AUTHOR.CALHO: If I didn't write it, I would be hitch hiking cross country to Maine and then Alaska in that order. While taking frequent breaks to spread leaflets. And sit in diners. And write on things because I wasn't at a computer. I may still do that in a few years. Writing this also helps me forget about and better understand the limitations of being human, and keeps me busy enough to allow me no free time to burn the world down.

THEMATIC.ABOUT : Collapse often. The things that hold people together and hold them apart and scatter brains. The things that make thoughts go boom. The things that ooh and aah and [expletive deleted]. Sometimes poking around the margins where responsibility ends and the only one to look to is the Original Equipment Manufacturer and say "but, I already pressed 9 for more options and the menus are exactly the same. Can you just replace it?" The answer will be: "please hold." Sometimes hanging out in dark corners. Sometimes following the train tracks. Looking for ways out and ways in and all the while sharing the things seen and heard and done and drawn and written and scorched and healed and teased and caged and dreamed along the way.

12/31/13

Dear (____)

Dear Crystal Light,

I do not dislike your appletini flavor.  It's kind of good.  You could have gone with red instead of neon Ghost Busters green or toxic waste Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtules toxic ooze green, but I'm sure the committee had something on their mind when it got green lit, no pun intended.  I would submit that some of us cannot afford apple juice.  It's expensive, kinda like orange juice.  Or any juice, for that matter.

Could you consider, perhaps, producing an apple flavored zero calorie product, as a black guy trying to die of a few things besides diabetes and looking for a low cost alternative to apple juice that is not bright green, it would be swell to be able to enjoy the apple taste without the cost, because, let's face it, I'm not asking you to try to produce some sort of grape product that tastes like cough syrup, no?  If you can make an appletini that only tastes good when vodka is mixed into it, can you not make an appletini that also tastes legitimately like apples with no vodka mixed into it?  It's not a party all of the time.  And appletini mixes like shit when anything else is involved besides potatoes.  Please get on that horse.

Thanks and yours truly,

former sugar fiend.

That Instant

you know you could choke a cat until he dies, but you're jamming up toward the edge where it'll be awkward between you two for the next week if you don't let go and you'll never be able to explain what you were trying to do to his brother cuz he's a cat too and does not speak English.

12/23/13

Dear (_____)

Dear new year resolutions,

We've had it out three years running.  This year we're going small. Compose one song.  And for fucks sake, update your poetry design.  We're both getting tired of it and there's beauty everywhere.  You cannot go three feet without tripping over it so come up with a summer theme and learn to play something and get an actual mic.  Christ.  You're not setting the bar low, be reasonable.  And quit smoking if you get a chance.  It's not on the books, but we know it is so stop short changing me, prick.

That Instant

you realize you've been chasing that sunavbitch down that went out of turn on the four way stop intersection and you're nine miles down the highway out of your way and hoping they'll pull over and get out because you're hatchet is tucked under your driver seat and you're betting they've got a tire iron at best.

That Instant

You rip into belly laughs watching a pug hang out the passenger window of a red coupe on the main drag of your town and the driver smoking a black and mild is enjoying its happiness just a much and he looks back with a smirk long enough to let you know it was okay to be in that moment with him.

12/14/13

That instant

you realize your deoderant is wearing off and you don't have time to shower, but...

..and then you kick yourself in the pants because it's not new information, but...

i'm coming in for a crash landing, gear up, and respect their space.

12/1/13

Overkill

Having a difficult time taking Is and Yous and Mes out of my poetry.  I wish I had a different face, but apparently I am no longer allowed to hack away at it.  I want to get back to wonder.  I want to get back to visions of enormous dinosaurs, but the real world continues to push back and it's not fair and I can't figure out a way to circumvent the charges.

I will.  Stand up act 9 is coming.  Long dark tunnel.  I conquered my fear of absolute darkness a while back.  Doesn't mean that it's comfortable though.  I want to pick up house and walk away from it all in a bad way.  Maybe a good way.  Tough to think about.  Do you just throw your hard drives in a ruck sack?  I don't know!  I'm asking you!  Who helps you plan that sort of thing out?  I have no clue.

Do ya have to bring an umbrella or something or do you count on finding one along the route?  Could probably thieve one.  Do you really want to do that?  That's not who you are.  You can take whatever you really want, but don't.  Every single time you take you are taking something from someone else and that's no good.  Let someone hold your leash.  They're not holding you back.  They're just checking you.  You have to allow yourself to be checked at the hip.  Take it and bounce off or try to run them over, but whatever you do correct your path.  Not correct, but make adjustments because you have to and understand that it is alright to make adjustments.

Adjusting the dials is okay.  Not everyone likes to hear music at 11, hell you don't either.  Not everyone wants or needs a kiss or needs your face two inches from their own.  Not everyone can be famous and not everyone will remember events the same ways you do.  You're losing your memory and maybe that plays into part of why you are losing connection fidelity with your dream states.  Be okay with working on it.  There's no breaker  to fire off in between where you're going and where you can never go back to and that's perfectly fine.

Do you bring a knife or no?  Do you need to?  Would you need to?  I don't know!  You can take what you want, but you don't have to.  Are you expecting battle?  It's a funky kind of war we fight and I've been seeing some strange things I don't know how to handle off of the top of my head.  I need time.  No picking up sticks.  No running away.  No abuse.  Abuse is shorthand for sadists.  What's short hand for saints?  I want to plow into a wall and obliterate my body in a mist of red and bone.  I want humor.  Get the fuck away from me!  I swear to god I will taste your eye fluid before the night is out, you mother fucker piece of shit, do you not know there is no such thing as a fair fight?

Rules are in place to keep me out of you.  Period.  Maybe it's all a matter of timing?  That may be what I'm getting wrong.

Wanderlust eats away at me and I nibble back.  I almost lit a cat on fire again.  I'm doing good though.  Being on good behavior and going to work almost every time I am supposed to go.  I want to keep it up through the end of the year.  I am not expecting much from Santa.  I still ask him for a 1911 against my better judgement.  No resolutions forthcoming and none will be given.  I think I'll treat myself to a box of ammunition this year.  One step at a time.  Baby steps.  We'll travel, but I'm not pulling up sticks just yet.  I'm trying to monitor my speech.  I've been speaking much too fast and running words together and feeling like I need to apologize inside my head every time someone says "what did you say?"  I said exactly what the hell I said.  It's hyper frustrating.  It's like a stutter, but backwards and difficult to correct and heart stabbing when I notice it flowing out of my damned mouth.  Not fair!

Howling in my head wont stop.  I haven't snorted anything serious in a long time and my sinuses feel like they are about to shatter.  "...turning the music up so ya don't hear the engine falling apart..."  by hook or by crook we are going to fix this thing so it runs smooth.  Chatty Cathy.  Slow the fuck down and take a moment.  The world's not crazy.  It is just you.  Everything does not smell like burning metal.  It is just you.  Space invaders.




///Kelis - "I Don't Think So"     just dont think you're at my speed

11/25/13

Atari

Going back in time to enjoy the things I love.  It has been strange hanging out with people I've only just met and their siblings.  The day before was silly violent and antagonized by the middle child in her family.  Her being the middle child and antagonizing everyone around her.  She was the back end of an eight banger.  It was difficult to identify and made more hilarious by our friend asking if he could bang her older sister.  I'm pretty sure it was not up to me or her sister's fiance.   Pretty sure whether or not she wanted to get mucky was and still is completely up to her.  You can come along for the ride if you want to.

"I've sucked enough dicks in my life."  ~ Tammy

We had this ongoing bet about how long it would take before she ran to history no one else knew, and I chimed in,but it was half hearted.  I just wanted to belong in the conversation.  Not a pissing contest of abuse as much as a revisiting of the things that inform and continue to inform our existence.  It's kind of like driving a car.  Think about it this way:  put in 40 degrees of left input to your road facing wheels and they will turn fifteen degrees.  Learning compensation.  Learning how much you actually do burn when you proclaim you've torched it to soil.

It really is that simple though and that laughable and that much more enjoyable than trying to slug away one for one.  That much more enjoyable than trying to get one unit of output for each understood unit of input.  Existence does not work that way.  There are boosters constantly.  Whether you like it or not, everything that you do is boosted and amplified upon reception.  It's the combat feedback loop.  I hit you.  How hard did I hit you?  Seven?  Six?  How hard will you hit me back?  At least a six.  What will I feel a six is?  Put a number on it.  At least a five, but you don't know so tag me at least at a six, but that six comes in at an eight because I already ate a six and you know that because you've been hurt before and know what a six feels like and know I probably played it soft and a jump cut is in order.

Into the flame, into the fire.  I have a lot of love pent up and no way to spend it.  Why you no want to cuddle no more?

Fucking cowards.

Sometimes we have to back off because we know they will take it the wrong way and run with it.  Does it hurt to be alone? Sure.  Does it hurt enough to make changes?  No.  One thing I've learned about myself is that distance is still necessary.  What I view as an appropriate relationship is still not, by and large, viewed the same way and it's not heartbreaking the way it used to be.  It used to break me apart in fantastic ways and now it's more of a "okay, we're here right now.  Option A, B, and J."  Cash out now, because two more steps will lead to two more steps will lead to two more steps will lead to two more steps and we're at J anyway.

I'm getting back to the things I love and it's been difficult.  It's been a battles by turn.  I have been trying not to think about it, but the successful artists I know had a pretty solid backing before they had outside backing making their whiles worth something.  I want to cut their faces off and wear them and drink the blood that trickles into my mouth while I talk behind their skin and I want to be able to talk to them about it, but "that's not okay."  And still they call themselves artists and photographers in the meantime never having actually known what the mean times really are.   I'm no teacher, but I am willing to crash course them.

