As much as I love reassembling language, I'm going to try and cut down on the made up words, no matter how functional they are to me. There's just something about the ring of things like legister, and healspan, and gastronaut, and dreadlot that color things in my head, but make no sense outside of it. I'm not saying they won't come up at all. I'm saying I'm going to try and keep a lid on it (as much as I'm going to try and cap my typing to more reasonable lengths of chained thoughts).
In other news, I'm still trying to work in time for Bits. It's daunting because there are more than thirty short stories that are unedited that were at one time fully edited and since I'm left with the unedited versions by redoing the edits I'm essentially going to end up with stories different from the ones I came to love once I edited them. It's like leaving for work and coming home and all the furniture is moved and because so many things are moved and they all existed relative to one another you can't begin to put things back where they go because by placing one thing you are essentially displacing everything no matter what that first thing is so you get comfortable instead in your weirded home and the weirdness becomes acceptable though deeply irritating and depressingly better than the peak fear of resetting the changes, but ultimately you're rushing toward a breaking point where the peak of the fear of completely inverting the reality and order you originally wanted to induce is broken by the critical mass of foreignness settling daily. So I'm going to do it. There is no way I can't. In short, it's a trap. A glorious trap.
I don't know when my days off will fall week to week so I think I may just settle on Wednesday mornings as Saturdays are dedicated to sewing my realities back together after days of cutting sutures and vision bleeds. That's longer term.
Shorter term outlay:
Finish paper robot and mail it to Boulder.
Go get computer in mid-March so I can do design again without cramping my hand on a mouse using crappy windows xp paint programs.
After I get computer, finish novel on the computer (no seriously, it was 2/3s done... I don't like it, but I told myself I would do it so I have to finish it so I can get that monkey off my neck and get the bullshit devices out of my body and then actually do one I want to do).
I guess that's it. Oh wait-
Need to build a target to punch. My knuckles are way too soft.
And need a big ol' scroll of paper to tape to my wall so I can draw on it and write things.
And then the list of bull required by living on my own like a trash can. And chairs. And a desk. And a lamp.
And of course more poetry. But the kid has been absent. I don't know where the whimsy has gone. The climate in the factory has turned a bit gritty and I want more than anything to be able to write and rhyme about the stars in my sky between the leaves of my dreams of the gray sand castles and tide pools on the shores of a warm hell. It's just hard to find sometimes without a guide. I'll keep looking though. It's strange sometimes. With the bridge gone and slipping across into the unreal only to find the city is abandoned and you're alone to wander the concrete blocks turned over to the trod and glass eyed streets and on slipping back you are quarantined for contamination and failing inside for particulate poisoning and mutation is flowering in your cells, but none of it was supposed to be and was somehow more real than imagined. I wonder sometimes if I did drop acid would anything change. I'll know someday. Till then, there is work yet to be done.
///Goldfrapp - "Utopia" It's a strange day. No colors or shapes.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
2/23/11
The Fringeness of Earnesty and High Cycles
I'm sort of coming to realize, well first of all I think I've been talking too much again, but I'm sort of coming to realize that I am a fringe personality. I was pretty delusional back in 2004. I thought I was cooler than the other side of the pillow beneath the boss cat's hipster transformers cartoon printed footie pajamas. Then I started to see the full Lawrence of Arabia letterbox landscape of who I was. Then even seeing that I started to believe again. Then I thought maybe the strangeness was the strangeness of perhaps a Kramer and desirable for the sake of its own quirks and prats. Now I'm beginning to understand that what it is really is the quality of fringe. I was beginning to think about what I could do to tear that away and assume a lower charge. No clue. My charge is way too high. By the time I get near to people I'm ravenous for company and traveling at speeds that break bones and all of me wants to talk at once. Not that quiet is a bad thing. I'm a fantastically introverted extrovert. I couldn't live with me. I shouldn't expect other people to. Right?
Well anyway, I'm going to try and keep these shorter. There's no lightness to being. There's no likeness to seeing. I'm camping at the edges of some things I shouldn't be near. Not that they keep calling me, but it's more like a landmark that lets me navigate the rest of the solid world. Or not even that. I have a hard time keeping track of progression. The importance of cause and effect is. I suspect the problem might be that I am difficult to relate to, but with slight effort able to be comprehended and possessing sightlines worth following when I am close to my best, and I am violent, obscure, unpredictable, melancholy, intensely introspective, restless, and largely inchoate and impossible to relate to when I am not near my best. Problematic. But at least I'm starting to understand how or at least why it seems I'm regularly fallen into Kuiper radial movements. I'll stop calling them every weekend. They'll get out the telescopes and rovers and years of planning and clean rooms and staffs of scientists and damage controllers when they're ready to see me blow by along the edges of the perceivable solar system.
I've also realized that my head is most active when I'm turning my motor at work. So now I take notes on my phone. Good. A fine start. Because by the time I'm ready to leave work and I get to my door at home I can't remember half of the things I started in my head while I was there. I'm losing lines. Each object in is another out. So now I can chase the high cycles like dust motes. I don't know why it didn't occur to me sooner. I guess I thought they'd think I was texting people. Just texting myself. Tracking my information. Taching my spin. My head always seems to run the hottest when I can forget my body or perhaps simply push in the clutch linking it to. Corporeal fault lay line.
Some advances were made at Bits. Not many. I like the layout, but I need to learn how to manipulate the blogger gadgets so I can create my own with proper attribution. Still waiting for the end of the world, but I'm happy to be doing so in a city I love. Let's dance till the sun comes up. I'll bring the scissors. Sometimes they tell me things I don't know.
///Juno Reactor - "Las Vegas Future Past" She runs great. Good idle. Clean title. Half the miles were done a quarter at a time too. Been to Vegas a couple times in it. You ever see one of these wide open on the interstate? It's got a sound like you wouldn't believe.
Well anyway, I'm going to try and keep these shorter. There's no lightness to being. There's no likeness to seeing. I'm camping at the edges of some things I shouldn't be near. Not that they keep calling me, but it's more like a landmark that lets me navigate the rest of the solid world. Or not even that. I have a hard time keeping track of progression. The importance of cause and effect is. I suspect the problem might be that I am difficult to relate to, but with slight effort able to be comprehended and possessing sightlines worth following when I am close to my best, and I am violent, obscure, unpredictable, melancholy, intensely introspective, restless, and largely inchoate and impossible to relate to when I am not near my best. Problematic. But at least I'm starting to understand how or at least why it seems I'm regularly fallen into Kuiper radial movements. I'll stop calling them every weekend. They'll get out the telescopes and rovers and years of planning and clean rooms and staffs of scientists and damage controllers when they're ready to see me blow by along the edges of the perceivable solar system.
I've also realized that my head is most active when I'm turning my motor at work. So now I take notes on my phone. Good. A fine start. Because by the time I'm ready to leave work and I get to my door at home I can't remember half of the things I started in my head while I was there. I'm losing lines. Each object in is another out. So now I can chase the high cycles like dust motes. I don't know why it didn't occur to me sooner. I guess I thought they'd think I was texting people. Just texting myself. Tracking my information. Taching my spin. My head always seems to run the hottest when I can forget my body or perhaps simply push in the clutch linking it to. Corporeal fault lay line.
Some advances were made at Bits. Not many. I like the layout, but I need to learn how to manipulate the blogger gadgets so I can create my own with proper attribution. Still waiting for the end of the world, but I'm happy to be doing so in a city I love. Let's dance till the sun comes up. I'll bring the scissors. Sometimes they tell me things I don't know.
///Juno Reactor - "Las Vegas Future Past" She runs great. Good idle. Clean title. Half the miles were done a quarter at a time too. Been to Vegas a couple times in it. You ever see one of these wide open on the interstate? It's got a sound like you wouldn't believe.
