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.
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.
Showing posts with label decompression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label decompression. Show all posts
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
1/8/16
The Year End Look
Never forget that any day you do not think about killing yourself is a pretty damn good day. Let's run the damage report to begin. One concussion. One fractured jaw. Pretty okay. What the hell, did we learn? What is the outlook on this year? I am afraid of saying "I don't know." It's all there. I don't want to sift through it. Slug through it. I want to try to take my reference point from the year end look to begin 2015 and see where we go; so let's go!
First of all, caution paid off. Before the major injury to my face, everything was humming on the hardware. When you suffer a debilitating injury, a person cannot help slipping into ways to deal with that pain. No friends were lost and no new real friends were won. Relationships grew deeper and more sovereign. The realization that the only person who can take care of you at the bottom line, when bone strikes metal, is you and the only person you can rely on absolutely, the only person you can control with high fidelity is you. Everyone else are variables. Your friends will help you and attempt to intercede and interject. Some who do are tourists. That is acceptable. Emotional tourism is a fact of life.
Nice guys finish last, but they finish clean and if that means something to your heart then it is absolutely worth pursuing. You cannot wear hats that do not fit before they blow off in the wind or constrict the blood vessels in your forehead hard enough to give you a migraine. Through the incident, I learned that I am a violent person at heart, but the jacket around that bullet is a jacket formed in a forge of love, kindness, emotion and the ability to feel. Sure, sometimes you feel nothing and sympathy and empathy are things I have to manufacture, but I realized very quickly, unable to eat, laugh, smile, frown, grimace, sneeze or cough, that manufactured or not, however you arrive at it, rage and violence is not the way to go. Thinking back on it, had I lashed out and taken the governors off of myself and won the day instead of trying to talk it through and getting cold cocked, I would be sitting at home afraid to go out at night, worried that someone I did something to still remembers and is looking for me and I have no idea what their faces look like. In retrospect, I am fine with the outcome and more comfortable in my own skin for it. I know the switch is there. They do not. That is all the security I need. Sometimes I ask myself if I am being too nice. I ask myself if I am behaving too well. I shrug. I tell myself I am not a rat on a sinking ship. Certainly, I am not the king of the rats. There is much more to do with my life than project my violent heart on the screens of the world around me. What happens when the video skips and the rainbow scaled dragon leaps across the screen and azure clouds belching constellations and weapons blueprints? Focus less on projections and more on allowing that mean streak to roll. Why guide it? Kick back and watch the waves break and listen to the sound. A person doesn't stand at the sea's lip and scream at the waves. Attempt to enjoy it, understand where they are from, listen to the sound, and watch the sun set. Nice guys finish last; violent guys finish dead.
I am pressing myself toward creating music. A good friend of mine is fairly deep into the art and it is intriguing. I didn't talk about it much last year because I didn't expect it to come forward in the ways that it did. I didn't compose a single story last year. I did, but I did not write a single one down. There is no writer's block. Task lock engaged pretty hard through the year. What I thought would be three months off turned into three, then four, months of person to person tasking. Exchanging information at a very high rate. Person to person relationships are still amazing difficult to me to this day. I can do it. I CAN do it. It takes heaven, earth, and hell out of me to make it happen. It is like cutting off one's own digits one at a time. Day by day. Another knuckle. Another knuckle. Another knuckle. At the palm? Next digit. Fingernail. Knuckle. Another knuckle. Another knuckle. Another knuckle. At the palm? Next digit.
On the cusp of actual free time, I am typing with nubs. The fingers are growing back. Healing the psychological wounds. It's amazing to think about how I am still alive. Think about the conversations that lead to continuing to soldier on. There were two very bad psychological breaking points that I did not see coming. I know it does not mean that I am getting better. It doesn't mean that I'm getting worse either. I haven't abandoned writing. It's grown distant. More intangible than it's ever been. "What's the point?" When so many outside forces are bearing down on you and you don't answer the phone and it goes 'click'. I laugh and cry because you never know if the next phone call is going to be the one in the chamber.
The year was severely back loaded with surprises and paperwork. I am still working on the sleeve of scarification. I still use the strokes on my face as a daily reminder to never forget what I cannot go back to. I am envious sometimes that some people have "home"s. I nearly slipped up. It was a phenomenal year for seeing my sister. She is wonderful and sprite. The suggestions creep in: open the door a little. Do not. Do not ever. I remind myself each morning that I am where I am with what freedom and freedoms I do have by, to coin my father's phrase "pruning." To let them back in is to let years and years of work fall away. The garden is not beautiful. It is in animal and entity. Do stellar objects have a soul and intent? Yes. I will not subject myself to it again. Ever. I will never go back. "I don't hate you either, but I really don't like you." The kind phrase he put together after I finally told him I didn't hate him. I wasn't lying. No one was asked to be born. You cannot hate your point of origin. It is you. Whether you like it or not. The only thing separating him from outright hate is the blood connection.
If you will, allow me this thought experiment:
Your memories begin where they will. Your father is just some guy you are forced to live with for the first 24 years of your life. Can you hate him? Yes. Now, that guy happens to be the person who impregnated the womb you came out of. You realize you would not exist, save for his cock. Can you hate him? Well, we're all here now and conscious. Yes and no. If there is a flake, a sliver, a hair between hate and intense "fuck him and his whole set up" to quote Josh Norman, yes. The only thing stopping me from outright hatred is the unfortunate fact that he decided to create another person with her (which holds her culpable too; is where the pass card comes in, but the general manager and the head coach come and go as a pair). It is kind of funny to wonder who the owner is. I laugh thinking about a god as the team owner. God is like "what the fuck, we need to move this franchise and clean house." The commissioner is saying, god's god, is saying "aye Danny, you've got to do something with this team, ticket sales are bombing."
The early months of the year was a fantastic cruise of steady work and hand tools. When everything boiled down to getting people to talk to one another and getting people to a place to sign forms, things got dicey. I left a few relationships behind in 2015. I realized I will never be my brother's equal and he will never see the world through my lens. Same thing with my older sister. If I never see either one of them again I will not be better for it, but I will never be worse for it either. Not the case with my little sister. Every time I get to see her I learn something new and a new way to be. My family doesn't shrink year by year. The depth of my connection with the folks around me that I can call and respond with as family grows. No love has been lost, though some has changed as their relationships to their loved ones and their religions changes.
I think, as we loop around the year and close in on the last things, we are moving in an appropriate direction. The death threats are real. Make no mistake. My love for the friends that I can call family in my new colony is real. My love for my little sister is real. My ambivalence toward my elder siblings is real. As I get older, my tolerance for pain increases as a function of my diminishing indestructibility. I feel sad for connections that burned out faster than I thought they would, but everyone has their own lives and what is convenient and warm and loving to you is harassment and pipe dreaming and gaudy and ancient and plastic and misplaced to them.
The reason no one talks to you may be because your ability to survive is so tightly tied to your ability to carry a conversation with yourself and the other human beings around you are polite enough, kind enough, human enough, to not interrupt.
The takeaway from 2015 is that we are more conscious than ever before. We still feel and we still can. We can love and we can hate and we will take caution. Our days are numbered and taking the most out of each one is not important at all. We will never be famous. We will never be complete. Our family is not the family we were born into, but we can run operating systems on top of each other to make a complete system. You're not born alone and you will not ever, ever, die alone. Waste your breath, waste your time, but do not trick yourself into believing a moment is ever wasted in putting down your hammer, your knife, your gun, your fire, your heart string marionette, your pen, your piss jar, your hat with matching gloves, your shoes, your cigarette, your car keys, your lube, your teeth, your comb, eyeshadow, rubber band, your space suit, your glasses, your sword, your helmet, means nothing.
2015 taught me about faith in people. Faith in friends. They don't have to know everything about you to know where you are from. They don't have to tell you what you mean to them to understand you should pick up the damn phone now and then. Sometimes it works the opposite way. You don't have to worry your pretty head about tabs. They're watching and waiting the same way you are. Fires on hillsides miles apart on the same planet. Give them the credit due yourself. I love you. It was a good year. The friends that I do have and the friends that I can call family sincerely, from Houston to NYC to California to Washington to Baltimore to Michigan... well, it's America off of the top of my head... ain't no family overseas. The point is this: I am not alone in 2015.
