I'll start with the last one first before I forget because I already forgot once and it took a good 15 to remember and even then it was only because I started thinking about shapes and cut outs of construction paper and slicing bottles in half that I remembered Venn diagrams and then remembered it was a comparison thing, but I'm rambling so let's get down to it. I was wondering where my, sometimes extreme, self centeredness comes from. It does get pretty extreme sometimes. Not to the point where my megalomaniacal, world beater, delusions kick in and I walk all over people thinking they're throwing themselves down there, when in fact, I'm going out of my way to haul them to the ground by their napes so I don't have to touch pavement on my way from my bed to my toilet. Pavement? Yeah because my house will be so huge I will have a second house that is only an enormous bathroom with three floors. The first floor is the pee paradise and waterpark, the second floor is the bath house with every kind of possible bath or shower or steam you can take, including swimming pools, and the basement is the boom box where you can shit in peace featuring every kind of toilet known to man. Sometimes my self centeredness gets out of control though.
To the point where I believe whatever difficult experience I'm going through is not only the greatest problem mankind has ever faced, but the first iteration ever of that difficulty. I get so into myself that if everyone I know isn't asking me what happened or if I'm okay or petting my ruffled feathers they must be blind and stone deaf. But that's not the case. It's not even that it's particularly easy to take up arms and march to the point of attack and scream like the hound of hell "life's not fair!" It's not. Everyone knows it. What are you going to do about you? It gets out of control. And there's nothing I hate more than "who's had it harder" pissing contests. Everyone has and everyone hasn't. Which discomfort do you prefer and at what intensity, becomes the more pressing question. To put it another way, how comfortable are you here versus there.
The most important thing is the "why". Why so far focused inward? What I've come to is hyper focus or big world little world. The world is huge. The world is daunting. The world is not as violent or angry as we make it appear. The anger and violence is just what sticks because you don't come out of a hug with welts and scars, but you do if you're at odds. Violence is the first language and love is violence's child. The branches from the trunk above the roots. Because life has the ability to scar at random and will, and sometimes in love, it is scary. Do you want those scars? That chance? "Is today the day something comes apart and I die?" You stay in for protection. That protection turns into faith. That faith turns into mania. And I close off opportunities for both danger and expansion until I am walled in and have every detail of the compound mapped to a square inch and where every potential threat to my existence stands and where it ranks and then I am stacking pee jars against one wall and logging days against another and getting lung infections and passing out from lack of oxygen because I've sealed myself in a space where air can never circulate. The second part is the crux of big world little world.
Determinism. If it was possible to plot every persons geographic location to a tee and, at some point map out all of the possible outcomes of each persons interactions you could, fairly accurately, play out every persons life from birth to death with some outliers and random pop ups of paths that skewed due to chance and freak probability and I guess quantum mechanical (insert longer lettered science terms and statistics) that make it impossible to do anything with 100% accuracy. But you'd have a pretty reliable, maybe down to ninety nine million out of one hundred million person type of accuracy. Or just look at family tree deaths. You've maybe got a shot at beating the over under, but by how many years? A decade? Two? How hard can you or would you want to torture who you are to get those years. What are you going to do with them? Sit in a wheel chair? Enjoy the massive stress of drastically increasing the chances you'll die putting on your slipper at the side of your bed and slip and fall and fracture your femur and die from the massive infection after surgery? Danger world becomes a lot more dangerous up there. That aside, the determinism factor also drives me inward at 300 pounds per square inch. Determinism is boring. Sure there can be a joy in choosing a path having a pretty solid understanding of where it can and probably will go. Even in small choices, but when the map increases in size and grows to world scope, I see that I am a very small bit of the circuit and no matter which paths I choose I am not going to cover any more ground than those dimensions... unless some other path comes in from outside my circuit and selects me. Pretty much, your circuit is printed at birth. And that is boring and difficult to live with.
However there is no saying you can't shrink the map. The smaller you make it, the more random it appears. The more random it appears the more beautiful each day becomes. Each day begins to hold actual surprises beyond what randomness you can try to choose to inject. Point to point, you can zoom in along the path and detour at will if you so choose to do, but the destination still looms and will be reached barring sudden death of some sort. You know what your ceiling is, you learn your floor, and at some point you understand what your potential is for exceeding them and the costs involved. There is no rule that says you can't shrink that map to the scale where measuring something changes it's properties. And that's where I find myself sometimes. My map shrinks to the point where everything that happens is truly random to my perspective and in that vastly shrunken world I know that I exist and the people around me are almost shadows, coming into and out of focus with a rarity that is extraordinarily delicious and I forget that I am not the only one walking the face of the earth. Nobody but me. NOBD BTME. Sometimes I have to have it though or I will never leave my front door again.
Pride complex is another thing. An entirely different animal to learn to stop feeding. My world once was a world of "no"s. To the point where the energy expended in asking the question was not worth the energy expended recovering from the disappointment. A universe of broken contracts. You can't do that because this. You can't do that because that. You can't do this because you're too this. You can't do that because you're too that. I got fed up, but not in a hurry. It built up over the years and I didn't digest it well and I'm sure some of the reasons were fairly valid, if not entirely truthful. Still, it's like telling someone to not get mad when you're about to give them bad news. Nurtured inside was pride complex. I can't do it? Watch me. Not doing it for them, but doing it for myself, and it started off small and then blew grotesquely out of proportion. Coupling with megalomania it began to beg how far could you really jump if you really really tried?
