You realize you are pushing your cycles and cams and pistons and engraved toothsets of finished brass over to force change so the person who loves you can see your moss and lichened belly clearly.
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 bravery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bravery. Show all posts
7/12/19
6/28/18
Driving Stick (Fairlady 280Z)
I think my pops saw a spark in me and didn't know how to feed it.
I think, faced with something completely different from his first two children, he hit a language wall. This one has the design eye, this second one does too. "This third one has an eye, but why is it obsessed with physics and manipulating form and space instead of creating on a canvas?"
Learning to drive stick was a massive challenge. Enter the F-250 1996 V8 5.8 Liters of displacement in a breath. Stupid torque and no horsepower.
The thing was, you never knew if he was taking you for a ride to explain to you why you had a beating coming or not. Sometimes it was Billy Graham, sometimes it was the guy who always had that quotable audio clip at the beginning of his radio show "lay up treasure in heaven" (it always made me laugh inside thinking about how does suffering now get you a v.i.p. pass to heaven and how dumb it felt watching years spin by and thinking 'the forsaken are now!')
There was this one day, he may have been driving me to work at Six Flags Great America or some shit, but we were in his 280 ZX that myself, my younger sister, and I don't remember if my older brother was there or not, but we washed and detailed that car. Cleaned from the floor mats to the spots where you put your fingers on the sill to push the passenger door open to the stock rims and the corners of the chrome trim around the rear window to the toe kicks along the foot of the door sills.
I can't remember what day it was specifically; Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday. We drove.
I may have missed the bus for the umpteenth time and he happened to be off work that day and heard me come back into the house absentee.
At any rate, what I do remember was this:
Before I took on driving school and getting licensed proper, he took his hand off of the stick shift and began calling out gears to me. I didn't know what to do. In the empty space he would shift and calmly call the next position the shiftknob was supposed to be in.
I didn't know he was speaking to me. I thought it was another one of his exercises to keep me on my toes so I would always be aware of my surroundings. One of those "what street is that?!" spot quizzes. I think it may have been one of his best attempts to connect with his kid who was not into the "arts" as he was.
In fear, I placed my hand on the shift knob with my fingers spread so I could see the 1 2 3 4 5 R grid, do not break his possession. Be good. If you do good, he will not be disappointed.
Understanding that he wanted me to move the shifter while he worked the pedals and the wheel, I was incredibly hesitant. Before that day I'd only read about it in magazines, Road & Track and Car & Driver and Model Builder and the RC aero rag on my stints at the library in the periodicals instead of going to school when I missed the bus because you can't get to Greenbelt from Bowie without missing have the damn day anyway, might as well go to the library on your bike and make sure you're back home before he is and no one is the wiser (fuck it and fuck Eleanor Roosevelt H.S.).
I shifted with my left hand for close to five minutes before he took over again. And that was my first taste. The second was driving school in a powder blue Chevy Cavalier with a stick that was way too long for the shitbox that it was. And the standard minted was the Falcor that I drive now. That was when I learned and am still learning.
Every time that I hold that stick, my dad does cross my mind. My dad and where my love affair with the Fairlady line of sporting two doors began. The way that he would cut through traffic and move through the shift gates was impressive to my young mind. He wouldn't be able to drive my F250 for shit and it makes me laugh. It makes me laugh because if you can pilot a junker with finesse, imagine what you can do with a coupe.
There are times I wish he'd taken the leap to see me outside of the framework of his knowns. We have much in common. I would love to be able to speak to someone who understands the rage and fire inside as much as he knows it and hides it and clamps it and eats it and focuses it and the ways it eats you alive.
I'm never going back to him. He is as welcome in me as he has said I am in him. Big ol' bag o' nopes and it does make me laugh to understand that happy endings are for stories- not history. Consolation prize: he tried and it planted a seed and a passion for Nissan coupes and the design philosophy throughout their years.
My artistes' eye is still there. The lines are classical music if you see its shape. When you think salon coupe GT as comfortable cutting into the wind as whipping around corners, steady as the shaft of an arrow and fickle if you tease it, from its stance to the cut of the A pillar to busy tail lights and sloop nose that can accommodate aero headlight glass or no.
I think back to that day and how I must have looked in the passenger seat with frightened eyes looking at the digital gauges and being thrilled and awed and stupefied at a tachometer that wasn't a dial. In the years following, I was disgusted at the tach that wasn't analog. And then I was enlightened to the tune that dashboards can be removed and replaced with whatever the pilot finds most useful. And then I went away to college and the car disappeared and I remembered that he didn't actually give a shit. For a moment I was his son and for a moment he was a dad. And then he was confused as to why I was upset that the car I cleaned for the better part of a year and got to touch and fell in love with was shipped off for who knows what.
It just... it pains me... he has no idea who I am. He had no idea then and he has no idea now.
I used to think he was just crazy. I still do. I am. I am a functioning adult from his loins so.... it kinda fucking follows. Also why I'm not waiting in line for progeny. Some things should stop. Accidents don't happen without a breath of agency and this time around I can be the eyes he didn't have then. The discerning he absolved himself of.
Do I want to make him pay for what he's cost me: of course. Can I? Yes. Will I? No. He will die in his bubble on his own time. My life is worth more than enlightening a grown child, talented though it may be. Do not attempt to turn a mountain, it will return to the sea on its own time.
Driving the truck, blasting music that is foreign to his circuits, with the windows down... ...he could have enjoyed himself and his child. Us both now in a solitary confinement. I hope he is pushing a standard, but we all know "it ain't that damn likely." With age also goes the tooth for sporting.
///Noname - (Diddy Bop) ~ driving music
I think, faced with something completely different from his first two children, he hit a language wall. This one has the design eye, this second one does too. "This third one has an eye, but why is it obsessed with physics and manipulating form and space instead of creating on a canvas?"
Learning to drive stick was a massive challenge. Enter the F-250 1996 V8 5.8 Liters of displacement in a breath. Stupid torque and no horsepower.
The thing was, you never knew if he was taking you for a ride to explain to you why you had a beating coming or not. Sometimes it was Billy Graham, sometimes it was the guy who always had that quotable audio clip at the beginning of his radio show "lay up treasure in heaven" (it always made me laugh inside thinking about how does suffering now get you a v.i.p. pass to heaven and how dumb it felt watching years spin by and thinking 'the forsaken are now!')
There was this one day, he may have been driving me to work at Six Flags Great America or some shit, but we were in his 280 ZX that myself, my younger sister, and I don't remember if my older brother was there or not, but we washed and detailed that car. Cleaned from the floor mats to the spots where you put your fingers on the sill to push the passenger door open to the stock rims and the corners of the chrome trim around the rear window to the toe kicks along the foot of the door sills.
I can't remember what day it was specifically; Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday. We drove.
I may have missed the bus for the umpteenth time and he happened to be off work that day and heard me come back into the house absentee.
At any rate, what I do remember was this:
Before I took on driving school and getting licensed proper, he took his hand off of the stick shift and began calling out gears to me. I didn't know what to do. In the empty space he would shift and calmly call the next position the shiftknob was supposed to be in.
I didn't know he was speaking to me. I thought it was another one of his exercises to keep me on my toes so I would always be aware of my surroundings. One of those "what street is that?!" spot quizzes. I think it may have been one of his best attempts to connect with his kid who was not into the "arts" as he was.
In fear, I placed my hand on the shift knob with my fingers spread so I could see the 1 2 3 4 5 R grid, do not break his possession. Be good. If you do good, he will not be disappointed.
Understanding that he wanted me to move the shifter while he worked the pedals and the wheel, I was incredibly hesitant. Before that day I'd only read about it in magazines, Road & Track and Car & Driver and Model Builder and the RC aero rag on my stints at the library in the periodicals instead of going to school when I missed the bus because you can't get to Greenbelt from Bowie without missing have the damn day anyway, might as well go to the library on your bike and make sure you're back home before he is and no one is the wiser (fuck it and fuck Eleanor Roosevelt H.S.).
I shifted with my left hand for close to five minutes before he took over again. And that was my first taste. The second was driving school in a powder blue Chevy Cavalier with a stick that was way too long for the shitbox that it was. And the standard minted was the Falcor that I drive now. That was when I learned and am still learning.
Every time that I hold that stick, my dad does cross my mind. My dad and where my love affair with the Fairlady line of sporting two doors began. The way that he would cut through traffic and move through the shift gates was impressive to my young mind. He wouldn't be able to drive my F250 for shit and it makes me laugh. It makes me laugh because if you can pilot a junker with finesse, imagine what you can do with a coupe.
There are times I wish he'd taken the leap to see me outside of the framework of his knowns. We have much in common. I would love to be able to speak to someone who understands the rage and fire inside as much as he knows it and hides it and clamps it and eats it and focuses it and the ways it eats you alive.
I'm never going back to him. He is as welcome in me as he has said I am in him. Big ol' bag o' nopes and it does make me laugh to understand that happy endings are for stories- not history. Consolation prize: he tried and it planted a seed and a passion for Nissan coupes and the design philosophy throughout their years.
My artistes' eye is still there. The lines are classical music if you see its shape. When you think salon coupe GT as comfortable cutting into the wind as whipping around corners, steady as the shaft of an arrow and fickle if you tease it, from its stance to the cut of the A pillar to busy tail lights and sloop nose that can accommodate aero headlight glass or no.
I think back to that day and how I must have looked in the passenger seat with frightened eyes looking at the digital gauges and being thrilled and awed and stupefied at a tachometer that wasn't a dial. In the years following, I was disgusted at the tach that wasn't analog. And then I was enlightened to the tune that dashboards can be removed and replaced with whatever the pilot finds most useful. And then I went away to college and the car disappeared and I remembered that he didn't actually give a shit. For a moment I was his son and for a moment he was a dad. And then he was confused as to why I was upset that the car I cleaned for the better part of a year and got to touch and fell in love with was shipped off for who knows what.
