That Instant

you realize you forgot you wrote the coast of baltimore after that amazing two week span of confession and rough housing and video games and case racing and all kinds of shit you will probably never get to do again there with the set of people you knew there and it crushes and elates you that you almost nailed it down for posterity, but mainly you're just glad that your sister manned up and took you there and really all you are is eternally grateful and a little stupefied the whole thing went as well as it did back in that November, years gone.

Burna

I don't know.  That's not true, I do know.  I get scorched sometimes.  Emotionally.   Not by anyone specifically or the selves within myself.  It's that the act of creation is a burner.  I have to crank it up to high and hear the igniter tick over and tap and I do not always know what the igniter will be.  The ignition coil accepts voltage over the course of hours and sometimes days and sometimes months.  It does not always click.  I would go as far as to say that often times, more often than otherwise, it does not click and the ignition coil never accepts enough voltage to arc and I have to hold a lighter down on that gas line and hope it takes before the house burns down and I'm sitting in the backyard smoking with no eyebrows wondering how I got there because the kitchen exploded and I was high off of my ass on fumes well before it happened.  I want it to work every time.  That's wishful thinking.   I get scorched a lot.  I am highly flammable.  Just the way the genes shook out.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of a writer I would be, could be, with greater mental stability, and then I laugh.  Because I would have bored myself to death in high school with pen and paper and I realize I would be the mathematician or the economist or the engineer or the welder who did it because it was something they could do mechanically and do well and do with hi fidelity in a very stable pattern and my interest would've waned and I would have sought out something more dynamic.  No wait.  That's me.  Me now, projecting myself backward and extrapolating to now.  Not what I was trying to describe at all.  I would have done those things and been happy to do them and never would have branched out to something I could be wrong at and still pursue with passion as though I was baseline perfect and sometimes brilliant, but not nearly enough to make that one diamond sparkle to my eye enough to push me to try for something with more cuts and more shine and more heart.  At least that's what I like to think.  Would happen if I were more stable.

Do I want the things that come with stability?  Of course.  You'd have to be a moron not to.  Do I want the things that come with instability?  Of course.  Not all of them, but at least 70% of them.  Maybe closer to 60%.  Thinking back, I never really was a very stable human being.  I remember getting into a spat at a summer camp when I was very young, came back to me today, cannot remember for my life what camp it was or if it was bible camp or something more or less or forced or if I asked to go to it.  It was a moment where myself and my peers were unsupervised and they were making fun of my shoes again because I had very bad knock off shoes.  Very bad.  Not even stylistically speaking.  Simply very poorly engineered shoes.  The soles were made of this weird psuedo plastic, translucent, compound so whenever we played "Duck Duck Goose" or "Steal the Bacon" in gym I would have to work ten times harder than everyone with regular rubber to make cuts and accelerate and slow down because the plastic stuff would glide on the waxed wood floor like skates.  I still won my fair share.  Unfair share?  I should have been undefeated.  It's probably how I got to be so fast early on and kept going from there.  Also probably how I got to be so frustrated when I get a job and don't have the right equipment today.

Anyway, where was I going....  so myself and my peers were unsupervised and I was being teased relentlessly and I didn't do anything for a while except shut up.  Partly because I knew however I spun it I would get the beating of a lifetime up until that point once I got home, and partly because I wanted to go grab a chair and beat him to death.  So I went straight for his throat because the middle ground was dealing with them making fun of you for having dirty nails, them not realizing you were keeping them as long as your mom could stand before digging that hook thing underneath or cutting them specifically for the instance when you may need to claw someones throat out of their neck.  It worked out pretty well.  He bled some and I was not nearly as strong as I thought I was then so he only lost some skin, but he was so freaked out he didn't even tell on me.  Or maybe he did and I've just blacked the aftermath out of my memory.  Anyway, I just remember thinking "awesome, why did I not do that sooner."  Strange days back then.

And now.  I know I can't be, but I believe I can be the greatest of all time.  I get scorched.  I melt down.  I've been so high strung emotionally with human contact.  It's rough.  Parsing things.  Knowing what to tell and what not to.  KNowing who to tell and who not to.  Going over events to parse what happened and what did not happen, but was later re-engineered from memories I didn't have, but took to heart regardless.  People I thought I talked to in depth, but never said one word to.  Real people that I see that I know I will not see again for some time.  Longing and wanting more and knowing I would mismanage it if it did happen.  The things that did happen that are stranger than fiction that I hesitate to retell to anyone because they wouldn't believe it either if they were there.  It's gutting.

