The Changed Landscape of Warfare, Want, and The Spacefarer's Bible

I won't say I will not continue to try to make myself happy.  That's foolish and, honestly, a little bit petty and a lot of bit lie no matter whose mouth it comes out of.  I do and will (most of the time).  Sometimes I completely screw it up and ruin everything for all of us.  Life is about that sometimes.  Let's begin and find our ending and hopefully put a bow on it so we can assault the next stronghold.

We're a consumer organism.  Advancement, the byproduct.  That's easy to yank out of the air because it's been floating around there since I was a kid.  "We don't make stuff anymore!"  "We export everything!"  "We import everything!" And on and on and on.  It's very easy to get lost in macro markets and who owes whom X amount of ... have you ever watched a history show?

A show where they talk about ancient constructs or modern constructs or ancient economies or modern economies or ancient populations or modern populations?  Have you ever watched a speculative show where they talk about what could be at X time in Y space  if A and B happen or if C continues to happen or if D changes to a ridiculous extent and ceases to be or metastasizes into some sort of creature all it's own?  Have you ever watched the news or an informative program or a program garbed as one that is vested in speculation or sometimes vested in pure facts?

If you have not laughed, laugh the next time you watch one.  Not because what they're saying is true or false.  Not because what they're saying could be true or could be false and massive death or infinite life may be just around the corner.  Not because what they're saying is a ridiculous analogy or because what they are saying makes no damn sense at all given what we know about the world, given how long human beings have been recording information and analyzing information and the fact that even the people that were completely off were still right by a few degrees and it's largely been a war of precision and infomatic attrition.

Laugh because it is hilarious when they tell you the heart pumps enough blood in your life time to fill an olympic swimming pool.  Okay, that's not that outlandish.  Bad example.  Are you laughing yet?  Laugh when they tell you the sun produces as much energy as  two billion nuclear power plants over the course of their lifetimes in a single second.  Laugh when you hear the Hoover dam can power 900,000 refrigerators for ten days with one day of it's output.  Laugh when you know a bullet packs the same punch from a .357 as  200 horse power driving a single 30 cm diesel piston pushing a ten mile rod one inch into glacial ice.  The scales get insanely arbitrary, but sound impressive.

We're not a consumer organism.  Advancement is the byproduct.   Want does make excellent bedfellows, though.  Maybe it's just the people I know, or choose to know and the ones I choose to not associate with.   Yeah there are a lot of consumers.  It gets me down.  Who doesn't it get down?  Silly question.  Programs and users.  It get's depressing.  On this little operating system.  It does.  I'm not going to lie and even if I did, you'd know.  Consumers give the rest of 'Merica a bad rap.

Where you going to put it?  What's your percentage of consumer to user?  Well, if you must know and you must because we must... 30% - 70%.  The thirty percent gets all the play though.  Eventually the 70% become dull eyed.  The economy does love the 30%, but some of them, many of them keep the seventy employed or at least in cummed.

The other best two words in the English language?  You guessed it: "I'm cumming."  And no, that's still not three words.  Niggler.  I'm on to you and your detail oriented cant.

I came to this point what for was for this: (partly to make a cup of tea and nod off to sleep knowing my books are clear for whatever's next but also the following point) driving through an upscale neighborhood, enclave, everything was out for display in the mid afternoon light.  Every garage had a car parked outside of it.  Every garage was parked outside of high square footage whatever you want to call it, shoulder to shoulder with the one beside it.  Parked outside each was a fit human being.  Parked beside them was a fit child or bicycle or motor bike or domesticated animal.  Parked beside them was a very well attended tree, beside it a clean swatch of cement and occasionally a glittering sign or hydrant.  Parked between them was a fine manhole cover.  All of it a strange display.

All of it begging to be wanted.  Not to be contrarian. All of it unreal.  All of it horribly unreal.  All of it violently upsetting at it's worst and unsettling at it's least.  Who want's to live in a gift shop?  Do you really want to know those people?  Do you really want perfect?  Do you really want to consume that violently?  By all means, take care.  Take care and maintain and perform and do not give in to kipple.  Kipple only breeds more kipple.  It's disconcerting.