2/17/11
Teleportation and Flight and Why the Hell am I From Here
I was walking down the street on my way home the other day and there was an exceptionally bright spot in the early morning still dark sky and it couldn't have been the North Star as I was walking almost due East. Is it possible to walk almost due to a cardinal? There's probably a different term I wanted there. Well anyway, walking almost due East and there is this bright point and I'm watching it and trying to figure out if it's flickering because its engines are vibrating and its moving or if its shaking because of the atmospheric interference I read about in that Astronomy class I almost failed because I didn't go to the Mars viewings.
A couple blocks later on down the road, still looking at it while taking in the rest of the sky and being generally happy that the moon went to bed much earlier in the night and I wouldn't have to deal with trying to sleep underneath it (I hate sleeping when the moon is out... it's just weird... I feel like I'm being watched whenever the moon can see me... like being really tired, but ambitious enough to sit in the front of the class... never ends well) I figured it must be a planet. So then I'm going down my mental list of attributes of planets and trying to figure out if the dot is tinged orange or red or brown or if the after image of headlights pouring in the opposite direction towards downtown are fucking with my eyes. Turns out the history channel's lessons about the planets combined with a couple thousand dollars worth of classroom credits taught me nothing retainable about the planets. I figured it's probably Venus. Anyway... where was I going with that, because I'm falling asleep with my head propped against the wall...
I had this idea about teleportation. If it could really work. I was trying to think of what it would look like for a man (or woman, or hamster) to teleport from here to the surface of Venus. This idea lead to another that I had about espestos. I don't think I spelled that right. Asbestos? That looks better. So this was an idea about asbestos. It stops things from burning. But that's not entirely true. It trades the burning. Instead of a speedy reorganization of carbon you get the very slow and meticulous reorganization of your carbon and fat chains in the form of a slow burning cancer. You're still burning, but just ridiculously slowly, which is a reasonable trade off I think. The guarantee of no sudden death by combustion for the guarantee of a slow death by, well you get the picture. So back to teleportation. Imagine teleportation as a similar thing.
A man or woman or hamster sitting zen lotus on a rock on the side of a mountain staring at Venus, well not staring because their eyes would have to be closed to meditate or something like that, and they're teleporting themselves. I kind of had to slap myself on the hand with a ruler because my first thought of what it would look like was this big flourish of streamers of energy and cool colors and aurora borealis out the asshole and spinning star fields and what have you and that's all just computer graphic bullshit that has taken imagination and turned it into rock candy on a stick for ten bucks a pop. I thought about some more and what it would probably look like is what we see when things are decaying.
The man would, sitting there zen buddha downward dog or whatever next to his meditating hamster, waste away atom by atom and cell by cell, decomposing himself and streaming himself invisibly, because the particles would be micro sized bits capable of being radiated photon like across the intervening space of time. Eventually his heart would stop. Consciousness would "leave". He would be pronounced dead, but suppose you just left him there. Eventually there would be nothing left. The argument could be made that all of the evidence of his presence is still there in the dirt he sat on next to his also legally dead hamster and the legally dead lady, but if its like sending a fax, maybe the copying process just takes that long and the original is left behind. And then on Venus because of the order in which things would have to be sent and the lossiness of the transmission of the radiated particles, maybe he doesn't reconstitute perfectly. Maybe he doesn't reconstitute at all accurately and ends up landing as a bunch of bliss filled bacterium that contain all the parts and codes to eventually rebuild himself when the surroundings and materials become available, but not before. Maybe that swatch of bacteria on Venus is some monk from like 200 B.C. who's just been hanging out waiting for the rest of us to get there.
It wouldn't be all that feasible once transportation is established. You'd be talking years to process yourself fully, assuming no one messes with your remains when you're not watching like some punk co-worker tearing the bottom half off of the page you were trying to fax while you're off grabbing a quick cup of coffee (I still haven't forgotten Brendan, it was not funny), and then a thousand year layover for conditions to present themselves that would allow you to finally rebuild yourself, but - yeah actually it seems like something no one should really want to do. I guess what I'm saying is I'll just wait for the rocket ship. I probably need to think about this concept some more. I can't tell yet if it's promising or retarded in terms of value. I might have to short circuit some things to make it appealing enough in terms of science fiction to warrant a suspension of the laws of science for the sake of a good story. But still, could you imagine how awesome that would be. Or gross. If you were on Venus and this fleshy fetus thing randomly started growing in the corner of your room. Would you let it go on for a year or two or would you draw the line at it starting to grow something that looked like a face and scrape it up and dumpster that shit. Oh, I just grossed myself out. I don't think I'm going to so much as look at mold the same way again. Gross.
Well the other thing that happened was in the sky by the big dipper and all of those ice blue glimmering lights there was a contrail and right where it crossed the North Star there was another running perfectly perpendicular to it. It was so beautiful. The kind of beauty that sucks the air out of your mouth like an earnest kiss and staring up at the stars all I could think was "home". It's ridiculous, but so often I feel like 'god damnit why the hell am I from here. I should be from there." 'there' being any other planet besides here. But anyway, the two contrails were catching the starlight and took on this silky translucence that was too delicate to touch and the coldness of night felt more like the coldness of thin atmosphere and I wished so hard that I could just jump and keep going up until I crossed those contrails and could see the moon and where the deep dark blue of sky is swallowed up by vacuum's black and see the star shine and my heart gun, full of weightless adrenaline and shredding and steeling nerve and quantum probability faults streaming wider and wider like ice nine through cement, but it didn't happen and I kept walking to work.
///The Chemical Brothers - "Pioneer Skies" This came on the shuffle in my head phones while I was walking and star gazing and I nearly wilted with longing to get off this rock. Don't get me wrong, I love it here more than anywhere else I've been so far. My heart just loves to wander and my blood runs for adventure. I probably won't be entirely happy or fulfilled until I'm living on the side of a mountain in the wilderness with a gun and a couple dogs and some solar panels and enough night sky and open ground to fill what's left of my lifetime.
A couple blocks later on down the road, still looking at it while taking in the rest of the sky and being generally happy that the moon went to bed much earlier in the night and I wouldn't have to deal with trying to sleep underneath it (I hate sleeping when the moon is out... it's just weird... I feel like I'm being watched whenever the moon can see me... like being really tired, but ambitious enough to sit in the front of the class... never ends well) I figured it must be a planet. So then I'm going down my mental list of attributes of planets and trying to figure out if the dot is tinged orange or red or brown or if the after image of headlights pouring in the opposite direction towards downtown are fucking with my eyes. Turns out the history channel's lessons about the planets combined with a couple thousand dollars worth of classroom credits taught me nothing retainable about the planets. I figured it's probably Venus. Anyway... where was I going with that, because I'm falling asleep with my head propped against the wall...
I had this idea about teleportation. If it could really work. I was trying to think of what it would look like for a man (or woman, or hamster) to teleport from here to the surface of Venus. This idea lead to another that I had about espestos. I don't think I spelled that right. Asbestos? That looks better. So this was an idea about asbestos. It stops things from burning. But that's not entirely true. It trades the burning. Instead of a speedy reorganization of carbon you get the very slow and meticulous reorganization of your carbon and fat chains in the form of a slow burning cancer. You're still burning, but just ridiculously slowly, which is a reasonable trade off I think. The guarantee of no sudden death by combustion for the guarantee of a slow death by, well you get the picture. So back to teleportation. Imagine teleportation as a similar thing.
A man or woman or hamster sitting zen lotus on a rock on the side of a mountain staring at Venus, well not staring because their eyes would have to be closed to meditate or something like that, and they're teleporting themselves. I kind of had to slap myself on the hand with a ruler because my first thought of what it would look like was this big flourish of streamers of energy and cool colors and aurora borealis out the asshole and spinning star fields and what have you and that's all just computer graphic bullshit that has taken imagination and turned it into rock candy on a stick for ten bucks a pop. I thought about some more and what it would probably look like is what we see when things are decaying.
