Sometimes

Sometimes I think I need or have to be less giving.  There's no better way to be.  I do not care all that much about the take.  I am not fixed on it.  Sometimes the give burns me a lot.  Sometimes I nail black jack on the dot and take another hit to see what happens.

Sometimes I take the black jack twenty one and roll out with it.  Sometimes it is difficult to walk away with it, but I know I have to and I am already halfway down the street when the cards begin to burn holes inside my pocket.

Just go, grand prix stylie.



///no music selection tonight, it's think time, unfortunately

A Joke, a Little Work, a Little Fantasy, and a Little Truth

Maybe that's why I enjoy night so much.  During the day I just want to stare at the sun and dream about going there.  Life without sunglasses was brutal.  I went mad trying to find them and turned my apartment inside out looking for them.  Of course I left them at a job site.  I asked the people there, when I returned and thought I saw them, if they were mine.  And they said "I don't know, are they?"  I don't know!  Are they?!  I thought they were, but they wouldn't tell me and I thought maybe they were playing a game on me to see how long it would take for me to declare that they were and take them.  In my mind, steal them.  I put two and two together (after turning my place upside down searching) and made my declaration.

So, let's open with a joke.  I'd like to.  I know I am no comedian, so let's give it a little go.  What did the manhole cover say to the street?

Give up?

It said "I'm glad I'm not square."

I was speaking to someone and I can't quite remember who.  I don't think it was a friend.  I think it was a random conversation that sparked up between myself and someone else at the gathering, because I'm near certain it was some sort of gathering with friends that I was at, otherwise I would have been on the deck of my starship.  I was speaking to someone and the who is not all that important.  What came out of the conversation was a comment on the work I do, performing maintenance and changing spaces and power tools and heavy tools sometimes when the work is thick and the corrections that need to be made are more intensive than pure oil changes and minor rerouting/replacement of resources.  

The comment was that my job is basically life as we know it and all I have to do is mine plus a little extra whenever it's not intensive.  I must say, I got offended, but I laughed it off.  I got offended.  Deeply offended.  Do you understand how difficult life is?  Do you understand how difficult maintenance is?  Cutting off the infinite hydra?  It has no heart.  It has no organs.  It has no weak points.  It is impossible to kill or destroy.  It will never be complete and it is constantly adapting.  I wanted to break their face when they said that, but I decided to laugh instead which was good for both me and him.

As I backed my mind over the conversation about work after things died down and everyone went their separate ways and I stepped inside my airlock and sealed the door and fired up the engines and set the course back away from the sun and plotted around the minefield of asteriods too big to bounce off the shielding and hull it occurred to me that they were not spot on, but they were right.

When I am not doing heavy work, my job is to perform what I would do for myself, except duplicated.  It is similar to running many instances of one life simultaneously.  Without the extra relationships so you can focus pure on the bones, guts, and vessels.  The blocks and supports that allow relationships to happen.  It's extra relationships to me, but for the constituents its first order relationships.  I maintain my ship to allow me to get the distance I want and know I need, and come and go from the inner system close to at will.  What they use their fighters and runabouts and escorts and carriers and interceptors and cruisers and bombers and liners or whatever you want to call its for is their business.  My business is making sure they run as well as they possibly can so they can do their business and grow their relationships as I do my own.

When it comes to work there are many ways to go about it, but they were right.  I am no longer offended by it.  Yeah, most of my work is life.  Regular life things.  That's about as much job as I can handle.  I'm laughing while I say that, but it's something I've come to know about myself that I didn't really think about more clearly until that particular conversation happened and I got sickly offended.  As much job as I can process is life, is the other connection I am trying to make and I think I made it good.  I'm not offended at all.  I control the timezone and the appointments to a degree.  I set the tempo.  To a degree.  And that's why I love my job.  It is a direct hit to my wheelhouse and not a degree more or less.  

I still have to answer for what I do.  I still have a difficult time performing maintenance on my own craft.  Multiplied over others crafts it's like managing a motor pool and every now and then when one limps into the shipyard and drops anchor I'm happy to see it because I know I am built for it, and yeh it, the task, may be nothing fancy to you.  It may be routine to you.  To me it is approaching maximum output and it gives me joy to know what I work to do, and sweat to do, and bleed to do, I can do for them and theirs too and let them punch their throttles and brakes and when they turn the dual keys and sequence their hyperdrive to go see who they want to or bring their lights up for their party or plug in their laptop in their study or push their coffee table to a spot where they can put their feet up and still be sitting on their couch or activate their weapons without having to think about whether it will work or not. 