How far was too far? I can stick it. Fuck it, you're trying to say I can't? Okay, watch this right here. And it bloomed gorgeous. More. And it bloomed gorgeous. But what are you really capable of? Pride complex has ruled me and I it in waves of awesome sorrow and awed joy. There is nothing that beats that high of putting your ten toes on the ground on the other side of a leap of faith in your bones and grit. The only things you can rely on sometimes. The things that never let you down. It is, however, damaging. You become arrogant. A soft, passive, arrogance that tells me no matter what comes down the pipe I will, I will!, be able to handle it with this body and this mind on this island. It and I will head into the woods and only I am returning. The belief will insist, but anyone with any one of their five senses knows there is no way in hell you are coming back. Anyone with any sense in the world knows your odds and that you've put the entire stack on something that breaks good once in five years and there are a lot of hours and minutes to go. I don't see it on my scale because everything is possible there to a fault.
Pride complex kicks in. I need pills? Fuck you, you need pills. Watch me go. I need money? Hell no. Watch me destroy myself solving this, but damn you, I will fucking solve this. Pride complex branches out like ivy. It infects things like blood cancer. Don't want to help me do this? Okay I'll do it without you. But that is not always and many times not the stance to take for many a several reasons I won't go into. Pride complex doesn't only damage the self. It has a fallout radius. Pride complex damages a persons ability to make adjustments. It damages a persons ability to integrate and coexist with society. It damages a persons ability to integrate. It pretty much harms society as a whole.
Yes you are going from A to B, but as you traverse the map and make your choices, your piece of the circuit board begins to function less and less successfully to the point where other pieces of the board have to compensate harder to function as well. When you are offered assistance, for whatever rationalization the assistance is offered, it is in the interest of keeping the entire computer running. Sometimes it's difficult to appreciate that. Sometimes it's difficult to appreciate that this setup or that is there specifically to make everyone's lives easier to a degree, but that degree is there and measurable and quantifiable in every nervous action or choice the people with greater numbers of points A and B and area to cover and allotted (if you take too broad a path from A to B and B to C and on and on, as many points as you are allotted when born there are consequences out of your control. a path selecting you) make. Your space is governed by their space.
Understanding that is one thing. Dismantling delusions of grandeur is another. Growing a map is another. Are they good things? Are they necessary? Should they even have to be? I want to roam wild. Yessir I do. Life's not fair. I'm not on this planet with you. You're on this planet with me. Control. Take what you want, but understand where it comes from. I love you.
///Band of Skulls - "Fires"
AUTHOR.CALHO: If I didn't write it, I would be hitch hiking cross country to Maine and then Alaska in that order. While taking frequent breaks to spread leaflets. And sit in diners. And write on things because I wasn't at a computer. I may still do that in a few years. Writing this also helps me forget about and better understand the limitations of being human, and keeps me busy enough to allow me no free time to burn the world down.
THEMATIC.ABOUT : Collapse often. The things that hold people together and hold them apart and scatter brains. The things that make thoughts go boom. The things that ooh and aah and [expletive deleted]. Sometimes poking around the margins where responsibility ends and the only one to look to is the Original Equipment Manufacturer and say "but, I already pressed 9 for more options and the menus are exactly the same. Can you just replace it?" The answer will be: "please hold." Sometimes hanging out in dark corners. Sometimes following the train tracks. Looking for ways out and ways in and all the while sharing the things seen and heard and done and drawn and written and scorched and healed and teased and caged and dreamed along the way.
4/29/13
4/18/13
A Definition for Addiction
Searching for a definition of addiction, I came to an impasse.
If you think about it every day, are you addicted?
If you think about it sometimes, maybe once a week, are you addicted?
If you run into your dealer and have an exceptionally awkward conversation, are you addicted?
Does it really matter what it is that you're talking about?
If you run into the son of a bitch that sold you crack at the dollar store are you less for not having talked to him while you were buying cereal?
I don't know what the rules are. I don't pretend to.
Sometimes, however, I do wonder though. It's not a matter of being clean or dirty or anything along those lines. It's just a matter of defining what is.
Are you addicted to television? Are you addicted to the thrill of the mainline, no matter what is? The surprise of what you get versus what you paid for? Are you addicted to the cliffhanger of a t.v. show? Are you addicted to crossing words with people? Are you addicted to waking up? Are you addicted to waking up fuzzy? Are you addicted to waking up next to another body? Are you addicted to waking up to a body, live or not?
I dunno. Spending a few days thinking about addiction and definition and words, and most importantly, trying not to try to mimic voice sounds from other people while they're in earshot. that's all. a life without definition is no life at all, right? said a wise someone to a soon to be wise soandso. Right?
///Ellie Goulding - "Only You" This one goes out to you McCourghty. I miss you. I hope you're not dead. Haven't seen you around in a long ass time, but whatever. For what it's worth, you were a project to find and a handful to corral and I had an easier time keeping a glass of water in my hand sans glass than it was to keep track of you. I feel awful cuz I still can't spell your last name right. Anyway. Miss you, bro. Thanks for everything.