The man would, sitting there zen buddha downward dog or whatever next to his meditating hamster, waste away atom by atom and cell by cell, decomposing himself and streaming himself invisibly, because the particles would be micro sized bits capable of being radiated photon like across the intervening space of time. Eventually his heart would stop. Consciousness would "leave". He would be pronounced dead, but suppose you just left him there. Eventually there would be nothing left. The argument could be made that all of the evidence of his presence is still there in the dirt he sat on next to his also legally dead hamster and the legally dead lady, but if its like sending a fax, maybe the copying process just takes that long and the original is left behind. And then on Venus because of the order in which things would have to be sent and the lossiness of the transmission of the radiated particles, maybe he doesn't reconstitute perfectly. Maybe he doesn't reconstitute at all accurately and ends up landing as a bunch of bliss filled bacterium that contain all the parts and codes to eventually rebuild himself when the surroundings and materials become available, but not before. Maybe that swatch of bacteria on Venus is some monk from like 200 B.C. who's just been hanging out waiting for the rest of us to get there.
It wouldn't be all that feasible once transportation is established. You'd be talking years to process yourself fully, assuming no one messes with your remains when you're not watching like some punk co-worker tearing the bottom half off of the page you were trying to fax while you're off grabbing a quick cup of coffee (I still haven't forgotten Brendan, it was not funny), and then a thousand year layover for conditions to present themselves that would allow you to finally rebuild yourself, but - yeah actually it seems like something no one should really want to do. I guess what I'm saying is I'll just wait for the rocket ship. I probably need to think about this concept some more. I can't tell yet if it's promising or retarded in terms of value. I might have to short circuit some things to make it appealing enough in terms of science fiction to warrant a suspension of the laws of science for the sake of a good story. But still, could you imagine how awesome that would be. Or gross. If you were on Venus and this fleshy fetus thing randomly started growing in the corner of your room. Would you let it go on for a year or two or would you draw the line at it starting to grow something that looked like a face and scrape it up and dumpster that shit. Oh, I just grossed myself out. I don't think I'm going to so much as look at mold the same way again. Gross.
Well the other thing that happened was in the sky by the big dipper and all of those ice blue glimmering lights there was a contrail and right where it crossed the North Star there was another running perfectly perpendicular to it. It was so beautiful. The kind of beauty that sucks the air out of your mouth like an earnest kiss and staring up at the stars all I could think was "home". It's ridiculous, but so often I feel like 'god damnit why the hell am I from here. I should be from there." 'there' being any other planet besides here. But anyway, the two contrails were catching the starlight and took on this silky translucence that was too delicate to touch and the coldness of night felt more like the coldness of thin atmosphere and I wished so hard that I could just jump and keep going up until I crossed those contrails and could see the moon and where the deep dark blue of sky is swallowed up by vacuum's black and see the star shine and my heart gun, full of weightless adrenaline and shredding and steeling nerve and quantum probability faults streaming wider and wider like ice nine through cement, but it didn't happen and I kept walking to work.
///The Chemical Brothers - "Pioneer Skies" This came on the shuffle in my head phones while I was walking and star gazing and I nearly wilted with longing to get off this rock. Don't get me wrong, I love it here more than anywhere else I've been so far. My heart just loves to wander and my blood runs for adventure. I probably won't be entirely happy or fulfilled until I'm living on the side of a mountain in the wilderness with a gun and a couple dogs and some solar panels and enough night sky and open ground to fill what's left of my lifetime.
dear (______):
Dear Pittsburgh,
I can feel again. Thanks so much. I almost walked into traffic today watching stars on my way home from work while the sun started to come up over the hills just east of Wilkinsburg. The clouds hanging just above the window dotted hills were like thick palette knife stroked oil scarves while the sky began its slow shift from black to spilled ink blue to this tarred aquamarine behind and above them. New York is flat soda in a dixie cup. You're champagne in a green stainless thermos.
I can feel again. Thanks so much. I almost walked into traffic today watching stars on my way home from work while the sun started to come up over the hills just east of Wilkinsburg. The clouds hanging just above the window dotted hills were like thick palette knife stroked oil scarves while the sky began its slow shift from black to spilled ink blue to this tarred aquamarine behind and above them. New York is flat soda in a dixie cup. You're champagne in a green stainless thermos.
2/15/11
Amongst Myselves
Trying to parse so much conflict. There are only so many channels available. At work I have to deal with awful music being piped in through the ceiling, physical demands, emotional demands, mental demands, and managing inconsistencies and as the day rolls fatigue takes its toll on the number of channels available. That's an analogy that works sometimes. The problem with channel failure is that things connected and monitored and capped through the channel are left to grow and die on their own. Sometimes its all cross chatter and all I have to do is select and confer or revoke access rights to my mouth parts. Sometimes its active denial and that takes up a channel. It's always monitoring sound as my eyes aren't always trustworthy under physical stresses. Well my eyes are but my vision is not. Sometimes a channel gets eaten up entirely by the effort required to make sure I don't shred my skin on some incorrect call to a memorized movement. Often times a few are taken up by keeping track of how I'm spreading loads and pain responses and how often I'm lifting what and with which muscle group. Today was so long a day that I limped out of there with so many failures it was all I could do to pay attention to how I was placing my feet so not to re-aggravate an ankle rolled earlier in the day. I was thinking if I killed them all then they would all be my friends because if they're dead then they can't not be my friends. I was thinking a lot of other things too, but the rest is lost to the dust on the linoleum tiles. Maybe I'll remember it later. My spine is burning. I did too much again. I have a dysfunctional relationship with my job. I don't hate it. I just wish it could be better. I just wish I could be better. I dropped a case of two liter jugs of bleach today and it exploded. Wasted thirty seconds with conflicting courses of action. It's like everyone put their hands up at once and started talking before I could call on any particular one and half of them had nothing to contribute to the solution which ended up being 'clean it up, dumbass'. I don't know how I feel today. At the end of yesterday I was pretty fucking depressed and I still don't know why. Maybe trust issues? I went running yesterday and some fat sows were outside with their lye ruined hair wrapped up while they killed the afternoon attempting to grill (it smelled terrible) and they were making fun of me for jogging. I have no idea why. I want really badly to explain to the people that I work with the importance of their cooperation and the generation of well knit atmosphere of trust because I am struggling mightily to keep all my parts moving in one direction without the whole thing smashing itself to furious pieces, but I know they wouldn't understand and if anything it would probably end up costing me the job. Maybe that's what's got me blue this afternoon while I'm trying to sleep. There are lots of 'I's in this one and not many returns.
There's one. Because I care. If only everyone cared just a little more. If I were a dictator the options would be friendship or death. Then I thought maybe exile would make it easier for me to make friends or at least delay the assassination attempts that would inevitably come along. And the extermination of the families of the exiled I would have to pursue to end the cycle of retaliation. Because I just want to be friends.
There's two. Am I that fucking hard to get along with? I asked an old woman if she needed help finding anything. She said 'no, but there is something you can do to help me out, champ.' She was adorable. She couldn't reach the back of the top shelf so I grabbed her fruit cereal for her. I guess I'm rooting for the world's current format, or at least America's current format, to completely collapse. Partially so I can finally get to work on my list of people who need to end, and partially so I can travel freely, but also partly so everyone who's security is based on finances and bullshit jobs will be cut loose to die and I can pick their bones for good meat. I walk past a lot of nice homes on my way to work. Outside of a conspicuously wealthy complex of four shared homes was a pile of nice things interleaved with their trash pickup. Why would they not simply donate it to somewhere? Don't most places have a pickup service? Oh well. It was stuff I couldn't use, but I'm sure someone else could.
