Stresses and Stressors and Life On My Tardis

Life is stressful and full of stressors.  That's not news to anyone.  Time is money and money can be converted into time.  The time it takes you to read this is time you could've spent making money.  Or maybe it is time you are spending making money.  Getting paid to read blogs.  Or maybe getting paid to do something, anything, besides read blogs.  Shame on you.  The time it takes to write this could have been spent working as a dishwasher at Eat n' Park.  Or could've been spent getting shopping carts at Kmart and trying not to completely lose it and burn the place to the ground.

Life has many different stresses to it.  Some of those stresses are more intense than others.  Just about all of those stresses demand some sort of relief, some sort of answer, and you can only ignore the bell for so long before they break in and tear you to pieces and sack your fortress and leaving nothing more than a few shreds of clothing and broken cookware and a few charred pages in their wake.  You have to answer the bell.  Eventually.  It's critical to your survival.

The sad part is, in order to answer those stresses, you have to introduce stressors.  Jobs, tasks, relationships, a stressor is anything you take on, voluntarily or not, to help alleviate the stresses, the ambient tensions of your existence, of being alive in a shared world.  If the world were not shared.  If the world were entirely yours, there would be a single bridge.  A single leap from stresses to peace.  A back and forth street, a channel, two lanes wide, and perfect. However, it is a shared world.  There is no single leap and there never will be.

To achieve any sort of relief from stresses you must introduce or have already introduced stressors.  Stressors which often times do introduce stresses of their own.  The channel becomes layered denser and denser with lanes upon lanes of tasks and responses all in the name of achieving a peaceful state or a state of greater fluidity and less tension than what your own ambience, your own existence, demands by the fact that you are alive and breathing and as such will not remain so in an entropic universe.  By the way, did you ever see Tropic Thunder?  Hilarious movie.  I highly recommend you watch it if you haven't seen it.  Came out a while ago.  Should be available for rental or something by now.  Robert Downey Jr's in it.  Tom Cruise to.  Surprisingly good.

Anyway, it's truly mystifying sometimes when you step back and look at and draw the circuit board, the ridiculous interstate  highway map of what you have to do just to feel good, normal, and whole, on this shared planet, in this country, in your state, in your city where you call yourself a citizen.  It's troubling sometimes.  From the time you are alone as a child until the time you die, so much of your energy will be spent on trying to return your state to a single bridge.  Return to the two channel direct connection.  The single bridge.  It's amazing the damage adding a single extra link, one more node, to the graph does.

Time is money and money is time, so let's move this thing forward.  I get that time is money, but I also get that what America values my time at is not what I value my time at.  I have precious little of it, not because I'm particularly busy, but because it is very difficult at times to function on a, for lack of a better term, "normal" level.  A level normative to my peers and expectations of someone my approximate age, build, and general intelligence.  My head wears out very quickly and I have to rest and gain space to gather myself before re-engaging.  I don't blame mental disorder as much as it's part of how I function and maintain myself now.  It's not something distinct of myself, it's incorporated [really, it's only a matter of perspective, part of yourself, outside yourself, what difference does it make from the outside observer looking in?  Very little.  The only difference looking in from the outside is viewing it one way sounds like you make "convenient" excuses when you do not perform and looking at it the other way sounds like you are a person who is unreliable and irresponsible and maladjusted, but you try to work on yourself.  "Attaboy, chap!  If you work hard enough you'll get there."  Eat me.].

At any rate, the way I understand it is spending your time allows you to convert it into money which you can use to purchase things you may need or want, things you would never have the time to learn how to make, gather materials, and then produce on your own.  The question is the conversion rate.  If the fastest I can convert time into money is a certain figure per hour, it will cost a certain amount of time to get X or Y thing, necessary or not.  Then the question becomes how much time will it cost to maintain X or Y thing at that time to money conversion rate.