It just... it pains me... he has no idea who I am. He had no idea then and he has no idea now.
I used to think he was just crazy. I still do. I am. I am a functioning adult from his loins so.... it kinda fucking follows. Also why I'm not waiting in line for progeny. Some things should stop. Accidents don't happen without a breath of agency and this time around I can be the eyes he didn't have then. The discerning he absolved himself of.
Do I want to make him pay for what he's cost me: of course. Can I? Yes. Will I? No. He will die in his bubble on his own time. My life is worth more than enlightening a grown child, talented though it may be. Do not attempt to turn a mountain, it will return to the sea on its own time.
Driving the truck, blasting music that is foreign to his circuits, with the windows down... ...he could have enjoyed himself and his child. Us both now in a solitary confinement. I hope he is pushing a standard, but we all know "it ain't that damn likely." With age also goes the tooth for sporting.
///Noname - (Diddy Bop) ~ driving music
9/20/15
Nearing the End of the Third Week With a Fractured Jaw
With roughly 75% of the range of motion returning and constant pain beginning to subside for several hours at a time I feel pretty good about not going to a hospital on this one. Had there been a clear break in the bone I definitely would have gone to get whatever metal was needed implanted and get wired shut. Sometimes it baffles me how interconnected the bodies musculoskeletal system is and I am constantly reminded of how layered its concert is.
I didn't realize how many different ways and how often I shift my jaw and slide my teeth against each other when I am processing information or thinking through conversation or using my eyes and ears to take information in. Left, right, backwards, forwards, clenching some sections of teeth and relaxing others at the same time. Everything from pulling on a door knob, to swinging a hammer, to stretching, sitting down, standing up, turning my head, opening a mailbox, to driving a stick shift is tied to the muscle groups around the neck and jaw. Suddenly hundreds if not thousands of long memorized motions and activities that you could perform with blindfolded confidence are thrown into doubt. "Is this going to hurt?" "How will this affect the healing cracks?" "Will this pull apart soft scar tissues not yet stabilized and calcified into bone?" In the third week I am starting to regain some confidence.
For most of the first and second week the pain never felt less than a five or six on a 10 point scale throughout the day from waking to sleep. Depression became a huge factor. You are not sad because of what happened or how it happened. You become depressed because you cannot laugh without shooting pain. You become depressed because you cannot fall asleep because of sudden spikes of pain that cut through your over the counter pain killers like the barrel of a bat slamming into a light bulb tucked inside a pillow case. You become depressed because the muscles of your tongue and throat put enough pressure on the angle of your jaw, right on the side of the cracks, to make your eyes tear up when you swallow what you can. Everything you casually associated with happiness in sleep, smiling, laughter, rest, sustenance, is hot wired and reprogrammed to fear and ache and apprehension and anger and it weighs on you hour after hour after hour until depression becomes crushing.
In week three many self imposed restrictions are beginning to lift. I can get through the day and night without a single pain pill. The constant background ache has dropped to an occasionally noticeable two or three. When I press on the impact site gently, the bone doesn't flex and make crunching sounds. In the second week I successfully set the condyle back into its natural position. I couldn't help crying for several minutes afterward. It was important and necessary as my bite was out of alignment from front to back. Once I did that the grinding noise right at the ramus's tip finally stopped and when I bandaged my mouth closed with a thick elastic wrap my teeth sat almost as evenly as they did before. I think that dislocation is probably what saved the angle from snapping clean through.
I can almost yawn again. I still have to brace my chin when I sneeze. At the end of this third week I can chew very soft pasta and cheese and drink thick soup relatively pain free, but I am taking it extremely carefully to be absolutely certain I don't retard the healing process or get too enthusiastic about my food choices. It felt so good to finally be able to scrub my beard again without fireballs of pain shooting through my face. Nothing changes the complexion of the day like starting it off with a good deep beard scrubbing, good god I missed that.
All of my anger and hatred toward the people that did this to me is gone. What really makes me happy is not caring what happens to them. Being able to let their aggression go and not have a second thought about retaliation or feeling like I'm owed something or that I owe them something. The transaction is over. What matters is what you decide to do next for yourself. What matters is that lying in bed your jaw doesn't sag and fall to one side like a screen door with one hinge. What matters is that you survived and you can physically laugh again without fear of splitting bone apart from the spirited ways in which you normally like to jump on life's comedy.
I still cannot laugh too much or the pain piles up and grows to wince worthy proportions and twists my face sour. I still can't make some facial expressions. I still can't sustain hours of conversation, but then again I was never particularly great at making conversation as much as listening to it, but it is still something to get used to realizing that I can only say so many words before I have to rest and close my mouth tightly. I still can't clench my teeth in consternation. I can feel some lingering instability and pain in the healing dislocated joint when I run up or down stairs or shake or nod my head too vigorously. Hopefully these things and instabilities will pass as week four progresses.
I know there is potential for some level of permanent pain in the joint since it was not reset by a professional and was not wired shut to ensure speedy and complete recovery of the fracture site. There were evenings when I slept and would wake with a start in the second week so abrupt I could feel the joint strain and hear the angle click and flex. There was a day when I woke to a spider landing on my cheek and a slapped at my face and new before the pain even registered that I screwed up big time in doing so and set myself back all of whatever healing occurred through that day. Common sense tells me this too, as my back injury from two and a half years ago still bothers me from time to time and sends numb sensations down my right buttock and thigh if the barometric pressure is too far off from my body.
Some of the nerves likely died as well as there is noticeably diminished feeling along the left side of my jaw bone. I expected as much. I expected the worst, but progress has been good and some levity has returned to day to day life. I am not out of the woods yet. Two to three more weeks to go before I'll try to bite into a piece of meat that hasn't been blended to the consistency of mashed potatoes. At least three more weeks before I try to bite into an apple. I think I may attempt a sandwich next Saturday... a grilled cheese or peanut butter and jelly. My tummy can't wait to have fun with food with my mouth.
The food has been spectacular. At first, the only things I could eat were nutrient shakes and very thin liquids for the first two weeks. Very finely blended and extremely water heavy meals put through the blender and then only a half cup or so every few hours because the pain was too intense to do much more than that. Since then the horizons have begun to grow and meals become more intricate. Right now it's an assortment of pastes and soups of varying composition, from fresh bell peppers ground into bacon pate with rice and spinach soups drizzled all around to sweet bean mashed potatoes with soft sharp chedder shredded over the top alongside peas carrot beef mash and oreos in a little cup on the side blended into a desert syrup. Nothing makes lunch quite like peanut butter and jelly paste beside a cup of milk. It has been a little bit of a challenge and through the first two weeks I lost 25 pounds, but as time is getting on, some of the weight has come back.
I still feel weak from not being able to work out or move much, but some strength has returned and will only increase as the healing progresses. At the end of week 3, I feel alright about the future. There's a decent chance I will be close to what I was before my jaw was fractured and dislocated. I know I will never be the same, but I am alive and can continue and I am happy for that. Happy with that. It kind of mirrors my mental problems that I deal with and constantly manage without medicine. I know I will never be better than I was, but I can try to make sure I don't completely unravel and if I can be close to as sound as I was the day before then I have done the best I can.
///Deptford Goth - "Objects Objects" the bass filled silence between the searing walls of the chaotic
I didn't realize how many different ways and how often I shift my jaw and slide my teeth against each other when I am processing information or thinking through conversation or using my eyes and ears to take information in. Left, right, backwards, forwards, clenching some sections of teeth and relaxing others at the same time. Everything from pulling on a door knob, to swinging a hammer, to stretching, sitting down, standing up, turning my head, opening a mailbox, to driving a stick shift is tied to the muscle groups around the neck and jaw. Suddenly hundreds if not thousands of long memorized motions and activities that you could perform with blindfolded confidence are thrown into doubt. "Is this going to hurt?" "How will this affect the healing cracks?" "Will this pull apart soft scar tissues not yet stabilized and calcified into bone?" In the third week I am starting to regain some confidence.
For most of the first and second week the pain never felt less than a five or six on a 10 point scale throughout the day from waking to sleep. Depression became a huge factor. You are not sad because of what happened or how it happened. You become depressed because you cannot laugh without shooting pain. You become depressed because you cannot fall asleep because of sudden spikes of pain that cut through your over the counter pain killers like the barrel of a bat slamming into a light bulb tucked inside a pillow case. You become depressed because the muscles of your tongue and throat put enough pressure on the angle of your jaw, right on the side of the cracks, to make your eyes tear up when you swallow what you can. Everything you casually associated with happiness in sleep, smiling, laughter, rest, sustenance, is hot wired and reprogrammed to fear and ache and apprehension and anger and it weighs on you hour after hour after hour until depression becomes crushing.
In week three many self imposed restrictions are beginning to lift. I can get through the day and night without a single pain pill. The constant background ache has dropped to an occasionally noticeable two or three. When I press on the impact site gently, the bone doesn't flex and make crunching sounds. In the second week I successfully set the condyle back into its natural position. I couldn't help crying for several minutes afterward. It was important and necessary as my bite was out of alignment from front to back. Once I did that the grinding noise right at the ramus's tip finally stopped and when I bandaged my mouth closed with a thick elastic wrap my teeth sat almost as evenly as they did before. I think that dislocation is probably what saved the angle from snapping clean through.
