With A Passion

 I refuse to die.  I think about death just about every day.  Who doesn't.  Yes that is a statement.  I refuse to die.  SHOW ME ALL OF MY LABELS.  I will show you a complete set.  A complete-ish set?  I miss my friends.  Am I alone.  I am alone.  I am l onea.  O, am I lone.  A olo nei. 

Destrega.   I have dreams about the end of the world.  They are fun.  Are you?

Dogfights are luscious.

I dreamt about trees falling and bears coming out of the woods across creek where I used to live in southern Maryland and the spider monster came down out of the bear tree limbs in the middle of winter and before the bears could get to the fawns grazing on what grasses were left behind in a mild thaw before the permafrost killed everything the tree sized monsters began swooping down to harvest the bears.

Their force began tipping the old and dead trees over, held up by ivy.

The entire thing began collapsing.

Have you ever heard the sound

of a tree hitting the ground

that was as large as you

can run?

The shadows were enormous.  I ran fast.  As fast as I could... the entire dream collapsed.  The ground collapsed with the bass of the shear air the trunks displaced as they fell.  The spiders were squashed.  The bears became pelts and powdered glistening bone, when I had time to glance back at the pink mist.

I lived.  The animals died.  I panted.  I watched

more trees fall with thick and thicker trunks, torn asunder like toothpicks before the clouds.  

The troposphere.  The fucking fickle thin layer of air that had just a little too much sun.  God, some single batch would probably kill me so I dont have to know

what's coming next.

Stay Positive, Opposite Day, Detours, and Paper

How funny would it be to wake up in your own car in the middle of the early morning after accidentally blowing your steering wheel airbag into your face the night before tinkering with the switches and wiring around the wheel?

The thought crossed my mind, walking home from the local store to buy smokes and chips.  Almost as good as chips and ice cream.  When I feel horrible, I prefer cigarettes because they make me feel a little less horrible without making me wish I felt an unsustainable joy derived from ice creams sweet and cooling goodness.  If only anyone could always be that smooth, creamy, and soothing all the way down to the belly.  The thought crossed my mind after walking away from my truck to go buy some comfit after I noticed my fuel gauge was malfunctioning and realizing the problem's solution was going to cost me at least $120 and 10 to 20 hours of labor at worst and 20 to 40 hours of labor, learning, trial and error, and no dollars at best.

I kept chuckling thinking about how angry I felt.  I kept chuckling thinking about reaching under the seat for my hatchet, letting out a bloody war cry, and smashing the wheel to pieces.  Only then, ditching the hatchet, pulling and tearing wires out of it with my bare hands until the airbag exploded and shoved one of my closed fistful of wires straight into my face and I basically ended up knocking myself out cold with a rocket powered fist to the dome.  Then waking up the next day with a deployed airbag, swollen knuckles, one hell of a headache, and one hell of a fist shaped bruise between my eyes.

Part of the reason for the rage is that I finished fixing another small problem with a steep learning curve and dozens of hours of labor and learning rolled inside only days before.  The truck is not falling apart around me, though it feels that way sometimes.  The problems are routine problems and I wish I could take it in for routine maintenance instead of d.i.y. desperation weekends.  The other part of the reason for the anger is that if I were paid more in line with my actual skills and level of higher learning, I could shrug, say "okay", and rent a car tomorrow while my truck sat in a shop for an afternoon.

Living near the bottom of the middle class is deceptive.  Bottom of the middle class, top of the lower class.  Living in the region can be deceptive if you have some imagination, some confidence, some helpful friends, and some ingenuity.  I have a one bedroom apartment with a closet bath/shower and mini kitchen.  If I take away all of the furniture a friend gave, all of the furniture I built, and all of the furniture I found on curbs or being given away by strangers, I have cinder blocks, two folding chairs, one of those university lobby lounge chairs, a sheet of particle board, and an end table.  Remove every worldly possession, so to speak, and there'd be a truck parked outside, a few pots and pans and plates, a desktop and pair of monitors, a console, a found tv, a few books and magazines, some shoes and goodwill clothes and multipack tees, some mechanical gadgets, some home and auto repair tools, and a printer and phone.

Imagination allows me to see what can be and holds the hand of ingenuity to find ways to make it happen.  Call it humility or call it living within your means or call it mining gold or a hobby, thrift stores are one of the keys to forgetting that you are part of the working poor.  The cream of the lower class.  Keeping good friendships is a huge part of the puzzle.  Without them, my life easily fits inside a 10' by 10' cell with a hole in the ground to eliminate and a spigot somewhere to drink and bathe.  Part of the anger stems from those parameters.

I have been heavily detoured.  Charging along the roads as quickly as possible in an effort to get back on some kind of track while wasting as few years as possible is frightening.  I ask myself what will happen if I miss a black on orange florescent sign letting me know my next turn is coming three turns from now and the sign at the third turn was never erected so commit this one to memory.  First and final warning.  The reason why it does not feel fair to me is because it is not fair.

I continue to consider the many branches not followed that have lead here, fighting for time to write.  I began to believe my father was trying to teach me a lesson about his pain all along and I am finally beginning to understand it, but I will not be able to understand until I am 48 or 50 or whatever his age was when I stopped talking to him.  Before that thought grew too large, I remembered he hasn't the subtlety or emotional imagination to allow him to pull that off.  I can see where some of his resentment stemmed from.  Losing all of the prime years of life and talent at the cutting edge of art, design, and martial arts bad-ass-ery to childcare.  Who wouldn't be a lot angry all of the time.  Though extremely dissimilar in their divination (did you see what I did there), the results are similar.  Cut away opportunities, trim an effective gesture here, clip a nudge there, ....

... I don't know.  I do not know why I never got the same support.  It would not have taken much.  Some days I am alright never knowing.  Some days it all comes to a head staring at your broken fuel gauge and doing the right thing and getting the hell out of the car without slamming the door and spinning 180 degrees to put your fist through the window and slash your own tires.  The world could've been miles from now.

I could be writing about my third year working as a librarian somewhere and moaning about coding database systems and dealing with angry patrons and making time for dates between writing short stories and working on my two part novel about warfare and keeping up to date on my space opera hopeful crown jewel I'm still searching out an editor for, however the third poetry anthology is going pretty great.  I'm tearing out the kitchen in parts on my down time when I get tired of writing and it should be finished in another week or two.

Today felt like opposite day.  Loading my truck up with bale after bale of carpet, a refridgerator door, water logged drywall, a cane and broken umbrella, armfuls of empty paint cans, a screen door, and three dozen other pieces of jetsam from the home I'm renovating's previous occupants, it was opposite day.  What I was doing should be my hobby.  I should be putting that sweat and blood and cuss into my own home, not someone else's.  When I go home I should be thinking about what I am going to tear down and visit the hardware store to work on next.  When I go home I should not be thinking about what I can write next that can be packed into the time it takes to shut my body down to hit the hammers and brushes and trash bags and saws again.

As much as I love working with my hands, I could find a way to work with my body in the face of an occupation that demanded I not.

"You're poor!  You're poor!  You're poor!  You're poor!  Do not be deceived; you're poor!"

Independent life is a horror show and funhouse of mirrors broken and whole.  I am staying positive.