I don't know what 2016 will bring. I am taking on new jobs and expanding limits of circuitry and I am afraid. It is going to be messy by my standards. The outlook is heavy and hardline and will take a focus I have not had to muster before. The bonus will be a new body for this red dragon. And, and, and, no one will have to die to get there, yeah? Yeah! How good is that. How great is that. It will not be nose to the grind stone. 2016 will be about how far do you trust me? I promise you that you will not be able to throw me that far. I weigh upwards of 185 pounds. It's only going to get heavier as I get back into the gym after being forced to take three months off when I screwed up and got my face fractured. How far can you throw 200 pounds? Joking. I do think trust will come into play in a big way this year. Trust in caution, trust in going through the motions of writing to find my muse again, trust in friends to standby and trust in friends to see their vision along their lines and do what is asked of me without question.
Let's make 2016 about trust and make progress on our scarification sleeve.
Let's do it. It's not going to be comfortable. It's not going to be easy. If you want easy, kill yourself.
///How To Dress Well - "Us In The Sense of Forever"
///*the year end playlist up next
First of all, caution paid off. Before the major injury to my face, everything was humming on the hardware. When you suffer a debilitating injury, a person cannot help slipping into ways to deal with that pain. No friends were lost and no new real friends were won. Relationships grew deeper and more sovereign. The realization that the only person who can take care of you at the bottom line, when bone strikes metal, is you and the only person you can rely on absolutely, the only person you can control with high fidelity is you. Everyone else are variables. Your friends will help you and attempt to intercede and interject. Some who do are tourists. That is acceptable. Emotional tourism is a fact of life.
Nice guys finish last, but they finish clean and if that means something to your heart then it is absolutely worth pursuing. You cannot wear hats that do not fit before they blow off in the wind or constrict the blood vessels in your forehead hard enough to give you a migraine. Through the incident, I learned that I am a violent person at heart, but the jacket around that bullet is a jacket formed in a forge of love, kindness, emotion and the ability to feel. Sure, sometimes you feel nothing and sympathy and empathy are things I have to manufacture, but I realized very quickly, unable to eat, laugh, smile, frown, grimace, sneeze or cough, that manufactured or not, however you arrive at it, rage and violence is not the way to go. Thinking back on it, had I lashed out and taken the governors off of myself and won the day instead of trying to talk it through and getting cold cocked, I would be sitting at home afraid to go out at night, worried that someone I did something to still remembers and is looking for me and I have no idea what their faces look like. In retrospect, I am fine with the outcome and more comfortable in my own skin for it. I know the switch is there. They do not. That is all the security I need. Sometimes I ask myself if I am being too nice. I ask myself if I am behaving too well. I shrug. I tell myself I am not a rat on a sinking ship. Certainly, I am not the king of the rats. There is much more to do with my life than project my violent heart on the screens of the world around me. What happens when the video skips and the rainbow scaled dragon leaps across the screen and azure clouds belching constellations and weapons blueprints? Focus less on projections and more on allowing that mean streak to roll. Why guide it? Kick back and watch the waves break and listen to the sound. A person doesn't stand at the sea's lip and scream at the waves. Attempt to enjoy it, understand where they are from, listen to the sound, and watch the sun set. Nice guys finish last; violent guys finish dead.
I am pressing myself toward creating music. A good friend of mine is fairly deep into the art and it is intriguing. I didn't talk about it much last year because I didn't expect it to come forward in the ways that it did. I didn't compose a single story last year. I did, but I did not write a single one down. There is no writer's block. Task lock engaged pretty hard through the year. What I thought would be three months off turned into three, then four, months of person to person tasking. Exchanging information at a very high rate. Person to person relationships are still amazing difficult to me to this day. I can do it. I CAN do it. It takes heaven, earth, and hell out of me to make it happen. It is like cutting off one's own digits one at a time. Day by day. Another knuckle. Another knuckle. Another knuckle. At the palm? Next digit. Fingernail. Knuckle. Another knuckle. Another knuckle. Another knuckle. At the palm? Next digit.
On the cusp of actual free time, I am typing with nubs. The fingers are growing back. Healing the psychological wounds. It's amazing to think about how I am still alive. Think about the conversations that lead to continuing to soldier on. There were two very bad psychological breaking points that I did not see coming. I know it does not mean that I am getting better. It doesn't mean that I'm getting worse either. I haven't abandoned writing. It's grown distant. More intangible than it's ever been. "What's the point?" When so many outside forces are bearing down on you and you don't answer the phone and it goes 'click'. I laugh and cry because you never know if the next phone call is going to be the one in the chamber.
The year was severely back loaded with surprises and paperwork. I am still working on the sleeve of scarification. I still use the strokes on my face as a daily reminder to never forget what I cannot go back to. I am envious sometimes that some people have "home"s. I nearly slipped up. It was a phenomenal year for seeing my sister. She is wonderful and sprite. The suggestions creep in: open the door a little. Do not. Do not ever. I remind myself each morning that I am where I am with what freedom and freedoms I do have by, to coin my father's phrase "pruning." To let them back in is to let years and years of work fall away. The garden is not beautiful. It is in animal and entity. Do stellar objects have a soul and intent? Yes. I will not subject myself to it again. Ever. I will never go back. "I don't hate you either, but I really don't like you." The kind phrase he put together after I finally told him I didn't hate him. I wasn't lying. No one was asked to be born. You cannot hate your point of origin. It is you. Whether you like it or not. The only thing separating him from outright hate is the blood connection.
If you will, allow me this thought experiment:
Your memories begin where they will. Your father is just some guy you are forced to live with for the first 24 years of your life. Can you hate him? Yes. Now, that guy happens to be the person who impregnated the womb you came out of. You realize you would not exist, save for his cock. Can you hate him? Well, we're all here now and conscious. Yes and no. If there is a flake, a sliver, a hair between hate and intense "fuck him and his whole set up" to quote Josh Norman, yes. The only thing stopping me from outright hatred is the unfortunate fact that he decided to create another person with her (which holds her culpable too; is where the pass card comes in, but the general manager and the head coach come and go as a pair). It is kind of funny to wonder who the owner is. I laugh thinking about a god as the team owner. God is like "what the fuck, we need to move this franchise and clean house." The commissioner is saying, god's god, is saying "aye Danny, you've got to do something with this team, ticket sales are bombing."
The early months of the year was a fantastic cruise of steady work and hand tools. When everything boiled down to getting people to talk to one another and getting people to a place to sign forms, things got dicey. I left a few relationships behind in 2015. I realized I will never be my brother's equal and he will never see the world through my lens. Same thing with my older sister. If I never see either one of them again I will not be better for it, but I will never be worse for it either. Not the case with my little sister. Every time I get to see her I learn something new and a new way to be. My family doesn't shrink year by year. The depth of my connection with the folks around me that I can call and respond with as family grows. No love has been lost, though some has changed as their relationships to their loved ones and their religions changes.
I think, as we loop around the year and close in on the last things, we are moving in an appropriate direction. The death threats are real. Make no mistake. My love for the friends that I can call family in my new colony is real. My love for my little sister is real. My ambivalence toward my elder siblings is real. As I get older, my tolerance for pain increases as a function of my diminishing indestructibility. I feel sad for connections that burned out faster than I thought they would, but everyone has their own lives and what is convenient and warm and loving to you is harassment and pipe dreaming and gaudy and ancient and plastic and misplaced to them.
The reason no one talks to you may be because your ability to survive is so tightly tied to your ability to carry a conversation with yourself and the other human beings around you are polite enough, kind enough, human enough, to not interrupt.
The takeaway from 2015 is that we are more conscious than ever before. We still feel and we still can. We can love and we can hate and we will take caution. Our days are numbered and taking the most out of each one is not important at all. We will never be famous. We will never be complete. Our family is not the family we were born into, but we can run operating systems on top of each other to make a complete system. You're not born alone and you will not ever, ever, die alone. Waste your breath, waste your time, but do not trick yourself into believing a moment is ever wasted in putting down your hammer, your knife, your gun, your fire, your heart string marionette, your pen, your piss jar, your hat with matching gloves, your shoes, your cigarette, your car keys, your lube, your teeth, your comb, eyeshadow, rubber band, your space suit, your glasses, your sword, your helmet, means nothing.