If you think about it every day, are you addicted?
If you think about it sometimes, maybe once a week, are you addicted?
If you run into your dealer and have an exceptionally awkward conversation, are you addicted?
Does it really matter what it is that you're talking about?
If you run into the son of a bitch that sold you crack at the dollar store are you less for not having talked to him while you were buying cereal?
I don't know what the rules are. I don't pretend to.
Sometimes, however, I do wonder though. It's not a matter of being clean or dirty or anything along those lines. It's just a matter of defining what is.
Are you addicted to television? Are you addicted to the thrill of the mainline, no matter what is? The surprise of what you get versus what you paid for? Are you addicted to the cliffhanger of a t.v. show? Are you addicted to crossing words with people? Are you addicted to waking up? Are you addicted to waking up fuzzy? Are you addicted to waking up next to another body? Are you addicted to waking up to a body, live or not?
I dunno. Spending a few days thinking about addiction and definition and words, and most importantly, trying not to try to mimic voice sounds from other people while they're in earshot. that's all. a life without definition is no life at all, right? said a wise someone to a soon to be wise soandso. Right?
///Ellie Goulding - "Only You" This one goes out to you McCourghty. I miss you. I hope you're not dead. Haven't seen you around in a long ass time, but whatever. For what it's worth, you were a project to find and a handful to corral and I had an easier time keeping a glass of water in my hand sans glass than it was to keep track of you. I feel awful cuz I still can't spell your last name right. Anyway. Miss you, bro. Thanks for everything.
4/7/13
Rage 2
The only thing I hate more than being injured is... you guessed it.... nothing. My body is my contract. Without it I am a fish with no fins. I hate it. I hate it. I HATE IT. The only thing that hurts me more is my past. What am I supposed to do when every breath of air costs me tears??? What the fuck am I supposed to do???? Pain fuels. There are limits, but where do those limits lie? Fake it til you make it, does not apply. Results, god damnit. I want results. Not just for me, but for my boss. Not just for my boss, but for my fucking friends. I want to churn out at all times. If it's not work I want to churn out fun. If it's not fun I want to be churning out hobby. If it's not hobby I want to be churning out nonsense. Not to be aching on the handicapped, but fuck. How do they live? Not at all used to being limited in a physical sense. I don't know how to handle it. I can still do everything I could do, but the meter that tells me when I'm at 12 thousand revs is broken. Simple things that wouldn't crack five hundred break two thousand. Things that would demand seven tip out at ten. Things that take ten to do bounce the needle off of the redline. I'm not used to that. No one should be. What I'm going to have to do, if this does not resolve itself in the next week, is just shove the whole god damn scale North. Fuck it. I don't have time for this shit. And neither do the people that depend on me. I want what they want and come hell and high water it is raring up to decision time and I don't like it, but that's just the way it is sometimes.
4/5/13
Ghosts [return]
What's black and white and red all over? Your mother, upside down, wrapped in electrical tape. You on the run. The pain has been astronomical. Mentally shredded. Bringing myself back together. You never want your heart to get too cold, but sometimes enough things pile up together and the fire goes out and it's just you out there, alone in the backwoods, beside a ring of rocks and ash and you can hear them at the tree line cutting under the bushes and between the trunks and leaves would rustle if it wasn't so late a winter, and instead the twigs are snapping and whistling when they breath and more than anything else you want to howl and bring them to you because waiting has you chewing your tongue out of your face, but even if you could draw enough breath to do it, your throat is swollen shut tighter than your shivering eyelids. So you wait for sunrise with the knee quaked temerity of a hangman who knows there are worse things than death.
It's been a while. It's been a long long while. Every minute an exercise, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, in control. Childhood memories know no limits and have no expiration date. They're like veins laid into the skin of your brain that pump that history through your tissues and sockets and bones and every few days or weeks or sometimes, blessed months, they rattle around your cells and locks like blind inmates with worn down kitchen ware for picks. Sometimes, strolling those halls you catch their empty, milky, eyes in little bits of mirror gummed to metal rods watching the sound of your footsteps down the hall. You took them out, one by one, to solitary confinement and punched those brown and blue iris's out with a peen hammer. Each new arrival. Because you could not stand the watching, but you never thought they would keep on looking with their ears, little mirrors still poking between the bars out of habit. Or maybe just to fuck with you. Every few days, weeks, or blessed months, one will get it right, and out of the corner of your eye, too far down the hall to break the hand at play, a cell springs open. Two cells. Three cells. Two more on the upper level. Another in a wing of a branch of your complex you only know because the alarm is thudding through your ears, through the bricks of your skull and you know something has gone very wrong.
The ghosts have been roaming again. To the point where the best thing I can do is lock myself up and pray for rain stiff enough to take the chalk off the attic walls where the roof is worn away. Sometimes I know why it happens. A lot of times I still don't. Managing is a kind word. But you do it to the best of your abilities. At some point it becomes not protecting yourself from others intrusions or exploitation or oversights or abuse or perceptions as much as it becomes protecting other people from yourself. Just because you know and can, to a degree, understand what's happening to you or not always the what, but the why (sometimes not even that) and can feel that something is not in its right place and that knife is not where you left it, and your shoes are covered in mud, but you went to bed early yesterday and it didn't rain until deep into the night, and that math is simply not accurate, does not mean that you can do anything to stop it besides isolate and insulate yourself as much as possible. "Bad things are about to happen."