A tough road, the feeling it.  The feeling writing.  Taking it beyond exercise to experiment and beyond experiment to theory and beyond theory to intent.  Taking intent back to exercise to ingrain it and then back to experiment to expansion packs.  Managing circuitry.  Without tripping breakers is a 99 by 99 game of Windows 95 vintage Minefield.  I was trying to explain to someone how communication, as I've learned it, is an experience of exchanged violence.  The base set of symbols.  Love growing from that basic set of characters.  Sometimes writing offers no release.  I can deal with that.  It's not so much that it's something that has to get out.  Someone else tried to put it to me that way and I accepted the assessment because I had no rebuff at the time.  To a small degree it is.  To a much larger degree it is conversation, within and without. Some internalized and leaking and some extroverted and speaking.

I'm taken back to the original mission.  The blueprint for the creation as a method of legacy.  I go back and forth often between life and death.  Self extermination versus procreation.  I do not play into it as often as I would like, or maybe, more likely, as often as I would feel comfortable with.  Is there a way to commit altruistic suicide for the greater good?  Yes.  I toy with the idea of dying of natural causes.  Thinking about having children and the million reasons why it would be better for that kid to never meet me.  I toy with big ideas of retirement and doing what I love, but even on that time scale of 60, 70, years, it's a long pipe.  What you want, sucka?  Not much.  I already have most of it.  It's getting to the point of formality and self improvement.  Competitive spirit.  How good can I possibly get?  I think that keeps me awake more often than any other meter.  When I know the answer, I'll rip the chord and bug the fuck out.  Selfish.  It makes me laugh to feel that way sometimes.

I get scorched.  I get thoroughly displeased with the quality of what comes out of me, but I know there's so much psychological garbage to sort through, there is no way I'm going to knock anything out of the park on a regular basis.  I play against myself.  It gets troubling.  Becomes troubling.  When your heckler is you.  Your clown is you.  You are your dealer and your fiend.  I used to do it for other people.  I used to do it for my mom and my dad before I realized the packages of carefully selected works were doing little more than collecting dust as soon as they unwrapped them.  When I realized sending them books for christmas was a waste of money and passion.


One of the best experiences I ever had was taking some of them back one of the times I was back home and never once hearing a single question about where any of them went.  XD.  I still get a rise out of that.  I was hot blooded for so long over it and then I realized it wasn't worth holding against anyone.  I think that's where a lot of my happiness stems from.  The knowing that there are people you can love and people you cannot love.  And I'm okay with that.  I still get scorched sometimes.  The factory floor fire spreads and work stations are abandoned and the fire spreads and the suppression systems kick in and they can't contain a god damn thing on the scale of what you are experiencing because you designed them in good times with hypotheticals and grossly miscalculated how swift and vast the psychotic destruction would advance.

So now I am back again and kicking at embers and trying to reimagine what it all was before the fire broke out.  Gathering the caucus.  Sending the calls and hoping to get a ping back from somewhere.  Anywhere along the rise and fall of consciousness.  Reinstalling routines.  Rebuilding structure.  Recreating from memory the blueprint and it's different every time.

If, at the end of it all, I can assemble something to make a future iteration of myself feel less daunted, or less alone, or less wrecked, or more hopeful for sunrise, or more comfortable with no one to sing to but the moon and the tone deaf clouds, I will be happy.  I don't always do good, but I do the best I can.  I know the cycle will eventually end and I won't be blown clear and the fire will consume, but what is the high worth if you'll never know just how high you could've been?  I'm not talking the highs that come with squared proportions.  False peaks?  I mean, would I trade the 40% bad outcomes for 100% decent outcomes?  No.  I don't think so.  In the worst times, yes.  Of course.  No.  I don't think so.  And it is difficult to wrap my head around.  Difficult to work around.  Difficult to not fall into myself standing on the foundation slab in a wilderness where a home used to stand and not feel something for everything and everyone who died in their beds who would have gotten up to jobs and friends that morning when the leaves were still wet with night and the paper boy was sucking oxygen looking at the weeks rounds on his front porch and the dogs were still dreaming and the shots in the dark were unreported and the spiders still had games to play and the cigarette burns still bled and fuck

As promised:  two pack.



///Five Deez - "So Good"  it's nice to be back.  nice to be feeling something.

///Amon Tobin - "Untangle"  slow verbs.