Yes, my kingdom is of sand and tied together bits, but they're well taken care of bits.  That, I do not mind.  When you want me to want yours because someone informed you that it is something to be wanted because someone taught them that it is something to be wanted it get's a little gross and wretchworthy.  It get's a little arson worthy because I wonder what you'd be without it.  If you'd still be you.  Ostentaaaaaaaaaaagh!  -tatious.   Fueling the economy with your fanned feathers.

My own hang up.  I know we're a country of makers, producers, writers, painters, builders, organizers, innovators, capturers, battlers, warriors, sportsmen and women, communicators, grifters, flippers, destroyers, and outright creators.  Why are the consumers the most flagrant?

I feel bad taking money sometimes.  Earned money.  I can't remember the last time I outright stole something from someone and didn't tell the person I stole it from what I did and why within 48 hours.  That doesn't count as stealing.  Especially when I give it in it's original state or better than I left it, right back to them.   It's aggravating.  I would be so much further ahead if I could steal better.  I would like to think.  I dunno if that would work out.  I don't believe so.  I feel bad taking money sometimes and I have to remember why I had to convert to pay for play a couple years ago.  Allow me to relate it briefly.  It's a very short, kind of funny story.

One day someone asked me to help them move furniture.  After another round of my long standing slug fest with who is and who is not a friend, I realized I could not continue to accept a hug and a few beers for my services.  The first time I did it, it was a great time and chummy and sexy and kind of fun to laugh and live and love and help build a new space.  It was fantastic.  It was downright fantastic.  The second time was the same.  The second, too.  The third, as well.  The four, you guessed it, the same.

A sensation began to creep in.  A very woeful sensation.  As I filled the gas tank and counted bruises and counted unvitations to normal events and counted invitations to things I could not attend for lack of fuel and bodily integrity it dawned on me that myself and my peers were no longer fighting the same war.

One of the great equalizers is college.  University.  Call it what you will.  We're all, more or less, fighting the same battles: studying, trying to eat, trying to have money on the side for fun, trying to pay for housing, trying to connect, (some of us) trying to work too, trying to keep up with family.  The war has changed and it took me years and years afterwards to identify the change.

I was doing too many favors.  Far too many favors.  Far far too many favors.  My peers and I are not in the same trenches anymore.  Not nearly as close as they were.  When they fire their rifle their elbow does not knock my shoulder.  When I miss a beat and drop my canteen it does not land near their boot heels at all.  When I want a smoke I cannot shout for one and catch their ear.  When I slop lunch at the mess hall they do not hear my fork and I do not hear theirs when they do the same.  We're on entirely different fronts altogether.  Not that we're not still friends, bunk mates, and lifers.  We're not all infantry anymore.

What I would and have done for them for free, nearly without asking, no longer applies.  Changing watch shifts means little to them and the world to me still.  An extra half apple means the world to me.  To them, it's something to throw in a pocket for later, ya know, just in case.  An extra magazine is the world to me.  To them, it's something to leave at home because they're operating beneath air superiority and, hell, the whole god damn squad will be resupplied at the push of a button if need be.  The war has changed for many and damn near all of them.  Not for me, though.  Not yet.  When a comm line has been shelled to hell I have to army crawl out to fix it, but they don't.

So now, when they ask me to, it's not a favor anymore.  It's mercenary work.  I hope it doesn't distance them.  I hope they understand.  If anything, I hope they are amazed I am only now realizing it.  Realizing that "smoke em if you got em" still applies, but now, if you ask me for one of mine I will ask you if you have my back when we get back home after we've shared the same trench because when you get shot you get to go back to the forward base and when I get shot, I get to sit down with a bowie knife and a lighter and a rag and a few minutes, and hope it doesn't get infected.

We're not nearly as close as we used to be.  I miss those days.  I miss loaning out clean dishes with the only caveat being you had to return them.  It's pay for play now.  On the big stuff.  The little stuff, as long as you can promise I will not get shot, I'll still do for you.  May not be the same war, but as long as your fighting, I'll fucking see what I can do and keep my own chatter to do or die please and thank yous.

