Hanging Up the Suit

It's an unfortunate, necessary, and beautiful time.  The time is the one to hang up the space suit.  The time to hang orbits closer than circumstance demands.  It's okay.  It's just Spring.  We'll get through it and to the dead and live wires of Summer.  It will be pleasant.

People will travel far and wide and countries will entertain them and landscapes you may never see will splatter across pages and it will be pleasant because they went there for themselves, but they cared enough to go there for you too and that's a neat thing.

Don't say proxy.  It isn't.  Don't get down on yourself for traveling that way though.  There is no shame in approximations.  Never forget that.  You'll have your chance for wanderlust, be it given or taken.  Wait, but in the middle times allow yourself to enjoy.

Laugh as often as possible.  Regardless of what you perceive, it is important.  Do not hesitate.  Explain later.  You'll thank me some day.  Or never.  Regardless, don't waste your time taking things too seriously.  Don't be a naysayer.  Be a slight naysayer.  Half of what is suggested is worth pursuing logically.  Half of that is worth pursuing purely rationally.  Half of that is worth pursuit in dreams and half of that is worth pursuing at the edges of plausible.  Half of that is worth pursuing in extrema and half of that is worth pursuing light out.  What's left is worth an idle thought, and half of that is worth creating in dreamland.

Dreamland is another story.  100% of dreamland is worth dreamland's pursuits, but what manifests inside dreamland,trickled down from perception is worth all dreamland can give.

I guess part of what I'm finding hard to believe is that I am able to be loved.  I am able to love, but I am not familiar with being able to be loved and am distanced enough from the lack of rationale to understand that there may be no actual actionable item or series of actions or stockade behind the signal.  No response found. None adequate to the task.

Formed structures of understanding maybe.  On top of that is the implied threat of compromising integrity.  How far am I, are we, supposed to go into the contract without a full understanding of implied risks?  I dunno.  I have no idea.  Can I be faulted for extreme reluctance, knowing possible outcomes?  It's not like jumping out of a window or spitting into the wind or pissing in an alleyway between two homes I have no part of.  Those variables are known.

It's tremendously difficult to hang up the suit.  I could've watched the last real snow fall for days instead of hours.  It ended.  So many questions.  So many tirades.  So much unrealized fuel and no where to burn it safely.

Are you really happy?

"Happier than I've ever been."

God fucking damnit, just tell me straight.

I still have the kill list (the capable list) for when I've gone as far as I can and I know that I can go no farther, freedom wise.  I look forward to its execution.  I look forward to my own progress too.  As far as it can be taken too.  I am sure, though not limitless, that's foolish, it is farther than I know now.



///Unkle - "The Answer"   days without headache.  I am trying very hard to make up and down of junk experience and important existence and meaningful relationships rendered dead outside of my hands for reasons I don't fucking know and do know and all the time all I really want is to leap from the tallest cliff I could find myself on some run and live to tell you about what it was like to hit the ground and survive.  We're hanging up the space suit for a while.  Not happy about it.  At all.

The Year End Look

I am tempted to attack some things there is not time enough yet to tackle.  I am okay with and respect and receive the temptation because the day is nearing and we stand on the cusp of something truly deafening with nothing between us beyond time itself.  Time's only enemy is patience.  The armory is stocked.  Let's knock down time first.

The 2013 year end look is a strange one.  Strange to me.  I crashed a car again.  For the second time in my life totaled an automobile.  The injury was an injury I never knew before and thought I would never return from.  It was probably something near or spot on to a partially herniated disc.  I am used to pain.  Used to adjusting for pain because a voice inside says it'll end eventually if you simply don't do it again.  This pain brought me literally to my knees every time I got out of bed for work or to meet someone or otherwise do anything that did not require lying down.  It was unbelievable.  Literally unbelievable.  It made me tear at myself and my bed sheets and scream in the afternoon and throw fits.  Everything worked fine except standing and walking.  In 2013 I became very aware of my age.

A friend of mine put it best: ten years ago, you hurt your back, you shotgun a beer and a whiskey short, have a smoke, and get on with life.  Now?  You hurt your back and you can drink 'til you cannot feel a damn thing, but that shit comes back as soon as your spine comes back on line.  You can't go through life partially shut down.

