I know shopping is not supposed to be difficult. You park, you go in, you get what you need, you get in line, you get out. Simple. Easy. Everything is different again. The boxes of toasters were fine where they were. What does a cube of pillows next to a cube of mingled tupperware and stamped artisanal pepper shakers supposed to mean? I should buy some hats. The jeans are just as good, if not better at Goodwill. If the mouse pads are in the photography department I will cry inside for a few minutes. There has to be a way to predict market fluctuations on the price of Nerf assault weapons. I cannot play Cribbage on a sheet of paper again, I'm better than that, you're better than that! Grow up! Let's build one. That's a lot of holes to drill. Not too many. I love customer service, but the air is impossibly dry. Uniforms and no tinted glasses and no facial hair and no headphones or earplugs or even earmuffs to help abate the halls echoing and that idle siren public address system. I was bound to be fired, and then quit, and then quit, and then simply stop going, and then be fired the final time I gave it a run. Breathing it sounds like a gale through a mesa canyon. The taste is hospital and hostile with so many confused and irritated and little kid lungs sucking and blowing. Draped cobwebs full of ants. I do not understand why the lights have to be so. The air pressure is all wrong. Leaving is expulsion from a mouth of a fossil, still throbbing with life, and ages dead. I head home with a few bags of things I've torn off of its sides and tips and joints, maybe a truck bed's worth now and then to help me survive in my wilderness and it's over. Bang, boom, piece of cake. I hate shopping. It is incredibly difficult and staying calm is key. Throw in too many people and the math begins "do I really, absolutely, need?"
///Moderat - "Sick With It"
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label antisocial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label antisocial. Show all posts
4/21/16
4/6/16
Stand Up Act 12
Stand Up Act 11
Dysfunctional weather is becoming unbearable. Life is unbelievably unpredictable at its root. People are the problem. You can wake up to a fabulous morning and have a wonderful shower and your pets were so well behaved through the morning hygiene routine they've actually made you a fresh sunny side egg on dry toast with a light coffee and a teaspoon of jam with three crackers and a pinch of parsley from the window box. You can head down to your car where you inexplicably have more gas than you did the night before when you parked it and your mailbox has five dollars in it because why the hell not. Your watch is five minutes fast, but you're ten minutes ahead of schedule anyway driving down to the metro station to take the train into town because suburban life is where you're at and the sun is beaming right above and slightly to your right along the drive, but clouds are providing enough shade to turn that eyebrow searing ball into a calendar photograph of light and deeper blues like an angel just mowed the sky and crystals of fresh cut sunshine are filling the nostrils of your eyes. Your parking space is taken, but there's an entire row of empty spaces right at the metro entrance and you glide on in
and slam your hand in your own door and drop your phone and crack the screen. The year long train pass you just bought is still at home thirty minutes away tucked in your wallet and the teller at the ticket booth inside the station is occupied outside of the booth talking with a police officer to a homeless man who appears to be shouting about how he has a right to sit in the station if he's bought a ticket if he isn't sleeping so you have to squeeze through the turnstile behind another guy who enjoys it a little too much and keeps standing way too close to you on the platform while you wait for the train to come, glancing at you sideways just long enough for you to feel it every time you glance away and you consider, hand throbbing, to turn back and go home before you realize your car keys are not in your pocket. Which is about when the guy with the baby strapped to his chest and the double wide stroller sidles up to you just in time for the train to arrive and one of his three little mouths to immediately begin wailing with just too little time for you to try to sidle away and hopefully get a more favorable car, but you've hesitated a little too long, with a single step back, to allow a massive crush of other downtown hats to clog the train's entrance and with standing room only your tie gets stuck in a teenager's lattice of straps covering their high country winter-pacolypse knapsack and a cloud of fast-food hash, bacon, and cheese burps.
Just like that, a perfect day, a perfectly normal day goes straight to hell because life is unpredictable and people are the problem. People are the problem including yourself. That's fine. I can deal with that. I'm an adult and all of the years of dealing with family members and friends and sometimes enemies and strangers and acquaintances has lead me to a place in life where sharing a bus bench with someone who has the worst body odor I have ever had the pleasure of quaffing actually does not phase me so much as it brings me to a place of curiosity. Is that odor being generated by dark magic? Were they hexed in another life or did they run over a gypsy in a night of drunken driving a week before and the gypsy's son is still learning how to cast curses and the best he could manage was a stink hex? How many days do you have to skip showering to reach an all star level of odor like that? I've had my streaks, but hot damn that stink is transcendent. Why are you on a bus right now? I should've walked. Why didn't I leave earlier so I could walk? It's only 6 miles.
I can deal with the unpredictability of life due to people. It's unavoidable. If you don't get in your own way, someone else eventually will try to, whether they intend to or not. What I cannot deal with is dysfunctional weather. Global warming is completely screwing up my life. Not, you know, in the sense that I have to move because my beach front shack is slowly being swallowed by the sea or out of season hurricanes have destroyed my high rise condos or winter flooding ate my car, but in the sense that I have no idea what to wear or what the hell to do in what order. Gardening is a big part of my life. It keeps me calm. It keeps me peaceful. I never have moments while gardening where I want to grab a plant by its collar and strangle it with the fabric of its own shirt until its eyes bulge out of its head and then drag it to an open window and hurl into the busy freeway below and cup an ear for the thud and splash. I've never had the urge to shout at a plant until my vocal cords rupture and blood fires out of my nose and mouth and paints a wall canvas. Gardening is a wonderful and peaceful and calming elemental thing. Sliding my fingers through soil and plucking weeds, and wonderful quiet conversation while the wind whispers and maybe a little rain dots us all while the sun shines and we can laugh and smile at each other, but not with this backwards weather running all over everything.
Is it going to snow? Who the hell knows. Is it going to freeze tomorrow? Who the hell knows. I love sleeping. Do I try to fall asleep with the windows open or closed? Is the air temperature going to feel like the actual temperature or should I account for the wind kicking up to gale force speeds for absolutely no reason at all around 2 A.M. and wake me up in a hot sweat underneath too many blankets and then freeze my skin right through to the muscle as soon as I swing the blankets away to dry my body sized wet spot on my mattress. Do I shower again at 2 A.M. or do I wait an hour and itch and scratch wind blown dry skin all night because I fell asleep again before remembering to close the windows and pull the blankets up tight? Sleep has gone right down the tubes because even if the windows are closed and the right number of blankets and under sheets are in place there is still the very very good chance that the thermostat is set to the wrong number because it snowed the previous morning, warmed through the day, and then dropped again in the evening, but did not get cold enough to require the use of hot forced air to remain comfortable and now hot air is blasting all over my face and my lips are drying out like Sponge Bob underneath a heat lamp. What is going on, planet Earth?
I'm getting old. I've got back problems, man. My hip hasn't been right for nearly half a year now. You would think that I would know when the weather is about to start doing strange things simply by putting a stethoscope to my knee and a tuning fork on my elbow and turning around three times. I should know when a miniature Nor' Easter is on the way down my street simply from all of the accumulated aches and bumps and "shoulda gone to the doctor, but still can't really afford it"s I've sucked up over the years. I'm getting old, but I'm not old yet so I'm still learning how to listen to all the tiny little signals that hint at things like walking with a hobble all day because the gummy tissues in my ankle are going to be swollen all day because that's just what they do when it's going to be cold and rainy and there's nothing you can do about it except try to smooth it out into a young man's confident strut or at least hope that's what it looks like when people see me from across the street. I'm a young old person so I don't have the practice yet and with weather spinning every which way I have no clue how I'm going to feel throughout the day or if I'll need to have the pain killers in my night stand for when I wake up or if I'll need four shots before bed to stay asleep because something bizarre is happening outside my window and stabbing knife edge pain will wake me up at some point during the evening without liquor blanketing my nerve endings.
I may not necessarily need stability from people. Asking for stability from people is a lot like asking a dog to not bark. Ever. It may be able to shut up for a while, maybe most of a day, maybe even a few days straight, but at some point its going to have that dream where a squirrel falls out of a tree and lands dead in its face and they'll lock eyes for a moment to figure out who will make the first move while John Wu doves rise from the long grass and samurai flick wisteria flower petals tumble through the breeze and it will bark so loud it wakes both of you up from a pleasant mid-afternoon nap. What I do need is stability from nature. I need to be able to know that I can hang up a jacket or put away a pair of pants or hang up my boots and blankets without fear of some ridiculous blizz-nado howling through the middle of my street at some unreasonable hour after a fine afternoon at the basketball court and catching pneumonia in my sleep.
"Why are you late for work today?" Well, I left my windows open to listen to the first crickets of the Spring and a thin layer of frost covered my apartment and all of my joint and back injuries from the last four years flared up at once and when I woke up my face was stuck to my pillow with snot and I couldn't get out of bed for half an hour because of shooting pain throughout my body. I took a good long bath with some Epsom salts and by then I was about an hour late so when I walked out to my car in a jacket and sweatshirt and gloves and scarf I got about halfway there before I started sweating bullets because it was on its way to a high of 65 so I had to walk back up to my apartment and change into something I wouldn't completely sweat through by the time I got here because I haven't showered in two days because its impossible for me to tell when to shower specifically because I never know if it will be a waste of water because I may sweat out a few gallons in my sleep and my pits still stink despite the bath so I had to make sure I wouldn't smell too bad by the time I arrived, because with my nose stuff up the way it is, I can only assume based on the length of time... "the day's half over, go home!"
Come on, nature! Get it together. This trickle down effect of dysfunction breeding dysfunction into my life is a no go. Figure out what you want to do and let me know so I can get things in order in my own life and at least rely on the fact that it will be hot in Summer, cold in Winter, chilly in fall, and crisp in Spring. Enough with this spin the wheel of seasons nonsense. I can't get anything done when I have to keep changing things around to accommodate you.
and slam your hand in your own door and drop your phone and crack the screen. The year long train pass you just bought is still at home thirty minutes away tucked in your wallet and the teller at the ticket booth inside the station is occupied outside of the booth talking with a police officer to a homeless man who appears to be shouting about how he has a right to sit in the station if he's bought a ticket if he isn't sleeping so you have to squeeze through the turnstile behind another guy who enjoys it a little too much and keeps standing way too close to you on the platform while you wait for the train to come, glancing at you sideways just long enough for you to feel it every time you glance away and you consider, hand throbbing, to turn back and go home before you realize your car keys are not in your pocket. Which is about when the guy with the baby strapped to his chest and the double wide stroller sidles up to you just in time for the train to arrive and one of his three little mouths to immediately begin wailing with just too little time for you to try to sidle away and hopefully get a more favorable car, but you've hesitated a little too long, with a single step back, to allow a massive crush of other downtown hats to clog the train's entrance and with standing room only your tie gets stuck in a teenager's lattice of straps covering their high country winter-pacolypse knapsack and a cloud of fast-food hash, bacon, and cheese burps.
