magic glances against real life and you hear yourself drawing the spell "focus, streamline, simplify" instead of "streamline, simplify, focus" and understand what you were about to embark on was going to be as destructive as a fucking godeye laser when the latter spell you could've swore you were making generates a map and you hear and know the difference between the two in Kelvins.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
12/31/16
Revisiting Battlefields Gone Silent
How many years has it been?
Revisiting and rereading them (Bits For Flames) for the umpteenth time I see and edit them in ways I could not before. I still have so much to learn.
I do believe my resolution for the new year will be to rewrite every single one of them that I felt fit enough to publish back then with the knowledge and practice I have now.
Rereading them now, these pearls and machinations that I knew were not perfect, but deft enough to force upon other ears, they dance like puppet shows. Telling too much and not showing enough. Stilted. Awkward. Wooden. Produced with what was the greatest understanding of the sweet science of writing and the cold magic of emotive sorcery that now reads like remedial math.
I used to set my goals to things I thought much higher. Quitting smoking! Learning and training to dunk a basketball! Mastering the art of throwing knives and being able to defend myself and hold accountable all who dared to cross me with martial perfection.
In the background I plugged away at how a conversation is made. How to engage someone actively. I worked on my translator software and my lens and tape. I listened to playback and learned how to speak with greater efficiency and economy of words. The war was not multi-tasked. Multitasking is a myth, we all know this.
After 10,000 hours I convinced myself I arrived at the best I can do. The best I have done is a lie. I can do better. And I will.
The emperor will wear new clothes before I turn that engine. First things are first and we have been waiting quite some time for the new design. What we have is a goal. What we will do is place the pen to paper once more and see what shakes out of our new branches that have borne fruit uncut just yet.
The blender awaits. The knife is ready. The cutting board is clean. There are no attachments. It is time to explore the old body and build a new one. When you can get everyone at the same table at the same time you can rearrange the workshop and factory floor plan. New weapons, new tools, new methods.
"...in the foxhole / where I hide..."
/// Hershey Kisses Bells
Revisiting and rereading them (Bits For Flames) for the umpteenth time I see and edit them in ways I could not before. I still have so much to learn.
I do believe my resolution for the new year will be to rewrite every single one of them that I felt fit enough to publish back then with the knowledge and practice I have now.
Rereading them now, these pearls and machinations that I knew were not perfect, but deft enough to force upon other ears, they dance like puppet shows. Telling too much and not showing enough. Stilted. Awkward. Wooden. Produced with what was the greatest understanding of the sweet science of writing and the cold magic of emotive sorcery that now reads like remedial math.
I used to set my goals to things I thought much higher. Quitting smoking! Learning and training to dunk a basketball! Mastering the art of throwing knives and being able to defend myself and hold accountable all who dared to cross me with martial perfection.
In the background I plugged away at how a conversation is made. How to engage someone actively. I worked on my translator software and my lens and tape. I listened to playback and learned how to speak with greater efficiency and economy of words. The war was not multi-tasked. Multitasking is a myth, we all know this.
After 10,000 hours I convinced myself I arrived at the best I can do. The best I have done is a lie. I can do better. And I will.
The emperor will wear new clothes before I turn that engine. First things are first and we have been waiting quite some time for the new design. What we have is a goal. What we will do is place the pen to paper once more and see what shakes out of our new branches that have borne fruit uncut just yet.
The blender awaits. The knife is ready. The cutting board is clean. There are no attachments. It is time to explore the old body and build a new one. When you can get everyone at the same table at the same time you can rearrange the workshop and factory floor plan. New weapons, new tools, new methods.
"...in the foxhole / where I hide..."
/// Hershey Kisses Bells
12/29/16
That Instant
you slip and skate in place before catching yourself on the bathroom sink because you forgot to stand on the bathmat while slathering yourself in baby oil and vaseline to protect your brown skin and you laugh in the mirror and wonder if there're white people doing the same thing in the thick of Winter.
12/18/16
That Instant
you realized what you wanted to do was write. Not necessarily the sound of the future, not the sound of the past, a sound. 13 years ago, an idea started to bloom and you did everything you were supposed to do to avoid it and embrace it in other ways. I went through dark times and bright times. I shifted blame and the blood edge of the knife and the adventures and the lens.
I switched who could be the protagonist and the anti. I prayed on it and asked for direction and gave up my soul to whomever could be and believed in math and science, chance and luck. I gave up and forgot and danced like a rhinoceros in the breeze until I couldn't.
And I realized I have a passion for creation. All paths lead that way, by fire, by ice, by leaf, by wind, by void, moon & sol, stations & interstellar sea.
you realize I have the misfortune to live at an insterstellar gate-
counting droplets of blood in zero gravity.
I switched who could be the protagonist and the anti. I prayed on it and asked for direction and gave up my soul to whomever could be and believed in math and science, chance and luck. I gave up and forgot and danced like a rhinoceros in the breeze until I couldn't.
And I realized I have a passion for creation. All paths lead that way, by fire, by ice, by leaf, by wind, by void, moon & sol, stations & interstellar sea.
you realize I have the misfortune to live at an insterstellar gate-
counting droplets of blood in zero gravity.
That Instant
you realize the definition of intent is when you deliver torque to your wrist to your metacarpals to your knuckles to the strike to shred the dive of physics equation into other and not a moment before, if ever, and you understand everything else is pawing and rehearsal.
12/17/16
Dear (_____)
Dear Sugar Cubes,
Is the sole purpose of your existence to be a reasonable portion and unit of measure for sugar? Were people getting that crazy, that messed up, getting that wild, with their intake that some caste of higher society decided that the only way to separate themselves from the gentry and the animals was to show that they only took their sugar in cubes? I mean, how ridiculous were those swinging days of loose sugar? Were there news reports: "another five dead at a suspected coffee and sugar orgy in the suburbs of East London today." I mean, how exactly did you come to be, oh innocent sugar cube.
Curiously yours,
a tea lover
Is the sole purpose of your existence to be a reasonable portion and unit of measure for sugar? Were people getting that crazy, that messed up, getting that wild, with their intake that some caste of higher society decided that the only way to separate themselves from the gentry and the animals was to show that they only took their sugar in cubes? I mean, how ridiculous were those swinging days of loose sugar? Were there news reports: "another five dead at a suspected coffee and sugar orgy in the suburbs of East London today." I mean, how exactly did you come to be, oh innocent sugar cube.
Curiously yours,
a tea lover
12/15/16
I Know It's Going To Be A Rough Day and That's Okay
I've been trying to arrest my emotions for two days and here we are at day three. I can't allow life to seize up and die. This morning, poking the tines of my work into the middle of a sunny side up egg on a piece of medium tough toast with a shake of a salt and a dollop of syrup beside it, I am afraid. I used to call Annie, I used to call Alexis, I used to call my psychiatrist, my therapist, myself, when fear gripped me. I haven't been able to eat willingly so I am preparing to chop up an egg into a little toast and see where it goes. Maybe we will cut up a clementine into quarters and have that in lieu of juice.
My emotions are still all over the place. Stitched together with some will and a little self motivational glue and a little music. I know I am going to cry today and I won't be able to stop it, but I will make myself go to work as best I can. There will be a lot of difficult exchanges of conversations today. "You look awful." "Are you okay?" I know and no. Walking through hardware stores and to the bank and to the grocery to buy more food to force myself to eat. I cannot allow myself to curl up and die. I cannot allow myself to see people. I have to turn everything inward to generate enough power to keep my sun from collapsing into a singularity.
Hysterical laughter tearing through my lungs and tears staining the floor between my boots while I stand in lines. Eyes red and sunken and lips cracked from grinning and grimacing. Doubling over in hacking coughs and dry heaves that will not stop. Questioning, screaming, begging the snowy sky why there is no magic pill, but there is a magic bullet. It's not going to be easy. Please don't talk to me. I know I am a mess and nothing will help more than time alone. Thank you for understanding.
///Philip Selway - "Coming Up For Air"
My emotions are still all over the place. Stitched together with some will and a little self motivational glue and a little music. I know I am going to cry today and I won't be able to stop it, but I will make myself go to work as best I can. There will be a lot of difficult exchanges of conversations today. "You look awful." "Are you okay?" I know and no. Walking through hardware stores and to the bank and to the grocery to buy more food to force myself to eat. I cannot allow myself to curl up and die. I cannot allow myself to see people. I have to turn everything inward to generate enough power to keep my sun from collapsing into a singularity.
Hysterical laughter tearing through my lungs and tears staining the floor between my boots while I stand in lines. Eyes red and sunken and lips cracked from grinning and grimacing. Doubling over in hacking coughs and dry heaves that will not stop. Questioning, screaming, begging the snowy sky why there is no magic pill, but there is a magic bullet. It's not going to be easy. Please don't talk to me. I know I am a mess and nothing will help more than time alone. Thank you for understanding.
///Philip Selway - "Coming Up For Air"
12/13/16
That Instant
your cat is biting you and you muse about how it has 5 pointy ends, the sixth its tail, and you enumerate your own being human and the count comes back sharp and blunt solid 43 and you know it's just trying to say hello as best it can to a fortress.
12/12/16
Dear (______)
Dear Key,
I know one day you will bring on nuclear Winter. I know it will be the greatest sunrise my eyes will ever see. I am in no hurry and will enjoy Sol's fickle and thorough rays and the ways it cuts through the atmosphere on Terra. Without you and your threat Sol would just be another light bulb, granted a few miles away to say the least and a lot warmer than a piece of tungsten with current through it. You are in my pocket and so the last sunrise too.
with joy,
The Watchmaker
I know one day you will bring on nuclear Winter. I know it will be the greatest sunrise my eyes will ever see. I am in no hurry and will enjoy Sol's fickle and thorough rays and the ways it cuts through the atmosphere on Terra. Without you and your threat Sol would just be another light bulb, granted a few miles away to say the least and a lot warmer than a piece of tungsten with current through it. You are in my pocket and so the last sunrise too.
with joy,
The Watchmaker
12/11/16
That Instant
you understand you have to keep fine grit sandpaper on your person for rolling cigarettes because something happens in the cold air that causes the lines and valleys in your fingerprints to contract enough to turn them into things that cannot move paper with doable friction and they must be scuffed anew manually.
12/5/16
That Instant
you hardcode override self destruct sequences through the panels via green lit switches after flipping the red caps and know that sometimes dual keys are a fools errand and are built in through practice for a different you.
12/2/16
Dear (_____)
Dear Spark,
you will never leave me. I will never leave you.
Sincerely,
Bass That Shakes The Windows of My Apartment
12/1/16
That Instant
you understand the symbiotic relationship you have with the deletion virus and call it by a more appropriate name because it is a living creature inside of you and it needs you alive as much as you need it and everything must have a name aligned to what it does and "virus" is well off the mark.
That Instant
you realize the recursive imperative to stop relaying a thought through words two sentences sooner (brought about by the writers of Futurama) and go with what you have after the subtraction to aid communication only works when there is no capacity for self editing.
And then you realize the recursive imperative is also a deletion virus that will reduce your verbal exchanges to single building blocks as though you are a tourist, no matter the landscape or indigenous peoples.
And then you realize you've been standing in one place for 47 minutes staring into space after you said hello and introduced yourself.
And then you realize you started your own deletion virus 28 years ago when wrong answers had painful consequences and every question or answer spoken extended miles through trees that grew instantaneously from the strike of word to ear, rippled and color coded.
And then you realize why that episode of Futurama was so funny.
And then you realize conversation will never be your forte and why.
And then you realize the recursive imperative is also a deletion virus that will reduce your verbal exchanges to single building blocks as though you are a tourist, no matter the landscape or indigenous peoples.
And then you realize you've been standing in one place for 47 minutes staring into space after you said hello and introduced yourself.
And then you realize you started your own deletion virus 28 years ago when wrong answers had painful consequences and every question or answer spoken extended miles through trees that grew instantaneously from the strike of word to ear, rippled and color coded.
And then you realize why that episode of Futurama was so funny.
And then you realize conversation will never be your forte and why.
11/18/16
The Ethos of The Project
As projects continue to mount up incomplete the motor pool continues to grow. The airfield continues to sprawl. The docks, the compounds, the factories, the underground sites, the developers, the researchers, the caf staff, the janitors, the resource department, the policing, the eateries, the sourcing, the contractors, the licensing, it all sprawls and becomes their own cities. Their own threaded lives to live each birth to death. Transportation hubs and power grids. Interlaced reasons and reasoning.
All of them existing in suspended animation. Adjusting a blade of grass here. Striking a cloud there. Moving the sun a few degrees and running over every detail on that continent's sunsetting side. Moving the sun a few degrees back and seeing it again for reference before putting it back where it was and tilting its axis a half degree so the flock of early evening moths make a little more sense. I want to live in them in a universe of suspended animation. I have to finish them. As you work on them and take on new ones that universe reaches higher and higher resolutions and once they cross into the realized that's the end.
The generator stops and something new exists. The snow globe must collapse. The means must see their end. Everything that was in there is now in there. I can't keep joyriding through the suspended animation universe. It's time for them to go. Time to take apart the cities that sprang up around them. There'll be other cities to build and populate. I tell myself "it'll be fun."
///Nina Simone - "Feeling Good (Bassnectar Remix)"
All of them existing in suspended animation. Adjusting a blade of grass here. Striking a cloud there. Moving the sun a few degrees and running over every detail on that continent's sunsetting side. Moving the sun a few degrees back and seeing it again for reference before putting it back where it was and tilting its axis a half degree so the flock of early evening moths make a little more sense. I want to live in them in a universe of suspended animation. I have to finish them. As you work on them and take on new ones that universe reaches higher and higher resolutions and once they cross into the realized that's the end.
The generator stops and something new exists. The snow globe must collapse. The means must see their end. Everything that was in there is now in there. I can't keep joyriding through the suspended animation universe. It's time for them to go. Time to take apart the cities that sprang up around them. There'll be other cities to build and populate. I tell myself "it'll be fun."
///Nina Simone - "Feeling Good (Bassnectar Remix)"
11/12/16
That Instant
Joint pain is reduced, I don't shit blood, I don't experience tremors, I sleep okay, rage is curtailed, I eat better, I can dream, flat affect is diminished, suicidal thoughts are reduced, I don't pee blood, heart rate remains normal, violent diarrhea is never a concern alongside double vision, blood clots are a nonissue, I can make a complete thought, the voices are muted and I can feel a range of feelings and I understand that may be the trade off for the chances of respiratory cancers. If I have to pick between definite physiological changes and a tilted dice roll, pass the dice and light me up.
11/11/16
What Half The Country Said
I can't stop bursting into tears every few hours. Food won't stay in me when I do try to force myself to eat. It's heart rending. My body is physically rejecting reality like an immune system trying to defeat a bacterial infection. Half of the country would prefer you don't exist. Half of the country said that you are what's wrong with the country. Half of the country said you are worthless. Half of the country said do us a favor and keep it moving. Sickening. Half of the country said your life is good enough, you should be happy no one is tying you to a tree and that should be good enough for you. Half of the country said we don't want to be bothered with you anymore. Go away.