It's true.  Another year older, just one year removed from invincibility, or something damn near it, I am aware, acutely aware of physical limitations.  Invincibility has been thoroughly dispelled in 2013.  Respect for the injured and more feeble than I has been reinforced to incredible degrees.  Of course it didn't help falling down multiple flights of stairs after the car accident.  That one is on me.  I should have known where I was standing on the fire escape and not allowed someone to high five me hard enough to push me backward into the night air.  I guess I'm kind of a good fall guy.  I should have broken my neck or an arm or at least a finger on my way down, getting something stuck in the stairs and landing made of iron grating, but all I remember, three days after the car accident, was waking up looking at the top of the fire escape and their back door and the little light and thinking "wait a minute? wasn't I just there?  Why am I here?"

I went to a casino for the first time (with no money) and someone gave me a $100 chip.  I can count the number of times I've held $100 bills in my hands with intent to spend instead of pay on one hand.  Two of the five times were to pay for cars.  I didn't get to use it for fun.  I did get some long standing necessities taken care of though and a bill paid.  One step closer to actual freedom.

I taught myself to drive stick for real in 2013.  On a rear wheel drive truck.  I also learned how to use torque and how to use horsepower.  Yes, they're linked, but now I understand when to use which.  When to use a little work fast and a lot of work slowly.  Of course there's always the golden peak when you can use both at the same time, but high end cars are out of the cards for at least another half decade.  I'm salivating thinking about it.  My dream garage is still the same.  Still stocked up with late 80s Japanese machines and American muscle.  Some day, sweetheart.

2013 also taught me who my friends are and who my friends are not.  For much of the year I tried to be a friend to the world.  A friend to everyone who would have my ear and have my words, however fleeting, but I soon recognized (by soon, I mean it took the entire year) that what I was counting as friendship was not being counted or similarly given weight by the people I was ascribing it too.  It was heart breaking.  Truly heart breaking.  I remember crying on and off for several days as each episode unwound.  The penultimate was a multiple day thanksgiving celebration that was supposed to be fun.  It was, to an extant.  I was too much a different stripe to blend in and it was hurtful to me to be expected to do so, but maybe they didn't really expect me to blend that well.  Maybe they expected me to realize sooner than later that I should've left.  As it stands I only over stayed by a day or two before I recognized where I was and where I could do myself better.  Coming home was beautiful on that day.  

The ultimate was when I was left stranded by people I thought I could count as friends.  My truck died and a true friend bailed me out.  I've grown intimate with my truck of late.  Gotten to know her inside and out.  2013 reminded me of the bullshit premise my birth father put to me about a car that was supposed to be my reward for graduating Carnegie Mellon (which did not happen) that was his vision for us rebuilding a beater BMW (which flew in the face of everything automotive I actually do espouse and believe in) and it's been tremendous and heart stoppingly gorgeous keeping that truck on the road and at the same time by turns puzzling that anyone, let alone the sack of nuts that raised you for 18 years, could miss your values that hard.

It does make me laugh though, because there have been more than a few times I could've used an extra set of hands to get the job done and I thought about the gents and lassies that could call up their dads or moms and schedule a weekend under the hood or chassis without getting violently ill or stomach ulcers.  I appreciate that about people.  Sometimes I ask them about their parents because it's practically porn to me.

In 2013 I learned to slow down scarification.  In tandem with realizing that time is getting on I also realized if I ever do have children or adopt children there will be questions for me to answer too.  Questions I am prepared to answer and questions that will have to be answered as my nose and ears get bigger and nothing else does and my eyes continue to sink and my brow continues to crease.  The reminders still remain necessary and beautiful obelisks and world wonders to human history and I thank us for them always.  I need them.  Some mistakes you can make multiple times.  Some mistakes you cannot afford to retread because lives are in the balance and the house does not always win, but you can never go back.  You will die.  You will be consumed, make no mistake.  Every time I look in the mirror I am reminded and I need to be.  Inside of your skull you are your friend more often than not.  Outside of your skull is a flipped story.

The same problem does abound, though.  My development, my passion for writing, remains far too grounded for my tastes.  There is patience though.  There is gestation.  There is still the thirst for whimsy and dreamland.  There is where I lie and I know it.  I can feel it.  The attack is coming.  The all hail that tells me "forward now!"  I can taste it.  2013 was about defining starting points.  Defining relationships.  Defining the scope of the maintenance necessary for progress.  Did it have to take a year?  Yes.  2013 was about defining severance.  Defining which and what kinds of quests were worth pursuing.  2013 was a very long think.