2015 taught me about faith in people. Faith in friends. They don't have to know everything about you to know where you are from. They don't have to tell you what you mean to them to understand you should pick up the damn phone now and then. Sometimes it works the opposite way. You don't have to worry your pretty head about tabs. They're watching and waiting the same way you are. Fires on hillsides miles apart on the same planet. Give them the credit due yourself. I love you. It was a good year. The friends that I do have and the friends that I can call family sincerely, from Houston to NYC to California to Washington to Baltimore to Michigan... well, it's America off of the top of my head... ain't no family overseas. The point is this: I am not alone in 2015.
I don't know what 2016 will bring. I am taking on new jobs and expanding limits of circuitry and I am afraid. It is going to be messy by my standards. The outlook is heavy and hardline and will take a focus I have not had to muster before. The bonus will be a new body for this red dragon. And, and, and, no one will have to die to get there, yeah? Yeah! How good is that. How great is that. It will not be nose to the grind stone. 2016 will be about how far do you trust me? I promise you that you will not be able to throw me that far. I weigh upwards of 185 pounds. It's only going to get heavier as I get back into the gym after being forced to take three months off when I screwed up and got my face fractured. How far can you throw 200 pounds? Joking. I do think trust will come into play in a big way this year. Trust in caution, trust in going through the motions of writing to find my muse again, trust in friends to standby and trust in friends to see their vision along their lines and do what is asked of me without question.
Let's make 2016 about trust and make progress on our scarification sleeve.
Let's do it. It's not going to be comfortable. It's not going to be easy. If you want easy, kill yourself.
///How To Dress Well - "Us In The Sense of Forever"
///*the year end playlist up next
5/12/14
Simulations, Run Times and Control
Simulation is an art form. Everyone's guilty. Shut up, you're guilty. Every compromise is another exhibit, another piece of evidence, but you're nothing wrong for it. It means that you are reading and absorbing. Where structure rattling shifts occur are when you've overstepped is all. That's fine. If it's not, it should be. Deception is not an art. Deception is a skill. There's a difference.
Simulation is an art form and a means of communication and should be maintained. Not must be, but should be. It's a token. It's a tipped hat. There is no fault with simulation. To read, to understand, to emulate, to produce circumstances in which the assumed can thrive, with or without the other's knowledge, is an art and, furthermore, to be absorbed in the simulation wholehearted is to complete it, and to find completion being a crime is simply absurd. Refuse crime.
To the larger point, bottling sounds of my thoughts through snippets offered through social media is not whoring. It is simulation refined and semi-successful and semi-failure. I am comfortable with that and uncomfortable at the same time. The act, itself, plays directly into the multifacet self. The concept of conscious faced through planes of a gem cut (or not) through experience and trying to catch the most acceptable light from the most appealing angle not because there is a drive to appeal and appease and assure, because there is, within the contract of citizenship to this planet, a very very important subtext and rule line x, dash alphabet, dot n, that says you can either participate or margin.
The approach to social media is always a tricky one. Not for offering opportunities for criticism; for offering opportunities for connection. There is much less value in not offering a front door and at the same time expecting the line to run from there, down to the sidewalk, and around the corner. A certain amount of simulation must happen. Consider it something akin to taking the temperature of a moment. Consider it too, an argument that specialized and targeted results diminish the quality of the simulation each and every time that impetus is to be obeyed and deviation will be cause for changes not, surface, necessary.
Hunting for ghosts should be saved for television. Things go bump in the night. Dealing with things that go bump in the night should not be necessary, and is. I'm not celebrating it. Have lust for the ones you don't dare. Few things truly scare me in life. It is part production. Part assumption of past fears like putting on clothes so those around you can feel more comfortable being around and talking the same way you can talk and fearing the same way you can fear. If there is a subtext, a foot note, to the experience it is that I saw someone who truly scared me because I never laid eyes on it before and it has me rattled because I never want to see it again.
I saw, for lack of a better term, a ghost. I have no idea how to explain it. It was not a ghost or a spirit. It was not an after image burned onto my retinas so I happened to wake up two hours later and blink a lot and rub the corner of the eye snot away and coughed to make sure I was awake. It was something I hope to never see again and it burned me on the inside simply to lay eyes on it.
I got out of bed and walked around it and it kept saying "you can fly in your sleep" and I do not know what it meant. You can fly in your sleep. You can fly in your sleep. It only came up to near chest height. I kept walking around it to make sure it was three dimensional. I was running tests, mental tests, to be sure that I was not asleep and that it was not a figment and it kept talking and did not hold the usual humanoid, warped and not, shapes or the usual animal, warped and not, shapes.
To pin my psychological misgivings current on its existence feels like a cop out. It's there though, watching me and I desperately would like to do something about it. I don't want to sleep. I don't want to sleep knowing it can enter my apartment with no sound. Where did you come from?! Go away! Go away! I have not seen it since its first appearance, but I feel it. It makes my skin itch. How do I kill you?
I've grown comfortable with some of them to the point where I can say hello, nod, and continue on. They're almost like family or pets or even, I'd go so far as to say, fixtures like lamps or hat racks and sometimes they yap, but it's getting easier to ignore them. Not easier, but second nature through strict training. My breath is still snatched away now and then when they are where they are not supposed to be and the agreement that I assume is broken because they and my own paths cross without warning and my face is not our face and they are.
I don't want to go to sleep. I am afraid it will visit again. I am much more afraid that it is a returned. I'm not prepared to deal with that. My techniques and knowledge have advanced enough to protect against signs and travelers and after images and beckonings and name calling and interpolations and ringers and false alerts and I ... ... don't know it and I cannot be caught engaging it and ......... I should not be talking about it. I have to. For record. To help me better. As far as I go. The lights will be kept on. Fear no man. It is, this I know, no man.
I had an odd dream. I dreamt I had a sex change surgery. Except the Earth, this planet, was so far advanced, or smoothed, that all outward adornment went by the wayside. To the point where nature and tech apexed to an uncomfortable coexistence. To the point where every injury, every modification, needed no bandage and had no boundary for it's obviousness. We were sitting at a hookah bar and passing a cigarette between each of ourselves and someone commented that my penis looked better where it was and we railed for a minute and then got home sick and wished we'd telecommuted to the outing instead because we liked our new body a lot, but no one stuck up for us so we smoked some more instead. Then we blinked and when our eyelids opened we were not on sand world again.
We were walking down a street where each and every person walked too, fully clothed, but the backs of their heads were all torn out, blown out, by something. Grapefruit sized holes. Deer slugs? Their eyes were fine. Their faces for the most part. Whatever went in must have gone through their mouths. Everything smelled like take out food Bronx tenements. It was queasy.
I'm not saying it's the return of the monster. It's not. I am afraid. I am dreaming. I am sleep walking. I am not sleep walking. You are not sleep walking. You are reading this. Pause here. Whatever it was you were thinking about doing, pause here for at least five minutes, but not more than ten. Whatever it was, it will be back. You can handle it. Do not be afraid. No crying. No hiding. If it can get in, it can do more and it has chosen not to. Do not talk to it. Do not engage it. Do not engage it. Do not engage it. Do not name it. Do not listen to it. Listen without hearing. Always remember.
I am trying to remember, trying very hard, to remember the name of the one I gave away to a friend and the price (I do remember that torture) I paid when he called him through text messages. It needn't be repeated. Once was enough. Learn from mistakes. To this day I do not think he realizes how far open I had to be to do that and how stupid I was to do that. Learn from mistakes.
I am trying very hard to remember and I can't and you know what? I am happy it is struck from memory. I am happy I can review the pages of notes and review the eye reel and find no hints. It means I did something right. I remember the weeks and the forced in closeness and needing to give for what I received and splitting cigarettes on the balcony and looking at the enormous clockwork gears ticking over behind the tree line near Bloomfield and the memory tape ends there and I do not want to discover what was buried there ever again.