With all of the time being drawn out of you, how much time is going to be left for simply living.  Will you spend most of your "free" time recovering from work so that you can go back to work so that you can keep X or Y thing you thought you needed or wanted?  How fast is that going to kill you.  How much stress is that stressor going to introduce and are there enough channels flowing back to ever break the loop long enough to have time to feel whole?  My time is worth more than the conversion rate offered.  I'll do without, thank you.  If my conversion rate changes, I will reconsider.  Until it does I am happy maintaining what I have, where I am, keeping the channels as simple as possible so that I do have time to enjoy life and write and breath and sleep.  I get it, the more money you make the "better" your life will be near the end.  I am sorry.  My mind will not work that way.  I wish many nights and days that it did.  That it functioned properly and reliably and all of the other words that make an effective and productive, ever climbing upward, American.  It doesn't.  I won't get to enjoy that.  I won't get to see that.  But hey, I could always win the lottery or something.  Wouldn't that be a gas.

Life on my Tardis is pretty okay.  Often times when I do manage to save up money and get near the cusp of making a capital improvement to my life or my ship, something breaks.  I laugh saying it because it's happened so many times it feels nearly inevitable, to the point where whenever I save up any significant amount of money I start to get anxious and wondered what the ship is going to pull out of it's hat next.  I sometimes think the answer may be a credit card, but after being buried by student loans that turned out to be all for nought I refuse to live beyond my means.  No credit cards unless they're already paid for, in which case they're not really credit cards are they?  I still have never owned a credit card and I'm damn near 30.  I had a Target card back in the day, but I think we all know that doesn't really count.  Besides, that ended in utter disaster too.  I will not do it.  If you have to make payments on something, you probably shouldn't have it right now.  Simple as that.  Of course that also leaves no space for emergencies and heaven knows there have been emergencies aboard my ship.  Gross injuries to my musculoskeletal system as wheel.  Pretty sure I still have a torn ligament in my thumb and being uninsured, that range of motion is just going to be gone by the time it heals on its own.  "You should have gone to the hospital!"  Yeah, right.  Of course.  It's a part of my life I've kind of resigned myself to.  As fast as I can improve and repair things is just as fast as they'll break and splinter and burn up and fizzle out.  Life aboard my Tardis.  One step ahead of the fire, but boy it would be nice to be a couple more steps ahead, or even a block away would be swell.

What day is it?  Sunday, 6 P.M.  Are you sure?  Yeah.  No.  Wait a minute, it's 6 A.M.!  What the hell happened?  It's Tuesday!?  What happened to Monday?  Weren't we supposed to be somewhere?  It's 6 P.M. on Tuesday.  Are you sure?  Well, okay.  We'll call them tomorrow morning at 6 A.M. and explain everything.  Yes, that will be Wednesday.  I'm pretty sure they don't want to hear it now.  What do you mean we're 5 miles from home.  This is a park bench?  Come on, man.  Get it together.  The Tardis will get you to any point in time or space within a 5 second 5 inch radius.  Except when it doesn't.



Bjork - "Enjoy (Dark Jedi Remix)"  There have been a lot of great reimaginings of Bjork's music.  This is one of my favorites of late.  So dark.  So playful.  So wonderfully and beautifully mechanically.

That Instant

you realize your coworker back in Queens at JFK airport while you were baristing at starbucks inside the international kiosk on the second floor of the terminal was hitting on you and not giving you occasional rides to work in her Tiburon for free.

The Best Thing

about outer space is that no one can hear you scream.

The other best thing, though,

no one can hear you howl either.

The Come Down (i know i cannot keep skirting)

I will try to keep this brief.  There is a lot on my heart and my focus, my eye focus is getting, cheap.  I will have to rebut this hard when my eye focus is getting better.


A story of betrayal.  Yan, ayn, yan yan, ayan,.   Let me do that better: yan yan yan,

Bad rehearsal.

Allow me to do that better.  Punching keys like putting a fist into water.

Blank faces.