Just like that, a perfect day, a perfectly normal day goes straight to hell because life is unpredictable and people are the problem. People are the problem including yourself. That's fine. I can deal with that. I'm an adult and all of the years of dealing with family members and friends and sometimes enemies and strangers and acquaintances has lead me to a place in life where sharing a bus bench with someone who has the worst body odor I have ever had the pleasure of quaffing actually does not phase me so much as it brings me to a place of curiosity. Is that odor being generated by dark magic? Were they hexed in another life or did they run over a gypsy in a night of drunken driving a week before and the gypsy's son is still learning how to cast curses and the best he could manage was a stink hex? How many days do you have to skip showering to reach an all star level of odor like that? I've had my streaks, but hot damn that stink is transcendent. Why are you on a bus right now? I should've walked. Why didn't I leave earlier so I could walk? It's only 6 miles.
I can deal with the unpredictability of life due to people. It's unavoidable. If you don't get in your own way, someone else eventually will try to, whether they intend to or not. What I cannot deal with is dysfunctional weather. Global warming is completely screwing up my life. Not, you know, in the sense that I have to move because my beach front shack is slowly being swallowed by the sea or out of season hurricanes have destroyed my high rise condos or winter flooding ate my car, but in the sense that I have no idea what to wear or what the hell to do in what order. Gardening is a big part of my life. It keeps me calm. It keeps me peaceful. I never have moments while gardening where I want to grab a plant by its collar and strangle it with the fabric of its own shirt until its eyes bulge out of its head and then drag it to an open window and hurl into the busy freeway below and cup an ear for the thud and splash. I've never had the urge to shout at a plant until my vocal cords rupture and blood fires out of my nose and mouth and paints a wall canvas. Gardening is a wonderful and peaceful and calming elemental thing. Sliding my fingers through soil and plucking weeds, and wonderful quiet conversation while the wind whispers and maybe a little rain dots us all while the sun shines and we can laugh and smile at each other, but not with this backwards weather running all over everything.
Is it going to snow? Who the hell knows. Is it going to freeze tomorrow? Who the hell knows. I love sleeping. Do I try to fall asleep with the windows open or closed? Is the air temperature going to feel like the actual temperature or should I account for the wind kicking up to gale force speeds for absolutely no reason at all around 2 A.M. and wake me up in a hot sweat underneath too many blankets and then freeze my skin right through to the muscle as soon as I swing the blankets away to dry my body sized wet spot on my mattress. Do I shower again at 2 A.M. or do I wait an hour and itch and scratch wind blown dry skin all night because I fell asleep again before remembering to close the windows and pull the blankets up tight? Sleep has gone right down the tubes because even if the windows are closed and the right number of blankets and under sheets are in place there is still the very very good chance that the thermostat is set to the wrong number because it snowed the previous morning, warmed through the day, and then dropped again in the evening, but did not get cold enough to require the use of hot forced air to remain comfortable and now hot air is blasting all over my face and my lips are drying out like Sponge Bob underneath a heat lamp. What is going on, planet Earth?
I'm getting old. I've got back problems, man. My hip hasn't been right for nearly half a year now. You would think that I would know when the weather is about to start doing strange things simply by putting a stethoscope to my knee and a tuning fork on my elbow and turning around three times. I should know when a miniature Nor' Easter is on the way down my street simply from all of the accumulated aches and bumps and "shoulda gone to the doctor, but still can't really afford it"s I've sucked up over the years. I'm getting old, but I'm not old yet so I'm still learning how to listen to all the tiny little signals that hint at things like walking with a hobble all day because the gummy tissues in my ankle are going to be swollen all day because that's just what they do when it's going to be cold and rainy and there's nothing you can do about it except try to smooth it out into a young man's confident strut or at least hope that's what it looks like when people see me from across the street. I'm a young old person so I don't have the practice yet and with weather spinning every which way I have no clue how I'm going to feel throughout the day or if I'll need to have the pain killers in my night stand for when I wake up or if I'll need four shots before bed to stay asleep because something bizarre is happening outside my window and stabbing knife edge pain will wake me up at some point during the evening without liquor blanketing my nerve endings.
I may not necessarily need stability from people. Asking for stability from people is a lot like asking a dog to not bark. Ever. It may be able to shut up for a while, maybe most of a day, maybe even a few days straight, but at some point its going to have that dream where a squirrel falls out of a tree and lands dead in its face and they'll lock eyes for a moment to figure out who will make the first move while John Wu doves rise from the long grass and samurai flick wisteria flower petals tumble through the breeze and it will bark so loud it wakes both of you up from a pleasant mid-afternoon nap. What I do need is stability from nature. I need to be able to know that I can hang up a jacket or put away a pair of pants or hang up my boots and blankets without fear of some ridiculous blizz-nado howling through the middle of my street at some unreasonable hour after a fine afternoon at the basketball court and catching pneumonia in my sleep.
"Why are you late for work today?" Well, I left my windows open to listen to the first crickets of the Spring and a thin layer of frost covered my apartment and all of my joint and back injuries from the last four years flared up at once and when I woke up my face was stuck to my pillow with snot and I couldn't get out of bed for half an hour because of shooting pain throughout my body. I took a good long bath with some Epsom salts and by then I was about an hour late so when I walked out to my car in a jacket and sweatshirt and gloves and scarf I got about halfway there before I started sweating bullets because it was on its way to a high of 65 so I had to walk back up to my apartment and change into something I wouldn't completely sweat through by the time I got here because I haven't showered in two days because its impossible for me to tell when to shower specifically because I never know if it will be a waste of water because I may sweat out a few gallons in my sleep and my pits still stink despite the bath so I had to make sure I wouldn't smell too bad by the time I arrived, because with my nose stuff up the way it is, I can only assume based on the length of time... "the day's half over, go home!"
Come on, nature! Get it together. This trickle down effect of dysfunction breeding dysfunction into my life is a no go. Figure out what you want to do and let me know so I can get things in order in my own life and at least rely on the fact that it will be hot in Summer, cold in Winter, chilly in fall, and crisp in Spring. Enough with this spin the wheel of seasons nonsense. I can't get anything done when I have to keep changing things around to accommodate you.
12/31/15
That Instant
you realize the reason the guy you met on your way home from work and had over for some television and a beer and some laughs to help you feel some connection with the everyday world and humanize yourself is not returning your texts to hangout because he stole things from your apartment and figured you were going to notice, albeit 36 hours later.
1/17/15
The Unwritten Beard Manifesto and Subsequent Referendum That Never Happened
Here's why:
I'm not against shaving. I just hate it. I say that shaving is for pussies. Its a joke that cuts both ways. If you don't see the humor in it, you're an idiot. If you don't see the humor in it, allow me to clarify. Shaving is for pussies, as in weak people that feel they have to present a certain image of themselves to be attractive. Beards are awesome. Lady, if you've got a mustache, the only thing weirder is shaving every morning. Everyone sees your five o'clock shadow. I dunno, bleach it or something maybe? Okay, fine. Shave it. Laser it. Laser the hell out of your face. It's a complicated issue, I know. Shaving is for pussies, as in pelvic areas, as in the vulva, is a joke. It's sarcasm. Can you imagine walking around with razor burn on your crotch all day, everyday, with the most confining underwear known to mankind? I can. I once completely botched a ball shaving job with an electric razor and didn't realize it until my scrotum was on fire in a pair of fine mesh black panties while sitting at a bus stop in the middle of summer. It was ten o'clock in the morning. It was one of the worst days I've ever experienced hygienically speaking. Oddly enough, when I do it right I can shave my crotch with great ease and never have the problems induced when shaving my face. If I had pubic hair for a beard I could shave every day, easy as pie. However, I could never grow a beard because I would have pubes on my face and a full forest in my pants and that's just asking for all sorts of smelly sweaty awfulness down there and who wants a pube face? I mean, than I would absolutely have to shave every day and that's just a hassle on another scale. Shaving is not for pussies. Trimming perhaps, but not baby smooth shaving. That's just weird and hazardous to your health and safety. Beards are awesome. They keep the wind off of your face in Winter. They shimmer in Summer. They're low maintenance. They let the world know you are a sexy beast. They let the world know you are not a child anymore. They make a statement. They give you a chin if you don't have one. They give you something to play with and tug on and snuffle into. I'm not against shaving. I just hate it. I hate it like I hate Nazis. Okay, I hate Nazis more. Slightly more. There should be an extra notch above hate so that I can hate Nazis more, but there isn't so I have to hate shaving slightly less than I hate Nazis. So I don't actually hate shaving. I just strongly strongly strongly dislike it. Why set your face on fire everyday? I don't like anyone enough to go in for that no matter how much they like a smooth cheek. How's that working out for you now? What do you mean you don't want to nuzzle my horribly broken out, bleeding ingrown haired face? Wasn't that what you wanted? Aw, go to hell! You don't know what you want. I want a nice thick beard, thank you ma'am. Shaving is not for pussies, its simply not for me. No need to spark a revolution. Grow a beard or do not. I won't love you less, but you may find I love you a little more.
I'm not against shaving. I just hate it. I say that shaving is for pussies. Its a joke that cuts both ways. If you don't see the humor in it, you're an idiot. If you don't see the humor in it, allow me to clarify. Shaving is for pussies, as in weak people that feel they have to present a certain image of themselves to be attractive. Beards are awesome. Lady, if you've got a mustache, the only thing weirder is shaving every morning. Everyone sees your five o'clock shadow. I dunno, bleach it or something maybe? Okay, fine. Shave it. Laser it. Laser the hell out of your face. It's a complicated issue, I know. Shaving is for pussies, as in pelvic areas, as in the vulva, is a joke. It's sarcasm. Can you imagine walking around with razor burn on your crotch all day, everyday, with the most confining underwear known to mankind? I can. I once completely botched a ball shaving job with an electric razor and didn't realize it until my scrotum was on fire in a pair of fine mesh black panties while sitting at a bus stop in the middle of summer. It was ten o'clock in the morning. It was one of the worst days I've ever experienced hygienically speaking. Oddly enough, when I do it right I can shave my crotch with great ease and never have the problems induced when shaving my face. If I had pubic hair for a beard I could shave every day, easy as pie. However, I could never grow a beard because I would have pubes on my face and a full forest in my pants and that's just asking for all sorts of smelly sweaty awfulness down there and who wants a pube face? I mean, than I would absolutely have to shave every day and that's just a hassle on another scale. Shaving is not for pussies. Trimming perhaps, but not baby smooth shaving. That's just weird and hazardous to your health and safety. Beards are awesome. They keep the wind off of your face in Winter. They shimmer in Summer. They're low maintenance. They let the world know you are a sexy beast. They let the world know you are not a child anymore. They make a statement. They give you a chin if you don't have one. They give you something to play with and tug on and snuffle into. I'm not against shaving. I just hate it. I hate it like I hate Nazis. Okay, I hate Nazis more. Slightly more. There should be an extra notch above hate so that I can hate Nazis more, but there isn't so I have to hate shaving slightly less than I hate Nazis. So I don't actually hate shaving. I just strongly strongly strongly dislike it. Why set your face on fire everyday? I don't like anyone enough to go in for that no matter how much they like a smooth cheek. How's that working out for you now? What do you mean you don't want to nuzzle my horribly broken out, bleeding ingrown haired face? Wasn't that what you wanted? Aw, go to hell! You don't know what you want. I want a nice thick beard, thank you ma'am. Shaving is not for pussies, its simply not for me. No need to spark a revolution. Grow a beard or do not. I won't love you less, but you may find I love you a little more.
