, I do a weekly webcast, I’m working on some electronica.  However, but I feel I am doing these things merely to stay alive.  Without these things, I’d just dry up.  I can sum up my ambivalence by quoting the wife, who, when I asked if she wanted to hear a song I was working on, made a face like I was offering to hot plate her and said, ‘Um, maybe tomorrow.’  And that’s the feeling that plagues me daily now.  Of course, if the wife doesn’t care what I do, and she’s smart, it could be that I’m merely on the right track.

 

Of course, I know my wife loves me and likes what I come up with and there are times when she just doesn’t want to be married to The Entertainer.  I only mentioned that as an example as what is shadowing me daily now.

 

Even the thought of cancer isn’t dissuading.  When I think of potentially getting ill, my inner commentator merely suggests that it would end the show sooner, and, let’s face it, Vinnie, no one cares that much about the show now so you’d probably not miss much.  How many books have you sold?  Not many.  Remember that spate of submitting plays every Saturday from January through March 2009?  Nothing happened.   Five years and ten shows with a sketch comedy group – and what do you have to show for it?  Nada. 

 

And the black hole sucks me in.  And I feel worthless more often than I care to admit.

 

You know what helps alleviate these emotional-tundra feelings?  That’s right – cigarettes.

And so I will buy a pack.  Have one or two.  When I feel better, I will throw the pack out.  Repeat.

 

And so the struggle continues.

 

-Vincent Truman