Stop cock teasing me.   Stop front loading me.  I cannot handle that kind of nonsense.  Take your vacations and enjoy your languages, but do not fucking...  ....I'm going to war.  There are rules.  Aligning with my own.  Measures not drastic.

Deterioration.  Leaving memories at least as fast as they come.   I drive toward new ones as constantly as I can because there really is nowhere else to be and I am okay with that.  It's a riot.  I feel silly sometimes bending over to pick up the shards of myself and sometimes the entire exercise feels machinated.  What I really want to do is tattoo you and have you tattoo me whatever you want.  Battling down the brain chiggies.  The glitch farm.

I could look back in time, but it won't change the view.  The hardest I ever cheated was kissing another woman and being truthful about it.  What makes you okay?  Violently successful people who don't understand how they were set up to succeed aggravate me.  Everything they know are things I should have known when they did, but had to learn later because, like those post coin op machines with the news on their face, I had no coins to insert and no nudge on top of that to pay attention to them and am now taking notice and am now earning quarters to slot in and am now getting up to speed with and am not mad about it.  A little sorry, but not mad.

Through the TV eye.  A wrecka.  I said "hey!"  Being bummy with no standards is okay.  I'm not going to hurt you if you promise not to hurt me. Dhali Lama and llama beans and trying to be profound in every little thing.   It's silly.  The outside world bleeds in and the inside world bleeds out and really i just want you to say you're sorry.  Even that will be and is meaningless because I won't remember it until I'm steamed and wishing I was not so forgettable.

Power.  Something cosmic.  It takes a lot out of me to be here and I know it takes a lot out of you to be here with me.  Diet on anxiety.  I wish I could fill my stomach whenever I wanted to, but I've been grained to the scale of rice to need as little as possible and digest want as a hack hazard that is a crumple zone.  I want to be a foodie.  I really do.  Up chucked bringing to do more with less.

Every time I get something new to me I expect it to break down immediately or somehow fail me because no one gives something valuable to them up for grabs.  Except people like me who do not deal in currency.  Your word is your word.  Your bond is your bond.  Everything starts and ends at that initial hand shake.  No farther and no less.  Things new to me are things old and decrepit to others.  Not a revitalization as much as a re-purposing.  There is love in that.

Time elapsed, time remaining.

There was this one time I set my cat's whiskers to flame, not understanding that he was made of fur.  The whiskers caught and burned down to his coat and we were both surprised at how fast it was able to go.  Needless to say, or perhaps, for everyone's sake, we never got that ticky tacky mad again, but if I need to I know some good out of the way spots to bury you if you want to roll those dice.  I'm a bad liar and a good forgetter.  Push upstairs ;")

I will play asteroids with you for days.


///Daedelus - "My Beau"  at night, I think of you and do not call because our wars are different and mounting a head after a battle means something wildly different to me than it does to you, no slight

10/28/13

Scizophrenia

I continue to ask myself: what the hell am I doing wrong?  I don't get it.  I think I am assimilating well and then everything falls apart in my palms and I find myself catching bits and ... bits and pieces.  Remembering the wrong things and forgetting the right things.

I am you to you and you are me to me and there is a massive disconnect between and it hurts my heart.  I've been trying to do it through emulation and it has failed and succeeded in many ways.  I don't know how to express love or hate appropriately.  I feel like, just taking this car ride today, conversations are different and I can't remember part C or A but I can remember part B.

It's tiring.  Asking my other selves what happened in hours X toward Y or hours G to H.  Does everyone mark hours that way?  I don't know.  You're just an alcoholic.  It goes deeper than that and no, I'm not, but thanks for trying.

It burns my nerves.  I don't know when I'm being manipulated.  I don't know when it's just bipolarity.  Part of why I've taken to writing is that there is an actual record.  I get anxious sometimes wondering if the person invited to hang out is the same person that actually shows up or if they know the difference and on top of that it's been a hard pill getting to normal.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, compounding everything is the idea and manifesto that I am the cat's nipples and I know I'm not.  I'm just another john, another burro, another acquaintance and it hurts my heart a lot and I do not know where else to push it.

Everybody wants something from me and all i want to do is slit a throat tonight and wash my hair in the blood, but there's no way I can get away with it tonight or weeks ahead and it's incredibly aggravating and not fair and I don't know what to do about it aside from spinning my wheels.

Brain virus.

That Instant

interpretation crosses lines with interpolation.

10/23/13

Bed Time Story 2 (51 text messages to my sister)

It was a routine take off.  The sun was low and behind, about to tuck itself to bed behind the Monmut mountains edging the salt basin of the Campmine desert

She prepared as usual when her alarm went off at five p.m. playing loud, nudging her out of dreams

It was her favorite song.  Slow jazz but not easy listening.  The woman on the record asked, in her bowling ball tenor rolling across the jazz lounge smoke through flower hats and bow ties "how are youuuu, todaaaaayayeaye.  I came here to playaaaaayeaye"

She didn't light up after her hand swiped the red digited clock off her night stand

Today was the same, but a little different.  The city lights would be on beneath her.  The stars would wink to life above her, but the X-two two four around her was on her maiden record attempt and her nerves were steel.

At the edge, a mistake of any proportion could be fatal.  Nerves were unreliable.  Senses, however, could get her back home

The briefing went well.  She painted her nails a vioently subtle purple while her black coffee steamed in its styrofoam cup while the lieutenant went on and on about the fighter/bombers specifications in front of the touch screen while she tried to find a comfortable way to sit in a plastic folding chair in a room too hot and not think about where in hell the annual budget went

Janice already went over the six hundred page manual twice and knew it backwards and front.   she could've Built the damn thing in the time the briefing took.  

She blew on her fingertips and sipped some more coffee. 

Outside of the bubble canopy, the sun laid deep red and orange streaks across the salt flats, bunkers, and air traffic tower where dinosaur fish hundreds of feet long used to swim.

She whistled her song into her respirator, nodding her head and thinking about how good it would be to touch down and take off her twenty pound helmet.

Glancing left and right, runway lights came to life, she reminded herself she didn't have to wait for the weapons crews to load up the hard points on the X-224s wings.  Her wings.

It was not a weapons test.  It was a dual test of woman and machine and settling in to her cockpit, adjusting her harnesses, she moved her gloved hand to the throttle without a cloud in the sky


"alright, Lionmane, its just you and me today.  Be good.". She toggled her radio switch with a wink to her in helmet display, the dual turbines thrumming quiet as an aeroplane is capable behind  her head.

"This is Rainbow Nugget, ready for all go on your signal Walking Stick."

The control tower came back, the controller chuckling at her call sign despite himself, "Rainbow nugget, you are clear for go.  Be safe out there.  Don't scratch the paint."

"I'll bring him back in one piece, you get the wine cooling.  I'm gonna need a pick me up when this is over." she winked again at her visor display and took a deep breath.

Without the crackle of the radio, the jet engine buzz was too quiet.  Her left hand flew across the dials and switches on her console, yellow lights blinking softly to solid green.

The chime rang through the cockpit.  Lionmane X two two four sighing back "I am ready"

She toggled the brake switch, turned on her wing tip and running lights and hauled on the throttle with her right.

The tower half a mile away tore through her vision as the engines screamed.  Water condensed on the canopy front, capturing the sun at her back in burned gold droplets as she broke the sound barrier once and then twice.

She winked her radio back on and barked against the breast squeezing gee force: "systems stable.  Vertical climb!"

The X-224s landing gear mashed the sand like a drunk through the middle of a street hanging onto their beau for dear life before finally letting go.

The twin tails streaked into the evening sky as she held the throttle at maximum.  The Tower, miles behind, came back.  "Rainbow Nugget, you are clear.  Have you on the board.  You are on pace for time to climb record."

"Systems stable!" she barked back, Earth doing everything it could to collapse her lungs

Over her shoulder, as the engines screamed and the composite alloy frame of the X 224 shook, the sun began to rise over the sloping peaks of the Monmut mountain ridge.

The basin beneath her shrank to a football field and then a coin.  She held the throttle down.  The Tower came back: "Rainbow Nugget, you are clear, you are clear. Looking good."

Janice grit her teeth, "I know!"

The sun shone like mid day.   her visor tinted itself, twin contrails scorching upward.  "Afterburn!" she shouted as her pressure suit began to force circulation through her limbs. 

With all of the strength she could muster she lifted her hand from the throttle, flipped the clear plastic cover from the bright yellow and black deadmans switch and pressed the lime green button at its center

At the base, 30 pounds of TNT went off over their heads.  The control tower shook like a twig in a thunderstorm as the lionmanes engines tore the sky apart and two new stars blazed to life in the evening sky.

The Tower came back, "we have you on visual!" unable to contain their calm.

Janice held her thumb to the switch and touched the stick with the gentleness of a mother cleaning a kitten.

The canopy turned, too quickly at first, and more slowly.  Janice gave a ferocious glance across the console before risking turning her head away.

The canopy spun at her fingertips and as she climbed the sun set again behind the shadow of her wing tip.

The sky began to darken and the lights of Santa Monica, Las angeles, Eugene, San Antonio, Austin, and Denver grew brighter and brighter. "Where's Mexico city," she chuckle rasped to herself.

"Rainbow Nugget, you've got the record, bring him in whenever you're green."  She nodded, tearing her eyes away from the ground. 

"I hear!" she barked, not yet ready.  The sky turned blue and then black and in that midnight blanket the stars came to life in front of her. 

All around they shined with a brilliance that pulled at her heart harder and harder as she held her thumb to the afterburn switch

"Rainbow Nugget, be advised you're running out of air up there."

"Walking Stick, I hear y-" the X- 224s thrashing rumble ceased.

