I just watched Gone in 60 Seconds on TV, mainly as a means of sedating myself. Tube is just like any drug, a thing you do to tune your experience, and some times it's a good one for calming you down or numbing you out. Sometimes that's a pretty healthy thing to do. Anyway, it wasn't really all that bad a film. Some of the characters were great. Robert Duvall looks like he's having fun doing his rusty old man schtick. Angelina Jolie is a genetic freak. Nicholis Cage, while much more convincing as a human being, makes an ok action anti-hero.

As typically happens, dipping my head into the stream of popular culture produces new trains of thought, getting me going on ambition, drive, stride, purpose, etc. It's been a rollercoaster these past six months, many personal highs and lows. Sometimes it feels like I'm bullet-proof with holy ghost power, other times I wonder where it all went wrong. I seem to maintain a pretty high opinion of myself, though. I do tend to think that I'm special, but the kind of personal clarity I can recall at other points in time is lacking.

I haven't felt at home in a long ass time. That's one of my recurring life-things, feeling like an outsider. Lately when my mind wanders that way I end up sinking into past brushes with coupledom. I search back for moments of peace and the first few things I remember are other people's beds, which then leads me to ponder why I didn't really ever treat any of the good women I've know all that right. Why I never made an effort to hang on.

It's a lonely Koenig lately, occasional hookups notwithstanding. There's a kind of visceral hunger that comes along with this state. It's like when you've been drinking for a while, and you're getting thirsty from dehydration, and you keep hooking down cold beers, good "drinkin' beer" like Pabst or High Life or Tecate, with an almost animal intensity. The ritual act of symbolic quenching just throws more fuel on the fire, most likely until you hit the wall and loose consciousness. I tend to resist judging any of this; in the midst of fever there are glorious moments of clarity and pure reeling sensation; insights and kicks and maybe even adventure.

So I find myself inconsistantly lusting around, eyeing pretty things but not really reaching out to touch. The surges are strong, but fitful, and my personal self is such that there's very little connection, follow through or ownership. It's kind of like being a teenager in that I'm reluctant to lay claim to my desire, a procrastinating lust, but without the thrilling electricity and danger that comes with innoncence. My forebrain knows pretty well by now that with a little focus I can proabably get whatever I want. The problem, really, is wanting something enough to focus, to reach, to expend energy without guaranteed return. That's a trick I haven't mustered in quite a little while.

Bringing it all back home, like always the story of women is the story of my life. I'm hungry, restless, but the path is dark and the way forward unclear. I've been forced to think beyond this election that's been my obsession for so long and I realize I don't have much of a game plan for myself. I don't want to continue my current lifestyle, but I don't have anything better lined up either, and that's a problem. I need to spend some time on personal development, some time of recreation and simply being a social being again. I want to write books and see the world. I want to do so many things; a sea of possibilities, as my man Mark says; but first I've got to renew my sense of who and why I am.

So it's about role indentification and rekindling the passion. I'll do it. I'll find that inner reserve of hope or faith or trust or whatever it is that's kept me going times when I've been down -- and I've been down much worse than this; this here's just confusion and fatigue -- it's just that I'm tired and frustrated and I don't have any good methods for any of this. It's all a crapshoot until I strike a good new vein of energy.

Like the song says, they say the darkest hour is right before the dawn. Buck up and bear down; the way will emerge in time.