8/23/14
Knowing Where You Have No Business and That You Are Expected On Occassion
You don't have to front load everything you say. You don't have to translate at the end either. You may be coming across better than you believe.
One of the most hilarious things was the whole "they took our jobs" rhetoric at the last election and the come back that they're doing jobs we do not want to do. The funny part was my challenge. It's a matter of geographics and debt. I took the challenge knowing that. Just to see. Because they were taking our jobs here too, right? What I got back was paperwork. It's a little bit a lot of bit hilarious. If you cannot laugh at that, you have no soul. I still get email updates on it, but I am passed caring. Yes. Passed. English, the most, hands down, complicated language.
My relationship with America? It's complicated. And I am dating myself. And I am dating myself too. We wreck up sometimes. Slang for fight, no? Yes. I do not agree with everything we do. I do not. Sometimes I am on damage patrol. Some times I am on altitude control. Sometimes I am just sometimes and I am, having learned, not apologetic because people do get tired of sorrys and start to ask "why the bleep do you not just do it better?"
I will not give you the run around. I'm just American. I'm a little gangster circa 1925 and a little modern circa "what's the date today" and a little 90's grunge and a little 80's synth, a little bit of a late 90's "get money" and a little 70's rhythm and blues, a little bit of #$%^'n disco and a little bit of late 80's space rock, a little bit of 1960 fuck you and a little bit of 1950 be easy and every one is working for something greater because no one actually wants to be here, and a little bit of drum and bass tongued in with a little bit of pop talked down through the ages and distilled and reanimated. I'm just American and I will make no excuses.
And I will fight you. And then discuss. And then fight you harder because I only wanted a breather and we may as well butcher language in the mean times. They only get meaner.
I wish I could get along with people like me. I cannot. I am not going to stop trying. It is a little bit of playing with where you know you have no business being. And you know it. You do not understand why you are excluded. There are the times you are expected though and you do not show up. To reverse the two would be gold out of lead. Less cameos. More booked seats? I have no idea. What I do know is this: if they ask you if you can make it, you had better go.
///Pulp - "Like A Friend"
One of the most hilarious things was the whole "they took our jobs" rhetoric at the last election and the come back that they're doing jobs we do not want to do. The funny part was my challenge. It's a matter of geographics and debt. I took the challenge knowing that. Just to see. Because they were taking our jobs here too, right? What I got back was paperwork. It's a little bit a lot of bit hilarious. If you cannot laugh at that, you have no soul. I still get email updates on it, but I am passed caring. Yes. Passed. English, the most, hands down, complicated language.
My relationship with America? It's complicated. And I am dating myself. And I am dating myself too. We wreck up sometimes. Slang for fight, no? Yes. I do not agree with everything we do. I do not. Sometimes I am on damage patrol. Some times I am on altitude control. Sometimes I am just sometimes and I am, having learned, not apologetic because people do get tired of sorrys and start to ask "why the bleep do you not just do it better?"
I will not give you the run around. I'm just American. I'm a little gangster circa 1925 and a little modern circa "what's the date today" and a little 90's grunge and a little 80's synth, a little bit of a late 90's "get money" and a little 70's rhythm and blues, a little bit of #$%^'n disco and a little bit of late 80's space rock, a little bit of 1960 fuck you and a little bit of 1950 be easy and every one is working for something greater because no one actually wants to be here, and a little bit of drum and bass tongued in with a little bit of pop talked down through the ages and distilled and reanimated. I'm just American and I will make no excuses.
And I will fight you. And then discuss. And then fight you harder because I only wanted a breather and we may as well butcher language in the mean times. They only get meaner.
I wish I could get along with people like me. I cannot. I am not going to stop trying. It is a little bit of playing with where you know you have no business being. And you know it. You do not understand why you are excluded. There are the times you are expected though and you do not show up. To reverse the two would be gold out of lead. Less cameos. More booked seats? I have no idea. What I do know is this: if they ask you if you can make it, you had better go.
///Pulp - "Like A Friend"
5/16/14
S'not All Guts and Glory
It isn't. I get overly dramatic. It is a study. It is very important to learn and understand appropriate responses, but the study need not dampen the human inside of you. The human inside of you should never need or be dampened.
To put the darkness forward is a matter of preference, not necessity. To attack every upcoming day is to ask for a war. Approach it analog. It's not coming at you digital. One or zero or one or zero. There is so much more that can be done.
The responses do push from one boundary to the other, but it is possible to find a zero beside the one, a one nestled in beside the zero, and start a new language. That's happy. Bad in a good way. It's easier to view digitally, but better to view analog.
Failure is vision. Wear your eyes. Use them or be prepared to lose them and cry through your nose because nothing is supporting your eyelids. Power chords. I know I get obsessed with damage control. It's only because damage is very difficult to control.
Damage requires a ton of run cycles and making plans A through G takes a ton of run cycles too. I do wonder what I look like from the outside in these days. It's a curiosity that demands attention. It's not all bad though. Don't let me get you down.
I have a lot of questions. As I'm navigating my way through the years and continuing to find new ways to look at the mission and questioning the mission and my own value within the operations frame works, I am finding light not easy to describe.
At least, not easy to describe better without using terms embracing negative pasts. It kind of strikes me as learning how to compose drawings using negative space. Instead of tracing the damage and the brush fires limits, tracing the brush.
Tracing the wild life instead of the pelts. Nature still speaks to me. Tech and currency still eats me. People continue to fascinate me though I find them terrifically repellent. I try to keep one ear on the ground and one up to the sky.
I have to reassure myself that I am fine. I have to maintain my distance. I cannot allow distance to dissolve. What I want cannot be obtained through casual means. It will take explicit and thorough aggression.
We are years away. It's not all guts and glory. Relax. Absorb and do not over think. It's not all bad. It's not all analysis. Do not remove the human from inside you.
///Bjork - "Hidden Place" im simply suggesting
To put the darkness forward is a matter of preference, not necessity. To attack every upcoming day is to ask for a war. Approach it analog. It's not coming at you digital. One or zero or one or zero. There is so much more that can be done.
The responses do push from one boundary to the other, but it is possible to find a zero beside the one, a one nestled in beside the zero, and start a new language. That's happy. Bad in a good way. It's easier to view digitally, but better to view analog.
Failure is vision. Wear your eyes. Use them or be prepared to lose them and cry through your nose because nothing is supporting your eyelids. Power chords. I know I get obsessed with damage control. It's only because damage is very difficult to control.
Damage requires a ton of run cycles and making plans A through G takes a ton of run cycles too. I do wonder what I look like from the outside in these days. It's a curiosity that demands attention. It's not all bad though. Don't let me get you down.
I have a lot of questions. As I'm navigating my way through the years and continuing to find new ways to look at the mission and questioning the mission and my own value within the operations frame works, I am finding light not easy to describe.
At least, not easy to describe better without using terms embracing negative pasts. It kind of strikes me as learning how to compose drawings using negative space. Instead of tracing the damage and the brush fires limits, tracing the brush.
Tracing the wild life instead of the pelts. Nature still speaks to me. Tech and currency still eats me. People continue to fascinate me though I find them terrifically repellent. I try to keep one ear on the ground and one up to the sky.
I have to reassure myself that I am fine. I have to maintain my distance. I cannot allow distance to dissolve. What I want cannot be obtained through casual means. It will take explicit and thorough aggression.
We are years away. It's not all guts and glory. Relax. Absorb and do not over think. It's not all bad. It's not all analysis. Do not remove the human from inside you.
///Bjork - "Hidden Place" im simply suggesting
5/3/14
You Need To Vibrate Higher and The Good News (and the bad news)
I want to get the bad news out of the way first, but the bad news is also the good news. Let's do that first. The good news is we've made some changes, but they will not stick. Self doubt. The results were not at all to expectation. The expectation was, through dropping metaphor, there could be achieved a clearer stage of communication between people, but it only introduced severe complications. We're going to go ahead and burn that solution so hard it leaves shadows against the walls of my head.
It was a spirited effort and executed to the best of our abilities, but ultimately a failure. Well intentioned though. It introduced an incredible amount of doubt in meaning and second guessing, even more so than the use of extended metaphor. "Is now the time to be blunt?" "Are you being blunt enough?" "Who are you speaking for because I know for damn sure you are not speaking for me." There was an excessive amount of hate and miscommunication circulating because of the effort and action to connect A to D effectively. It was a worthy pursuit. Always diagnose actionable thoroughfares. ADAT.
ADAT is a friendly reminder to carry with you. When confusion eats in, the best way back toward organization is through ADAT. Understand, however, there is only so much to be gained in terms of growth through deviation from the path best traveled. It's not about volume or trail blazing. Select what will allow you to travel and utilize your abilities to the best of their purpose. What good is the path less traveled if you're not equipped to attack it? What good is the path most traveled if you're not equipped to attack it? Destruction.
I'm not going to put on my sage hat because I don't have one. Mostly, I could really go for some coke right now. I think I already told you, but every time I hear the Coca Cola commercial that ends with "smile because it's coke" I snicker a little because I know other people have caught it too. We're all people. Some of us are more people than others.
I have to remind myself that I am not spinning my wheels. If I was it would be, easily, the show stopper of all burn outs at the muscle car convention. I am not marking time (I am). I am side tracking myself, but still tracking.
Anyway, the good news is we are making some changes. The bad news is we are making some changes. What has been added cannot be subtracted because it will tirelessly and quietly shred my insides with abandon. There's is no doubling back. There is, but I will not forgive myself if I do. I am not looking forward to changes. I will still ask questions because I have the memory capacity of a goldfish when it comes to current events that do not scar hard enough to wake up the following day and demand investigation. Which is fine. That, we can do. You don't have to punch me in the brain pan, you just have to make sure I will ask myself about it later and get some answers. The latter half of that being key.