The g forces crushing her body reversed direction and threw her forward hard enough to send her hand through her head up display atop her console, shattering it

"Rainbow we have you losing speed, copy?"

The stars began to spin outside of the canopy.  City lights, then stars, then cities again.  Her eyes raced, cueing the visor display to go to this and that menu, lines of information and diagrams and maps whipping by.  They raced like one hundred horses loosed from their  pens across her in helmet display

Steady green lights turned to flashing yellow and then sharp and solid red.  "Rainbow, do you copy??"

as her eyes raced they picked out pieces of information. "Flame out," she shouted to herself as she rammed the throttle to zero and worked her hands across the dials.

"Come back?" the Tower shouted through her earpiece.

"Flameout!  Walking Stick!  Flameout!" She winked at her visor to close the radio link as her hands continued to work furiously.

The X -  224 no longer arrowed upward.  It spun end over end until momentum could carry it no further and began its descent.  With no more air to feed engines, the lionmane became a  fuel filled 3000 pound free falling bomb

"air brakes," she told herself, "now!"  her hands flew and the lionmanes frame rumbled with the back up hydraulic systems effort beneath her ejector seat

"im not giving up on you!" she shouted at her console, her eyes flying behind her visor as the stars spinning outside her canopy began to wink out and the sun began to rise again.
She pumped the fuel from nothing to the kitchen sink as the X 224s end over end flattened out into a frisbee toss. "god damn it, remember!"

Her mind tore through the pages of the manual and the briefing and the sequences as she read her speed by altitude and knew she could fire the landing gear without ripping it clean off.

The city lights slipped completely from view as the Monmut ridge rotated in and out of view
She pumped the fuel from nothing to the kitchen sink as the X 224s end over end flattened out into a frisbee toss. "god damn it, remember!"

Her mind tore through the pages of the manual and the briefing and the sequences as she read her speed by altitude and knew she could fire the landing gear without ripping it clean off.

The city lights slipped completely from view as the Monmut ridge rotated in and out of view

She pulled up her backup head up display inside her helmet and caught her heart in her mouth.  The zeroes on the altimeter were disappearing much too fast.

She pumped the fuel from nothing to the kitchen sink as the X 224s end over end flattened out into a frisbee toss. "god damn it, remember!"

Her mind tore through the pages of the manual and the briefing and the sequences as she read her speed by altitude and knew she could fire the landing gear without ripping it clean off.

The city lights slipped completely from view as the Monmut ridge rotated in and out of view

"Fire!  You son of a bitch, fire!"  The fuel light blinked from yellow to green.  The main hydraulic light showed solid green. 

She tore her respirator from her face.  "Start!"  she rested her left hand on her ejector lever and hammered the throttle.

Above the tower a roar tore through the late afternoon sky.

Miles up two contrails ran like rails to the east as one and then another sonic boom rattled windows across state lines.

Janice pulled back on the throttle once the lights held and began a slow and looping decent to the salt basin, her heart still pounding.

She winked her radio on.  "This is Rainbow Nugget for Walking Stick"

"Walking Stick here."

"Bringing him in."

"We have you on the board, the field is clear Rainbow Nugget.  You've got the altitude record too"

  The twin turbines thrummed in Janice's ears as she sighed, "glad to hear it," and winked her radio off.

The debriefing was going to be harsh, but no one could ever take the record away from her.

As the tires on the X 224s landing gear hit the salt and sand and rolled the beast along the runway past the control tower, Janice began to whistle and think about sleep.  She sang softly as she shut down the engines "how are you today?" and the sun set behind the Monmut mountains
Gnite. <3 div="" u="">


///Cleveland Lounge - "Drowning (Scuba Mix)"  all the best to you on your sleep swim

10/21/13

That Instant

you realize you broke your back up set of headphones.  Fu--

and did not plan for it at all.

Giddy Up

I've been trying to chart my work books, but I don't want to see them.  At all.  Fantastic difficulty.  I did the first class and the reminder came up to do the second class and I couldn't bring myself to do it.  Part of it is horror.  Part of it is blatant stupidity.  Part of it is just not wanting to know how much further I am going to have to work to get back to zero.

I just want to put my fist through something.  Anything!  Not even through, but just break my hand.  Null it.  But I need my hands, both of them.  And I need the ability to ambulate.  I need my knees and my elbows and I have to protect them the same way people protect their investments.  It breaks my heart sometimes knowing that I can't do what I need to do.  It makes me cry a lot.  I won't go to "it's not fair" because it's just a fact.  I could probably cut a finger off.  I think I would save it.  Maybe eat it.  Cook it somehow like a ham hock.  Stew it or something.  It's tantalizing and aggravating because I know where the knuckles join and have cut limbs apart before but I don't trust my left hand to operate the scissors on my right hand.  Maybe just the pinky.

Gauging my pain threshold.  I'm still not sure where it is exactly and I probably shouldn't be losing sleep about it, but I am.  I think I get that from my father.  How far are you willing to go before you jump to get what you need.  Would I have to cauterize it myself?  Probably.  I don't know why I need to do these things, but I do and its getting more powerful and harder to swallow it down between suggestions.  I don't know what that means!  It scares me.  It's getting harder to pretend to be normal.  Normative?  Baseline.  Nullification.  Talked to Martin about that for a while.  It was a good conversation.

Relying more and more on emulation and I'm afraid I will be found out.  Not about being gay or anything that trivial, but being found out about being a fucking psychopath.  I want blood all the time, I don't care how it comes.  I need help.  I need assistance and I keep saying I can run this car until the wheels fall off, but I've been rolling on brake discs forever.  So many years.

It would be easier if I was not aware of the degeneration, but I think a piece of the awareness has lent itself to a belief that I'm making it up and even as I'm speaking I know it sounds contrived.  It isn't.  It's motor and I know less and less how to change the fucking oil.  I don't know what to do about it.  I know where to go, but you better believe I'm not going there.  Like I need more debt, don't make me laugh.  I'll spit ice tea everywhere.  I'm not getting interned again!  No!  I will never put down the ax!  If you want it out of my hands you better be fucking prepared to take it from me.

I'm not a gun, but I will put one between your eyes and kiss you while I do it if you think it was going to be that easy.  Don't touch me.  Do not fucking touch me.  Ever.  I will break your fingers one by one while I sit on your chest so you don't move too much.  Escalation.  Take the escalator back down.

I know what's wrong with me, but I need a checkup and I don't know where to get one without the internment trap.  I'm not doing that again.  We're not doing that again.  Just handle it. Just grab your ears and pull up your socks and eat it.  Life hasn't been all that bad to me.  I'm just tired of having to emulate to squeak by.  Doing it by the skin of my teeth and I'm pretty sure some people have started to see through it so I have to work harder at it because the people that I do love I love dearly and want to keep them and want them to keep me to and the last thing that should happen is giving them a reason.

It's tough.  Everything worth having is hard.  Is a myth.  Perpetuated by people who think "difficult" is possession in the material sense or the kid rearing sense.  Everything worth having is hard in the interpersonal intrapersonal sense.  Having ground you do not need to give inside your skull is worth having.  Maintaining relationships with the people you care about and trust is worth having.  Put in work, no doubt, but put in secondary work too.




///Amon Tobin - "Back from Space"  I wish I could fly, but not just to the atmosphere, to the stars.  I want to explore the Oort cloud and be the first man to land on an asteroid and be out there in the zero cold and see the sun without atmospheric interference.  I want to see Jupiter up close at all costs and I want to die out there.  But I'm stuck here.  And have to keep coming back to this fucking planet every time I wake up.  Bullshit.

10/14/13

Coming Back

Your customer service representative will be with you in a moment.  Please stand by.  We are aware that you are having some problems with your account and we very much enjoy your business and you are a valued customer.  Please hold while the next available representative ...

finishes their shit.  I cant slam my phone on the coffee table hard enough without breaking it.  I hate dealing with people.  I love dealing with people.  Nothing happened to me, everything happened to me.

Please hold.  I don't know what songs you like, but here, have this one.  It's an elevator and a stabilizer so enjoy it for a minute while we talk about your request and jump around it for a while and weasel.  Okay, that's fine.  I'm glad I chabbed up on something to munch.  I'll hold.  Please, continue.  It's not like I had something to grind on today.  Not at all.  I'm just blowing in the wind, but okay.  Please hold, please hold.

We are experiencing some technical difficulties, but here, this is the weather for the next nine days and 22 hours.  Here's the news.  In case you were wondering, nothing has changed so here's more of it.  Smile a little?   Here's more junk.  Here's what time it is and here are some pundits and here is some humor.  Here's some tosh and some cartman.  Here's bart and toys turned into cartoons and cartoons turned into toys.  Here's PBS and here's NOVA and here's are you being swerved.

Enjoy.  Here's ducks and hitler and dams and bridges and pawn shops and tits and dicks and marriages and food and chores and nannies and dads and children and scooby fucking doo and courage and beers and beers and beers and liquor and shampoo and lipstick and gloss and appliances and payment plans and retirement and cars and shrimp and outings and beef and socks and shirts and underwear and

I can't take it anymore.  I can't eat anything anymore.  I used to starve myself because I was paranoid about my weight and now I can't eat anymore because everything is getting shoved down my throat.  I can't do it. I can do it.  Everytime they ask me if I want to go out to eat I just fucking can't and I don't know how to explain it.    I can't eat anymore! Fuck.  I'm sorry, I want to and would love to, but I cannot fucking afford it anymore and on top of that I cannot digest it.  Fuck.  Sorry.  No.  No mores.  Can't do it.