There's three. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what I'm training for. That's why I run and work my body till it breaks and stitches and then I break it again. I'm working toward the end of the world. You can come hang out with me when it's over. I'll take care of you. We'll kill lots of zombies, smoke some doobies some afternoons and hike to South America for the winters (the douchebags of America will probably bloat and ruin Cali when it's over). Shit'll be ridiculous, I promise, but stupid fun. For us. Because we've already been to the end of the world. Twice. I guess that's what makes us different.
///El-P "Oxycotin"
There's one. Because I care. If only everyone cared just a little more. If I were a dictator the options would be friendship or death. Then I thought maybe exile would make it easier for me to make friends or at least delay the assassination attempts that would inevitably come along. And the extermination of the families of the exiled I would have to pursue to end the cycle of retaliation. Because I just want to be friends.
There's two. Am I that fucking hard to get along with? I asked an old woman if she needed help finding anything. She said 'no, but there is something you can do to help me out, champ.' She was adorable. She couldn't reach the back of the top shelf so I grabbed her fruit cereal for her. I guess I'm rooting for the world's current format, or at least America's current format, to completely collapse. Partially so I can finally get to work on my list of people who need to end, and partially so I can travel freely, but also partly so everyone who's security is based on finances and bullshit jobs will be cut loose to die and I can pick their bones for good meat. I walk past a lot of nice homes on my way to work. Outside of a conspicuously wealthy complex of four shared homes was a pile of nice things interleaved with their trash pickup. Why would they not simply donate it to somewhere? Don't most places have a pickup service? Oh well. It was stuff I couldn't use, but I'm sure someone else could.
There's three. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what I'm training for. That's why I run and work my body till it breaks and stitches and then I break it again. I'm working toward the end of the world. You can come hang out with me when it's over. I'll take care of you. We'll kill lots of zombies, smoke some doobies some afternoons and hike to South America for the winters (the douchebags of America will probably bloat and ruin Cali when it's over). Shit'll be ridiculous, I promise, but stupid fun. For us. Because we've already been to the end of the world. Twice. I guess that's what makes us different.
///El-P "Oxycotin"
2/12/11
Observation Continues Undocumented
Well, I have a mouse now. How swank is that? I'll tell you how swank it is: it is pretty ridiculously cool. I can't tell you how nice it is to not have to use a crappy touch pad. I had to pop one of the buttons off of the laptop and stuff a dime in there because it was malfunctioning so bad. With a mouse though I'm now in version 2.0 of my new technological life. No more will I have to scratch crude horsies on cave walls with burnt sticks. Speaking of horsies I really need to buy a few rolls of heavy paper so I can start writing on the walls. It's where words go. They go on the walls. End of story.
I was telling someone the other day, a friend of mine, we were hanging out and having a pretty good blast, that I'm pretty laid back and I told this rambling story about how I told some girl that I would shank her if she stepped on my ping pong ball and at the end of the story I realized that all it really said about me is that I'm incredibly neurotic and unpredictable in social situations involving alcohol. So I tried to save it. I forgot why I jumped into the story in the first place so I had to mentally talk myself back to the starting point, go back down the segments of the story, and hit the junctures correctly like a choose your own adventure book. Then, having retold the story to myself I realized the entire point of it was that I am laid back through 95% or so of life, but 5% of my life is governed by arbitrary and inflexible rules and I don't entirely understand why.
I know why I have to do certain things. I have to put my t-shirts on like a dolphin diving through a hoop. If I don't hold them and look through the neck holes while I'm putting them on then I run the risk of unknowingly entering an alternate dimension through the shirt hole and not realizing it until it's too late because I didn't see that things were different because the body of the shirt blinded me. That has to be done. No exceptions. If I make food I have to eat it no matter how awful it turns out. If I throw up because of it or get really sick then good for me. How else will I learn to not make bad food? If I cook for other people and portions don't turn out right I am responsible for eating the worst of whatever I prepare as a penalty for being a bad cook. There has to be accountability in the kitchen. A door to a pitch black room cannot be left open for any reason. If you don't divide the lit room from the dark room with some sort of physical boundary you run the risk of invitation of the things of night into the realm of day and the last thing I want is to be trying to do daytime things in a daytime room that happens to be dark and have to deal with nighttime things outside of ... well ... I don't even like talking about that sort of stuff in great detail anyway. It makes me sound crazy, but more importantly they don't like me talking about them and I'm the one who has to deal with their bad feelings so that's all I'm going to say about that, but the point is there are rules for reasons.
So what I don't understand is - people? I understand people. People don't understand how I understand them. People don't understand the rules. I guess the rules are in place so that I can be more socially normal. More functional. That's why they're important. I think. Maybe. This is boring me.
Today I had to get out of bed a bunch and I damn near broke my neck scrambling to accomplish things and get back into my bed to keep the sheets warm. I've got the heat set as low as possible now so the only warmth around is what I'm producing and throwing off into the air.
Someone lied to me the other day. It made me very angry. I wanted to beat her up, but how ridiculously stupid would that have been. It's against the rules to lie. Before, it was against the rules to upset other people. Now those two have flipped places. The only problem with that is, of course, memory bleed. Things disappear and get transposed and interposed and juxtaposed all the time, not to mention out and out manufactured. She said something about me needing to perform some task for her and I'm pretty sure I already did it, but it is also entirely possible that I didn't do it because I went to visit her and her husband at their place in one of my dreams and we had a great time and went out to a parade and they dropped me off at work and it was great, but if I asked her about that later she would have no idea what I was talking about let alone remembering something that she wasn't actually a part of at any point. So maybe I never did explain or perform the thing she needed me to and I just think and remember vividly that I did (because I do). It can't be her fault for not having physically been there to see it.
Life is still stupid. Well, stupid funny though I don't really report on the funny all that much these days. It's probably because I've seen it so much it's stopped being funny and now strikes me as just painfully aggravatingly human. Plus I think I already established that I am nowhere near as funny as I thought I was. If I ever become a stand up comedian I'm going to call my act "talk out the stupid", but - there's probably no need for a but there. I wasn't thinking of any follow up when the sentence ended, but then I got there and it was like hitting a wrong street, but you don't want to look lost, because that's when they mug you and take your laundry money and call you a pussy faggot, so you walk down the street and go another two blocks before doubling back on a side street in a big loop so that you're gone long enough for the porch sitters to think you were just going to the gas station for candy and not wandering around scratching your ass. I hate it when the houses are watching me more than I watch them. They could probably eat us if they wanted to.
I was working on some poetry the other day and I jammed a rhyme scheme into a poem about a feeling and it completely screwed it up and the end result was this gross sort of mannequin looking piece of poetry with a colorful baseball cap on it. I was ashamed, but I shared it to share the shame and the accomplishment hanging around it like a fart of impressive proportions. I don't know, it just felt like the right thing to do. The rules of production dictated action be taken. In a way I had to punish myself for forcing it through to an end and wasting precious time before work in creating so odious a turd. It was a still birth. Sad times.
I'm tired again, but I don't know what rest will help me accomplish in the next few hours. I'll let me know. And by me I mean you. And by you I mean the part of you that.... that is... not really a part of me, but... I am fantastically thirsty. I have a mouse. Maybe I should draw us something?
It's not much but I was already starting to get a mouse cramp by the end of it. I don't know if life is sweet. I had this really strange feeling while I was making dinner that there was no one left to beat me and that made me sad for longer than I thought it would. I dunno. Sometimes improvements take some getting used to I guess. Oh well. Time to try and travel.
=sigh= miss that wacom pad. But at least we have you. Sort of. :)
///Luke Slater - "You Butterfly" "...come, let us walk..."
I was telling someone the other day, a friend of mine, we were hanging out and having a pretty good blast, that I'm pretty laid back and I told this rambling story about how I told some girl that I would shank her if she stepped on my ping pong ball and at the end of the story I realized that all it really said about me is that I'm incredibly neurotic and unpredictable in social situations involving alcohol. So I tried to save it. I forgot why I jumped into the story in the first place so I had to mentally talk myself back to the starting point, go back down the segments of the story, and hit the junctures correctly like a choose your own adventure book. Then, having retold the story to myself I realized the entire point of it was that I am laid back through 95% or so of life, but 5% of my life is governed by arbitrary and inflexible rules and I don't entirely understand why.