What brought me back to a semblance of balance is remembering that the day is still young.  Independent life is 5 years old.  Five.  Five years ago you started stepping outside of your cell.  A year or two later you walked down a hallway and into a cafeteria.  A few months later you learned there was a yard and no time restrictions.  A few months later you found a gate into another yard.  It's getting larger and larger as long as you do not screw it all up and have your privileges revoked.  All of the time you lost will be compounded by the time you spent finding a way back out.

No one pays you what you're worth unless you have the paper to create the market.  Or the portfolio and charisma, in lieu of paper.  Portfolio and charisma is an absolute "and" statement.  The one and not the other turns into a luck base number system.  I will never know my actual value.  Maybe that is the worst of it?  I will never know if I am being over paid or under paid, valued appropriately or not.  The optimist inside, the petitioner, tells me that if and only if we suffer for as much time as we spent pursuing the degree, our penance will be met with paper if and only if we are gracious through our turbulent era.  The eros inside whispers about penance through joyful degradation,   The musician adds another kick drum, knocking over cymbal stands.  The child snaps crayons in half so both hands can draw at once inside the same lines.

It is difficult not to fantasize about getting my degree in the mail, tearing it in half, driving to their house, and suffocating them to death in turn, each by half, with a wad of paper.  That would be thoroughly satisfying.

What are you supposed to do when the toys you want to play with are above the grade you are licensed for?  What are you supposed to do when what you are allowed to do you can do very well, but the ceiling is opaque and the sounds coming through it are not in a language you can or maybe will ever understand?  Maybe I am paid exactly what I am worth.  If I have reached my ceiling and given no indication that I am prepared for or understand in the slightest or am equipped for beyond that ceiling, I am paid exactly what I am worth.

That's frightening.  Also true.  Harrowing.

Sometimes I understand that I'm getting too fixated on true freedom.  I get a taste of working something I can enjoy to support the writing habit and expect everything else to fall in line. There's a luck element to it, that I cannot unlock through work or optimism or faith or trust.  That operates on its own time table.  If I do win the lottery, I will take out full page ads in major cities for the hell of it, but only once.

Part of me continues to say it is not supposed to be this hard to make massive uncertainty and day to day, week to week, at best month to month living a thing of the past.  My state is, however, that fragile.  At the ripe old age of at least 1/3 dead the best I can do for myself is knowing I have at least a month to figure out a new lowline.  Fear the high lines because you know a low line is around the corner... ....what to do when you are following low lines?   High lines have to be engaged.  My spider sense is not tingling.  Shake the wrong tree and a warship mine may fall out of it, let alone a tank or soldier sized one.  The other story of America.  Every body wants to be a cat.  If you have enough money you can do whatever you want to.  Not that much money.  I mean enough money to swap cars, or pick up and move, or add and subtract clothing, or change lighting, or paint colors, flip what you walk on, change shoes when you feel like it, add and subtract channels, modify whatever you want to when the moment strikes you, eat out, order drinks for other people, pay for other peoples gas, buy extra fresh fruit.  It's nice.

I am still going to try to brew my own beer this summer.  Do not give me that horseshit "God works in mysterious ways" because chance does too.  The only thing better than chance is ingenuity, and the only thing more important and better than ingenuity is imagination.

I am trying to stay positive with some success.  Frustration and rage are part of being us.  Born here?  Sure.  From here?  No.  I've missed you.  Don't lose touch.  If you ever need to talk, do not forget my ear.                 I love you.                    I love you.       I love you.  I love you. I love you.I love you.Iluvu.Ilvu.Iu.U.I.

We'll get this thing sorted out.  We have a lot of time ahead of us, like it or not, we do.

Do not quit.

You have the rest of your life to make that decision.

It is opposite day, okay?

It is not wasted time.

Opposite day.

Time becomes more valuable as it accumulates.

Okay.  I am
with you.  Agreeing to never throw hands up in frustration.  Agreeing to ride it as long as there is still track in front.  Agreeing to dance as long as there is a beat to dance to, be it from within or without.  I am okay with you as long as your are
okay.  With me.





///Aesop Rock - (Gun for the Whole Family) ~ i've missed you for a very long time.  things got bad.  things were getting bad.  i had to remember that they weren't as bad as they'd been.  we're working toward a utopia of coexistence.  we're not there yet, but damn sure we're going to keep on trying while helping lay the ground works and maps and blue prints for the next iteration of our being.




/
//
///Alanis Morissette - (Thank You) ~ passive mobile adaptable armor.

The Two Dimensional Garage, Jury Duty, and the Furnace

I continue to not eat.  I don't know why.  Well, I do know why: it's very difficult to do regularly.  In short, it's hard.  That's not a reason.  That doesn't qualify as a reason.  That's an excuse.  It's a reason!  I know it's a reason because I like food.  I like shopping for food.  I like looking at food.  I like cleaning and preparing food.  I simply cannot eat it and I don't know why it is so difficult to get food from in front of me to inside of me.

Eating with people is still so strange and, for the most part, to be avoided.  It's incredibly uncomfortable.  It makes my forearms itch to watch and listen to it.  It's not disgusting, but mechanically it's draining to be around, and then people ask you why you're not eating and it turns into a whole thing and just thinking about it now I want to vomit.  It's difficult to do.  I don't understand it.  I try to do it, the feeding, but even two a day is a break through.  Once is enough.  Get it down and out of the way and forget about it.  Go to bed.  Sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep.  You can't run yourself into trouble if you're asleep.

I'm not sure what.  You can see all of the colors and the sun's light and clouds and birds and it flattens  and smears out to gray.  There are things you have to do.  Things that must be done.  Feeding, washing, resting.  Sometimes it feels like a two dimensional garage.  A plastic play place facsimile of garage where everything is laid out inside white lines.  You get up and everything is numbered in order.  You take this off and put that on, brush this, comb through that, turn knobs here and there, check your fuel gauge, off to work little guy, home, and into bed to lie awake until your brain turns itself off.

There's nothing special.  There's nothing important.  There's nothing pressing.  There's nothing.  The routine is critically important.  The more rigid the better, I used to think.  I'm not so sure.  With familiarity, brutal and starkly lit familiarity, there are fewer opportunities for mistakes, misreadings, miscues, misses.  All of them.  Destructive and damaging misses.  Misses that can affect my relationships with friends or neighbors and strangers.  Fewer opportunities for misses that can lead to depressions and emotional collapses.  Fewer opportunities for problems to arise all across the board, because of something I saw or heard and reacted to or engaged with that later proved to never have existed at all beyond my own eyes.

Brute force coping.  Except even that fails and begins to deteriorate and then you can't be at work and you can't be at home either and you hide from them by sleeping as much as you possibly can and maybe this time when you wake up they'll be gone and they're not and you're quietly terrified and you can't be out of the house for too long, and you can't be awake for too long.  They'll know.  Turn your world into a two dimensional garage and nail the windows shut and paint them black so they can't get inside and they won't be able to tell if anyone is awake at night by candle light.  To be safe and certain.  They'll try to fool you, but you know.  You know what you have to do to live.  It's all laid out by numbers and if something goes missing you know exactly what it is because its outline will be there in its absence.