I wish I could fucking disappear. Just evaporate into thin air. Maybe you voted for him because he had that one campaign promise that you could really get behind. Maybe you voted for him because Hillary is a woman and you just can't have a woman in an office with that much responsibility. Maybe you voted for him because you flipped a coin and whatever it landed on was what you were going to vote. Maybe you voted for him because you truly believe some of what he says or you thought he's a strong leader capable of leading America back to some made up glory from the past. Whatever reason you found for yourself, whatever mental gymnastics you made yourself do: what you said with that vote was fucking get out of our lives because we are sick of you and this country is not for you, it is for us. I want to kill myself.
You may continue to justify your vote with "well, I don't believe that and I don't think he really thinks that. I love minorities. I'm friends with them. I love women, they should have the same rights as men and jobs..." oh of course. "He only said that to get people riled up. He tells it like it is, but he doesn't mean what he says..." you are so full of insane bile it is nauseating. If you are willing to overlook everything he stands for to find the one thing you can hold on to and make yourself okay with casting a vote for him you are saying you are okay with everything else about him and can get behind everything he says. You cannot pick and pull little bits here and there and throw blinders on toward the rest of the hatred and disgust. That's like riding in a car with some people who are on their way to beat someone to death and shrugging because you're in the car to get a lift from your house to the store. What the fuck should you care who gets beaten lifeless, it wasn't you holding a chain or bat, hell you didn't even get out of the car and turned the radio up when they stopped.
What you said with your vote was disappear. I wish I could. My body will stop convulsing soon. I'll get back in to the movement of life. Half of the people I see I will wonder what hatred is hiding underneath that smiley "good day, to you" mask. What part of his hate speech is inside you word for word that you've managed to mask with "I like his healthcare ideas." What part of his hate speech is inside you, but with a gentler paraphrase because you would never say it that way exactly. I will wonder what fears lie behind half of their eyes. I can't kill myself. You'll always be there and disappearing won't change how you feel. My pain will always be there and I'll have to learn to live with this latest greatest example. I'm just tired of fighting and trying to fit in around the margins near the shadows. What you said with your vote will never not be disgusting, will never not bring tears to my eyes. You say get over it, we've come so far since slavery. What half the country said with their vote with proud chests and big smiles begs to differ.
I wish I could fucking disappear. Just evaporate into thin air. Maybe you voted for him because he had that one campaign promise that you could really get behind. Maybe you voted for him because Hillary is a woman and you just can't have a woman in an office with that much responsibility. Maybe you voted for him because you flipped a coin and whatever it landed on was what you were going to vote. Maybe you voted for him because you truly believe some of what he says or you thought he's a strong leader capable of leading America back to some made up glory from the past. Whatever reason you found for yourself, whatever mental gymnastics you made yourself do: what you said with that vote was fucking get out of our lives because we are sick of you and this country is not for you, it is for us. I want to kill myself.
You may continue to justify your vote with "well, I don't believe that and I don't think he really thinks that. I love minorities. I'm friends with them. I love women, they should have the same rights as men and jobs..." oh of course. "He only said that to get people riled up. He tells it like it is, but he doesn't mean what he says..." you are so full of insane bile it is nauseating. If you are willing to overlook everything he stands for to find the one thing you can hold on to and make yourself okay with casting a vote for him you are saying you are okay with everything else about him and can get behind everything he says. You cannot pick and pull little bits here and there and throw blinders on toward the rest of the hatred and disgust. That's like riding in a car with some people who are on their way to beat someone to death and shrugging because you're in the car to get a lift from your house to the store. What the fuck should you care who gets beaten lifeless, it wasn't you holding a chain or bat, hell you didn't even get out of the car and turned the radio up when they stopped.
What you said with your vote was disappear. I wish I could. My body will stop convulsing soon. I'll get back in to the movement of life. Half of the people I see I will wonder what hatred is hiding underneath that smiley "good day, to you" mask. What part of his hate speech is inside you word for word that you've managed to mask with "I like his healthcare ideas." What part of his hate speech is inside you, but with a gentler paraphrase because you would never say it that way exactly. I will wonder what fears lie behind half of their eyes. I can't kill myself. You'll always be there and disappearing won't change how you feel. My pain will always be there and I'll have to learn to live with this latest greatest example. I'm just tired of fighting and trying to fit in around the margins near the shadows. What you said with your vote will never not be disgusting, will never not bring tears to my eyes. You say get over it, we've come so far since slavery. What half the country said with their vote with proud chests and big smiles begs to differ.
11/9/16
How To Fast Forward the Next 8 Years
It's quite simple. The world is not going to end because Donald Trump was elected. The offices will struggle to accomplish anything because the policies don't work, don't exist, or both. They'll distract the American public for four years with scary this and that. Throw in a war on something at home and more involvement in a war somewhere else. Start the next election cycle highlighting how everything that went wrong was because everyone else screwed it up and the country wasn't ready for real change yet and it would take at least four years to undo nonexistent office corruption and then you have Donald Trump re-elected and nothing gets done again on a platform of "every magical thing that can't be done or makes no sense, but makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, will get done this time". Some people get a lot richer. Most people don't. Tons of imaginary money changes bank accounts, a bunch of people get sick, some businesses collapse, the environment takes a hit, international relations trip over themselves, segregation gets worse, and then a Democrat is elected again when a few more people jump over to the other side of the aisle because they don't want to be associated with the consequences any more and they're tired of trying to explain how their ideas worked, but didn't, but obviously absolutely did, but actually data can be manipulated to say anything of course, so... you know... allow my colleague to explain.
No need to leave the country. Just yawn and go back to sleep and wake up 8 years from now. Things will be worse. Trying to change them will be impossible until the people holding the levers have to step away and everyone has a fresh, 8 years long, understanding of what is and is not to be feared and challenged instead of what they've been distracted or tricked or worn down into believing. Yep, 8 years sounds about right for the messaging and programming to finally fade. Just try to live the best life you can in the meantime and do what you can to keep your life and loved ones from collapsing under the weight of lunacy and if we're all lucky 4 years will be all it takes for folks to snap out of the flash & magic show.
Then with that Democrat, everyone on the other side will start clamoring "what about us" even though their lives under so and so Republican, locally or nationally, didn't get much better because it literally can't get much better without extracting freedoms from other people (liberties and justices have to come from somewhere eventually), but they'll see other lives improving because there is literally that much space for improvement without taking away anything from anyone else. "Injustice, inequality, we deserve better too" the other side will say and the flash and magic show parade will come crawling over the horizon with their flags and music and swaying tents like a fantastical parade from outer space and it'll start over again and the only thing you can do is hope enough was done before it arrives that much of the work will still be standing when it finally dissipates.
///Paranoia Agent - (Ending Credits) oh, calliope
No need to leave the country. Just yawn and go back to sleep and wake up 8 years from now. Things will be worse. Trying to change them will be impossible until the people holding the levers have to step away and everyone has a fresh, 8 years long, understanding of what is and is not to be feared and challenged instead of what they've been distracted or tricked or worn down into believing. Yep, 8 years sounds about right for the messaging and programming to finally fade. Just try to live the best life you can in the meantime and do what you can to keep your life and loved ones from collapsing under the weight of lunacy and if we're all lucky 4 years will be all it takes for folks to snap out of the flash & magic show.
Then with that Democrat, everyone on the other side will start clamoring "what about us" even though their lives under so and so Republican, locally or nationally, didn't get much better because it literally can't get much better without extracting freedoms from other people (liberties and justices have to come from somewhere eventually), but they'll see other lives improving because there is literally that much space for improvement without taking away anything from anyone else. "Injustice, inequality, we deserve better too" the other side will say and the flash and magic show parade will come crawling over the horizon with their flags and music and swaying tents like a fantastical parade from outer space and it'll start over again and the only thing you can do is hope enough was done before it arrives that much of the work will still be standing when it finally dissipates.
///Paranoia Agent - (Ending Credits) oh, calliope
11/5/16
That Instant
you realize your disdain for punctuation in sentence structure is the root of "trap" cadence in lyric design and it's a happy accident that rips you into modernity.
10/28/16
Texts From A Stoneissuer
"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."
Remember the stoneissuer. Remember they are not your friend. Do they? So the texts come in. Texts about hard times and market fluctuations. People too busy to do X or Y and on and on until you get to the bone and your teeth crunch a little as you grind them: "can I buy some to get by 'til...". Oh, no they don't. The stoneissuer never does. Forgive and forget and all. I get it. Break through the bone to the marrow. That chain of texts months and months ago still burns bright despite the ash and dirt of time packed over it. Despite the months of rain to douse it. The clock has struck and the ringtone chimes for thee.
Remember when you told me it wasn't that good. You said "well, on the street I can get this and that for this and this isn't even as good as what I usually get so I don't see why I should have to pay X and Y when... if you need the money my husband can loan you some. You don't need to up charge me when what you have is basically street." Oh, I remember, stoneissuer. I only smoke what I can get myself. If you weren't willing to pay more for the lengths I had to go to in order to fill the requirements of what I need to enjoy and fill my prescription then, guess what: it's not worth your money now either.
Stoneissuer. Poor stoneissuer. I'm not trying to teach you a lesson. I'm eliminating a blight upon my land. Ring back later when your head isn't licking crumbs out of your jean pocket and your fingers aren't cramping trying to extract dreadful resin from a crack in the glass of your picked clean wares. Then, I'll be a believer. Until then, plan a little better. Or have a little restraint. Better yet, do both.
///JJ Doom - "GMO feat. Beth Gibbons"
Remember the stoneissuer. Remember they are not your friend. Do they? So the texts come in. Texts about hard times and market fluctuations. People too busy to do X or Y and on and on until you get to the bone and your teeth crunch a little as you grind them: "can I buy some to get by 'til...". Oh, no they don't. The stoneissuer never does. Forgive and forget and all. I get it. Break through the bone to the marrow. That chain of texts months and months ago still burns bright despite the ash and dirt of time packed over it. Despite the months of rain to douse it. The clock has struck and the ringtone chimes for thee.
Remember when you told me it wasn't that good. You said "well, on the street I can get this and that for this and this isn't even as good as what I usually get so I don't see why I should have to pay X and Y when... if you need the money my husband can loan you some. You don't need to up charge me when what you have is basically street." Oh, I remember, stoneissuer. I only smoke what I can get myself. If you weren't willing to pay more for the lengths I had to go to in order to fill the requirements of what I need to enjoy and fill my prescription then, guess what: it's not worth your money now either.
Stoneissuer. Poor stoneissuer. I'm not trying to teach you a lesson. I'm eliminating a blight upon my land. Ring back later when your head isn't licking crumbs out of your jean pocket and your fingers aren't cramping trying to extract dreadful resin from a crack in the glass of your picked clean wares. Then, I'll be a believer. Until then, plan a little better. Or have a little restraint. Better yet, do both.
///JJ Doom - "GMO feat. Beth Gibbons"
10/17/16
That Instant
you make peace with the pipe dream of getting back down to your optimal fighting weight and know you can get close without sacrificing too much of your day to day functional weight.
That Instant
you understand it doesn't matter if you've won or lost. You understand anew that the only thing that matters is what you know and the only thing, as time continues to bleed off of the clock, the only thing worth knowing about yourself is what you will be getting back to your feet seven seconds in to your third eight count.
10/11/16
Dear (_____)
Dear online gamer,
If I said I would be right back or if I told you a time around which I might be joining the online community, do not call me twenty times when I'm late getting there. Do not text me twenty messages full of curse words. Do not send me emails asking me where I am. The rules of meeting courtesies and respect don't apply to online video game recreation. Nothing in life is screwed up by anything that does or does not happen there. Literally nothing. If someone leaves a chat room without saying goodbye, do you go to their house and ring their doorbell fifty times? Find something else to do while you wait, or don't wait at all. It's a big world out there, kiddo.
It is a game. It is a fictional world. The real world takes precedent at all times. What do you not understand about that? This fictional world is populated with literally hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people. Find one to play with. Sometimes plans change. Badgering and harassing people is the wrong way to get in touch with anyone. No one, the fifteenth time their phone rings, thinks "oh terrific, I can't wait to talk to this person who has no concept of friendly boundaries and is losing their mind; they are going to be level headed and rational when I press 'answer'." How flat out of touch are you?
Get over yourself. Better yet, get into yourself. Don't be so dependent on other people to complete your gaming happiness. Or don't. Keep ringing people thirty times and leaving voice mails that say "hey, call me back" and strings of indignant texts. I'm sure it'll work out great for you some day, right?
Rationally yours,
another online gamer
If I said I would be right back or if I told you a time around which I might be joining the online community, do not call me twenty times when I'm late getting there. Do not text me twenty messages full of curse words. Do not send me emails asking me where I am. The rules of meeting courtesies and respect don't apply to online video game recreation. Nothing in life is screwed up by anything that does or does not happen there. Literally nothing. If someone leaves a chat room without saying goodbye, do you go to their house and ring their doorbell fifty times? Find something else to do while you wait, or don't wait at all. It's a big world out there, kiddo.
It is a game. It is a fictional world. The real world takes precedent at all times. What do you not understand about that? This fictional world is populated with literally hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people. Find one to play with. Sometimes plans change. Badgering and harassing people is the wrong way to get in touch with anyone. No one, the fifteenth time their phone rings, thinks "oh terrific, I can't wait to talk to this person who has no concept of friendly boundaries and is losing their mind; they are going to be level headed and rational when I press 'answer'." How flat out of touch are you?
Get over yourself. Better yet, get into yourself. Don't be so dependent on other people to complete your gaming happiness. Or don't. Keep ringing people thirty times and leaving voice mails that say "hey, call me back" and strings of indignant texts. I'm sure it'll work out great for you some day, right?
Rationally yours,
another online gamer
10/10/16
Change Clothes
New covers are coming. Beware.
I love taking on new challenges. Who doesn't. "I don't like change!" Relax. We'll get her done before the snow flaws in twenty sixteen. Falls. Same difference.
///C.W. Stoneking - "Dodo Blues" fat snowflakes
I love taking on new challenges. Who doesn't. "I don't like change!" Relax. We'll get her done before the snow flaws in twenty sixteen. Falls. Same difference.
///C.W. Stoneking - "Dodo Blues" fat snowflakes
The Best Thing
about having a good cry, regardless of what its ends are, is that you had it on a Sunday and by Monday's scheduled demands your eyes will be back to a stoic neutral.
Return Of The Painted Dinosaur (New Limit)
To say that it is difficult to talk about is true. Not an overstatement, not an understatement. The wounds still feel like they happened in a dream. When I wake up I feel like I am going to wake up again as soon as start to move my limbs, and I do not. I wake up once and look at my hand and wrist and wiggle my fingertips and hold it up over my face and pinch myself and poke my eyebrows and sniff it and it is mine. Check after check comes back positive. "This belongs to you." There was not a mistake. There was not a swap of body parts while you were sleeping. You are awake. You are breathing. The nerves are speaking to each other as they should. Motor functions have all checked out. You are indeed occupying the body you went to bed in. Further damage has ceased. Necrosis is staved off. Healing has also ceased. It is not going to get better or return to mint, though it will also not get worse. Wake up. Get up.