I can almost yawn again. I still have to brace my chin when I sneeze. At the end of this third week I can chew very soft pasta and cheese and drink thick soup relatively pain free, but I am taking it extremely carefully to be absolutely certain I don't retard the healing process or get too enthusiastic about my food choices. It felt so good to finally be able to scrub my beard again without fireballs of pain shooting through my face. Nothing changes the complexion of the day like starting it off with a good deep beard scrubbing, good god I missed that.
All of my anger and hatred toward the people that did this to me is gone. What really makes me happy is not caring what happens to them. Being able to let their aggression go and not have a second thought about retaliation or feeling like I'm owed something or that I owe them something. The transaction is over. What matters is what you decide to do next for yourself. What matters is that lying in bed your jaw doesn't sag and fall to one side like a screen door with one hinge. What matters is that you survived and you can physically laugh again without fear of splitting bone apart from the spirited ways in which you normally like to jump on life's comedy.
I still cannot laugh too much or the pain piles up and grows to wince worthy proportions and twists my face sour. I still can't make some facial expressions. I still can't sustain hours of conversation, but then again I was never particularly great at making conversation as much as listening to it, but it is still something to get used to realizing that I can only say so many words before I have to rest and close my mouth tightly. I still can't clench my teeth in consternation. I can feel some lingering instability and pain in the healing dislocated joint when I run up or down stairs or shake or nod my head too vigorously. Hopefully these things and instabilities will pass as week four progresses.
I know there is potential for some level of permanent pain in the joint since it was not reset by a professional and was not wired shut to ensure speedy and complete recovery of the fracture site. There were evenings when I slept and would wake with a start in the second week so abrupt I could feel the joint strain and hear the angle click and flex. There was a day when I woke to a spider landing on my cheek and a slapped at my face and new before the pain even registered that I screwed up big time in doing so and set myself back all of whatever healing occurred through that day. Common sense tells me this too, as my back injury from two and a half years ago still bothers me from time to time and sends numb sensations down my right buttock and thigh if the barometric pressure is too far off from my body.
Some of the nerves likely died as well as there is noticeably diminished feeling along the left side of my jaw bone. I expected as much. I expected the worst, but progress has been good and some levity has returned to day to day life. I am not out of the woods yet. Two to three more weeks to go before I'll try to bite into a piece of meat that hasn't been blended to the consistency of mashed potatoes. At least three more weeks before I try to bite into an apple. I think I may attempt a sandwich next Saturday... a grilled cheese or peanut butter and jelly. My tummy can't wait to have fun with food with my mouth.
The food has been spectacular. At first, the only things I could eat were nutrient shakes and very thin liquids for the first two weeks. Very finely blended and extremely water heavy meals put through the blender and then only a half cup or so every few hours because the pain was too intense to do much more than that. Since then the horizons have begun to grow and meals become more intricate. Right now it's an assortment of pastes and soups of varying composition, from fresh bell peppers ground into bacon pate with rice and spinach soups drizzled all around to sweet bean mashed potatoes with soft sharp chedder shredded over the top alongside peas carrot beef mash and oreos in a little cup on the side blended into a desert syrup. Nothing makes lunch quite like peanut butter and jelly paste beside a cup of milk. It has been a little bit of a challenge and through the first two weeks I lost 25 pounds, but as time is getting on, some of the weight has come back.
I still feel weak from not being able to work out or move much, but some strength has returned and will only increase as the healing progresses. At the end of week 3, I feel alright about the future. There's a decent chance I will be close to what I was before my jaw was fractured and dislocated. I know I will never be the same, but I am alive and can continue and I am happy for that. Happy with that. It kind of mirrors my mental problems that I deal with and constantly manage without medicine. I know I will never be better than I was, but I can try to make sure I don't completely unravel and if I can be close to as sound as I was the day before then I have done the best I can.
///Deptford Goth - "Objects Objects" the bass filled silence between the searing walls of the chaotic
10/17/14
Stresses and Stressors and Life On My Tardis
Life is stressful and full of stressors. That's not news to anyone. Time is money and money can be converted into time. The time it takes you to read this is time you could've spent making money. Or maybe it is time you are spending making money. Getting paid to read blogs. Or maybe getting paid to do something, anything, besides read blogs. Shame on you. The time it takes to write this could have been spent working as a dishwasher at Eat n' Park. Or could've been spent getting shopping carts at Kmart and trying not to completely lose it and burn the place to the ground.
Life has many different stresses to it. Some of those stresses are more intense than others. Just about all of those stresses demand some sort of relief, some sort of answer, and you can only ignore the bell for so long before they break in and tear you to pieces and sack your fortress and leaving nothing more than a few shreds of clothing and broken cookware and a few charred pages in their wake. You have to answer the bell. Eventually. It's critical to your survival.
The sad part is, in order to answer those stresses, you have to introduce stressors. Jobs, tasks, relationships, a stressor is anything you take on, voluntarily or not, to help alleviate the stresses, the ambient tensions of your existence, of being alive in a shared world. If the world were not shared. If the world were entirely yours, there would be a single bridge. A single leap from stresses to peace. A back and forth street, a channel, two lanes wide, and perfect. However, it is a shared world. There is no single leap and there never will be.
To achieve any sort of relief from stresses you must introduce or have already introduced stressors. Stressors which often times do introduce stresses of their own. The channel becomes layered denser and denser with lanes upon lanes of tasks and responses all in the name of achieving a peaceful state or a state of greater fluidity and less tension than what your own ambience, your own existence, demands by the fact that you are alive and breathing and as such will not remain so in an entropic universe. By the way, did you ever see Tropic Thunder? Hilarious movie. I highly recommend you watch it if you haven't seen it. Came out a while ago. Should be available for rental or something by now. Robert Downey Jr's in it. Tom Cruise to. Surprisingly good.
Anyway, it's truly mystifying sometimes when you step back and look at and draw the circuit board, the ridiculous interstate highway map of what you have to do just to feel good, normal, and whole, on this shared planet, in this country, in your state, in your city where you call yourself a citizen. It's troubling sometimes. From the time you are alone as a child until the time you die, so much of your energy will be spent on trying to return your state to a single bridge. Return to the two channel direct connection. The single bridge. It's amazing the damage adding a single extra link, one more node, to the graph does.
Time is money and money is time, so let's move this thing forward. I get that time is money, but I also get that what America values my time at is not what I value my time at. I have precious little of it, not because I'm particularly busy, but because it is very difficult at times to function on a, for lack of a better term, "normal" level. A level normative to my peers and expectations of someone my approximate age, build, and general intelligence. My head wears out very quickly and I have to rest and gain space to gather myself before re-engaging. I don't blame mental disorder as much as it's part of how I function and maintain myself now. It's not something distinct of myself, it's incorporated [really, it's only a matter of perspective, part of yourself, outside yourself, what difference does it make from the outside observer looking in? Very little. The only difference looking in from the outside is viewing it one way sounds like you make "convenient" excuses when you do not perform and looking at it the other way sounds like you are a person who is unreliable and irresponsible and maladjusted, but you try to work on yourself. "Attaboy, chap! If you work hard enough you'll get there." Eat me.].
At any rate, the way I understand it is spending your time allows you to convert it into money which you can use to purchase things you may need or want, things you would never have the time to learn how to make, gather materials, and then produce on your own. The question is the conversion rate. If the fastest I can convert time into money is a certain figure per hour, it will cost a certain amount of time to get X or Y thing, necessary or not. Then the question becomes how much time will it cost to maintain X or Y thing at that time to money conversion rate.
With all of the time being drawn out of you, how much time is going to be left for simply living. Will you spend most of your "free" time recovering from work so that you can go back to work so that you can keep X or Y thing you thought you needed or wanted? How fast is that going to kill you. How much stress is that stressor going to introduce and are there enough channels flowing back to ever break the loop long enough to have time to feel whole? My time is worth more than the conversion rate offered. I'll do without, thank you. If my conversion rate changes, I will reconsider. Until it does I am happy maintaining what I have, where I am, keeping the channels as simple as possible so that I do have time to enjoy life and write and breath and sleep. I get it, the more money you make the "better" your life will be near the end. I am sorry. My mind will not work that way. I wish many nights and days that it did. That it functioned properly and reliably and all of the other words that make an effective and productive, ever climbing upward, American. It doesn't. I won't get to enjoy that. I won't get to see that. But hey, I could always win the lottery or something. Wouldn't that be a gas.
Life on my Tardis is pretty okay. Often times when I do manage to save up money and get near the cusp of making a capital improvement to my life or my ship, something breaks. I laugh saying it because it's happened so many times it feels nearly inevitable, to the point where whenever I save up any significant amount of money I start to get anxious and wondered what the ship is going to pull out of it's hat next. I sometimes think the answer may be a credit card, but after being buried by student loans that turned out to be all for nought I refuse to live beyond my means. No credit cards unless they're already paid for, in which case they're not really credit cards are they? I still have never owned a credit card and I'm damn near 30. I had a Target card back in the day, but I think we all know that doesn't really count. Besides, that ended in utter disaster too. I will not do it. If you have to make payments on something, you probably shouldn't have it right now. Simple as that. Of course that also leaves no space for emergencies and heaven knows there have been emergencies aboard my ship. Gross injuries to my musculoskeletal system as wheel. Pretty sure I still have a torn ligament in my thumb and being uninsured, that range of motion is just going to be gone by the time it heals on its own. "You should have gone to the hospital!" Yeah, right. Of course. It's a part of my life I've kind of resigned myself to. As fast as I can improve and repair things is just as fast as they'll break and splinter and burn up and fizzle out. Life aboard my Tardis. One step ahead of the fire, but boy it would be nice to be a couple more steps ahead, or even a block away would be swell.