///The Grid - "Crystal Clear (Clear Water Revival Mix)" Henry remembered his mother and preferred not to.
Simulation is an art form and a means of communication and should be maintained. Not must be, but should be. It's a token. It's a tipped hat. There is no fault with simulation. To read, to understand, to emulate, to produce circumstances in which the assumed can thrive, with or without the other's knowledge, is an art and, furthermore, to be absorbed in the simulation wholehearted is to complete it, and to find completion being a crime is simply absurd. Refuse crime.
To the larger point, bottling sounds of my thoughts through snippets offered through social media is not whoring. It is simulation refined and semi-successful and semi-failure. I am comfortable with that and uncomfortable at the same time. The act, itself, plays directly into the multifacet self. The concept of conscious faced through planes of a gem cut (or not) through experience and trying to catch the most acceptable light from the most appealing angle not because there is a drive to appeal and appease and assure, because there is, within the contract of citizenship to this planet, a very very important subtext and rule line x, dash alphabet, dot n, that says you can either participate or margin.
The approach to social media is always a tricky one. Not for offering opportunities for criticism; for offering opportunities for connection. There is much less value in not offering a front door and at the same time expecting the line to run from there, down to the sidewalk, and around the corner. A certain amount of simulation must happen. Consider it something akin to taking the temperature of a moment. Consider it too, an argument that specialized and targeted results diminish the quality of the simulation each and every time that impetus is to be obeyed and deviation will be cause for changes not, surface, necessary.
Hunting for ghosts should be saved for television. Things go bump in the night. Dealing with things that go bump in the night should not be necessary, and is. I'm not celebrating it. Have lust for the ones you don't dare. Few things truly scare me in life. It is part production. Part assumption of past fears like putting on clothes so those around you can feel more comfortable being around and talking the same way you can talk and fearing the same way you can fear. If there is a subtext, a foot note, to the experience it is that I saw someone who truly scared me because I never laid eyes on it before and it has me rattled because I never want to see it again.
I saw, for lack of a better term, a ghost. I have no idea how to explain it. It was not a ghost or a spirit. It was not an after image burned onto my retinas so I happened to wake up two hours later and blink a lot and rub the corner of the eye snot away and coughed to make sure I was awake. It was something I hope to never see again and it burned me on the inside simply to lay eyes on it.
I got out of bed and walked around it and it kept saying "you can fly in your sleep" and I do not know what it meant. You can fly in your sleep. You can fly in your sleep. It only came up to near chest height. I kept walking around it to make sure it was three dimensional. I was running tests, mental tests, to be sure that I was not asleep and that it was not a figment and it kept talking and did not hold the usual humanoid, warped and not, shapes or the usual animal, warped and not, shapes.
To pin my psychological misgivings current on its existence feels like a cop out. It's there though, watching me and I desperately would like to do something about it. I don't want to sleep. I don't want to sleep knowing it can enter my apartment with no sound. Where did you come from?! Go away! Go away! I have not seen it since its first appearance, but I feel it. It makes my skin itch. How do I kill you?
I've grown comfortable with some of them to the point where I can say hello, nod, and continue on. They're almost like family or pets or even, I'd go so far as to say, fixtures like lamps or hat racks and sometimes they yap, but it's getting easier to ignore them. Not easier, but second nature through strict training. My breath is still snatched away now and then when they are where they are not supposed to be and the agreement that I assume is broken because they and my own paths cross without warning and my face is not our face and they are.
I don't want to go to sleep. I am afraid it will visit again. I am much more afraid that it is a returned. I'm not prepared to deal with that. My techniques and knowledge have advanced enough to protect against signs and travelers and after images and beckonings and name calling and interpolations and ringers and false alerts and I ... ... don't know it and I cannot be caught engaging it and ......... I should not be talking about it. I have to. For record. To help me better. As far as I go. The lights will be kept on. Fear no man. It is, this I know, no man.
I had an odd dream. I dreamt I had a sex change surgery. Except the Earth, this planet, was so far advanced, or smoothed, that all outward adornment went by the wayside. To the point where nature and tech apexed to an uncomfortable coexistence. To the point where every injury, every modification, needed no bandage and had no boundary for it's obviousness. We were sitting at a hookah bar and passing a cigarette between each of ourselves and someone commented that my penis looked better where it was and we railed for a minute and then got home sick and wished we'd telecommuted to the outing instead because we liked our new body a lot, but no one stuck up for us so we smoked some more instead. Then we blinked and when our eyelids opened we were not on sand world again.
We were walking down a street where each and every person walked too, fully clothed, but the backs of their heads were all torn out, blown out, by something. Grapefruit sized holes. Deer slugs? Their eyes were fine. Their faces for the most part. Whatever went in must have gone through their mouths. Everything smelled like take out food Bronx tenements. It was queasy.
I'm not saying it's the return of the monster. It's not. I am afraid. I am dreaming. I am sleep walking. I am not sleep walking. You are not sleep walking. You are reading this. Pause here. Whatever it was you were thinking about doing, pause here for at least five minutes, but not more than ten. Whatever it was, it will be back. You can handle it. Do not be afraid. No crying. No hiding. If it can get in, it can do more and it has chosen not to. Do not talk to it. Do not engage it. Do not engage it. Do not engage it. Do not name it. Do not listen to it. Listen without hearing. Always remember.
I am trying to remember, trying very hard, to remember the name of the one I gave away to a friend and the price (I do remember that torture) I paid when he called him through text messages. It needn't be repeated. Once was enough. Learn from mistakes. To this day I do not think he realizes how far open I had to be to do that and how stupid I was to do that. Learn from mistakes.
I am trying very hard to remember and I can't and you know what? I am happy it is struck from memory. I am happy I can review the pages of notes and review the eye reel and find no hints. It means I did something right. I remember the weeks and the forced in closeness and needing to give for what I received and splitting cigarettes on the balcony and looking at the enormous clockwork gears ticking over behind the tree line near Bloomfield and the memory tape ends there and I do not want to discover what was buried there ever again.
///The Grid - "Crystal Clear (Clear Water Revival Mix)" Henry remembered his mother and preferred not to.
2/21/14
Vicious Paranoia
Saw the opportunity. Memory songs.
Some days it is difficult to remember that you can piss in your own pot and not avoid windows and keep as erratic as possible a schedule because the truth of the matter really is that no one is coming to get you. There is a boogie man, but he doesn't live outside the window.
Living by night is great when you are trying to control every aspect of sun up. You can avoid the grift entirely if you work at it. If he is trying to get you it'll have to be a crime in broad daylight. There is a weapon in every corner so grab whichever one you want because, be assured, I have one closer to me than you, day flyer. And I know where the spares are.
Come in through a window or a front door. Come on. It's silly though. The concept of combat. Asking for it? Earned. It still makes me laugh though, understanding that I damaged some and I wish I knew who exactly I hurt, because you're never the biggest kid on the playground, but you have to act the part or they'll eat you up.
They won't. You also have to analyze value. At the same time though... running over recent conversations... it is impossible to really know who any of them knows and who, in that party, is game for leaving things behind and making a decision estranged to you, because, let's face it, you are the extent of your staff and there may or not be an extended staff beneath the person you wronged and or the person you wronged may or may not be connected to a very extended pack of wolves that you may or likely will not be prepared to deal with on one versus one basis. That's why bar fighting is never good and part of why I quit. You never really know who they know and it'll come back to bite you, if not now then later.
Mistakes have been made. Exhaustive turbulence. Watch your shoulder. I'm not at all prepared to move up sticks, but I am. It's difficult. SR. That was the gambit though. Like it or not. If it ever comes down, as shiii tends to roll, just be ready. I was born ready. I wasn't. If they ever do come in, though, if they ever do. A battle for the ages.
It'll be a fine night. And in the mean time?
It's been difficult to keep NORAD going. Never falter. We'er not at tying loose ends up yet. Right now, take your choice when you walk in and I will match metal for metal.
///JDSY - "All Shapes" ... shadow specifications are... geometric ghosts are... hallucinations resolve into be ready for anything.
Some days it is difficult to remember that you can piss in your own pot and not avoid windows and keep as erratic as possible a schedule because the truth of the matter really is that no one is coming to get you. There is a boogie man, but he doesn't live outside the window.