I've tried for years to understand it.  I say tried, but it is not as though the attempts to understand it have reached their conclusion.  They are ongoing.  It is very difficult to prioritize.  There are many things to complete, and all they all strike me as the same.  Eating or a glass of water are as important as going to work or placing critical phone calls.  As important or as unimportant.  Prioritization has stepped away and I don't know where exactly to.  I want to feel the sensation of hot blood across the surface of my skin.  I am trying to summon the rage that fills and fires the furnace that can push me forward into and through a day or a week.  By the end, there isn't much left.  The weekend or the month's end will be composed of reassembling what is left of the furnace when I have to use it and over use it.  Picking up and bending sections and pieces back into place for having to contain for lengths and lengths of time roiling licks of anger and sheer rage.

I hate myself.  I hate having to force on smiles and eat back tears and shake hands.  I hate that I have so much trouble getting into and keeping jobs.  I'm lucky enough to have a position now that is fairly flexible and accommodating.  I'm afraid of the day the unpredictable nature of my disorder will strike me with no warning with a ferocity and depth of intensity that I.  I just don't want to hurt anyone.  Often I've said my main desire in this life is to be left alone, but that's not because I want to be left alone.

Isolation is the only way.  Every day I know I am going to die alone.  I cannot be married.  I cannot raise children.  I cannot take care of someone else.  I cannot ask someone to help me take care of myself.  I completely understand.  It would not be fair.  Beyond fairness, and the idea that trying to build a home with someone who is afflicted and, for lack of a better word, damaged it would be hazardous on many other levels.  At least isolated there is a very large zone of dead space, neutral space, physically speaking, but isolated there is also a zone of communications that can be closed off and shut down until a time arises when they can be safely used again.  Whatever damage is done is localized and hopefully hidden from those who would be part of relationships tended.  That way when communications and visitations resume they can be pursued with the cues and tips and exchanges of normalcy and proportions near normalcy that govern civil life.

Which brings me to jury duty.  There was the questionaire about all of the reasons why the prosecution or the defense may not want to select you for their trial and I came to the line item of: do you have any mental or physical disabilities that may impair your ability to perform the duties ... to paraphrase.  I don't have a prescription anymore.  That lapsed so long ago I can't remember the specific year.  I don't have paperwork.  I hate saying "what's wrong with me", but I tried to describe, during the interview portion when they ask you about your particular survey answers, what was wrong with me.  It was terribly uncomfortable though they smiled a lot,but it was the evil smile.  Not the understanding smile.  You can't ask everyone to understand.  They won't get it.  If I struggle to grasp it myself, how can I ask someone else to?

Several hours later, we had to sit for all of the interviews even though we knew we weren't going to be selected, I still thought about it.  There are many things I should not be allowed to do and serve on a jury is among them.  It's upsetting.  Feel fractional because you are.  Parts of your mind are missing or maybe it's that there are many more glitches on top of and laced throughout what is supposed to be there, what is standard equipment, and there is no way to clean or tear down and rebuild the system free of them without killing yourself in the process.  Feel and know that you'll never quite be up to par with anyone, as long as you live and know that it probably will not be all that much longer.  Maybe another 30 or so years.  Maybe less.  When you were younger you wanted to die.  Not far removed from then you realize, there's no hurry.  Be patient.  Don't fool yourself.

Or do.  I try to laugh a lot.  The idea is that maybe if I smile and laugh enough it will stick in place and remain.  People will love being around me and I will love being around them because they will love being around me.  Carefully and painstakingly construct it inside your two dimensional garage, piece by piece by piece.   Power it up.  Go through the movements and the timing and conversational spacing.  Practice and memorize so that you can drum up this other self upon demand, slip inside of it and wear it effortlessly and with enough repetitions it will become not only effortless, but a full projection and extension of you to the point that it is you.  Until your body violently rejects it and you blaze apart before your own eyes.  We will see.



///TV on The Radio - "Wear You Out" let me to bed.  please?

Year End Playlist 2014

January - Run the Jewels - Sea Legs
February - Sleigh Bells - Rachel Remix
March - Run the Jewels - No Come Down
April - Matt and Kim - Lessons Learned
May - The Sabres of Paradise - Smoke Belch
June - Deathgrips - Blackjack you don't pay attention, you're going to get whacked
July - Machinedrum - Loveking
August - Starfucker - Rawnald Gregory
September - Various - Listen to the Animals
October - Nneka - Heartbeats fuck when you want me
November - Miss Kittin - Happy Violentine oscar foxtrot november
December - Sylvan Esso - Hey Mami

Fault of circumstance.  Blood blood blood blood blood.  Machinedrum almost made it for a two'fer, but Loveking was pushed off of the list for Nneka.  The list is in a particular order.  I should offer honorable mentions and I will:

in no particular order

Junkie XL - Zero to Nine
Machinedrum - Loveking
Macklemore - Whitewalls
Junkie XL -  Blackjack
Goldie - Mother
Meaghan Trainor - All About That Bass
Daft Punk - Giorgio By Moroder

My brother tells me often "love and peace".  I appreciate the words.  I do.  Conscientious objection is not an option for some.  Draft dodger maybe.  Acceptable?  Yes.  For another time?  Yes.

Dealing & Check In

Gotta change the motor oil now and then.  S'not the first time or the last.  I was concerned.  The panels were lighting up in not so good ways and it's kind of like changing your alarm because sometimes the tune you design to play goes doot doot doot and then you start dancing instead of waking up and that's no good, ya know?  It's no good.

Instead of waking up you get like "aw, this sounds great, who made this?  I can jam all day" and that's no good at all.  Time to change the motor oil.

An overactive imagination they said.  Spirits was put past me too.  Talking to angels got floated.  Talking to demons got floated too.  "Just pick which ones" got floated too.  Hawky talk.  All of it trash.  Waking up to the signals again.  The check engine light.  Sky zoe frania.   I hate that word so much.  I hate that word so fucking much.  I hate that word so fucking much!  I hate that word.  I hate that word.  I hate that word.  I hate that word.  I hate that word.  I hate that word.  I hate that fucking word.

Delusions of grandeur.  I don't understand!  I don't get it.  I'm very happy.  I'm working on a concussion free year and I think I'm gonna be able to get it this year.  The first one in five without one.  The first year in three that I haven't broken my nose.  I'm looking forward to it.  It is going to be a gold belt when I check off December.  I'm dealing.

Six years without a pain killer (minus alcohol but that only halfway counts.... a pain putter offer).  Nothing to the significance of a tylenol.  I'm not allowing myself to sniff anything near an edible.  It's good though.  It's a bad track to go down, plus pain lets you know where the line is.  There's nothing wrong with that.  I'm dealing and it's great and terrifying because I'm - not sure when the line happens, ya know?  When we click over and aren't talking to people anymore or are extremely unreasonable.

The concern comes from knowing that an existence without you is doable, highly doable, but not nearly as ... well, not that far.  I won't go that far.  Within the framework of citizenship, yes, absolutely.  An existence without you is by a landslide far more favorable and speaks to my heart in ways I don't always and can sometimes not do at all.  A self starter to a degree; turn the dial far enough and hydrolock blows the push rods to bits and reduces the engine block to a 300 lb paperweight.

Does that make me dependent?  I hope not.  I guess, what I'm saying is if I was the last man on Earth, my reign would be fairly brief.  We laugh saying it out loud, but it's true.  Maybe a decade or two, if that.  I hope I am doing a reasonable job of it.  I know I slip sometimes and the clutch engages and I am two gears off of first and I don't always know whose driving the damn thing to begin with and sometimes ... talking out of school.  Nope nope nope.  None of that.  Enough of that.