What day is it? Sunday, 6 P.M. Are you sure? Yeah. No. Wait a minute, it's 6 A.M.! What the hell happened? It's Tuesday!? What happened to Monday? Weren't we supposed to be somewhere? It's 6 P.M. on Tuesday. Are you sure? Well, okay. We'll call them tomorrow morning at 6 A.M. and explain everything. Yes, that will be Wednesday. I'm pretty sure they don't want to hear it now. What do you mean we're 5 miles from home. This is a park bench? Come on, man. Get it together. The Tardis will get you to any point in time or space within a 5 second 5 inch radius. Except when it doesn't.
Bjork - "Enjoy (Dark Jedi Remix)" There have been a lot of great reimaginings of Bjork's music. This is one of my favorites of late. So dark. So playful. So wonderfully and beautifully mechanically.
Life has many different stresses to it. Some of those stresses are more intense than others. Just about all of those stresses demand some sort of relief, some sort of answer, and you can only ignore the bell for so long before they break in and tear you to pieces and sack your fortress and leaving nothing more than a few shreds of clothing and broken cookware and a few charred pages in their wake. You have to answer the bell. Eventually. It's critical to your survival.
The sad part is, in order to answer those stresses, you have to introduce stressors. Jobs, tasks, relationships, a stressor is anything you take on, voluntarily or not, to help alleviate the stresses, the ambient tensions of your existence, of being alive in a shared world. If the world were not shared. If the world were entirely yours, there would be a single bridge. A single leap from stresses to peace. A back and forth street, a channel, two lanes wide, and perfect. However, it is a shared world. There is no single leap and there never will be.
To achieve any sort of relief from stresses you must introduce or have already introduced stressors. Stressors which often times do introduce stresses of their own. The channel becomes layered denser and denser with lanes upon lanes of tasks and responses all in the name of achieving a peaceful state or a state of greater fluidity and less tension than what your own ambience, your own existence, demands by the fact that you are alive and breathing and as such will not remain so in an entropic universe. By the way, did you ever see Tropic Thunder? Hilarious movie. I highly recommend you watch it if you haven't seen it. Came out a while ago. Should be available for rental or something by now. Robert Downey Jr's in it. Tom Cruise to. Surprisingly good.
Anyway, it's truly mystifying sometimes when you step back and look at and draw the circuit board, the ridiculous interstate highway map of what you have to do just to feel good, normal, and whole, on this shared planet, in this country, in your state, in your city where you call yourself a citizen. It's troubling sometimes. From the time you are alone as a child until the time you die, so much of your energy will be spent on trying to return your state to a single bridge. Return to the two channel direct connection. The single bridge. It's amazing the damage adding a single extra link, one more node, to the graph does.
Time is money and money is time, so let's move this thing forward. I get that time is money, but I also get that what America values my time at is not what I value my time at. I have precious little of it, not because I'm particularly busy, but because it is very difficult at times to function on a, for lack of a better term, "normal" level. A level normative to my peers and expectations of someone my approximate age, build, and general intelligence. My head wears out very quickly and I have to rest and gain space to gather myself before re-engaging. I don't blame mental disorder as much as it's part of how I function and maintain myself now. It's not something distinct of myself, it's incorporated [really, it's only a matter of perspective, part of yourself, outside yourself, what difference does it make from the outside observer looking in? Very little. The only difference looking in from the outside is viewing it one way sounds like you make "convenient" excuses when you do not perform and looking at it the other way sounds like you are a person who is unreliable and irresponsible and maladjusted, but you try to work on yourself. "Attaboy, chap! If you work hard enough you'll get there." Eat me.].
At any rate, the way I understand it is spending your time allows you to convert it into money which you can use to purchase things you may need or want, things you would never have the time to learn how to make, gather materials, and then produce on your own. The question is the conversion rate. If the fastest I can convert time into money is a certain figure per hour, it will cost a certain amount of time to get X or Y thing, necessary or not. Then the question becomes how much time will it cost to maintain X or Y thing at that time to money conversion rate.
With all of the time being drawn out of you, how much time is going to be left for simply living. Will you spend most of your "free" time recovering from work so that you can go back to work so that you can keep X or Y thing you thought you needed or wanted? How fast is that going to kill you. How much stress is that stressor going to introduce and are there enough channels flowing back to ever break the loop long enough to have time to feel whole? My time is worth more than the conversion rate offered. I'll do without, thank you. If my conversion rate changes, I will reconsider. Until it does I am happy maintaining what I have, where I am, keeping the channels as simple as possible so that I do have time to enjoy life and write and breath and sleep. I get it, the more money you make the "better" your life will be near the end. I am sorry. My mind will not work that way. I wish many nights and days that it did. That it functioned properly and reliably and all of the other words that make an effective and productive, ever climbing upward, American. It doesn't. I won't get to enjoy that. I won't get to see that. But hey, I could always win the lottery or something. Wouldn't that be a gas.
Life on my Tardis is pretty okay. Often times when I do manage to save up money and get near the cusp of making a capital improvement to my life or my ship, something breaks. I laugh saying it because it's happened so many times it feels nearly inevitable, to the point where whenever I save up any significant amount of money I start to get anxious and wondered what the ship is going to pull out of it's hat next. I sometimes think the answer may be a credit card, but after being buried by student loans that turned out to be all for nought I refuse to live beyond my means. No credit cards unless they're already paid for, in which case they're not really credit cards are they? I still have never owned a credit card and I'm damn near 30. I had a Target card back in the day, but I think we all know that doesn't really count. Besides, that ended in utter disaster too. I will not do it. If you have to make payments on something, you probably shouldn't have it right now. Simple as that. Of course that also leaves no space for emergencies and heaven knows there have been emergencies aboard my ship. Gross injuries to my musculoskeletal system as wheel. Pretty sure I still have a torn ligament in my thumb and being uninsured, that range of motion is just going to be gone by the time it heals on its own. "You should have gone to the hospital!" Yeah, right. Of course. It's a part of my life I've kind of resigned myself to. As fast as I can improve and repair things is just as fast as they'll break and splinter and burn up and fizzle out. Life aboard my Tardis. One step ahead of the fire, but boy it would be nice to be a couple more steps ahead, or even a block away would be swell.
What day is it? Sunday, 6 P.M. Are you sure? Yeah. No. Wait a minute, it's 6 A.M.! What the hell happened? It's Tuesday!? What happened to Monday? Weren't we supposed to be somewhere? It's 6 P.M. on Tuesday. Are you sure? Well, okay. We'll call them tomorrow morning at 6 A.M. and explain everything. Yes, that will be Wednesday. I'm pretty sure they don't want to hear it now. What do you mean we're 5 miles from home. This is a park bench? Come on, man. Get it together. The Tardis will get you to any point in time or space within a 5 second 5 inch radius. Except when it doesn't.
Bjork - "Enjoy (Dark Jedi Remix)" There have been a lot of great reimaginings of Bjork's music. This is one of my favorites of late. So dark. So playful. So wonderfully and beautifully mechanically.
3/17/14
Concepts and Compulsions (the third star on the right)
There was a definite shift from the factory perspective to the machine level perspective. I'm not sure exactly when it happened and I do think it was a shift in the correct direction. It was a shift that granted more personhood, more agency, more personality to what is continuing. Obviously the factory still exists and maybe not as obviously the dreaming door is still there near it's basement and used frequently, but not documented as thoroughly as I would like, but that's a matter of preference and amplitude.
The idea of them being up in an office having meetings without me and being forced to listen in to get news of what direction the committee was going grated on me pretty hard and I was getting very upset about not being included on their decisions so I am taking some agency back because I have to live here too and what they make affects me immediately as soon as it leaves the factory doors because I am the consumer primary and the keeper and owner. The deed's in my name. Just saying. I can't have them wrecking up the place and deciding when and where they want to work inside the building and the child is going to do what he will, and I can't keep stopping everything to go look for him (which is easy to say because he's right in front of me now and he won't hold my hand, but I've got his pinky and his pain tolerance is nowhere near mine and it doesn't need fixing or adjustment, it just needs held), but I will because I can't keep watch all of the time and he knows when to sneak out better than I know when to check on him.
I took the map of the warehouse and exploded it. Took the map of the iron works and exploded it into pieces and came up with a better way to organize and run diagnostics on its ability to function on it's own. Not off any grid, but function as a thing properly connected and fed by mainlines. The concept was lurking in the back of my mind and took a back seat to the foundry, the assembly line, but the stock house allowed far too much space for engineering weapons and tools that built better tools for building war machines. I'm still trying to get the spacing right. Getting to a point where we know what all of the parts are doing at all times is very difficult and throws error messages and blows out the lights sometimes. I would like to believe I am getting close to a master approach.
I've adopted a more mechanical concept. The electric layer and the machine layer. All into a sandwich. It's like a massive circuit board with steam punk getting the outside layer to talk to the inside layer. Communications are still a little bit shoddy, but I think I'm getting the response times right. Or at least more correct and that's more steps in a direction so I'm comfortable with not drowning. Control itself has not been an issue except in extreme cases or cases that I would call extreme sensory nodes. Times and instances of overwhelming input from the outside surface that over powered the gears ability to translate it into valid input to the inside surface. And then it just goes harmonic spitting back weird settings to the machine layer that does not know how to place it in three dimensions that makes sense to the surface and then the surface burps up colors and lights and structures and the entire layout of the city is completely off and the gps sends some bastard down a sidewalk that ends at a cornfield because that road was paved over fifteen years ago and broken up ten years ago and filled in and sodded and there've been 9 annual fairs there and the whole thing smells like carnies and animal poop vaguely to this day.