Some days I wake up, since it happened, and I scream into my pillow for long pillows for long minutes. Pound my fists on the mattress. Cry until I am exhausted. And then get up and head to the shower, not to take one, but to get the bandages on my leg wet enough to peel off the still reforming skin without damaging it or tearing it because no matter how non-stick bandages claim to be, they will fuse with your newly regenerated skin and tear it off like a fine gossamer contacted with Velcro if you are not careful. If you stub your toe or brush your shin against a coffee table corner or bump against a chair leg, that newly formed skin will peel free like over ripe peach fuzz and the healing has to begin all over again.
I've wanted to brand myself for some time. A change of pace between scarification stints and a way to get a different look as I work on tattooing myself to help me mark time between the many different iterations of myself and stages of my life. The pain brings an acute awareness that helps me cut through the storm swells and confusion and voices and whorls and weirs of manic depression and schizophrenia. When your nerves are screaming out at you, it can drown out the noise. When you can touch something concrete and constant it becomes a reference stone and constant reminder of your human elements, your and everyone else's pains and joys and emotional lives. It allows you to access a reality that opens doors of sympathy and empathy you otherwise would not be able to see or understand. It clear cuts a path to direct needs and functions. In small doses, that pain is invaluable and a joy with incredible utility. In large doses it is a nightmare.
When the deep fryer began to fall over, time did not slow down. I knew my two cats, rescued from negligent homes some years ago, were both in my efficiency kitchen with me, waiting for me to toss a little food on the floor for them to nose and paw, maybe eat, maybe pass on. The fryer was in the same space it'd occupied since I bought it and first began using it. Hundreds of times. This time, whatever balance struck that slowly shifted through the years made its final move. It began to fall, my cats looking up at me, and I threw my hands out at full speed to stop it. From all of the previous times I'd dropped bowls, or a bucket slipped off of a shelf while I was filling it, I knew the cats wouldn't move until it hit the floor and I didn't have time to try to scare them out of the splash radius with words. The speech centers of my brain were an afterthought. All I could engage was "protect them!"
Weeks later I can understand why. I can't afford to take them to a veterinarian to treat them long term for hot oil burns, especially what would likely have been second to third degree burns over 50% or more of their little bodies. I would have had to put them down or take them to a vet to have them do it. The whiff, the scent, the lightest breeze of a notion of having to mercy kill them was enough to send me into action because they are two of my mates. My family in my outpost here in Pittsburgh as I build a life for myself, a single early thirties male permanently estranged from all family save for my immediate siblings, and even they not all as close as siblings are often assumed to be. They mean the world to me, no matter how often I bellyache about them keeping me up all night with their little paw paw games and wrestling with my feet and ankles with a little too much claw now and then. They're my shipmates that take care of the place while I am away and while I'm hurtling through the universe, trying to make sense of other people, and maybe stumble upon someone or ones to accompany me, in my hodgepodge, homemade, Tardis. My companions.
I lunged and the fryer moved along the shelf and slammed against the wall and 367 degree oil rolled up its side like water in a blender. Below, the skitter scratch of cat claws scrambling against floor boards reached my ears, my leading foot planted against the plastic tile to balance me. Relief washed over me knowing "they will be safe" as the sheet of amber oil hanging in the air began its descent over where the fryer basin used to be. Where my hands now were.
I snatched my left hand backward, my right still connected to the arm putting as much force as possible into the basin, now against the wall to drive my body backward. The oil sloshed over my right hand and, knowing I could not withdraw it without allowing the entireity of my torso to fall into the shower and shelf and further shake the ball of solar flare to catch the rest of its contents on my face, I pushed back and took a shower against the skin's hand.
The thump and tumble of my cats running away collided with the immediate shock of hot oil across my hand and wrist and once my body began traveling backward, the oil beginning to slap and clap against the floor, I began to raise my leg against the back splash. What splashed and dotted my left leg cooled enough as it dotted my pants to leave no mark. What landed in the bin turned around its base like a tsunamic rip tide, crushed against the basin's rear wall, curled around as sport, cameras flashing, snap, and teeth bared came for me.
Balanced, I tore my right hand away, the curling aftershock cresting. It spilled. The wave covered my knee and washed my shin and right foot and that was when a scream cut loose. I cried out. Prime and howl. I screamed to the skies as the last of it dribbled off of my toes.
The deep fryer, spun with the terror of my flash fried hand, fell backward and spilled the rest of its contents to the floor that I, loosed from protecting cats and certain further was easily, by miles, too far, could leap clear and land against the kitchen sink. I breathed hard for wasted minutes in a mental gridlock, hips perched on the lip of the kitchen sink, before I ran to the bathroom.
The cold water was turned to its maximum setting with the tub to shower knob turned to full shower. Water washed all over me and I held my paw up to the chill spray and only brought it down to rinse over every other part of the right side of my body that was vibrating at death levels. Sometimes when I lose my temper and cannot corral it I will fire off a punch into an inanimate object to pop off steam and that tingle returned is that tingle that tells you every part of your skin that was between flesh and bone and the rock and the hard place you found yourself in to bring ya to a point where the only release was the flood of endorphin and whatever other enzymes cover up disappointment and rage has died and maybe given up a fragment of solace to the rest of the mad house. That tingle, rushing over the right side of my body and the nerves shouting out for soft words brought me back to the point where I understood I could not put enough cold water on every part of me that needed it.
My leg continued to burn. For hours afterward. I was able to wash my arm in enough cold water, enough of it falling into the tub, as it scattered from the shower's head against my hand, to cool my foot. Second degree burns, superficial as superficial second degree burns can be, set in on my arm and foot as second degree burns ate into my leg, starved of cool.
I got out of the shower and pat dried myself.
Skin came off in palm sized chunks.
It stuck to the towel.
I got back in the shower.
Skin clogged the drain.
I cried. I grabbed a bar of soap and rubbed. More skin came loose. It stuck to the walls of the shower. It stuck to my own face. It caught in my chest hair and groin. Tendrils drifted from my beard. I shouted "no!" I shouted "this is not happening" over and over and over. For many seconds it was all I could say. Every part of me felt like it was coming unseamed.
I was in shock for two days.
I didn't know what to say to myself or anyone else. I didn't know what to believe. I slept. When I woke I did not move. While I stayed frozen I tried to sleep until I did. When I was not sleeping I tried to. When I was sleeping I waked with a recurring nightmare every handful of minutes I could forget. Terror stricken. It was not real. I was in shock.
Waking, I looked at my hand and it was not mine. It was a raw thing. It stank. The smell of it was raw meat opened two days too late. Sour and slimy and sticking to everything it touched. Blood oozed and wept from its every divide. It was a scene in that movie that you cannot watch start to finish because it turns your stomach just enough to make your eyes cross and tinfoil rattle in your mouth until you are too sick to stand. For some time, waking and looking at it and having its smell fill my nostrils so close to my face and knowing that if I lifted my blanket enough to look down at my leg I would see a sea monster colored in a sickly greenish yellow full of lint, cat fur, exudate, and blood scab as far as light can carry, I would sweat and convince myself if I just lied still it would heal itself fine like a rug burn.
On the third day I threw up. 60 some odd hours in bed hydrating with only a two litre of Barq's root beer I happened to toss over there before deciding to make food before bed took it's toll. Waking up the third day for the twentieth time in that period, pain spiking, and the odor of raw flesh beside my head, unable to shake it away and unable to cut it off, took its toll. I wretched.
Rolls of heaves began working their way along my spine. I began to scramble with my good left hand to make sure my face was pointed toward empty floor space instead of mattress, pillow, or wall. I could not walk. Wherever the projectile went, it had to be somewhere I would be able to lie near without getting it into open wounds. I succeeded and ralfed, sickened by the furious turbulent grotesquery of my own body parts.
On the fourth day I came to grips with what would become my new modernity. Without health insurance, there was no one to fix me except me. I tried to walk and succeeded. I pissed. In my own toilet. Deep brown syrup. I found my fridge. There was food, I walked to my sink. There was water. I drank and drank and drank. I pulled food and food and left arm's full of tupperware and placed on my night stand. I found my cubby of strange and sudden items and found my scarification kit and breathed a sigh. Relief, joy, love for the friend who came over prepared for a one time dual scarification incident I ribbed him for (coming over prepared) that he left with me. With a little improvisation I was able to repurpose the kit to cover the open wounds enough to return to bed on track to recovery instead of on rails to infection.
Days went by like barges trying to force their way over harbor reefs. The stench of my hand continued to get to me as I left it bare with the kit nearby. The flesh continued to sweat and the swelling did not go down. Slicing it off became an option. I could not sleep with any fidelity. I could not rest and when I was awake the pain I felt was more than anything near the throb I felt inside my skull when I fractured my jaw. It was more than anything I felt when I fell down stairs or was in my second car accident or slipped off of the odd side of a hand rail and landed on the concrete bordering the stairs beside a 21 foot decent from a porch to a sidewalk with a hill between us. I wanted to cut it off as the bare flesh continued to weep that slimy clear goo. Cut it off! Cut it off!
I wrapped it. I wrapped it. Healing began. The recurring nightmare, the recurring dream continued. I was able to make bandages and while it healed I was able to order in specialized products for attending to burns. I researched for days whiles my leg and hand and arm stuck to my bed sheets. Every time I tried to move, they stuck to me. Belief set. "If I don't move while I'm waiting for these products to arrive, there is no way it can get infected because it is sealed by the plastic fabric so further movement will only create more problems and possible amputation." I had to figure out a way to urinate.
And I did. Three weeks in. My neighbors stopped by to see if I was okay. I still could not leave the bed for any sort of extended period. Dropping my burned hand below my heart produced an incredible throbbing pain the likes of I have never felt. To put the sensation in perspective: do you know when recommendations say to keep the limb elevated? Imagine that every time you are lying flat on your back that limb crosses a plain. Now imagine that plain is wherever your heart is located. Now imagine that every time that limb crosses south of that plain you instantly feel like it is about to burst apart as though a truck tire, connected to a 3/4 ton truck, is rolling over it and if you do not raise it above that plain IT WILL BURST INTO HAMBURGER MEAT. Yes. That. Now imagine that while you are trying to find a comfortable way to lie in bed and sleep. Now imagine that happens instantly for 18 days to everything from your elbow up and your knee down!
Coming in to something close to normal. I hope that was coherent. How else can we survive?
The pain remains. It feels indescribable though I've done my best.
People you knew before look at you differently. More so than your scarification. They look at you as though there is something contagious about you. The root of your being is love for animals. Perhaps they should.
As I've healed and become a human being again through the last weeks, looking at my hand and my leg, I almost feel like I am wearing a human costume. All of the skin was flash fried off of my hand save for my palm. The skin underneath each one of my digits and my palm is original and up to date. Looking at it, seeing it clinging to the rest of my flesh, it is out of place. I want to peel it off and it will not go. It will not go away. There is no transistion between the old, the original, and the new. It is stark. If you shake my right hand you will feel the transition in the form of many tiny spikes where the original skin meets the new. Where the rough and weathered meets the baby smooth; fingers crossed bounds, hands clasped in a firm grasp.
I still find pieces of skin around my apartment. It is disgusting. It is revolting. Vomit climbs through my body and I know I have to pick that part of me up and put it in a garbage can and it is... .... .... ..... .......................... I know I can go on. I know I will. I know I have to. It hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts.
Fuck. It hurts so much and I know I have to go on and it just fucking hurts so much. I want to shake it off. I want to be able to shake it off. The pain is ................. ugh. I know I'll beat it. I think part of the pain it gives me is that I didn't have a choice. And now I have to wear a permanent and exceptionally visible reminder of how I didn't have a choice through the 24 years of my life my Dad destroyed myself. I broke away from that, finally. It took cutting my face apart to see. To finally split his noose. Now I have to wear the scars of chance and love right along with them. It hurts. It fucking hurts. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I have to wear it. I will and have and will continue to do so.
I am happy to close this chapter. If I didn't talk about it I would still find myself living in it months, maybe years, from now.
At least now,
at least now,
we can get back to comedy, true tragedy (instead of misfortune), and stories untold in fiction. Close this book and open a new. Carry on, soldier. How many times do I have to change? How many times do I have to be changed? People already look at me so many different ways from what I am. And they will look at me differently again.
Ever becoming.
We have been patient. We will still.
You thought you new hell. It was one of many.
It was a long month. Come back home, darling. The worst is over. You may have set a new ten. Many, most, if not all, is lost in translation, however- -there's still a lot of work to do. Do not quit on me and I will not quit on you.
/////Bjork x Deathgrips - "Thunderbolt" fourteen birth of the painted dinosaur. Molt.
Some days I wake up, since it happened, and I scream into my pillow for long pillows for long minutes. Pound my fists on the mattress. Cry until I am exhausted. And then get up and head to the shower, not to take one, but to get the bandages on my leg wet enough to peel off the still reforming skin without damaging it or tearing it because no matter how non-stick bandages claim to be, they will fuse with your newly regenerated skin and tear it off like a fine gossamer contacted with Velcro if you are not careful. If you stub your toe or brush your shin against a coffee table corner or bump against a chair leg, that newly formed skin will peel free like over ripe peach fuzz and the healing has to begin all over again.
I've wanted to brand myself for some time. A change of pace between scarification stints and a way to get a different look as I work on tattooing myself to help me mark time between the many different iterations of myself and stages of my life. The pain brings an acute awareness that helps me cut through the storm swells and confusion and voices and whorls and weirs of manic depression and schizophrenia. When your nerves are screaming out at you, it can drown out the noise. When you can touch something concrete and constant it becomes a reference stone and constant reminder of your human elements, your and everyone else's pains and joys and emotional lives. It allows you to access a reality that opens doors of sympathy and empathy you otherwise would not be able to see or understand. It clear cuts a path to direct needs and functions. In small doses, that pain is invaluable and a joy with incredible utility. In large doses it is a nightmare.
When the deep fryer began to fall over, time did not slow down. I knew my two cats, rescued from negligent homes some years ago, were both in my efficiency kitchen with me, waiting for me to toss a little food on the floor for them to nose and paw, maybe eat, maybe pass on. The fryer was in the same space it'd occupied since I bought it and first began using it. Hundreds of times. This time, whatever balance struck that slowly shifted through the years made its final move. It began to fall, my cats looking up at me, and I threw my hands out at full speed to stop it. From all of the previous times I'd dropped bowls, or a bucket slipped off of a shelf while I was filling it, I knew the cats wouldn't move until it hit the floor and I didn't have time to try to scare them out of the splash radius with words. The speech centers of my brain were an afterthought. All I could engage was "protect them!"
Weeks later I can understand why. I can't afford to take them to a veterinarian to treat them long term for hot oil burns, especially what would likely have been second to third degree burns over 50% or more of their little bodies. I would have had to put them down or take them to a vet to have them do it. The whiff, the scent, the lightest breeze of a notion of having to mercy kill them was enough to send me into action because they are two of my mates. My family in my outpost here in Pittsburgh as I build a life for myself, a single early thirties male permanently estranged from all family save for my immediate siblings, and even they not all as close as siblings are often assumed to be. They mean the world to me, no matter how often I bellyache about them keeping me up all night with their little paw paw games and wrestling with my feet and ankles with a little too much claw now and then. They're my shipmates that take care of the place while I am away and while I'm hurtling through the universe, trying to make sense of other people, and maybe stumble upon someone or ones to accompany me, in my hodgepodge, homemade, Tardis. My companions.