I want a fucking present.  I want a parade and a band and a fucking float.  I want the parade, the band, the float, and a present.  I tore after my pap paps for talking to me in snippets of things he's seen and not actually talking and here I am doing it too.  Anger management was neither of our strong suits.  I wonder who talks to him.  Who did he have to talk down.  Did he?  It would certainly explain a lot of a few things.  It really fucking would.  He's not talking though so I guess I'll grill him in heaven or hell.  Chaa!  Have the rest of eternity to exchange phone books.  Wouldn't that be the fucking cats.

I'm dealing though.  The committee deals back and we play our cards and try to beat the dealer sometimes.  Sometimes we just fill the house coffers and call it.

It's a juggling act with a little bit of severed limbs when the chainsaw comes down two seconds earlier than expected or turns a rotation before it was supposed to or hangs in the air a tad bit longer for no god damn reason whatsoever and control goes out like a tungsten bulb and its tomorrow already and you're talking to people in daylight and how the hell what the fuck am i doing here happens and you have to review your notes.  I really hope it's not like this when I'm fifty.  I'm afraid it might be, or worse.  Da fuck is paranoia anyways?  Why can't I sleep in the dark?  What is out there?  What the hell is out there???  I've been looking for you.  I've been searching for you.  Come out!  I know you're there.  I can fucking smell you, you fuck.  I can fucking hear you!  Why can no one else hear you!  It's not fair.  It's not fair.  You know what, 'ats fine.  We're fine with that.  For fucks sake, just once, speak to someone else too.  I dunno.  It's tiring and very difficult to explain how energy is expended without losing traction altogether and paying for it in a big way because I am just like you.  I want to be.  Let's trade.  S'not a grift if it's an even trade.  Keep routine.  Stay alert.  Routine will rescue you.  I don't like change.  I'm not stubborn.  I'm not antisocial.  I just have to maintain parameters and readings and locations to the "t" and to the dot.  Please don't be offended if I whip donuts and drive like a madman when designated play time comes about.  It's the only time I have to spend when high alert can be tuned down to "we are all present and accounted for."  Why won't you fucking die!?  Time to change the oil.

My tracking is suffering again on certain very important things.  We are not enthused.  It is unacceptable.




///Nancy Sinatra - (Bang Bang)

A Joke, a Little Work, a Little Fantasy, and a Little Truth

Maybe that's why I enjoy night so much.  During the day I just want to stare at the sun and dream about going there.  Life without sunglasses was brutal.  I went mad trying to find them and turned my apartment inside out looking for them.  Of course I left them at a job site.  I asked the people there, when I returned and thought I saw them, if they were mine.  And they said "I don't know, are they?"  I don't know!  Are they?!  I thought they were, but they wouldn't tell me and I thought maybe they were playing a game on me to see how long it would take for me to declare that they were and take them.  In my mind, steal them.  I put two and two together (after turning my place upside down searching) and made my declaration.

So, let's open with a joke.  I'd like to.  I know I am no comedian, so let's give it a little go.  What did the manhole cover say to the street?

Give up?

It said "I'm glad I'm not square."

I was speaking to someone and I can't quite remember who.  I don't think it was a friend.  I think it was a random conversation that sparked up between myself and someone else at the gathering, because I'm near certain it was some sort of gathering with friends that I was at, otherwise I would have been on the deck of my starship.  I was speaking to someone and the who is not all that important.  What came out of the conversation was a comment on the work I do, performing maintenance and changing spaces and power tools and heavy tools sometimes when the work is thick and the corrections that need to be made are more intensive than pure oil changes and minor rerouting/replacement of resources.  

The comment was that my job is basically life as we know it and all I have to do is mine plus a little extra whenever it's not intensive.  I must say, I got offended, but I laughed it off.  I got offended.  Deeply offended.  Do you understand how difficult life is?  Do you understand how difficult maintenance is?  Cutting off the infinite hydra?  It has no heart.  It has no organs.  It has no weak points.  It is impossible to kill or destroy.  It will never be complete and it is constantly adapting.  I wanted to break their face when they said that, but I decided to laugh instead which was good for both me and him.

As I backed my mind over the conversation about work after things died down and everyone went their separate ways and I stepped inside my airlock and sealed the door and fired up the engines and set the course back away from the sun and plotted around the minefield of asteriods too big to bounce off the shielding and hull it occurred to me that they were not spot on, but they were right.

When I am not doing heavy work, my job is to perform what I would do for myself, except duplicated.  It is similar to running many instances of one life simultaneously.  Without the extra relationships so you can focus pure on the bones, guts, and vessels.  The blocks and supports that allow relationships to happen.  It's extra relationships to me, but for the constituents its first order relationships.  I maintain my ship to allow me to get the distance I want and know I need, and come and go from the inner system close to at will.  What they use their fighters and runabouts and escorts and carriers and interceptors and cruisers and bombers and liners or whatever you want to call its for is their business.  My business is making sure they run as well as they possibly can so they can do their business and grow their relationships as I do my own.

When it comes to work there are many ways to go about it, but they were right.  I am no longer offended by it.  Yeah, most of my work is life.  Regular life things.  That's about as much job as I can handle.  I'm laughing while I say that, but it's something I've come to know about myself that I didn't really think about more clearly until that particular conversation happened and I got sickly offended.  As much job as I can process is life, is the other connection I am trying to make and I think I made it good.  I'm not offended at all.  I control the timezone and the appointments to a degree.  I set the tempo.  To a degree.  And that's why I love my job.  It is a direct hit to my wheelhouse and not a degree more or less.  

I still have to answer for what I do.  I still have a difficult time performing maintenance on my own craft.  Multiplied over others crafts it's like managing a motor pool and every now and then when one limps into the shipyard and drops anchor I'm happy to see it because I know I am built for it, and yeh it, the task, may be nothing fancy to you.  It may be routine to you.  To me it is approaching maximum output and it gives me joy to know what I work to do, and sweat to do, and bleed to do, I can do for them and theirs too and let them punch their throttles and brakes and when they turn the dual keys and sequence their hyperdrive to go see who they want to or bring their lights up for their party or plug in their laptop in their study or push their coffee table to a spot where they can put their feet up and still be sitting on their couch or activate their weapons without having to think about whether it will work or not. 

Sure, it's regular shit.  As much job as I can take without losing control of my own regular shit.

Alright, I'm going to try to get through this fast so I do not waste your time.  There are few things worse than thieves.

Burn like a tire.  The easy thing to do is burn energy by burning it.  We all get that.  Burn the excess.  Take only what you need.  I think that's the key and the dream to art's pursuit.  The realized and often unrealized dream to art's pursuit and it's main reason for existence.  Without art we are nothing.  We are little entropy machines and we are aware enough to know this.  We build up charge and build up charge and requires expense.  It is not optional.  We are aware that ourselves and environment are constantly approaching disarray at fantastic speed.  Our awareness heightens as we approach great structure.  We would not know structure without disorder built into our make up.

The easy thing to do is burn.  It's not the secret of life.  Each day a person wakes up they are given charge.  Each day a person wakes up, their fortress has trapped free energy from the destruction around them.  Destroy it.  Burn it.  Literally.  Run in circles.  Use it to create more endless fury.  Or battle it.  Make a declaration and take a stand and say "no."  It's not about building a tower to be sent down by time or sent down by someone else.  It's about recognizing that you have recognized that you are different.  You know what's happening and where it ends and offering a beautiful warning.  The game of putting your finger on the tip of your nose to say "not it!"  