Dear (_____)

Dear Summer,

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

sincerely,

Goddamnitihatesummer

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.

Development

I haven't transcended, but, God knows, I've tried.  I will keep head banging.  I will because there's no other way.  Explorations and serial failures.   I did not use to approach writing as work, because I never got paid to do it.

It was a hobby and still is.  What changed inside myself was perspective.  That and doing more reading.  The reading has been tremendous.  Just opportunities to see the constructions in different light.  Not even different light as much as opportunities to see the same constructions spun by other brains in the same kind of light.

It's been ...  refreshing.

Refreshing and disconcerting.  It's been a very thorough, bridge crossed, work in progress.  I can't recall being this high over so extended a period of time without gumming up the workshop.  It has been silly even keeled.  You and I

Where are your papers?  Where is your documentation?   Where is your passport and your photo identification?   Where is your veteran of foreign wars certificate and your color bar?  Where is your jacket and your weapon?  Your cap, your boots, your wares, and your ounces of drug deals and your tears for times only you can relate to?   Where the fuck is your memorial?  Where are your headphones?  Where is your ethic and your lorn and your degrees?  Where did you leave your books and, holy shit, where did you leave your other set of keys?


///Skrillex - "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites"    ...you don't need to hide, my friend, cause I am just like you...

That Instant

You realize you've been gunning through the years, slipshod, but doing the best you could and it's still not good enough for the people who know you, but good enough for you.

And the qualifier is still hanging.

Ramping Up

I have been ramping up to this, and I have been a little bit absentee as well.  Side by each.  It has been tough getting back to here.  Circuitous. Among other words and expletives.  It has been a very difficult cycle of days.  I do not know how else to place it.  Everything is back where it belongs.   A lot of argumentation internal.  It catches up with you and before you know it you are dying while still breathing.

It;s been tough though.  But what hasn't?  Production has lapsed, but what is avoidable?  Art is up however. Graphics.  Graphics and graphic design.  It;s tough sometimes when people talk to you and say they/re artists, but you know in their hearts they are not.  It ruffles feathers and rumples collars.  It's difficult to tell them otherwise because, in the telling, you are admitting skill and I have a hard time, still, admitting that I know what I'm trying to do, for the most part, on easels.  Given easels.

If you look at your reflection, sometimes what you see is not what you know you could be, given everything that came before; that hesitation, those devils and those guns, are what keeps me from being a shameless self promoter, but are you hiding in the trees?

The point is that it is all an elaborate dream and there is no way you can spin manslaughter 2 into mistaken identities and a lack of coverage or maybe it's just black town.  I don't know.  Hard decisions.  I know how much you are supposed to take, but how much am I supposed to take.  Against the wall.  Am I supposed to want sex or is sex supposed to want me.  Is the BIC pipe a one hitter in the sense that you use it once or is it a one hitter in the sense that you can't light crack twice?

I don't know where to go from here, but I'm not quite sure if I should be so entertained with the idea of the opportunity to leave.   Cash money, mother nucca.  It just drives the nerves sometimes.  It's hard to admit failed suicide attempts.   What you can do though is tape up your wrists and throw some fists.

Not to get oxygen necessarily, but just to get inside your britches.  Feel your (can't spell it) huch spa.  Feel your id on the outside and taste a little blood, instead of digesting it.  There's too much blood and sunlight to go around.  I am trying to draw a line between pretending and good acting and I am having a difficult  time of it.

Sometimes things go down in a fashion that breaks your heart.  Sometimes your older sister whiffs on painting your nails.  Sometimes things go down in a way that throws shit out of whack.  Sometimes the throwing is enough to reframe ideas about things you've been mulling.  I don't know if this is better or worse than talking in third person.   It is difficult to be concerned.

What was I going for?  Chronic masturbation.  No,  Laughter.  Nod your head because I know that I;m right.  I'm not the capital G.  I'm not nothing either.  Hang out with me in the middle ground.  I swear I'll love you like I've never loved myself.  Andd I won't promise to make you happy.  And I won't promise anything more than 18 hours out, but I will.  I won't, but I will give you one year with the dragon in one day and rape is a device of the lesser and if you would be considering kissing me now I would not be opposed

to standing there


///track not found - lets get back up on that horse.  I'm sorry I left you.  Please be kind.  I'm coming out of left field in a full sprint out of the clear blue sky

Hanging with family

Its all good

That Instant

you realize your cat is just as high as you are.  

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).