It is, to be honest, a little…scarybeautifulreal.

gets disabling, I take the dose. My doctor, who is awesomely supportive of me getting off of it all, has given me a prescription for 37.5 mg tablets and so I’ll be stepping down to those soon. I wish I could take a week and just let my body readjust. It’s funny, venlafaxine has a half-life of 5 hours and so it is out of your system quick, and so the withdrawals are not about the drug leaving your body, but about your body’s disarray in the absence of the drug – which strikes me very much as a fundamental characteristic of physical addiction and a hideous trait for a psychiatric medication to possess, though I suppose it is a handy way for pharmaceuticals and practitioners to force compliance.

“Take this drug. If you stop, you will be sick. You may even feel like you’re dying.”

So, yes, it is important that I come off of this substance. I am still trying to change my nicotine habit, but, that too, is a challenge. I hope it rains all day so I’ll have good reason this afternoon to not go out for a cigarette while I am at my parent’s house with my kids. When it is raining, there is no dry place to smoke at their house. Sitting in my car, boxed in by smoke from a damp and disintegrating cigarette is not a good way to spend my time.

How is your music coming along? I really am looking forward to hearing some compositions. I have been thinking a lot about my relationship with music and how timid I have always been about making and responding to sound. I know how the music in me became quiet, a series of dumb lessons learned early – and I am trying to figure out how to wake it up.

The rain sounds nice today. That is, I suppose, a good start. I am going to go see Explosions in the Sky next Friday – it’s a costly show, 20 bucks, but I think it is going to be amazing. The venue (Orange Peel) seems to hardly be promoting it and so it is possible that there may be a small crowd. Of course, depending on their tour route, people may come from regional cities to see them? They are that good.

I got my certificate from the good state of NC, my legitimacy papers for my work as a Peer Support Specialist. I don’t know whatever happened to my college diploma, but I think I might frame this piece of paper.

Anyway, I hope your day is good. I need to write something today. I have been very letter-oriented lately and a wellspring of direct communicative impulse has sprung up. I think I will write my penpal on NC Death Row and tell him that if they call for his termination, I fully intend to start a national and international movement to save his brilliant and redeemed heart from tragic, pointless, squandering. He could help a lot of young people and his death would be a insult to our humanity.

In my home state of Georgia, they are executing a man tonight, at 7:00pm. Hundreds of thousands of people, including Desmond Tutu, have tried to stop it. It seems, at this point, that they are going to do it anyway.

Those motherfuckers.

I am a sixth generation Georgian. My great-great grandfather, Marcus Beck, Sr. was a State Supreme Court Judge.
His son, Marcus Beck, Jr., was a dark-eyed artist. He once drew a picture of Liberty being lynched. Bits of his story and letters he wrote while he was on run-away and before he died in an idiotic war are compiled here, back in June 2010.

Funny how sometimes the relatives you feel closest to are the ones you never met.

So, do me a favor and consider that last night at 8:18 pm EST, hundreds of thousands of people received the NAACP email with the subject line “Troy will refuse his last meal” and, at that moment, those of us who got this message on our phones all simultaneously FELT something (or at least, we should’ve – I really hope that people FELT something…) and what I want most in the world is for that to have somehow mattered.

Be in touch and be well. Do me a favor and be quiet for a minute at 7:00 tonight. See if you hear anything:)