I guess I did finally get that I cannot play dumb as often as I would like to.  At the same time though, what gave me pause was, I also know for sure I am not as smart as I think I am sometimes.  A good portion of the time.  So I'm not going to allow myself to get brassy on my own behalf.  S'not playing dumb, but I would rather underestimate the jump and take too much care than overestimate the jump and take too little.

I am an awful liar.  I still sweat horribly when I'm trying to spin a lie.  Does it ever get difficult for you to think about who you would be if you're skillsets were rearranged when it comes to communication?  I am such a bad liar, it's ridiculous.  I would probably enjoy card games and games in general a lot more if I could lie better.  Then again, if I had a talent for it, I would probably abuse it and beat it until the wheels fell off and I wouldn't get caught in a web.  I'd get caught in a world of trouble and the very ground I walked on would be sticky as fuck.

Life without headphones has been brutal.  I didn't realize how much I needed them to help me tune out products of my mind and visions and conversations happening and not actually happening and interpolations happening and not actually happening.  With background I can turn the contrast up a lot higher when I am walking, forced or no, outside of the learned and mastered framework where I know exactly what is and is not imagined without having to look twice unless I have to.  It's been a very rough go and very upsetting.

I went to the gas station again last night because I was very hungry and needed milk.  I didn't want to go, but by the time I convinced myself it was worthwhile I was feeling pretty ready.  I saw it again.  Between two houses, there it was.  Smack dab in front of my face and I almost yelped.  I walked back and forth along the street and it was there, tracking.  I just wished I had my headphones so I could put my head down and forget about it.  I don't want to know it.  I don't want to get to know it.  I don't want it to sniff me out again or get a smell for me.  What the hell were you?

Trespassing is a crime.  I walked all the way up to the fence of their yard between the houses.  When I touched the links and rattled them a little it ran off, but I couldn't see to where.  I'm not looking forward to tonight.  I don't know if I should stay or risk going out.  I just don't know.  I don't know where they come from.  They make my skin prickle.  It was so hard not to pee my underwear.  I don't know what to do about it, but I'll figure something out eventually.  Or hide.  It is entirely possible I'm not the one it's looking for and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Entirely and absolutely possible.

At any rate.  Our problems are our own and it's passed time to close up shop for a little while.  Shut down hailing frequencies and allow the machines to do their work and hum and try to do some dream work.  I am going to get a replacement set of headphones as soon as possible.  I can't use photoshop effectively for the time being so we will try to change the face of the Auralport and OEM by hand.  We can do it.  I hate waiting for me.  I think you don't like waiting for me too.  Nothing to it, but to do it.  I want to crank out a few short stories too.  There is a pair that have been knocking around my skull for a few months that I've been editing up there and it is, again, passed time that I put the needle to the record and turn up the volume and relax and reread.  

I do not know what's in the backwoods.  I always hope the backwoods do not know me too.

Left Field - "Gussett"  i wish it was raining today

Hanging Up the Suit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you really happy?

"Happier than I've ever been."

God fucking damnit, just tell me straight.

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



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

The Takedown, Hold Overs, Creation, and Airlock to Spacewalk

"That time is now."  It's time to tear it all apart and restructure it.  The tags no longer make any sense in terms of what they are supposed to be pointers too.  They still point to the things they are supposed to point to, but there's no longer the sort of continuity between meanings that there was.  Over the years and iterations and expansion, a lot of the growth has been organic save for the bare bones items and the most common of common veins and themes.  I'm having a hard time following it and searching and reviewing.  I'm sure part of it is to do with my own electromigration and changing processing powers, up and down.  Things that used to make sense do not anymore, that which makes sense now does not fit cleanly into what came before.

The main problem is, because I enjoy writing so much, getting other things done becomes tedious and overly difficult.  Discouragingly difficult.  Task lock kicks in and nothing gets done at all because I have that loop constantly running with no way to put an end to it.  "What do you want to do tonight?"  Get some writing done, maybe do some doodling.  "Okay, go!"  Wait, I want to do that first and then- "Okay, go!"  But I don't know how what I'm thinking about writing is going to seat next to the last thing I did so I need to find out what I was planning on accomplishing last week that's still in proc- "Okay, go!"  You're not hearing me.  I'm still trying to lay out the sequence so that when I get to the part where I start to lay down tracks I'll be able to begin to set up the next step into- "Okay, go!"  God damn it!!  Forget it.  I'm going to go jerk off and try to sleep.  And sleep refuses to kick in because my mind is still circling a world light years away from planet sleep even though my body arrived days ago.  Ghost ship.

There are hold overs.  Artifacts.  A lot of what I am doing is cataloging artifacts.  The overall design, however, is a massive artifact of another time.  A thing I've fallen in love with deeply.  When the entire interface and blog structure updated to a new design structure a few years ago, was it years, I retained mine because what I wanted to express was inexpressible within the new structure available.  The only real issue with doing it, at the time, was being cut off from any possible further updates beyond my own.  I liked what I put together.  I liked looking at it.  I liked making small adjustments here and there and watching it completely change it's feel without losing it's theme.  It's time to let go of the tinkering.  Save the memory.

Fun in creation.  Unique pleasure in drawing resources together into a whole.  This piece of code and that drawing on that server together with a banner you put together and stored on another server and watching it all spin to life at the click of a button.  Part of the enjoyment in keeping the ship alive after this or that part died or stopped responding was the puzzle of rerouting connections, solving them, and kicking off into space again.  One of the reasons why I love writing is pulling the parts and pieces together, memories, fragments, dreams, real and unreal, and at one point I got that same buzz from design, but it's wearing me out trying to do it across multiple platforms.  Time to retool and tighten up creation.  Focus on what matters the most and let that drive what comes next instead of allowing the platform to drive production.  The factory and the caucus and everyone working within should be governing what comes out of the warehouse, not the shape and color and how many windows the warehouse has.  Flight inversion.

Airlock to spacewalk, it is.  Time to park it in an orbital bone yard and piece together a new ship.  Maybe not one that incorporates everything, but one that simplifies so we're not flipping sixteen switches and checking three different read outs before tuning dials to accomplish what could be done in one cycle.  I'm looking forward to it.  I don't know what I'm going to do about the tag situation.  A problem for another day.  We'll see what's out there.  Never forget the mission.  Never forget how beautiful the Earth looks from afar.  When you can't see past your own control panel, it's time.  "Next time you go out to space, how about leaving yourself a little free time?"


///Plaid - "Air Locked"

Pride Complex, Fallout Radius, and Big World Little World

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"

Tired, Music, Studio Dust and Weekdays

I'm tired.  A lot of people are.  Just kind of beat.  It's not the usual beat.  The common beat.  You know the kind of beat I'm talking about.  The beat that runs from Sunday into Monday because you didn't do anything and you got tired near the end of the day because of all the things you didn't do, but didn't spend the energy to not do?  Is that the right way around?  Spent the energy to not do?  It's not that kind.  It's the kind of beat that comes from doing stuff and dreaming stuff with equal gusto.  I was going to say passion, but I feel like passion tends to connote a certain amount of emotional sensitivity that tends to drag meaning away from doing stuff and bend the beat toward a beatnik kind of over sensitivity that screams I spent my day doing nothing because doing nothing was better than doing something I don't believe in.  Whatever that means.  So I'm tired.  Just tired.  Days full of doing and nights full of doing and not enough doing to go around.  What it do?  I don't know?  What does it do?  Give me a few weeks and I'll tell you.