So now it's all a circuit and machine. Taking Occam to it to a degree. Keep it simple, stupid. It's not a committee, it's a group of parts, pieces, and controllers and they work together at all times. Yes, not all on the same page, but they are in constant communication despite what I thought before. They are in constant communication and the child is a hardware addition with poor pin alignment so as he comes and goes and is present or not, he may not always be detected by the system proper, but he cannot be confirmed or denied. I still do wonder where he goes when he does not register. I wonder if he is listening or not. Prick. WHERE ARE YOU?
Anyway, I can't allow myself to be consumed with his location. I can, but I would prefer not to. I do. We love it when he's around. God, what is he doing now? WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU, I KNOW YOU'RE LISTENING. I'll wait. It's all I can do. All any of us can do. I'll hunt him down. 'S'cool. But basically I took the time to rearrange components into a different, not necessarily new, configuration that allows for greater mobility and flexibility and diminishes destructive passion. Never again. Not yet, anyway. That plan is under double keyed authentication, minimum.
I've gotten away from paper again. I don't know how to feel about it because it's not pure laziness. It's a distaste for the purity to an extant and a feeling of reversion to another extant. I'm not sure where or if the two can be balanced or with what. You must commit to one or the other or both will suffer? No. There is dual dedication. I believe it is a problem of efficiencies and developing a left hand where the right hand has become the left and the left the right and I am partially consumed with teaching the right to do the things the off hand was forced to do. I am okay with that. That is a matter of more practice only, not malfunction. Or to put it another way, no abandonment of duties inside the factory. No idle mills, simply users unaccustomed to their new devices and methods.
I thought back to when I knew something was off with my upbringing. It happened back in elementary school when Mrs. Hymenlokuvar was rubbing my back in kindergarten when I ran from the station wagon, when I was sure it was okay to run after my mom and pop pulled away, all the way to my seat in the classroom. It is one of the few childhood (childhood referencing 2nd grade to birth) memories I can recall that did not end in violence. She rubbed my back for what felt like minutes, but was probably seconds. I remember her being very weirded out that I could show up for class at table three with a healthy sweat going. That was when I began to feel something was off. I liked it though, I remember that. I remember the soothing nature to it and how her hand felt like it was sucking heat off of me so I could run at a much better temperature and it felt terrific.
When I was sure something was off was when I ... was washing dishes at the sink on Taylor street and my parents were going at it about something I cannot remember. Something about Barnabus. Or was his name Barnaby. I don't know. He was the upstairs neighbor and we weren't allowed to play with his kids or something, what I do know, regardless of the details is hearing my dad say "he's listening to us" and then them two leaving the room. It was strange. I wanted to leave the kitchen too, but I had my assignment. Learning all of the creaks in the floor so you could get to the bathroom without disrupting them when you had to pee at night and couldn't hold it or when you wanted to talk to your sisters and you had a whole house to navigate in the dark without bumping into anything too loud.
There is some humor thinking back to how hard I idolized kids when I first broke in to college. "Oh my God, you assholes know everything!" It's a little bit of time compression helping that out. They didn't know everything. Not even close. Well traveled, well heeled? Sure. Capable, adaptable, thorough, and finicky? Sure. Closed and open minded by turns? Also, yes. As time grows longer and leaps of experience compress, it becomes increasingly clear that my peers are just that and no more. No apotheosis necessary. Appreciation yes. I am not just like you, but I will tell you what I fucking am. Closer to your know how than I have any business being given what we are and what you are and where we came from. Fuck you, that's "swagger" and tooth. What's four years to you? I know what it is to me. I wish I knew what it would be to me now eight years ago, though.
I'm a fine pilot, if I may say. I was considering running someone down walking on the side of Will Flynn motorway, but I didn't. Mostly because I was too far from home to be sure I could get home without being pulled over for questioning about the dent in my windshield and the spritz on my hood. Sometimes you have to make business decisions. Plus, I don't have money to get my windshield fixed. That's just silly money management policy!
I embraced metaphor with all my heart through highschool. I think that's when communication fault lines could not be written off anymore as being shy or quiet. I just didn't know how to say it. Didn't know an effective agent to be my stand in for the person between the person that says what I want to say for me. That position was vacant for so long.
Don't mind me if I get weak kneed with words. It's a joy I couldn't experience for a very long time and I am suspect to abuse it.
I wonder sometimes how my Myspace friend DCScompton is doing in Australia. I loved talking to him. Since the migration several years ago we lost touch and I look for him now and then to see if he's still kicking. I would love to move to Canberra. I don't think I would adjust well or I would slot in perfectly. America is not overrated at all, but I think we would have made excellent dual adventurers. I remember asking him about what the compton in his screen name was about and I've been miffed for years because I can't remember. He was a blast to read, but he jumped ship too and somewhere in migrating computers I lost the note that had the address of his page in it, among other things.
Wonder what my therapist is doing? I do too. Jeff is a good guy. He meant well. I do wonder how much of it was general altruism and how much was actual understanding. I never asked him how he was doing or about his family, but I think it was a lot of unspoken understanding that it was none of my business and absolutely off limits for reasons we both knew.
I don't worry about him, but I do wonder about what he kept off the table and why. Why didn't he offer too? Was it because I had to be there? And why did he turn me in that day? Was it concern or was it a matter more akin to protecting job security. I don't think he ever really trusted us. Which is fine. Understandable. I have to understand that we didn't really know each other know each other. He could have, though. I wouldn't have rejected it.
The tracking signal cuts both ways. A ping back is a ping back. Until the signal cuts out. The keys jingling on your pant loop let you know you are traversing reality and they also let reality know that you are crossing space and you have to be prepared to accept that your recognition is also the key not only to an ignition, but to a gate.
It's the third star on the right, straight on 'til morning, can't miss it.
///Steve Miller Band - "The Joker" some people call me a lot of things. there's power in knowing your own name.
The idea of them being up in an office having meetings without me and being forced to listen in to get news of what direction the committee was going grated on me pretty hard and I was getting very upset about not being included on their decisions so I am taking some agency back because I have to live here too and what they make affects me immediately as soon as it leaves the factory doors because I am the consumer primary and the keeper and owner. The deed's in my name. Just saying. I can't have them wrecking up the place and deciding when and where they want to work inside the building and the child is going to do what he will, and I can't keep stopping everything to go look for him (which is easy to say because he's right in front of me now and he won't hold my hand, but I've got his pinky and his pain tolerance is nowhere near mine and it doesn't need fixing or adjustment, it just needs held), but I will because I can't keep watch all of the time and he knows when to sneak out better than I know when to check on him.
I took the map of the warehouse and exploded it. Took the map of the iron works and exploded it into pieces and came up with a better way to organize and run diagnostics on its ability to function on it's own. Not off any grid, but function as a thing properly connected and fed by mainlines. The concept was lurking in the back of my mind and took a back seat to the foundry, the assembly line, but the stock house allowed far too much space for engineering weapons and tools that built better tools for building war machines. I'm still trying to get the spacing right. Getting to a point where we know what all of the parts are doing at all times is very difficult and throws error messages and blows out the lights sometimes. I would like to believe I am getting close to a master approach.
I've adopted a more mechanical concept. The electric layer and the machine layer. All into a sandwich. It's like a massive circuit board with steam punk getting the outside layer to talk to the inside layer. Communications are still a little bit shoddy, but I think I'm getting the response times right. Or at least more correct and that's more steps in a direction so I'm comfortable with not drowning. Control itself has not been an issue except in extreme cases or cases that I would call extreme sensory nodes. Times and instances of overwhelming input from the outside surface that over powered the gears ability to translate it into valid input to the inside surface. And then it just goes harmonic spitting back weird settings to the machine layer that does not know how to place it in three dimensions that makes sense to the surface and then the surface burps up colors and lights and structures and the entire layout of the city is completely off and the gps sends some bastard down a sidewalk that ends at a cornfield because that road was paved over fifteen years ago and broken up ten years ago and filled in and sodded and there've been 9 annual fairs there and the whole thing smells like carnies and animal poop vaguely to this day.
So now it's all a circuit and machine. Taking Occam to it to a degree. Keep it simple, stupid. It's not a committee, it's a group of parts, pieces, and controllers and they work together at all times. Yes, not all on the same page, but they are in constant communication despite what I thought before. They are in constant communication and the child is a hardware addition with poor pin alignment so as he comes and goes and is present or not, he may not always be detected by the system proper, but he cannot be confirmed or denied. I still do wonder where he goes when he does not register. I wonder if he is listening or not. Prick. WHERE ARE YOU?
Anyway, I can't allow myself to be consumed with his location. I can, but I would prefer not to. I do. We love it when he's around. God, what is he doing now? WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU, I KNOW YOU'RE LISTENING. I'll wait. It's all I can do. All any of us can do. I'll hunt him down. 'S'cool. But basically I took the time to rearrange components into a different, not necessarily new, configuration that allows for greater mobility and flexibility and diminishes destructive passion. Never again. Not yet, anyway. That plan is under double keyed authentication, minimum.
I've gotten away from paper again. I don't know how to feel about it because it's not pure laziness. It's a distaste for the purity to an extant and a feeling of reversion to another extant. I'm not sure where or if the two can be balanced or with what. You must commit to one or the other or both will suffer? No. There is dual dedication. I believe it is a problem of efficiencies and developing a left hand where the right hand has become the left and the left the right and I am partially consumed with teaching the right to do the things the off hand was forced to do. I am okay with that. That is a matter of more practice only, not malfunction. Or to put it another way, no abandonment of duties inside the factory. No idle mills, simply users unaccustomed to their new devices and methods.