Do not get offended if I flip out because you spent $250 dollars on a fucking chair.  A fucking chair!?  Are you kidding me?  Different theaters, I know, but that could have kept me and my unit supplied for two months.  Just saying, mickey.

A clean ship is a very happy ship.  Returning to kipple.  It really does breed.  Kipple makes it difficult to wake up.  More difficult even to think once you are awake.  It breeds violence too.  They never spoke about that part of it.  Kipple particles that flake off of the kipple and get breathed in and become a part of your insides and work their way into your nerves like heartworms.  The effect isn't the same as a neurological disorder that causes you to lose motor control and not like the effect (if they existed) of ingesting some sort of nanobot that takes over your musculature or even the effect (I would assume) of incorporating some sort of particulate life form or virus that forced signals.  Breathing in kipple dust provokes a profound loss of fidelity.  It is very important to keep a clean ship.

More importantly, in the vacuum of space, it is critically important to know what is wrong exactly, or as close to exactly, to diagnose the problem effectively and come to a solution quickly.  The margin for error is thin.  Part way out of the necessity for distance and part way out of the necessity for the fact that calls for support will take a lot of time to travel to the nearest waypoint or planet or orbital station that you happen to be near and an answer will not, regardless of distance, be able to be assumed available before your ships integrity has been completely compromised and you have to either float until you are picked up or hope the entire structure was lost somewhere close enough to another grave yard to piece something back together.  The bonus of being a ship builder and engineer by trade and everything else by passion.  It gets hairy sometimes.

Whatever planet I'm on, whatever city I occupy, whatever vessel I visit, whatever waypoint I frequent, when I talk about going home, I'm talking about my ship in orbit and my airlock with my key code and my pressure settings and o2 mix.  Sometimes I leave I leave the radio on because it's nice to come home to tunes banging through the tunnels.

Admittedly, we've learned to entertain ourselves.  There is no slight to the galaxy outside ourselves or Sol.  We just don't get along.  I remember the shit times and the good times dragging around the inner system.  It was pretty fun sometimes.  It was pretty hell too.  There's a disconnect.  I understand that.  I'm not going to stage a war against it.  The book taking precedence over the rest is the composition of the Spacefarer's Bible.  Not to be confused with the Hitchhiker's Guide.  It will be a handbook (so I have to keep it short) on how to not screw up when you are responsible for every single last little thing that happens to and for and within your ship.  It's taking some precedence.  Should I even be talking about it here?  I don't know how that shit works.  Let's stop cussing so fucking much.  How about that?

I woke up yesterday with the realization that since the cessation of communication with my birth parents life has been a very pax by comparison.  I had to remind myself not to forget new memories while running from the blacked out ones.  I was going willy nilly, erase that one, and that one,  n'at, n'at, n'at!!!!  I think everything that should be glass is finally glass and god damn I feel pretty nice about it.  I will not say mission accomplished just yet, but almost.  Not 'til they're dead and I can move freely.  Then, yes.  Camo theory.  The double fake.  The triple fake?  Off grid: suspicious.  On grid: innocuous.  Off grid:  hello.  On grid:  hello.  Who has the discipline for that?

Do not forget to look up.  Every summer I think about and pain over how hard summer is going to hurt me.  It's hot.  It's bright.  It's humid.  The days are long.  The nights are too short.  The world is busy.  Kids run everywhere screaming.  Teens judge you and you want to knock them down with a well placed baseball to the teeth and then beat their ears in with rocks for having the nerve to say shit to someone they do not fucking know.  And the little children run around bewildered at how green everything can be and you want to spin around in circles with them too and pick flowers and the littler ones just scream and cry because they're too hot and the pool is too cold and you want to scream too because it seems like good fun and one hell of a way to get to a good nap for a few hours until it cools off enough to sleep alright if you want to or run around alright if you want until you're too tired to run around and then take a good long nap under the stars or maybe go fishing and start a fire and find some dumb ass tweens to beat to death with a rock you found at the river while they're getting high and being rebels in the woods behind your fishing spot or find the guy who lives there each year or open your mouth in the 10 A.M. sun shower and just look up at the sky and the thunderheads and the moon all up at once and see lightning at ten in the morning.  Don't forget to look up when the air is hot and thin at night and the stars come clearer.