I lunged and the fryer moved along the shelf and slammed against the wall and 367 degree oil rolled up its side like water in a blender. Below, the skitter scratch of cat claws scrambling against floor boards reached my ears, my leading foot planted against the plastic tile to balance me. Relief washed over me knowing "they will be safe" as the sheet of amber oil hanging in the air began its descent over where the fryer basin used to be. Where my hands now were.
I snatched my left hand backward, my right still connected to the arm putting as much force as possible into the basin, now against the wall to drive my body backward. The oil sloshed over my right hand and, knowing I could not withdraw it without allowing the entireity of my torso to fall into the shower and shelf and further shake the ball of solar flare to catch the rest of its contents on my face, I pushed back and took a shower against the skin's hand.
The thump and tumble of my cats running away collided with the immediate shock of hot oil across my hand and wrist and once my body began traveling backward, the oil beginning to slap and clap against the floor, I began to raise my leg against the back splash. What splashed and dotted my left leg cooled enough as it dotted my pants to leave no mark. What landed in the bin turned around its base like a tsunamic rip tide, crushed against the basin's rear wall, curled around as sport, cameras flashing, snap, and teeth bared came for me.
Balanced, I tore my right hand away, the curling aftershock cresting. It spilled. The wave covered my knee and washed my shin and right foot and that was when a scream cut loose. I cried out. Prime and howl. I screamed to the skies as the last of it dribbled off of my toes.
The deep fryer, spun with the terror of my flash fried hand, fell backward and spilled the rest of its contents to the floor that I, loosed from protecting cats and certain further was easily, by miles, too far, could leap clear and land against the kitchen sink. I breathed hard for wasted minutes in a mental gridlock, hips perched on the lip of the kitchen sink, before I ran to the bathroom.
The cold water was turned to its maximum setting with the tub to shower knob turned to full shower. Water washed all over me and I held my paw up to the chill spray and only brought it down to rinse over every other part of the right side of my body that was vibrating at death levels. Sometimes when I lose my temper and cannot corral it I will fire off a punch into an inanimate object to pop off steam and that tingle returned is that tingle that tells you every part of your skin that was between flesh and bone and the rock and the hard place you found yourself in to bring ya to a point where the only release was the flood of endorphin and whatever other enzymes cover up disappointment and rage has died and maybe given up a fragment of solace to the rest of the mad house. That tingle, rushing over the right side of my body and the nerves shouting out for soft words brought me back to the point where I understood I could not put enough cold water on every part of me that needed it.
My leg continued to burn. For hours afterward. I was able to wash my arm in enough cold water, enough of it falling into the tub, as it scattered from the shower's head against my hand, to cool my foot. Second degree burns, superficial as superficial second degree burns can be, set in on my arm and foot as second degree burns ate into my leg, starved of cool.
I got out of the shower and pat dried myself.
Skin came off in palm sized chunks.
It stuck to the towel.
I got back in the shower.
Skin clogged the drain.
I cried. I grabbed a bar of soap and rubbed. More skin came loose. It stuck to the walls of the shower. It stuck to my own face. It caught in my chest hair and groin. Tendrils drifted from my beard. I shouted "no!" I shouted "this is not happening" over and over and over. For many seconds it was all I could say. Every part of me felt like it was coming unseamed.
I was in shock for two days.
I didn't know what to say to myself or anyone else. I didn't know what to believe. I slept. When I woke I did not move. While I stayed frozen I tried to sleep until I did. When I was not sleeping I tried to. When I was sleeping I waked with a recurring nightmare every handful of minutes I could forget. Terror stricken. It was not real. I was in shock.
Waking, I looked at my hand and it was not mine. It was a raw thing. It stank. The smell of it was raw meat opened two days too late. Sour and slimy and sticking to everything it touched. Blood oozed and wept from its every divide. It was a scene in that movie that you cannot watch start to finish because it turns your stomach just enough to make your eyes cross and tinfoil rattle in your mouth until you are too sick to stand. For some time, waking and looking at it and having its smell fill my nostrils so close to my face and knowing that if I lifted my blanket enough to look down at my leg I would see a sea monster colored in a sickly greenish yellow full of lint, cat fur, exudate, and blood scab as far as light can carry, I would sweat and convince myself if I just lied still it would heal itself fine like a rug burn.
On the third day I threw up. 60 some odd hours in bed hydrating with only a two litre of Barq's root beer I happened to toss over there before deciding to make food before bed took it's toll. Waking up the third day for the twentieth time in that period, pain spiking, and the odor of raw flesh beside my head, unable to shake it away and unable to cut it off, took its toll. I wretched.
Rolls of heaves began working their way along my spine. I began to scramble with my good left hand to make sure my face was pointed toward empty floor space instead of mattress, pillow, or wall. I could not walk. Wherever the projectile went, it had to be somewhere I would be able to lie near without getting it into open wounds. I succeeded and ralfed, sickened by the furious turbulent grotesquery of my own body parts.
On the fourth day I came to grips with what would become my new modernity. Without health insurance, there was no one to fix me except me. I tried to walk and succeeded. I pissed. In my own toilet. Deep brown syrup. I found my fridge. There was food, I walked to my sink. There was water. I drank and drank and drank. I pulled food and food and left arm's full of tupperware and placed on my night stand. I found my cubby of strange and sudden items and found my scarification kit and breathed a sigh. Relief, joy, love for the friend who came over prepared for a one time dual scarification incident I ribbed him for (coming over prepared) that he left with me. With a little improvisation I was able to repurpose the kit to cover the open wounds enough to return to bed on track to recovery instead of on rails to infection.
Days went by like barges trying to force their way over harbor reefs. The stench of my hand continued to get to me as I left it bare with the kit nearby. The flesh continued to sweat and the swelling did not go down. Slicing it off became an option. I could not sleep with any fidelity. I could not rest and when I was awake the pain I felt was more than anything near the throb I felt inside my skull when I fractured my jaw. It was more than anything I felt when I fell down stairs or was in my second car accident or slipped off of the odd side of a hand rail and landed on the concrete bordering the stairs beside a 21 foot decent from a porch to a sidewalk with a hill between us. I wanted to cut it off as the bare flesh continued to weep that slimy clear goo. Cut it off! Cut it off!
I wrapped it. I wrapped it. Healing began. The recurring nightmare, the recurring dream continued. I was able to make bandages and while it healed I was able to order in specialized products for attending to burns. I researched for days whiles my leg and hand and arm stuck to my bed sheets. Every time I tried to move, they stuck to me. Belief set. "If I don't move while I'm waiting for these products to arrive, there is no way it can get infected because it is sealed by the plastic fabric so further movement will only create more problems and possible amputation." I had to figure out a way to urinate.
And I did. Three weeks in. My neighbors stopped by to see if I was okay. I still could not leave the bed for any sort of extended period. Dropping my burned hand below my heart produced an incredible throbbing pain the likes of I have never felt. To put the sensation in perspective: do you know when recommendations say to keep the limb elevated? Imagine that every time you are lying flat on your back that limb crosses a plain. Now imagine that plain is wherever your heart is located. Now imagine that every time that limb crosses south of that plain you instantly feel like it is about to burst apart as though a truck tire, connected to a 3/4 ton truck, is rolling over it and if you do not raise it above that plain IT WILL BURST INTO HAMBURGER MEAT. Yes. That. Now imagine that while you are trying to find a comfortable way to lie in bed and sleep. Now imagine that happens instantly for 18 days to everything from your elbow up and your knee down!
Coming in to something close to normal. I hope that was coherent. How else can we survive?
The pain remains. It feels indescribable though I've done my best.
People you knew before look at you differently. More so than your scarification. They look at you as though there is something contagious about you. The root of your being is love for animals. Perhaps they should.
As I've healed and become a human being again through the last weeks, looking at my hand and my leg, I almost feel like I am wearing a human costume. All of the skin was flash fried off of my hand save for my palm. The skin underneath each one of my digits and my palm is original and up to date. Looking at it, seeing it clinging to the rest of my flesh, it is out of place. I want to peel it off and it will not go. It will not go away. There is no transistion between the old, the original, and the new. It is stark. If you shake my right hand you will feel the transition in the form of many tiny spikes where the original skin meets the new. Where the rough and weathered meets the baby smooth; fingers crossed bounds, hands clasped in a firm grasp.
I still find pieces of skin around my apartment. It is disgusting. It is revolting. Vomit climbs through my body and I know I have to pick that part of me up and put it in a garbage can and it is... .... .... ..... .......................... I know I can go on. I know I will. I know I have to. It hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts.
Fuck. It hurts so much and I know I have to go on and it just fucking hurts so much. I want to shake it off. I want to be able to shake it off. The pain is ................. ugh. I know I'll beat it. I think part of the pain it gives me is that I didn't have a choice. And now I have to wear a permanent and exceptionally visible reminder of how I didn't have a choice through the 24 years of my life my Dad destroyed myself. I broke away from that, finally. It took cutting my face apart to see. To finally split his noose. Now I have to wear the scars of chance and love right along with them. It hurts. It fucking hurts. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I have to wear it. I will and have and will continue to do so.
I am happy to close this chapter. If I didn't talk about it I would still find myself living in it months, maybe years, from now.
At least now,
at least now,
we can get back to comedy, true tragedy (instead of misfortune), and stories untold in fiction. Close this book and open a new. Carry on, soldier. How many times do I have to change? How many times do I have to be changed? People already look at me so many different ways from what I am. And they will look at me differently again.
Ever becoming.
We have been patient. We will still.
You thought you new hell. It was one of many.
It was a long month. Come back home, darling. The worst is over. You may have set a new ten. Many, most, if not all, is lost in translation, however- -there's still a lot of work to do. Do not quit on me and I will not quit on you.
/////Bjork x Deathgrips - "Thunderbolt" fourteen birth of the painted dinosaur. Molt.
10/7/16
That Instant
you understand new that you cannot go back no matter the state you are in, no matter what "now" has taken out of you, regardless of what tomorrow has in store.
You understand that if you are infected, if you have to cut off a limb, if you must lose any or all parts that make up your body, you must not go back.
You recite "this is home" and believe it anew.
You understand that if you are infected, if you have to cut off a limb, if you must lose any or all parts that make up your body, you must not go back.
You recite "this is home" and believe it anew.
10/3/16
Dear (_____)
Dear Injury,
Coming off of you is one of the hardest things to do. Continues to be so. Coming off of you, oh beautiful injury, oh beautiful send down, oh beautiful hip check, oh beautiful headbutt, oh beautiful broken broken broken king, is learning to trust. Learning limits all over again. I am crying. I do not want to.
You've changed. So have I. We have to speak with one another and learn anew what it means to hurt because what we had doesn't hurt anymore. What we had is now a matter of inconvenience if it happens again. A thing to be avoided because I do not want to lose another month of my life waiting to get back to a place where I can go rhinoceros into and between goal posts.
I was hurt. I am complete enough to operate. Not complete enough to be healthy. That's never stopped us before. Give your body time. You could hibernate and rest and sleep and conserve until when? You will always be injured. You will always be failing. You will always be working toward operational capacity. When will you be ready? I am ready now. I am ready now. I can taste it. I can smell it. I can touch it and my nerve feels it like a matchbook made of tacks in the rain with a limp cigarette on my lip.
Injury, you've set me back. I am ready.
with love,
toothy
Coming off of you is one of the hardest things to do. Continues to be so. Coming off of you, oh beautiful injury, oh beautiful send down, oh beautiful hip check, oh beautiful headbutt, oh beautiful broken broken broken king, is learning to trust. Learning limits all over again. I am crying. I do not want to.
You've changed. So have I. We have to speak with one another and learn anew what it means to hurt because what we had doesn't hurt anymore. What we had is now a matter of inconvenience if it happens again. A thing to be avoided because I do not want to lose another month of my life waiting to get back to a place where I can go rhinoceros into and between goal posts.
I was hurt. I am complete enough to operate. Not complete enough to be healthy. That's never stopped us before. Give your body time. You could hibernate and rest and sleep and conserve until when? You will always be injured. You will always be failing. You will always be working toward operational capacity. When will you be ready? I am ready now. I am ready now. I can taste it. I can smell it. I can touch it and my nerve feels it like a matchbook made of tacks in the rain with a limp cigarette on my lip.
Injury, you've set me back. I am ready.
with love,
toothy
9/8/16
Fandom Changes With Age
Maybe there's less energy to go around in general as people age. I think it has more to do with developing an identity. Fandom is steadily fading year by year. It will never go away entirely. Football Sunday will still be football Sunday. The Steelers will always be fun to watch and their games against the Ravens will always be my favorite games to watch and if they make the playoffs I'll watch those games too. The Pirates are still the Pirates. When I stumble across a game on the radio or on television I'll listen in or sit down for an hour or two to take them in. The Penguins will still be the Penguins. Their games will still be a lot of fun to listen to on the radio, especially on the radio. Listening to hockey on the radio is one of those things that's actually more entertaining and exciting than watching it on television.
Fandom will not completely go away, but as I have more things to get done and have built a life in Pittsburgh I feel connected with the city without needing to feel like I have to embrace and demonstrate that connection through waving a sports flag. Sitting in front of a computer screen, waiting for a fantasy draft to start, I had a moment where I heard a voice in my head say "what the hell am I doing" and I closed the screen. No fantasy sports this year. It's extraneous. It's plastic. I realized I didn't want to spend weekdays keeping an eye on waiver wires and fretting about teams I don't care about at all. I follow the Steelers and that's good enough for me.
There's not much more to enjoy about your local teams besides watching them play once in a while and feeling a little civic pride when they win and a little let down if they lose. However, as you grow into a person with your own loves and affections for the place that you live, your civic pride comes less and less from what happens to your sports teams and more and more from what you do within and around your town and city.
Two years ago, a Steelers loss could make the entire rest of my week until the next game absolutely miserable. Three years ago, it was misery, screaming at the television and throwing things at the walls of my apartment. The following year was screaming misery and jubilation and throwing things. The following year, fandom faded to shouting at the television and occasionally jumping up and down. This year, I'll probably still shout at the t.v. from time to time, but other than that, it'll just be a fun diversion once a week for the Fall and Winter. I know some of the roster, but it's not encyclopedic knowledge the way it used to be. I don't know when they play the Ravens, but I'll find out and probably mark the games on my calendar.
I'll still buy the occasional Black and Gold trinket as years go by. I'll still go out of my way to hear about some sports news every day. I'm going to be a fan for life. As I get older, the fanatic in me fades away and I'm not unhappy to see it go.