I know why I have to do certain things. I have to put my t-shirts on like a dolphin diving through a hoop. If I don't hold them and look through the neck holes while I'm putting them on then I run the risk of unknowingly entering an alternate dimension through the shirt hole and not realizing it until it's too late because I didn't see that things were different because the body of the shirt blinded me. That has to be done. No exceptions. If I make food I have to eat it no matter how awful it turns out. If I throw up because of it or get really sick then good for me. How else will I learn to not make bad food? If I cook for other people and portions don't turn out right I am responsible for eating the worst of whatever I prepare as a penalty for being a bad cook. There has to be accountability in the kitchen. A door to a pitch black room cannot be left open for any reason. If you don't divide the lit room from the dark room with some sort of physical boundary you run the risk of invitation of the things of night into the realm of day and the last thing I want is to be trying to do daytime things in a daytime room that happens to be dark and have to deal with nighttime things outside of ... well ... I don't even like talking about that sort of stuff in great detail anyway. It makes me sound crazy, but more importantly they don't like me talking about them and I'm the one who has to deal with their bad feelings so that's all I'm going to say about that, but the point is there are rules for reasons.
So what I don't understand is - people? I understand people. People don't understand how I understand them. People don't understand the rules. I guess the rules are in place so that I can be more socially normal. More functional. That's why they're important. I think. Maybe. This is boring me.
Today I had to get out of bed a bunch and I damn near broke my neck scrambling to accomplish things and get back into my bed to keep the sheets warm. I've got the heat set as low as possible now so the only warmth around is what I'm producing and throwing off into the air.
Someone lied to me the other day. It made me very angry. I wanted to beat her up, but how ridiculously stupid would that have been. It's against the rules to lie. Before, it was against the rules to upset other people. Now those two have flipped places. The only problem with that is, of course, memory bleed. Things disappear and get transposed and interposed and juxtaposed all the time, not to mention out and out manufactured. She said something about me needing to perform some task for her and I'm pretty sure I already did it, but it is also entirely possible that I didn't do it because I went to visit her and her husband at their place in one of my dreams and we had a great time and went out to a parade and they dropped me off at work and it was great, but if I asked her about that later she would have no idea what I was talking about let alone remembering something that she wasn't actually a part of at any point. So maybe I never did explain or perform the thing she needed me to and I just think and remember vividly that I did (because I do). It can't be her fault for not having physically been there to see it.
Life is still stupid. Well, stupid funny though I don't really report on the funny all that much these days. It's probably because I've seen it so much it's stopped being funny and now strikes me as just painfully aggravatingly human. Plus I think I already established that I am nowhere near as funny as I thought I was. If I ever become a stand up comedian I'm going to call my act "talk out the stupid", but - there's probably no need for a but there. I wasn't thinking of any follow up when the sentence ended, but then I got there and it was like hitting a wrong street, but you don't want to look lost, because that's when they mug you and take your laundry money and call you a pussy faggot, so you walk down the street and go another two blocks before doubling back on a side street in a big loop so that you're gone long enough for the porch sitters to think you were just going to the gas station for candy and not wandering around scratching your ass. I hate it when the houses are watching me more than I watch them. They could probably eat us if they wanted to.
I was working on some poetry the other day and I jammed a rhyme scheme into a poem about a feeling and it completely screwed it up and the end result was this gross sort of mannequin looking piece of poetry with a colorful baseball cap on it. I was ashamed, but I shared it to share the shame and the accomplishment hanging around it like a fart of impressive proportions. I don't know, it just felt like the right thing to do. The rules of production dictated action be taken. In a way I had to punish myself for forcing it through to an end and wasting precious time before work in creating so odious a turd. It was a still birth. Sad times.
I'm tired again, but I don't know what rest will help me accomplish in the next few hours. I'll let me know. And by me I mean you. And by you I mean the part of you that.... that is... not really a part of me, but... I am fantastically thirsty. I have a mouse. Maybe I should draw us something?
It's not much but I was already starting to get a mouse cramp by the end of it. I don't know if life is sweet. I had this really strange feeling while I was making dinner that there was no one left to beat me and that made me sad for longer than I thought it would. I dunno. Sometimes improvements take some getting used to I guess. Oh well. Time to try and travel.
=sigh= miss that wacom pad. But at least we have you. Sort of. :)
///Luke Slater - "You Butterfly" "...come, let us walk..."
Sometimes When You're Feeling It
There are sometimes in life when you know your brain is about to cum and it is such a good and difficult to describe feeling and you're watching all of the things in front of you waiting for one of them to stand above the rest and glow landing light like and your watching and watching the field of little obtainable dreams and every second is a beat in the note of i'm doing this it really is about to happen and ive beenwaiting so longfor this instanttobecomeperfectlyalignedandnowicanfuckingdoanythingiputmymindtointhenextfiveminutes and then it blows and you realize that while you've accomplished nothing a taste of the feeling can, sometimes, be enough to spur further action in a potentially positive way, and a thing so small as that should not be discounted in value or ignored, but should be looked at as a mental exercise whose dividends, when well informed, intentioned, and carried motives are in play, should not be wholly discounted. I think I am okay with that. And then there are some times in life when you completely whiff on an orgasm. And now I have a sad. A happy after tasting sad.
///Mum - "A Little Bit Sometimes"
///Mum - "A Little Bit Sometimes"
2/10/11
Tired, but Still Looking
But I don't want the rest of the world to know I'm ready to call a time out. More movement in the bedroom again. Had to turn all the lights on yesterday to verify there was not a foot and a half tall little round black thing running around the edges of my bed. A face poked through my cigarette smoke. Scared the living shit out of me. Not a human face. Kind of looked like a really big nosed lizardy thing. Where do these bastards keep coming from.
I missed you all week. It sucks that we can't hang out more. On working days I have to chop 10 to 11 hours out of my day. 8 at work plus 2 in transit plus an extra one to two depending on how huge a slacker co-workers are being and how much work has to be made up at the end of the day. Out of the 12 hours left I usually have to spend at least 8 asleep so my muscles can knit up again for the next days work (if I don't I've found fatigue stacks up like bad heartburn and just as suddenly). So I've got 4 hours to handle midweek clerical stuff, working out, showering, making lunch for the next day, making a breakfast, and making a dinner if I want one. It's tough.
Discovered bits for flames is gone yesterday. Apparently the domain lapsed. Bad news. Worse news is I'm pretty sure all the files are lost except for the templates and graphics I saved on my desktop which is still trapped in NYC. So now there's a new one I made on blogger. It won't be as functional, but it'll be the story store house. Bits For Flames. I'm so tired tonight. I got lost again in Edgewood. Not on purpose. Have been doing a lot of traveling in dreams though I can't find the train station I used to use so I got lost and aggravated there too trying to find the bus station. Eventually I gave up and hopped in a car with a jitney who took me down to the industrial complex. I don't know why I wanted to go there. In fact I think I was supposed to be somewhere else, but he took me there anyway. I took some great pictures before I woke up. Wish I could draw them for you. It was breath taking.
///Air - "The Vagabond (featuring Beck)" I do the best I can not to worry about things. It's stupid, but all I want right now is god damn hug before I go take on another day of work instead of writing. I want some scotch. I just want to be a little warmer inside than I am right now.
I missed you all week. It sucks that we can't hang out more. On working days I have to chop 10 to 11 hours out of my day. 8 at work plus 2 in transit plus an extra one to two depending on how huge a slacker co-workers are being and how much work has to be made up at the end of the day. Out of the 12 hours left I usually have to spend at least 8 asleep so my muscles can knit up again for the next days work (if I don't I've found fatigue stacks up like bad heartburn and just as suddenly). So I've got 4 hours to handle midweek clerical stuff, working out, showering, making lunch for the next day, making a breakfast, and making a dinner if I want one. It's tough.
