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.
10/19/19
That Instant
10/1/19
Where the Time Went V
Banished from the lands. I almost said unfortunately. Fortune has little to do with what a person decides to do with their present. Fortune has everything to do with what and who you are up until "now", but maybe fifty percent to do with after. Fortune has fifty percent or less to do with what happens to you after you realize what the system is and what you're in for and who you are and where you've been with an open eye. Of course, you've still got to get "lucky" in part for good things to happen to you, but you also have to be prepared to act.
Banished and returned out of sympathy for their survival, them having flailed in the vacuum of space and been over matched by the very things they spat in my face they could handle on their own so often and myself being fed incomplete information (what I call lies and they call "telling the full truth when they're ready"). So now we are trapped into providing shelter for the wayward addict and trying to lay down ground rules in their defiance and abuse of kindness. Few things feel more alone than living with someone who is not prepared or capable yet of living outside of their own interests, whatever those interests may be.
If you're still in the mindset of "I am a fuck up, I can't do this" and won't even honest to yourself try, you're going to miss it. Four months long attempts at trying to wake them up to that simplicity. Trying to be the best person I could be toward the person I loved. Maximum effort. Whether I wanted to or not, whether I was upset or not, whether it would cost me or not. We had a conversation the other evening about what love is. Is it an emotion? A feeling? A pile of chemicals? An exchange of ideas, ideals, memories, and hopes? Is it that metaphorical eternal flame of the soul and yadda yadda that keeps everything and everyone connected and relationships blossom where the connections happen to be stronger instead of weaker? She sort of fumbled around for some time, at points fading into and out of the "a person can fall into and out of love conundrum so it can only be, but so much of this or that and" basically a word salad of chopped up experiences, tossed with a little salt and vinegarette and served halting.
Love at its core is sacrifice. Love is willfully putting yourself second for the betterment of someone else. Love is not whispering "I would die for you" while your heads lay on the same pillow and your faces are six inches away from each other. Every time someone tells me they would die for me I tell them to live for me.
I'm not looking for apologies anymore. Whatever form they come in, apologies, an acknowledgement that you did something that did not account for that action's, that decision's, that event's happening's impact on my life, or you did and chose to disregard it, or you did and it did not weigh out to enough to sway you, but you cared enough to inform me and help me better understand where I fall in your calculus and explore the otherverses of paths so that we can figure out whether we should or should not cross paths in the future, if it can be avoided.
I am looking for changes in behavior. Whatever forms the apologies take, if you find yourself offering apologies and sacrifices to the same You, it is vainity at its root. Isn't it? As long as you can forgive you, everything should be good with the person you are bowing your head for the knife for. As long as you're in the loop, you are your own executioner. And yes, you will die in dramatic fashion. The applause will rain. Everyone will believe something was accomplished in the display. The executioner will go to their home, once the crowd applause fade, and there's some sort of proclamation about sins and wrongs and the pigeons and crows will come to peck up the bits of food the audience left in the courtyard. The morticians will get to work and the janitors too. The executioner's phone will buzz a "hey, are you up? Let's hang out" the following night. You'll do your make up, cross legged on the floor, and say to yourself you must go meet so-and-so because...
Apologies and "sorry" are not worthless. They carry some merit on their own, though tacit.
You'll befriend fall guys and walking excuses and you'll apologize later. Beheading yourself used to mean something. It used to be painful. Cognitive dissonance is something for therapy couches, though. Why respect the opinions of people that have spent their lives studying people, just like you. With enough repetitions, a person can become anything they want to be.
///Fatboy Slim - "The State We're In" ~
8/30/19
Where the Time Went IV (the message)
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
8/26/19
That Instant
8/23/19
Where The Time Went III
...the line should've been drawn a long time ago. I have to become comfortable with notion that my partner will be homeless outright. I've been there. I don't want to do it to someone else. The truth is I'm not doing it to them. They are doing it to themselves.
Is there more I could've done? Sure. Is there more I could've done without killing myself? No. Clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Can't hit he. Can't hit he can't hit. He can't hit. He can't hit. He. Clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Vocal cord rehearsals to explain to her that everything has been askew for almost two years because of her addictions. The motorbike in the backyard still collects rust because of her addictions. The home mortgage fund is short $4000 over two years because of her addictions.
Rehearsing answers to her inevitable retorts and fits of anger.
Rehearse.
Rehearse.
Rehearse.
And know it. Know it like the creases on the back of your hands because they will always be tested. When your support is the rock at the bottom, don't flinch. If it means cutting that base out, try to even though you are crying tears of blood behind stony eyes.
///I miss being able to listen to music without submitting to a five hour long rant about songs we've already listened to the last time hammers fell. Her addiction took even that away from me and she still does not see what it's cost beyond a dollar sign.
8/2/19
Life With Alcoholism
If you say no: they'll just go out anyway, be angry with you all night because "we never go anywhere", probably spend far too much money, call you to pick them up, be further upset with you for not trusting them and for "always being tired", and be irritated that "we never spend time together", be angry with you for "judging" wanting to have a good time.
If you say yes: wherever you go they won't want to leave after an hour, pressure you to drink more than you want (if you decide to drink at all), convince you to spend too much money or spend it themselves, try to get you to bring something back to the house for later (but really that night), go out again anyway if you do get home early, make you feel miserable for going cautiously/reluctantly, be upset with you for thinking about how you'll feel tomorrow, be annoyed with you the entire outing for thinking about the chores & things you still need to do at home.