/// Jimmy Pol - "Steelers Fight Song"
Fandom will not completely go away, but as I have more things to get done and have built a life in Pittsburgh I feel connected with the city without needing to feel like I have to embrace and demonstrate that connection through waving a sports flag. Sitting in front of a computer screen, waiting for a fantasy draft to start, I had a moment where I heard a voice in my head say "what the hell am I doing" and I closed the screen. No fantasy sports this year. It's extraneous. It's plastic. I realized I didn't want to spend weekdays keeping an eye on waiver wires and fretting about teams I don't care about at all. I follow the Steelers and that's good enough for me.
There's not much more to enjoy about your local teams besides watching them play once in a while and feeling a little civic pride when they win and a little let down if they lose. However, as you grow into a person with your own loves and affections for the place that you live, your civic pride comes less and less from what happens to your sports teams and more and more from what you do within and around your town and city.
Two years ago, a Steelers loss could make the entire rest of my week until the next game absolutely miserable. Three years ago, it was misery, screaming at the television and throwing things at the walls of my apartment. The following year was screaming misery and jubilation and throwing things. The following year, fandom faded to shouting at the television and occasionally jumping up and down. This year, I'll probably still shout at the t.v. from time to time, but other than that, it'll just be a fun diversion once a week for the Fall and Winter. I know some of the roster, but it's not encyclopedic knowledge the way it used to be. I don't know when they play the Ravens, but I'll find out and probably mark the games on my calendar.
I'll still buy the occasional Black and Gold trinket as years go by. I'll still go out of my way to hear about some sports news every day. I'm going to be a fan for life. As I get older, the fanatic in me fades away and I'm not unhappy to see it go.
/// Jimmy Pol - "Steelers Fight Song"
9/6/16
Dear (_____)
I understand how you can view the end credits of Nicholas Offerman's American Ham as a straw man American white out dream. I see myself inside it too, colorless. I saw it as freedom to be masculine and delicate and colorful and meat eater and every now and then you have to pee where you are going to.
I saw it a bit differently. How many ways can a flapjack be turned before it burns? It was a good conversation for it's brevity. I wish we could have talked longer to suss more tiny waves out of a fabric that was thicker than I thought it would be. I wanted you to enjoy it for its face value. The question in my lap is now why you took it to other dimensions.
Regardless, your opinion will not diminish my love for Nick or the end credits of American Ham. I will not stop being curious in the meantime.
Sincerely,
a Comedian
I saw it a bit differently. How many ways can a flapjack be turned before it burns? It was a good conversation for it's brevity. I wish we could have talked longer to suss more tiny waves out of a fabric that was thicker than I thought it would be. I wanted you to enjoy it for its face value. The question in my lap is now why you took it to other dimensions.
Regardless, your opinion will not diminish my love for Nick or the end credits of American Ham. I will not stop being curious in the meantime.
Sincerely,
a Comedian
9/5/16
That Instant
you remember the second time you stopped observing holidays was in your clerking past because someone had to stock on the milk on Christmas when you're open 24 hours and someone had to polish floors the night of Thanksgiving and some parts of you do not change because if the world comes to a screeching halt...
and then you remember the first time you stopped observing holidays was in your kid past because they were insufferable exercises in guilt, backhanded shame, and trouble season far too often, and people should just be good to each other and give a shit on a regular basis instead of waiting for a stupid calendar coincidence to make up for welts...
and then you remember it's still a @#$%ing holiday and you're screwed either way so take a little time to treat yourself and carry on.
and then you remember the first time you stopped observing holidays was in your kid past because they were insufferable exercises in guilt, backhanded shame, and trouble season far too often, and people should just be good to each other and give a shit on a regular basis instead of waiting for a stupid calendar coincidence to make up for welts...
and then you remember it's still a @#$%ing holiday and you're screwed either way so take a little time to treat yourself and carry on.
That Instant
traffic feels suspiciously thin and there is no mail, but somehow neighbors .com packages have appeared and the street sweeping machine didn't wake you up before your phone alarm and half the garbage is out at curbs and the other half is invisible and the grocery store is open while the bank is closed and you realize it is a holiday and your aspirations are cut short dead circuited in their tracks and you literally kick rocks before heading back home.
9/2/16
There Is Still No Fix For Introversion and Comprehension Skill's Lament
Aloneness means the world to me.
Introversion is a difficult thing to navigate. This is news to no one. The people I am around are well aware of my introversion's depths and shallows. I am occasionally gripped in manic depressive cycles of changing ferocity, but the underlying truth that forms the foundation of my being, core, and interactions is introversion. It's quiet. It's private. I rarely talk simply to talk. I often spend days without saying a word to anyone beyond the few cat noises I'll make to my pets. I don't like being around people for much time outside of a few hours, sometimes a half day, rarely a full day, but anxiety creeps in and introversion twists my nerves. I have to be left alone for regular and frequent stints of time.
Communication is a problem. Introverts can get trampled easily. I don't like fighting. I hate fighting. I hate arguing. At times I hate conversation, period. However, eschewing these things makes it difficult or impossible to express displeasure with people around you. Behold the reason why I will not go anywhere that I cannot remove myself from. Why argue, why fight, why bother explaining what and how you are feeling when you can simply leave? This works fantastically. When I am finished with you, I leave. When I have had enough of you, I leave. When I am bored, tired, happy, have other things to do, errands to run, when I feel like you've mislead me as to what we set out to do, don't like the venue, whatever may come up, I can quite easily say a pleasant goodbye to you and remove myself to my home and it's wonderful.
I'm not forced to be someone that I'm not, you're not forced to try to peer into what is going on behind my eyes and everyone is happy or at least content with the entirety of the interaction. I'm back home safe in my cocoon, your life goes on, nice and simple. When you come into my home, that dynamic is destroyed. When I am relying on you to get me back home or back to my car, that dynamic is destroyed. When you are in my home I am relying on you to leave in a timely fashion. When I am out with you, I am relying on you to not continue extending the day farther and farther away from an end point we agreed upon. Just because I keep acquiescing to your saying "hey, why don't we..." with the promise that we'll relax a little bit and have a little fun before taking me back to my car, doesn't mean that I'm not screaming inside every single time the "relax and have fun" part is pushed back another half hour and another half hour and another half hour. Eventually I will break.
You must take me home. You must get out of my house. And I've been trampled again. So which one is it? Are the people that do it not friends? Have they not known me long enough? Have they assumed that I've changed over the years? Do they not care? Do I put on a pleasant enough facade such that they don't notice until the entire thing breaks down in pieces and my grimace and crying eyes show? Why do they keep doing it? Because they can? I don't know. What are they not comprehending?
I've spoken to them a few times about it. What do they keep forgetting about me? It's strange. With people I'm not friends with, people I've only just met, circumstances unfamiliar, people I've known and can't trust, I leave nothing up to them to figure out. I rely on them for nothing. I believe very little of what they say. I come prepared for most any possibility and mode of extraction to protect myself from unintentional outside harm. You are supposed to be my friend, please don't step on me.
And on that note, what I cannot deal with is the friend whose comprehension skills are so incredibly underdeveloped I couldn't have an argument or disagreement with them if I tried with all of the tact, diplomacy, conscientiousness, and kindness I can muster.
We all have that friend who immediately flies off of the handle when you tell them they've done something wrong. That friend who will tell you that in the subjective world of right and wrong to you is something that they can dictate. That friend who tells you when they've helped you, regardless of what the actual result of their misguided effort was. That friend who you specifically instruct not to come over without an invitation from you, who takes it upon themselves to come to your house and scare all of your neighbors into believing something horrible has happened to you to get someone to open your door and enter your apartment because you fell asleep on the phone with them after staying up for 40 hours. That friend who says they came over to check on you without an invitation because they were not going to let a friend die on their watch, who immediately asks you upon arrival if you have anything to drink, who happens to have brought an overnight bag and their video game remote and parts, and their tiny bottle of liquor, when all you wanted to do and did was fall asleep. What the hell are you doing here? No, it's not funny. No, it's not heroic. No, it's not friendly. I was sleeping with my phone on silent because I am tired. That friend who mooches all of your food and beer over the next two days and destroys what sleep you were hoping to get while managing to leave your place trashed, who you tell not to come over again without an explicit invitation because "you fell asleep while I was talking to you and I had to make sure you weren't dead" is not a reason to invite yourself over to crash at someone's house for two and a half days and make your neighbors think you may die at any moment to trick your way in, that just do not understand that what they did was patently wrong. Regardless of how they contort their actions to fit some larger narrative of "I helped you."
No comprehension skills. The funniest part is when, as an introvert, giving yourself time to think the events over, you let them know what they did must not be done again. You explain to them it is hugely disruptive to your life and takes days of cleaning and rest to recover from and days of explaining and apologizing and discomfort with neighbors who now have no idea if this idiot will pop up on some random day demanding entry because I may be in some ambiguous danger and they've thrown on their hero cape (or just fucking sleeping or maybe just awake with my phone off or not even home) and their response is to get angry at you. Not only get angry at you, but insist that they will continue to ignore your wishes, disrespect your house, and treat you like a five-year-old who may slip and fall while running with scissors who must be constantly monitored. No comprehension skills.
You try to lay down very basic information, very basic tenets of how you would like friends to treat you and the space you want them to respect and they scream and yell at you about how wrong you are and how right they were to violate your space and how you'll live to regret and rue the day you told them how you felt and how you want to live your life and then go on to tell you they aren't going to respect your wishes or your space regardless.
So what do you do? Do you just scream and shout back at them? No, you're an introvert and they'll out yell you at every turn and out outrage you too. Do you try to restate your point and your needs? Nope, they've already shown they are not going to listen. Don't sweat it. Leave. Watch them from afar for a while. Feel free to leave them alone altogether for some time. Maybe they need time to understand better. They can't trample you and your introverted heart and mind if they can't interact with you. There is no fix for introversion. There is no fix for introversion. There is no fix for introversion.
There is no need to fix introversion. Take care with who you befriend. It is important to understand that, as an introvert, you can be liable to get hurt pretty badly, whether friends mean to or not. Relying on other people to learn how to treat you is a losing game. It's up to you as you grow older and more experienced in navigating introversion, to learn how to maintain proper distance from the people you do call friends. When it becomes too close, don't drive yourself to death trying to keep it together. Open up some space and go from there. You won't be sorry. You may feel like an awful person who is abandoning people that thought they were your friend. You may feel like something is wrong with you. You may feel, at first, that you're hurting people trying to help, but that subsides quickly once you see their blindness to your being for what it is.
///Richard Wagner - "Das Rheingold Prelude" aloneness still means the world to me.
Introversion is a difficult thing to navigate. This is news to no one. The people I am around are well aware of my introversion's depths and shallows. I am occasionally gripped in manic depressive cycles of changing ferocity, but the underlying truth that forms the foundation of my being, core, and interactions is introversion. It's quiet. It's private. I rarely talk simply to talk. I often spend days without saying a word to anyone beyond the few cat noises I'll make to my pets. I don't like being around people for much time outside of a few hours, sometimes a half day, rarely a full day, but anxiety creeps in and introversion twists my nerves. I have to be left alone for regular and frequent stints of time.
Communication is a problem. Introverts can get trampled easily. I don't like fighting. I hate fighting. I hate arguing. At times I hate conversation, period. However, eschewing these things makes it difficult or impossible to express displeasure with people around you. Behold the reason why I will not go anywhere that I cannot remove myself from. Why argue, why fight, why bother explaining what and how you are feeling when you can simply leave? This works fantastically. When I am finished with you, I leave. When I have had enough of you, I leave. When I am bored, tired, happy, have other things to do, errands to run, when I feel like you've mislead me as to what we set out to do, don't like the venue, whatever may come up, I can quite easily say a pleasant goodbye to you and remove myself to my home and it's wonderful.
I'm not forced to be someone that I'm not, you're not forced to try to peer into what is going on behind my eyes and everyone is happy or at least content with the entirety of the interaction. I'm back home safe in my cocoon, your life goes on, nice and simple. When you come into my home, that dynamic is destroyed. When I am relying on you to get me back home or back to my car, that dynamic is destroyed. When you are in my home I am relying on you to leave in a timely fashion. When I am out with you, I am relying on you to not continue extending the day farther and farther away from an end point we agreed upon. Just because I keep acquiescing to your saying "hey, why don't we..." with the promise that we'll relax a little bit and have a little fun before taking me back to my car, doesn't mean that I'm not screaming inside every single time the "relax and have fun" part is pushed back another half hour and another half hour and another half hour. Eventually I will break.
You must take me home. You must get out of my house. And I've been trampled again. So which one is it? Are the people that do it not friends? Have they not known me long enough? Have they assumed that I've changed over the years? Do they not care? Do I put on a pleasant enough facade such that they don't notice until the entire thing breaks down in pieces and my grimace and crying eyes show? Why do they keep doing it? Because they can? I don't know. What are they not comprehending?
I've spoken to them a few times about it. What do they keep forgetting about me? It's strange. With people I'm not friends with, people I've only just met, circumstances unfamiliar, people I've known and can't trust, I leave nothing up to them to figure out. I rely on them for nothing. I believe very little of what they say. I come prepared for most any possibility and mode of extraction to protect myself from unintentional outside harm. You are supposed to be my friend, please don't step on me.
And on that note, what I cannot deal with is the friend whose comprehension skills are so incredibly underdeveloped I couldn't have an argument or disagreement with them if I tried with all of the tact, diplomacy, conscientiousness, and kindness I can muster.
We all have that friend who immediately flies off of the handle when you tell them they've done something wrong. That friend who will tell you that in the subjective world of right and wrong to you is something that they can dictate. That friend who tells you when they've helped you, regardless of what the actual result of their misguided effort was. That friend who you specifically instruct not to come over without an invitation from you, who takes it upon themselves to come to your house and scare all of your neighbors into believing something horrible has happened to you to get someone to open your door and enter your apartment because you fell asleep on the phone with them after staying up for 40 hours. That friend who says they came over to check on you without an invitation because they were not going to let a friend die on their watch, who immediately asks you upon arrival if you have anything to drink, who happens to have brought an overnight bag and their video game remote and parts, and their tiny bottle of liquor, when all you wanted to do and did was fall asleep. What the hell are you doing here? No, it's not funny. No, it's not heroic. No, it's not friendly. I was sleeping with my phone on silent because I am tired. That friend who mooches all of your food and beer over the next two days and destroys what sleep you were hoping to get while managing to leave your place trashed, who you tell not to come over again without an explicit invitation because "you fell asleep while I was talking to you and I had to make sure you weren't dead" is not a reason to invite yourself over to crash at someone's house for two and a half days and make your neighbors think you may die at any moment to trick your way in, that just do not understand that what they did was patently wrong. Regardless of how they contort their actions to fit some larger narrative of "I helped you."
No comprehension skills. The funniest part is when, as an introvert, giving yourself time to think the events over, you let them know what they did must not be done again. You explain to them it is hugely disruptive to your life and takes days of cleaning and rest to recover from and days of explaining and apologizing and discomfort with neighbors who now have no idea if this idiot will pop up on some random day demanding entry because I may be in some ambiguous danger and they've thrown on their hero cape (or just fucking sleeping or maybe just awake with my phone off or not even home) and their response is to get angry at you. Not only get angry at you, but insist that they will continue to ignore your wishes, disrespect your house, and treat you like a five-year-old who may slip and fall while running with scissors who must be constantly monitored. No comprehension skills.