Discovered bits for flames is gone yesterday. Apparently the domain lapsed. Bad news. Worse news is I'm pretty sure all the files are lost except for the templates and graphics I saved on my desktop which is still trapped in NYC. So now there's a new one I made on blogger. It won't be as functional, but it'll be the story store house. Bits For Flames. I'm so tired tonight. I got lost again in Edgewood. Not on purpose. Have been doing a lot of traveling in dreams though I can't find the train station I used to use so I got lost and aggravated there too trying to find the bus station. Eventually I gave up and hopped in a car with a jitney who took me down to the industrial complex. I don't know why I wanted to go there. In fact I think I was supposed to be somewhere else, but he took me there anyway. I took some great pictures before I woke up. Wish I could draw them for you. It was breath taking.
///Air - "The Vagabond (featuring Beck)" I do the best I can not to worry about things. It's stupid, but all I want right now is god damn hug before I go take on another day of work instead of writing. I want some scotch. I just want to be a little warmer inside than I am right now.
dear (______):
Dear Pittsburgh Steelers,
It was a good year. Seriously. The entire season was handicapped like no other team in the league except maybe the Packers in one of the most difficult divisions to win except maybe the AFC East and we still kicked ass. And at least you showed us that Dixon can play. Please please please address the gaping hole behind Troy Polamalu at safety with a decent mid-round draft pick. Sweet cracklin' Jesus on a barbecue spit, I would like to not shit a brick every time he almost stubs his toe.
xoxo,
fan for life
p.s. I'm still mad at you.
It was a good year. Seriously. The entire season was handicapped like no other team in the league except maybe the Packers in one of the most difficult divisions to win except maybe the AFC East and we still kicked ass. And at least you showed us that Dixon can play. Please please please address the gaping hole behind Troy Polamalu at safety with a decent mid-round draft pick. Sweet cracklin' Jesus on a barbecue spit, I would like to not shit a brick every time he almost stubs his toe.
xoxo,
fan for life
p.s. I'm still mad at you.
2/3/11
Return to Patagonia
I don't know what I want to talk about today, but I do know that if I don't talk then I'll move closer bit by bit to having full blown running arguments with myself and when you do that people think you're crazy.
Something occured to me a long time ago that I never talked about. Not that long ago actually, but long enough to make calling it a long time ago feel appropriate. It occurred to me that maybe my Dad's goal all along was to make sure his kids didn't have kids. Would that mean that he wins if I don't have kids? But then I realized that first of all that is ridiculously complex of a double feint. Then I realized he is not smart enough to orchestrate anything requiring that much vision. Then I realized it didn't really matter anyway because if I do have a kid the lucky bastard will be adopted so he doesn't get my screwed up brain cells all up ins.
I guess I've been thinking about the continental divide a lot lately. I want to go back there. I want to go back to where the earth broke apart and I want to lay my face against the water and stand with my toes on the edges of sheer faces and think about how my heart would explode with bliss in midair if I were to fall and then bask in the glowing here after of a moment so full and heady left undone and swallowed in time.
It's just my day off, but my head is in another country. Not that it went there overnight, but it's been slipping and sneaking farther and farther away, but always coming back just early enough for me not to worry if it may have gotten lost.
I wonder if I'm lucky that I'm not dead. I had a dream about a fantastic geared machine. It was as tall as the side of a small house. Every gear had a photograph inside of it. Not a photograph as much as a photostatic image. Faces burned onto the faces of the gears and to protect them from the wear of the elements, because the entire machine was outdoors and built on the surface of a cathedral turned inside out, the gear faces were coated in slugs of brown glass that cracked under the strain of clinging for so many years. I don't know what it did. I didn't stay there long enough to figure it out, partially because the entire thing was making one hell of a creepy sound (the sound the joints of cockroach legs would make if one were stuck in your ear and flailing against the ear wax and hairs there), but also because the rust was gummy around chest level where someone clearly touched it and caught a sleeve and in all likelihood lost one or several fingers, but at least several centimeters of skin.
I'm not sure where I'm going. I need to see my old poetry professors. I don't think they need to see me though. In fact I'm almost certain they don't want to see me. It wouldn't help either of us to see each other. I feel like that's also true of a former best friend. It doesn't mean that I don't want some proof. I don't know what I would say to Jane. She'd say hello. I'd say hi. She'd ask how I was. I'd tell her how screwed up things have been. She'd apologize for lack of anything else to offer. I'd tell her don't sweat it and well.... fuck.
I'm not smoking. For now. Maybe that's the problem. I figure I'll save my money at the expense of further turning up the heat on my senses. I probably just need a hug and a couple shots. I don't know where my head's at, but it is having a fantastic time without me. It's like I woke up after drinking too much too early and everyone at the houseparty has pulled up sticks and gone off somewhere and no one told me where so ... empty nest? Maybe. More like I had a date with myself and I've somehow managed to stand myself up again and I don't get it. I thought we were in agreement.
=sigh= whatever. It's aggravating. I think I'm just gonna take my clothes off and ball myself up for a couple hours. Maybe get up later and write some more poetry. I had this great idea at work yesterday and I want to see it spin on its own and if it can't spin then I want to break it apart and see what's inside of it. Is it supposed to be so cold that your eyes well up?
I'm going back to new york this month. To get the last of my things. I'm not looking forward to it. But I miss my computer so God damn much, you have no idea. And my sex toys. But mostly my computer. It's hard to explain why I love. Through the years most everything else has been crushed, whipped, and burned out of my emotional spectrum. These days all I can do is love or hate. I sometimes wish there was something in the middle. But there isn't. I'm digital. Sad happy held digital boy whose head has gone back to Patagonia without him. Again. Now I give chase in dreams for want of touch.
///Hugo Maldoro - "I Know a Little Cuban"If Aguas De Marco had hips they would swing like this. If I wander around my mind long enough and find the clubhouse with the low fedoras and dim smoke parlors and enough palm fronds to set a tropic stage in a desert, maybe I'll see him playing dominoes at the usual booth with whiskey ice and cigarillos and a big watch with no batteries. Where did you go?
Something occured to me a long time ago that I never talked about. Not that long ago actually, but long enough to make calling it a long time ago feel appropriate. It occurred to me that maybe my Dad's goal all along was to make sure his kids didn't have kids. Would that mean that he wins if I don't have kids? But then I realized that first of all that is ridiculously complex of a double feint. Then I realized he is not smart enough to orchestrate anything requiring that much vision. Then I realized it didn't really matter anyway because if I do have a kid the lucky bastard will be adopted so he doesn't get my screwed up brain cells all up ins.
I guess I've been thinking about the continental divide a lot lately. I want to go back there. I want to go back to where the earth broke apart and I want to lay my face against the water and stand with my toes on the edges of sheer faces and think about how my heart would explode with bliss in midair if I were to fall and then bask in the glowing here after of a moment so full and heady left undone and swallowed in time.
It's just my day off, but my head is in another country. Not that it went there overnight, but it's been slipping and sneaking farther and farther away, but always coming back just early enough for me not to worry if it may have gotten lost.
I wonder if I'm lucky that I'm not dead. I had a dream about a fantastic geared machine. It was as tall as the side of a small house. Every gear had a photograph inside of it. Not a photograph as much as a photostatic image. Faces burned onto the faces of the gears and to protect them from the wear of the elements, because the entire machine was outdoors and built on the surface of a cathedral turned inside out, the gear faces were coated in slugs of brown glass that cracked under the strain of clinging for so many years. I don't know what it did. I didn't stay there long enough to figure it out, partially because the entire thing was making one hell of a creepy sound (the sound the joints of cockroach legs would make if one were stuck in your ear and flailing against the ear wax and hairs there), but also because the rust was gummy around chest level where someone clearly touched it and caught a sleeve and in all likelihood lost one or several fingers, but at least several centimeters of skin.