I thought back to when I knew something was off with my upbringing. It happened back in elementary school when Mrs. Hymenlokuvar was rubbing my back in kindergarten when I ran from the station wagon, when I was sure it was okay to run after my mom and pop pulled away, all the way to my seat in the classroom. It is one of the few childhood (childhood referencing 2nd grade to birth) memories I can recall that did not end in violence. She rubbed my back for what felt like minutes, but was probably seconds. I remember her being very weirded out that I could show up for class at table three with a healthy sweat going. That was when I began to feel something was off. I liked it though, I remember that. I remember the soothing nature to it and how her hand felt like it was sucking heat off of me so I could run at a much better temperature and it felt terrific.
When I was sure something was off was when I ... was washing dishes at the sink on Taylor street and my parents were going at it about something I cannot remember. Something about Barnabus. Or was his name Barnaby. I don't know. He was the upstairs neighbor and we weren't allowed to play with his kids or something, what I do know, regardless of the details is hearing my dad say "he's listening to us" and then them two leaving the room. It was strange. I wanted to leave the kitchen too, but I had my assignment. Learning all of the creaks in the floor so you could get to the bathroom without disrupting them when you had to pee at night and couldn't hold it or when you wanted to talk to your sisters and you had a whole house to navigate in the dark without bumping into anything too loud.
There is some humor thinking back to how hard I idolized kids when I first broke in to college. "Oh my God, you assholes know everything!" It's a little bit of time compression helping that out. They didn't know everything. Not even close. Well traveled, well heeled? Sure. Capable, adaptable, thorough, and finicky? Sure. Closed and open minded by turns? Also, yes. As time grows longer and leaps of experience compress, it becomes increasingly clear that my peers are just that and no more. No apotheosis necessary. Appreciation yes. I am not just like you, but I will tell you what I fucking am. Closer to your know how than I have any business being given what we are and what you are and where we came from. Fuck you, that's "swagger" and tooth. What's four years to you? I know what it is to me. I wish I knew what it would be to me now eight years ago, though.
I'm a fine pilot, if I may say. I was considering running someone down walking on the side of Will Flynn motorway, but I didn't. Mostly because I was too far from home to be sure I could get home without being pulled over for questioning about the dent in my windshield and the spritz on my hood. Sometimes you have to make business decisions. Plus, I don't have money to get my windshield fixed. That's just silly money management policy!
I embraced metaphor with all my heart through highschool. I think that's when communication fault lines could not be written off anymore as being shy or quiet. I just didn't know how to say it. Didn't know an effective agent to be my stand in for the person between the person that says what I want to say for me. That position was vacant for so long.
Don't mind me if I get weak kneed with words. It's a joy I couldn't experience for a very long time and I am suspect to abuse it.
I wonder sometimes how my Myspace friend DCScompton is doing in Australia. I loved talking to him. Since the migration several years ago we lost touch and I look for him now and then to see if he's still kicking. I would love to move to Canberra. I don't think I would adjust well or I would slot in perfectly. America is not overrated at all, but I think we would have made excellent dual adventurers. I remember asking him about what the compton in his screen name was about and I've been miffed for years because I can't remember. He was a blast to read, but he jumped ship too and somewhere in migrating computers I lost the note that had the address of his page in it, among other things.
Wonder what my therapist is doing? I do too. Jeff is a good guy. He meant well. I do wonder how much of it was general altruism and how much was actual understanding. I never asked him how he was doing or about his family, but I think it was a lot of unspoken understanding that it was none of my business and absolutely off limits for reasons we both knew.
I don't worry about him, but I do wonder about what he kept off the table and why. Why didn't he offer too? Was it because I had to be there? And why did he turn me in that day? Was it concern or was it a matter more akin to protecting job security. I don't think he ever really trusted us. Which is fine. Understandable. I have to understand that we didn't really know each other know each other. He could have, though. I wouldn't have rejected it.
The tracking signal cuts both ways. A ping back is a ping back. Until the signal cuts out. The keys jingling on your pant loop let you know you are traversing reality and they also let reality know that you are crossing space and you have to be prepared to accept that your recognition is also the key not only to an ignition, but to a gate.
It's the third star on the right, straight on 'til morning, can't miss it.
///Steve Miller Band - "The Joker" some people call me a lot of things. there's power in knowing your own name.
8/23/13
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.
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.
4/18/13
A Definition for Addiction
Searching for a definition of addiction, I came to an impasse.
If you think about it every day, are you addicted?
If you think about it sometimes, maybe once a week, are you addicted?
If you run into your dealer and have an exceptionally awkward conversation, are you addicted?
Does it really matter what it is that you're talking about?
If you run into the son of a bitch that sold you crack at the dollar store are you less for not having talked to him while you were buying cereal?
I don't know what the rules are. I don't pretend to.
Sometimes, however, I do wonder though. It's not a matter of being clean or dirty or anything along those lines. It's just a matter of defining what is.
Are you addicted to television? Are you addicted to the thrill of the mainline, no matter what is? The surprise of what you get versus what you paid for? Are you addicted to the cliffhanger of a t.v. show? Are you addicted to crossing words with people? Are you addicted to waking up? Are you addicted to waking up fuzzy? Are you addicted to waking up next to another body? Are you addicted to waking up to a body, live or not?
I dunno. Spending a few days thinking about addiction and definition and words, and most importantly, trying not to try to mimic voice sounds from other people while they're in earshot. that's all. a life without definition is no life at all, right? said a wise someone to a soon to be wise soandso. Right?
///Ellie Goulding - "Only You" This one goes out to you McCourghty. I miss you. I hope you're not dead. Haven't seen you around in a long ass time, but whatever. For what it's worth, you were a project to find and a handful to corral and I had an easier time keeping a glass of water in my hand sans glass than it was to keep track of you. I feel awful cuz I still can't spell your last name right. Anyway. Miss you, bro. Thanks for everything.
If you think about it every day, are you addicted?
If you think about it sometimes, maybe once a week, are you addicted?
If you run into your dealer and have an exceptionally awkward conversation, are you addicted?
Does it really matter what it is that you're talking about?
If you run into the son of a bitch that sold you crack at the dollar store are you less for not having talked to him while you were buying cereal?
I don't know what the rules are. I don't pretend to.
Sometimes, however, I do wonder though. It's not a matter of being clean or dirty or anything along those lines. It's just a matter of defining what is.
Are you addicted to television? Are you addicted to the thrill of the mainline, no matter what is? The surprise of what you get versus what you paid for? Are you addicted to the cliffhanger of a t.v. show? Are you addicted to crossing words with people? Are you addicted to waking up? Are you addicted to waking up fuzzy? Are you addicted to waking up next to another body? Are you addicted to waking up to a body, live or not?
I dunno. Spending a few days thinking about addiction and definition and words, and most importantly, trying not to try to mimic voice sounds from other people while they're in earshot. that's all. a life without definition is no life at all, right? said a wise someone to a soon to be wise soandso. Right?
///Ellie Goulding - "Only You" This one goes out to you McCourghty. I miss you. I hope you're not dead. Haven't seen you around in a long ass time, but whatever. For what it's worth, you were a project to find and a handful to corral and I had an easier time keeping a glass of water in my hand sans glass than it was to keep track of you. I feel awful cuz I still can't spell your last name right. Anyway. Miss you, bro. Thanks for everything.
1/30/13
The Year End Look (part two)
Two thousand twelve was a banger. A lot of truly excellent things happened. Some truly awful things happened. Mistakes were made and successes enjoyed. I thought after the debacle of 2010 I would not be surprised by whatever could come next and 2011 actually ended up being fairly swell. 2012 was jam packed with more change than I could see coming. I'm pretty sure I didn't write any fiction in 2012. I don't know why. 2012 was a war with the clock. I think that's why. I did sort of rediscover a pair of old friendships that I thought were pretty much blown to flaming kingdom come and that was nice. My memory fails me pretty regularly. Too many blows to the head (chemical and otherwise). Speaking of chemicals, I still haven't gone to get help. I don't know that I ever will. I don't know that I'll ever be able to on my own.
I'm trying to think of what the overarching lesson of 2012 was. Nothing particular comes up. 2012 was very much a blur. I became a car owner. That's nice. I also became quite broke keeping that car on the road and functioning. I became a paper towel owner. That was pretty huge. Do you know how hard it is to justify paper towels? Pretty damn hard. Mostly I was using my dirty laundry to clean up floor spills. Dish rags to clean up counter top spills. Worked perfectly, really. It's not like I was going to wipe up spilled floor milk and then put the shirt right back on. I also became a soap and toilet paper stockpiler. I used to buy it in four packs and then string it out as far as it would go and then find alternatives already in my apartment when they ran out. That's not what grown ups do. I got car insurance for the first time. My car is better insured than I am now. I think I did that one wrong.
You know what? I've got it. Twenty twelve was about taking steps toward being an adult. Meshing with other adults. Not that I succeeded with the meshing at all. I tried to pay for cat litter with sex. That didn't work out too well. Especially when I found out there was no cat litter to begin with. I have to stop being so easily convinced in twenty thirteen. I am on the tail end of my twenty seventh iteration. Can't make rookie mistakes like that or I'll end up smoking bath salts and living in the woods. Which doesn't sound particularly bad on the surface, but try finding a hot shower off of an interstate and you'll end up with a hobo pissing on your back while you sing Disney anthems in the pre dawn light of another Thursday, wondering if the pair of pants you named after your dead dog will ever find their way back to your cardboard shanty town. That's what 2012 was. A lot of learning how to do grown up things.
Not just that. My literary voice changed so much through 2012. My whimsical spirit did not die well and I think I want to make the effort to rediscover it. So much of my life became brutally concrete. There was no time to write down extensive dream logs and what explorations I could do and enjoy across the dream bridge were lost. There was a massive task lock. Huge gridlock between where I was and where I was going mentally that suffocated and snuffed out so much of what I wanted to achieve. Obviously, everyone wants to be loved. On some level. A lot of that need was torn out of me. It's still there, latent and active by turns and expressed and expressible and not in different forms.
