Dear (_____)

Dear Malcolm and Norma,

You can't hurt me anymore.  Rory Breaker put it fairly comically so I'll borrow his words for you so that I don't have to explain it again.  If you try to come see me "I'll kill ya."  If you hurt anyone I love to try to get at me  "I'll kill ya."  If you lie to other people to recruit them for your purposes "I'll kill ya."  If you try to insert yourselves into my life again before I say you can "I'll kill ya."  If you touch my sisters or brother again and it isn't a hug or a kiss "I'll kill ya."  If you have a problem or question for me and you continually take it up with someone else  "I'll kill ya."  What I'm trying to say is I'm not 6 anymore.  I'm not afraid of you.  I'm not 22 anymore.  I'm not afraid of you.  I'm not 25 anymore.  I'm not afraid of you.

It's very easy to stay alive.  But, as Rory said, "you're going to have to work very hard to stay alive" and if you don't understand the fuck I've said to you in the past-  I am waiting for you to die.  Please hurry.  Do not make me accelerate the clock on your fading years. Retire.  Your cause is lost.  You have three kids, not four.  That ain't changing anytime soon.

Sincerely

Crx24

Fireflies for the Child In Me

I know I have to get back to writing.  I've been feeling sexual pins and needles, like a blanket in a dry room with a fireplace.  It's been a very confusing sensation.  Electric and warm and immaginary, though sensate.  The land of a half million new pairs of knit socks rubbed along a tightly curled rug by one million feet, except I feel that warmth running through my hips and arm pits and around my nips and ribs and the backs of my knees and my tailbone and right behind my ears.  For days.  I know I have to get back to writing.  I know this isn't what it feels like to not write.  I don't know what this sensation is, but I want to bury my mouth and eyes and nose in it and wrap my whole body up tight in it like a cigarillo, light the end, and pitch myself into a twinkling sunset from the lip of a bridge.  I will get back to writing.  The awareness of sexual solitary confinement is blitzingly real and oddly ember drift.

I want to watch and feel the fireflies depart with the breeze.  Little by one.  One by little.  Until the only light is from the evening sky and the threat of sunrise.  I think it is the only part of that spectrum I'll get to know and share with other people in a reasonable way.

Why not enjoy it?

Will you ever have sex again?  I don't know, but I hope it feels something like this.

That Instant

you can't understand why you are sleepy at 9:04 in the morning until you realize it's 12:46 in the afternoon and you forgot to eat breakfast.  Again.

Smashing Bottles On Ships

I think part of the passion for smashing bottles against the noses of ships before they depart the yard is not only a charm or totem.  I think it is also a celebration of what could've been and what will be if you think the ship is destined for disaster.  A chance, after months and days and years (relative), to lift restrictions and wiggle, watching the behemoth's construction.  It's a time to dance and dance as thoroughly as possible.  The smashing of a full bottle being representative. Once in union, all the rest is random and uncontrollable and sometimes violent and magical and explosive and "the last unexpected thing that will happen is this shattering and firework."

It is a reasonable lens.  And a reasonable way to approach.


///Brassica - "Wryders (FMB009)"

Dear (_____)

Dear Weed,

Smoking you an hour or two before bed has yielded me the most fulfilling sleep I've experienced in quite some time.  I'm not used to waking up at 8, rested and alert.  At first, the sensation was alarming.  I had so many questions and was sure there was no way I would make it through the day on a measly six hours of sleep.  I scoffed at the idea that I could function without at least eight, preferably 10 to 12, hours of sleep.  I'm not going to make a habit of sleeping less than 8 hours, but I was surprised to still be sharp well into the evening.

Imagine that: no pills, no concoctions, not a 12 pack or half a fifth of liquor, not five cigarettes and some herbal tea.  A spliff or two and I slept through the night without waking up to a point where I was inside myself again and had to start all over to try to fall asleep.  I wanted to ask you if that's what most people feel like when they wake up.  Part of me is still amazed.  I know the more I use you, the more tolerant my brain chemistry will be and I'll probably have to up the intake little by little to hunt down and capture that elusive deep rest.  I don't mind.

The sensation reminds me of when we use alcohol to escape the present's grim realities and the past's ghosts that simply will not die and you wake up 3 days after a bender and realize the hangover has finally cleared and you can actually remember anew what it feels like to not be hungover.  So many days in a row, it becomes normal and what should be normal is a shock to the system.  The body's biochemistry is a frustrating, fine, machine.