You need to vibrate higher. As unpleasant as it sounds, it must be done. Not in the spirit of further development or outside tracking or productivity or any multi-syllabic word. In terms of exorcising the engine. The engine has been well breathed of late, but needs exorcised. Far too many misfires. What was accomplished recently could have been accomplished four weeks ago if not for the misfires. Those should be remedied.
Remediation through vibration. Knocking and being quiet enough to hear the knock back. It's not easy. It is very easy to allow distraction. It's not easy to be quiet enough to hear the knock back loud enough to know whereabouts to knock next. That's the hard part. I think that's where I've been dropping the ball. Forgotten how to navigate silence. Not entirely forgotten, but locked the skill away for reasons I do not clearly remember, but looking at it from the outside I suspect it had something to do with trying to actively connect with people. A holdover from a submission that failed or succeeded (hell if I know) that was still being invoked to the detriment of the rest of us.
There is nothing in the desert. And no man needs nothing. Aberrations, hallucinations, and oasis's and dry docks aside... that was a mistake. Actually, not aside, but in hand. It was a mistake and poorly executed operation. S'ok though, don't mug yourself. Mistakes are made to learn repair. You're going to jam it up again. We both know this.
The good news is we're going to make changes. The bad news is we're going to make changes. We will vibrate higher. Hibernation is not an option. Do not convince yourself otherwise. Get mad. You know what you are. Stop talking yourself out of it. Stop fighting it.
Things have been a bit upside down. It's very difficult to connect with people and continue to maintain the routine that is so desperately needed. I have not been so outwardly frustrated with how clearly against the grain of normal I am than I have been through this last month. It's like getting hit in the teeth with a metal ruler on full spring. My head keeps screaming "GET AWAY FROM ME OR I WILL RUN!" and I don't know what to do about it.
I think that's why I cherish and despise free time at once. Free time is too much time to think and work is too much work to create. It would be different if it was a mixture of the two. It would be different if I could handle a tincture of the two. I cannot. It has to be one or the other. And still, atop that, is the difficulty, the pain of emotion that keeps coming stamped "on pain of death" if not exercised. I want to feel, as much as you do. I want to feel and not force. I do not understand why they must force me. Sometimes the forcing is enjoyable. It wakes me up where I would otherwise fall dead, emotionless. I cannot take it all of the time though. Why can they not understand that? I want to say no. My body tells me no. My head tells me no. My heart tells me no. So where is this motor coming from?
Am I an extension of you? Not again. Not again. Not again! Yes, again. I'm not. I don't love many people. Not in terms of justifying existences or anything near that cosmic in scale. More important, I don't trust many people. I'm not sure where I'm going with it.
Collecting.
I wish we spoke the same language instead of crying.
Crying being universal and cross dimensioned, but all too simple to express the depths to which we go.
///Massive Attack & David Bowie - "Nature Boy"
It was a spirited effort and executed to the best of our abilities, but ultimately a failure. Well intentioned though. It introduced an incredible amount of doubt in meaning and second guessing, even more so than the use of extended metaphor. "Is now the time to be blunt?" "Are you being blunt enough?" "Who are you speaking for because I know for damn sure you are not speaking for me." There was an excessive amount of hate and miscommunication circulating because of the effort and action to connect A to D effectively. It was a worthy pursuit. Always diagnose actionable thoroughfares. ADAT.
ADAT is a friendly reminder to carry with you. When confusion eats in, the best way back toward organization is through ADAT. Understand, however, there is only so much to be gained in terms of growth through deviation from the path best traveled. It's not about volume or trail blazing. Select what will allow you to travel and utilize your abilities to the best of their purpose. What good is the path less traveled if you're not equipped to attack it? What good is the path most traveled if you're not equipped to attack it? Destruction.
I'm not going to put on my sage hat because I don't have one. Mostly, I could really go for some coke right now. I think I already told you, but every time I hear the Coca Cola commercial that ends with "smile because it's coke" I snicker a little because I know other people have caught it too. We're all people. Some of us are more people than others.
I have to remind myself that I am not spinning my wheels. If I was it would be, easily, the show stopper of all burn outs at the muscle car convention. I am not marking time (I am). I am side tracking myself, but still tracking.
Anyway, the good news is we are making some changes. The bad news is we are making some changes. What has been added cannot be subtracted because it will tirelessly and quietly shred my insides with abandon. There's is no doubling back. There is, but I will not forgive myself if I do. I am not looking forward to changes. I will still ask questions because I have the memory capacity of a goldfish when it comes to current events that do not scar hard enough to wake up the following day and demand investigation. Which is fine. That, we can do. You don't have to punch me in the brain pan, you just have to make sure I will ask myself about it later and get some answers. The latter half of that being key.
You need to vibrate higher. As unpleasant as it sounds, it must be done. Not in the spirit of further development or outside tracking or productivity or any multi-syllabic word. In terms of exorcising the engine. The engine has been well breathed of late, but needs exorcised. Far too many misfires. What was accomplished recently could have been accomplished four weeks ago if not for the misfires. Those should be remedied.
Remediation through vibration. Knocking and being quiet enough to hear the knock back. It's not easy. It is very easy to allow distraction. It's not easy to be quiet enough to hear the knock back loud enough to know whereabouts to knock next. That's the hard part. I think that's where I've been dropping the ball. Forgotten how to navigate silence. Not entirely forgotten, but locked the skill away for reasons I do not clearly remember, but looking at it from the outside I suspect it had something to do with trying to actively connect with people. A holdover from a submission that failed or succeeded (hell if I know) that was still being invoked to the detriment of the rest of us.
There is nothing in the desert. And no man needs nothing. Aberrations, hallucinations, and oasis's and dry docks aside... that was a mistake. Actually, not aside, but in hand. It was a mistake and poorly executed operation. S'ok though, don't mug yourself. Mistakes are made to learn repair. You're going to jam it up again. We both know this.
The good news is we're going to make changes. The bad news is we're going to make changes. We will vibrate higher. Hibernation is not an option. Do not convince yourself otherwise. Get mad. You know what you are. Stop talking yourself out of it. Stop fighting it.
Things have been a bit upside down. It's very difficult to connect with people and continue to maintain the routine that is so desperately needed. I have not been so outwardly frustrated with how clearly against the grain of normal I am than I have been through this last month. It's like getting hit in the teeth with a metal ruler on full spring. My head keeps screaming "GET AWAY FROM ME OR I WILL RUN!" and I don't know what to do about it.
I think that's why I cherish and despise free time at once. Free time is too much time to think and work is too much work to create. It would be different if it was a mixture of the two. It would be different if I could handle a tincture of the two. I cannot. It has to be one or the other. And still, atop that, is the difficulty, the pain of emotion that keeps coming stamped "on pain of death" if not exercised. I want to feel, as much as you do. I want to feel and not force. I do not understand why they must force me. Sometimes the forcing is enjoyable. It wakes me up where I would otherwise fall dead, emotionless. I cannot take it all of the time though. Why can they not understand that? I want to say no. My body tells me no. My head tells me no. My heart tells me no. So where is this motor coming from?
Am I an extension of you? Not again. Not again. Not again! Yes, again. I'm not. I don't love many people. Not in terms of justifying existences or anything near that cosmic in scale. More important, I don't trust many people. I'm not sure where I'm going with it.
Collecting.
I wish we spoke the same language instead of crying.
Crying being universal and cross dimensioned, but all too simple to express the depths to which we go.
///Massive Attack & David Bowie - "Nature Boy"
4/14/14
Cause for Concern
There are very real causes for concern. I didn't want to say anything, but I am getting backed into a corner sooner than I imagined. I'm having some, many a several, difficulties with normal conversation. Even trying to meet up with people makes me violently ill. I'm not used to that. Who should be? Introversion is supposed to be a quiet thing. I'm tired of having to wear sunglasses in grocery stores because the lights vibrate too much and it makes me tear up and then everyone thinks you've gone through some sort of tragedy, but really you just wanted to buy some apples and you had to gut it out beyond your normal radius to get them.
I am a violent person. I know this. no matter what we do we always try to do our best to take ownership and clean up our messes. Something my papa never did. Or maybe he did do in his own way. Whatever he did, it was thorough in its reach. At any rate he never explained so I have license and agency. Because I asked him. Passive aggressively. He made a woman out of me I suppose. A woman with more power than mama ever had. And that's good.
I'm losing the war on my chemistry and I do not like. I do not want it. Pain is one thing. Passenger is another. I do not like not being able to express clearly. It's taking more and more work to maintain clear communication and it's not the drugs because I've been free and clear of paint and coke and pretty much every sniffable and injectable and I'm not fucking with my chemistry set at all. That's what's been so frustrating. No assists. No boosters. And still fracturing. It makes no sense.
That I can do this, type on a keyboard easy peasy, and then struggle mightily with trying to string words together in real time. And I've been very good about tuning down the violence too. There is no reward for that. There should be. THERE SHOULD BE. I should fucking be paid for that.
I keep and will continue to argue that I am not a reject. I am a citizen. It is not my planet, but I don't just live on it. I am a part of it. I do need the means and I will subject you to retribution at some point and these are my life goals and everything is building to it and I have no sex and I am an agent of a movement and you will know me when it's done and I will never place a gun to my own skull and I will be responsible and I will find you and force you to answer for everything you have done because I am not God, but I am me and whether you like it or not I just want to be safe with you.
It's difficult to think and be reasonable. Reason out the voices. They must be reasoned with. They aren't monkeys. They are to be unnamed and it's very frustrating to know that I get to know them and they can never be .... it hurts. It hurts less than naming and that's acceptable. It's not about ferocity. They punish me in ways you may understand. Even with that understanding there is no equivalent exchange. I know I need to get back on medicine. I know I have to. I refuse.
It's not a team effort. It's just me. No metaphor. I refuse. I will fucking burn this house to the ground before I do that again and I'm not happy about it. I am furious. Why does everything boil down to money? Why did you leave me here? What kind of advice do you fucking expect me to give that does not play directly back into history or roundabout to the same spot? I don't understand. I do. Normalcy. I can do normalcy. I have it, down pat. What I do not have is normalcy. There's a difference between the two.
I will not quit the battle. There is very real cause for concern. Things are developing faster than expected.
Delusions. I will not cash out. I have faced the dragon, but no apotheosis. There is no way out and it's not a death grip.
I wish you had more time.
I was ill prepared, but armored well. Armor is no workable substitute.
///Count Basic - "Gotta Jazz" there are things i have to do. things that must be done, come hell and high water. fault me. these are faults. they must be done, but i am a citizen and you will not deport me today, or tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that.