Sure, it's regular shit.  As much job as I can take without losing control of my own regular shit.

Alright, I'm going to try to get through this fast so I do not waste your time.  There are few things worse than thieves.

Burn like a tire.  The easy thing to do is burn energy by burning it.  We all get that.  Burn the excess.  Take only what you need.  I think that's the key and the dream to art's pursuit.  The realized and often unrealized dream to art's pursuit and it's main reason for existence.  Without art we are nothing.  We are little entropy machines and we are aware enough to know this.  We build up charge and build up charge and requires expense.  It is not optional.  We are aware that ourselves and environment are constantly approaching disarray at fantastic speed.  Our awareness heightens as we approach great structure.  We would not know structure without disorder built into our make up.

The easy thing to do is burn.  It's not the secret of life.  Each day a person wakes up they are given charge.  Each day a person wakes up, their fortress has trapped free energy from the destruction around them.  Destroy it.  Burn it.  Literally.  Run in circles.  Use it to create more endless fury.  Or battle it.  Make a declaration and take a stand and say "no."  It's not about building a tower to be sent down by time or sent down by someone else.  It's about recognizing that you have recognized that you are different.  You know what's happening and where it ends and offering a beautiful warning.  The game of putting your finger on the tip of your nose to say "not it!"  

I guess I did finally get that I cannot play dumb as often as I would like to.  At the same time though, what gave me pause was, I also know for sure I am not as smart as I think I am sometimes.  A good portion of the time.  So I'm not going to allow myself to get brassy on my own behalf.  S'not playing dumb, but I would rather underestimate the jump and take too much care than overestimate the jump and take too little.

I am an awful liar.  I still sweat horribly when I'm trying to spin a lie.  Does it ever get difficult for you to think about who you would be if you're skillsets were rearranged when it comes to communication?  I am such a bad liar, it's ridiculous.  I would probably enjoy card games and games in general a lot more if I could lie better.  Then again, if I had a talent for it, I would probably abuse it and beat it until the wheels fell off and I wouldn't get caught in a web.  I'd get caught in a world of trouble and the very ground I walked on would be sticky as fuck.

Life without headphones has been brutal.  I didn't realize how much I needed them to help me tune out products of my mind and visions and conversations happening and not actually happening and interpolations happening and not actually happening.  With background I can turn the contrast up a lot higher when I am walking, forced or no, outside of the learned and mastered framework where I know exactly what is and is not imagined without having to look twice unless I have to.  It's been a very rough go and very upsetting.

I went to the gas station again last night because I was very hungry and needed milk.  I didn't want to go, but by the time I convinced myself it was worthwhile I was feeling pretty ready.  I saw it again.  Between two houses, there it was.  Smack dab in front of my face and I almost yelped.  I walked back and forth along the street and it was there, tracking.  I just wished I had my headphones so I could put my head down and forget about it.  I don't want to know it.  I don't want to get to know it.  I don't want it to sniff me out again or get a smell for me.  What the hell were you?

Trespassing is a crime.  I walked all the way up to the fence of their yard between the houses.  When I touched the links and rattled them a little it ran off, but I couldn't see to where.  I'm not looking forward to tonight.  I don't know if I should stay or risk going out.  I just don't know.  I don't know where they come from.  They make my skin prickle.  It was so hard not to pee my underwear.  I don't know what to do about it, but I'll figure something out eventually.  Or hide.  It is entirely possible I'm not the one it's looking for and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Entirely and absolutely possible.

At any rate.  Our problems are our own and it's passed time to close up shop for a little while.  Shut down hailing frequencies and allow the machines to do their work and hum and try to do some dream work.  I am going to get a replacement set of headphones as soon as possible.  I can't use photoshop effectively for the time being so we will try to change the face of the Auralport and OEM by hand.  We can do it.  I hate waiting for me.  I think you don't like waiting for me too.  Nothing to it, but to do it.  I want to crank out a few short stories too.  There is a pair that have been knocking around my skull for a few months that I've been editing up there and it is, again, passed time that I put the needle to the record and turn up the volume and relax and reread.  