I know I'm not a write off or disposable.  Scratch that, I am disposable.  That I do know.  I'm okay with that.  The challenge is making yourself indisposable for stretches.  Making yourself available.  Laying out the factory floor.  Not changing the blueprint for the map's sake, but changing it because you've changed.  Because we've changed.  "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR" shaken by the collar.  I work for you.  Don't you remember me?  I came in during operation sea hawk midway through mission wolf noose.  You don't remember me?

Save things for a good time.  Save nothing for a perfect time.




///Django Django - "Zumm Zumm"    sometimes you yawn and realize you still have 8 bit roots

You've Got Some Work To Do, Kiddo

I know.  I feel like a fire wrapped in people skin.  I borrowed some money to buy toothpaste the other day.  Something felt wrong about it.  Something felt wrong about the whole thing.  Memories came pushing back the days afterward.  Things I pushed away only recently and some things I pushed away years ago.

Cut out to Pittsburgh and a boy walking down Main street.  I put the last of my money into buying a thermocouple for a water heater I was working on and I remembered the dream I had that morning of my teeth coming apart.  My molar broke into quarters and caramel came spurting out in little bits of spray.  When I ran my tongue across my front sheets, little white sheets came off and got stuck between them and I would tongue the stuck bits, but rub more off and then all that were left were pink and gray nerve ends and I couldn't close my mouth because the pain was incredible and the caramel made me salivate and it poured down my shirt front in a glistening tan and foaming mess and the heat of it and the wind blowing through the cave of my mouth burned the nerves until my eyes could only see white static and glimmer stars of blood cells pounding through the veins inside them.  I remembered that dream and knew I had to find a way to buy some toothpaste.

The other memory that came back was of my dad screaming at me through my old cellular and the ear piece cracking.  It was a train of threats and I remember the strength in my knees barely hanging on through it all.  I was to change schools immediately or face the violent consequences he would bring my way for my poor performance.  The second part of the memory was a part I hadn't recalled or even connected until that day.  The school he was demanding I transfer to was one of the schools I originally pointed out and highlighted that I wanted to apply to in the first place two years before.  It crashed in on me then.  I brought them the list and they had to approve it because it was their money paying for the application fees and this one and that one got shot down and crossed off and shot down for one reason or another in their minds and based on that stupid ass college rankings book that was two years out of date at the time anyway (thanks public library).  Remembering it, I simply shook my head.  Wastes of brain space.  Why?  That still pops like a flickered light as the power grid compensates for outages miles away beneath a storm already come and gone from where you sit beneath its glow.

The air vibrates for a moment.  The walls flex under the sudden pressure and creak and groan.  Nothing happens.  Everything doesn't fall apart.  A tear came down my cheek from behind my sunglasses and I let it go.  It was hot as hell and feeling it evaporate felt wonderful and cooled my skin.  "Why?"  I don't know.  I never will.

There was a period of intense plasticity, three, maybe four, days long.  Precipitated by several days of a slow decline in mental activity.  It made me wonder if that was what peace felt like.  Feeling like internal and external pressures and atmospheres were perfectly attuned.  Like striking one face produced the right and singular sound on the other side instead of the rattle tin of snare wires.  Confusion began to set.  "What is happening to me?"  And then it began to break apart like lake shore ice not quite in rhythm with the season turn at sunrise.  Interference.  I couldn't tell if I was happy or simply depressed to a blank slate or so far disengaged from my head that I could essentially remote pilot this body thing through what it was supposed to do and could dock it at my home address and step outside of the cockpit into dreams.

I don't know what it was, but in greater efforts (always greater and greater as time runs on) to manage myself I will add those sign posts to my warning lights.  I don't know what they mean or what they signify, but it was disconcerting and disorienting a series of days as I've seen in a small while.

Spoke to a friend who is dating someone else now and I couldn't help, but wonder how the new was better than old.  I gave it a further thought and it was tremendously obvious.  I imagined the group photos and holiday visits and it was tremendously obvious.  One of these things is not wired like the others.  And now it is.  I don't think, in fact I am near certain there is ... I want to date again.  Do I hate companionship?  No, absolutely not.  Do you hate companionship?  Yes, what kind of stupid question is that!  I can't get through two consecutive hours of the day without thinking about breaking a slit into someone's skull with the blunt back end of a hatchet and shoving my penis into the slippery fat.  How terrific would that be.  I think about killing myself every day.  I also think about living in the deep north forest ridges every day, so you sort it out.