6/22/13
4 Years Is a Lifetime, Music, and Summer What?
Sometimes I wake up and it's hard to believe it's been four years since I made it clear of the 24 years that came before when it comes to my parents. When people ask about them, I'm still tempted to say they died. They are dead to me, but just because they're dead in my mind doesn't make them dead in real life, even though it would be great if they were. It's hard to believe I ever did love them. I suppose I once did. My mother anyway. Is it better to be feared or loved? They decided it was better to be feared. It is easy to receive gratitude for putting out a fire. I suppose it is easy to cling to those firemen and women rescuing you from that fire and believing you owe them a life debt. A water debt. A blood debt.
It is easy, until you find out, when the blinders come off, that they set that fire that took your body down to it's foundations. Then it's not so easy. When that sun dawns and the city you've been inhabiting in the dark comes into sharp relief and you realize you've been living downtown for 24 years and didn't know it and from the tallest skyscraper there you can't even see the city limits, you cry. And I did. For years. I wanted to jump back then. Break my heart on the pavement into beads of pomegranate flesh crushed. I didn't.
I walked. I ran. And then I walked some more when my lungs and legs quit. I camped. I broke into abandoned homes and raided food and threw it in my back pack and kept going. I slept on concrete and hid in basements when creatures roamed and cached weapons to defend myself. Taught myself how to use them, because the day you come face to face with the monsters will be the day you are least prepared to fight for your life and the blood in your veins and your heart beat. I walked for years until the buildings and bridges grew smaller. The shells of "civilization" as I knew it grew fewer and far between, and one day I was outside of it all, on a hill top looking back in and I could see the towers so tall back then. I could see the flag poles and radio towers atop the things so massive they crowded out the sky and blanked the stars at night with their ferocious brilliance.
And it's strange to be outside of it. Strange to feel myself breathing. There was a time, right after I took myself away from it all, that it felt odd not to be hurt. I felt like my skin didn't fit. My face didn't feel like my face. It was difficult to walk, like my legs forgot how to do it in this new frame unburdened. It felt strange to stand up straight. Strange to deal with my bosses because I was constantly afraid that they might hit me if I messed something up or forgot to do something or did what they wanted, but they changed their minds halfway and did not tell me. It never occurred to me that people are not supposed to be allowed to do that to other people. It never occurred to me that people are not naturally inclined to do that necessarily. It never occurred to me that there would and could be legal recourse for me if they did. Shedding the things, piece by piece, that I once thought to be absolute truths of power relationships and interchange with "authority".
It was a difficult transition and four years removed from it, it feels like a lifetime away. The longest four years of my short life. I've done so much living, it amazes me and I love it. I love being able to look forward without immediate apprehension. Some days I wake up and my first thought is "so this is what everyone else has been feeling like all this time." I wish that I did still retain the good memories from when I was little. I've spent so much of myself and so much time eradicating the bad ones, but you can't pick and choose when it comes to that. There are huge blank spaces in my memory now. Massive expanses that I should have some recall about, but I don't. Struggle with whether that's a good or bad thing comes up sometimes, but I'd rather recall nothing than wake up sweating at night.
A choice I decided to make. The most vivid memories still remain, both good and bad; the worst of the worst and the best of the best. Every time I speak to my siblings something new and minor comes to light for better and for worse and I forget all over again. Strike it from the library. Continue on my way. I feel like, really for the first time in a long time, like I'm going the right way and ... there's no price to put on peace. Peace at any cost. Call it selfish. Call it whatever you want to. There's beauty in grace and grace is not killing your parents to square your own books.
There's music stored up in there. I have about 120 tracks and sounds and machine sounds stocked up. I really do want to do it, I haven't made the time to learn. Really learn. I'm passion infused about it. I need it. I'm terrified of failure the same way I used to be years ago when I first decided to share and open myself up to criticism. Not just open myself up, but open myself up to criticism on something I thought I was pretty good at. Music is an entirely different bucket. I want to do it, I've taken the first steps, and now I just have to make one foot follow the other. Never did download that manual for the autoharp. It's not collecting dust though. Every few days, I drag it out from under my bed and lay it down and pluck it's strings and see what comes out of it, but I'm happy to be a dabbler. And unhappy to be just.
Beats, notes, and rhythms in my head and the struggle, I know, will be exhausting. It's a problem of effort and I know that's a me problem, not an environment problem. I've had some trouble with scheduling. Trying to keep yourself out of trouble by sleeping on a max schedule will only drive you so far. Eventually you have to step out of safety if you want to accomplish anything. No one ever won a football game by kneeling down in the first quarter. Crunch time is never convenient and I can't imagine the force of the crush that will drive me to try and I don't want to experience it. I'll get on it someday. To do lists grow long like finger nails. Eventually you have to cut it down or at least paint them.
On another note, you know it's summer when the girls are out in flip flops and the guys are losing their shirts. That's the usual metric. Everyone is out in their Ed Hardy tees and old men are jogging, red skinned, down the middle of side streets and kids are pushing their strollers and little carnivals with tractor trailer ferris wheels start popping up. You know it's summer when you can't get a spot to fish on the river shore if you show up any later than noon on a Tuesday. Opening your car door is like opening an oven door and you sweat from the effort of fixing yourself a bowl of cereal for breakfast. You know it's summer when you head down to the basketball court and you'd rather stand than sit when you're not playing because the asphalt is just that hot.
The real tell about summer, though, is when the ladies start to come out doors in shorts and Ugg boots. I have no idea when that nonsense caught on. What I do know is that every year it happens. Inevitably. It makes no sense. I am a huge fan of form following function, but there is no function to it! None whatsoever! I am taking a stand against it. I was walking down to the gas station in the middle of the day and a nub wearing Uggs and a jean jacket strolled by on the other side of the street and I tried to contain it, but I couldn't. I guffawed for a second, choked, and then laughed at the top of my lungs. It's okay though. She's doing her and I'm going to do me. No big deal.
Still though, come on! Really? Watching it from the corner of my eye all I could think about was gross, stanky, lady feet. I don't care how pretty your face is, guy or girl, but if your feet stank something awful or are horribly deformed or even noticeably deformed, that's a deal breaker. Call me shallow. I don't mind, but there has to be limits. Still chuckling while I walked into the gas station I was at a loss as to what planet that was considered attractive.
I'm not the style police. 90% of what I wear serves a function and a purpose and if that purpose or function requires something off putting or ugly, hey... go f#$% yourself. Form will always follow function for me. If I happen to net up some good form along the way it's just the bonus. I love summer. I love the absurdity of it all. I got into a long back and forth with a girl friend about style. Sometimes I do make style considerations when it comes to choosing the best function/form ratio. She was dressed to the nines and I asked her why she would put herself into such nice clothes. Turned out she just wanted to dress up on a Friday. I scratched my beard. She elaborated. "Sometimes I'm just in the mood to feel a little different."
I got it, then. When function governs there's less room for expression. Everything can't be mechanical the way I want it to be or would like it to be. Input equals output not always and it shouldn't always be. Reproduction being what it is and kind of necessary. Hard wiring. And there I go, back to the mechanical. I can't help it. She had a point though. After the conversation I felt myself starting to want to be a slacks and button up guy. She explained that even though she was dressed to the teeth with shiny earrings, they were still her play clothes because if anything bad happened to them, they're not her actual dress clothes. I might try to wear button up shirts more often. Without buttoning them. To pull that off I'll probably need pants without latex paint all over them. That takes money. Maybe not. I love function.
I'll have quiet dreams about wearing dumb slacks and ripping the crotch out of them doing what I do. In the meantime, I'll just do me and wear what I want. I guess, in very short retrospect, I respect that Ugg jean jacket girl. If I see her again I'm still going to laugh. The same way people probably laugh at me strolling down the main drag in clothes with no form, scratching their heads like "did you look at a mirror before you left your house or did you grab the first four garments you could find on your floor and jump out of your door to conquer the world?"
And that's how you know it's Summer.
Kisses. Later on, kids.
///Ladytron - "Soft Power" ...daylight is the enemy... I love the night. Everything smells wet and good at night. I want to sleep by the river again and talk to the fish while the fire goes out.
It is easy, until you find out, when the blinders come off, that they set that fire that took your body down to it's foundations. Then it's not so easy. When that sun dawns and the city you've been inhabiting in the dark comes into sharp relief and you realize you've been living downtown for 24 years and didn't know it and from the tallest skyscraper there you can't even see the city limits, you cry. And I did. For years. I wanted to jump back then. Break my heart on the pavement into beads of pomegranate flesh crushed. I didn't.
I walked. I ran. And then I walked some more when my lungs and legs quit. I camped. I broke into abandoned homes and raided food and threw it in my back pack and kept going. I slept on concrete and hid in basements when creatures roamed and cached weapons to defend myself. Taught myself how to use them, because the day you come face to face with the monsters will be the day you are least prepared to fight for your life and the blood in your veins and your heart beat. I walked for years until the buildings and bridges grew smaller. The shells of "civilization" as I knew it grew fewer and far between, and one day I was outside of it all, on a hill top looking back in and I could see the towers so tall back then. I could see the flag poles and radio towers atop the things so massive they crowded out the sky and blanked the stars at night with their ferocious brilliance.
And it's strange to be outside of it. Strange to feel myself breathing. There was a time, right after I took myself away from it all, that it felt odd not to be hurt. I felt like my skin didn't fit. My face didn't feel like my face. It was difficult to walk, like my legs forgot how to do it in this new frame unburdened. It felt strange to stand up straight. Strange to deal with my bosses because I was constantly afraid that they might hit me if I messed something up or forgot to do something or did what they wanted, but they changed their minds halfway and did not tell me. It never occurred to me that people are not supposed to be allowed to do that to other people. It never occurred to me that people are not naturally inclined to do that necessarily. It never occurred to me that there would and could be legal recourse for me if they did. Shedding the things, piece by piece, that I once thought to be absolute truths of power relationships and interchange with "authority".
It was a difficult transition and four years removed from it, it feels like a lifetime away. The longest four years of my short life. I've done so much living, it amazes me and I love it. I love being able to look forward without immediate apprehension. Some days I wake up and my first thought is "so this is what everyone else has been feeling like all this time." I wish that I did still retain the good memories from when I was little. I've spent so much of myself and so much time eradicating the bad ones, but you can't pick and choose when it comes to that. There are huge blank spaces in my memory now. Massive expanses that I should have some recall about, but I don't. Struggle with whether that's a good or bad thing comes up sometimes, but I'd rather recall nothing than wake up sweating at night.