I'm not sure where I'm going. I need to see my old poetry professors. I don't think they need to see me though. In fact I'm almost certain they don't want to see me. It wouldn't help either of us to see each other. I feel like that's also true of a former best friend. It doesn't mean that I don't want some proof. I don't know what I would say to Jane. She'd say hello. I'd say hi. She'd ask how I was. I'd tell her how screwed up things have been. She'd apologize for lack of anything else to offer. I'd tell her don't sweat it and well.... fuck.
I'm not smoking. For now. Maybe that's the problem. I figure I'll save my money at the expense of further turning up the heat on my senses. I probably just need a hug and a couple shots. I don't know where my head's at, but it is having a fantastic time without me. It's like I woke up after drinking too much too early and everyone at the houseparty has pulled up sticks and gone off somewhere and no one told me where so ... empty nest? Maybe. More like I had a date with myself and I've somehow managed to stand myself up again and I don't get it. I thought we were in agreement.
=sigh= whatever. It's aggravating. I think I'm just gonna take my clothes off and ball myself up for a couple hours. Maybe get up later and write some more poetry. I had this great idea at work yesterday and I want to see it spin on its own and if it can't spin then I want to break it apart and see what's inside of it. Is it supposed to be so cold that your eyes well up?
I'm going back to new york this month. To get the last of my things. I'm not looking forward to it. But I miss my computer so God damn much, you have no idea. And my sex toys. But mostly my computer. It's hard to explain why I love. Through the years most everything else has been crushed, whipped, and burned out of my emotional spectrum. These days all I can do is love or hate. I sometimes wish there was something in the middle. But there isn't. I'm digital. Sad happy held digital boy whose head has gone back to Patagonia without him. Again. Now I give chase in dreams for want of touch.
///Hugo Maldoro - "I Know a Little Cuban"If Aguas De Marco had hips they would swing like this. If I wander around my mind long enough and find the clubhouse with the low fedoras and dim smoke parlors and enough palm fronds to set a tropic stage in a desert, maybe I'll see him playing dominoes at the usual booth with whiskey ice and cigarillos and a big watch with no batteries. Where did you go?
2/2/11
The Music that Made the Living 2010
I didn't make it out of 2010 on my own. I had a lot of help from a handful of friends and a lot of help from a handful of artists. If there's one thing that music can do it's make the living a little easier and a little more worthwhile.
My last tracklist was pretty sprawling, so in the spirit of the changes in structure enacted on the posts here sometime ago (changes that have kind of worked out alright I think) I'm going to structure the year end playlist too.
12 months -> 12 songs that tell the story of the year. Enjoy.
Dec 2009>> Nine Inch Nails - The Four of Us Are Dying Go
Jan 2010>> Yoko Kanno - Fish ~ Silent Cruise Go
Feb 2010>> Mum - They Made Frogs Smoke
'Til They Exploded Go
Mar 2010>> Deep Dish - Mohammed Is Jesus Go
Apr 2010>> Aphex Twin - At the Heart of It All Go
May 2010>> Evol Intent - The Foreword Go
Jun 2010>> The Black Angels - Young Men Dead Go
Jul 2010>> Massive Attack - Girl I Love You Go
Aug 2010>> Primal Scream - Higher than the Sun Go
Sep 2010>> Diplo - Summer's Gonna Hurt You Go
Oct 2010>> Danger Mouse - Insane Lullaby Go
Nov 2010>> Sage Francis - Lie Detector Test Go
Dec 2010>> Mathew Herbert - You Saw it All Go
Thank you to everybody that made being alive a joy by parts. Thanks for hanging in there. The caucus squalls on and smiles around the face. xoxo. I'll catch up with you later this week maybe. Sleep tight.
///The Cure - "Plainsong" I love you.
My last tracklist was pretty sprawling, so in the spirit of the changes in structure enacted on the posts here sometime ago (changes that have kind of worked out alright I think) I'm going to structure the year end playlist too.
12 months -> 12 songs that tell the story of the year. Enjoy.
Dec 2009>> Nine Inch Nails - The Four of Us Are Dying Go
Jan 2010>> Yoko Kanno - Fish ~ Silent Cruise Go
Feb 2010>> Mum - They Made Frogs Smoke
'Til They Exploded Go
Mar 2010>> Deep Dish - Mohammed Is Jesus Go
Apr 2010>> Aphex Twin - At the Heart of It All Go
May 2010>> Evol Intent - The Foreword Go
Jun 2010>> The Black Angels - Young Men Dead Go
Jul 2010>> Massive Attack - Girl I Love You Go
Aug 2010>> Primal Scream - Higher than the Sun Go
Sep 2010>> Diplo - Summer's Gonna Hurt You Go
Oct 2010>> Danger Mouse - Insane Lullaby Go
Nov 2010>> Sage Francis - Lie Detector Test Go
Dec 2010>> Mathew Herbert - You Saw it All Go
Thank you to everybody that made being alive a joy by parts. Thanks for hanging in there. The caucus squalls on and smiles around the face. xoxo. I'll catch up with you later this week maybe. Sleep tight.
///The Cure - "Plainsong" I love you.
2/1/11
Year End Retrospective 2009-2011
Somewhere in the middle of all the bullshit and heart break and fucked up bullshit heart break that filled the skies of 2010 like a flock of severely underfed ravens wheeling over a field hospital whose tents all blew away in a freak hurricane after the worst days of shelling the war saw since its start left a record number of open flesh wounds and completely overwhelmed the nursing staffs ability to even begin to sanitize them all, let alone beat the rats back... where was I going with that? Sort of lost track along the way in there. It's been a while since I've written any fiction and sometimes all I do is close my eyes and it comes bubbling up like gold oil in a blue toilet bowl.
2010 had its downs and its ups. I learned a lot of things about myself and about other people. I learned that most people are probably not my friends, but they are polite and a lot of times because they have to be. I come back to that a lot don't I? It feels like a lot. It's one of those things that I have to keep reminding myself because I'm not wired to accept it. In my head it's a circuit breaker that keeps opening and I have to keep going down to the basement to close it and it's a big hassle. Or is it the reverse? The reverse conditions being assigned to ... you get the point.
Back to 2010. 2009 was the break. The complete unraveling of the assumed and constructed reality. 2010 was the rabbit hole. More like the ocean. 2009 was the break from land. The acceptance that what I was leaving I will never return to because it is not only out of my control, but under the influence of things set in motion and built and conceived years in advance of my ever setting foot on the place I had the foolishness to plant a flag, however intensely the pole was thrust into the Earth and however proudly the wind took to my banner. The ground fell through as though my stupid ambition, well stupid is actually the wrong word there... my misinformed ambition were a fist and the dirt was the crust of a 99 cent store brand pot pie in a tinfoil bowl.
It's not to say that 2009 was fundamentally flawed well before it arrived. It is to say that through my and others efforts the collapse of 2009 was delayed for as long as it was because we didn't know just how thin and cheap and empty the ground beneath my feet was back in 2006. Or maybe I knew and I just did not want to believe. I think that's what it was. It was coming apart back then and I wanted to will it together and make it mine and not be the kid with a future and family so far out of line from everyone else he knew, but that kind of thinking is a recipe for catastrophe.
It wasn't all terrible. The collapse was, but there were things that happened apart from it and I tried to separate myself and compartmentalize the personal wildfire from the person I thought people enjoyed hanging out with. There was some success in that. I discovered the most intense smile is the smile mustered in the face of pains that refuse to be denied. Things burned off left and right in 2009 and then the descent to the ocean floor of 2010 was just as eye opening and faith demolishing. Not in faith in religion. That was long gone. There were still lingering faiths in parents that were systematically slaughtered, there was faith in decency that was blown away, then there was faith in systematic accountability that failed, followed by faith in language and reason, give and take, compassion, the senses, right on down to ... well, I don't know exactly where that fire ended or if it's still eating away inside of me.
