Some people fake their death.

I'm faking life.

*

Tonight's fortune cookie told me, "It could be better, but its good enough."

Essentially, your life is what it is, Dave, deal with it. How much of a downer. I see how it could be positive, but it seems more like settling. Why try, Dave? This is what you deserve. Take it and shut up.

I don't think I'll be ordering Chinese for quite some time.

*

My advertising portfolio is due in a little over a day. Flipping through it, what makes me better than anyone else? Largely, ideas are held back because of an inability to art direct. That's not my job though. My job is ideas. Yet, my book needs to be both. If I get hired, I won't have to art direct ever again. Fucking catch-22. Fucking Joseph Heller.

Each ad I think, Anyone else could have thought of this. True. They did not. But really, couldn't they have? Ha ha- old recliners are forced to prostitute themselves on the street because a La-Z-Boy replaced them. What a gas. Oh, and look, a mildly witty headline pimping perfume & dye free Cheer. Gee.

The problem is, I cannot accept opinions. The only feedback I can accept is negative. Dave, this is pure shit. Why are you in advertising? I would accept that. Instead I get, Hey, keep going with this, I like it. No. No you don't.

Really, the same goes for my writing. No one's ever said something is bad, but I know it is bad. I've heard good things, but I don't buy them. Who will be rude to your face about it? In the end though, at least there are a few (maybe 30 out of 3 years of writing, not a good ratio) that I somewhat like. Maybe I just like the idea though and hate the poem itself. It comes down to- I should have considered immediate grad school.

Truthfully, if advertising doesn't work out sometime this summer, I will apply to grad school. Let's just hope that works out. I do not want to take some shitty local advertising gig doing billboard work for some no name casino in Atlantic City. Someone out there just needs to take a chance on me. Someone needs to look at my book and think, If he wasn't worried about art direction, if he was in a place where he could talk with others, he'd have it.

I truly think that way. Newhouse has it set up so that you are forced to think of ideas on your own. This seems logically, yes, it is my work. But no. This is not how it runs. Most agencies you are at least in a team of two kicking things back and forth and out of that something fucking stellar occurs. Cavemen didn't make fire by rubbing one rock against itself.

What a horrible metaphor.

Before my psyche crumbles...adieu.

*

Rather, I'll leave you with this. I'm writing from dreams now. Dreams and whatever else I see when I close my eyes. This is from last night.

The Bird Was a Jackal

The bird was an elephant.
Size-wise taking
up the room. No.

The bird was a jackal.
Size-wise and in
spirit. Bed side.

The bird was hollow.
It had eyeless sockets-
managing to stare.

Staring into my head.
Until I found
myself standing

inside the socket.
And I became
the bird’s lone pupil.

The bird had one
eye now. I led it
to find the second.