A choice I decided to make. The most vivid memories still remain, both good and bad; the worst of the worst and the best of the best. Every time I speak to my siblings something new and minor comes to light for better and for worse and I forget all over again. Strike it from the library. Continue on my way. I feel like, really for the first time in a long time, like I'm going the right way and ... there's no price to put on peace. Peace at any cost. Call it selfish. Call it whatever you want to. There's beauty in grace and grace is not killing your parents to square your own books.
There's music stored up in there. I have about 120 tracks and sounds and machine sounds stocked up. I really do want to do it, I haven't made the time to learn. Really learn. I'm passion infused about it. I need it. I'm terrified of failure the same way I used to be years ago when I first decided to share and open myself up to criticism. Not just open myself up, but open myself up to criticism on something I thought I was pretty good at. Music is an entirely different bucket. I want to do it, I've taken the first steps, and now I just have to make one foot follow the other. Never did download that manual for the autoharp. It's not collecting dust though. Every few days, I drag it out from under my bed and lay it down and pluck it's strings and see what comes out of it, but I'm happy to be a dabbler. And unhappy to be just.
Beats, notes, and rhythms in my head and the struggle, I know, will be exhausting. It's a problem of effort and I know that's a me problem, not an environment problem. I've had some trouble with scheduling. Trying to keep yourself out of trouble by sleeping on a max schedule will only drive you so far. Eventually you have to step out of safety if you want to accomplish anything. No one ever won a football game by kneeling down in the first quarter. Crunch time is never convenient and I can't imagine the force of the crush that will drive me to try and I don't want to experience it. I'll get on it someday. To do lists grow long like finger nails. Eventually you have to cut it down or at least paint them.
On another note, you know it's summer when the girls are out in flip flops and the guys are losing their shirts. That's the usual metric. Everyone is out in their Ed Hardy tees and old men are jogging, red skinned, down the middle of side streets and kids are pushing their strollers and little carnivals with tractor trailer ferris wheels start popping up. You know it's summer when you can't get a spot to fish on the river shore if you show up any later than noon on a Tuesday. Opening your car door is like opening an oven door and you sweat from the effort of fixing yourself a bowl of cereal for breakfast. You know it's summer when you head down to the basketball court and you'd rather stand than sit when you're not playing because the asphalt is just that hot.
The real tell about summer, though, is when the ladies start to come out doors in shorts and Ugg boots. I have no idea when that nonsense caught on. What I do know is that every year it happens. Inevitably. It makes no sense. I am a huge fan of form following function, but there is no function to it! None whatsoever! I am taking a stand against it. I was walking down to the gas station in the middle of the day and a nub wearing Uggs and a jean jacket strolled by on the other side of the street and I tried to contain it, but I couldn't. I guffawed for a second, choked, and then laughed at the top of my lungs. It's okay though. She's doing her and I'm going to do me. No big deal.
Still though, come on! Really? Watching it from the corner of my eye all I could think about was gross, stanky, lady feet. I don't care how pretty your face is, guy or girl, but if your feet stank something awful or are horribly deformed or even noticeably deformed, that's a deal breaker. Call me shallow. I don't mind, but there has to be limits. Still chuckling while I walked into the gas station I was at a loss as to what planet that was considered attractive.
I'm not the style police. 90% of what I wear serves a function and a purpose and if that purpose or function requires something off putting or ugly, hey... go f#$% yourself. Form will always follow function for me. If I happen to net up some good form along the way it's just the bonus. I love summer. I love the absurdity of it all. I got into a long back and forth with a girl friend about style. Sometimes I do make style considerations when it comes to choosing the best function/form ratio. She was dressed to the nines and I asked her why she would put herself into such nice clothes. Turned out she just wanted to dress up on a Friday. I scratched my beard. She elaborated. "Sometimes I'm just in the mood to feel a little different."
I got it, then. When function governs there's less room for expression. Everything can't be mechanical the way I want it to be or would like it to be. Input equals output not always and it shouldn't always be. Reproduction being what it is and kind of necessary. Hard wiring. And there I go, back to the mechanical. I can't help it. She had a point though. After the conversation I felt myself starting to want to be a slacks and button up guy. She explained that even though she was dressed to the teeth with shiny earrings, they were still her play clothes because if anything bad happened to them, they're not her actual dress clothes. I might try to wear button up shirts more often. Without buttoning them. To pull that off I'll probably need pants without latex paint all over them. That takes money. Maybe not. I love function.
I'll have quiet dreams about wearing dumb slacks and ripping the crotch out of them doing what I do. In the meantime, I'll just do me and wear what I want. I guess, in very short retrospect, I respect that Ugg jean jacket girl. If I see her again I'm still going to laugh. The same way people probably laugh at me strolling down the main drag in clothes with no form, scratching their heads like "did you look at a mirror before you left your house or did you grab the first four garments you could find on your floor and jump out of your door to conquer the world?"
And that's how you know it's Summer.
Kisses. Later on, kids.
///Ladytron - "Soft Power" ...daylight is the enemy... I love the night. Everything smells wet and good at night. I want to sleep by the river again and talk to the fish while the fire goes out.
10/25/12
Proliferation Theory
If you do enough, something is bound to stick favorably. For a time I approached writing with an arrogance. I thought, because it was the only thing I got decent marks in, I must be good at it. And then I got bad grades. Still got good grades from time to time, but bad grades just as often, usually related to the technical composition and not the ideas. And then I got good technical marks and bad ones on the formation of ideas. Sometimes I did well with both.
It was a strange time. I transitioned from writing on my own time and going to class and writing instead of doing homework to higher grades where writing was my only homework and all I did in classes. The arrogance of perceived innate talent faded quite a bit with one failed attempt to win awards after another and I blamed closed communities and the like, the department was exceptionally cliquey. I believed the profs liked what they liked and you liked what you liked and it was your job to jump the gap, not theirs.
I don't know what my problem is exactly, but I do believe it is that the people that I idolize make it look so effortless and what they make feels like hit after hit after God damn hit. Maybe proliferation theory is failing me. It's difficult to say either way. Maybe I am genuinely no good. It's tough to digest. Without some kind of schedule. I rolled up a dollar bill. It's just strange, I guess. Proliferation theory. Asking when is good enough for me good enough for someone else.
The theory begs a lower standard, but how much is compromised in terms of value and personal expansion? Is the cost appropriate to the value of the product, the life time stamp I put my name to? I don't know. I do it predominantly for myself, at least that's what I've convinced myself of. I don't know. Would I kill to go back to school? How many people? Could I plea bargain my way out of life sentences and would the offer still be good when I got out? I'd have to think about it. Hypotheticals.
Yeah, it drives me crazy. A little bit. I try to think about what else I would be doing, could be doing. None of it appeals to me the same way. Everyone, including myself, well maybe not everyone, many people talk about being their harshest critic. I may be my most passionate lover. Delusions of grandeur coming with the territory, but I don't always see it so clearly. The Fantha. Losing focus on the mission. I just want to die knowing I was good as I could possibly be, not knowing I was good as I was going to be. Who wants that?
I think believing that I'm great keeps my engine running. Keeps the clutch down and a hand on the shift knob for when I come running. Beyond that, I don't know how much credence I give it. I butcher language and muddle image on a weekly basis. I talk like broke nosed sailor all too often and argue like a fifteen time concussed politico's son. Pretty sure my mental dictionary has "turn to page 345"s on it and on page 345 there is a crayon hand drawn hairy dick in the corner.
Purpose is a fine commodity. Take a digger. Fire off the magazine, discharge, and throw it as far as you can. Sometimes panic can be beautiful. Never outwardly. Did I tell you that I was you? Don't be silly. Don't be silly little king with your crown. Let me polish that for you; you dropped it skipping puddles in gutters without your galoshes. You know the ones with He-Man and Skeletor printed all over? I'll remember for you.
Just behave, okay?
The project was, the final project was, to make a visual that encompassed everything you believed poetry to be. Everything you believed poetry to be and the purpose it served. They came in with their power points and dream catchers and God's eyes and a diorama of a village and someone made a painting and someone made a collage from printed magazines and there were a handful of abstract sculptures and even a figurine, but you made a life sized naval mine with trigger switches and detonators and wires out of empty wine bottles and paint brush handles and spray painted it black. That was a fun walk across campus with that hugged to your chest. Cutting across the grass, because the people on the sidewalk could go f--- themselves that early in the morning. You worked on it all night after thinking about it for a week. Everyone talked about their things and you talked about yours. And that's where it ended.
Officially. I suppose, the project is ongoing. I hate myself. I love myself. I hate myself. I'm sorry to drag you into it. I don't know how else anything changes. Contemplating the validity of ProT.
///Starkey - "Spacewalk" infolatice diver with a bad respirator. the city is so vast and so uninhabitable so far beneath the waves
from a similar born year and different circumstance, but very little I haven't enjoyed while there: alicja-w-krainie-czarow
It was a strange time. I transitioned from writing on my own time and going to class and writing instead of doing homework to higher grades where writing was my only homework and all I did in classes. The arrogance of perceived innate talent faded quite a bit with one failed attempt to win awards after another and I blamed closed communities and the like, the department was exceptionally cliquey. I believed the profs liked what they liked and you liked what you liked and it was your job to jump the gap, not theirs.
I don't know what my problem is exactly, but I do believe it is that the people that I idolize make it look so effortless and what they make feels like hit after hit after God damn hit. Maybe proliferation theory is failing me. It's difficult to say either way. Maybe I am genuinely no good. It's tough to digest. Without some kind of schedule. I rolled up a dollar bill. It's just strange, I guess. Proliferation theory. Asking when is good enough for me good enough for someone else.
The theory begs a lower standard, but how much is compromised in terms of value and personal expansion? Is the cost appropriate to the value of the product, the life time stamp I put my name to? I don't know. I do it predominantly for myself, at least that's what I've convinced myself of. I don't know. Would I kill to go back to school? How many people? Could I plea bargain my way out of life sentences and would the offer still be good when I got out? I'd have to think about it. Hypotheticals.
Yeah, it drives me crazy. A little bit. I try to think about what else I would be doing, could be doing. None of it appeals to me the same way. Everyone, including myself, well maybe not everyone, many people talk about being their harshest critic. I may be my most passionate lover. Delusions of grandeur coming with the territory, but I don't always see it so clearly. The Fantha. Losing focus on the mission. I just want to die knowing I was good as I could possibly be, not knowing I was good as I was going to be. Who wants that?
I think believing that I'm great keeps my engine running. Keeps the clutch down and a hand on the shift knob for when I come running. Beyond that, I don't know how much credence I give it. I butcher language and muddle image on a weekly basis. I talk like broke nosed sailor all too often and argue like a fifteen time concussed politico's son. Pretty sure my mental dictionary has "turn to page 345"s on it and on page 345 there is a crayon hand drawn hairy dick in the corner.