It shakes you on the inside. The frameworks you've built up to contain and blanket fracture and split apart and you have to force one hand into the other. Force your hands to love each other so they do not tear you to pieces. And sigh "please, not now. Not yet." They will pay someday, but you're not ready yet. The switch turns and you're alone again. The things with names I cannot pronounce are gone, but how far away did they go this time. Are they in the next room? Around the corner of the building? Is he on the windowsill, outside the drawn shade admiring the night air? Check the bathroom. Where did all of this blood come from? The switch turns again. Rusty contacts spark and pain flows like spilled water on live copper. You hold your hands over your ears and go days without saying a word because if you do not know who and what it is that is breathing in your ear, you can never trust a word from between your lips again.
Pain builds and abets and builds in the dark inside your folds. They eat at your body. Snack and taste and tear away this and that. They can hear you crying through the years, sniffing you out. One and then two and then too many to count and all you want is to reach back through that long stairwell, past the cobwebs, to hug your little body and press your round little face into your chest until you stop breathing, but you can't bring yourself to do it, so you hold yourself tight and listen to the echos rising to the floor above and the snick snacking shuffle of their footsteps trying to find their way down to where your body broke all those years ago. They come down those stairs and pull chairs near and wait and watch and some laugh and some pick skin out of their teeth with spare change or a bobby pin. Some draw little things in the dust on the floor with little fingers. Pain builds and you take it and take it until it becomes.
In the pile of ash inside the stone circle in the backwoods you failed to navigate and so made a bed, the weight of ignition is reached. The heart inside you, driven and compacted to a block of solid steel arctic ice, begins to burn again. Focus taken returns. It is only you. Yes, they are near, but it is only you holding the gun to your chest and the hammer falls and you exhale fire. The sun is hanging itself and all you need do is walk toward it to feel its heat. The air is not vibrating anymore, instead holding you the way you tried to hold yourself. Pain destroys until the scale goes so far it can only be described by what it creates. Clarity is a kind word. Control. Management. I know someday it will go somewhere we will not come back from. But that day is not today. Today, everyone is in their cell. Everyone dangerous enough to raise the hairs on my neck and make me piss into my pant leg and fill my left shoe. History never goes away.
Rebuild. Come back to us. There is no reason for this is the biggest lie you'll ever hear. Someday we'll be right and they'll see what it is that steals sleep from our eyes. It's been a long long while, but it feels like no time at all. Someday we'll have a necklace made out of their teeth, little holes drilled in them, fillings and all, with a little pink thread through them and the back ends in fisherman knots tied to silver clasps. That would be nice. Someday sweetheart.
It's been a while. It's been a long long while. Every minute an exercise, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, in control. Childhood memories know no limits and have no expiration date. They're like veins laid into the skin of your brain that pump that history through your tissues and sockets and bones and every few days or weeks or sometimes, blessed months, they rattle around your cells and locks like blind inmates with worn down kitchen ware for picks. Sometimes, strolling those halls you catch their empty, milky, eyes in little bits of mirror gummed to metal rods watching the sound of your footsteps down the hall. You took them out, one by one, to solitary confinement and punched those brown and blue iris's out with a peen hammer. Each new arrival. Because you could not stand the watching, but you never thought they would keep on looking with their ears, little mirrors still poking between the bars out of habit. Or maybe just to fuck with you. Every few days, weeks, or blessed months, one will get it right, and out of the corner of your eye, too far down the hall to break the hand at play, a cell springs open. Two cells. Three cells. Two more on the upper level. Another in a wing of a branch of your complex you only know because the alarm is thudding through your ears, through the bricks of your skull and you know something has gone very wrong.
The ghosts have been roaming again. To the point where the best thing I can do is lock myself up and pray for rain stiff enough to take the chalk off the attic walls where the roof is worn away. Sometimes I know why it happens. A lot of times I still don't. Managing is a kind word. But you do it to the best of your abilities. At some point it becomes not protecting yourself from others intrusions or exploitation or oversights or abuse or perceptions as much as it becomes protecting other people from yourself. Just because you know and can, to a degree, understand what's happening to you or not always the what, but the why (sometimes not even that) and can feel that something is not in its right place and that knife is not where you left it, and your shoes are covered in mud, but you went to bed early yesterday and it didn't rain until deep into the night, and that math is simply not accurate, does not mean that you can do anything to stop it besides isolate and insulate yourself as much as possible. "Bad things are about to happen."
It shakes you on the inside. The frameworks you've built up to contain and blanket fracture and split apart and you have to force one hand into the other. Force your hands to love each other so they do not tear you to pieces. And sigh "please, not now. Not yet." They will pay someday, but you're not ready yet. The switch turns and you're alone again. The things with names I cannot pronounce are gone, but how far away did they go this time. Are they in the next room? Around the corner of the building? Is he on the windowsill, outside the drawn shade admiring the night air? Check the bathroom. Where did all of this blood come from? The switch turns again. Rusty contacts spark and pain flows like spilled water on live copper. You hold your hands over your ears and go days without saying a word because if you do not know who and what it is that is breathing in your ear, you can never trust a word from between your lips again.