7/12/19
That Instant
10/17/18
Dear (_____)
Dear piercing hip pain,
We've ruled out kidney stones, appendicitis, burst and displaced disks in the spine, and abdominal tears. Could you please just tell me what you are? Is that so difficult? This whole shell game of taped up notes is getting awfully passive aggressive and I can't keep guessing what's wrong every day and adjusting my work schedule on the fly. I have to work! I am needed! There are deadlines to meet. So what is it today? Who exactly are you that I'm sharing my body with? No one even told me you signed a lease. Tendon inflammation? Lack of rest? Too much stretching? Low pressure swelling? Tiny chunk of bone?! Cartiledge tear?!?! A welcome to old age and the gift is "this is the rest of your life til you die"?!?!?! Stop me if I guess your name!
Sincerely,
Occasionally Bed Ridden at 33
10/1/18
Where The Time Went
Each time I board it there are freshly opened meals, a coffee sack still warm, a cigarette drifting with flecks of ash still floating and clouds of smoke swaying in the recycled air. A saucer and chipped cup and different music playing in the background over the public address. Breathable 65 degree air. A few playing cards that weren't there before. A display still picking up signals from Sol from 1989 when they aren't playing static. A ghost ship. I turn off the distress beacon and return to my junker to figure out what to do with it.
I can't turn it over to the scrappers just yet. Not with people aboard. Their machines will shred it with no regard for souls. If someone is on that ship, I can't forgive myself. If someone is on that ship, I hope to make contact soon. The trade hub orbiting Europa is still four days journey from our position in the Oort. Remember how lovely the grass was down on Terra? If I can bring this thing back in one piece, there'll be a fortune and a vacation waiting for us.
Someone is on that ship. I will find them.
Captain Jexel Hobbes of the Noway Accel- 10201800278
Time has flown by. I've missed so many deadlines I wanted to hit. When was the last time we spoke?
RAM is going to take a serious investment. I know that the mother board can handle it and I've tried a half dozen times different combinations of chips to blow it to the 16 gigabytes that it can do. I've allowed the bottleneck to become a road block on producing art. I fell in love back in March. Sacrificing and sacrificing over and over to try to bring another person into my world, but most efforts have failed.
I've asked her dozens, but not yet hundreds of times to meet me half way. She continues to do the same things she does, not because she doesn't love me as much as I love her, but because it is all she knows and has known since she was small. I do think that it's possible to change, I know it is. Everyone deserves a chance. There is a spark in her. If I can help, I will. I didn't get to where I am in life without help. How can a person conscious of this turn away another and another who actually kind of sort of understands you?
I am beginning to wonder if she actually does or if she is a part of my life because I am so different from everything she once knew and cares more about being truly loved as a person than....... she does love fairly unconditionally. Maybe that's a part of the problem. She can't tell the difference between someone who actually cares for her and someone who is using her. It's a possibility. It can be solved.
How do you speak to someone who is jammed with ultimatums and unwilling to discern? How do you speak to someone who cannot see the consequences of their actions beyond a week, beyond a month, beyond 12 hours? How do you reach an addict? I am one. She's not on another level. She hasn't allowed herself into the terrors of introspection.
She flies away from the heat. She creates reason mazes. Responsibility mazes. Agency dead falls. I understand the fear. How can you explain that fear in your own life to someone who hasn't acknowledged it within their own space? I suppose that goes back to the old adage: how can you love someone, if you cannot love yourself. I don't know what to do when I see her setting herself up for apologies. It's how she's gotten by. The other adage: don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness.
I never thought that I would fall in love again. I knew I would. I did not believe, however, that it would be more than a passing fancy. Survival is paramount. Survival comes with its costs. One of the costs is you do not get to enjoy stable long term relationships because you must survive. If two survivors meet, there's a match and a stable long term relationship can grow there because there is no dependence. There is only a mutual companionship. Do not tell me you would die for me. Live with me.
I am afraid this will not work and I may have to eject her through an escape pod into the vacuum of space with a few months survival kit, a beacon, and a radio.
The largest red flag wasn't history, or family composition, or addiction. The largest red flag remains a dearth of creative thought. A nagging inability to see what's possible instead of what's here.
One year. One year. I will gift her one year of my life. I was given less to reach further and, for some of it, I destructed because I didn't know what and who I was and a heavy portion was out of my control from the outset. Everyone deserves a chance to grow. Everyone! I know she can do it. We have so much in common and beautifully so. I do love her after believing that I did not have the capacity to love again after everything my circuits have been sheared through. I am a part of my ship, incorporated, built, and breathing, designed, redesigned, scrapped, prototyped, burned, and rebuilt anew.
The larger mission is still to build a map for the sojourners after I am long gone and someone else is stumbling upon my space station and docked junker broadcasting songs no one has heard in decades and curious what the hell a space station is doing 15 light years away from Sol in dead space.
I have compassion. I know that I am a pretty tough ticket 300 out of 365 days, but I can feel and I can be and am conscious of my bipolar schizophrenia. Occasionally it gets away from me, but not nearly as often as it once did. I can protect her and my friends from it (it's impossible to protect one's self).
One year from the day we met in March.
Synchronize watches.
///Way Out West - "Northern Lights" radiata