I do not know what's in the backwoods.  I always hope the backwoods do not know me too.

Left Field - "Gussett"  i wish it was raining today

The Best Thing

About the end of the day is when you get to take a shower and wash your nose out and soap up the backs of your ears, turn your piercings, get the days grime from under your fingernails and clip them again so they're all even and won't get in the way of tomorrow's work, comb the knots out of your beard, twist up the new growth in your locks while they're wet and easy to manage, and knock around breakfast ideas.

That Instant

You realize it's been enough time killing time and time to make some for later.

Over Simplification and the Missing Link and Father's Day

Something's missing.  I know something is missing because I am not grasping a few concepts correctly.  I can be as small minded as I want to be, sure.  I am a bit frightened of using all that I can produce, see control issue.  I suppose it is easier for me to take as small a perspective as possible.  I can't do whatever I want to do.  If I did whatever I wanted to, this would be a very different world, or I would be stone dead in the ground wishing I had rethought doing whatever I wanted to do.

I had many and, some, long thoughts about my father.  I hate saying that.  That word.  Makes me grind my teeth.  It was a road that had to be reevaluated, and no I am not going to kick cans in anger here.  It was a very positive approach couched mostly in pure analysis and attempting to see it from outside my head and look in at the relationship, while it still existed, from a third party.

What I started to think about and completed was that he may have seen some things from before my memory begins.  My memory begins around preschool, kindergarten.  I can't recall much of anything, virtually nothing, from before that and cannot vouch or insist I was one way or another.  What I came to was that he may have seen something in me and my ways then and made an attempt to push the tracks this way and that way as I got older.  Maybe.  I'll never know because I asked and was refused, flat.  Father's day.  What a hoot.

I do know I am missing something.  Not information.  Yes information.  My history is thoroughly incomplete.  I have to remind myself and update my tabs on who's kicked the bucket.  I'm fine with that.  Less interference.  I am missing something about being a proper citizen and holding down a job and, let's put it blank, growing up.  My concept of growing up is not aligned with what I believe the general population's concept of being growed up is.  But, I do know I can't do whatever I want.  That's wrong.  I can't fish all day, that ones easy to know.  I get that.  I have to wear pants and clothing in general.  I get that too.  I must participate.  That one's clear as well.  I am missing a, on it's outside, simple bridge.  I cannot keep offering disclaimers.  To do that is akin to handing out passports.  Far too reckless.

Rejecting life's intrinsic complexities is not a way forward.  It is a system failure.  Simplification.  Keep it simple, stupid, only gets one so far before the wall of sound and input comes calling and breaks your nose.  The mission for simplicity begins to damage the ability to engage, with necessity and vigor, peers, idols, fam, friends, and the rest of the grid.

Simplification denies and is denial when forced too far.  I understand that better now, but not completely.  No where near completely.  I'm not alright with the concept and it makes me smile to say and hear it from our own mouth.  We are not simple.  We are bright.  We are sharp.  We cannot use simplicity as a device for protection.  A way to consume information at a pace appropriate for us.  A way to do what we want.  Gain access to what we want.  Appropriate.  Unacceptable.  It's neither sly nor sneaky.  Plain dumb.

I suppose I will cut my tongue out one of these days.  It can be a weapon.  A technique.  Believe it or not, I need to learn how to use communication better, more efficiently.  Maybe I'll learn sign language.  I think I'll be better for it.   Better than learning another verbal language.  That way at least when I'm ready to have it removed I'll be prepared to talk in other ways.  I've been using sign language for quite some time, but not the official one, anyway.  I've been using my sign language, exclusive to me and my country and my time zone.  Hello there, and welcome to the rest of the world.




///T-Pain & Early Cuyler - "I Like Driving In My Truck"    ...i like driving in my truck...

Holdovers and Artifacts

Food is a reward.  It is a fact.  And a holdover from days, years, decades of "discipline" (call it what you will, I've come to understand and know it by it's other name: abuse).  I have managed to unwire many things hard coded into me and I am happy for that.  It is one of the things that has been very difficult to dismantle.  "You can eat when the work is done".  The entire idea of getting caught eating.  Getting caught eating first.  I've been deconstructing why exactly it is I feel so uncomfortable eating around other people and I do know that has something to do with it.

