The new Zero Point Zero is now up here — a commentary on poetry as a personal spiritual quest.

I had planned on a different column, but decided to postpone it until I felt better. This was a backup I’d started sometime ago — I looked it over and decided it was ok for posting.

Comment here, comment there, you can comment everywhere.

We’ll do something easy, to start. Meme from just_jeff.

NAME AN EXCELLENT:

Country song: Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash

Soul song: Try A Little Tenderness, Otis Redding (Monterey Pop version)

Blues song: Come On In My Kitchen, Robert Johnson

Rock song: Shook Me All Night Long, AC/DC

Acoustic/folky song: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning, Richard Thompson

Punk song: Search and Destroy, Stooges

Rap song: Fight the Power, Public Enemy

Song with a great lead vocal: Anything by Patsy Cline

Song with great harmony: This Boy, the Beatles

Song with great drumming/percussion: Sing Sing Sing, Gene Krupa paying as part of the Benny Goodman Orchestera, 1938 Spirituals to Swing Concert at Carnegie Hall

Song with great bass playing: The Real Me, The Who

Song with great acoustic guitar: Anything by Paco de Lucia

Song with great electric guitar: See No Evil, Television

Solo break in a song, any instrument: Saxophone, Illinois Jacquet, in Lionel Hampton’s Flying Home

Song with great piano/keyboard: My Favorite Things, John Coltrane (McCoy Tyner on piano)

Instrumental song: Miserlou, Dick Dale

Song with a great hook: Blitzkrieg Bop, Ramones

Overall rowdy feel: Bang On The Drum, Todd Rundgren

Lyric from a song that means a lot to you: “Life/What a mess/On the ladder of success/Where you take one step/And miss the whole first rung” — Bastards of Young, Replacements

Lyric that makes you laugh: “I wasn’t born as much as I fell out” — Lost In the Supermarket, the Clash (not sure why, by the way)

Album from the 60s: Interstellar Space, John Coltrane

Album from the 70s: Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols

Album from the 80s: X, More Fun in the New World

Album from the 90s: Rumor and Sigh, Richard Thompson

Album from the aughts, so far: Lust in Phaze: the Best of Soul Coughing

Some of you know I had a meltdown earlier today that was…well, extreme. And frankly, more extreme than I allowed my self to believe.

Your concerns for my safety were both appreciated and well founded, I am embarrassed to say.

I will promise you all that I will seek immediate and direct in person help if it gets that bad again.

While it’s no secret that I’ve been fighting depression for years, I have to say it’s been a very long time since I got that far into a hole, and was actively thinking about self harm.

And I’m pretty freaked out about it.

In general, I’ve been doing better; but I think that the cycling piece is different, and pretty wearing on me overall. My sleep is also pretty disturbed as a result of the new cocktail, which makes for rough mornings, added time pressure, etc.

I am looking on this afternoon as a warning sign.

You need to understand that I am deeply embarrassed at having frightened my friends this afternoon. Many of you know I’ve carried on a long crusade to erase the perception of mental illness as a necessary part, or even cause, of creative ability; the same kind of mentality that has caused us to lose some great artists.

I think of Chris Branch, from St. Louis, most immediately when I think of this.

So when I find myself in the same trough, it’s hard to reconcile my high minded rhetoric with the truth that I can be as much a wallower as the worst teen angst poets.

At any rate, my apologies if I frightened anyone.

I will be absent from here, I think, for a bit…until I get myself settled and more stable again.

Thanks for your patience and love. It is more than I could hope for.

I was just having a bad moment.

Please, don’t worry about me. I am sorry to have caused anyone any anxiety.

I will be going home shortly, I have various doctor’s appointments tomorrow and will not be at work again until Friday.

Your concern was deeply moving to me. Thank you.

I am safe, I promise. And I will remain so.

OK, Meme for the day:

If you want me to interview you–post a comment that simply says, “Interview me.” I’ll respond with questions for you to take back to your own journal and answer as a post. Of course, they’ll be different for each person since this is an interview and not a general survey. At the bottom of your post, after answering the Interviewer’s questions, you ask if anyone wants to be interviewed. So it becomes your turn– in the comments, you ask them any questions you have for them to take back to their journals and answer. And so it becomes the circle. Who will play? May I interview you?

These questions courtesy of ablueeyedboy.

1) Anger is always based in fear. What makes you the most angry, and what are you afraid of in relation to it?

I think what makes me the most angry is intolerance of difference. Some of my most nominally liberal friends are incredibly intolerant of those who don’t share their views…to the point of bigotry.

What I fear most as a result, is twofold: first, that I will be the same way, and second, that I will bend so far backward with tolerance that I fail to stand up for that which I find important.