Living by night is great when you are trying to control every aspect of sun up. You can avoid the grift entirely if you work at it. If he is trying to get you it'll have to be a crime in broad daylight. There is a weapon in every corner so grab whichever one you want because, be assured, I have one closer to me than you, day flyer. And I know where the spares are.
Come in through a window or a front door. Come on. It's silly though. The concept of combat. Asking for it? Earned. It still makes me laugh though, understanding that I damaged some and I wish I knew who exactly I hurt, because you're never the biggest kid on the playground, but you have to act the part or they'll eat you up.
They won't. You also have to analyze value. At the same time though... running over recent conversations... it is impossible to really know who any of them knows and who, in that party, is game for leaving things behind and making a decision estranged to you, because, let's face it, you are the extent of your staff and there may or not be an extended staff beneath the person you wronged and or the person you wronged may or may not be connected to a very extended pack of wolves that you may or likely will not be prepared to deal with on one versus one basis. That's why bar fighting is never good and part of why I quit. You never really know who they know and it'll come back to bite you, if not now then later.
Mistakes have been made. Exhaustive turbulence. Watch your shoulder. I'm not at all prepared to move up sticks, but I am. It's difficult. SR. That was the gambit though. Like it or not. If it ever comes down, as shiii tends to roll, just be ready. I was born ready. I wasn't. If they ever do come in, though, if they ever do. A battle for the ages.
It'll be a fine night. And in the mean time?
It's been difficult to keep NORAD going. Never falter. We'er not at tying loose ends up yet. Right now, take your choice when you walk in and I will match metal for metal.
///JDSY - "All Shapes" ... shadow specifications are... geometric ghosts are... hallucinations resolve into be ready for anything.
2/9/14
Uncle Scar's Cross Dimensional Fortress
There are days of dread in trying to cross the bridge into dreamland. Days when I've convinced myself everything will stay stable if I keep my eyes open. Days when I'm afraid of putting on clothing, because once it's on, it cannot be turned off.
Some nights you just gotta take that slow breath and put on the helmet and close your eyes and wait for the assault craft to crash into the beach. From the second the floor rumbles and rattles your teeth upon landfall to the instant the long range weapons open up is sleep. In those moments, that very long blink, listening to the engines hum and forgetting where you are and where you're going, worlds congeal. Cities twine together like muscles sliding over bones and lives burn into being like veins inside. And then it all blows apart in the morning. Crying face down and screaming and laughing at the same time.
Sometimes the most satisfying minutes are those early ones where the tears on cheeks are dried by the heat of combat and flames run high and blood runs. They're the minutes where you know you know what you know and you know whatever happens next could be the next that changes everything. I do not want that. I think there are times people mistake free wheeling for extremely extensively planned. The back up to the back up back up back up plan allows for flexibility that mimics carelessness. Walk with the wind on your mind.
I think I'm done trying to be funny. It never comes off right. Days of dread. Open your eyes. No. I've been mapping fantasy time lines across several sheets of paper and now there are twelve of them taped end to end. There were twelve of them. I got extremely upset about the inefficiency of the entire exercise and tore it apart. And now there's packing tape everywhere packing tape need not be and a severe longing for a time machine to undo what I did because I did not take the time to think, the time to breath, before I took action. To die with rage instead of rage is a win.
At some point the alarm goes off that the amount of blood you are losing will have a stiff impact on your ability to continue effective consciousness. I suppose it was a bit disappointing to have someone I did not know all that well recommend something to me with the caveat "...if you like huffing you will love...". Irregularities. An overwhelming desire to remain on schedule. I will follow you down. Any deviation is unacceptable.
Protection is invaluable and hard to come by and harder still to compromise for any reason, but compromise is necessary and not without it's own value too. We need to get back on mission. An operation unto itself. Obstacles have been attacked and sent down and the path is clearing to make a good run at the main objective and it feels good. It feels really damn good. What are all of those jars of piss for? If I knew, they would be used already! And frankly I do not appreciate the line of questioning.
Come play with us, Arthur. That is not my name. That is not my name. That is not my name! Stop calling me! I do not know who that is! We match, don't we? Leave me the hell alone. I need a whetstone. Who doesn't? I've been dying to put together a new theme tailor made to what I want to see and what I want others to see when they come here. Sometimes we're struck unexpected again with the death of a friend. I did not know him that well. Am I wrong to be violently upset about it? Years removed.
Sometimes I weigh how well or poorly my brothers and sisters know me. The now me. The today me. Oddly enough, my brother in law may know me better than them. It's difficult to contemplate. Processing and it comes back not a number. What do I actually know, though at the mouth of the bridge. Do it for you. I will get it working. I have to. Back up back up plans fly well at the interface and through interstice, but nearer toward the core they blow apart like tissue paper origami in a squall. Get it right. No will do, can do. You're having a hard time, aren't you. Nope, just downloading the patch. The short that makes the radio turn on without having to turn the key because the battery is still good.
No gods, no kings, no high down, and for christ's sake no god damn rings. Especially pinky rings. Boosters on. It is not me you have to worry about, it is the rest of me. We have done life by committee pretty satisfactorily going on a decade and a half. I see no reason to make sweeping changes just yet. Obviously at some point we will run into the person, faced up, who does not get the joke, but deal with that when it arrives. And by deal with that I mean make extensive back up plans now.
I am still going to make music this year. We cannot not do it. It has been too long already. "...We're only in the first few minutes of the first of January..." we'll evolve. Walk with the wind on your mind. Let go. Open the gate. Do not be afraid to walk with the wind on your mind because you are not alone.
///Underworld - "Second Hand" gear up. slingshot around the sun.
Some nights you just gotta take that slow breath and put on the helmet and close your eyes and wait for the assault craft to crash into the beach. From the second the floor rumbles and rattles your teeth upon landfall to the instant the long range weapons open up is sleep. In those moments, that very long blink, listening to the engines hum and forgetting where you are and where you're going, worlds congeal. Cities twine together like muscles sliding over bones and lives burn into being like veins inside. And then it all blows apart in the morning. Crying face down and screaming and laughing at the same time.
Sometimes the most satisfying minutes are those early ones where the tears on cheeks are dried by the heat of combat and flames run high and blood runs. They're the minutes where you know you know what you know and you know whatever happens next could be the next that changes everything. I do not want that. I think there are times people mistake free wheeling for extremely extensively planned. The back up to the back up back up back up plan allows for flexibility that mimics carelessness. Walk with the wind on your mind.
I think I'm done trying to be funny. It never comes off right. Days of dread. Open your eyes. No. I've been mapping fantasy time lines across several sheets of paper and now there are twelve of them taped end to end. There were twelve of them. I got extremely upset about the inefficiency of the entire exercise and tore it apart. And now there's packing tape everywhere packing tape need not be and a severe longing for a time machine to undo what I did because I did not take the time to think, the time to breath, before I took action. To die with rage instead of rage is a win.
At some point the alarm goes off that the amount of blood you are losing will have a stiff impact on your ability to continue effective consciousness. I suppose it was a bit disappointing to have someone I did not know all that well recommend something to me with the caveat "...if you like huffing you will love...". Irregularities. An overwhelming desire to remain on schedule. I will follow you down. Any deviation is unacceptable.
Protection is invaluable and hard to come by and harder still to compromise for any reason, but compromise is necessary and not without it's own value too. We need to get back on mission. An operation unto itself. Obstacles have been attacked and sent down and the path is clearing to make a good run at the main objective and it feels good. It feels really damn good. What are all of those jars of piss for? If I knew, they would be used already! And frankly I do not appreciate the line of questioning.
Come play with us, Arthur. That is not my name. That is not my name. That is not my name! Stop calling me! I do not know who that is! We match, don't we? Leave me the hell alone. I need a whetstone. Who doesn't? I've been dying to put together a new theme tailor made to what I want to see and what I want others to see when they come here. Sometimes we're struck unexpected again with the death of a friend. I did not know him that well. Am I wrong to be violently upset about it? Years removed.