You try to lay down very basic information, very basic tenets of how you would like friends to treat you and the space you want them to respect and they scream and yell at you about how wrong you are and how right they were to violate your space and how you'll live to regret and rue the day you told them how you felt and how you want to live your life and then go on to tell you they aren't going to respect your wishes or your space regardless.
So what do you do? Do you just scream and shout back at them? No, you're an introvert and they'll out yell you at every turn and out outrage you too. Do you try to restate your point and your needs? Nope, they've already shown they are not going to listen. Don't sweat it. Leave. Watch them from afar for a while. Feel free to leave them alone altogether for some time. Maybe they need time to understand better. They can't trample you and your introverted heart and mind if they can't interact with you. There is no fix for introversion. There is no fix for introversion. There is no fix for introversion.
There is no need to fix introversion. Take care with who you befriend. It is important to understand that, as an introvert, you can be liable to get hurt pretty badly, whether friends mean to or not. Relying on other people to learn how to treat you is a losing game. It's up to you as you grow older and more experienced in navigating introversion, to learn how to maintain proper distance from the people you do call friends. When it becomes too close, don't drive yourself to death trying to keep it together. Open up some space and go from there. You won't be sorry. You may feel like an awful person who is abandoning people that thought they were your friend. You may feel like something is wrong with you. You may feel, at first, that you're hurting people trying to help, but that subsides quickly once you see their blindness to your being for what it is.
///Richard Wagner - "Das Rheingold Prelude" aloneness still means the world to me.
8/21/16
That Instant
standing inside a place of commerce, waiting in line for what you need to purchase to keep your spaceship afloat and thinking about the sharpest loop around the sun to dock it at your orbital station, you overhear conversation and consume and catalog and diagram and highlight and bullet point them, wishing they understood what you were doing so that you could feel some sort of guilt and heat of the perverse window watcher instead of feeling wreaking anxious havoc as though if you tilted your head 29 degrees either way, a jeweler or museum caterer's tome of notes, a pair of bifocals, a monocle, a steam eye piece, a taxidermist's blade, or a lens for reading fine print,will not clatter to the plastic tile floor and rattle until it settles flat.
8/20/16
The Best Thing
about Xbox Live is that every now and then someone blurts out (during a first person shooter round table sniper match when everyone has run out of ammunition and they are hunting each other in dark corners with melee weapons) "you'll never kill me alive!"
"Yep, that's kind of the point" I think to myself wiping snot from my nose after doubling over on my couch with tearful laughter for several minutes. I know what they meant to say. What they did say was the toast of the evening.
"Yep, that's kind of the point" I think to myself wiping snot from my nose after doubling over on my couch with tearful laughter for several minutes. I know what they meant to say. What they did say was the toast of the evening.
Dear (_____)
Dear live online gaming communities,
Odd things happen. It's not an under or over statement. It is a great place to gather intelligence on what the outside world is up to and collect tracks of dialog for future use in stories and written creative work. It is a great place to get exposed to other worlds and ways of life and sets of problem solving skills you could not have imagined given twenty years and places to have conversations you believed were moot and had angles you did not see before. It is a great place to see reflections of yourself and fractions of people not as old as you and fractions of people inside yourself much older. It is also a great place to hear people trot out their best and worst jokes because nothing is recorded once the community dies out for the evening (except on the master servers hosting all of the connections, but that's a detail for another time). The best part is the exposure the accidental killer phrase, that boils up out of the person you would least suspect, slays everyone in the virtual room and they are all howling laughter at what you said, but not at you, and you wonder where everyone has gone for several minutes as they each come back on their mics catching their breath to explain the lightning bolt.
Odd things happen. It's not an under or over statement. It is a great place to gather intelligence on what the outside world is up to and collect tracks of dialog for future use in stories and written creative work. It is a great place to get exposed to other worlds and ways of life and sets of problem solving skills you could not have imagined given twenty years and places to have conversations you believed were moot and had angles you did not see before. It is a great place to see reflections of yourself and fractions of people not as old as you and fractions of people inside yourself much older. It is also a great place to hear people trot out their best and worst jokes because nothing is recorded once the community dies out for the evening (except on the master servers hosting all of the connections, but that's a detail for another time). The best part is the exposure the accidental killer phrase, that boils up out of the person you would least suspect, slays everyone in the virtual room and they are all howling laughter at what you said, but not at you, and you wonder where everyone has gone for several minutes as they each come back on their mics catching their breath to explain the lightning bolt.
8/2/16
Dear (_____)
Dear upscale shoemakers,
Please stop trying to sell me with big words. Of course I demand the finest in quality and performance in my shoe selection. Of course style is important. A little color is nice. A lot of color has its time too (sometimes all of the time). Tons of flowery language or well strung together man boy truck tire square jaw tones do not hide the clear as day fact that your shoe will fall apart inside of a month of regular athletic use. The lines of type in your ads do not disguise that a few puddles here, a couple stubbed toes, a dropped coffee, an outdoor court game, and a few bike rides in and your sneakers will look like I found them under a freight car by the river. With a disgustingly high price tag, your game is obvious. Sneakers for people that don't use sneakers to do things that require sneakers. Thanks, but I'll be picking up my usual pair with function leading form. And a home run cut's dash of color.
Please stop trying to sell me with big words. Of course I demand the finest in quality and performance in my shoe selection. Of course style is important. A little color is nice. A lot of color has its time too (sometimes all of the time). Tons of flowery language or well strung together man boy truck tire square jaw tones do not hide the clear as day fact that your shoe will fall apart inside of a month of regular athletic use. The lines of type in your ads do not disguise that a few puddles here, a couple stubbed toes, a dropped coffee, an outdoor court game, and a few bike rides in and your sneakers will look like I found them under a freight car by the river. With a disgustingly high price tag, your game is obvious. Sneakers for people that don't use sneakers to do things that require sneakers. Thanks, but I'll be picking up my usual pair with function leading form. And a home run cut's dash of color.
7/23/16
Thought Experiments
They are wonderful. The down side is they can lock you up with inaction. They can make you distant and untouchable. They can make you a perpetual daydreamer. They are not real. They can bring you to a place, after running over every possible iteration of futures and their trees and branches, nothing will be able to surprise you. Not now, not ever. Everything becomes old faster than you can possibly age without introducing performance enhancing drugs to your body's ability to restore itself. Nothing will ever surprise you if you go down the road. Why choose? Take every fork in mind. Every fork. And the forks beyond them and beyond them too. Die 200 deaths, live 200 lives. Imagine them all!
The up shot is, 24 iterations out, you may land upon a world that is in perfect tune and natural balance so incredible to be immediately discredited. Upon review, it revolves, it sits still, it moves only when touched, and it's gravity is its own and its poles its own. You explore and find an object or idea that defies everything you knew and live in and is contained within itself in eternum. You stumble upon a number that is a number and not at once. A quantity unquantifiable. A thing, brought 24 levels backward in to your three dimensional time locked existence, that will vanish the moment you return home. An idea that only exists in that space.
So hunt. Hunt! Thought experiments are wonderful. Yes, many things will not surprise you. Many things in your "now" will lose their luster and zest, but should you come upon that perfectly imbalanced mirror sphere that only spins counterclockwise that turns the universe if you attempt to put your fingertips or tongue on it to make it move clockwise because gravity and space time need not apply at the door you have to exit before entering, they are worth it. Every second. Every minute. Every hour in dreams.
///The Cure - "Burn"
The up shot is, 24 iterations out, you may land upon a world that is in perfect tune and natural balance so incredible to be immediately discredited. Upon review, it revolves, it sits still, it moves only when touched, and it's gravity is its own and its poles its own. You explore and find an object or idea that defies everything you knew and live in and is contained within itself in eternum. You stumble upon a number that is a number and not at once. A quantity unquantifiable. A thing, brought 24 levels backward in to your three dimensional time locked existence, that will vanish the moment you return home. An idea that only exists in that space.
So hunt. Hunt! Thought experiments are wonderful. Yes, many things will not surprise you. Many things in your "now" will lose their luster and zest, but should you come upon that perfectly imbalanced mirror sphere that only spins counterclockwise that turns the universe if you attempt to put your fingertips or tongue on it to make it move clockwise because gravity and space time need not apply at the door you have to exit before entering, they are worth it. Every second. Every minute. Every hour in dreams.
///The Cure - "Burn"
That Instant
you have to remind yourself to protect your eyes because you only get two and one is for fuck ups and the other one is for "oh fuck!" and spending both at once is unacceptable.
7/17/16
7/11/16
That Instant
you realize the one of your many incarnations has come home and the rest shout "It's the master!!!" and you say "step in time."
7/2/16
Rest Is A Cocoon
As we rest and breath over past and history and details. Knowing more. Growth is a strong word. More like molting. Showing that you have not died. Showing that the fire, though about you and your skin and your nerve and eating through the marrow of your bone, has birthed, not consumed, you. In love again. The moon drives past my house real slow. I howl out of the window, a scarf around my neck.
///Gold Panda - "Fifth Ave"
///Gold Panda - "Fifth Ave"
Origins
What fascinates me the most was his unwillingness to let me in.
At every turn there was a guard and I got tired of trying to break them down. It became a fools errand.
I am disappointed in him. A child should never have to reach a point where it is forced to scorch away it's parent. I still get the chucks even admitting that I have a father. Thirty one and seven years out to open life and it's boggling. When I finally grew enough to understand that he couldn't break me, he didn't want to discuss why we got to that place in the first. I won't say I'll never be able to understand it, but he made it clear, many years my senior and able to make decisions on a much more vast scale, that he would never come to the table to view my entire history objectively.
"Where are you from?" I will never know. I can speak on it, but I will never be granted 360 degree vision.
"What were you before you entered citizenship?" I will never know. It's all hearsay from my siblings and I believe them because they would not lie to me.
"Where is he now?" Rotting, I hope. I'm waiting for him to die. I won't be any better for it, I certainly won't be any worse. I will be better. The questions will have answers then. The "I" will be dotted, the "T" crossed, and the pain inflicted, the trauma, accounted for. The books closed.
"Given the opportunity, would you kill him?" Yes.
"Why will you not have an audience with him?" When I reached my own voice and understood I was an individual, he would not have an audience with me and it went on for five years and I had to stop taking refusals because it made me want to kill myself. I will never return to that state.
Everyone talks big about love. Demons. Addiction. Religion. Shan and shan. It's not all bullshit. I tried my best to love and care for him. I don't know why he heeled me to the curb at near incalculable turns (I've faded some memories because I couldn't deal with them so they are dungeon locked and will remain that I may live). I don't want pity. I don't want his love. I don't want his ire. I don't want to hear his voice.
I wanted him to let me in. His resistance and fortress will be a mystery until the day he dies. I may go to his funeral to hear the eulogizers put his unsung thoughts on wax. Not for closure; to get a view into what was behind those brown eyes. Rose tinted? Of course. I can parse with terrible efficiency.
He was the first iron giant I ever knew. Scaled up to city proportions. I learned not to fear him when I realized I became one. I've chosen to use my bones differently. When I reach through the atmosphere, waste is not laid to communities and vessels. Virus does not spread. The horsemen do not ride at once. I'm not ashamed to have been born. I'm not ashamed to have come from a fire and furnace. I'm baffled as to the why. That's all. I've asked for many things through my life, is it too much to ask for straight answers from your point of origin? In this world, half created, half designed, the answer will always be yes.
Original equipment manufacturer fail.
///Thom Yorke- "The Clock"
At every turn there was a guard and I got tired of trying to break them down. It became a fools errand.
I am disappointed in him. A child should never have to reach a point where it is forced to scorch away it's parent. I still get the chucks even admitting that I have a father. Thirty one and seven years out to open life and it's boggling. When I finally grew enough to understand that he couldn't break me, he didn't want to discuss why we got to that place in the first. I won't say I'll never be able to understand it, but he made it clear, many years my senior and able to make decisions on a much more vast scale, that he would never come to the table to view my entire history objectively.
"Where are you from?" I will never know. I can speak on it, but I will never be granted 360 degree vision.
"What were you before you entered citizenship?" I will never know. It's all hearsay from my siblings and I believe them because they would not lie to me.
"Where is he now?" Rotting, I hope. I'm waiting for him to die. I won't be any better for it, I certainly won't be any worse. I will be better. The questions will have answers then. The "I" will be dotted, the "T" crossed, and the pain inflicted, the trauma, accounted for. The books closed.
"Given the opportunity, would you kill him?" Yes.
"Why will you not have an audience with him?" When I reached my own voice and understood I was an individual, he would not have an audience with me and it went on for five years and I had to stop taking refusals because it made me want to kill myself. I will never return to that state.
Everyone talks big about love. Demons. Addiction. Religion. Shan and shan. It's not all bullshit. I tried my best to love and care for him. I don't know why he heeled me to the curb at near incalculable turns (I've faded some memories because I couldn't deal with them so they are dungeon locked and will remain that I may live). I don't want pity. I don't want his love. I don't want his ire. I don't want to hear his voice.
I wanted him to let me in. His resistance and fortress will be a mystery until the day he dies. I may go to his funeral to hear the eulogizers put his unsung thoughts on wax. Not for closure; to get a view into what was behind those brown eyes. Rose tinted? Of course. I can parse with terrible efficiency.
He was the first iron giant I ever knew. Scaled up to city proportions. I learned not to fear him when I realized I became one. I've chosen to use my bones differently. When I reach through the atmosphere, waste is not laid to communities and vessels. Virus does not spread. The horsemen do not ride at once. I'm not ashamed to have been born. I'm not ashamed to have come from a fire and furnace. I'm baffled as to the why. That's all. I've asked for many things through my life, is it too much to ask for straight answers from your point of origin? In this world, half created, half designed, the answer will always be yes.
Original equipment manufacturer fail.
///Thom Yorke- "The Clock"
That Instant
you realize yourself and your father probably would have been very good friends had you been born by another and met off hand on Staten Island, age difference accounted for. Enough in common and enough apart to be able to enjoy one another and argue happily til the sun went down and jog and spar and spit at one another and open doors and windows by force and hear voices til the sun came up.
You realize your birth cramped his style as much as his efforts to raise you cramped your own and you understand everything happened too close and too cramped.
And you realize there is still furious anger and distilled righteousness in both veins and arteries to ever get to a place where you can see him without having to move ten feet away to not attempt to tear his esophagus out of his throat with your fingernails.
You realize your birth cramped his style as much as his efforts to raise you cramped your own and you understand everything happened too close and too cramped.
And you realize there is still furious anger and distilled righteousness in both veins and arteries to ever get to a place where you can see him without having to move ten feet away to not attempt to tear his esophagus out of his throat with your fingernails.
6/23/16
Dear (_____)
Dear nose blowers,
A day can start, end, turn, and release on a good one. You know this. I know this. The rest of the world probably wants you to enjoy your moment less. That whole "ten sneezes in a row equals a single orgasm" thing is a myth. We've been there. We've seen it. The lightheadedness on the other side is an entirely different beast made of clouds of vision fading to black when you're not sure the sneezes are going to stop and you briefly contemplate the distinct possibility that you may die or fall into a coma or spasm to death because everything is firing far in excess of normal operation or even abnormal and there is no way possible to cum in the throes of a maelstrom and then it's over.