Do you want to go to the bar?  No!  Do you want grab lunch?  No!  I'm buying some food at Burger King, do you want anything?  No!  No! No1  Stop asking.  Please!  At the same time, though, I run headlong into a problem.  How will you see them when they're not eating or barring or ... it burns!!!  It's not fair at all.  I'm trooping it and trying to be friends and I'm literally getting eaten.

However, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  I understand that.  At what cost?  At what fucking cost?  I'm coming back and I know I love to laugh and I know things can be easy, but I want what I wants and it's not expensive at all and I don't get why everyone is charging so much sometimes when all I want is a scratch off.  Jesus.  If I can navigate a day, alright.  Sweet.  Stop stomping on me.  I didn't want a fight, but hey, you got one on your hands now.  It turns me inside out sometimes trying to break down differences in understanding.  Yes, no one asked me to.  I get that too.

But if we're going to live on the same planet we better be seeing something close to eye to eye because otherwise you or I got's to go.  I've missed so many people for so long I just can't do it anymore.  I've accidentally estranged and shoved away some people too.  People that I couldn't afford to lose, but I was so wrapped up in being myself I forgot that the planet is a shared one.  I forgot about their knuckles and their dreams and tore my skin up and I'm just now getting back.

Pluto is great.  It's a fine place to stay.  Unlike New York, you can actually Winter over there and not get sick of yourself and population.  I don't care about being the first man on Venus or Titan, but I would volunteer to go if only to be alone and reasonably so.  Not needing a reason to have to be there.  Meltdown much?  I know I have a brain made of glass.   That's probably why she moved on.  Falling asleep in class wasn't an action as much as a symptom.  I wasn't born this morning, but I did stay up all night.

Shadow people.  Courage the cowardly dog.  My favorite color is still yellow.  I'll get there.  I'm coming back.  Out of orbit and nothing but gravity.  This is not my planet, but I live on it sometimes.  This is not my jail, but I walk in it sometimes.




///DJ? Acucrack - "Time For You to Leave"  ... turn the radio on, turn the radio off but you never never...  I don't know if thems the lyrics but this song is close to my heart.

9/29/13

That Instant

you realize you have to make choices for your weekend.  You can sell or you can buy X or Y and sell, but you might need it later, but where you're going you will need fuel to get to so do you steal gas or... you realize you've made it when you don't have to choose.

9/27/13

Stand Up Act 8 (stoneissuers, night work, handouts and nickle go)

(Stand Up Act 7)

Goddamn stoners.  God fucking damn stoners.  I don't have a problem with them for the most part.  I really don't.  Pot is legal in more states than anyone could have imagined three years ago.  Not even a decade, just three years.  Unless I'm completely off and time has been moving faster than I thought.  Or slower than I thought.  I'm not good with time.  It has nothing to do with drugs, just alcohol.  And college.  In college everything is oriented to due dates and when you need to wash your clothes because you're going home to your parents and they reek of the actual world instead of the bubble they built for themselves wherever.  I'm not good with time, but pot is legal and it's great.  It should be legal.  There is nothing wrong with it at all.

All kinds of legal things turn people into worthless sacks of shit all of the time and they're fine.  Weed doesn't even do that to people on a consistent basis.  If you smoke a pound of weed a month you will be in much better shape than the person who eats ten pounds of candy a month.  To the point though, I don't hate smokers or pot smokers, but stoners are a bit different.  Stoners are that one shade further beyond the smoker, for better and for worse.

Some stoners need that extra nudge to push and motivate and inspire them to operate and create and shove work through and enjoy other people and enjoy the chase of life in general.  Some stoners like that extra nudge to mooch and coast, but not just coast, but accelerate, and entertain and smooth their own course through the path of least resistance, not as a way of escape or relaxation, but as a way to live.

Everything takes on the slight pale of life and death once they enter the circle.  A routine trip to the gas station becomes a twenty minute conversation on the meaning of life and how hard it is to survive in the real world and if God hadn't created the man who created the coldcut sandwich the world as we know it would be horribly altered and disfigured to the point where walking out of your front door would be suicide.  Jesus christ, calm down.  We're gonna get food.  I know you couldn't bring yourself to leave your front door without someone walking with you, but for fucks sake, it's not the end of the world.  Not by a long shot.

I'm even okay with adventurous stoners.  The kind that get really high and then want to operate.  I'm a little bit of an adventure stoner streaker myself from time to time.  I know it's obnoxious in some ways.  It doesn't mean that I don't do it and want to push other people to, but I am that, and I'm never really all that sad when people shoot me down.  When I'm smoking, "I just had the absolute greatest idea ever" is the last thing you want to hear out of my mouth.  For one: it's probably a way too elaborate or distant quest to achieve a goal unique to me that I couldn't do without other people there (everything from playing some sort of multiplayer only game to crossing some distance to see or buy something much better crossed in a car).  For two: there's probably a good chance someone might actually get hurt (adds to the allure of the adventure.  When you have bad credit all you have is yourself, so while you gamble with imaginary numbers and scores, I gamble with my body...  because I have no credit).  And for three: by the time the idea comes out of my mouth, no one feels like moving.  I'm okay with that.

The stoner I can no longer stand is the stoneissuer.  The girl or guy who always wants to know what you have and then compares it to other high end "brands" they've had.  No one asked you.  Literally, no one asked you for your opinion on how this stacks up to Phonecase White Palidin (insert semi-obscure flower phylum here).

Yes, that's why I invited you over: to stick your nose into my bag and not shake your head, but give me the "weird" eye and ask the admonishing question of  "how much did you pay for this."   I'm begging the question in offering it, aren't I.  I needed your expertise.  I wasn't just bored the fuck out of my mind and out of videos to jerk off to and thought it might be fun to have someone else to talk to for an evening.  No, I wanted your sharp nose and your ten point critique of what is essentially free weed for you.  I'm not basically paying for your company like a truck driver picking up some fawn eyed drifter for a few hours of bullshitting til the next stop.

You asked to drop by and what I wanted you to do was pull out your pocket scale and shake your head and tell me I was lied to and it was almost a gram light and repeat over and over again that back home you wouldn't have paid over X amount of dollars for what I had while you ground up your Panda Blue Light Special shipped in from the west coast.

The stoneissuer is particularly distasteful because as soon as theirs runs out you are the first one they call.  You are the first one they try to buddy up with and then they come over and try to be modest about how much they are taking and go out of their way to point it out that they are somehow doing you a favor because what they usually get is more pure and they're not used to smoking a gentler high and the taste is way off but they can get accustomed to it.   Meanwhile the baseball bat in the corner keeps chirping in your ear "come on, just do it," but I love company more than my own sometimes and know better than to act out and act out of rage.   Most of the time.

The stoneissuer will trash talk you sideways.  The kind of person who, in a race, would nudge your back end out and force you off the road to get ahead and then say "well, I was holding my same racing line, but you were diverting from your own to hold me back, so it's kind of your fault you spun out into sand on your last lap."  They will passive attack in attempts to try to insure and assert their value to the group as the token expert, without realizing that no one really cares as long as they get something out of experience.

Stoneissuers are usually descended from higher, no pun intended, echelons of the hierarchy of smokers.  Rich folks all too often, trying to distance themselves, but be included in, the experience.  The thing that makes them the most distasteful is that, if they aren't already motivated to stay away from the lower grades for the fact that moving up is sort of a socioeconomic graduation and going backward implies some sort of failure in tastes or earning power or status, as soon as their shit runs out and they go enough days without it, they're right back with you.  Suddenly what made them curl their lips and flare their nostrils and roll their eyes like you just said One Direction is the greatest band to grace the face of the Earth, becomes "hey, that's not so bad.  I kind of feel it."  Suddenly "how much did you pay for that" and "you got ripped off" turns into "that's pretty good" and "is it alright if I steal some more?"

Yeah, it's fine, but nightwork is great.  I think I realized one of the reasons why I like working night shifts so much, and it's nothing profound.  It comes down to the fact that I don't give all that much of a shit when it comes to my clothes.  It's not a complete abandon fueled by the functionality of homeless people.  Nothing close to that.  I have no one to impress so it makes no sense to impress people.

Sometimes it's a matter of detailing.  Everyone likes a well detailed car or house, why not clothing.  I am sometimes gripped by the thrill of matching.  It's real.  I am aware of my body and I ride in my body all the time.  Everyone does.  When things match, it's easier to not notice it and when you do notice it, you have color cues to make that understanding zip through your brain that much faster and then, that much faster, you can carry on being yourself.  For the same reason I don't read too much into people obsessed with matching.  It really is a matter of cutting down variables and freeing up much more, or at least that much more, free time and better yet, uninterrupted thought and brain space.  That's pretty damn valuable for the small price of picking out clothing beforehand.

Consider when you're deep in thought after work, pulling the day in front of your eyes like that choppy 8mm film on the two spools that burns up if you leave it in front of the lens too long.  That stuff your parents parents watched home videos of themselves on in dusty attics or family renunion Wonder Times grainy video project screen things or whatever it was they did kind of things.

That spool is running and you're trying to figure out ways to do that again, but without that 45 seconds of frames in the lunch break room where you put the pack of coffee filters you didn't pay for in your locker and that 72 second stretch of frames where you could've and also would've done your job better because you actually do care, but come off wrong sometimes over the phone.  That spool is running and right in the middle of it.  When you are beginning to build some understanding, it switches to a high definition video of rally cross for an hour compressed into ten seconds and switches back.  Bad news.

That's what makes night work so great.  It takes the work out of work.  You can up and go with pants with their crotch completely ripped out and no one gives a shit and it already blends in with rest of the night because the lighting is so poor so even if you did look down it wouldn't matter because you can't see anything.  It's a near perfect situation.  Everything is dark and everything follows that dark pattern so even if someone did think they could see something, they wouldn't be able to really know beyond what's inside their own head and everyone knows as much as half of what's in their is bullshit anyway.