Sometimes I weigh how well or poorly my brothers and sisters know me. The now me. The today me. Oddly enough, my brother in law may know me better than them. It's difficult to contemplate. Processing and it comes back not a number. What do I actually know, though at the mouth of the bridge. Do it for you. I will get it working. I have to. Back up back up plans fly well at the interface and through interstice, but nearer toward the core they blow apart like tissue paper origami in a squall. Get it right. No will do, can do. You're having a hard time, aren't you. Nope, just downloading the patch. The short that makes the radio turn on without having to turn the key because the battery is still good.
No gods, no kings, no high down, and for christ's sake no god damn rings. Especially pinky rings. Boosters on. It is not me you have to worry about, it is the rest of me. We have done life by committee pretty satisfactorily going on a decade and a half. I see no reason to make sweeping changes just yet. Obviously at some point we will run into the person, faced up, who does not get the joke, but deal with that when it arrives. And by deal with that I mean make extensive back up plans now.
I am still going to make music this year. We cannot not do it. It has been too long already. "...We're only in the first few minutes of the first of January..." we'll evolve. Walk with the wind on your mind. Let go. Open the gate. Do not be afraid to walk with the wind on your mind because you are not alone.
///Underworld - "Second Hand" gear up. slingshot around the sun.
8/28/12
Circle Back
I am circling back and taking my time to do it. Care is the order of the day. I posted some old stories to Bits. It's funny sometimes looking at how the composition has changed. How some of the sentence structure has remained the same and some has mutated.
I edited the names out. Not for protection against embarassment, but because it was a collective effort and the whole idea about collective effort is not knowing who contributed what to make the final product. More than that though, I was trying to hide my voice. I want to rework that story. It's good, thus far, lower case letter t$$$, but seriously, it is a good start and was a good start to something really violent and heavy and it needs a good twenty to thirty thousand more words to make it polished. I'm willing to do it. You know I'm willing to do it. I just have to do it, and that's why I put it out there. That, and just to say thank you too to an old friend I ain't talked to in far too long who put a good idea in my head and then vanished. I'm on the hunt for several a thing. this is one of them. Chasing my tail.
I edited the names out. Not for protection against embarassment, but because it was a collective effort and the whole idea about collective effort is not knowing who contributed what to make the final product. More than that though, I was trying to hide my voice. I want to rework that story. It's good, thus far, lower case letter t$$$, but seriously, it is a good start and was a good start to something really violent and heavy and it needs a good twenty to thirty thousand more words to make it polished. I'm willing to do it. You know I'm willing to do it. I just have to do it, and that's why I put it out there. That, and just to say thank you too to an old friend I ain't talked to in far too long who put a good idea in my head and then vanished. I'm on the hunt for several a thing. this is one of them. Chasing my tail.
8/8/12
Redesign (stealth mode, but not really)
So I'll make this short and sweet. Some updates (hooray changes). I haven't been sitting around scratching my bum and picking my nose and wishing for things to change. Well I have, but that's only half of my day. I'm on the "wish it, want it, do it" plan from the book of the same title as reviewed by Bill Maher on that show about the dog and the baby and the bad father and their crazy antics. I don't know why I did that to such detail. I think it was supposed to be funny. Progressively funnier as the details got more specific and more vague. Reverse comedy crash zoom. What was I talking about?
Oh yeah, so some updates:
The Auralport is wearing it's summer best. It looks a lot better over there (pictured here it's tinted gray) and the cloud bank drawn inside the letters really pops out bright. The design actually turned out completely different from the idea I had in my head of summer fields and woodlands. I wanted it to come out in deep greens and golds and purple and pink and as I was working on it I became more and more consumed with the steeliness of summer skies and the way power lines and telephones poles cut everything up when the sun goes down until it's too dark to see. And then the links became these bits of flame salmon that kind of reminded me of how the clouds kind of catch fire bit by bit at sunrise and sunset. So I wanted to capture some of that without making it unreadable. I'm pretty sure it's borderline unreadable as it is, but it's the right kind of hardness I was looking for. That same hardness that makes the summer sky hard to stare into some days because it is so bright and black at once.
I'm looking forward to doing the fall redesign though. I think I just do better with darker pallets and color arrays and lower contrast over there. OEMFail will always be a high contrast affair.
Bits for Flames received a little infusion of life in the form of two short short stories: The Hills at Wallston Park and Cement Head. Obvs they're not for kids. One is drama and the other is curio. I still want to do more with it, but haven't really had the courage or drive to really sit down and tear something big off there. I almost toyed with the idea of doing a redesign, but then I remembered I still have to do header art for the various sub sections, not to mention finish populating them from my stock piles of google docs. Anyway, they're there for your consideration.
Times have been tough. Times have been fun. Finally regained the ability to do somethings, and learned to do some new things. It's never all bad. It's going to be a tough month though. Then again, when is it never not a tough month? I don't know. Still popping off the works over at Auralport though the traffic stats are down, but I don't particularly mind. I remember when I first started over there I was afraid someone would see it. Funny how things flip around. I'm not particularly happy with the subjects and themes lately, but I'm not sure what I'm turning toward as of yet, so I'm going to keep shaking my head like I've got swimmers ear and writing down what comes out until I hit on what it is I've been trying to say this season.
May be time to just sit down and grind out an album.
Anyway. Unannounced changes that are now announced so they're stealthy, but not really. I'm rambling. Anyway, uhm... I lived, I loved, I laughed, and then slept for 14 hours. Gnite :P
///the item you are searching for has been moved. for no particular reason at all. because sometimes that happens. bonus track available next time around. i promise (maybe).
Oh yeah, so some updates:
The Auralport is wearing it's summer best. It looks a lot better over there (pictured here it's tinted gray) and the cloud bank drawn inside the letters really pops out bright. The design actually turned out completely different from the idea I had in my head of summer fields and woodlands. I wanted it to come out in deep greens and golds and purple and pink and as I was working on it I became more and more consumed with the steeliness of summer skies and the way power lines and telephones poles cut everything up when the sun goes down until it's too dark to see. And then the links became these bits of flame salmon that kind of reminded me of how the clouds kind of catch fire bit by bit at sunrise and sunset. So I wanted to capture some of that without making it unreadable. I'm pretty sure it's borderline unreadable as it is, but it's the right kind of hardness I was looking for. That same hardness that makes the summer sky hard to stare into some days because it is so bright and black at once.
I'm looking forward to doing the fall redesign though. I think I just do better with darker pallets and color arrays and lower contrast over there. OEMFail will always be a high contrast affair.
Bits for Flames received a little infusion of life in the form of two short short stories: The Hills at Wallston Park and Cement Head. Obvs they're not for kids. One is drama and the other is curio. I still want to do more with it, but haven't really had the courage or drive to really sit down and tear something big off there. I almost toyed with the idea of doing a redesign, but then I remembered I still have to do header art for the various sub sections, not to mention finish populating them from my stock piles of google docs. Anyway, they're there for your consideration.
Times have been tough. Times have been fun. Finally regained the ability to do somethings, and learned to do some new things. It's never all bad. It's going to be a tough month though. Then again, when is it never not a tough month? I don't know. Still popping off the works over at Auralport though the traffic stats are down, but I don't particularly mind. I remember when I first started over there I was afraid someone would see it. Funny how things flip around. I'm not particularly happy with the subjects and themes lately, but I'm not sure what I'm turning toward as of yet, so I'm going to keep shaking my head like I've got swimmers ear and writing down what comes out until I hit on what it is I've been trying to say this season.
May be time to just sit down and grind out an album.
Anyway. Unannounced changes that are now announced so they're stealthy, but not really. I'm rambling. Anyway, uhm... I lived, I loved, I laughed, and then slept for 14 hours. Gnite :P
///the item you are searching for has been moved. for no particular reason at all. because sometimes that happens. bonus track available next time around. i promise (maybe).
3/22/12
Comrade Super Code
Life has been strange. A lot of big boy decisions. Decisions I haven't had to make before. Like what? Like none of your damn business. It's been difficult. Then again, when has it ever been easy. My dreams have been phenomenal. I've taken again to recording them when I can as I wake up. The first thing I do is grab hold of my phone and press record and just talk, sometimes for hours. Sometimes just to hear a voice that I know is real. Sometimes just because there is so much information brought back from there that I know I am going to lose that I know I will need later. I promise I will get back to serials.