Sorry I got distracted again. Just talking about it I sometimes think I can feel that fire touching the insides of my skin. It's comforting. That's all I have faith in now. The consuming flame of discovery that burns in the heat of destruction.
2010 was touching the void, but more than that it was my throat constricting and me screaming out, in a voice I wish I had 15 years ago, a simple no. 2010 was learning that I didn't have to take it. Learning that what I thought I needed and what I knew I needed were so far from what I was living and what I was living was so close to complete emotional rape mind fucking physical slavery was hard to deal with. Tracing the roots back to the abuse was even harder. Tracing the branches that grew from those roots was the hardest part. Right around there was when I finally found me. I guess I'm still the same, but I'm conscious in ways I didn't know I could be and it's made some things easier and some things harder, but it has also allowed me to move on. It was more than finally waking up to the actual dimensions of the cage. It was waking up to the universe outside of it, it's history, my history, how I got there, who put me there, what happened to me and because of me while I was inside of it, and who I was. It was like seeing for the first time with absolute clarity the person I was supposed to be, right there in the room with me, understanding that I could never be that person because of what came before, and finally being able to begin to let that go.
2010 was rage and heat. 2011 is going back to the soul that burned down to find the valuables left, if any, and started over again with free eyes. I still have a lot of letting go to do. There is still so much rage that still smolders, but I have the ability now to understand where it's come from and to direct it, at least partially, to where it must go. 2010 was also the discovery of who the people I could understand to be friends really are. One of the major reasons why I'm not dead in a basement in Queens is because of them.
The world is a fucked up place.
2011 I'm still on fire inside my head. I'm still learning to manage paranoid schizophrenia. I'm still trying to be human. The witticism of taking life one day at a time comes to mind. That's complete bullshit. Life is nothing without goals. I have some deaths to look forward to, but closer in I have the rest of Pittsburgh to look forward to and talking to you and with everything else burned to the ground I think that is finally enough to make sunrise so much less a spear through my heart.
///The Future Sound of London - "Among Myselves" I can hear myself. They were drowning me... your tracklist is up next. Three finger promise.
2010 had its downs and its ups. I learned a lot of things about myself and about other people. I learned that most people are probably not my friends, but they are polite and a lot of times because they have to be. I come back to that a lot don't I? It feels like a lot. It's one of those things that I have to keep reminding myself because I'm not wired to accept it. In my head it's a circuit breaker that keeps opening and I have to keep going down to the basement to close it and it's a big hassle. Or is it the reverse? The reverse conditions being assigned to ... you get the point.
Back to 2010. 2009 was the break. The complete unraveling of the assumed and constructed reality. 2010 was the rabbit hole. More like the ocean. 2009 was the break from land. The acceptance that what I was leaving I will never return to because it is not only out of my control, but under the influence of things set in motion and built and conceived years in advance of my ever setting foot on the place I had the foolishness to plant a flag, however intensely the pole was thrust into the Earth and however proudly the wind took to my banner. The ground fell through as though my stupid ambition, well stupid is actually the wrong word there... my misinformed ambition were a fist and the dirt was the crust of a 99 cent store brand pot pie in a tinfoil bowl.
It's not to say that 2009 was fundamentally flawed well before it arrived. It is to say that through my and others efforts the collapse of 2009 was delayed for as long as it was because we didn't know just how thin and cheap and empty the ground beneath my feet was back in 2006. Or maybe I knew and I just did not want to believe. I think that's what it was. It was coming apart back then and I wanted to will it together and make it mine and not be the kid with a future and family so far out of line from everyone else he knew, but that kind of thinking is a recipe for catastrophe.
It wasn't all terrible. The collapse was, but there were things that happened apart from it and I tried to separate myself and compartmentalize the personal wildfire from the person I thought people enjoyed hanging out with. There was some success in that. I discovered the most intense smile is the smile mustered in the face of pains that refuse to be denied. Things burned off left and right in 2009 and then the descent to the ocean floor of 2010 was just as eye opening and faith demolishing. Not in faith in religion. That was long gone. There were still lingering faiths in parents that were systematically slaughtered, there was faith in decency that was blown away, then there was faith in systematic accountability that failed, followed by faith in language and reason, give and take, compassion, the senses, right on down to ... well, I don't know exactly where that fire ended or if it's still eating away inside of me.
Sorry I got distracted again. Just talking about it I sometimes think I can feel that fire touching the insides of my skin. It's comforting. That's all I have faith in now. The consuming flame of discovery that burns in the heat of destruction.
2010 was touching the void, but more than that it was my throat constricting and me screaming out, in a voice I wish I had 15 years ago, a simple no. 2010 was learning that I didn't have to take it. Learning that what I thought I needed and what I knew I needed were so far from what I was living and what I was living was so close to complete emotional rape mind fucking physical slavery was hard to deal with. Tracing the roots back to the abuse was even harder. Tracing the branches that grew from those roots was the hardest part. Right around there was when I finally found me. I guess I'm still the same, but I'm conscious in ways I didn't know I could be and it's made some things easier and some things harder, but it has also allowed me to move on. It was more than finally waking up to the actual dimensions of the cage. It was waking up to the universe outside of it, it's history, my history, how I got there, who put me there, what happened to me and because of me while I was inside of it, and who I was. It was like seeing for the first time with absolute clarity the person I was supposed to be, right there in the room with me, understanding that I could never be that person because of what came before, and finally being able to begin to let that go.
2010 was rage and heat. 2011 is going back to the soul that burned down to find the valuables left, if any, and started over again with free eyes. I still have a lot of letting go to do. There is still so much rage that still smolders, but I have the ability now to understand where it's come from and to direct it, at least partially, to where it must go. 2010 was also the discovery of who the people I could understand to be friends really are. One of the major reasons why I'm not dead in a basement in Queens is because of them.
The world is a fucked up place.
2011 I'm still on fire inside my head. I'm still learning to manage paranoid schizophrenia. I'm still trying to be human. The witticism of taking life one day at a time comes to mind. That's complete bullshit. Life is nothing without goals. I have some deaths to look forward to, but closer in I have the rest of Pittsburgh to look forward to and talking to you and with everything else burned to the ground I think that is finally enough to make sunrise so much less a spear through my heart.
///The Future Sound of London - "Among Myselves" I can hear myself. They were drowning me... your tracklist is up next. Three finger promise.
dear (______):
Dear Volvo drivers
The outsides of your cars can still kill people. If you've got a minute, I'd appreciate it if you'd at least pretend to be concerned with the world outside of your mobile airbag.
Thanks.
The outsides of your cars can still kill people. If you've got a minute, I'd appreciate it if you'd at least pretend to be concerned with the world outside of your mobile airbag.
Thanks.
dear (______):
Dear residents of communities with private streets,
I have to get to work. Save your stiff posturing, high beams, and frowny faces for someone with the time to waste standing in large groups on street corners glaring at traffic and smoking black and milds. Those are probably the fellas you're looking for, and your "private" street is between where I'm at and where I'm going, so how many days in a row do you need to see me walking and smiling in a red jacket and orange back pack before you'll believe I'm not casing the joint? Silly bunnies.
up yours,
10 mile pedestrian
I have to get to work. Save your stiff posturing, high beams, and frowny faces for someone with the time to waste standing in large groups on street corners glaring at traffic and smoking black and milds. Those are probably the fellas you're looking for, and your "private" street is between where I'm at and where I'm going, so how many days in a row do you need to see me walking and smiling in a red jacket and orange back pack before you'll believe I'm not casing the joint? Silly bunnies.
up yours,
10 mile pedestrian
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