I had a final falling out with my birth parents. Good riddance. Things were going quite well until they demanded a response and I gave them the one I'd been holding back for years (which was a fairly simple death threat). Which spiraled out of control and had to be reigned back in to an even simpler "Hi, you've hurt me for the last time and I'm not going to give you the opportunity to ever hurt me again." Which went over slightly better. So I do have that peace of mind to look forward to. The emails have stopped and that's what I wanted. BKB (bitches know better) than to ever try to contact me again. Some things can be forgiven. Some things can only be atoned for. Some things can only be paid for, and the checks they wrote on my skin in bruises and welts and blood and on my mind in so many lines of unforgettable screams and shouts can only be paid for. It was good though. A link so thoroughly destroyed that I will never have to worry about it threading itself around my neck again.
I did find love again, briefly, in twenty twelve. Online. I also found that most of the people in BDSM chat rooms are full of themselves and fake. But I don't even have to go to any other online dating sites to know that it's probably not unique to my bag. Back to love and friendships. I'm fairly certain I may have lost a friend I really wanted to keep, but who knows, maybe it'll come back around in thirteen. 2012 saw a pretty severe drop in production in general. Adult problems. Remember that three banger I put out of its misery early last year? That came back to haunt me when one of them got a job at a store I used to frequent (they had good prices, can't argue with that). Well, that cut my neighborhood in half. Can't go to that side of town anymore without looking over my shoulder, or occasionally ducking down in my car at red lights. Like I said, mistakes were made.
My only new years resolution this year is to not get concussed. I think that might be aiming too high. Too many bar fights happened last year. Between the life drama and tracking myself down rage blew off me like sunspot flares. Yes, you can punch anything with a face, but can and should are two very different things. I'm not saying I'm going to be a saint, but I am saying the world is only so big and eventually someone is going to recognize you when you least expect it and remember that thing you did the weekend before to one of their friends and they'll even the score and then it's all bad news bears from there.
Style wise, I was lost as 2012 tailed out. Spun out. Ate the guardrail and burned it's way to the bottom of a ravine. Shifting identity. Events and exchanges, human exchanges external to my brain pan, brought up so many questions I hope to answer to myself in the coming year. The identity I believed I had was drastically revised. Am I still a writer? Am I a poet? Am I a songstress? Maybe just a bard? I don't know. I've given up on trying to calculate how many hours I've gone in and what mastery means. Mastery means nothing. Exposure means nothing. The new foundation is framed quite simply as passion. I have a passion for words on paper. Whatever that makes me to you, I'm down. To me, I'm a kid with a pen. That's all. Calling yourself a writer or not, calling someone else by the same, is like having embossed ink on a business card. Doesn't mean a damn thing beyond image. Do I still want a house in the middle of nowhere to invite people to that I might cut them up, eat the good parts, and burn the rest of their remains? Yeah. That's kind of the ultimate goal. That and having a place to write that I only have to pay taxes on. That'll work. A wonderful desert compound. Somewhere near the border.
Twenty twelve taught me that I'm nowhere close to where a lot of my peers are fiscally, mentally, and emotionally. My concerns are still fringe. My furniture still sparse. My needs are still fairly small and my dreams equal and as difficult to access. I always thought I'd die in Pittsburgh, but maybe that's not good enough. Last year made me question my capabilities, but not in the way some people down grade themselves. I'm not a smart cookie. I'm not brilliant. I'm not particularly resourceful. I can, however, create to no end, my only limitation being the cards I have to play with..
It was a strange year. There were many tears in 2012. Some earned, many not. Many involuntary and inappropriate to the subject. That's not going to change. I'm crying right now typing this and it's silly. My weight keeps fluctuating wildly between 155 and 185. Every month. It makes no sense.
Gather. Fads go out of style. I've had a few of my own. I realized through the year that they were constructs to help me express concepts that come to me and help me live from week to week and month to month, but also help me relate. Junior psychologist over here. There was some real damage in 2012 and I don't know that 2013 will be that much better, but I like to believe it will be. Maybe we'll get back on the pills this year. Just to see. Just to see and stop talking about talking about doing it. Twelve was also a year of addictions. I don't know how to fix that. They were all, largely, necessary. But at least I know the side effects will or won't do what they do. Maybe that's the big thing standing guard these days. This turned pretty dark in a flash. I used to think I would be a great candidate for surviving the zombie apocalypse, and then I realized I would probably risk everything for a pack of smokes and dozen cans of spray paint. Unless I have my desert compound by then (I'll pass the time writing poetry and taking head shot breaks with a .50 cal and whiskey on the rocks).
The major issue I want to resolve this year, given last year, is my writing. Let's do better. Let's be better for us. Shooting for late forties. I want to at least make it to being a weird uncle.
What did 2012 teach me? What was the takeaway? Christmas lights are awesome. People can't be programmed. My morals and principles don't translate by default and no one else's do either. God is still a work of fiction. I am still figuring myself out and trying not to implode. At least not completely. Still so far away, only because I have to be. I am my own best company and my own worst friend. The things I don't own are things I should not have yet. The relationships I don't have are relationships I'm not and may never be ready for. The spaces I occupy, I am grateful for and will continue to be. The spaces I do not are spaces I have given back to the ones who belong there and will use beyond my ability to and that's okay. Twenty twelve was strange. Twenty thirteen is a big old bag of TBD, but I wish it was a big old bag of LSD. You can't go through life asleep, but a boy can dream.
///TRACK NOT FOUND - year end playlist up next
defining moments of a finest hour? yeah, something like that.
I'm trying to think of what the overarching lesson of 2012 was. Nothing particular comes up. 2012 was very much a blur. I became a car owner. That's nice. I also became quite broke keeping that car on the road and functioning. I became a paper towel owner. That was pretty huge. Do you know how hard it is to justify paper towels? Pretty damn hard. Mostly I was using my dirty laundry to clean up floor spills. Dish rags to clean up counter top spills. Worked perfectly, really. It's not like I was going to wipe up spilled floor milk and then put the shirt right back on. I also became a soap and toilet paper stockpiler. I used to buy it in four packs and then string it out as far as it would go and then find alternatives already in my apartment when they ran out. That's not what grown ups do. I got car insurance for the first time. My car is better insured than I am now. I think I did that one wrong.
You know what? I've got it. Twenty twelve was about taking steps toward being an adult. Meshing with other adults. Not that I succeeded with the meshing at all. I tried to pay for cat litter with sex. That didn't work out too well. Especially when I found out there was no cat litter to begin with. I have to stop being so easily convinced in twenty thirteen. I am on the tail end of my twenty seventh iteration. Can't make rookie mistakes like that or I'll end up smoking bath salts and living in the woods. Which doesn't sound particularly bad on the surface, but try finding a hot shower off of an interstate and you'll end up with a hobo pissing on your back while you sing Disney anthems in the pre dawn light of another Thursday, wondering if the pair of pants you named after your dead dog will ever find their way back to your cardboard shanty town. That's what 2012 was. A lot of learning how to do grown up things.
Not just that. My literary voice changed so much through 2012. My whimsical spirit did not die well and I think I want to make the effort to rediscover it. So much of my life became brutally concrete. There was no time to write down extensive dream logs and what explorations I could do and enjoy across the dream bridge were lost. There was a massive task lock. Huge gridlock between where I was and where I was going mentally that suffocated and snuffed out so much of what I wanted to achieve. Obviously, everyone wants to be loved. On some level. A lot of that need was torn out of me. It's still there, latent and active by turns and expressed and expressible and not in different forms.
I had a final falling out with my birth parents. Good riddance. Things were going quite well until they demanded a response and I gave them the one I'd been holding back for years (which was a fairly simple death threat). Which spiraled out of control and had to be reigned back in to an even simpler "Hi, you've hurt me for the last time and I'm not going to give you the opportunity to ever hurt me again." Which went over slightly better. So I do have that peace of mind to look forward to. The emails have stopped and that's what I wanted. BKB (bitches know better) than to ever try to contact me again. Some things can be forgiven. Some things can only be atoned for. Some things can only be paid for, and the checks they wrote on my skin in bruises and welts and blood and on my mind in so many lines of unforgettable screams and shouts can only be paid for. It was good though. A link so thoroughly destroyed that I will never have to worry about it threading itself around my neck again.
I did find love again, briefly, in twenty twelve. Online. I also found that most of the people in BDSM chat rooms are full of themselves and fake. But I don't even have to go to any other online dating sites to know that it's probably not unique to my bag. Back to love and friendships. I'm fairly certain I may have lost a friend I really wanted to keep, but who knows, maybe it'll come back around in thirteen. 2012 saw a pretty severe drop in production in general. Adult problems. Remember that three banger I put out of its misery early last year? That came back to haunt me when one of them got a job at a store I used to frequent (they had good prices, can't argue with that). Well, that cut my neighborhood in half. Can't go to that side of town anymore without looking over my shoulder, or occasionally ducking down in my car at red lights. Like I said, mistakes were made.
My only new years resolution this year is to not get concussed. I think that might be aiming too high. Too many bar fights happened last year. Between the life drama and tracking myself down rage blew off me like sunspot flares. Yes, you can punch anything with a face, but can and should are two very different things. I'm not saying I'm going to be a saint, but I am saying the world is only so big and eventually someone is going to recognize you when you least expect it and remember that thing you did the weekend before to one of their friends and they'll even the score and then it's all bad news bears from there.
