Time Locked (meta jail)

As freedoms increased, freedoms increased.  Identities are the easiest way to build a lock.  Layers upon layers of identities.  Make each layer easily identifiable and then nest them.

The only way in, in a timely fashion is to know them all.  You will get in, eventually.  Perhaps the algorithm before.  30 semaphores?  3000 semaphore tumbler.  Vector crossed?   259.

I have to remind myself on a regular basis why being 8 years removed from the day I finally said "no" to being trampled and hidden and displayed and ripped apart by my parents is important.

It's not an "in memorium" for them as much as a "time makes fools of us all."  Things get rose tinted and goofy and it becomes easy to slough details and miss bolts during assembly.  It becomes

natural to see it their way and understand margins and forget why fifteen layers thick gloves are necessary to.  It is scary existing without the safety net of a mom and a dad.

Not even the safety net, but a perspective with something behind that should be automatic.  I never thought the jealousy would grow the way it has.  I hoped cutting them off would be the hardest part.

"There won't be any home to go back to."  The seasons wear on.  Soldier on.  I would still rather a genuine holiday gathering to plastic family photographs and obtuse threats.

It's not rage.  S'not anger or disappointment.  It's slipping my fingers through the links of the farthest fence I've reached inside the meta-jail compound.  Fuck me, seventy acres out from solitary.

Forty-four fucking gates,  six yards,  general population, no armed guards, three muzzles and three mittens, two fields, and one drone called off and still inside the fucking compound.

It is strange to be an orphan by choice.  Well, why don'tcha call 'em?  Have you ever been on the phone with someone who hurt you more times than you could count and it took you

years just to understand that it didn't have to be normal?  That it wasn't normal.  And then to have an outright denial thrown in your face when you do finally fucking get it.

To see so many parts of why you are the way that you are tossed away with a flick of a wrist and rebuild it into some semblance of what you could've been and ...  hell, you know what?

You call them.  I can tell you exactly what they'll say.  And you'll say "aw, man, your parents are funny.  Cool dude.  Your mom had this story about this one time and-"

Okay.  I hate being an orphan.  There's a blackhole where P1 & P2 were supposed to be.  It's the lesser of blades I suppose.  I try not to wear it outright, but I do get jealous sometimes

when I speak to friends and they talk about how they had a conversation with their pops or moms.  I will not do it again.  That territory is radioactive for a reason and I want to make sure

that we don't forget.

That Instant

I was born at the age of 25.

The Best Thing

about the screaming argument that starts with "I'll get dressed when I'm dead!!!" and "I don't fucking feel like it today!!!" and "Well, neither do I!!!" is that it sometimes ends with high fives all around because you've managed to agree on something unanimously and that something just happened to be: getting dressed sucks and yeah people should be a lot less fucked up about nudity, but they aren't and we can't kill them all so we'll get dressed and file our grievances under artistic differences or something, and it's a starting point to key the rest of the day.

Preparing For Changes and the Return of the Painted Dinosaur

We've been drinking a lot.  The nice thing about self medicating is that you can up or down your dosage as needed without the pain or risk of seeing "professionals", though the time elapsed has gifted a pro status to yourself.  That professionalism about the approach can easily get away from you in much the same way an infinite prescription pad can get away from you and the dulling of sensation and thought and process will become a pea beneath a mattress. 

We are going to strip some away.  Artificial feeling.  Artificial sense.  Changes are coming and they're going to be unpleasant, but carrying around the ghosts in the darkness constantly is not possible.  Face them.  Face them.  Face them.  Face them.  Face them.  There is no winning or losing.  There is fear.  You've been normal, you've been good,  you've engaged, you've laughed, you've loved, you've cried, you've walked back and forth three hundred and eight times and you can't push anything new until you open the box. 

So we're going to open the box so we can write our poetry again and stop pretending we're fine.  We're not.  Haven't been for months.  How great a run has it been?  It's been fun.  The muddy boots and gloves, the tools misplaced, the hysterics, the silence, they don't lie.  Eventually it feels like building a carnival atop mass graves and playing the music loud enough to drown out the way foot falls squeeze blood from between the blades of grass and insisting to the patrons it's just part of the show.  I'm looking forward to it.

That Instant (_____)

you want to have a little time to yourself for some slippery self love and an orgasm or two, but you just can't quite get there because there is an alarming number of fake books all along the shelves of the walls surrounding the sense and sexuality at the film shoot's center...  ...like a conspicuously, mind bogglingly, strange amount of fake books... 

That Instant (_____)

you reach the meta level of justifying skipping workouts so that you don't have to feel the disappointment in yourself after you keep it rolling for three months and miss a few weeks because you vegged out and partied and flat didn't feel like it and can still honestly say that you will start again when you're ready but there's not point in starting right now because twelve weeks from now will still play out the same and who wants to feel like a waste of life after their first day back?

That Instant

you look back at the countless system restarts, software downloads, years of physical and programming glitches, migrations from operating system to operating system, hardware failures, compatibility explosions, canyons of anxieties, quits, fear, fiscal shortfalls, bouts of rage, helpful hands, sympathetic ears, crying nights, hate filled days, and continents of time you've put in to trying to get the right graphics tablet with the functions you need that isn't near the end of its service life from the moment you plug it in and the tablet lights open their little firefly eyes, and the pen pressure is natural, and no batteries are required, and a twirl of its balance to bring the eraser to the page is as natural as the pointed tip too and you don't know what to feel because maybe something else terrible is waiting to happen and all will be lost overnight again including the money you could've used to buy so many other things, but damnit, it just works. 

it finally just works the way you've wanted it to, needed it to, and things are going to be a little different now, at least maybe ... the way they were before everything fell apart on you.

Dear (_____)

Dear pain,

You've taken sleep away from me.  The paranoia that breeds across my maps is all rooted to you.  I never know if the next morning is the morning when a swollen disk pokes a nerve or a frayed nerve get's caught in gravity's rotation and snips a cold bolt down one of my legs.  That paranoia, that anxiety, that never knowing if all of the days waking without you are a lead to some sort of crescendo two days long.  pERMANENT INURY BRED Memory. 

You don't scare me often.  I hope, when next you arrive, you bring some frost and ankle deep snow too.

huddled,

Hobbes

The Best Thing

about realizing your sense of humor is directly tied into the belief or disbelief in the supernatural and ghost stories are ghost stories as the starting ground and the turn of the gate always jams backward and that is unfair and that realization nudging you toward a shelf of acceptance...     no...

about realizing your sense of humor is uncommon is that they (some) will laugh with you.  Others will allow it.  Some of the caucus will grip their sides with glee.  Others will hold their chins and wag their horned heads.  And they all will be there to see you.

Dear (_____)

Dear cigarettes,

You got me again.  Another pack gone with nothing to show for it but discolored phlegm, chest pain, and a hole in my wallet where $10 used to be.  Fuck you.  I'm not going to quit quitting.  I know that you never really do finish quitting and that every week you can say no is maybe another day you might get to live when everything starts shutting down and the soul waves a finger "alright, let's wrap this thing up!"  I know childhood trauma already ate decades off the end of my life.  I know my line of work, my station in society, my genetic make up, and just day to day survival stress shaves years off what's left.  If I can avoid it, I'd like to not suffocate inside my own body.  I'd like to die doing something much more interesting.  So I'm not going to quit quitting just because I feel like absolute shit and burned more of my life away.  You'll come knocking again.  I'll turn up the radio and go sit in another room.  The porch light may be on, but don't wait up for someone to come to the door.

Later 'gator.