The funniest part about 2013, it came around the tail end, was realizing that just because you can identify the group of people that you are attracted to does not automatically make them accessible or easily located.  You meet just as many air heads and space cases exploring your same sex as your opposite sex.  The worst, the most lip curling, the most eye squinting, experiences are had when you meet a carbon copy of someone you'd cultivate a relationship with straight, gay.  In my mind I'm thinking ten minutes in to the conversation: "god damn it, not this again.  Really?  You exist here too?  Who dropped you on your head?  Why do you have fifteen pairs of shoes and a $200 dollar love seat in an apartment you're paying $900 a month for?  Why are we going out to a bar downtown when there's one at the corner while you have a fridge full of wine and candy imports?  Three pairs of sunglasses?  Sunglasses??"  

I don't know what 2014 is going to bring.  I think my year to year expectations have grown foggier and foggier so I will add some definition.  I think this year (no resolutions) I will try to fuck a woman for some variety.  The whole "no concussions" thing failed miserably.  I had four in 2013 so I think it's fair to rule that out.  Broke my nose twice too, so that's out.  I want to do more art in 2014 too.  Life's demands put way too much on my plate to really put anything outside of my skull to look at and enjoy, and I'm not saying for you to enjoy, I'm saying for me and we/us to enjoy. 

Now that things have been better defined through thirteen, in fourteen I would like to explore that framework and see what and where it builds to.  New territories and frontiers.  I want a new scar for 2014.  A scar for the turn.  A scar for the "maybe" identified because in twelve the maybe had no identity.  2014 will be a quest for the whimsical.  A seeking out of the imaginary and a protecting of the physical.  We achieved many grown up tasks and came into adulthood through 2013 from its humble beginning in 2012's confusion.  It's time to explore the limits of what that adultness and understanding and thinking and domestication can ring when our bell is rung hard enough.  What music will it make?  Will it make music or fall apart with the strikes?

For the first time, in 2013, I had to shave down my knuckles with a pumice stone.  The scar tissue accumulated so thickly that I couldn't open and splay my fingers easily without fighting against it.  Too much contact.  I cannot fall into the trap of abusing myself in lieu of taking abuse just to feel normal and normalcy.  That's not okay.  It is not okay to do that.  2013, a lot of 2013 was about learning what it is not okay to do.  Platonic spooning was okay.  Talking about platonic spooning to their friends indirectly and accidentally by way of mentioning conversations they were not a part of, but must have happened after they left, later on when we and they met again is not okay.  It should be though.  Don't break my heart that way.  Break it any other way, but that is pure... muffed intent.  I do not have time for that in 2014.

I have accumulated old man hands at the ripe age of 28.  I am a destroyer parked in a lagoon and rusting.  You fucking cowards.  2013 was also about rebuilding my space craft.  I had to tear it apart and rebuild it.  It was gathering too many parts and pieces superfluous and useful once and never again.  When one part failed I hooked and slaved another component to keep it running.  Fourteen is streamlining.  Keep the violence down at all costs.  The love too.   Control.  2014 is focusing on control and dynamics.  It's easy to glass a city.  It's hard to embrace one and construct.  Consider the "what will and what can we build here?"

It does make me laugh though, to consider that I may be at a new base line measurement.  It is enticing.  So many things happened.  So much time spent alone and too much time spent in contact.  It does not add up to my satisfaction.  I will boost literary output in 2014.  It does not matter if you want to do it, it has to be done for your own sake.

2014 is action.  Redesigns are on the table.  Stand up act 9 is on the table.  Before both will come the year end playlist.  Let's go!  No sneak peeks this time.  So much left out too, but we'll get it in later.

///Shiny Toy Guns - "Major Tom"   ...near Earth orbit

Coming Back

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finishes their shit.  I cant slam my phone on the coffee table hard enough without breaking it.  I hate dealing with people.  I love dealing with people.  Nothing happened to me, everything happened to me.

Please hold.  I don't know what songs you like, but here, have this one.  It's an elevator and a stabilizer so enjoy it for a minute while we talk about your request and jump around it for a while and weasel.  Okay, that's fine.  I'm glad I chabbed up on something to munch.  I'll hold.  Please, continue.  It's not like I had something to grind on today.  Not at all.  I'm just blowing in the wind, but okay.  Please hold, please hold.