Pain builds and abets and builds in the dark inside your folds. They eat at your body. Snack and taste and tear away this and that. They can hear you crying through the years, sniffing you out. One and then two and then too many to count and all you want is to reach back through that long stairwell, past the cobwebs, to hug your little body and press your round little face into your chest until you stop breathing, but you can't bring yourself to do it, so you hold yourself tight and listen to the echos rising to the floor above and the snick snacking shuffle of their footsteps trying to find their way down to where your body broke all those years ago. They come down those stairs and pull chairs near and wait and watch and some laugh and some pick skin out of their teeth with spare change or a bobby pin. Some draw little things in the dust on the floor with little fingers. Pain builds and you take it and take it until it becomes.
In the pile of ash inside the stone circle in the backwoods you failed to navigate and so made a bed, the weight of ignition is reached. The heart inside you, driven and compacted to a block of solid steel arctic ice, begins to burn again. Focus taken returns. It is only you. Yes, they are near, but it is only you holding the gun to your chest and the hammer falls and you exhale fire. The sun is hanging itself and all you need do is walk toward it to feel its heat. The air is not vibrating anymore, instead holding you the way you tried to hold yourself. Pain destroys until the scale goes so far it can only be described by what it creates. Clarity is a kind word. Control. Management. I know someday it will go somewhere we will not come back from. But that day is not today. Today, everyone is in their cell. Everyone dangerous enough to raise the hairs on my neck and make me piss into my pant leg and fill my left shoe. History never goes away.
Rebuild. Come back to us. There is no reason for this is the biggest lie you'll ever hear. Someday we'll be right and they'll see what it is that steals sleep from our eyes. It's been a long long while, but it feels like no time at all. Someday we'll have a necklace made out of their teeth, little holes drilled in them, fillings and all, with a little pink thread through them and the back ends in fisherman knots tied to silver clasps. That would be nice. Someday sweetheart.
3/29/13
1/30/13
The Year End Look (part two)
Two thousand twelve was a banger. A lot of truly excellent things happened. Some truly awful things happened. Mistakes were made and successes enjoyed. I thought after the debacle of 2010 I would not be surprised by whatever could come next and 2011 actually ended up being fairly swell. 2012 was jam packed with more change than I could see coming. I'm pretty sure I didn't write any fiction in 2012. I don't know why. 2012 was a war with the clock. I think that's why. I did sort of rediscover a pair of old friendships that I thought were pretty much blown to flaming kingdom come and that was nice. My memory fails me pretty regularly. Too many blows to the head (chemical and otherwise). Speaking of chemicals, I still haven't gone to get help. I don't know that I ever will. I don't know that I'll ever be able to on my own.
I'm trying to think of what the overarching lesson of 2012 was. Nothing particular comes up. 2012 was very much a blur. I became a car owner. That's nice. I also became quite broke keeping that car on the road and functioning. I became a paper towel owner. That was pretty huge. Do you know how hard it is to justify paper towels? Pretty damn hard. Mostly I was using my dirty laundry to clean up floor spills. Dish rags to clean up counter top spills. Worked perfectly, really. It's not like I was going to wipe up spilled floor milk and then put the shirt right back on. I also became a soap and toilet paper stockpiler. I used to buy it in four packs and then string it out as far as it would go and then find alternatives already in my apartment when they ran out. That's not what grown ups do. I got car insurance for the first time. My car is better insured than I am now. I think I did that one wrong.
You know what? I've got it. Twenty twelve was about taking steps toward being an adult. Meshing with other adults. Not that I succeeded with the meshing at all. I tried to pay for cat litter with sex. That didn't work out too well. Especially when I found out there was no cat litter to begin with. I have to stop being so easily convinced in twenty thirteen. I am on the tail end of my twenty seventh iteration. Can't make rookie mistakes like that or I'll end up smoking bath salts and living in the woods. Which doesn't sound particularly bad on the surface, but try finding a hot shower off of an interstate and you'll end up with a hobo pissing on your back while you sing Disney anthems in the pre dawn light of another Thursday, wondering if the pair of pants you named after your dead dog will ever find their way back to your cardboard shanty town. That's what 2012 was. A lot of learning how to do grown up things.
Not just that. My literary voice changed so much through 2012. My whimsical spirit did not die well and I think I want to make the effort to rediscover it. So much of my life became brutally concrete. There was no time to write down extensive dream logs and what explorations I could do and enjoy across the dream bridge were lost. There was a massive task lock. Huge gridlock between where I was and where I was going mentally that suffocated and snuffed out so much of what I wanted to achieve. Obviously, everyone wants to be loved. On some level. A lot of that need was torn out of me. It's still there, latent and active by turns and expressed and expressible and not in different forms.