Thanks for helping me sleep inside all of its damned moving parts for a few hours.  I couldn't do it without you.

ever yours,

     SmokeyDokey

That Instant

you realize your cat is addicted to nicotine and has nic fits too. 

Small Victories

Of course I can't help asking myself "what's the point?"  A lot of times I have to remind myself to live life for myself.  Do it for you.  Sure it would be nice to justify your existence on the basis that someone else needs you, like a kid, or dying family member, or very close friend, or lover, but they'll move on or move away (or die) or meet someone even nearer and dearer and that's okay.  Do it for you.

Sure, sometimes it's difficult to love yourself.  Sometimes it is even more difficult to care about yourself because it feels selfish.  No one is going to do it for you.  When we look in the mirror and laugh with ourselves at how strange we are and ask who would want to live with that, the answer is right there: we would!  Do it for you.  It doesn't mean you don't care about anyone else, or couldn't give a damn if society and civilization as we knew it fell apart.  It doesn't mean that we don't empathize and sympathize with oppressed peoples and sufferers of injustices and the caged subsets of this country and all the messed up things happening to them.  It doesn't mean we are wholly callous and willing to say "screw them, I got mine, I'm fine."  Mind that you can't build your life around someone else's fight.  You'll wear down faster than a clutch plate made of wax and find yourself torn apart at your seams every single day.  Give a damn, but give a damn about yourself too.

Lying on the ground, having spent the last of my saved money on a replacement leaf spring hanger for the one that rotted out on my truck (that I will have to saw off since it's riveted to the frame and I can't afford to pay a mechanic regardless), staring up at my ceiling fan I was thinking "what's the point of saving money if it vanishes every few months whenever something bad happens."  The next day, I opened my fists, put my hands behind my head, watching the fan blades go, and it occurred to me that there has been an improvement through the years.  It used to be living paycheck to paycheck and unable to afford food.  Just beans and rice and beans and rice and beans and hotdogs and beans and chicken and rice and hotdogs and PB and J.  Then it was living paycheck to paycheck, but able to afford better food.  Then it was living paycheck to paycheck, and not having to worry about food.  Then it was living paycheck to paycheck, not having to worry about food, and being able to afford auto insurance.  Then paycheck to paycheck, no food worries, auto insurance, and able to save a little.  Now it's crisis to crisis, no food worries, and auto insurance.  Sure, it's better than paycheck to paycheck and not as good as being able to save for the future in a meaningful way, but life is decent between crisis level events (like having to empty your savings account to pay for bandages or truck parts and specialized tools or new sneakers because the soles fell off your old ones or a car battery).  Small victories, ya know?

It kind of goes back to my ethos behind writing once I realized the industry is basically geared to be self congratulatory in some kind of messed up ways that make any sort of climb outside the construct largely an exercise in blind luck and volume: just do it for you.   What's the point if no one will ever read it, if no one likes it, if it's never impactful, recognized, or coherent.  Do it for you, care about its pursuit because you do.  That's all you really need.

Of course, I'll forget this answer in time.  Toss and turn about the meaning of love, and lost relationships doomed to fail anyway.  I'll slip into self loathing.  The little voices that are easy to ignore when life is fun and in balance will turn into roars and screams and shouts and flying sparks "kill yourself! kill yourself! kill yourself!" and I'll drown them out with music until I can't play music loud enough and I walk out into the woods and scream at the trees "what is the point!  I can't succeed at anything long enough to make anyone's lives better or build a family of my own!"  Then I'll remember, living for other people is not what we're built for.  We are built to be alone, to live alone, to love alone, to ride alone.  Can we live with others?  Sure.  We won't succeed for long, but it's possible, we've seen it, but never expect much from that thread of being.  It hasn't, and may never develop within you.

Do it for you.  Part of me still remembers my cartographer's mandate.  Do it for you and because someone else may be seeing and going through the years you've seen for the first time and may be just as bewildered as you were.  "If only there were some sort of mapular object to help me know what may be coming next."  Most of all, the point is, don't waste your time trying to measure yourself on other people's scales at every turn.  A successful day for some is a nice date, or driving a few hours to see a buddy, or dinner with their spouse, or closing a deal, or a raise, or whatever makes their white picket lawn and dog.  For now, for you, it's taking care of your job, exploring some ideas, taking care of you, having a few laughs, and not killing yourself and that is just fine.  Don't forget that.  Do it for you.