The thought of dying has not been as intense as it used to be. I had a conversation with someone about that specifically. Ten iterations ago I was sixteen. I don't know what I was thinking then. The documentation is largely destroyed. The record really begins to come into it's own when I was 18 and really began to apply myself to writing. That's been the literal paper trail. It hasn't been as intense as it used to be. Probably part of the blunting. Which is fine. I can deal with that missing edge. Sometimes you just have to beat yourself in the head with a bat until things quiet down. The kid hasn't been missing. That's not the problem. The problem is that we're all on the factory floor, guns to each other's heads, knives out, and if you say one word, just one, I will cut you so bad they will need your dental records to put a name to your body.
I just have to get them to work together again. They're all here. Just off on different projects. Different passions asking each other to pass the mashed potatoes, but never directly. It's been great hanging out with them on an individual basis, since they're not talking. We've gotten close. Which is nice. Not together. Which is not nice. Variable occupancy. Not healthy. We do drugs. No we don't. Second hand spray. Collusion. You owe me. I have been managing rage. Easier to do when you don't own standoff weaponry. In my life everyone has lied to me. That is not entirely true. Tomorrow is my 67th birthday in my 26th iteration. There is a certain amount of pride to be had in not joining the under 27 club, I think. A certain amount of disappointment, because joining that club is pretty elite in terms of prodigious production, but I have not done enough or come close to where I want to be in terms of body of work to be happy enough to pull that trigger, and a certain amount of relief because I am sure the majority of under thirty something suicides go unheralded and how sad is that? It's off and on. Wires close enough to arc, but the force of the spark and ignition of air shoves them apart until they work their way close again.
The shadows have been crawling. The little faces in door jambs closed. The weeping man in streaks of dry paint laid to a door decades ago. What the hell. Who made that and why. The shadows have been crawling and blooming for lack of a better word. When I'm not looking. When I'm barely looking. When I'm trying not to look. The world is a war zone. A fantastic warzone. I have been imagining the most fantastic weapons to expedite exterminations. If only I had the staff and the means. An angry boy can dream.
The world cross bridge is haunted. By my father. I have to kill him there. If I ever want to enjoy it again. I've had to rip chord out of there more times than I would like to admit in the last seven days and I can't kill him here. Not yet anyway. Still too much to do. He will pay though. Eventually. Matters of course and convenience. There was a word I was supposed to look up and I didn't. It's going to bother. 24 years of compensation. I just have to make sure I don't take it out on the people I love.
I gave women a pretty hard rap sheet yesterday. And I'm sorry for that. Not because it wasn't true, but because it came across so chopping blocked. There's no vendetta. Probably a lot of buried issues with my mother. They come up as I dig into the ground. Trying hard to not be found. I'm not going to go on a serial spree of slaughtering women to make myself feel better about myself. The shadows have been crawling. Actually moving. I don't know what to do about that. If there is anything I can do about that.I had this dream where darkness poured out of light fixtures like little waterfalls and it was gorgeous until the shadows grew so high people started to drown and I looked for days and couldn't find the switch to turn them off. Ghostly swims. Turning off the lights and trying hard not to look back into the rooms and believe there really is nothing there more than what was when the switch turned the other way. The freedom. It's been strange.
Where the hard stops start. Toxic involvements. I do have to clean up the circuitry at some point. My willingness to engage has been the source of certain difficulties. What happened to your face? I can't say, honestly. If I told you, I would sound crazy. And then you wouldn't want me around at all. I swear it's all above board. My boards. Not yours. Your square one, your nothing is different from mine. Maybe connected on some flattened levels. When you pick through them with zero and one forensics. I thought maybe if I scratched my ear hard enough I could pick my brain. No luck. We had this dream, right? About a house made out of cardboard and dried leaves.
I was wondering, you know, if you knew where I'd been. I have this sneaking suspicion someone's been lying to me, but I don't know who. Many loves of the dragon. Maybe I should get a kitten. At some point. I need to draw more. Now that I have the time to. The time to sleep dive almost at will. It's going to be amazing. I'll try to take notes better than I have. I've been gone for some time, but I'm back now. Bolting through space. Hell hound on a thin leash and learning boundaries the while. Dog bites man and man bites dog and dog bites dog and man bites man. And everybody wishes sweet dreams into your head as though there isn't fire filling the coils of your bed.
/// Starkey - "Eris" stoop sitter blues high
The thought of dying has not been as intense as it used to be. I had a conversation with someone about that specifically. Ten iterations ago I was sixteen. I don't know what I was thinking then. The documentation is largely destroyed. The record really begins to come into it's own when I was 18 and really began to apply myself to writing. That's been the literal paper trail. It hasn't been as intense as it used to be. Probably part of the blunting. Which is fine. I can deal with that missing edge. Sometimes you just have to beat yourself in the head with a bat until things quiet down. The kid hasn't been missing. That's not the problem. The problem is that we're all on the factory floor, guns to each other's heads, knives out, and if you say one word, just one, I will cut you so bad they will need your dental records to put a name to your body.
I just have to get them to work together again. They're all here. Just off on different projects. Different passions asking each other to pass the mashed potatoes, but never directly. It's been great hanging out with them on an individual basis, since they're not talking. We've gotten close. Which is nice. Not together. Which is not nice. Variable occupancy. Not healthy. We do drugs. No we don't. Second hand spray. Collusion. You owe me. I have been managing rage. Easier to do when you don't own standoff weaponry. In my life everyone has lied to me. That is not entirely true. Tomorrow is my 67th birthday in my 26th iteration. There is a certain amount of pride to be had in not joining the under 27 club, I think. A certain amount of disappointment, because joining that club is pretty elite in terms of prodigious production, but I have not done enough or come close to where I want to be in terms of body of work to be happy enough to pull that trigger, and a certain amount of relief because I am sure the majority of under thirty something suicides go unheralded and how sad is that? It's off and on. Wires close enough to arc, but the force of the spark and ignition of air shoves them apart until they work their way close again.
The shadows have been crawling. The little faces in door jambs closed. The weeping man in streaks of dry paint laid to a door decades ago. What the hell. Who made that and why. The shadows have been crawling and blooming for lack of a better word. When I'm not looking. When I'm barely looking. When I'm trying not to look. The world is a war zone. A fantastic warzone. I have been imagining the most fantastic weapons to expedite exterminations. If only I had the staff and the means. An angry boy can dream.
The world cross bridge is haunted. By my father. I have to kill him there. If I ever want to enjoy it again. I've had to rip chord out of there more times than I would like to admit in the last seven days and I can't kill him here. Not yet anyway. Still too much to do. He will pay though. Eventually. Matters of course and convenience. There was a word I was supposed to look up and I didn't. It's going to bother. 24 years of compensation. I just have to make sure I don't take it out on the people I love.
I gave women a pretty hard rap sheet yesterday. And I'm sorry for that. Not because it wasn't true, but because it came across so chopping blocked. There's no vendetta. Probably a lot of buried issues with my mother. They come up as I dig into the ground. Trying hard to not be found. I'm not going to go on a serial spree of slaughtering women to make myself feel better about myself. The shadows have been crawling. Actually moving. I don't know what to do about that. If there is anything I can do about that.I had this dream where darkness poured out of light fixtures like little waterfalls and it was gorgeous until the shadows grew so high people started to drown and I looked for days and couldn't find the switch to turn them off. Ghostly swims. Turning off the lights and trying hard not to look back into the rooms and believe there really is nothing there more than what was when the switch turned the other way. The freedom. It's been strange.
Where the hard stops start. Toxic involvements. I do have to clean up the circuitry at some point. My willingness to engage has been the source of certain difficulties. What happened to your face? I can't say, honestly. If I told you, I would sound crazy. And then you wouldn't want me around at all. I swear it's all above board. My boards. Not yours. Your square one, your nothing is different from mine. Maybe connected on some flattened levels. When you pick through them with zero and one forensics. I thought maybe if I scratched my ear hard enough I could pick my brain. No luck. We had this dream, right? About a house made out of cardboard and dried leaves.