Oxygen begins to regain the helm and breath returns stable enough to begin to store and spoons tip against the sides of tea cups. Stone faced gut laughter. Mind rolls body. Cramp. Eye water. Fold.
Sincerely,
Handkerchief URI
A day can start, end, turn, and release on a good one. You know this. I know this. The rest of the world probably wants you to enjoy your moment less. That whole "ten sneezes in a row equals a single orgasm" thing is a myth. We've been there. We've seen it. The lightheadedness on the other side is an entirely different beast made of clouds of vision fading to black when you're not sure the sneezes are going to stop and you briefly contemplate the distinct possibility that you may die or fall into a coma or spasm to death because everything is firing far in excess of normal operation or even abnormal and there is no way possible to cum in the throes of a maelstrom and then it's over.
Oxygen begins to regain the helm and breath returns stable enough to begin to store and spoons tip against the sides of tea cups. Stone faced gut laughter. Mind rolls body. Cramp. Eye water. Fold.
Sincerely,
Handkerchief URI
6/21/16
That Instant
you walk into a tenants laundry basement, having explained to them when they moved in a year ago that their dehumidifier must be run at all times, and the walls are blotched with slimes and buds of mold in all shapes and sizes and the dehumidifier is turned on, not running, and displaying a humidity percentage in the mid eighties and you cannot, for the life of you, understand what the hell is wrong with people that they did not once think, coming and going with armfuls of laundry into a toxic, jungle, health hazard hell, to press the machine's start button after whatever break in its power supply caused it to reset.
6/11/16
That Instant
you've lost all faith in the human race reading comment sections of articles and youtube videos to find insight into the human psyche when you stumble upon another introspective human who understands the charade and extended comedy of performance art littering the social sphere so thoroughly they create a gem and ray of hope that knocks the inevitable march of sadness and futility dead in its tracks. Yes, the world is falling apart etc etc, but with no sense of humor, with no creative eye, with no lens for the absurd, with no imagination, it will be a very short walk off that pier.
For your consideration, a comment by SecondSons left on a music video by Desiigner (Panda) that did not take itself too seriously, though many, many, many of the comments and viewers did:
For your consideration, a comment by SecondSons left on a music video by Desiigner (Panda) that did not take itself too seriously, though many, many, many of the comments and viewers did:
6/10/16
What Makes You Laugh 3
What has been cracking me up over the last few days is a thought problem.
Everyone works to advance themselves in one way or another. What happens when you find yourself in a field you can excel at, but have an Achilles heel for? I am not a negotiator, but the field that I find myself in and doing very well with does not reward merit. It rewards negotiation. You are only worth what people are willing to pay for you. If you would like to price yourself out of their range, you are more than welcome to do so.
The field does not operate in the same ways the rest of the customer service field operates. If you want a job you can have one and if they ask what you would like to be paid you are welcome to write down whatever number you choose and they will come back to you with the starting and only number and you either say "yes" or you say "no." Very simple. Very straightforward. Very easy.
I have been laughing trying to gauge what I am worth to other people. In this field, what you are worth is an algorithm whose nuances run deep, parallel, and cross cut with sudden violence and stark contrast with blood and bone on the line should a miscalculation be made. There is no room for guesswork. Or is it that there is infinite room for guesswork because time is money and time is beholden to whom. For whom does the bell toll these days? For how long can negotiations continue and if you did get what you wanted, when would you feel armored and steeled and learned enough to ask for more? To demand more. Hell, if I know.
Given what I know, where I've been, the way I carry the fire like it is my pants on fire when the client's is, the willingness to tax flesh and artery until the tread falls off to make the date agreed on, I still have no idea what those values register on someone else's Richter scale. I still have no idea what dialing my number means to them when they want something done right, done thorough, and finished to the dotted "I." In terms of valuation, I don't know what I'm worth, but I'm pretty, inexactly, sure I am a cost effective means to whatever ends are summoned.
I am well trained and well versed in many modes. Control is lacking, but only because it is not easy to corral 700 horses in one direction at the same time; we manage. Adaptable, robust, and the commercial ends.
It does crack me up. Folks tell you so-and-so should be paying you "X" amount of dollars. Person "C" should have paid you this-and-that. What is stopping you from paying me what I'm actually worth? I'm not going to say no to money. I'm not going to ask for more. What's stopping you from returning a smile to me the way I gave one to you that you will enjoy much longer than the life span of the paper that passes from my hands to vendors? That is what has made me laugh lately.
You hear the same thing from so many different people and it makes us wonder if my asking for more money will actually change anything in the right direction. You've seen my body of work. You know what I can and cannot yet do. You know what you can ask me to do. I know what I can ask us to do. We are all familiar with one another and are either friends or thoroughly acquainted to a degree that we can rely on one another to follow through on our word. Why don't you trust me yet to do what I say I can do and have done? Why do I have to ask for more?
You've seen me operate enough times. I've worked with you enough times. If you believe I am some sort of benchmark to keep, you are mistaken. I am skewing the market low. What really, what really, cracked me up (because I had no option beyond cackle laughter) was thinking about all of the over paid clowns you rowd and rail about. Wondering why this clown is somehow ten times more efficient, ten times more reliable, 60 times more faithful, five times more communicative, 100 times more driven, and ten times more accessible and somehow.............. somehow.......... worth less to you than the other, menial, infantry clowns you employ.
Grade S infantry? "No, I will settle for grade D and pay them like a scientist apprentice."
Maybe, I'm just not cooperative enough. Eventually the question will boil over and we will have a discussion to resolve points that our sextants align. In the face of heartache, the only option is irrational, hysterical, laughter.
///Stereolab - "The Free Design" live
Everyone works to advance themselves in one way or another. What happens when you find yourself in a field you can excel at, but have an Achilles heel for? I am not a negotiator, but the field that I find myself in and doing very well with does not reward merit. It rewards negotiation. You are only worth what people are willing to pay for you. If you would like to price yourself out of their range, you are more than welcome to do so.
The field does not operate in the same ways the rest of the customer service field operates. If you want a job you can have one and if they ask what you would like to be paid you are welcome to write down whatever number you choose and they will come back to you with the starting and only number and you either say "yes" or you say "no." Very simple. Very straightforward. Very easy.
I have been laughing trying to gauge what I am worth to other people. In this field, what you are worth is an algorithm whose nuances run deep, parallel, and cross cut with sudden violence and stark contrast with blood and bone on the line should a miscalculation be made. There is no room for guesswork. Or is it that there is infinite room for guesswork because time is money and time is beholden to whom. For whom does the bell toll these days? For how long can negotiations continue and if you did get what you wanted, when would you feel armored and steeled and learned enough to ask for more? To demand more. Hell, if I know.
Given what I know, where I've been, the way I carry the fire like it is my pants on fire when the client's is, the willingness to tax flesh and artery until the tread falls off to make the date agreed on, I still have no idea what those values register on someone else's Richter scale. I still have no idea what dialing my number means to them when they want something done right, done thorough, and finished to the dotted "I." In terms of valuation, I don't know what I'm worth, but I'm pretty, inexactly, sure I am a cost effective means to whatever ends are summoned.
I am well trained and well versed in many modes. Control is lacking, but only because it is not easy to corral 700 horses in one direction at the same time; we manage. Adaptable, robust, and the commercial ends.
It does crack me up. Folks tell you so-and-so should be paying you "X" amount of dollars. Person "C" should have paid you this-and-that. What is stopping you from paying me what I'm actually worth? I'm not going to say no to money. I'm not going to ask for more. What's stopping you from returning a smile to me the way I gave one to you that you will enjoy much longer than the life span of the paper that passes from my hands to vendors? That is what has made me laugh lately.
You hear the same thing from so many different people and it makes us wonder if my asking for more money will actually change anything in the right direction. You've seen my body of work. You know what I can and cannot yet do. You know what you can ask me to do. I know what I can ask us to do. We are all familiar with one another and are either friends or thoroughly acquainted to a degree that we can rely on one another to follow through on our word. Why don't you trust me yet to do what I say I can do and have done? Why do I have to ask for more?
You've seen me operate enough times. I've worked with you enough times. If you believe I am some sort of benchmark to keep, you are mistaken. I am skewing the market low. What really, what really, cracked me up (because I had no option beyond cackle laughter) was thinking about all of the over paid clowns you rowd and rail about. Wondering why this clown is somehow ten times more efficient, ten times more reliable, 60 times more faithful, five times more communicative, 100 times more driven, and ten times more accessible and somehow.............. somehow.......... worth less to you than the other, menial, infantry clowns you employ.
Grade S infantry? "No, I will settle for grade D and pay them like a scientist apprentice."
Maybe, I'm just not cooperative enough. Eventually the question will boil over and we will have a discussion to resolve points that our sextants align. In the face of heartache, the only option is irrational, hysterical, laughter.
///Stereolab - "The Free Design" live
That Instant
you are familiar with as many addictions as you have fingers on two hands and somehow cigarettes are the only one you have no control over. Kiss the sky, float away, war speed, cuddle song, cube puzzle, there can be only one, everything balance, diagram, organic symbiote, flare gun, brush fire, assymetree city planning, and for some reason, some way, some how, cigarettes remain a stand alone complex.
6/2/16
When Is Enough
The difficulty of motivation is obvious to anyone who has bothered to write, or paint, or draw, or work, or invest any part of themselves in an activity or pursuit that is painful, uncomfortable, or plain not easy.
When is enough far enough? What do I want? What do I want to accomplish? What do I need? What can I disallow myself? What must I disallow myself? When I was younger, growing up through early adulthood, I heard so many "no"s. Everyone and every system telling me what I can not do, where I could not go, who I could not speak to, when I must disappear. Molded and shaped by the enclosure, dreams fade. Fade until they're forgotten because it hurt too much to bring it back into consideration every day, every week, every year, to see that not only was I no closer to anything I set out to do to satisfy my soul and mind, but I was further from it than I was the year before. The mind falling apart. The costs of keeping it together steadily rising. People telling you again and again what your ceiling is, not out of a fear of what I could do, but out of a strange compassion for seeing the war fought inside to maintain a level of sanity and "normal" against mental disorders eating away at the fringes of my consciousness.
Can I be content now? What else do I want? To be left alone. There is still a lot of work to do to arrive there. That may be the only ultimate goal. To be left alone with the things living inside my head and a few animals to keep me company. People are out of the question. They can be trusted, but they are out of the question as quarters draw closer and closer. There is not enough space now. That is what I need. I suppose a bit of both. Can I be content now? As long as I can avoid hurting myself too intensely, too viciously, I won't need health insurance. I will likely only live to 60 or so. Would it be that far a leap of madness to arrive to that end 15 years early? No. Would it be foolish to drag my feet to that end 15, 20, 30 years beyond? Absolutely. Don't be absurd.
I can hardly maintain a conscious coherent line of action for 12 hours because I have to lie in bed for 12 hours because I can't sleep for more than two hours at a time before I wake up and need an hour to get back to sleep. To achieve an eight hour work day, I need four hours to prepare and four to undo the damages, eat, unpack the interactions, bathe, and prepare for sleep. Every where I look I am losing time in human maintenance that is impossible to make up elsewhere inside the sweep of the clock. Until I melt down, lose control, and fall apart in a heap of wails, tears, and broken tissue, begging for an end to the insanity of trying to fit myself into these chains of events for money.
How long do you keep smashing your own extremities with a peen hammer before you wake up and decide this is as far as I am willing to go and I am going to learn to live in this tiny cage and make it work because I know I or some around me will die if I try to reach any further. Life is long. Many people can race along it's rivers. I am not one of those people. I've got no use for your money. I wish I had no use for your money, is more accurate. I suppose that is where I am heading. Retirement is another name for being left alone to leave life in peace and enough isolation to prevent anyone around you from being hurt and to be able to let myself live among the shadows in my head openly and happily with everything I need to survive until my body fails. Retirement is a pipe dream. I'll find another way.
When is enough? When I have my own paid off house in the middle of a thickly wooded wilderness or some cottage at the end of a one lane drive to the vanishing point of a horizon plain? When I've found a place in the world where I can not be found? A place to hide and mend and dance with my broken brain and that's all I have to do to continue to see sun's rise? I don't want to think about it now. Enough is not yet. I have to keep chugging along down the damned river, occasionally stopping to fish, at a blisteringly fast (to me) half knot and continue to hope and strive for the best and make due with repairs whenever its engine sputters and dies and hope I don't run out of supplies or the some day passerby who toss me a pipe, wrench, or a handful of wire harness to keep it going until I reach my tributary to one side or the other to glide down and stake claim to a bit of land no one will find for ages after I'm gone.
Who knows when enough is. I do know I am not close yet and as much as I want now to be that place, it is not. Wrestling with motivation won't get you killed. Picking up the hammer eventually will.
///Jon Hopkins - "Candles"
When is enough far enough? What do I want? What do I want to accomplish? What do I need? What can I disallow myself? What must I disallow myself? When I was younger, growing up through early adulthood, I heard so many "no"s. Everyone and every system telling me what I can not do, where I could not go, who I could not speak to, when I must disappear. Molded and shaped by the enclosure, dreams fade. Fade until they're forgotten because it hurt too much to bring it back into consideration every day, every week, every year, to see that not only was I no closer to anything I set out to do to satisfy my soul and mind, but I was further from it than I was the year before. The mind falling apart. The costs of keeping it together steadily rising. People telling you again and again what your ceiling is, not out of a fear of what I could do, but out of a strange compassion for seeing the war fought inside to maintain a level of sanity and "normal" against mental disorders eating away at the fringes of my consciousness.
Can I be content now? What else do I want? To be left alone. There is still a lot of work to do to arrive there. That may be the only ultimate goal. To be left alone with the things living inside my head and a few animals to keep me company. People are out of the question. They can be trusted, but they are out of the question as quarters draw closer and closer. There is not enough space now. That is what I need. I suppose a bit of both. Can I be content now? As long as I can avoid hurting myself too intensely, too viciously, I won't need health insurance. I will likely only live to 60 or so. Would it be that far a leap of madness to arrive to that end 15 years early? No. Would it be foolish to drag my feet to that end 15, 20, 30 years beyond? Absolutely. Don't be absurd.
I can hardly maintain a conscious coherent line of action for 12 hours because I have to lie in bed for 12 hours because I can't sleep for more than two hours at a time before I wake up and need an hour to get back to sleep. To achieve an eight hour work day, I need four hours to prepare and four to undo the damages, eat, unpack the interactions, bathe, and prepare for sleep. Every where I look I am losing time in human maintenance that is impossible to make up elsewhere inside the sweep of the clock. Until I melt down, lose control, and fall apart in a heap of wails, tears, and broken tissue, begging for an end to the insanity of trying to fit myself into these chains of events for money.
