Tryptophan may cure insomnia

I wouldn't know. I couldn't sleep last night. The darkness in my basement room helped in no way and even as I pulled the covers over my head, a dreary black sheet loomed across the device from which my brain is able to view reality, or at least perceive it. I didn't have a Thanksgiving dinner last night, but it didn't bother me. The loneliness at hand last night was not an emotionally desolate complex. However, I did really want turkey. I traveled over an hour in the morning to make it across town to a small church in the northern tip of Manhattan. I was with my friend Naz, and we were mistaken for bums when we tried to enter the auditorium. We agreed we'd rather be mistaken for bums than privileged rich kids. Anyway, we served the senile elderly a Thanksgiving feast. It was nice.

I'm not even going to try to dive into how I felt about the experience or who I met or how I felt about them because I don't think my inexperienced mind can even begin to put it into words. And at the current stage I'm in, I think my efforts would put their sincerity in vain.

So, as the warm eastern currents pull in and the seagulls migrate due to hunger and the filthy fragments we call sand move across the earth, I've stayed the same- an ageless teenager/young adult, trying to master the art of some pompous coming of age strategy, a manipulative scheme that can generate nothing but pretense and ego. And as I throw the ingredients into a boiling pot, the temperatures decrease, leaving me with nothing but raw meat, bloody and red as a cherry waiting to choke it's next hungry victim, and vegetables, soaked in the blood of the veal and infected with the disease of greed, and the callow broth, raging with disgust of failure. It's a good thing I can't really cook.

I am re-thinking my career as a teacher. First, I'm scared shitless. I do not know how to be a "good" teacher and I will be held accountable for the education and lives of growing minds. I can easily fuck it up. Second, I'm not sure if I'm ready for it. When I graduate, I will be thrown into the public education system of New York City and I will have a full career, and I'm not sure if I'm fit for the job. Here I am- 19, almost 20, living in my friend's basement, working in a fucking kitchen, making $9.65 a hour, and waking up in the afternoons to an empty bed and a dirty room filled with the debris of last night's battle I raged with myself. Teacher material? Third, I hate school, and I feel it's a little hypocritical to want to be a teacher. Forth, I hate this, but I know I am infiltrating the system, wanting to break it, wanting to change it, and that is the aspiration of new age teachers, but how many of them throw down the triumph card? How many of them even make it to the finish line? How many of them run out of breath, clawing on the dirt path with their blood stained fingers as they see checkered flags rising in the vague distance, a mirage maybe, something they want to see, an illusion drawn not from their fatigued minds, but from their hearts and souls so they can tell others; an excuse for their lack of commitment to say they tried.

I don't know when I lost it, I don't know when I disguised my stressed, haggard face with smile- a blatantly fake smirk to convey my apathy toward what is good and what is bad, I don't know when I lost it all. Is it the death of my grandmother from when I was a child wanting nothing more than the relief of hearing the school bell so I know I can hop on the bright yellow bus to arrive home, only to throw my book bag in the living room and run outside and spend the night playing street hockey or skateboarding with my neighborhood friends? Perhaps it is the death of my cousin's grandmother, just a few months ago as she was laid in the ground, not six feet under, but miles, because the grief my family felt couldn't be measured. Maybe it is the fact that I couldn't make it home to see her one last time, nor could I remember the last time I saw her, but I do remember she bought me my first two wheeled bike from the Flea Market in San Jose; the tiny red bike that gave me scars and the skill to ride with nothing but paved streets in front of me. It might be the disintegrating kidneys that are destroying the health of my aunt, causing her to go through dialysis everyday, turning her spirited voice into one with lassitude. Or it just may be the recent news of the cancerous cells in my uncle's lungs as it distorts his breathing method, causing his throat to swell and swaying his will to live.

All I am looking for is relief, and I don't know where I can find it. These two days of vacation did relax me, but two days is not enough. I need more. I need it to hold its arms out for me as I comply and gently crack its bones just to watch it crumble, I need it to succumb to my desire as I rip it open at the seams of its tender chest and tear out limb after limb, I need to suck it's blood until I feel its last cold, dry breath spewed to the world. I am looking for relief and I want to exploit it, I want to use it up because I don't know when I will feel it again.

Sometimes I get so anxious I can hear silence knocking on my door. Sometimes I feel so robotic I want to rupture my cold metallic body and rip out each fiber, each cord so I can put myself back together again with different cables and connections. I need some re-wiring. In fact, I wish I was robotic so certain emotions can be turned off and certain femotions can come to play. Flicker, flicker. I went to a lounge/restaurant in Williamsburg last night and I still can't get over how the waiter gave in to serving me alcohol.

I need a new job.
Peace and Love,