Allow me to o that better.  It's funny to see my fingertips mashing things up into words because I cannot hit words into words by accident.

It's funnnnnnny to do that and well there should be a comma inside there but there isn't because that is just how it happens oh fuck!   Time's out for////  fpr what growing conscio0usiouts of, growing conscioutious of.....  growing consciouscious of ....  did i still not spell it right???? growing conscious of the spinny things?

This is the come down,  /'  Comining down off of cutting,  Coming down off of consciousness.  Coming down off fo consciousnesss.   Coming down off of consciousness and coming down off of mobility.  Coming down off of the abukuty to come at folks and understanding yhsy with coming at peoople.... coming at people requires a certain something out of you.  A certain something that I have shut off from myself that I do no and should never be turned onnn again no matter ther input.

Yes I am drunk, but no matter.

I can drive. There is no one I  can't ew

RIP RIP RIP RIP CANCEL

THERE IS NO ONE I CANT REACH.

I ALWAYS COME IN BLOOM.

Focus.

Focus.
















I always hate boundaries.

I fear for the day I forget them and who I will hurt when I do.

Imagining myself in court

attempting to explain my actions

and unable to scribe

reasonable doubt.

Thursday (explication of what came to be "I'll Come See You" the poem)

I don't know how you read it, but this is how I meant it.

Knock the slag off, with air piston jacked hammers.

When I kicked this off, the intent was to put something down in writing that was blunt force enough to make me need to go further to explain it because I know I do paint myself into corners, at least I feel that I do, to add clarity to what I say.  From that spark, the spark of shedding light, everything else developed.

Sitting on a crate opposite you
sitting on another,
printed in yellow block stencil
underneath, 98 mm high explosive x 75.

From that spark I imagined our meeting.  What I said before about knocking off slag with jack hammers was a reference to work.  From that reference, I immediately jumped into the warzone of language and how often times that is how I view my relationship with the world outside of me.  It really is a, put it on whatever scale you want to, some kind of war and this blog is a bit of a foxhole and we are literally sitting on our mental ammunition boxes. 

Underneath my ass 150 mm
aye pee
times 30.  My feet dangling like our cigarette's
smoke mingling on a windless afternoon.

This verse is kind of a wink and a nod because I do avoid actually smoking as much as possible, but I vape pretty hard.  The main thing about it though is that I am prone to large gauge action while most people are happy to work with suppressing fire.  My actions are much more leaned toward "kill them all in one sweep of gun barrel barking."  I can go accurate, but it is much more fun to swamp them in flames the way I have been.  Hence, the large gauge ammo underneath my bum and the smaller gauge, but still deadly, ammunition box underneath the interpolated.

The front is 220 miles out
East as the crow flies.
We will have to refuel
over the mediterranean
and I am looking forward to seeing
how you do it.

This is where we bring in the mechs and how the mechs will get to the front lines, where the action is happening and a short reference to how we wage ware once we get there.  This is a reference to the fact that what is about to happen is not new to either of us.  We know exactly where it is and what needs to be done to get there.  And also speaks to the fact that we have no problem with how the mission succeeds as long as it succeeds.

Our conversation has already broken down
into objectives and way points with a little
bet mixed in to the after action report.

This verse simply speakes to the fact that we've been there before.  Our conversation does not need to be enumerated here, only indicated, hinted at, ellipsed.   We've done it so many times that the only thing that needs to be done is counting up how many people, targets, installations, were destroyed by the time we succeeded.

It is unfair
to where we land and to whom we mount against,
because they are not in on the game.

Again, this verse is a reference to the previous verse, assuming we both got back home after the operation safe and sound 

Us both waiting for the KA-CHUNK
of couplings leaving us in free fall
to where our bombardier's decided
we could do our best
against the populace.

This verse is a credit to the people who get us to the target zone and an acknowledgement that we do not neccessarily know who exactly it is we are going up against inside of our mechs, however.  However we have full faith that they, the pilots and/or controllers of our evening will not drop us into a situation that our equipment and skills directly related to our equipment cannot handle well, if not outright destroy them.