I'm tired though and it gets aggravating.  First world problems or something like that.  I never thought I would find myself whining to myself about transcribing my voice recordings.  I don't want to sit down and type at my computer, but I don't want to sit down and write down notes and write out stories with pen and paper either, but I don't want to transcribe my recordings because, as it turns out, that's kind of harder.  I've never said "what the hell did he just say" in reference to myself so many times in a row.  Doesn't help that I lost my data cable for transferring them to my computer.  And I could buy a card adapter, but I bought a shower curtain instead.  It's weird.  Am I dodging myself?  Probably.  Do you know how hard it is to do that?  Not very.  I'm easily distracted.  Especially when I'm tired.

I have a hard to stifle desire to make music.  Write songs.  Emo guilty.  I don't know the first thing about writing songs, but I can learn.  Task locked after a way.  I would say everyone is, but that's just not true.  Pretty sure I'm not waiting for anything specific.  I'm trying to turn routine into stability, but it feels like the only routine I can maintain with any faith is instability.  It's what makes me a good fighter and a bad fighter at the same time, because even instability can grow predictable.   I kind of had a little crisis mode thought track down on the low lying channels that worked its way up to the high line and caught fire across circuits.  What if I'm not a writer?  What if I've just been fooling myself for a decade?  And then I thought: well, it's been a pretty fun decade, set backs not withstanding.  Maybe all you have to do to live, the secret of life or something like it, is to do what you love and let everything else orbit it and sometimes you spend time on Titan and sometimes you stink up Venus for a little while and sometimes you dig ditches on Earth and go visit friends on Mars before swinging out to Saturn to ogle and then do some time on Io when you know when you can't be trusted to do anyone any good.  Anyway you cut it though the sun of desire still comes up and you put your helmet back on and check the pressure and the panel and kick on the boosters and go.  I don't mind that.  I don't think I don't mind that.

I've been trying to figure out what I need to do to find my music again.  Wherever it is.  It's not on notes between lines and bars and what have you.  I think that ship has sailed for the time being.  Not that I can't do it.  I just get pissed off hearing ridiculous compositions by people years younger and I know I'll just tear it up, spit on it, crumple up the spit on shreds and bean someone on the sidewalk with earbuds in their ears from my window, correcting for wind.  I'm still pretty good at that.  "Hey, douche!"  Smack.  Kind of a counter productive talent.  I can also flick a cigarette with 75% accuracy from two yards.  Bigby would be jealous, if he were real.  In a fight between Bigby and me I would totally win, or at least be the one still able to walk afterwards, cuz I would kick him straight in the dick like five times before he hit the ground.  I've been trying to find my music again though.  I used to play trombone and that little plastic flute thing that could only play eight notes, and that other thing.   Viola!  Not well though.  Music programs in sixth grade didn't teach you how to tune them.  I'm pretty sure my sixth grade music teacher was on pills most of the time.  She just sat at her piano, over weight, with ratty, burned up, lye blonde, wisps of shoulder length hair, playing chords and vaguely answering questions.  Didn't help that I was perpetually terrified of popping my eyeball with a snapped viola string.  For some reason I never got over that fear and the even greater fear of facing my parents who would say something like "this is why we didn't want you playing viola!  and staying after school!"

I don't get why they cashed out when their investment was practically over.  They pretty much took a steaming dump on every extracurricular I chased and then wondered why the scholarships didn't come rolling in like publishers clearing house with ten entrants instead of 10 million, because that is basically what scholarship competitions are.  Do people even realize how much nonsense has to go right to win that crap?  It's gotta be something on the scale of lower tier pro sports or Division three sports.  Is there even a third division in the NCAA?

I have a vague idea of the direction I'm going to have to go.  Samples.   Lots and lots of samples and loops, but also keyboard and MIDI instruments.  I already have some of the tracks laid out in my head.  That's the easy part.  The hard part is the hours and days and weeks it takes to get it laid out on my computer.  I'm going to do it though.  And I'm going to pick up reading music again in a few years.  Or, I should say, a few years after I start doing that because I know the time will come when I can't find the sample I want and the realization will dawn for the second time, dawning first here, that it will ultimately be easier to create the exact sound I'm looking for instead of looking for the sound already out there and bending it to my will of production.

I'm getting behind though.  Behind on the various projects.  Time is at a premium lately and I'm trying to restructure my time expenditures to better reflect the end times of another year.  The heady days of Summer are gone the fuck out the door, nigga.   Time to start burning the winter fat and make something real that I can hold up to my eyes and review and turn over and do better again.  Masturbation is not that thing.  When the hell did I start masturbating so much?  It's gotten to the point where I have to check my hand for excess lotion before I go out in public.  That's not healthy, right?  That's the other problem though.  Two hours a pop is way too long for masturbatory purposes.  The pursuit of the perfect orgasm is a waste of time because I know where it is.   That little switch in my head that says "alright, just pick one and let's get through this," broke a long time ago.  That has teamed up with my easily distractedness and my absolute focus on making the best iteration of an experience or nothing at all to explode my masturbation budget into a time deficit that sucks the rest of my day into it like a hole in the space time continuum.   You've got a problem when you wake up and think "alright let's rub a quick one out before breakfast" and you're washing your hands at lunch time.  Defeats the purpose of waking up, dude.  Get it together grouch.

My studio is accumulating a disconcerting amount of dust.  This needs remedied.   Soon.  The itch to produce something, anything, is getting unscratchable and we are not under any circumstances doing crack again.  With crazy people.  To make up for it.  That's like asking someone to scratch an itch on your knee and they punch you so hard in the cheek they blow one of your wisdom teeth out.  Sure, the itch is gone, but damn.  I would have gone to see a dentist for that shit if I knew you were going to do that.  And second of all, I thought we agreed on "not the face."  It's cool, though.  It's not.  I have got to get my creative hands dirty doing before they turn on me.  Operation Danny's Attic, the Outride missions.

I've been getting excited about weekdays.  For televisions sake.  It's a fine time of the year.  Sports, cartoons, sitcoms.  New episodes of this and that.  And then it occurred to me why other people don't necessarily get as excited.  They're taping it, or catching it later online.  Technology sucking the fun out of life.  The death of the viewing party.  DVR killed the video star, would be an ironic throwback title to it, if ironic is the right word.  Maybe dated fits there too.  Sad times.  Remember when Seinfeld episodes were still new?  People probably had to VHS them and before they could do that they had to master their tape machines and make sure their television was on the right channel.  I wonder how many people taped Friends by mistake and shot themselves in the face in their bath tub with a glass of wine balanced on the side by the bubbles that same night.  I'm not saying Friends was that bad a show or Seinfeld was that good.  They were just that far apart.  After the Seinfeld finale I'm sure Monday night suicides probably spiked for a few weeks and then dropped dramatically.  What do you mean the saga of Kramer has reached it's conclusion???  Can't remember the last time I used three question marks in a row, but I'm sure my computer could tell me.  I've got to clean my studio and fire up the factory.  They may not respond to coaxing, but I'm fed up coaxing with words.  It is time to put the boot to them.