2) What date that you can put numbers on, besides the common shared ones (Kennedy assassination, trade center, etc.) do you remember vividly and why is it so important?

I think it would have to be Dec. 19, 1975. I was involved in an act of violence that I prefer not to describe in detail. It was important because it changed me forever.

3) What is your first regret?

I had the chance to live in Ireland some twenty odd years ago. A friend and I were going to borrow a house on the coast from an old professor for six months. I was too afraid of leaving the US and my family for six months with no obvious means of support. I turned down the chance. Stupid.

4) If you could trade bodies with someone of the opposite sex for a week, who would you trade with, and what are three things you would do with it?

Patricia Smith. I’d write three Patricia Smith poems.

5) If you could alter the nature of one thing in existance, what would you be and how would you alter it?

Water would be intoxicating.

The new Zero Point Zero column which so many of you contributed to is up here if you’d like to take a look.

I posted the link on the weekend, so you might have missed it.

In addition, a couple of my good buddies (Joe Fusco Jr., Paul David Mena, and — I think — a couple more are getting their own columns there as well. Joe’s funny, and Paul’s a truly great haiku master (won awards in Japan for his work).

I have come to the decision that I only feel good before I get on stage, while I’m on stage, and in the few minutes of applause after I am done.

All my good feelings dissolve a few moments after that.

Isn’t that known as Janis Joplin syndrome?

THE END OF THE WORLD

The best part of
The end of the world
Was the moment
Just before it happened

When
The ground and horizon that had been clear before us
slipped a bit
and we said
hey,
This is it, this must be it

And it was grand
because
for that one second we knew just what was going to happen
We knew that we could expect things to change
Because change was inevitable and unavoidable
and sex was over but so were war and famine
and we thought all we had to go on
in the few minutes we had left
were tenderness and a refusal to give up –

But then

the shock

to find

the end was instead so
quiet,
low clarinet
instead of tympani,
that
we weren’t sure it had happened
until long after it was over
until the morning we woke up and saw the sky turn bright white

We turned up our faces toward it
And they shone like hubcaps
Rolling away from a wreck
And we couldn’t eat breakfast together and
We didn’t kiss goodbye and we barely
Recognized each other
As we went about our business

And that was the true end of the world

Or at least
of my part of it

I have come to the decision that I only feel good before I get on stage, while I’m on stage, and in the few minutes of applause after I am done.

All my good feelings dissolve a few moments after that.

Isn’t that known as Janis Joplin syndrome?

THE END OF THE WORLD

The best part of
The end of the world
Was the moment
Just before it happened

When
The ground and horizon that had been clear before us
slipped a bit
and we said
hey,
This is it, this must be it

And it was grand
because
for that one second we knew just what was going to happen
We knew that we could expect things to change
Because change was inevitable and unavoidable
and sex was over but so were war and famine
and we thought all we had to go on
in the few minutes we had left
were tenderness and a refusal to give up –

But then

the shock

to find

the end was instead so
quiet,
low clarinet
instead of tympani,
that
we weren’t sure it had happened
until long after it was over
until the morning we woke up and saw the sky turn bright white

We turned up our faces toward it
And they shone like hubcaps
Rolling away from a wreck
And we couldn’t eat breakfast together and
We didn’t kiss goodbye and we barely
Recognized each other
As we went about our business

And that was the true end of the world

Or at least
of my part of it

Today has been filled with work, from writing to cleaning in the basement to helping my uncle set up his computer (translated, setting up my uncle’s computer).

I also had a sleepless night and a nap this morning.

It strikes me that I also had a productive week at work, getting several things done I was unable to get to earlier in the month.

Plus I paid bills today and I think I’m gonna go to the movies tonight and poetry tomorrow.

And I played guitar for the first time in ages, working up a fingerstyle version of Graham Parker’s “You Can’t Be Too Strong.”

I do believe this is what you call an improvement.

Today has been filled with work, from writing to cleaning in the basement to helping my uncle set up his computer (translated, setting up my uncle’s computer).

I also had a sleepless night and a nap this morning.

It strikes me that I also had a productive week at work, getting several things done I was unable to get to earlier in the month.

Plus I paid bills today and I think I’m gonna go to the movies tonight and poetry tomorrow.

And I played guitar for the first time in ages, working up a fingerstyle version of Graham Parker’s “You Can’t Be Too Strong.”

I do believe this is what you call an improvement.

The new Zero Point Zero is up here.

I’m back, at last. Enjoy.

Bed time.

The new Zero Point Zero is up here.

I’m back, at last. Enjoy.

Bed time.

In other news, the “orgasm” quiz suggested that Jim Morrison would give me an orgasm with a vibrator, and that it would be very good.

Considering how much I loathe Jim Morrison, this would seem to be inaccurate, to say the least.