A little cheers of coffee.
A little double check of flight suits.
Is the mic where it needs to be?
Trial fit the helmet again
after a quadruple check;
be sure the reticle is in line.
Double check my nail polish
before the glove comes on.
Smash shoulders and opposing tattoos,
before the top of the flight suit
is zipped on.

This is an inside joke to a close friend who helped me tattoo myself.    It is part inside joke and part coffee joke.  "the best way to start your day" when you are going over your manifest for the day.  You know whatever it is that is required of your skills will take all of your skills and you have to be sure when the time comes to pull the trigger, that trigger cannot fail, take practice shots.

Finish the coffee, with pills in our mouths.
They will learn what we live for,
they will learn what is loud.

They will learn that you do need coffee and that you do live for challenges and that you do know what horrible drugs are and that you are not about it.

Our flights will be long.  I'll sleep inside the mech
along the way.  I don't know what happens to you
while we wait out the sandbox for play.
The thup thup thup thup thup thup
I can hear, because I never turn off
the audio input once I am strapped in.

We both understand how to get to the battlefield.  I don't understand how you are so calm.  I feel like you've been here before and I have not.

For me, it is a very long long long grin
to watch you work.  Guilty.

You know I have not been there before but youare looking forward to my struggling.

Watching, zone cleared against spear chuckers
who happened to have come into
a fushionable pile
and needed reckoning before
something terrible happened,
you break out a "grenade"
two tons strong and willing to-\
-/Christ, where is the pin?

A mixture of edge of tommorrow and starship troopers the book.  In Starship Troopers the book they had miniature nukes.  Miniature nukes could clear an entire area as long as they got clear. In edge of tomorrow the whole deal was differremt.  

Mech against mech.  Dust to dust.
Die another day.
Why can you not understand I do
feel the same?

This is myself, dropped onto this planet trying to stop you and yrtying to fighht you hardcore because what I would like to do is save everyone but I cannot.  What I would also like to do is kill everyone but I can also cannot.  I'm good with figthing you though.  I am good with where you RE COMING FROM.

Fire the shell in my mechanized palm
to fire it just that strong
and knock it four miles out
to change the time of day from moonlit to
high noon in a fire ball that could eat city blocks,
but she's in the air.  Fair.  But "what the f@#$?"

Apologies, but I turned the palm and the gun built in to accelerate  it against the what?  The elbow cannon that went off and blew the palm muzzle off to an odd degree shot it off toward the dark horrizon and it lit up like noon day.

Overkill.........  underneath your left foot,
underneath your left pedal inside your cockpit and
underneath you left foot outside your cockpit
you are grinding human flesh into a paste.  And now is
the fucking time.
Do you remember being small?  I do.
You don't get conscripted by chance.

Hearing him over the comm, realizing that the action he just did with the arm of his mech just required him to smush some people with the foot of his mech....

You find detonators.  You stumble upon detonators.
Land mines   Mines.  I've never met a land mine like you.

Me on the ground amongst the  flattened human beings trying to offer encouragement to my friend (the other pilot) while shaking my head at the damage he did without thinking about the power at his fingertips.

I will know how to move forward
regardless ,after you.
Everyone talks big.  Yack, yack, yak yak yak, waaaan.

Him trying to make another move and myself watching, back in my own mech while our communicators crackle and guns go boom.

Cruiser.  Angry.  There was someone else here.  I will find them, sonavubitch.  Fail.  My fault.    Reset.

Reset.

Reset.

Reset.

Me trying to wipe my memory and undo the entire operation in my head.  Each reset a muzzle flash.

Clutch in.  Match revs. Time to the light.  Gas pedal.  Clutch out.
Release brake.
Gas pedal down.

Slowly.

Burnout.

Me, over the comm link trying to coach him and failing, instead focusing on what I can do.  The work.