Anyway, the point is, there's a lot of work to do and the work doesn't care how tired you feel or where your identity crisis lies or how you feel about what you think you might be terrible at or good at.    Until you do it, you're going to wish you did and once you've done it you're not going to think back and say something like: "man, I wish I hadn't spent so much time caring about and doing something I care about and enjoy doing."

Call it a cold start.  I don't know how it ends.


///The Flaming Lips - "Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung"

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

But Really the Moral Is

The moral of the story is if someone offers to make you french toast and you just met them at a bar, the chances are pretty good that there will be no french toast at any point in the upcoming hours and what they really wanted went so far over your star eyed head to begin with that you probably should have just stayed home and had french toast on your own. And for that matter, why would you even go out if french toast was what you wanted to begin with. And attendant, if you are turning conversation toward food at a bar at 1 A.M., why would you believe anyone would take it any way besides having breakfast for dinner.

I don't know who outsmarted whom. I do know "well, if there's not going to be any food, I think I'm going to go" is probably the most awkward exit line in the history of exit lines. Probably right up there with the food poisoning excuse and the "I'm tired, I think I'm going to go to bed" excuse when there is a bed not ten feet away from you at their place.

It wasn't that strange of a night though. I did a lot of dream hunting. The hard part is disconnecting from yourself to a degree that will allow the prey to make an appearance and still be equipped well enough to make the kill. Like playing chess against yourself. It takes skill to make that sort of divide between consciousness and unconsciousness.

I had the shakes all day. The stupid and silly repetitiousness of motor action. The thing is, it's not stupid or silly, but necessary. Very really necessary. Very nearly. Part of it was tracking time. Part of it was sonar. Part distraction so I wouldn't have to think too much about time and space. The knock knock go of music in lieu of music. It got better and then worse and then better. The never ending search for answers. In lieu of. The important thing is I washed my hair for the first time in a while and that was an achievement because washing my hair takes forever. On the scale of 1/8th of a day dedication.

I am supremely disappointed at the failed hunt. But I will take another crack at it now that I know what I have to do. My scars have been itching more than usual. Someone asked me what happened to my face. It's all history. The local bar opened up again after the drug sting with some new bits and pieces, but it is essentially the same place with some new jerk wads there who saw the sign out front, I guess, and thought "aw yeah, a new bar", but it's the same bar. Exactly the same except for them. I don't think they understand that. Understand that the only thing new about it is them. Which is fine. I just hope they move on sooner than later so I can get a damn game of eight ball in without having to ask to be cued into their relationship roulette.

Things are going to get weird tomorrow. Not because I want them to, but because they're not going to work any other way so you embrace the weirdness, after a fashion. A familiar clip.I'm getting closer to something. I made some art today. I almost started to read a book in my spare time. I am trying to turn that almost into an already. I still have to pierce my ears and my eyebrow. Things aren't stacking up though. Not the way they used to. Now they're just roads waiting to be walked and sometimes I stand still.

Carnival is rolling around. Basically a reunion. I don't know who wants to avoid me. I want to see all of them, but knowing who wants to avoid you helps to make things easier to handle. Expectory. It's like a rectory of memories that maps outcomes over logic trees and points, graphically, to ends. It's not a place any more than a chalk board or map is a place, but it places places.

I don't know what I am going to do when I find him.Not exactly. I am going to try to bring back a trophy, if at all possible. It's a big world in there, though. A lot of places to hide to say the least. I've never been in the active position before. Then again, I've rarely had to be. There was nothing so assiduously beyond my control there to warrant active eradication. There were instances and events there I had nothing to do with (the war, the dust storm, the heart discovery, the mass migration, the shopping cart cats, the end of fossil fuels, the underground train system's metastasis, the rise of loose villainy) that I tried to roll with. Varying levels of success and confusion abiding. This is, this is different. Like getting hacked from the inside. Tampered with. Abused all over again. So we go back to war.

Summer is coming. You can smell it in the air. I want to look forward to it. I don't know when or why summer's prospect began to touch me in a bad way. Summer makes people do untoward things. It's like a full moon that last for four months. And then dies in your arms just when you've gotten to know and appreciate each other. Summer makes everyone want and try to win time. But it's just grass. Grass and leaves and yard work and half faked memories of times that didn't quite materialize the way they do in movies, but everyone thinks that this year is the year they do. The days are long and the nights are short and everything is hot as hell and restless. Restless so bad you would take your skin off if you could.

Everything that should not be alive comes to and slow wakes through spring. Houses start to breath and crack and groan in the night and the trees start to laugh. The ground gets soft and wet and comfortable and everyone brings out there best and worst outfits and nobody where's appropriate footwear and it all makes me so damn nervous. Do I look, do I not look, and for that matter what the hell am I looking at or for. The cattle train does it's dance and everyone wants to mate and sweat soaked nights turn into a search for steel sharp enough to cut through the bullshit bandied. When you're inside you want to be out and when you're out you want to be inside. And you can't wear a spacesuit when it get's that damn hot and you can't hide your face either without sweating harder than a crook at a creek with a dead body in a trash bag and locals fishing, eyes peeled at the water ahead. It's tough to deal. Everything with half an ounce of soul comes alive like it'll get into heaven if it breaths hard enough.

I just have to calm down, you know? Not just say we're going to get through this, but believe the words that I am saying to myself. Believe in the next step. Understand again that, yes, summer is going to maul my heart like a cat with a wad of toilet paper, and tear me up in ways familiar and ways I will learn anew, and not be afraid of the ... pain. Maybe this is the iteration it works out okay? That's always out there too.

I've been shaky all day. Needing to swap bodies. Bad command lines. Bad time code. But not bad everything. Some good, you know? I never know how to answer questions. The shakes. But maybe this is the summer that makes good.


///Dntel - "Rock My Boat" ...I wonder if you were alright...

Have and Half Knots, Making Dead Lines, and Explosive Decompression

So I think I am finally approaching upper lower class. Inching toward car ownership and consistent internet access that doesn't cut off if I watch ten feature length pornographic movies in one month. It only took a year to save up the money for both, but I'm not mad because that was roughly the time span I estimated so many moons ago. Not that I'm some kind of social climber, but it certainly makes life a lot easier for me (being that at least half of my waking time is dependent on connectivity). If I think about it the only reason why I have a job, let alone two, is because of the internet. A major factor in my escape from New York was the internet. My creative outlets, well three out of the five, are internet dependent. Not originally, but since I opened myself up to being read, along with the good and bad that comes from it, that is what they've become. A pair still remain personal and internet independent, and they are my babies, whom I coddle and pet unceasingly. So I'm not quite a "have", but I am the possessor of many knotted ends.

Everyone likes to sew things up. Who doesn't. From the youngest age you can remember some of the most satisfying moments are the moments when you connect one and one and get to bask in the glory of your hard earned, bent spined, but elegant in that way, two. Whatever operand falls between the two slivers of symbols matters little. All that matters is you put in the hard think and the finger fumbles and drew something out of two separate things that ended up being beautiful, simply, the answer. Not just an answer, but the only answer possible within the frames of the rules of everything else that described the world around you. That is clutch. That is what I want to be able to do, but instead of sewing my things up I have ended up with knot after knot, with some fine stitch work in between.