How long do you keep smashing your own extremities with a peen hammer before you wake up and decide this is as far as I am willing to go and I am going to learn to live in this tiny cage and make it work because I know I or some around me will die if I try to reach any further. Life is long. Many people can race along it's rivers. I am not one of those people. I've got no use for your money. I wish I had no use for your money, is more accurate. I suppose that is where I am heading. Retirement is another name for being left alone to leave life in peace and enough isolation to prevent anyone around you from being hurt and to be able to let myself live among the shadows in my head openly and happily with everything I need to survive until my body fails. Retirement is a pipe dream. I'll find another way.
When is enough? When I have my own paid off house in the middle of a thickly wooded wilderness or some cottage at the end of a one lane drive to the vanishing point of a horizon plain? When I've found a place in the world where I can not be found? A place to hide and mend and dance with my broken brain and that's all I have to do to continue to see sun's rise? I don't want to think about it now. Enough is not yet. I have to keep chugging along down the damned river, occasionally stopping to fish, at a blisteringly fast (to me) half knot and continue to hope and strive for the best and make due with repairs whenever its engine sputters and dies and hope I don't run out of supplies or the some day passerby who toss me a pipe, wrench, or a handful of wire harness to keep it going until I reach my tributary to one side or the other to glide down and stake claim to a bit of land no one will find for ages after I'm gone.
Who knows when enough is. I do know I am not close yet and as much as I want now to be that place, it is not. Wrestling with motivation won't get you killed. Picking up the hammer eventually will.
///Jon Hopkins - "Candles"
Dear (_____)
Dear Cats,
Puh-lease, please, please, please, please finish shedding. With temperatures in the mid 90's day and night it's already a coin flip to figure out when to sleep, and only able to sleep nude uncovered, with several fans, it's an F1 of cat hair filaments touching skin like tiny insect antennas and legs. Please finish shedding so that I can sleep and you can be comfortable too and we can all not lose our minds slapping and pawing our faces at bugs that don't exist.
Also it would be nice to have some open glasses. That can't be tasty to drink from your bowl either. So, from one over heated apartment dweller to another, let's get finished up, okay?
Love ya,
a cat person
Puh-lease, please, please, please, please finish shedding. With temperatures in the mid 90's day and night it's already a coin flip to figure out when to sleep, and only able to sleep nude uncovered, with several fans, it's an F1 of cat hair filaments touching skin like tiny insect antennas and legs. Please finish shedding so that I can sleep and you can be comfortable too and we can all not lose our minds slapping and pawing our faces at bugs that don't exist.
Also it would be nice to have some open glasses. That can't be tasty to drink from your bowl either. So, from one over heated apartment dweller to another, let's get finished up, okay?
Love ya,
a cat person
That Instant
You can definitively confirm Summer's arrival because you've fallen asleep naked on your back for the second evening in a row spread eagle with a fan blowing from your bow to stern trying to keep dry while your dinner finished baking only to wake up to a cold, over done, and dry dinner hours later and need a cold shower anyway. Then while sitting and chewing your over done and dry meat, sweat beads on the bridge of your nose.
5/21/16
That Instant
You come face to face with your loss of dexterity and you know you will never get it back.
5/19/16
That Instant
you remember you left your spare pack of smokes on your desk and run over the cost/benefit analysis of running back up to your apartment versus going on an evening walk without them before closing and locking the door.
Move Town
I get so caught up with making the people around me things as a way of saying thanks and payment that I forget to make myself- to do what I want to do because I owe my existence, my here and now, to those people by a currency that will never translate because they don't know fully what they helped me reach escape velocity away from what I saw as an insurmountable margin and I don't view it as penance or clinging to the past or misplaced. I see it as a continuous consciousness of how tenuous life can be and a ten four toward how the smallest gesture, the smallest show of what someone outside of a relationship might see as pity pence or enabling weakness can actually be a point and moment where you've helped someone's life turn a corner. It's burdensome to think about and it takes a piece out of myself to do it, but everyone is thanked out of reflex and I feel more comfortable in my own skin, helpless and power filled at once, when I have taken the time to let them know the fact that I am still alive now is not by chance or the grace of a supreme being and is by their taking their time to pitch a penny or several thousand into my hat. To fool yourself into thinking you've done it by yourself or by chance or by blessing or sheer hard work grind is something I want to make sure I never do. So maybe it is an anchor. Maybe it is an unnecessary sacrifice and can be framed as a guilt or a confirmation of sin and imperfection. A penance. I don't see it that way and will never come around to that frame of mind. So much of life is decisions and whether it suits me or not a lot of those decisions happen outside of myself. I accept that. So please, accept my outside decision to thank you and the universe outside of myself that you have had a hand, direct and indirectly, in forming.
Once we're clear of that, we can shift focus back to fantasy lands and dreamscapes. There isn't much more distance to cover and I am happy for that. Excited for that. There are times when I feel like every other word is about some future date when the resources are at their correct levels and processes have synchronized and the planets have lined up into something close to a grand cross and if I am twenty minutes in to 5th Element while listening to acid jazz with my heaphones in my key tray and I've already consulted my little sister and am suitably numb mouthed from too many cigarettes and just the right amount to dissuade me from running to the gas station to purchase more and the moon is a waning gibbous on a clear night with rain in the forecast for early before the sun comes up with the option to sit outside with a fire at any point prior barring the anything prior to the immediate because it did not rain the day through at work, where I box myself in to unrealistic expectations as a way to never have to actually execute anything. If you never pull the trigger, you never have to learn whether or not there is more to learn about what you want to do. Whatever you have conceptualized is its best and most perfect form. You never have to translate. I wanted to have children. I can have children. Meet my family! It's almost like every idea is that part of you other people talk about and love, but if they ever did meet you, the rest of you, they'd screw their nose up and rub their squished shut eyes like they just saw an apple snap loose from a twig and fall up to disappear into the sky.
I get very caught up, but I have not forgotten my own needs. It eats me out from the inside, but I never forget the gnaw and the sound of it and the feel of it, the blood cough taste of it, nose running, water eyed mechanics of it. They scream at me. I'm moving forward as fast as I can. I swear, I am. The days disappear swiftly. The nights are restless, strapped to a mattress. Fear lurks in corners. Cats ask questions. Notes are taken on walls and skin and misnamed folders. Bite a lower lip and squeal from the top of the foothills of the mountain range, the clouds ahead of the temperature front doing strange things above the peaks and the ground bellowing thunder lake swells and strikes days distant, birds moving town in brunch sky above. Sip. Nod. Please pass the olives. Cross a leg and scribble onward.
///Sylvan Esso - "Uncatena"
Once we're clear of that, we can shift focus back to fantasy lands and dreamscapes. There isn't much more distance to cover and I am happy for that. Excited for that. There are times when I feel like every other word is about some future date when the resources are at their correct levels and processes have synchronized and the planets have lined up into something close to a grand cross and if I am twenty minutes in to 5th Element while listening to acid jazz with my heaphones in my key tray and I've already consulted my little sister and am suitably numb mouthed from too many cigarettes and just the right amount to dissuade me from running to the gas station to purchase more and the moon is a waning gibbous on a clear night with rain in the forecast for early before the sun comes up with the option to sit outside with a fire at any point prior barring the anything prior to the immediate because it did not rain the day through at work, where I box myself in to unrealistic expectations as a way to never have to actually execute anything. If you never pull the trigger, you never have to learn whether or not there is more to learn about what you want to do. Whatever you have conceptualized is its best and most perfect form. You never have to translate. I wanted to have children. I can have children. Meet my family! It's almost like every idea is that part of you other people talk about and love, but if they ever did meet you, the rest of you, they'd screw their nose up and rub their squished shut eyes like they just saw an apple snap loose from a twig and fall up to disappear into the sky.
I get very caught up, but I have not forgotten my own needs. It eats me out from the inside, but I never forget the gnaw and the sound of it and the feel of it, the blood cough taste of it, nose running, water eyed mechanics of it. They scream at me. I'm moving forward as fast as I can. I swear, I am. The days disappear swiftly. The nights are restless, strapped to a mattress. Fear lurks in corners. Cats ask questions. Notes are taken on walls and skin and misnamed folders. Bite a lower lip and squeal from the top of the foothills of the mountain range, the clouds ahead of the temperature front doing strange things above the peaks and the ground bellowing thunder lake swells and strikes days distant, birds moving town in brunch sky above. Sip. Nod. Please pass the olives. Cross a leg and scribble onward.
///Sylvan Esso - "Uncatena"
5/18/16
Dear (_____)
Dear Union Pig and Chicken,
Please do better. Or continue to do the same, I suppose. Either way, it's fairly clear you're smoke house food and bar is not for my kind. My friend sitting across from me cussed at the television because the Pirates game was on and a bull shit call happened, and the manager came out of the Pirate's dugout and was clearly mouthing "no, no, no, that is bull shit" on live television several times over, and my friends exact words were "ah, that's bull shit" on the loud side and we went back to our conversation about the idiosyncrasies of baseballs rules. Your wait staffer went out of their way to admonish him with widened and upset eyes that cursing was not for the bar area or U, P, & C, unless we were in the back room playing adventure bingo. The staffer kept on as though about to ask us to leave.
We got a "to go" order and were only waiting for a half pound of brisket to arrive in a paper bag while we shared a cider from a can. The hell, UPC? It was 9:30. You close at Ten. Everyone upstairs was talking loudly. We were sitting at a table four feet away from the bar because that's where your waiter sat us after I let him know we just wanted a drink while we waited for my"to go."
Was it our beards? Was it our clothes? The single swear word? Among all adult clientele, at a bar, while everyone else was drinking? Why the glaring? Why the threatening posture? Why did your staffer feel like they had to say "swearing is not for out here, is that clear" before taking our drink order of a single can of beer and a pair of waters and repeating the question when we asked if we can order and move on?
No smoking? fine. Everyone understands that. No screaming and shouting profanity enough to paint the walls? Sure, no one wants to hear that while they're eating or trying to relax. Threatening denial of service for a remark about a game on the televisions at a bar of all places that is damn near empty I visited to have a drink and grab a little over priced grub in exchange for a tip and live sports for twenty minutes? I'm confused.
Please do better. Or continue to do the same, I suppose. Either way, it's fairly clear there's a kind of person you do not want as a customer in East Liberty and my friend and I are they. In retrospect, it's not that disappointing. I feel a little goofy now, not realizing and reading from the interior decor, the folks populating a few of the bar stools and a booth, and our initial interaction, that your place is not the place for us.
Thanks anyway?
You Do You
Please do better. Or continue to do the same, I suppose. Either way, it's fairly clear you're smoke house food and bar is not for my kind. My friend sitting across from me cussed at the television because the Pirates game was on and a bull shit call happened, and the manager came out of the Pirate's dugout and was clearly mouthing "no, no, no, that is bull shit" on live television several times over, and my friends exact words were "ah, that's bull shit" on the loud side and we went back to our conversation about the idiosyncrasies of baseballs rules. Your wait staffer went out of their way to admonish him with widened and upset eyes that cursing was not for the bar area or U, P, & C, unless we were in the back room playing adventure bingo. The staffer kept on as though about to ask us to leave.
We got a "to go" order and were only waiting for a half pound of brisket to arrive in a paper bag while we shared a cider from a can. The hell, UPC? It was 9:30. You close at Ten. Everyone upstairs was talking loudly. We were sitting at a table four feet away from the bar because that's where your waiter sat us after I let him know we just wanted a drink while we waited for my"to go."
Was it our beards? Was it our clothes? The single swear word? Among all adult clientele, at a bar, while everyone else was drinking? Why the glaring? Why the threatening posture? Why did your staffer feel like they had to say "swearing is not for out here, is that clear" before taking our drink order of a single can of beer and a pair of waters and repeating the question when we asked if we can order and move on?
No smoking? fine. Everyone understands that. No screaming and shouting profanity enough to paint the walls? Sure, no one wants to hear that while they're eating or trying to relax. Threatening denial of service for a remark about a game on the televisions at a bar of all places that is damn near empty I visited to have a drink and grab a little over priced grub in exchange for a tip and live sports for twenty minutes? I'm confused.
Please do better. Or continue to do the same, I suppose. Either way, it's fairly clear there's a kind of person you do not want as a customer in East Liberty and my friend and I are they. In retrospect, it's not that disappointing. I feel a little goofy now, not realizing and reading from the interior decor, the folks populating a few of the bar stools and a booth, and our initial interaction, that your place is not the place for us.
Thanks anyway?
You Do You
5/15/16
That Instant
you are watching porn with a friend and you both nerd out like eight-year-olds opening a new pack of Magic cards when you simultaneously notice the set has a copy of Super Mario All-Stars on its bookshelf.
4/29/16
Dear (_____)
Dear beloved domesticated felines,
Coexisting with you takes a lot of effort and time. More so than dogs and our aqueous friends. More so than our avian and reptilian friends. Less so than people, by orders of magnitude. To this day, I do declare, that human intimate level connection nearly impossible over extended periods of time for some unfortunate people (myself included), bringing your kind into our lives. A lot of effort and time and understanding brings us together in ways the thought of making you into a glove liner or hat, or a good few days of meals and key chain ornaments rarely comes to mind; please do not be offended when I kick you out from under the blankets beside my naked body when I peek underneath to see if the beat of my heart has lulled you to sleep and you drowsily blink up, nostrils flared, and pour two shotgun blasts of kitty boogers into my sleepy eyed face.
I don't hate you any more or like you any less, but please don't come back until you've finished clearing your sinuses, darling.
with love,
your cuddleboo
Coexisting with you takes a lot of effort and time. More so than dogs and our aqueous friends. More so than our avian and reptilian friends. Less so than people, by orders of magnitude. To this day, I do declare, that human intimate level connection nearly impossible over extended periods of time for some unfortunate people (myself included), bringing your kind into our lives. A lot of effort and time and understanding brings us together in ways the thought of making you into a glove liner or hat, or a good few days of meals and key chain ornaments rarely comes to mind; please do not be offended when I kick you out from under the blankets beside my naked body when I peek underneath to see if the beat of my heart has lulled you to sleep and you drowsily blink up, nostrils flared, and pour two shotgun blasts of kitty boogers into my sleepy eyed face.
I don't hate you any more or like you any less, but please don't come back until you've finished clearing your sinuses, darling.
with love,
your cuddleboo
4/23/16
Birthday
Thinking about everything that may or may not be coming your way. Thinking about everything you have left behind. Everything you pretend to leave behind. Everything, born new, you try to make and force people to think you've grown beyond. You haven't. ?Yoiu are ertarded,-= /You are retarded. You have grown and changed, but what you are is still thoroughly flawed. You did not pass "go." You fought for it. Triumphed even. You did not pass inspection. I am pissed and in love.
I do not invoke accents. It bleecx. It bleeds. Remind a self that I am just like you. Horatio! /
I feel horribly deaf. Root for. Poesis. Root for Poe. Sunrise is a /default. One eye. Bumper, crumple, zone5.
///The Postal Service - "We Will Become Silhouettes (remastered)"
I do not invoke accents. It bleecx. It bleeds. Remind a self that I am just like you. Horatio! /
I feel horribly deaf. Root for. Poesis. Root for Poe. Sunrise is a /default. One eye. Bumper, crumple, zone5.
///The Postal Service - "We Will Become Silhouettes (remastered)"
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