I Love and Press the Boundaries of Semicolons: a welcome to the exhibitionist side of the blog

This is the public side of my already-established Musirants blog, which deals with more private topics; my blog with a purposeful readership of less than a handful. However, I often write things than anyone can see, so this is where the majority of my posts will go from now on, because I do need to write in any capacity. The more write, the more the words will come; the more I'll have to write. I can't help it; it's what I do.

Today, today:

After a rousing 12-hour sleep session, I managed to drag myself out of bed (shortly after, taking a nap on the bathroom floor; those six seconds I spent walking really took it out of me!) just in time to make it to work at 5- at a leisurely pace. I worked. No really, I worked. No hiding in the bathroom to write today; I was productive, and not like a cough. Afterward, I treated myself to a drive through north Topeka, in effort to regain a sense of the city as a city. As I drove over the bridge and caught a glimpse of the creepiest area of town- the "Jesus Saves" sign in neon, right between "God help me, I'm so lost, I'm going to get shot if I can't figure a way out of this place" and the rescue mission- I realized I've been lacking something: a voice recorder.

So I drove. I drove to northwest Topeka, to places I hadn't been in fifteen years; places I'd never driven to myself, yet still made the turns from memory. You know, what's funny is that no matter where you go, you can always tell what part of town you're in by two things: the layout of the variety of stores, and the density of auto shops populating the area. Well, this area had two hardware stores right next to each other, two dollar stores next to those, A McDonalds, The formerly-known-as-Dunkin-but-now-Dimple Donuts, and enough auto shops to fill the space of a breath. A few blocks later, I found a Wal-Mart, which looked far seedier than the Dillons it was next to, convinced myself I probably wouldn't get raped on the way in and bought a voice recorder for twice as much as I'd expected one to cost. Turns out they're digital these days. I can now record myself talking to... myself. My life is complete. I need nothing more, especially with 104 hour storage capacity... except, it looks like I'll have to keep the day job to buy some batteries.

With my newfound device that will surely cause me to slip into such insularity that I shortly become incomprehensible to people who don't live within my mind, I drove to my old church, then back around to Washburn, talking and making notes the whole while. The point? Oh, christ, I really don't know why I thought I needed this thing anymore, other than that whole driving over the bridge incident, wishing I only had to say the words to record my thoughts since writing while driving is only my third-best idea ever. Hands-free writing. That's what I was thinking. Yes! And I couldn't have arrived to this in any less than two paragraphs.

Well, I'd intended to go on my drive the previous night, but was instead drawn into a 3+ hour argument with my boyfriend that ended with him claiming to love me and me claiming it to be a claim. He said I can tell he loves me because he cared enough to not let me drive through the ghetto at two in the morning. I told him if he loved me, he'd understand precisely why I needed to drive through the ghetto at 2am. Seriously, how does he expect me to write depraved city when I'm laying around in quasi-suburbia on the internet all night?

I can't. Not really. Not that it means I have to sit under the Jesus Saves sign, warding off hepatitis-riddled sex offenders every second that I'm writing this thing, but I do feel the need to experience the city as the city; the part of the city that means something, that was alive then dead. That damn Jesus Saves sign. It was in the poem before I even recalled it! How about that?

And just in time to get two hours of sleep, I've finally gotten tired. I really should look into this consistent sleep thing, sometime.