Purpose is a fine commodity. Take a digger. Fire off the magazine, discharge, and throw it as far as you can. Sometimes panic can be beautiful. Never outwardly. Did I tell you that I was you? Don't be silly. Don't be silly little king with your crown. Let me polish that for you; you dropped it skipping puddles in gutters without your galoshes. You know the ones with He-Man and Skeletor printed all over? I'll remember for you.
Just behave, okay?
The project was, the final project was, to make a visual that encompassed everything you believed poetry to be. Everything you believed poetry to be and the purpose it served. They came in with their power points and dream catchers and God's eyes and a diorama of a village and someone made a painting and someone made a collage from printed magazines and there were a handful of abstract sculptures and even a figurine, but you made a life sized naval mine with trigger switches and detonators and wires out of empty wine bottles and paint brush handles and spray painted it black. That was a fun walk across campus with that hugged to your chest. Cutting across the grass, because the people on the sidewalk could go f--- themselves that early in the morning. You worked on it all night after thinking about it for a week. Everyone talked about their things and you talked about yours. And that's where it ended.
Officially. I suppose, the project is ongoing. I hate myself. I love myself. I hate myself. I'm sorry to drag you into it. I don't know how else anything changes. Contemplating the validity of ProT.
///Starkey - "Spacewalk" infolatice diver with a bad respirator. the city is so vast and so uninhabitable so far beneath the waves
from a similar born year and different circumstance, but very little I haven't enjoyed while there: alicja-w-krainie-czarow
11/25/11
That Instant
That instant you fly into a panic because someone might have called or text messaged you and you can't remember where you left your phone and search every pair of pants you even thought about wearing over the last two days and then realize your phone is on your desk, right where you left it. Still silent as a five day old dead goldfish.
But at least now you know where it is.
But at least now you know where it is.
10/30/11
Cheesus Christ, Does Nothing Work?
I'm sorry I've been away. Less sorry than usual. Only because I've been away because I've been working and not because I've been furiously masturbating. It's been hard. The living. The being aliveness of breathing. Not the breathing part. That part is easy. What's been hard is trying to have a continuous thought when bells go off every fifteen minutes. Remember that book about that society that suppressed creativity by fitting every person with an apparatus that sounded a chime every five minutes to interrupt thought and render it's populace unable to create new ideas? No? Well that's what it's been like. A lot of "gotta put bread on the table" things interrupting the "gotta put bread into my skull so I don't check out of this world on some aneurysm shiz".
I've had one of those days. Not really one of those days, but one of those days stretched across an entire week. One of those days where you come down the break room stairs after sitting for fifteen minutes that flew by in a blink because you fell asleep in your chair watching infomercials about magic brassieres and magic belts that will force your body to do things you haven't taught and practiced or considered that maybe your body just wasn't meant to do for any length of time and you go to get back to work and realize, picking up your box cutter that you left your mug of tea upstairs. And it's going to take you another five minutes to go back and get it and your legs are too dead for yet another trip up those damned stairs, but you are already dead thirsty and have to weigh which death is more unpleasant.
One of those days where the fattest jar of the smelliest pickled peppers in piss yellow juice slips out of your clutches because your hands are cramping and every single paper towel dispenser is empty because the people responsible for keeping them filled never do their jobs as well as you do yours. The mop bucket is at the other end of the store, another five minute round trip on sleeping hooves, and when you get there to fill the mop bucket there is no floor soap and the other fluids available would take up the spill and stink right along with the wax finish. You take the bucket and get halfway across the store before you realize its got a flat and you are utterly baffled as to how a plastic wheeled yellow tank of a bucket could have a flat before you realize a thread of the mop came loose and lodged in the wheel and, instead of plucking it out, the bucket was filled and dragged around for weeks, maybe months until the wheel turned into a plastic orange wedge, and since you were too tired to notice it sooner you've left a scratch on the floor several dozen yards long.
You walk the bucket back and have to pick it up and hug it's black stained, deli grease streaked body to yours because walking it back on the floor would double your error. Selecting a new bucket you walk it across the store to the opposite slop sink and find that while there is cleaning solution appropriate for the task, someone was so kind as to snap off the knob, rendering the sink into something more like a flushless urinal, and so you walk the bucket with soap back to the other end of the store with the working sink and wonder why they would bolt the soap to the wall instead of making it possible for you to take the soap to the working sink and prevent having to do the routine all over again, and why the hell you would need a manager to sign off on throwing out a broken bucket in the first place when they so rarely use them they wouldn't know if it was broken or not and can you really not be trusted to make a simple judgement like "a three wheeled bucket is no longer useful."
=sigh= sometimes nothing's working for ya. And by the time you get back to the shattered jar it's been tracked up and down the aisle. By your coworkers. And you wonder how much time you'd do if you just killed them all and called it a day and a win for humanity.
///The Chemical Brothers - "Surface to Air" take flight and forget the world even exists... what i want to do. but its the only outpost in this sector of the galaxy and my ship can't take me far enough to reach the next one. so we keep in touch.
I've had one of those days. Not really one of those days, but one of those days stretched across an entire week. One of those days where you come down the break room stairs after sitting for fifteen minutes that flew by in a blink because you fell asleep in your chair watching infomercials about magic brassieres and magic belts that will force your body to do things you haven't taught and practiced or considered that maybe your body just wasn't meant to do for any length of time and you go to get back to work and realize, picking up your box cutter that you left your mug of tea upstairs. And it's going to take you another five minutes to go back and get it and your legs are too dead for yet another trip up those damned stairs, but you are already dead thirsty and have to weigh which death is more unpleasant.
One of those days where the fattest jar of the smelliest pickled peppers in piss yellow juice slips out of your clutches because your hands are cramping and every single paper towel dispenser is empty because the people responsible for keeping them filled never do their jobs as well as you do yours. The mop bucket is at the other end of the store, another five minute round trip on sleeping hooves, and when you get there to fill the mop bucket there is no floor soap and the other fluids available would take up the spill and stink right along with the wax finish. You take the bucket and get halfway across the store before you realize its got a flat and you are utterly baffled as to how a plastic wheeled yellow tank of a bucket could have a flat before you realize a thread of the mop came loose and lodged in the wheel and, instead of plucking it out, the bucket was filled and dragged around for weeks, maybe months until the wheel turned into a plastic orange wedge, and since you were too tired to notice it sooner you've left a scratch on the floor several dozen yards long.
You walk the bucket back and have to pick it up and hug it's black stained, deli grease streaked body to yours because walking it back on the floor would double your error. Selecting a new bucket you walk it across the store to the opposite slop sink and find that while there is cleaning solution appropriate for the task, someone was so kind as to snap off the knob, rendering the sink into something more like a flushless urinal, and so you walk the bucket with soap back to the other end of the store with the working sink and wonder why they would bolt the soap to the wall instead of making it possible for you to take the soap to the working sink and prevent having to do the routine all over again, and why the hell you would need a manager to sign off on throwing out a broken bucket in the first place when they so rarely use them they wouldn't know if it was broken or not and can you really not be trusted to make a simple judgement like "a three wheeled bucket is no longer useful."
=sigh= sometimes nothing's working for ya. And by the time you get back to the shattered jar it's been tracked up and down the aisle. By your coworkers. And you wonder how much time you'd do if you just killed them all and called it a day and a win for humanity.
///The Chemical Brothers - "Surface to Air" take flight and forget the world even exists... what i want to do. but its the only outpost in this sector of the galaxy and my ship can't take me far enough to reach the next one. so we keep in touch.
8/3/11
Manifesto (just kidding)
It's tempting to construct manifestos when things don't go your way. Tempting to take the bum raps you keep getting and try to think of a way to correct everything wrong that's happened to you, letter by letter, number by number until you arrive at a list of things and virtues that can correct the world once and for all and make it, not only a place in which your alternate self who experienced all of the positive outcomes you have been deprived truly exists, but a world in which everyone's alternate selves experience every positive outcome they possibly can while only actively subtracting the negative and leaving the ceiling open for the positive (perhaps they won't experience as positive an outcome as they would have previously, but the potential would still be there).
So enough about that shite.
Everybody's different. Some people will never understand how to be people. How to be human. I myself am much closer to being feral, to identifying with the senses and sensibilities of the higher functioning animal kingdoms than the lower functioning partitions of society. I don't know if I'm the right person to ask what it is to be human. I'm comfortable there. I suppose if I had to choose which side of that fence I wanted to stand on, I know what side I'd pick. I can't hold it against the people that have never been down that end of the spectrum if they don't understand how to relate. I can fucking still hate them though. For a little while. And then I get bored because I can howl as hard as I want into that wind coming down from where they are, and they'll never hear me clearly. And then I get back to rooting around my woods for things to eat and things to do and other wolves with which to play.
Ire. It's there. There is no ire extinguisher. I can break all the glass I own, but inside those cases there is only an ax with which to fight the fire. Swing away. Go find a patch of grass that is not burned to crisp ash. Roll around for a bit. Run off into the burning woods again after the scent of the something gorgeous, eyes wilder, mouth drawn back from teeth and hungry for something fat and slow. And happy to feel my lungs beating against my smoke stained ribs. Just break glass.
Don't invite me to your pity party. I'll drink all the liquor and toss back all the punch and go dancing on rooftops singing praises to the moon and starry ash smudged sky. I'm not without compassion. It's just something that's hard for me to understand. To feel and synthesize and give back. Sympathy yes. I can understand that. Sometimes I feel like my heart is the bleeding heart of a broken little girl fallen into a ravine in the Black forests of Germania, but my head is screwed on with steel lag bolts and filled with enough warheads, .50 cals, and trigger happy children to stage a military coup in darkest Africa and enough warpaint to terrify the most elaborate and landed samurai. I do my best to feel. And then I take what's left and make sense of what I read back from the dials and switches.
///El-P - "Love Theme" ...love though, I guess that's one thing that stays the same, but even that... the understanding fractures. As if the symmetry alone is a prescription to live. The world is busted, learn to live in it and treat people right. No manifestos necessary.
So enough about that shite.
Everybody's different. Some people will never understand how to be people. How to be human. I myself am much closer to being feral, to identifying with the senses and sensibilities of the higher functioning animal kingdoms than the lower functioning partitions of society. I don't know if I'm the right person to ask what it is to be human. I'm comfortable there. I suppose if I had to choose which side of that fence I wanted to stand on, I know what side I'd pick. I can't hold it against the people that have never been down that end of the spectrum if they don't understand how to relate. I can fucking still hate them though. For a little while. And then I get bored because I can howl as hard as I want into that wind coming down from where they are, and they'll never hear me clearly. And then I get back to rooting around my woods for things to eat and things to do and other wolves with which to play.
