I got a fire in me

I don't know what it is lately, but I got a fire in me. I mean a burning one. Every song I hear sounds like its the greatest one ever played. Every orange I eat is the sweetest one I've ever had. Every pair of pants I put on are more comfortable than all the others. My friends are becoming inanimate objects. I don't know if its that I have no confidants here, no true companions, or that I've always been borderline insane but I am developing serious plutonic bonds with inanimate objects. I am also in a constant state of flux. I seem to meandering through each day as an amoeba through a medium. Anything I want intellectually, I engulf. I absorb it. I don't know why its happening. I can't seem to find sufficient words to describe what I'm talking about.
Let me try another approach. I'm having my neighbors over for dinner tonight. I was cutting up vegetables, drinking half a day old Folger's coffee, listening to a electro-jazzy-lounge-spoken word record I brought up to the Ack (that's what I call Alaska now because the letters are AK) and I couldn't stop thinking how much I love to cut up vegetables. I was dancing around my kitchen slicing a red pepper thinking "Red peppers are really good, I don't know why I had such a bad opinion of them in the first place." I mean, what is going on up there in my melon anyways? I think I'm going off the deep end.
I think what is happening to me is that I have absolutely no friends. I have neighbors, colleagues, acquaintances, students, and fellow Mekoryukites, but I don't have a single real friend. You know, someone who has nothing better to do than hang out with you and you likewise. Sometimes that simple fact does make me really lonely. But, most of the time it makes me really busy. In the last month, I have been turning out more random and tangential art than I ever have in my life. I am almost done with a really big drawing I've been working on. I worked on this drawing for like 10 hours total now. I've never had the patience to do something like that in the past. But, now I want to do something else. I feel like I am constantly starting new things and finishing nothing. I don't want that to happen with this experience. I don't feel like it would be right for me to leave these kids after a year. I don't know what the circumstances for teachers in our dwindling population school will be next year but I think I decided in the last couple of the days that I want to come back. I'll reevaluate in the dead of winter, but as for now I like it here. Its weird, I'm going crazy, I'm pretty lonely and I don't have access to anyone who means a single thing to me, but I still like it here. I'm comfortable with myself. That's a new thing.

So I just had my neighbors over for dinner...thats why there was a pause in the train of thought. They are awesome people. Super nice, super funny, super people all around. I guess its not just them though. I found that you can find a lot of good in most everyone if you look hard enough. With some people, like my neighbors, its easy to see the shining hearts beat inside them. Some people you have to scratch away months, years or decades worth of dirt, dust, mold, mildew and grime to get the gooey center where its still warm like a fresh baked cookie. I hope thats not how people think about me. I hope I am a good person. We can all say we try. Well, we do. We can say "I am a good person dammit." We can shout it out loud in the rain. We can say it under our breath. Or we can not. Either way, its in there somewhere hopefully.
I'm going to end this rambling incoherent charade with a strict piece of advice. Think of it as a special piece of advice that could only come from someone who contemplates the goodness of red bell peppers, which are good regardless of your opinion. Please, I beg of you, purchase and play (or just play if you already own it) the album "Careless Love" by Madeleine Peyroux. Listen to it all the way through instead of watching TV some night. Write a letter to a loved one, or start a blog and tell a whole bunch of people how much beauty you see around. Tell me that you don't feel like a better person afterward. I'm not saying I'm any better than anyone else, I am saying I feel better than I used to. I feel like I am in a Bob Ross painting. Good night.