I had a final falling out with my birth parents. Good riddance. Things were going quite well until they demanded a response and I gave them the one I'd been holding back for years (which was a fairly simple death threat). Which spiraled out of control and had to be reigned back in to an even simpler "Hi, you've hurt me for the last time and I'm not going to give you the opportunity to ever hurt me again." Which went over slightly better. So I do have that peace of mind to look forward to. The emails have stopped and that's what I wanted. BKB (bitches know better) than to ever try to contact me again. Some things can be forgiven. Some things can only be atoned for. Some things can only be paid for, and the checks they wrote on my skin in bruises and welts and blood and on my mind in so many lines of unforgettable screams and shouts can only be paid for. It was good though. A link so thoroughly destroyed that I will never have to worry about it threading itself around my neck again.
I did find love again, briefly, in twenty twelve. Online. I also found that most of the people in BDSM chat rooms are full of themselves and fake. But I don't even have to go to any other online dating sites to know that it's probably not unique to my bag. Back to love and friendships. I'm fairly certain I may have lost a friend I really wanted to keep, but who knows, maybe it'll come back around in thirteen. 2012 saw a pretty severe drop in production in general. Adult problems. Remember that three banger I put out of its misery early last year? That came back to haunt me when one of them got a job at a store I used to frequent (they had good prices, can't argue with that). Well, that cut my neighborhood in half. Can't go to that side of town anymore without looking over my shoulder, or occasionally ducking down in my car at red lights. Like I said, mistakes were made.
My only new years resolution this year is to not get concussed. I think that might be aiming too high. Too many bar fights happened last year. Between the life drama and tracking myself down rage blew off me like sunspot flares. Yes, you can punch anything with a face, but can and should are two very different things. I'm not saying I'm going to be a saint, but I am saying the world is only so big and eventually someone is going to recognize you when you least expect it and remember that thing you did the weekend before to one of their friends and they'll even the score and then it's all bad news bears from there.
Style wise, I was lost as 2012 tailed out. Spun out. Ate the guardrail and burned it's way to the bottom of a ravine. Shifting identity. Events and exchanges, human exchanges external to my brain pan, brought up so many questions I hope to answer to myself in the coming year. The identity I believed I had was drastically revised. Am I still a writer? Am I a poet? Am I a songstress? Maybe just a bard? I don't know. I've given up on trying to calculate how many hours I've gone in and what mastery means. Mastery means nothing. Exposure means nothing. The new foundation is framed quite simply as passion. I have a passion for words on paper. Whatever that makes me to you, I'm down. To me, I'm a kid with a pen. That's all. Calling yourself a writer or not, calling someone else by the same, is like having embossed ink on a business card. Doesn't mean a damn thing beyond image. Do I still want a house in the middle of nowhere to invite people to that I might cut them up, eat the good parts, and burn the rest of their remains? Yeah. That's kind of the ultimate goal. That and having a place to write that I only have to pay taxes on. That'll work. A wonderful desert compound. Somewhere near the border.
Twenty twelve taught me that I'm nowhere close to where a lot of my peers are fiscally, mentally, and emotionally. My concerns are still fringe. My furniture still sparse. My needs are still fairly small and my dreams equal and as difficult to access. I always thought I'd die in Pittsburgh, but maybe that's not good enough. Last year made me question my capabilities, but not in the way some people down grade themselves. I'm not a smart cookie. I'm not brilliant. I'm not particularly resourceful. I can, however, create to no end, my only limitation being the cards I have to play with..
It was a strange year. There were many tears in 2012. Some earned, many not. Many involuntary and inappropriate to the subject. That's not going to change. I'm crying right now typing this and it's silly. My weight keeps fluctuating wildly between 155 and 185. Every month. It makes no sense.
Gather. Fads go out of style. I've had a few of my own. I realized through the year that they were constructs to help me express concepts that come to me and help me live from week to week and month to month, but also help me relate. Junior psychologist over here. There was some real damage in 2012 and I don't know that 2013 will be that much better, but I like to believe it will be. Maybe we'll get back on the pills this year. Just to see. Just to see and stop talking about talking about doing it. Twelve was also a year of addictions. I don't know how to fix that. They were all, largely, necessary. But at least I know the side effects will or won't do what they do. Maybe that's the big thing standing guard these days. This turned pretty dark in a flash. I used to think I would be a great candidate for surviving the zombie apocalypse, and then I realized I would probably risk everything for a pack of smokes and dozen cans of spray paint. Unless I have my desert compound by then (I'll pass the time writing poetry and taking head shot breaks with a .50 cal and whiskey on the rocks).
The major issue I want to resolve this year, given last year, is my writing. Let's do better. Let's be better for us. Shooting for late forties. I want to at least make it to being a weird uncle.
What did 2012 teach me? What was the takeaway? Christmas lights are awesome. People can't be programmed. My morals and principles don't translate by default and no one else's do either. God is still a work of fiction. I am still figuring myself out and trying not to implode. At least not completely. Still so far away, only because I have to be. I am my own best company and my own worst friend. The things I don't own are things I should not have yet. The relationships I don't have are relationships I'm not and may never be ready for. The spaces I occupy, I am grateful for and will continue to be. The spaces I do not are spaces I have given back to the ones who belong there and will use beyond my ability to and that's okay. Twenty twelve was strange. Twenty thirteen is a big old bag of TBD, but I wish it was a big old bag of LSD. You can't go through life asleep, but a boy can dream.
///TRACK NOT FOUND - year end playlist up next
defining moments of a finest hour? yeah, something like that.
