Ack.

I just tore up all the work I’ve done so far on the damn thing, with the exception of four lines.

But now, they’re damn good lines.

I just wish I didn’t have to write the fifty or so bad ones to get to them.

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On second thought…no I don’t. This is the process for me, these days; far more discarding than keeping, far more learned in the process than in the result.

I tell people all the time that to be attached to the result of writing is to miss the point of it. I need to recall this as well, from time to time; while completion is a goal, it’s important to not slight the journey either.

So no underwear dance for me tonight…which is good, since I find it tends to chafe and I’m uncomfortable that way when I sleep.

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When I awake, it’ll be my birthday. I’ll be 44; mid-forties; etc. Apply adjectives as you wish.

This year had better be better, is all I’ve got to say.

So…last night, I get home and my dad has left a message for me to stop over.

I get over to the house, and sitting on the kitchen table is a knife — not just any knife, but a WWII standard issue Pal Navy knife, with a 9″ blade and an original sheath in damn near perfect condition, with the exception of having my uncle’s name carved into the sheath.

Seems my dad got it from my uncle, who no longer wanted it, and he decided that I should have it.

For those who don’t know me, you should know that one of my unpleasant little idiosyncrasies is that I’ve had a lifelong love affair with cutlery. I own over a hundred knives, including a few that I probably shouldn’t own…’nuff said about that. I don’t collect seriously, the way I do with guitars, in the sense of going out just to purchase knives; more a case of coming across them now and again at bargain prices, or having them given to me by my dad.

It’s one of the things I inherited from my dad, along with bipolar disorder, a love of Johnny Cash, and an affinity for long hair. Dad still has the knife his grandfather made for him on the rez back in the ’30s, with a leather wrapped wooden handle and a blade made from the back of a two-man crosscut saw.

This new acquisition means that I now own one example of every American issue knife from WWII, plus an original British Sykes-Fairbairn special forces dagger. (I don’t do Nazi. Period.)

As I was leaving, I thanked my dad again and he asked offhand if I also wanted the rifle and bayonet.

I did a double take — he hasn’t had guns in the house for years, mostly because of our shared propensity to suicide.

We headed downstairs to take a look…Yup. An M1 Garand with its original bayonet, also my uncle’s.

I took a pass on the gun. And the bayonet. I knew Anne would NEVER go for it — and I don’t trust myself either. (I don’t think it was still in working order, but you never can tell.)

Before I left, he’d called a collector buddy of his and he came and got it.

Funny…I’m politically lefty for sure, but I’ve still got the atavistic love of weapons that you see sometimes on the right of the political spectrum. I recognize it as an issue, a contradiction if you will; I think it’s at least in part a way of pushing, poking on my death wish a bit; having all those edged weapons around…The Fugue State poems are about this sort of identity dis-integration…I find it less troubling than I used to…