Getting punished for eating or resting before the assignment is done.  Even alone it is still enforced consciously to avoid the unconscious recoil.  Even before cutting weight for the wrestling team and working to the point of exhaustion because getting caught in the house brought severe consequences for quite some time to the point where, and I will grant him this, my father would see me working and tell me it was okay to stop and I would insist on continuing because his word was not too be trusted.  It plays back into the whole he says one thing and waits and watches and waits and then springs the trap the next day or two weeks off or two months off.  Sycophant in a way.  An issue of control.

How he used to strap a governor on my face.  What the hell was he afraid of?  We could've been friends.  Left and right barrels with one trigger.  Ah well.  The point is this: artifacts.  Afterimages that have refused to fade through the years and I have to remind myself there are many more to come and many more erasers to try.  An aversion for food is very unhealthy.  I will strive to continue to dissociate the two.  Food is necessary and vital and has nothing to do with occupation, preoccupation, goals, failure, desertion of duty, breaks in time, success, or operations.  If I am eating it is because I should be, not because I've somehow tricked my way into it or trapped my way to a plate or have let someone down by taking the time.

In the meantime while I try to enforce this very simple principle, I will continue to attempt to escape and nibble when I can.  I understand it may seem strange, but if I ever eat with you heartily it's because it means a lot to me to be able to do so and I hope it comes across that way.  I will be willing to do many other things with you before I will agree to eat with you at a table.  There are still several more relics that need eradicated, raised, and (some) built upon.  This one is the one that needs leveled to rubble first.  A dead heat, but the one I want to focus first and burn away.




///Bonobo - "Pick Up"   ...the loud minority...


///Tricky - "Overcome"  nothing to gift, so ill gift you this, for now

Appropriated

There are some things that cannot be appropriated by reasonable or tenable means.  That, I understand.  I am okay with that.  I am not okay with the disconnect between what I understand I can and cannot do and what  others believe I can and cannot do.  Let alone imagination.  That far-grounds.  The literal fairgrounds.  I know what I am capable of.  That is why my closest eye is always kept on my own core.  Why control remains a battle and I am open about it and why I will tell you, you who has much more to live for and with and do and impact and absorb and congregate and contribute, you who, let's not mince words, mean more to the continued survival of "us" than I do (being consumed, manipulable, and damaged plaything willfully and unfortunately acknowledged beyond embracing to bracing and building and purpose driven more so to clean logic than you burdened [in many ways] will "get").  I am not self absorbed as much as self contained.  For good and well reason.

That far grounds and I will take it because the planet is shared and cooperation is far favored over conflict.  You'd be mad to favor the one over the other.

What I will attempt to do, making no excuses for my own absence, is make an attempt to bridge the gap between interface and input and output.  They each have their own gap since I lost the utility of my digital/analog transferrer.  My drawing pad.  I have killed far too much time in attempts to make it work and then it does work and then it doesn't and then it does.  I do not work with instability.  It's pain filled in ways that are difficult to describe and often times it is like watching systems break down and panic, but the ship still needs piloted and crying will not steer you away from making landfall nose first and exploding on impact because you packed enough fuel for the return trip assuming there would not be enough planet side to get back home and god knows the minute you left orbit you wanted few things more than being back among the moon sized blocks of ice and rock where the weather is a stable "too small to hold atmosphere even if it was available."

There is a lot to think about.  Has been for some time now.  Apart from the boards themselves.

Additional cycles.

Rage to sort.

Or is it happiness?  It is not easy to tell the difference between hungry and food poisoning, blind and tired, excited and impossibly anxious, indecisive and disinterested, hot enough to burn and cold enough to do the same, sleepless and too tired to, hyper and happy, disappointed and defeated, slow and stupid.  It has been very difficult to trust and give freely.  Enfuriating or a good problem to have?  Expectations have not been met and I believe it is largely my own fault and I wonder how far I can modify, because there is always room for modification on my end, but how many times can modification be made before you have completely lost yourself?  Perfect and good are two very separate things.

No music selection tonight.  Double score tomorrow?