We are experiencing some technical difficulties, but here, this is the weather for the next nine days and 22 hours.  Here's the news.  In case you were wondering, nothing has changed so here's more of it.  Smile a little?   Here's more junk.  Here's what time it is and here are some pundits and here is some humor.  Here's some tosh and some cartman.  Here's bart and toys turned into cartoons and cartoons turned into toys.  Here's PBS and here's NOVA and here's are you being swerved.

Enjoy.  Here's ducks and hitler and dams and bridges and pawn shops and tits and dicks and marriages and food and chores and nannies and dads and children and scooby fucking doo and courage and beers and beers and beers and liquor and shampoo and lipstick and gloss and appliances and payment plans and retirement and cars and shrimp and outings and beef and socks and shirts and underwear and

I can't take it anymore.  I can't eat anything anymore.  I used to starve myself because I was paranoid about my weight and now I can't eat anymore because everything is getting shoved down my throat.  I can't do it. I can do it.  Everytime they ask me if I want to go out to eat I just fucking can't and I don't know how to explain it.    I can't eat anymore! Fuck.  I'm sorry, I want to and would love to, but I cannot fucking afford it anymore and on top of that I cannot digest it.  Fuck.  Sorry.  No.  No mores.  Can't do it.

Do you want to go to the bar?  No!  Do you want grab lunch?  No!  I'm buying some food at Burger King, do you want anything?  No!  No! No1  Stop asking.  Please!  At the same time, though, I run headlong into a problem.  How will you see them when they're not eating or barring or ... it burns!!!  It's not fair at all.  I'm trooping it and trying to be friends and I'm literally getting eaten.

However, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  I understand that.  At what cost?  At what fucking cost?  I'm coming back and I know I love to laugh and I know things can be easy, but I want what I wants and it's not expensive at all and I don't get why everyone is charging so much sometimes when all I want is a scratch off.  Jesus.  If I can navigate a day, alright.  Sweet.  Stop stomping on me.  I didn't want a fight, but hey, you got one on your hands now.  It turns me inside out sometimes trying to break down differences in understanding.  Yes, no one asked me to.  I get that too.

But if we're going to live on the same planet we better be seeing something close to eye to eye because otherwise you or I got's to go.  I've missed so many people for so long I just can't do it anymore.  I've accidentally estranged and shoved away some people too.  People that I couldn't afford to lose, but I was so wrapped up in being myself I forgot that the planet is a shared one.  I forgot about their knuckles and their dreams and tore my skin up and I'm just now getting back.

Pluto is great.  It's a fine place to stay.  Unlike New York, you can actually Winter over there and not get sick of yourself and population.  I don't care about being the first man on Venus or Titan, but I would volunteer to go if only to be alone and reasonably so.  Not needing a reason to have to be there.  Meltdown much?  I know I have a brain made of glass.   That's probably why she moved on.  Falling asleep in class wasn't an action as much as a symptom.  I wasn't born this morning, but I did stay up all night.

Shadow people.  Courage the cowardly dog.  My favorite color is still yellow.  I'll get there.  I'm coming back.  Out of orbit and nothing but gravity.  This is not my planet, but I live on it sometimes.  This is not my jail, but I walk in it sometimes.




///DJ? Acucrack - "Time For You to Leave"  ... turn the radio on, turn the radio off but you never never...  I don't know if thems the lyrics but this song is close to my heart.

The Best Thing

The best thing about winter aside from the Snow? No more @#$&@$$ mosquitoes.

The Fall and Collective Effort and No Cussing This Time and Craigslist (Again)

Do you ever get the feeling that you're falling and then it changes to a feeling of being pulled into the jet wash of a landing airliner feet first and then you realize that the ground isn't moving, but the sky is and you get sick anyway and you fall face first onto your front lawn and dry heave for ten minutes and then realize that you probably should have just stayed inside to begin with?

I get that feeling sometimes.

So tell me, would you tell me if I had a really bad idea? No? Great. So I was thinking about writing MF Doom a letter and including in that letter a proposal to become his intern. Would that be crazy? I think so. What if I wrote a letter to every artist and writer I admire with a similar proposal. I don't really want to make money as much as I want the opportunity for exposure and guidance.

I was also thinking about using craiglist to find friends. I think I mentioned that before. Maybe I'll meet a murderer. That would be interesting. Probably bad news, but interesting. I mean, I wouldn't be going out specifically to get murdered, but I'm not entirely sure I'd be completely opposed to it either. Maybe I'll try and use it to move my wares.