I'm trying to think of what the overarching lesson of 2012 was. Nothing particular comes up. 2012 was very much a blur. I became a car owner. That's nice. I also became quite broke keeping that car on the road and functioning. I became a paper towel owner. That was pretty huge. Do you know how hard it is to justify paper towels? Pretty damn hard. Mostly I was using my dirty laundry to clean up floor spills. Dish rags to clean up counter top spills. Worked perfectly, really. It's not like I was going to wipe up spilled floor milk and then put the shirt right back on. I also became a soap and toilet paper stockpiler. I used to buy it in four packs and then string it out as far as it would go and then find alternatives already in my apartment when they ran out. That's not what grown ups do. I got car insurance for the first time. My car is better insured than I am now. I think I did that one wrong.
You know what? I've got it. Twenty twelve was about taking steps toward being an adult. Meshing with other adults. Not that I succeeded with the meshing at all. I tried to pay for cat litter with sex. That didn't work out too well. Especially when I found out there was no cat litter to begin with. I have to stop being so easily convinced in twenty thirteen. I am on the tail end of my twenty seventh iteration. Can't make rookie mistakes like that or I'll end up smoking bath salts and living in the woods. Which doesn't sound particularly bad on the surface, but try finding a hot shower off of an interstate and you'll end up with a hobo pissing on your back while you sing Disney anthems in the pre dawn light of another Thursday, wondering if the pair of pants you named after your dead dog will ever find their way back to your cardboard shanty town. That's what 2012 was. A lot of learning how to do grown up things.
Not just that. My literary voice changed so much through 2012. My whimsical spirit did not die well and I think I want to make the effort to rediscover it. So much of my life became brutally concrete. There was no time to write down extensive dream logs and what explorations I could do and enjoy across the dream bridge were lost. There was a massive task lock. Huge gridlock between where I was and where I was going mentally that suffocated and snuffed out so much of what I wanted to achieve. Obviously, everyone wants to be loved. On some level. A lot of that need was torn out of me. It's still there, latent and active by turns and expressed and expressible and not in different forms.
I had a final falling out with my birth parents. Good riddance. Things were going quite well until they demanded a response and I gave them the one I'd been holding back for years (which was a fairly simple death threat). Which spiraled out of control and had to be reigned back in to an even simpler "Hi, you've hurt me for the last time and I'm not going to give you the opportunity to ever hurt me again." Which went over slightly better. So I do have that peace of mind to look forward to. The emails have stopped and that's what I wanted. BKB (bitches know better) than to ever try to contact me again. Some things can be forgiven. Some things can only be atoned for. Some things can only be paid for, and the checks they wrote on my skin in bruises and welts and blood and on my mind in so many lines of unforgettable screams and shouts can only be paid for. It was good though. A link so thoroughly destroyed that I will never have to worry about it threading itself around my neck again.
I did find love again, briefly, in twenty twelve. Online. I also found that most of the people in BDSM chat rooms are full of themselves and fake. But I don't even have to go to any other online dating sites to know that it's probably not unique to my bag. Back to love and friendships. I'm fairly certain I may have lost a friend I really wanted to keep, but who knows, maybe it'll come back around in thirteen. 2012 saw a pretty severe drop in production in general. Adult problems. Remember that three banger I put out of its misery early last year? That came back to haunt me when one of them got a job at a store I used to frequent (they had good prices, can't argue with that). Well, that cut my neighborhood in half. Can't go to that side of town anymore without looking over my shoulder, or occasionally ducking down in my car at red lights. Like I said, mistakes were made.
My only new years resolution this year is to not get concussed. I think that might be aiming too high. Too many bar fights happened last year. Between the life drama and tracking myself down rage blew off me like sunspot flares. Yes, you can punch anything with a face, but can and should are two very different things. I'm not saying I'm going to be a saint, but I am saying the world is only so big and eventually someone is going to recognize you when you least expect it and remember that thing you did the weekend before to one of their friends and they'll even the score and then it's all bad news bears from there.
Style wise, I was lost as 2012 tailed out. Spun out. Ate the guardrail and burned it's way to the bottom of a ravine. Shifting identity. Events and exchanges, human exchanges external to my brain pan, brought up so many questions I hope to answer to myself in the coming year. The identity I believed I had was drastically revised. Am I still a writer? Am I a poet? Am I a songstress? Maybe just a bard? I don't know. I've given up on trying to calculate how many hours I've gone in and what mastery means. Mastery means nothing. Exposure means nothing. The new foundation is framed quite simply as passion. I have a passion for words on paper. Whatever that makes me to you, I'm down. To me, I'm a kid with a pen. That's all. Calling yourself a writer or not, calling someone else by the same, is like having embossed ink on a business card. Doesn't mean a damn thing beyond image. Do I still want a house in the middle of nowhere to invite people to that I might cut them up, eat the good parts, and burn the rest of their remains? Yeah. That's kind of the ultimate goal. That and having a place to write that I only have to pay taxes on. That'll work. A wonderful desert compound. Somewhere near the border.