Ire. It's there. There is no ire extinguisher. I can break all the glass I own, but inside those cases there is only an ax with which to fight the fire. Swing away. Go find a patch of grass that is not burned to crisp ash. Roll around for a bit. Run off into the burning woods again after the scent of the something gorgeous, eyes wilder, mouth drawn back from teeth and hungry for something fat and slow. And happy to feel my lungs beating against my smoke stained ribs. Just break glass.
Don't invite me to your pity party. I'll drink all the liquor and toss back all the punch and go dancing on rooftops singing praises to the moon and starry ash smudged sky. I'm not without compassion. It's just something that's hard for me to understand. To feel and synthesize and give back. Sympathy yes. I can understand that. Sometimes I feel like my heart is the bleeding heart of a broken little girl fallen into a ravine in the Black forests of Germania, but my head is screwed on with steel lag bolts and filled with enough warheads, .50 cals, and trigger happy children to stage a military coup in darkest Africa and enough warpaint to terrify the most elaborate and landed samurai. I do my best to feel. And then I take what's left and make sense of what I read back from the dials and switches.
///El-P - "Love Theme" ...love though, I guess that's one thing that stays the same, but even that... the understanding fractures. As if the symmetry alone is a prescription to live. The world is busted, learn to live in it and treat people right. No manifestos necessary.
7/7/11
In the Back Woods and Friendship Tugs of War
Well, I've been gone for a minute, but it's been something of a stroll in the backwoods. The creepy backwoods that are often not to be strolled until the circumstances demand some sort of outing and the only reasonable place to go where you can't be bothered is the back 9 of the mind. Keeping a good clip with poetry. A minor defeat of writer's block that has allowed some things to flourish. I haven't used that word in a while, if at all. Flourish. It has a certain pirouette to it that has to be reserved for unique measures of success.
Success in the face of nightmares.
Actual nightmares. Actual moments of the involuntary bridging of dream and real states. Of seeing what is there and what isn't or at least shouldn't be in the same instance of breathing and having to close my eyes and repeat after me "you are safe"s. If repeating is believing. I guess that's one of the reasons why I don't believe in heaven or hell. I've seen them both and they're not what anyone says they are supposed to be. I've been to the end of the world and it's nothing like what we've been told is it? Few things ever are. If I smell a little like death it's because we've been bedfellows on and off recently. A flirting couple that knows neither is really committed to anything serious, but when is play ever except when it is?
So we've pumped and ground and made and done and life has gone on for less and worse and better and blood. The organs still pump and the sound still comes in fountains and so I continue. I continue on in the backwoods and little leaps to foregrounds until, I have come to convince myself recently in the train of reasons to reason in, the day when my life transposes from discrete experiences into a singular piece of poesis. A perfect and sustainable solid state. And then I'll happily call it a day. Not in a bid for immortality because immortality is only to memory and human memory will never break the solid state barrier (so even immortals are no more than incarnates), but in a bid to have become. I suppose there are probably many things I am becoming, but to have definitively crossed that boundary of becomingness to the hell pots of posterity is a thing worth aspiring to if there is anything worth shooting for. Call the stars, or the moon, or glory, or whatever. Incarnations of the become be damned. To have is to have in some way shape and form held in hands so often dropped in emptiness. To have gripped, and not let go even in whatever can be termed death.
There have been joys in the backwoods. Joys tasted rarely in and the travel has been hard and light, but worth it in some ways and a waste in many others. And I don't know why I am trying to see this in two points of view. Oh wait I do! Friendship tug of war. You can pick your nose. You can pick your friends. But you can't favor one person over the other though they both know you in pathetically thin terms. What the hell does it matter, you idiots? I mean really. Can we all just grow up a good four years and call this bullshit a day. Not to rant on so silly a topic. It's just aggravating. Neither one of you could really keep pace with what I'm up to so what the hell difference does it make. Both of you would probably have nothing to do with me if you knew me to the fullest possible extent so can we please all just get along by the terms of the established sensibilities of isness? Probably not.
I have got too much to run from to ever fully open to either so what can I possibly be expected to do when I can't even begin to describe what can be reasonably expected of myself. How can you love anybody when you don't love yourself? Well, it's kind of easy if you try. Just kidding, it's impossible, but still- what the hell. Are my choices really to go hang with the one person who always lies to me and makes assertions they can never back up and keep trusting in them and keep getting screwed up worse than I am, or is it to drag myself across town to hang with someone who has no idea who i actually am and will be put in a weird situation when he does. I guess the one thing I do have to consider is that I shouldn't presume to know people I - don't know. Simply stated. So maybe it's worth a shot. Maybe it's time to bend the orbit a little bit and come in close enough to lay some mathematics and calculus to a potential short rendezvous. Haven't used that word in a while either. Generally reserved for important things. Like scenes from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Elegant things. My staff of scientists are not elegant or important. Their idea of a delicate landing is detonating on the surface. They didn't do so well in school, I guess. If shithead A gets a shot, I think it stands to reason that potential decent friend B should also get a shot to play the table and fit into my arbitrary and ridiculous set of rules for friendship that, I swear these people do exist, few people can seem to fit into. I miss those people a ton. I guess the stupid thing is they'll never know who they are. If they did know they probably wouldn't care what it is they accomplished. Alright I'm gonna pipe this down as I'm making myself slightly depressed. And by slightly I mean massively. It's been a tough week. Sorry I've been away.
Well anyway, thought I would drop off some graphics. Because what is a road trip without photographs. There are things that live when you sleep that do not sleep as you are living. They wait for you to come on back. Come on home. One more time. You'll not leave this place alive, but you can try. You can try for old time's sake. We'll give you a fit and running start. See how far you go before we are there, sucking the lengths of string of your calf through your heel like fine noodles through a straw of shredded skin. Don't stay up too late.
///The Black Angels - "Mission District" You can sometimes hear it. You can always feel it when it comes beating on your heart like a death threat. You will write or you will suffer in ways you did not know existed, but will become intimately familiar with. And you do it. And you duck away into the grass and you listen to it beat it's way farther along and then it's gone and you can't really tell if you saved yourself or if maybe the entire thing is coming around again and this time at an angle you did not know was possible and maybe you'll hear it. You'll certainly feel it closing in, but how much less warning will there be next time?
Success in the face of nightmares.
Actual nightmares. Actual moments of the involuntary bridging of dream and real states. Of seeing what is there and what isn't or at least shouldn't be in the same instance of breathing and having to close my eyes and repeat after me "you are safe"s. If repeating is believing. I guess that's one of the reasons why I don't believe in heaven or hell. I've seen them both and they're not what anyone says they are supposed to be. I've been to the end of the world and it's nothing like what we've been told is it? Few things ever are. If I smell a little like death it's because we've been bedfellows on and off recently. A flirting couple that knows neither is really committed to anything serious, but when is play ever except when it is?So we've pumped and ground and made and done and life has gone on for less and worse and better and blood. The organs still pump and the sound still comes in fountains and so I continue. I continue on in the backwoods and little leaps to foregrounds until, I have come to convince myself recently in the train of reasons to reason in, the day when my life transposes from discrete experiences into a singular piece of poesis. A perfect and sustainable solid state. And then I'll happily call it a day. Not in a bid for immortality because immortality is only to memory and human memory will never break the solid state barrier (so even immortals are no more than incarnates), but in a bid to have become. I suppose there are probably many things I am becoming, but to have definitively crossed that boundary of becomingness to the hell pots of posterity is a thing worth aspiring to if there is anything worth shooting for. Call the stars, or the moon, or glory, or whatever. Incarnations of the become be damned. To have is to have in some way shape and form held in hands so often dropped in emptiness. To have gripped, and not let go even in whatever can be termed death.
There have been joys in the backwoods. Joys tasted rarely in and the travel has been hard and light, but worth it in some ways and a waste in many others. And I don't know why I am trying to see this in two points of view. Oh wait I do! Friendship tug of war. You can pick your nose. You can pick your friends. But you can't favor one person over the other though they both know you in pathetically thin terms. What the hell does it matter, you idiots? I mean really. Can we all just grow up a good four years and call this bullshit a day. Not to rant on so silly a topic. It's just aggravating. Neither one of you could really keep pace with what I'm up to so what the hell difference does it make. Both of you would probably have nothing to do with me if you knew me to the fullest possible extent so can we please all just get along by the terms of the established sensibilities of isness? Probably not.
I have got too much to run from to ever fully open to either so what can I possibly be expected to do when I can't even begin to describe what can be reasonably expected of myself. How can you love anybody when you don't love yourself? Well, it's kind of easy if you try. Just kidding, it's impossible, but still- what the hell. Are my choices really to go hang with the one person who always lies to me and makes assertions they can never back up and keep trusting in them and keep getting screwed up worse than I am, or is it to drag myself across town to hang with someone who has no idea who i actually am and will be put in a weird situation when he does. I guess the one thing I do have to consider is that I shouldn't presume to know people I - don't know. Simply stated. So maybe it's worth a shot. Maybe it's time to bend the orbit a little bit and come in close enough to lay some mathematics and calculus to a potential short rendezvous. Haven't used that word in a while either. Generally reserved for important things. Like scenes from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Elegant things. My staff of scientists are not elegant or important. Their idea of a delicate landing is detonating on the surface. They didn't do so well in school, I guess. If shithead A gets a shot, I think it stands to reason that potential decent friend B should also get a shot to play the table and fit into my arbitrary and ridiculous set of rules for friendship that, I swear these people do exist, few people can seem to fit into. I miss those people a ton. I guess the stupid thing is they'll never know who they are. If they did know they probably wouldn't care what it is they accomplished. Alright I'm gonna pipe this down as I'm making myself slightly depressed. And by slightly I mean massively. It's been a tough week. Sorry I've been away.
Well anyway, thought I would drop off some graphics. Because what is a road trip without photographs. There are things that live when you sleep that do not sleep as you are living. They wait for you to come on back. Come on home. One more time. You'll not leave this place alive, but you can try. You can try for old time's sake. We'll give you a fit and running start. See how far you go before we are there, sucking the lengths of string of your calf through your heel like fine noodles through a straw of shredded skin. Don't stay up too late.
///The Black Angels - "Mission District" You can sometimes hear it. You can always feel it when it comes beating on your heart like a death threat. You will write or you will suffer in ways you did not know existed, but will become intimately familiar with. And you do it. And you duck away into the grass and you listen to it beat it's way farther along and then it's gone and you can't really tell if you saved yourself or if maybe the entire thing is coming around again and this time at an angle you did not know was possible and maybe you'll hear it. You'll certainly feel it closing in, but how much less warning will there be next time?
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