A friend of mine is kicking my ass to write a novel. I started one. I'm about 8000 words in. I'm not sure I'm going to finish it. No, scratch that. I am going to finish it. The problem is that I don't particularly care about the characters. It doesn't make it that much more difficult to write. It just doesn't make it that much more interesting.

Now that I'm back together I was expecting sunshine to come flooding back in, but it hasn't. I'm not really sure if anything else is really missing. I was thinking about emailing my old professors to show them my work and ask for pointers. I emailed them once before and they basically unanimously panned my plea for assistance. It was shocking. I don't think I've really recovered from that. What lesson could they possibly be trying to teach me by not responding at all? Well, there was one response. The response was essentially a non-response, but a statement of non-response. I can respect that. I think.

I've noticed a warmth in my skin. I can't tell if it's just the sensation of my blood flowing against the temperature difference of my cold muscles or if it's just feeling warm. I can see why they wanted to put me on medication. It's not like I don't need it. I also wonder if 30 will be any different. One thing that has stood out over the last few days is that I've been living in a situation where everyone tells me to do something other than what it is I know I am built to do and do well. I think I will still make the suicide diary and the music hit list. I'm thinking about moving north and the ways in which I can make that happen. I want to order sex toys. Actually, so I was considering posting to craigslist about my thoughts on a cross country migration. I don't want to move to Pittsburgh until I'm completely ready to die there.

I keep talking about craigslist, but I haven't done anything about it have I? Well I will. I did some drawing today. Do you like it? I kind of do. I cleaned up my language today too. I miss the hospital. They were so constructive there. And I earned the right to stay up past 9:30 to watch the video of soothing sounds and star fields by going to start your day group everyday for two weeks. I even put together a jigsaw puzzle. I got a sticker for that. Not even joking, it was a pretty awesome feeling. What day is it? Remember that song that was all about little things the narrator learned through his life? That song got played so much it became sickening.

I sent an accidental email. No response on that either. Maybe I'll shoot an email to my old therapist. He always knows when to shut the hell up. Pardon. Sometimes I wonder if I'm dragging my feet about writing because I know when I have nothing left to say I'll very likely not put up with the hassle of occupying my body. I ran through a handle in 4 days. I'm going to make a terrible father. Well, maybe not. I slept with the lights off after I stiff night of drinking. It was the first time in a while. I've been thinking about winning a writing fellowship for some time. There's a certain validation of efforts that comes from winning. There's a certain confirmation in other people telling you "yes, go forth and do this thing because you've earned it". What I've come to realize is that I'm in one. It's not ideal. It's not glamorous. It's full of distractions. The desk is terrible but, it's my desk, and it's glamor enough, and distractions are inevitable. It's my fellowship.

In my dream last night I got into an argument with someone about the word 'suiterate'. It's not a word, but the guy made a very good case. The odd thing was as we were arguing and for some reason smoking cigars while we walked the streets at midnight near the el trains, a cat, a Tabby, came tearing down the street in a motorized shopping cart that couldn't have been more than a foot tall. The little guy was really moving and the man I was talking to about the possible uses of a word like 'suiterate' had to jump out of the way as this thing came screaming past us and took a hard left. We both stood there for a while and then went on arguing as we walked down the middle of a street. It wasn't all that strange.



At any rate, I should go to sleep and try to eat in the morning. I don't know when I started to hate eating food, but I've lost a ton of weight. Used to be 189 and now I'm 170. It blows and I hate doing it, but I have to make myself eat so I can wake up and do things. I love dreaming. I hate being awake. I love you. That's why I keep on. Hoping for some hokey conclusion to whatever this thing has been.


///Way Out West - "The Fall" I don't know if I listed this track already, but it is close to my heart. "And I miss you most of all, my darling, when Autumn leaves start to fall." To my ex, I do miss you most of all though I realize it was as realistic an expectation for success as gunning for snow in mid August. The lyrics are actually from some other older song, but they play well with the, in my opinion, conservative engineering effort. No deafening use of reverbs. No auto-tones. No wind chimes. It gets a little mundane in the mid stretch, but in the end it rewards the listener with a beautiful vocal break. I look forward so much to the taste of winter air and this song in my headphones and melancholy that is so much sweeter, so much more palatable, than the bitterness of the real and present nothing.