Nobody wants handouts.  Sometimes you have to help your dealers, because some of them do it for a living and are subject to market forces same as any kind of investor.  The truth is there are two sorts of dealers.  There are the shorters and the careers.  The shorters are on a temporary schedule.  Volatile products and volatile prices.  They're on the get wealthy very quickly and retire permanently track or supplementary income (McDonalds) track.

Sometimes you have to help folks out.

"Do you want some gas money?  I can just bring you some money for gas.  I don't want anything right now."

"You might as well take it though.  You can use it for something is all I'm saying."

"I know, but I would rather have the money for later, 'cause there isn't a bank I can go to is what I mean.  That's you're issue right now."

"If you just take this right now, I'm fine with that.  I just need to put gas in my car because I had to push it off the street when the engine stopped."

Pineapple Express backwards.  I always feel a little bad when my parting words are "hey, take care of yourself."  Even when nothing is given, the sentiment itself implies the person it's directed to is completely incapable of and must be reminded to do better by their machinery.  Nobody wants hand outs.  Ever.

Happiness is contagious.  I'll give you a nickle both to go down either road A or road B.  Whichever makes me happy as I go is the one I'm taking.



9/12/13

Dissolving (some) Isolation, September 11th, Launch, and Laughter (touching roots)

It's been a long time.  It had to be.  I had a lot of things I needed to think about and learn an acceptable way to grasp, but I did!  That's good.  You know what else is good?  Coke's slogan.  I thought about it all day when I heard the commercial and now I can't remember what the hell it was, but I'm sure it'll come back to me tomorrow when I'm not thinking.

I will think of coke and remember the slogan for Coke that cracked me up because it was so dual apt they couldn't have done it by accident.  Look it up.  I don't assign homework in general and almost as a rule, but look it up.  I was just thinking though, I have never assigned homework unless I had to.  I kind of make a bad teacher in that way sometimes.  I think that's the way it should be though; if you always come to class and never miss one you should be as well informed as the person who never goes to class, but reads the textbook cover to cover.

Sorry, I got distracted.  I didn't know where to start and I've been looking for a way to start again, but nothing has lead back here the way I expected it to and then I was all out for starting points and so far away that I was all in for whatever I could find to begin again and I found what I was not happy to find but I'll throw it off from the edge of the rooftop and watch it fall down and try to make sense of it.  Okay?  Let's go:

September 11th.  The day that changed 'merica.  It didn't.  America is still what it was.  Only a little more paranoid.  This day used to have a little more bite.  I used to remember the servicemen I know and knew (not because they died, we just stopped being as close as we used to be) and the new ones I've met while fishing the river on a slow Thursday.  I used to remember them with incredible reverence.  Not so much anymore.

The one's still in are in because they want to be.  The ones that are out are out on good terms and very well compensated, on the pay scale I aspire to climb toward that kind of stability, and have awesome resumes.  I guess that still burns me a little on this day.  Getting near perfect scores on the entrance test and damn near perfect on the physicals and getting bounced on psychological failures.  The whole talk my dad gave me about "the family standard of excellence."  I didn't want to cry or weep.  I just wanted to pop out of existence with a genie wink when going in and making it as an infantryman and working a way up could be viewed as tarnishing "the family standard of excellence."  I still makes me laugh out loud today to say it aloud.

Part of what makes me laugh is that, incidentally, he was right.  After taking a year or two to think about it a little harder, I can see that I would have been a skittish, trigger happy, blood hungry, question asking, thinking, liability to the cause.  I would have gotten myself and other people killed, given a uniform, a weapon, and a theater.  That's just coincidence, though, pure coincidence, so it doesn't really count.  At all.
Serendipity.

"Are you dead or are you sleeping, God, I sure hope you are dead."  Dealing with a little paranoia break, but that's neither here nor there.

September is also the anniversary of the longest intimate relationship I ever was able to be a part of and it was fantastic.  I forgot the date the first three years we were together.  Finally made the brilliant move to add it to my phone.  It stayed there after we broke up.  I can vaguely remember some of the gifts, one of the gifts, I gave her. I think the others were holiday related.  I can remember trying to figure out how to get flowers delivered to her office and the whole runaround I got.  I can also vividly remember the violent times.  The times when my brain fractured.  The times when truth was too much for me to eat.

I am laughing because it is remembering the times when, more than anything else, I wanted the laws of interpersonal physics to suspend themselves.  I do not know, though.  Life is long.  Who else are you going to travel the spectrum of drugs with when you're too old to work and done everything else and the prospect of shagging is as interesting as scrubbing your bathtub?  Blackouts.  Retirement is going to be an amazing thing.

So, September 11th used to be like holding a revolver in my mouth and pulling the trigger until the chamber clicked over several times while fingering an empty casing from the gun range.  Not anymore.  I'm passed it.  Nothing's going to change my world, sweetness.

We will modify, sometimes ad hoc, we will destroy and build, we will continue to drive toward some kind of perfect state, but we will mow down no one else along the way.  We will remain honest and not overly dramatic, maybe, we will masturbate to idle thoughts of bodily violence, we will maintain course and get to know the new ship, we will cultivate friendship, and build ourselves into better people instead of weapons.  We will.

I don't want to spend too much time on this.  I've been trying to structure my paragraphs better and slash the blocks into verses.  The poet that keeps clawing it's way out of my mouth.  I don't want to spend too much time on this and I'm three hours in so let's call it close.

I love you.  I do.  I shouldn't.  If I could bury you each and be the one with the shovel over night, I would cum.  It is a strange thing, I know.  I love helping people, so much.   There is no replacing the feeling of helping someone solve a problem and secure a future outcome 100%.   100% assured that what they wanted was what they were going to get.  Nothing replaces that.  Wherever you are.

I've been working to dissolve some isolation.  It's important.  An important thing.  Once I finish the project I am working alone I am going to need to be able to interact on a normal basis to get another job to fill the money void.  Money drives everything, doesn't it?  More than that is learning how to interact with people without a group to diffuse the messy bits to.  It's easy to do when there are many other magnetic orientations to diffuse field lines to.  Not so much otherwise.

I am approaching a point where isolation will become counterproductive.  Flat out. For a time.  There are many options for filling the counter point to weigh it into a cantilever support system.  Ad hocced.  Performing the expense reports in my mind.  It's not going to work.  I think that is part of growing up.  Growing the capacity to do that and know with some certainty what is bound to fail when it comes to tolerable and intolerable acts of personality.

I am getting closer toward dissolving some aspects of isolation.  One finger on the trigger that will close fire bulkheads.  I don't know what process or loop or instantiation will trigger something terrible, but I am prepared to eject instantaneously.  I'm not your project.  I am project enough for myself. Here come old flattop.

We are you friends.  We are your friends.  We are shoving off from the scrap yard brand new in many ways.  The new ship is troubleshot and configured.  There is nothing more to it than to do it.  We are launching.  We are reentering circles and seeing what snow will fall and where and what kinds of sculpture we can make of it until the sun comes up and melts it all.  We are launching.  Granted we were stocked up and manned up a week prior, but we didn't have the heart at the wheel to give chase to open sea.  We do know.  We are ready.  Cobbled together from many different pieces, we are ready to see if it works.  Shove off, baby.

Getting back to laughter.  Getting back to what makes us laugh.  Back to the roots of what made me start in the first place.  Gain some understanding.  At first it was a reaching out, it became a gps, and now it's a tough out.  I don't like to think inwardly.  As tough an out as they come.  It's still a map.  I'm on the far edge of it and it keeps drawing beyond the dark part of the space of influence.  I think I am getting back to laughter.

Back to being able to really, really, indulge in the spaces life does afford for taking nothing too seriously and taking everything too seriously.  That magical place where living life, at least the way you understand it presently, like it is your last day jives with the fact that, barring absolute worst outcomes in tandem, it probably isn't.

You're going to have to live with, regardless of how you or someone else can spin it, what you did today.

I want to spend that time laughing.  We're launching again.  We are equipped for combat, need it arise, we are equipped for food, it will arise, and we are equipped to question ourselves and somethings (not everythings) anew.  We are equipped to observe and equipped for some closeness.  We have an L six two D load out and we are ready to rock.

I am perpetually intermittently disappointed with myself. Lack of ability to grow networks combined with... grows.  I wonder if I am some kind of cancer embodied sometimes.  A walking carcinogen.  You go back to her and I go back to... I feel like I am in a very long race to eliminate myself or as many people as I can take down at once.  It's nothing personal.  It's sporting.  Not immediately but, I don't know.

Some days, walking down the street, I look at myself in the store front windows reflected, and it's a pretty damn cool thing to see that ambulating to wherever and enjoy that remove.  There's no vanity there for me.  Just trekking and knowing that we're doing it.  We're doing it!  We are out of doors and doing alright.  I don't love the birds looking back sometimes with that "not if you were the last man on Earth" look.  What the hell is that about?

We're doing this.  I am as over myself as I'll ever be.  It's passed time to laugh again.  Laugh about little things genuinely.  It's easy to see the world as whole.    It's passed time to really chew on it again.  Launch probes.  Explore and navigate from afar or as far as possible, but do not be afraid to take readings from the machines you employ.  It's time, however briefly, to try again to square up vision with reality and  you'll never know how far off you are, or've been, unless that depleted round sails downrange.


///DJ? Acucrack - "Allegra"  ... this is the soundtrack to stalking yourself.  Searching out, the movie score. This is, bassed up, the chase; the quiet chase between functional and passable (between blending and fitting in).