I was wondering, you know, if you knew where I'd been. I have this sneaking suspicion someone's been lying to me, but I don't know who. Many loves of the dragon. Maybe I should get a kitten. At some point. I need to draw more. Now that I have the time to. The time to sleep dive almost at will. It's going to be amazing. I'll try to take notes better than I have. I've been gone for some time, but I'm back now. Bolting through space. Hell hound on a thin leash and learning boundaries the while. Dog bites man and man bites dog and dog bites dog and man bites man. And everybody wishes sweet dreams into your head as though there isn't fire filling the coils of your bed.
/// Starkey - "Eris" stoop sitter blues high
12/13/11
Have and Half Knots, Making Dead Lines, and Explosive Decompression
So I think I am finally approaching upper lower class. Inching toward car ownership and consistent internet access that doesn't cut off if I watch ten feature length pornographic movies in one month. It only took a year to save up the money for both, but I'm not mad because that was roughly the time span I estimated so many moons ago. Not that I'm some kind of social climber, but it certainly makes life a lot easier for me (being that at least half of my waking time is dependent on connectivity). If I think about it the only reason why I have a job, let alone two, is because of the internet. A major factor in my escape from New York was the internet. My creative outlets, well three out of the five, are internet dependent. Not originally, but since I opened myself up to being read, along with the good and bad that comes from it, that is what they've become. A pair still remain personal and internet independent, and they are my babies, whom I coddle and pet unceasingly. So I'm not quite a "have", but I am the possessor of many knotted ends.
Everyone likes to sew things up. Who doesn't. From the youngest age you can remember some of the most satisfying moments are the moments when you connect one and one and get to bask in the glory of your hard earned, bent spined, but elegant in that way, two. Whatever operand falls between the two slivers of symbols matters little. All that matters is you put in the hard think and the finger fumbles and drew something out of two separate things that ended up being beautiful, simply, the answer. Not just an answer, but the only answer possible within the frames of the rules of everything else that described the world around you. That is clutch. That is what I want to be able to do, but instead of sewing my things up I have ended up with knot after knot, with some fine stitch work in between.
It's not failure. Every time you tried to tie your laces and ended up knotting the threads when you were little, you did not just sit down and cry. Well maybe sometimes I did. Eventually, though, I ended up going outside to play regardless because the fact of the matter was that I was not concerned so much with the ending. I was not so much concerned with the fact that eventually I would have to take the shoes off, as much as I knew, no matter what I did after the episode of frustration, the things were going to do what they were designed to do, and that was stay put. So although I am a possessor of more knots than neat and fixed loops, and although I will sit and cry about it for a while, I know that I can still go out and get it done with the best of them. The difference being when I get home and the game is over I have to cut the laces apart and rethread them.
Making deadlines is hard, in that way. Not that I have to start over every week, but the things people take for granted are things I have to redo every week and make them work like new all over again. I would be more upset about it, if I had not had to live with it for so long. It's the standard. Part of the allure of medication is that it offers the promise of a consistent starting point. It simplifies, to the detriment of other experiences. I alternately accept and reject that promise. It depends on how frustrated I get tying knots when I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they refuse to respond. When I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they answer and accept and then absent themselves from the chain of command altogether because it turns out I did not have the con to begin with.
Making deadlines is hard, but having deadlines helps the continuity. I think that's why I hate days off so much. Days off are like being thrust into the airlock of my ship half suited, half relaxed, half giddy just to be there without having a reason, and then the count begins for the hatch release and I realize it is for real. I realize there was something I set out to do when I entered and soon I will be sucking vacuum if I don't get it together and I have to fumble and scramble to abort the entire venture because my helmet is still sitting right where I left it, in the lounge, and there is no way I'm going to manage to make something meaningful out of the next ten seconds (ten hours) besides flailing for molecules.
That analogy was a stretch, but that's what it feels like. Trying to get things done without a hard plan is difficult. Days off are always unplanned. Uncharted and unplannable. The hardest thing about it is going without contact. When I'm down on the surface among people I know what's real for the most part. Well, for the some part. When all I have is time spent with myselves it's a dicey affair. Tremendous amounts of necessary dialog and balance checking and enforcing limitations. I wonder sometimes why I sleep so much. What is wrong with me? And the answer often comes back that I cannot afford not to. A little escapist as the life across the bridge is so damn rich and half the time I am awake I want to go back there, but also because it's so certain there. A is A. B is B. C is C. And D is D. Every time. Not like here. Here person A is sometimes Z. And B is an irrational number. And C is A, but only when Z is B.
Maybe that's why I like to work so much. Formulaic. Math in action. Inactivity through action. Long story shorter, I want to finish the gift for Christmas. A gift of intent. A gift of a promise that I won't stop fighting. Not yet anyway. So game on?
Yeah, I think so.
///luke slater - "Hectic Bag" ...start as you mean to grow on.
Everyone likes to sew things up. Who doesn't. From the youngest age you can remember some of the most satisfying moments are the moments when you connect one and one and get to bask in the glory of your hard earned, bent spined, but elegant in that way, two. Whatever operand falls between the two slivers of symbols matters little. All that matters is you put in the hard think and the finger fumbles and drew something out of two separate things that ended up being beautiful, simply, the answer. Not just an answer, but the only answer possible within the frames of the rules of everything else that described the world around you. That is clutch. That is what I want to be able to do, but instead of sewing my things up I have ended up with knot after knot, with some fine stitch work in between.
It's not failure. Every time you tried to tie your laces and ended up knotting the threads when you were little, you did not just sit down and cry. Well maybe sometimes I did. Eventually, though, I ended up going outside to play regardless because the fact of the matter was that I was not concerned so much with the ending. I was not so much concerned with the fact that eventually I would have to take the shoes off, as much as I knew, no matter what I did after the episode of frustration, the things were going to do what they were designed to do, and that was stay put. So although I am a possessor of more knots than neat and fixed loops, and although I will sit and cry about it for a while, I know that I can still go out and get it done with the best of them. The difference being when I get home and the game is over I have to cut the laces apart and rethread them.
Making deadlines is hard, in that way. Not that I have to start over every week, but the things people take for granted are things I have to redo every week and make them work like new all over again. I would be more upset about it, if I had not had to live with it for so long. It's the standard. Part of the allure of medication is that it offers the promise of a consistent starting point. It simplifies, to the detriment of other experiences. I alternately accept and reject that promise. It depends on how frustrated I get tying knots when I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they refuse to respond. When I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they answer and accept and then absent themselves from the chain of command altogether because it turns out I did not have the con to begin with.
Making deadlines is hard, but having deadlines helps the continuity. I think that's why I hate days off so much. Days off are like being thrust into the airlock of my ship half suited, half relaxed, half giddy just to be there without having a reason, and then the count begins for the hatch release and I realize it is for real. I realize there was something I set out to do when I entered and soon I will be sucking vacuum if I don't get it together and I have to fumble and scramble to abort the entire venture because my helmet is still sitting right where I left it, in the lounge, and there is no way I'm going to manage to make something meaningful out of the next ten seconds (ten hours) besides flailing for molecules.
That analogy was a stretch, but that's what it feels like. Trying to get things done without a hard plan is difficult. Days off are always unplanned. Uncharted and unplannable. The hardest thing about it is going without contact. When I'm down on the surface among people I know what's real for the most part. Well, for the some part. When all I have is time spent with myselves it's a dicey affair. Tremendous amounts of necessary dialog and balance checking and enforcing limitations. I wonder sometimes why I sleep so much. What is wrong with me? And the answer often comes back that I cannot afford not to. A little escapist as the life across the bridge is so damn rich and half the time I am awake I want to go back there, but also because it's so certain there. A is A. B is B. C is C. And D is D. Every time. Not like here. Here person A is sometimes Z. And B is an irrational number. And C is A, but only when Z is B.
Maybe that's why I like to work so much. Formulaic. Math in action. Inactivity through action. Long story shorter, I want to finish the gift for Christmas. A gift of intent. A gift of a promise that I won't stop fighting. Not yet anyway. So game on?
Yeah, I think so.
///luke slater - "Hectic Bag" ...start as you mean to grow on.
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