Sharp and blinding like a dozen needles thrown into a million eyeballs the insistent caterpillar crawls with its bladed legs into the flesh, digging around. But it isn't a caterpillar, it's your destiny, and it's eating you alive like a fifth grader with a sack of Halloween candy. Under the table, the coffee grounds rot and gather life discouragingly, a bitter wad of rebellion, a loogey hocked in the face of human perceptions of the vast dominion of death. They seem unable to perceive that the living spirit of life infests everything, including death, so why not stop fearing and return to the dance? The sickening crunch of injury becomes sickening no more if you only embrace it, and the benefits to your own ability to deal with injury as as nothing compared to the ecstacy of inflicting it. The sheer kinetic flex and feel of violence is purity, is life, is the essence of existence distilled to a few moments of pure and perfect will. Distilled power forced from your own blood and sweat condensed drawn forth channeled into the hand, into the knife, into the muscles, and the power vents itself, showing the shower of perfect redness as proof of your success, of the sanctity of the dance. The circle continues unabated no matter your attempts to stop it, seal it away. I wish I could run free with the wolves and coyotes, but my Indian dog will have to do. I can't wait until he gets here. She gets here. It, either way, will understand me far better than any human could, and even better than the cats, though not by nearly so great a ratio, of course. Indeed, the cats know me well. But it's not the same ... only a couple more months. Mid-December. Then, for another fifteen years, I won't be alone. I wish I could find away to make it live longer. I haven't even met it yet and I'm already dreading when it leaves me. I suppose that's the purpose of Before -- to make you do all the stuff you'd normally waste doing in Now, so you can just enjoy Now when it happens. Nevermind that it's always Now. Forget it. I want to return to the ceaseless life-and-death dance of the hindbrain. This semiconscious anticipation is too tantalizing for me. Might as well fantasize about winning the lottery, won't make it happen now.

I have to do this every night, dump out my brain, squeeze it like a sponge, or else the letters chase themselves around and I can't sleep no matter how much medicine I smoke, unless I chew the special seeds, the turquoise dragon seeds, and there aren't enough of those, at least not until Friday, I get more on Friday. Hopefully I'll get more this month, hopefully the pharmacist will actually give me what's mine. I need to vent, I need to sleep, and I can't decide which is more pressing. I doubt anyone will want to play with me, anyway...

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