8/31/13

That Instant

you realize you hate when you have one of those "must do want have again" kind of nights, but you already know it will be impossible to put that chain of events back into place and you learned that lesson in real life, but only remember it because you saw it in a cartoon last year that stuck with you, so you go straight up about it, cuz, god damn that was fun times.

8/23/13

You've Got Some Work To Do, Kiddo

I know.  I feel like a fire wrapped in people skin.  I borrowed some money to buy toothpaste the other day.  Something felt wrong about it.  Something felt wrong about the whole thing.  Memories came pushing back the days afterward.  Things I pushed away only recently and some things I pushed away years ago.

Cut out to Pittsburgh and a boy walking down Main street.  I put the last of my money into buying a thermocouple for a water heater I was working on and I remembered the dream I had that morning of my teeth coming apart.  My molar broke into quarters and caramel came spurting out in little bits of spray.  When I ran my tongue across my front sheets, little white sheets came off and got stuck between them and I would tongue the stuck bits, but rub more off and then all that were left were pink and gray nerve ends and I couldn't close my mouth because the pain was incredible and the caramel made me salivate and it poured down my shirt front in a glistening tan and foaming mess and the heat of it and the wind blowing through the cave of my mouth burned the nerves until my eyes could only see white static and glimmer stars of blood cells pounding through the veins inside them.  I remembered that dream and knew I had to find a way to buy some toothpaste.

The other memory that came back was of my dad screaming at me through my old cellular and the ear piece cracking.  It was a train of threats and I remember the strength in my knees barely hanging on through it all.  I was to change schools immediately or face the violent consequences he would bring my way for my poor performance.  The second part of the memory was a part I hadn't recalled or even connected until that day.  The school he was demanding I transfer to was one of the schools I originally pointed out and highlighted that I wanted to apply to in the first place two years before.  It crashed in on me then.  I brought them the list and they had to approve it because it was their money paying for the application fees and this one and that one got shot down and crossed off and shot down for one reason or another in their minds and based on that stupid ass college rankings book that was two years out of date at the time anyway (thanks public library).  Remembering it, I simply shook my head.  Wastes of brain space.  Why?  That still pops like a flickered light as the power grid compensates for outages miles away beneath a storm already come and gone from where you sit beneath its glow.

The air vibrates for a moment.  The walls flex under the sudden pressure and creak and groan.  Nothing happens.  Everything doesn't fall apart.  A tear came down my cheek from behind my sunglasses and I let it go.  It was hot as hell and feeling it evaporate felt wonderful and cooled my skin.  "Why?"  I don't know.  I never will.

There was a period of intense plasticity, three, maybe four, days long.  Precipitated by several days of a slow decline in mental activity.  It made me wonder if that was what peace felt like.  Feeling like internal and external pressures and atmospheres were perfectly attuned.  Like striking one face produced the right and singular sound on the other side instead of the rattle tin of snare wires.  Confusion began to set.  "What is happening to me?"  And then it began to break apart like lake shore ice not quite in rhythm with the season turn at sunrise.  Interference.  I couldn't tell if I was happy or simply depressed to a blank slate or so far disengaged from my head that I could essentially remote pilot this body thing through what it was supposed to do and could dock it at my home address and step outside of the cockpit into dreams.

I don't know what it was, but in greater efforts (always greater and greater as time runs on) to manage myself I will add those sign posts to my warning lights.  I don't know what they mean or what they signify, but it was disconcerting and disorienting a series of days as I've seen in a small while.

Spoke to a friend who is dating someone else now and I couldn't help, but wonder how the new was better than old.  I gave it a further thought and it was tremendously obvious.  I imagined the group photos and holiday visits and it was tremendously obvious.  One of these things is not wired like the others.  And now it is.  I don't think, in fact I am near certain there is ... I want to date again.  Do I hate companionship?  No, absolutely not.  Do you hate companionship?  Yes, what kind of stupid question is that!  I can't get through two consecutive hours of the day without thinking about breaking a slit into someone's skull with the blunt back end of a hatchet and shoving my penis into the slippery fat.  How terrific would that be.  I think about killing myself every day.  I also think about living in the deep north forest ridges every day, so you sort it out.

Choke it down and hold it there.  Inside is still a hidden place.  A territory I am still investigating and mapping.  Inside me I am snapping my fingers in front of my nose and patting my cheek and whispering "hey buddy, you in there?  Can you hear me?  Come on back.  Come on back, kiddo.  Stay with me, okay?"  Things blear in and out and then stick for a while.  I cannot live with other people for lengths of time.  Not yet anyway.  Still a lot of work to do.  Inside is still a deeply hidden place and for now it has to stay that way.

Walking down that street along the sidewalk and nodding to the old men on their way to fish and spend bits of their pensions at the hole in the wall and smiling at the kids on their little bikes and the folks my age pushing strollers and dogs my little heart fell out of my chest and hit the pavement and rolled.  It rolled like a tin can going tink a clink a link and as it went the brass compression ring broke off like a snapped rubber band.  Flex tubing went one way, an iron washer went another.  A welded chamber came loose and rolled in the chopped way a cube will into the gutter.  An adapter slipped off its fitting.  More brass tubing came loose and popped up into the air in front of me and a glass stator shattered.  Filaments flew into the grass and oil splashed into the cracks of the cement.  Rivets popped loose and sheet aluminum peeled away.  My heart rolled and rolled until it was a hex nut spinning like a coin until laid flat between the lines of the crosswalk yards away.

I saw myself running and dropping to knees to scoop this piece and that spring and that cam and this bolt and that shard and that curly Q of pipe and with fingernails prying bits of staple and brad from pebbles at the lip of storm drain.  What's missing?  Haul it all home in the hammock of your T-shirt mid drift.  Drop it all on the work bench and goggle up.  Sparks chip into the air.  The hammer, the drill, the saw, the shears.  Open up the drawers of the chest of saved scrap.  What's missing?  What's missing?!  Male to male adapters.  Counter sinking threads.  Punch sheared nails back through.  More sparks.  More acetylene.  More current.  Peen hammer curves.  Female to male adapter.  Hand tighten.  Air hammer drill rusted bolt tops.  Replace tubes.  Connect battery leads.  Respool springs.  Adjust valve timing.

The whole thing made me laugh.  The whole thing brought to mind the hilariousness of the notion of sewing your heart back together.  The whole notion of "look into your heart."  The whole highschool nonsense of the swooning "sewing my heart back together."  Apparently distance is still a necessary thing.  I don't know that it is something that can be outgrown or phasic.  Why did you cut up your face?  Because, in part, I'm tired of trying to explain it.  Remember that Popular Mechanics gloss issue from way back when nuclear energy was front page everything and there was an extensive design study to find a way to warn future men about areas where spent materials were stored in a way that could cross all future language barriers and changes regardless of origin?  I do and the whole thing makes me laugh.

The tension between this backwards country and where I want to be pulls apart my consciousness.  Are you supposed to be upset with the people that don't know it any other way?  Is there a right to be upset?  Wrong question entirely.  You can feel whatever you want to feel.  By being human and conscious at all you are given the right to emotion.  Hate has external vectors to it, though.  That's the difference.  The very important difference.  We've got some work to do, I know.  Everything has been heavily jammed up.  Between questions sparking forest fires of speculation and what ifs and more questions and dead zones and containment and management there has not been a lot of processing power left over to engage with society and decoupling is threatening and I can feel it climbing through the insides of my bones and bleeding into the streams inside my muscles and stable air is gaining turbulence and I am trying to correct.  I won't be privilege to some phases of interactions until the work is done and I don't know when that will be.  Trust sweetheart, I know.  Before you can get back to creating, we've got some work to do.  Goddamnit!  I know!!!!


///Flying Lotus - "Orbit Brazil"    Still building my new ship.  Still collecting parts at the orbital yard.  Dreaming about the empty space between stars and nothing more than the tick and whir of life support systems to nod my head to sleep to.

8/16/13

That Instant

you are kicking the walls in frustration because the ceiling tiles you just put up fell down and shattered and you realize you can't vent that way because the walls are more than thin enough to put your foot through.

Sit and fume.


8/14/13

Geometric Theory and How To Be a Good Ghost

I've been making a greater effort to understand myself.  Took some days to think harder on the subject in attempts to dismantle the motor and find the part tripping warning messages and panel lights.  I didn't get very far.  What I mean is, having many of the larger mechanism in pieces the map looked like a spilled box of lathe shavings and filaments and bits of casings.  Laid out, they said nothing in particular besides a resounding: from this mess comes everything you know.

Isolation is very important.  Two way protection, aside.  Isolation is near critical.  Incredibly important.  I used to tell myself I was not a violent person, but I acknowledge that I am.  Violently dedicated, at times.  Violently emotional.  Violently planted in the physical.  Violently loud and sometimes violently silent.  Many times over and often unnecessarily peaked.  If you graph it though, if you graph me on a smooth curve, I can't be that far away from normal.  I guess that's statistics though.  You can make values say whatever you want if you know the math well enough.  Kind of like paints.  You can draw damn near whatever you want and make it look damn close to your vision when the understanding of what the the colors do is clear to you.

The math is unclear to me.  I imagine, in my geometry, that every person can be represented by a three dimensional shape.  The closer you are to ideal, the more you represent a sphere.  The fields of emotion are painted on this sphere and the boundaries between emotions are all blended smoothly, one into another.  The area the regions occupy on the sphere all project inward to an infinite point of no emotion whatsoever.  A vegetable.  As the rays project away from the vegetable state they gain in intensity until they reach the maximum of what that emotion is and how it can be expressed on the surface.  When the rays intensity does not reach the surface it requires someone interpreting the shape to make some sort of judgement or act of perception to ascertain how exposed or close to nothing the ray terminates.