It's not failure. Every time you tried to tie your laces and ended up knotting the threads when you were little, you did not just sit down and cry. Well maybe sometimes I did. Eventually, though, I ended up going outside to play regardless because the fact of the matter was that I was not concerned so much with the ending. I was not so much concerned with the fact that eventually I would have to take the shoes off, as much as I knew, no matter what I did after the episode of frustration, the things were going to do what they were designed to do, and that was stay put. So although I am a possessor of more knots than neat and fixed loops, and although I will sit and cry about it for a while, I know that I can still go out and get it done with the best of them. The difference being when I get home and the game is over I have to cut the laces apart and rethread them.

Making deadlines is hard, in that way. Not that I have to start over every week, but the things people take for granted are things I have to redo every week and make them work like new all over again. I would be more upset about it, if I had not had to live with it for so long. It's the standard. Part of the allure of medication is that it offers the promise of a consistent starting point. It simplifies, to the detriment of other experiences. I alternately accept and reject that promise. It depends on how frustrated I get tying knots when I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they refuse to respond. When I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they answer and accept and then absent themselves from the chain of command altogether because it turns out I did not have the con to begin with.

Making deadlines is hard, but having deadlines helps the continuity. I think that's why I hate days off so much. Days off are like being thrust into the airlock of my ship half suited, half relaxed, half giddy just to be there without having a reason, and then the count begins for the hatch release and I realize it is for real. I realize there was something I set out to do when I entered and soon I will be sucking vacuum if I don't get it together and I have to fumble and scramble to abort the entire venture because my helmet is still sitting right where I left it, in the lounge, and there is no way I'm going to manage to make something meaningful out of the next ten seconds (ten hours) besides flailing for molecules.

That analogy was a stretch, but that's what it feels like. Trying to get things done without a hard plan is difficult. Days off are always unplanned. Uncharted and unplannable. The hardest thing about it is going without contact. When I'm down on the surface among people I know what's real for the most part. Well, for the some part. When all I have is time spent with myselves it's a dicey affair. Tremendous amounts of necessary dialog and balance checking and enforcing limitations. I wonder sometimes why I sleep so much. What is wrong with me? And the answer often comes back that I cannot afford not to. A little escapist as the life across the bridge is so damn rich and half the time I am awake I want to go back there, but also because it's so certain there. A is A. B is B. C is C. And D is D. Every time. Not like here. Here person A is sometimes Z. And B is an irrational number. And C is A, but only when Z is B.

Maybe that's why I like to work so much. Formulaic. Math in action. Inactivity through action. Long story shorter, I want to finish the gift for Christmas. A gift of intent. A gift of a promise that I won't stop fighting. Not yet anyway. So game on?

Yeah, I think so.


///luke slater - "Hectic Bag" ...start as you mean to grow on.

Travels

Do you ever wake up and the first breath you take as you open your eyes is like the end of the beginning of the breath you held loosed in the exhalation last as you closed them hours before? The kind of breath that just draughts and draughts like a mug with its bottom smashed out and a waterfall pouring in through your eyes?

I've been so many places I haven't told you about. It truly has been amazing cities and villages and neighborhoods that I did not know existed in the slightest. It's been like holding up a sliver of pencil graphite and peering at it and into it and trying to see the sliding structures of the molecules that make it able to write and as you focus in harder and harder your eyebrow twitches, your right eye scrunches, your cheek pulls a little bit against the corner of your mouth, and you have a lopsided nostril flare as it curls into a black dot and you sneeze so hard you see the white and gray spots of single blood vessels traveling through the tubes inside your eyes until the white and gray static washes away and as you realize what you felt was probably the hardest sneeze you've felt all year and your vision sharpens and tightens and you go back to the task of focusing in on the little stick of graphite to gain some greater understanding of its whyness the focus of your eyes takes in first the space behind it and you notice for the first time that the entire world has changed and you, through your one tenth orgasmic bending of space and time and through modes absolutely involuntary to your methods, have been transported in the pinched microcosm of a microcosmically microbial micronaut of a micromicrosecond into another state of your known universe. And you're like, "awwww, snap. Wait, where was I just now?"

That's what the cross bridged universe has been like. I've got to find a way to slow down somehow. It's like every step, every step in this phase is approximately three feet (I'm a big stepper, though I live my wake state in little steps, admittedly, not by choice), but sometimes across the bridge it becomes impossible not to cover yards and hundreds of feet to a stride. It's alarming to me. Since the city I traversed and loved deeply, and had fairly close ties to, with it's cats that raced tiny v6 motored shopping carts, and its trams and extensive rail system, its modes and methods, and absolutely stunning, despite the time of day, industrial sector, passed to dust through the extinction level event that literally converted pretty much all living matter there to wind blown drifts of ash, knee and sometimes waist high, the entire world over there was silent for days. Dreams of black empty space.

The passage was probably linked to the discovery of an engine, a massively complex machine, whose only visage, comprehensible to me was red space. I remember traveling in search of the menace. There was so much unrest and power in the air. The kind of power that is impossible to control. The sort of power that raises the hairs on your forearms and makes your skin stand taut at a rally railing against a thing that you don't believe in necessarily, but that is necessarily part of the fabric of who and what you are, and your skin tries to wrench away from the sheer electricity of so many voices and hands raised against the isness of its whatness. The preparations for the event. The siphoning off of resources. It felt like the beginnings of war from the middle portions of textbooks on American history. No pantyhose, no lipstick, no zoot suits, no strip steaks. I don't think they're all related, but they rhymed and made funny notes in my head. All the same, I remember the streets emptying. The saving of fuels. The work stoppages because so many people were leaving and then whatever happened, whatever the engine so utterly complex in it's being and overwhelming in its output to be describable only as the color it left seared into my eyes, everyone died.

Then one day I crossed the bridge again, down the stairwell and through the door, across the water, to enter myself there and I searched farther and farther from the place I'd grown into and I started finding new places untouched by the destruction, by the discovery of a motor vast enough to destroy a population in its breach. It's been simply incredible. The world has been intensely sensory and I know that I am not from there, but a refugee from the city of dust. It's been difficult to blend in. I don't know what it means.

I am anxious for the arms race though. Turning laborers on my factory floors toward positive productions or at least neutral destruction. Admittedly I have been doing my best to live toward lower resolution perception. Perhaps stupidly. However, it has made it much easier to keep track of the caucus. All present for a span of weeks instead of days and hours. Well, mostly all present all the time, but have you ever tried keeping six people at the same table non stop for any length of time. Cellphones down, you assholes! I know it's happening (I've been using those rather interchangeably, but I'm making an effort not to). I haven't been dividing and sub dividing my body like I should be. Increased capabilities are a good thing for the people I work for and cohabitate real space with, but very bad for me because it basically cedes me more idle power, and my insides do not idle well before outlets become too infrequent, necessarily so as there's only so much you can physically do in 24 hours and then I drift toward solid state and forced diffusion through shorter out spouts. The better my conditioning the more of a potential and eventual hazard I become to myself. And who the hell keeps moving my toothpaste.

I guess there's an answer in there somewhere, but I don't remember asking a question. I guess mostly I've just been trying to get a handle on the verdant landscape. The wackness. Seeing through it. I'm used to two or three dreams. Two or three stints in dreamland. I've been having ten to fifteen in the new world. It is strange.


///Linkin Park - "Session" Not trying to create distance, but it's hard to know how far away I travel sometimes because I don't understand how much ground has been covered or how much time passes between what I perceive to be blinks of my eye. Sometimes the days spin by like tracers through sunset skies and it's all I can do not to blink against their rays.