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

A Brief Return to B6

After the diagnosis there was a lot of disbelief before understanding that I am wired differently and there is nothing that can be done about it besides modification.  Modifying my physiology and the chains that come with modifying.  Keeping schedules and junk and folding money into paying for medications and things and paying for visits to psychiatrists.  You can't spell psychiatrist without tryst.

I'm golden.  Understanding how I'm different was very difficult.  I still don't fully comprehend it.  I'm not okay with being different.  Expectations change a lot.  Do you want an exception or not?   Yes, we do, but we do not because we are efforting being a part of common society.  Aye yo, check it out, here's the baseline: getting exceptions makes us softer and enables if what we want is to be fully assimilated.  When we wreck it's hard to deal with because whatever it was we did made perfect sense to us.  To you, it's grounds for divorce.

And yep, my phone is officially broken.  The worst part about the diagnosis, the initial one, was my ignorance.  Let's keep this tight and short, but not to the point of complications.

I hated my psychiatrist.  I still do.  I know we are long passed the point of forgetting, but I have not forgotten him.   He has forgotten me though after I lost insurance.  Everyone has to get paid.  I refuse to check out.  I was bold before then, I am more bold now.  Capital lock.

Have you got my back?  I've got yours.  I tried to smash my skull apart on the side of the police car when I first got reigned in.  When I realized I had to reign myself in the morning after and they explained what I tried to do when they were putting me inside the squad car.  And it's alright now.  I'm not angry or mad.  They're different things.  Mad is angry without reasoning.  Mad dog.  Shoot him down.  Angry dog... alright, he has reason still.  I am neither mad nor angry.

After the diagnosis I had no idea where I could possibly go.  It was a true diagnosis and I have to lie out of the ass to avoid internment again.  After the diagnosis and hearing what it would cost to make me better, literally hundreds of dollars per month (and hearing too that the trial period ends, hence the name "trial period" until they get the milligrams right) and knowing what I was bound to make...  it's like being stuck with a home you can't actually pay for and you cannot move either.  You cannot pull up sticks and pick a new lot.  It was terrifying.  I had no idea where I could possibly go, so I decided to move off grid.  No meds.  No pills.  Just force.  True force.

Sometimes thing come apart a lot.  Sometimes control does not talk back to you no matter how many signals you send out, out of reflex.  If I could afford it, I would go.  Easily and quietly, I would go.  Let's go though, and keep it brief.

Back to basics.  I know I need help.  It's part of what I am working for.  Why I go to work everyday.  Start your day group was nice.  It was excellent.  I do not want to go back there.  I am damn near 30 years old and I do not belong there.  I know who I am.  I have to work harder and as time increases I know I have to work harder yet and I am okay with that.  I'm not and will never be a made man.  I am willing to work and that's something!  Diagnosis is not, I will prove it to you, ever a death sentence.




///Minamina Goodsong - "First Movement"

Holdovers and Artifacts

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

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

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

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




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


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