 The way I've come to understand emotional states, what is normal to me, is point projection.  A region on the surface of the shape, if I am spherical, will be occupied by a single point, not eliminating the possibility for multiple regions to register a single point, and the points add up to what I'm feeling/effusing at maximum intensity.  The entire thing sounds senselessly scientific coming out of my mouth.  I'll draw it later.  Promise.  It'll make more sense once I draw it.  What I think I wanted to say was this: I see people and I see people around me navigating the world with three dimensional emotion and it's difficult to understand and comprehend and that's what's driven me to find a way to help myself understand how it is possible and why it is happening.

Fluid forms.  In talking to them, I see their is as globules, sometimes pointed, inside the "normal" sphere.  I think that's part of what makes some internet communities appealing.  Shapes and occupied head spaces leaning and pointing or bubbled inside the normal (sometimes completely occupying the normal sphere) in ways that make the viewer marvel.  When I cut down and cut apart myself when I reach extroversion I don't see a shape.  I see surface breaches.  I see points on the three dimensional graph.  A series of two dimensional graphs, but no contiguous rays making up a region of space or continuous rays extending from vegetable zero.  Digital emotion.

Not everyone is represented by a sphere at the breach.  Some people are cubes, some people are tetrahedrons, etc and on to the Nth until you meet that perfectly spherical person who occupies spaces inside of it, but who is completely capable of occupying the entire thing or at least an amalgam of the outermost sphere or occupying a spherical space inside of the "normal."  It makes me confused and jealous.  100 percent of each.

A method of control.  Controlling which paints hit the canvas and better controlling where and in what order. How to repair X state: move this point here and that one there and that one there and presto!   It's a notion.

Much more importantly though, I got myself into a conversation about ghosts.  I believe ghosts exist.  The world, my world, is fact enough to push it into the realm of plausibility.  At least that.  The conversation ran on and on for about an hour.  What I, and the company, realized was that it is possible to be a good ghost.  Let's say you knew you were going to die and knew what it was going to feel like when your body was about ready to quit.  Your relatives, or at least you, treated yourself well and the nurse was very helpful to boot, but you were still dead set on haunting someone at some point.  Get high first on whatever makes you happy.

For the sake of argument, let's say that most ghosts that haunt people have unfinished business or died in some horrible way.  That's why they're so mad all of the time.  To prevent this, when you're on your death bed ask for a little weed instead of a last meal or maybe in addition to it.  Get really really high and then die, because however you die is what form you will take so no shotguns to the face.   Could you imagine being high for the rest of eternity?  Yeah, it sounds a bit like some kind of hell, but once the hell syndrome wore off it would be a continuously hilarious experience.  Person: "Are you trying to scare me?"  High Ghost: "yes!  BooooOOOooOOOOoooooooo!"  You'd be the happiest and probably worst ghost ever, but it would be worth it.  What will they do?  Kill you twice?

8/6/13

dear (_____)

Dear notes,

It's been easy taking you when my phone is available, but batteries are fickle things and I'm gone back to pen and paper.  It's nothing personal, but a notebook never runs out of battery.

with love,

Mr. Analog

p.s. it's not a trust issue, it's a must issue.  XOXO

8/5/13

The Silliest Part About Dealing With Parents

You cut ties.  Awesome.  You had to cut ties because they gave you no other recourse.  Not so awesome.  The greatest thing though, the silliest, giggliest, thing about it is that you didn't have to burn their house down to make your own.  One step at a time, sugar sugar.  You're getting old, but you're doing it.  You're doing it.

I still remember winning the spelling bee when no fourth grader at P.S. 19 had beaten a fifth grader and all I got was the apple Ms. Smith gave me after.  I watched my little sister lose her spelling bee bid and they took her to toys r us to buy a doll, batman with the belt buckle that extended out and wrapped around foes and you pushed the button on his back and it would reel them in for a beatdown or snatch him up.  I saw knife bob and wanted it so hard, but she got her batman based on the first movie, was that Tim Burton?, and loved it and every time I saw her playing with hers it made me wonder if I did good enough.

Ain't no thing now.  It is.  I still think about that apple and wonder what they were trying to teach me in not taking me to Toys R Us.  I threw out the medal.  The pewter stunk up my nose and I got sick of looking at it.

P.S. 19, my favorite school.  Kickball and wallball, the two best games ever invented.


///Tom Vek - "If I Had Changed My Mind"    would I be here?  I think that's missing from work, official recess times.

8/4/13

That Instant

You realize you're not not proud of your daddy, but you still want his head on a stake outside of your apartment building because you can still pay him respects and he will not ever explain his actions.

Change, Other Peoples Clothes, Top Down Sun Up, and Attack

I think that's how I got good at defense.  Attacking is an entirely different bag.  Attack, attack, attack!  Get on it!  I don't do call and response all that well.  I do response.  A lot of my growing up and formative whatevers was response, not call.  I was raised not to call and it's been a hedge maze trying to get out of it.  When I do call it's usually over top of what I was calling for and it's blunderbussy.  Killing a fly with a hammer instead of a swatter and then I have to fix the hole in the wall left behind.  It's been fun learning though, learning how to call the right way when calls need to be made and learning that response shouldn't be the only way to integrate myself into lives, because they have lives too and waiting until you're screaming and bleeding out of the eyes is no way to go about inserting yourself into conversation.  I still need distance in a bad way, but a good way.  It keeps them safe and it keeps me safe from misunderstandings and not so shuffle crowds and that's a good thing.  The fewer the things flowing in the better I can handle, and then it's not a frag of choice.  I hate getting hooked on forks.  STOP GIVING ME CHOICES WITHOUT CHANCES TO BREAK UP BAD ONES!  That's my only qualm with the United States of Aye Merica.  The land of one time opportunity for too many of us.  I'd swing less opportunity for more chances any day.

If I could go back in time I wouldn't punch myself in the face or shake myself by the shoulders.  I'd kiss me.  Hard and furious and little me would be like "what the fuck, man!" and then I'd tell him "it gets rougher, harder, longer, and more ridiculous.  You're going to fire a staple through your hand by accident and it's going to suck, but you're going to try to get out of work early and it's going to be one of the worst days post parents that you'll hate.  It'll heal up alright and nearly seamless and your boss will be proud of you for getting things done, but you're gonna wish you took more time on the project.  Just sayin'.  You're gonna hate it for about two minutes, but you're gonna kiss the blood and move on."  Poof!  Time traveling me peaces out and little me scratches his eyebrow and mumbles "no way."

I'm wearing other people clothes from goodwill.  They're great!  Half the stuff I have on makes me wonder what could provoke someone to give them up.  I haven't bought myself a jacket in a long time.  It's been years and I hadn't really thought about it until now.  It was always my mother, well, not always.  Sometimes my dad would pass me one.  I still miss my Bell Atlantic jacket sometimes.  That thing was the tits.  Furry pockets, double layered body and a knit collar.  Loved it.  Don't love how I got it (from my father, I hate saying that, but it's true.  I hate thinking about "I came from that"s cuz it makes me sick and it probably shouldn't, still heated, still gotdamn heated, it's not gonna die, but I actually want it to.  If he wants to apologize, my terms are teeth.  Not all of them.  But give me one of your kanines and apology accepted.  Until then, and only because you outright refused me.... twice, til death), but that jacket was everything you could want in a jacket.  Nice and tough outer with ... aw, it's not leather... trying to think of the word... the outer was made of the stuff good work pants are made of.  The cuffs were knit too, just like the collar.  And you can't beat the Bell Atlantic logo on the chest.  So good!

I'm wearing other peoples clothes and it feels nice.  It feels right.  It feels good to have new things that I bought on my own with my own tastes instead of for all kinds of purpose.  Purposeless clothing rocks.  Why do you have that jacket?  No reasons beyond my own.  It tickles me to say that.  Everything has been so purpose driven toward survival and managing damage and matching in, but this time, this jacket isn't about matching in or history or family or learning how to run with the silverfish, it's just about wearing what I want to wear.  The thing about goodwill though, the darker side, is wondering about if some of my stuff is going to end up at one when for one reason or another, cut short, or left standing still, my things get out of time.  Is someone going to be eyeing my baseball jersey who also loves the number 78?  I'm not mad about it, but I wish I could meet them so we could talk about our affinity for 78 and how it came about.

Top downing it.  I tried to go ground up and I couldn't provoke myself to make the change to oemfail, so I'm taking it from the roof down and it hurts.  Thematics don't work backwards no matter how hard you try to grow them that way.  I do enjoy the brighter motif.  I really do.  We're gonna grow the font into a better color and adjust the images, but sometimes you just have to go into a room and sit down in it to begin to understand where it's coming from.  The same thing goes for people.  You'll never get a good read from afar.  Top downing it because I've been boxed out and there is no other option.  And I'm okay with that.

I don't like change.  Change is stupidly difficult.  Sometimes routine will betray you and catch you not paying attention and I think I like that worse.  I can be manipulated and gulled and switch backed fairly easily, but I like to think of it as a trade off.  A trade off I am willing to take.  Unwillingly at times.  Taking it though.  Brighter and brighter.  Years behind and still in meta jail with my fingers through the fence, but making keys.


///Mackelmore - "White Walls"  .... lean back... the more I listen to his album the more I enjoy it


8/3/13

that instant

you almost poked yourself through your messy parts because you fell into your chair too fast all upset about nothing again.   Take it down a notch, home slice.