///Phonat - "Ghetto Burnin (Mmmathias Mix)

That Instant

you realize you must not panic and chances are decent

you are okay

Fear

I haven't been scared in a long time.   I know that I am going deaf from blasting music.  I know that I am forgetting things intentionally from my childhood and some of being an adult.  The methods of deletion are bleeding across boundaries and I'm beginning to forget things I'm supposed to remember.  Long term memory redactions are becoming short term memory blanks.

I don't know where it ends.  I do know I forced the process on myself.  I don't know which part of it is engineered and which part is a symptom of myself .

I'm afraid.  I'm afraid that I may have caught the tiger by its tail or if it has sunk its teeth into my arm and I don't know it yet because I can't see it.

Birthday Party

There's no answer for permanently fractured hearts.  Caught between the teeth of time and facts and wanting more than anything to be able to wish her a happy birthday without drumming up history.  More than wishing her a happy birthday, I want to be absolutely certain I don't hurt her.  To do that, I cannot offer a basic, basic, hallelujah.  Learning we would not be the same was one of the most terrifying, absolute, and violent days of my life.  I was already crying inside, taken every avenue to try to keep pace with her happiness and success.

Darker and darker and darker and darker.  The craziest part was our sense of adventure and curiosity for the world and cinema and oddball jokes and clowning and learning and reading and people watching were in line.

thinking backward, the love never dies.  Part of me shouts to the starlight "HAPPYBIRTHDAY".  I hope it matters.

I have nothing to offer her that will accelerate.   The answer to the question of future is blank.  I love you.  Time is an illusion.  Just gift me time I think.  Time is real.  Poor man, rich man, whatchu been in at.  What do you care about?

I put my body on the line and took risks.

What do you care about!!!

I can't have children, okay?  I can, but I'm far too warped to raise them.   Okay!?  I'm debt slagged as fuck, I can't raise kids, I don't know what a good chair is, I don't know how to do proper, I can cook and don't know what good food should cost, I don't have marketable skills, I hate customer service, and I have a useless degree and on top of that I still don't have the paper that confirms what I have actually learned.  Okay?  God is a lie, I'm antisocial, fucked in the head, and I would love to be.  I'm a social butterfly and an addict and a hermit.  I can't be trusted with a gun, the only family I recognize are my immediate siblings, I fucking hate people and the best world is a world where every city is glassed.  I'm an almost always nude and I love the outdoors and when we're at home, why are you wearing clothes?  It's weird!  Why can't I touch you?  Yes, it's your meat, I'm terrible with respecting boundaries once you're in everything should be open for all.  I'm not self conscious but I am conscientious.  That's the tip of it.  None of that answers what I asked.

What do I care about?  Fitting myself into life as invisibly as possible.  Caring about us goes about as far as: did you kill yourself today (y/n), was it a good day (y/n), can you engage with the world tomorrow (y/n), have you slept and eaten (y/n), did you hurt anyone (y/n)?  From those basics we can get more complex, but that's essentially it.  A very (I hate the word) easy checklist.

I laugh because who is supposed to live with that?

There's no answer for fractured hearts.

I wish there was.  Try to keep the shards in a box away from where they may be knocked over or caught up in the soles of feet and heels of hands and fingers or get into food.

The easy signs of trouble were violent in their simplicity.

We'll see.

I've told myself the ache will fade  Whispers along bedtime stories and therapy.  Imagine the... it would have continued for years afterward.  Pulling apart, love cannot solve base problems no matter how big or small and thorough a heart is.

What I hope most of all is that the first attraction wasn't a try to see how the other side of the tracks live. I hope most of all that she didn't think of me as ...

She gave a damn, and I will burn my circuits and song my circus.  It hurts.  I don't mind the reminder, knowing what it feels like to fall in love.  Knowing that falling in love is the sudden stop that will crush you.

Believe an end is just a beginning.

Believe love is real.

Believe that someone else saw something in you that you couldn't see yourself and the tides of fortune overwhelmed what could have been.

I Love You.




///Lemon Jelly - (Nice Weather For Ducks)