I guess it was only a matter of time.  My muse who I once painted in a lilac goddess gown, communicative only with her facial expressions (the wrinkled nose, the head shake, the “what the hell??”, and the nod of “now you’ve got it,” has been supplanted.  My new muse is a drill instructor from hell.  That’s right. Mr. Henry Rollins.  I WILL awaken, I WILL think, I WILL learn, I WILL write to answer my life’s call, otherwise I’m just another useless piece of shitbag crying at the breakfast table unable to say why I’m crying when YES I REALLY DO KNOW WHY.

Yes, Henry, I really do know why.  And now you’re taking this trip with me, as I took the trip with you. The one where I got to know you a little bit when you said you couldn’t bear to have a space with free time in it for fear you might become one of us mere mortals that lounge about aimlessly instead of gearing up SURVIVAL, so your long-suffering travel agent booked you on the Transiberian express… because you wanted to experience.  I’m taking this trip with you because you’ve shown me that if we’re not breathing, living, thriving, learning, asking, reaching, thinking, DOING…  we’re just better off throwing ourselves off a cliff.  I used to think the saying “an unexamined life is one not worth living” was harsh as hell and horrible and wrong. But once you start examining, and you recognize your agony of living among “mortals,” the Wal-Mart masses, the complacent, the ones who never thought or even tried to make themselves or this world a better place, then yeah, we reap what we sowed.  And maybe that’s harsh as hell, but is it worse than drinking cups of regret and dying from it every day?

No more.