7/30/13

Growth Is Hard, the Burna

Growth is hard hard hard.  I don't like change.  Routine is a life saver.  Regulation.  Having to think about what to wear and what to eat and when and how much and how many layers and what's clean and what's not and the questions mount up so damn fast.  Is there gas in the car, is there not, is there enough gas to get to a gas station, is there milk, are there eggs, did you put your socks on before you put shoes on, did you wear a belt, did you need to, are you wearing pants, is your shirt buttoned, tucked, or untucked and should it be.  Did you brush your teeth, did you brush your beard, where are your sunglasses, do you need them, did you check the weather, where are your keys, are your cards in your wallet, did you get back to the people who left you messages, did they message you at all, what's your schedule like, do you have a schedule, where's your cereal, do you need more, what's for breakfast, what's for dinner, did you smoke yet, should you be, what's the month budget for it, did you budget, shouldn't you be quitting, did you make time to draw, did you make time to check up on the engine light, did you do laundry, is your stuff in the dryer, did you vacuum the rugs, have you brushed the cats, did you water the garden, where's the coolant you picked up, have you gathered the scattered spare change, where are your shoes, where are the good jeans, did you hang up your good tees, how are the ice trays, did you take out the trash, did you look into buying fans, where are the new fish hooks you bought, who keeps letting their dog poo at the corner of your house, have you checked the mail, where's the other set of keys, where's your good hat, have you changed your water filter, what's the beer situation, did you buy new brushes for work, have you paid your phone bill, when are you changing your tires, have you washed your hair, have you checked your piercings, did you wash your sheets, have you clipped your nails, did you tie your shoes, is there an undershirt beneath your top, have you looked into ... brain explosion.

Routine really is a life saver.  I'd kill myself without it.  Without routine it is impossible to identify brain shrapnel apart from reality.  Impossible to separate the notes of a song from synapse misfires.  I haven't been slipping too much and I'm proud of that.  I've been doing a good job of managing schizophrenia and delusion.  I've been sharp and on my feet enough to know when control was slipping and intelligent enough to understand when a decent time to step back and lock my body in arrived.  I'm happy for that.  I'm happy that I've been able to not just see my friends and old family, but divide those conversations from the larger dialogues with other people and keep them private.  I am happy that the ones without names can be separated from the ones with.

I've been trying to keep ourselves busy in the factory and it's going good.  The warehouse is buzzing and everyone's happy and still yapping at each other and it's fantastic.  Everyone is accounted for, the first time in a long time.  I can't sit on it though.  They will start to wander away and then we won't be working together for half a damn.

I've been thinking over the last time I was in the hospital when they brought me in and made me intern myself as a bargain.  That night still itches me.  Still makes us furious.  I didn't do anything wrong that day!  I shut my mouth too, but they had us hooked up to a couple machines and I was lying through my teeth the whole time and to this day we're sure my heartbeat gave us up.  I stood up and it jumped real hard from rest to joy panic and the doctor winced and I winced and started sweating and everyone started screaming in my ears and I tried to run, but the door was locked from the outside and that's just plain unfair and I got mad.  Mad as hell.

Routine is a life saver, though.  Do X at Y time.  Z comes after.  A comes first, followed by B.  Sometimes D, but it's okay if C jumps in before D as long as A and B come before and X and Y follow.  Without it, without that, things get jumbled and then dreamland starts to bleed into reality and then things I shouldn't say and people who have no business in my circles start to have conversations with people they have no business meeting and then those people start to get mad at us because we've been talking about them behind their backs and once that check is cashed there's no going back on it.  Then I get burned because they make me pay and there's no way to explain to them because as hard as I try to explain it to them they don't hear me and I've already gone too far and that's far enough.

Growth is hard.  It hurts.  Learning what you can and can't do.  What I can and cannot do.  What is and is not acceptable.  More than anything else I want to meet someone who can sit down with me and them and have a good long coffee conversation.  I know they're not real, I know they are real.  I have to constantly monitor sounds.  I have to consistently monitor their footsteps so I know when and whom I'm looking at.  It's not fair.  It's not fucking fair!  I want you in my world.  I want you in my shoes so you can understand the kind of ...  it's not fucking fair.

I play music so loud so I don't have to hear.  I hope I go deaf.  I wouldn't mind still having eyes because I love to look at nature.  I love looking at nature.  Sometimes we hate what I see because they are there always now and it's terrifying and it's gorgeous.  Seeing where they've been and we talk about it across fields.  Are you hiding from me?  You with the-  I hate it.  I hate it!  Are you alone?  Did you come alone?  No!  Not ever!  I'm never alone!  Do you know what that's like???  Do you know what that's like??????  Get away from me!  Stop lying!!  Stop lying in my ear!!  Just go away!!!  It never happens.  It never happens like I want it to and I try not to take it out on us.  Not to take it out on you.  Growth is hard.  My dad used to assure me it was just angels and devils talking to me and if I chose the path of loving Jesus I would be able to sort them out and I would know which ones it was because "the Bible tells me so."  Goodnight and good luck.

Managing is harder.  It's difficult boxing that part of me away.  Walling and fencing it off so I can still be a part of the rest of 'merica.  Hard not to play into their hands.  The whole thing burns to malfeasance.  Reciprocal engine with no off button.  The only thing you can do is try to avoid putting gas in it.  I want new genes.  I want new genes.  I want new programming.  I've been doing good.  Little star.  Little little skittish star, but I've been doing good.  Been doing good with putting words the right way and conversations the right way, and containing, but it's exhausting and it hurts us on the inside parts.  It hurts a lot.  I want to be alone so badly and I don't know how to get there.  I don't know how to get back to good sleep.

It's not about my parents or the violence pushed way too far or relationships with friends or dating or god or  medicine.  Battling.  Don't celebrate the battles, celebrate the war.  I want nature to stop talking to me.  A billion dollars for silence.   A trillion dollars for blindness.  That's the wager.  Just give me one less eye and blown out ears.  Still no guts to do it myself.  Take it away from me.  Just shut up!  Shut the fuck up!  Growth is hard!  Being adult.  Sometimes I wake up and I know I'm still stunted, but inside a giant robot that has capabilities far beyond what my head is prepared to command.  I didn't want it, but I know I have to deal with it, continue to learn how to use it to become a part of the rest of the structures or destroy it so it doesn't damage the space it occupies and the rest occupying the same space.  It hurts.  It hurts a lot.  It's confusing to us.  I've been doing good though.  I want to keep it going.  I want to blend in better.  I am working on growth, but it's hard as hell.


///Bjork - "Pluto"  ... a little bit tired, but brand new...

7/19/13

The Takedown, Hold Overs, Creation, and Airlock to Spacewalk

"That time is now."  It's time to tear it all apart and restructure it.  The tags no longer make any sense in terms of what they are supposed to be pointers too.  They still point to the things they are supposed to point to, but there's no longer the sort of continuity between meanings that there was.  Over the years and iterations and expansion, a lot of the growth has been organic save for the bare bones items and the most common of common veins and themes.  I'm having a hard time following it and searching and reviewing.  I'm sure part of it is to do with my own electromigration and changing processing powers, up and down.  Things that used to make sense do not anymore, that which makes sense now does not fit cleanly into what came before.

The main problem is, because I enjoy writing so much, getting other things done becomes tedious and overly difficult.  Discouragingly difficult.  Task lock kicks in and nothing gets done at all because I have that loop constantly running with no way to put an end to it.  "What do you want to do tonight?"  Get some writing done, maybe do some doodling.  "Okay, go!"  Wait, I want to do that first and then- "Okay, go!"  But I don't know how what I'm thinking about writing is going to seat next to the last thing I did so I need to find out what I was planning on accomplishing last week that's still in proc- "Okay, go!"  You're not hearing me.  I'm still trying to lay out the sequence so that when I get to the part where I start to lay down tracks I'll be able to begin to set up the next step into- "Okay, go!"  God damn it!!  Forget it.  I'm going to go jerk off and try to sleep.  And sleep refuses to kick in because my mind is still circling a world light years away from planet sleep even though my body arrived days ago.  Ghost ship.

There are hold overs.  Artifacts.  A lot of what I am doing is cataloging artifacts.  The overall design, however, is a massive artifact of another time.  A thing I've fallen in love with deeply.  When the entire interface and blog structure updated to a new design structure a few years ago, was it years, I retained mine because what I wanted to express was inexpressible within the new structure available.  The only real issue with doing it, at the time, was being cut off from any possible further updates beyond my own.  I liked what I put together.  I liked looking at it.  I liked making small adjustments here and there and watching it completely change it's feel without losing it's theme.  It's time to let go of the tinkering.  Save the memory.

Fun in creation.  Unique pleasure in drawing resources together into a whole.  This piece of code and that drawing on that server together with a banner you put together and stored on another server and watching it all spin to life at the click of a button.  Part of the enjoyment in keeping the ship alive after this or that part died or stopped responding was the puzzle of rerouting connections, solving them, and kicking off into space again.  One of the reasons why I love writing is pulling the parts and pieces together, memories, fragments, dreams, real and unreal, and at one point I got that same buzz from design, but it's wearing me out trying to do it across multiple platforms.  Time to retool and tighten up creation.  Focus on what matters the most and let that drive what comes next instead of allowing the platform to drive production.  The factory and the caucus and everyone working within should be governing what comes out of the warehouse, not the shape and color and how many windows the warehouse has.  Flight inversion.

Airlock to spacewalk, it is.  Time to park it in an orbital bone yard and piece together a new ship.  Maybe not one that incorporates everything, but one that simplifies so we're not flipping sixteen switches and checking three different read outs before tuning dials to accomplish what could be done in one cycle.  I'm looking forward to it.  I don't know what I'm going to do about the tag situation.  A problem for another day.  We'll see what's out there.  Never forget the mission.  Never forget how beautiful the Earth looks from afar.  When you can't see past your own control panel, it's time.  "Next time you go out to space, how about leaving yourself a little free time?"


///Plaid - "Air Locked"