Choke it down and hold it there.  Inside is still a hidden place.  A territory I am still investigating and mapping.  Inside me I am snapping my fingers in front of my nose and patting my cheek and whispering "hey buddy, you in there?  Can you hear me?  Come on back.  Come on back, kiddo.  Stay with me, okay?"  Things blear in and out and then stick for a while.  I cannot live with other people for lengths of time.  Not yet anyway.  Still a lot of work to do.  Inside is still a deeply hidden place and for now it has to stay that way.

Walking down that street along the sidewalk and nodding to the old men on their way to fish and spend bits of their pensions at the hole in the wall and smiling at the kids on their little bikes and the folks my age pushing strollers and dogs my little heart fell out of my chest and hit the pavement and rolled.  It rolled like a tin can going tink a clink a link and as it went the brass compression ring broke off like a snapped rubber band.  Flex tubing went one way, an iron washer went another.  A welded chamber came loose and rolled in the chopped way a cube will into the gutter.  An adapter slipped off its fitting.  More brass tubing came loose and popped up into the air in front of me and a glass stator shattered.  Filaments flew into the grass and oil splashed into the cracks of the cement.  Rivets popped loose and sheet aluminum peeled away.  My heart rolled and rolled until it was a hex nut spinning like a coin until laid flat between the lines of the crosswalk yards away.

I saw myself running and dropping to knees to scoop this piece and that spring and that cam and this bolt and that shard and that curly Q of pipe and with fingernails prying bits of staple and brad from pebbles at the lip of storm drain.  What's missing?  Haul it all home in the hammock of your T-shirt mid drift.  Drop it all on the work bench and goggle up.  Sparks chip into the air.  The hammer, the drill, the saw, the shears.  Open up the drawers of the chest of saved scrap.  What's missing?  What's missing?!  Male to male adapters.  Counter sinking threads.  Punch sheared nails back through.  More sparks.  More acetylene.  More current.  Peen hammer curves.  Female to male adapter.  Hand tighten.  Air hammer drill rusted bolt tops.  Replace tubes.  Connect battery leads.  Respool springs.  Adjust valve timing.

The whole thing made me laugh.  The whole thing brought to mind the hilariousness of the notion of sewing your heart back together.  The whole notion of "look into your heart."  The whole highschool nonsense of the swooning "sewing my heart back together."  Apparently distance is still a necessary thing.  I don't know that it is something that can be outgrown or phasic.  Why did you cut up your face?  Because, in part, I'm tired of trying to explain it.  Remember that Popular Mechanics gloss issue from way back when nuclear energy was front page everything and there was an extensive design study to find a way to warn future men about areas where spent materials were stored in a way that could cross all future language barriers and changes regardless of origin?  I do and the whole thing makes me laugh.

The tension between this backwards country and where I want to be pulls apart my consciousness.  Are you supposed to be upset with the people that don't know it any other way?  Is there a right to be upset?  Wrong question entirely.  You can feel whatever you want to feel.  By being human and conscious at all you are given the right to emotion.  Hate has external vectors to it, though.  That's the difference.  The very important difference.  We've got some work to do, I know.  Everything has been heavily jammed up.  Between questions sparking forest fires of speculation and what ifs and more questions and dead zones and containment and management there has not been a lot of processing power left over to engage with society and decoupling is threatening and I can feel it climbing through the insides of my bones and bleeding into the streams inside my muscles and stable air is gaining turbulence and I am trying to correct.  I won't be privilege to some phases of interactions until the work is done and I don't know when that will be.  Trust sweetheart, I know.  Before you can get back to creating, we've got some work to do.  Goddamnit!  I know!!!!


///Flying Lotus - "Orbit Brazil"    Still building my new ship.  Still collecting parts at the orbital yard.  Dreaming about the empty space between stars and nothing more than the tick and whir of life support systems to nod my head to sleep to.