Twenty twelve taught me that I'm nowhere close to where a lot of my peers are fiscally, mentally, and emotionally. My concerns are still fringe. My furniture still sparse. My needs are still fairly small and my dreams equal and as difficult to access. I always thought I'd die in Pittsburgh, but maybe that's not good enough. Last year made me question my capabilities, but not in the way some people down grade themselves. I'm not a smart cookie. I'm not brilliant. I'm not particularly resourceful. I can, however, create to no end, my only limitation being the cards I have to play with..
It was a strange year. There were many tears in 2012. Some earned, many not. Many involuntary and inappropriate to the subject. That's not going to change. I'm crying right now typing this and it's silly. My weight keeps fluctuating wildly between 155 and 185. Every month. It makes no sense.
Gather. Fads go out of style. I've had a few of my own. I realized through the year that they were constructs to help me express concepts that come to me and help me live from week to week and month to month, but also help me relate. Junior psychologist over here. There was some real damage in 2012 and I don't know that 2013 will be that much better, but I like to believe it will be. Maybe we'll get back on the pills this year. Just to see. Just to see and stop talking about talking about doing it. Twelve was also a year of addictions. I don't know how to fix that. They were all, largely, necessary. But at least I know the side effects will or won't do what they do. Maybe that's the big thing standing guard these days. This turned pretty dark in a flash. I used to think I would be a great candidate for surviving the zombie apocalypse, and then I realized I would probably risk everything for a pack of smokes and dozen cans of spray paint. Unless I have my desert compound by then (I'll pass the time writing poetry and taking head shot breaks with a .50 cal and whiskey on the rocks).
The major issue I want to resolve this year, given last year, is my writing. Let's do better. Let's be better for us. Shooting for late forties. I want to at least make it to being a weird uncle.
What did 2012 teach me? What was the takeaway? Christmas lights are awesome. People can't be programmed. My morals and principles don't translate by default and no one else's do either. God is still a work of fiction. I am still figuring myself out and trying not to implode. At least not completely. Still so far away, only because I have to be. I am my own best company and my own worst friend. The things I don't own are things I should not have yet. The relationships I don't have are relationships I'm not and may never be ready for. The spaces I occupy, I am grateful for and will continue to be. The spaces I do not are spaces I have given back to the ones who belong there and will use beyond my ability to and that's okay. Twenty twelve was strange. Twenty thirteen is a big old bag of TBD, but I wish it was a big old bag of LSD. You can't go through life asleep, but a boy can dream.
///TRACK NOT FOUND - year end playlist up next
defining moments of a finest hour? yeah, something like that.
1/12/13
Dear (_____)
Dear cheese,
Why are you so tasty? I mean, nothing has a right to be tasty. God knows I wish I tasted better. If I could taste like cookies I'd be a made man. Rights aside, cheese, you are delicious and I wanted to take a minute to celebrate you in all of your tastiness. Cheese, you are great. And I will continue to aspire to your greatness. You're on my list of heroes, cheese. You earned it.
with love,
the cheese eater
Why are you so tasty? I mean, nothing has a right to be tasty. God knows I wish I tasted better. If I could taste like cookies I'd be a made man. Rights aside, cheese, you are delicious and I wanted to take a minute to celebrate you in all of your tastiness. Cheese, you are great. And I will continue to aspire to your greatness. You're on my list of heroes, cheese. You earned it.
with love,
the cheese eater
That Instant
you realize you almost said "we should hang out sometime" and then realized, before the words left your mouth, that it was a terrible idea because the little time you had with them was the perfect amount of time.
1/1/13
The Year End Look (part one)
Top of the morning, honey.Is it possible to look at a page and be ashamed from the get go? Yeah. This is part one. Gathering the caucus. I was violently depressed on the cusp of this new year. Violently so. Is it weird that it takes two hours to get up the gumption to put this out? A little bit, but everyone's a little bit scared, admitting it or not. So this is the prelude to the year end pouring out.
The year end playlist is coming out and there will be some familiar faces on it and some unfamiliar. Kiln is getting two spots. Sneak peeked. But mostly it's an opportunity for me to look backward and to look forward to weird and palatable ambitions, but more than that, look forward to brighter futures and, you know what, that means something, no matter how inaccessible or far away they are.
They're still there, I'm still here (God knows I should have been dead years ago), but I'm not so................... ...I don't make the schedule, I just live it. So I'll keep watch and do what I do and document until I'm gone.
Waking up to another sun. It can be helped, but I'm not gonna short change myself that way. That's just bad business. And I've too much to do. When I have nothing to do we will renegotiate. And when that time comes, it will, we will have a lot more things to talk through, but this is just part one. Part two is coming down the pipe and it will be great.
The year end playlist is coming out and there will be some familiar faces on it and some unfamiliar. Kiln is getting two spots. Sneak peeked. But mostly it's an opportunity for me to look backward and to look forward to weird and palatable ambitions, but more than that, look forward to brighter futures and, you know what, that means something, no matter how inaccessible or far away they are.
They're still there, I'm still here (God knows I should have been dead years ago), but I'm not so................... ...I don't make the schedule, I just live it. So I'll keep watch and do what I do and document until I'm gone.
Waking up to another sun. It can be helped, but I'm not gonna short change myself that way. That's just bad business. And I've too much to do. When I have nothing to do we will renegotiate. And when that time comes, it will, we will have a lot more things to talk through, but this is just part one. Part two is coming down the pipe and it will be great.
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