Style wise, I was lost as 2012 tailed out. Spun out. Ate the guardrail and burned it's way to the bottom of a ravine. Shifting identity. Events and exchanges, human exchanges external to my brain pan, brought up so many questions I hope to answer to myself in the coming year. The identity I believed I had was drastically revised. Am I still a writer? Am I a poet? Am I a songstress? Maybe just a bard? I don't know. I've given up on trying to calculate how many hours I've gone in and what mastery means. Mastery means nothing. Exposure means nothing. The new foundation is framed quite simply as passion. I have a passion for words on paper. Whatever that makes me to you, I'm down. To me, I'm a kid with a pen. That's all. Calling yourself a writer or not, calling someone else by the same, is like having embossed ink on a business card. Doesn't mean a damn thing beyond image. Do I still want a house in the middle of nowhere to invite people to that I might cut them up, eat the good parts, and burn the rest of their remains? Yeah. That's kind of the ultimate goal. That and having a place to write that I only have to pay taxes on. That'll work. A wonderful desert compound. Somewhere near the border.
Twenty twelve taught me that I'm nowhere close to where a lot of my peers are fiscally, mentally, and emotionally. My concerns are still fringe. My furniture still sparse. My needs are still fairly small and my dreams equal and as difficult to access. I always thought I'd die in Pittsburgh, but maybe that's not good enough. Last year made me question my capabilities, but not in the way some people down grade themselves. I'm not a smart cookie. I'm not brilliant. I'm not particularly resourceful. I can, however, create to no end, my only limitation being the cards I have to play with..
It was a strange year. There were many tears in 2012. Some earned, many not. Many involuntary and inappropriate to the subject. That's not going to change. I'm crying right now typing this and it's silly. My weight keeps fluctuating wildly between 155 and 185. Every month. It makes no sense.
Gather. Fads go out of style. I've had a few of my own. I realized through the year that they were constructs to help me express concepts that come to me and help me live from week to week and month to month, but also help me relate. Junior psychologist over here. There was some real damage in 2012 and I don't know that 2013 will be that much better, but I like to believe it will be. Maybe we'll get back on the pills this year. Just to see. Just to see and stop talking about talking about doing it. Twelve was also a year of addictions. I don't know how to fix that. They were all, largely, necessary. But at least I know the side effects will or won't do what they do. Maybe that's the big thing standing guard these days. This turned pretty dark in a flash. I used to think I would be a great candidate for surviving the zombie apocalypse, and then I realized I would probably risk everything for a pack of smokes and dozen cans of spray paint. Unless I have my desert compound by then (I'll pass the time writing poetry and taking head shot breaks with a .50 cal and whiskey on the rocks).
The major issue I want to resolve this year, given last year, is my writing. Let's do better. Let's be better for us. Shooting for late forties. I want to at least make it to being a weird uncle.
What did 2012 teach me? What was the takeaway? Christmas lights are awesome. People can't be programmed. My morals and principles don't translate by default and no one else's do either. God is still a work of fiction. I am still figuring myself out and trying not to implode. At least not completely. Still so far away, only because I have to be. I am my own best company and my own worst friend. The things I don't own are things I should not have yet. The relationships I don't have are relationships I'm not and may never be ready for. The spaces I occupy, I am grateful for and will continue to be. The spaces I do not are spaces I have given back to the ones who belong there and will use beyond my ability to and that's okay. Twenty twelve was strange. Twenty thirteen is a big old bag of TBD, but I wish it was a big old bag of LSD. You can't go through life asleep, but a boy can dream.
///TRACK NOT FOUND - year end playlist up next
defining moments of a finest hour? yeah, something like that.
4/24/12
Reiterate (Life's a gun that's always pointing in my face)
Starting over. 27 iterations. Begin again. Are you now or have you been? 27 shots. Done deal. I was much more composed at Carnival this year. I guess a little distance helps. Found some closure over Jee. Found some connection too.
Sometimes all you've got to do is stay the course. Sometimes the only thing you've got to do is not fuck up. It was nice seeing people in real life. It was even nicer being as happy to see them as they were to see you. Wasn't expecting that at all. So much mutual love and understanding. And you feel it and it's like "is this really how the majority of people get to go through life?"
And the answer is an emphatic yes. Or maybe it's a no. But for two days it was a big old yes and it was beautiful just to be in it for it a little while. Just to be in it and forget about all the rest. It was nice to be a stand up guy and ready to throw down for anybody and not have to.
It sucks going back. I don't wanna go. I never do. I want to be there forever. I want to be loved and looked after. I want to wake up naked and happy all of the time. Driving home the sky accelerates. Going back out to space. Giving everyone their due and their distance. It hurts, but I know I have to. They're not prepared to be close to me and I them. A long letting go-ness. Compressed into hours instead of days. I'm one years old again. It feels amazing and stupid. And amazing all over again.
Nothing has changed, but everything has and I don't want to cry and I can't help myself at the same time. There's nothing keeping me dry. Time slicks by like a sinking ship with more passengers than rafts. Shoving off to pluto and all collected. Another year older, another year bolder, another year just a little bit colder. But not alone. Turbines to speed. Birthday wishes pending.
///The Postal Service - "Brand New Colony" ... when you're drowning in an open tub and your judgement's on the brink
Sometimes all you've got to do is stay the course. Sometimes the only thing you've got to do is not fuck up. It was nice seeing people in real life. It was even nicer being as happy to see them as they were to see you. Wasn't expecting that at all. So much mutual love and understanding. And you feel it and it's like "is this really how the majority of people get to go through life?"
And the answer is an emphatic yes. Or maybe it's a no. But for two days it was a big old yes and it was beautiful just to be in it for it a little while. Just to be in it and forget about all the rest. It was nice to be a stand up guy and ready to throw down for anybody and not have to.
It sucks going back. I don't wanna go. I never do. I want to be there forever. I want to be loved and looked after. I want to wake up naked and happy all of the time. Driving home the sky accelerates. Going back out to space. Giving everyone their due and their distance. It hurts, but I know I have to. They're not prepared to be close to me and I them. A long letting go-ness. Compressed into hours instead of days. I'm one years old again. It feels amazing and stupid. And amazing all over again.
Nothing has changed, but everything has and I don't want to cry and I can't help myself at the same time. There's nothing keeping me dry. Time slicks by like a sinking ship with more passengers than rafts. Shoving off to pluto and all collected. Another year older, another year bolder, another year just a little bit colder. But not alone. Turbines to speed. Birthday wishes pending.
///The Postal Service - "Brand New Colony" ... when you're drowning in an open tub and your judgement's on the brink
10/30/11
Every Day I'm Shoveling
First of all, why is "every day" not one word by now? Or the various "every" constructions? If we as a people can come to accept "bling" as a word with real meaning, how can we not accept words with real meanings that don't lose those meaning with the space dropped out? A space between words is a fence between neighbors and fences are necessary. I'm not saying take out all the spaces and make every sentence a word, though that would be awesome. You could say what you wanted to say whenever you wanted to say it in like ten words or less every time. But instead of an organized neighborhood of streets and cross walks when you looked at a page you'd see a mosh pit. Every time you spoke to someone it would basically be you sharing your personal rave and trying to combine parties when they spoke back and that would just be... ...awesome. Also awesomely unintelligible. For a generation or two. Ultimately though it would probably make our children smarter, or at least allow them to think differently. It would change politics. It would make it pretty much impossible for foreigners to assimilate and then you really would need to learn other languages because that guy that only speaks Spanish or only speaks Cantonese would not be able to talk to you at all in broken English because the language would be so agglutinated and dense that it would be impossible for anything but an uncreased brain to grasp it with ease and build into it.
Second of all: why can't I sit in a park with a shovel after the sun goes down? That is just unfair. I walk halfway across town because I saw an awesome shovel out for trash and I forgot to go back and get it until the evening and besides my hands were full at the time. I walk halfway across town, granted I live in a pretty small town and get this nice, heavy handled, spade shovel that would be absolutely perfect for some yard work I'll have to do later and on the way home I cut through the local park and it's a pretty nice night out and the hills are all dotted with little Saturday evening fires of people in doors so I sit for a moment on a bench with my new sweet ass shovel, staring up and letting my mind wander over who those people might be and just enjoying the weather cold enough to drizzle the air with the smell of fireplaces. I've never had a fireplace of my own. I like to imagine what it's like. I saw a duraflame log once, one of those fake wood things for people who don't like to burn real wood I guess. Or maybe for people who like fire places, but don't want to do the things that having a fireplace requires you to do. That really is the story of modern America. I want things, but I don't want to do the things having those things will require me to do.
Anyway, I'm sitting there and a car comes rolling up real slow and I don't look back to see who it is. I know it's a car. I know that pebble crunch anywhere. I also know people don't like it when I make sudden moves, and besides I have nothing to hide. I'm just a dude with a shovel. I keep listening to this car rolling closer and then, in the background of my mind because I'm still thinking about the hillsides and the gorgeous night, but my head is also running through all of the sound clips of tires and pebbles and speed equations, I realize the tires are doing police cruiser and/or drive by speed and/or jump out and stuff in the backseat kidnapping speed. So I stand up and I figure one of those three things will happen and sure enough the flashlights come on and the questions start in and why the hell do you have to shine that shit directly in my eye sockets anyway. I have a shovel. I'm not running anywhere with a damned shovel. Or at least not far anyway. So now I know. It is officially not okay with society to just be a dude in a park with a shovel between the hours of 7 PM and 7 AM.
I haven't really been eating. Not my fault though. I have been eating. Because I'm pretty sure I give off this pheromone when I don't eat. I'm kind of obsessed with how I smell. I try to match it with what I've been doing and putting into my body. Not farts. Those are totally easy. I'm pretty sure you can tell how someone's body functions based solely on how their ears smell. Well maybe not solely. And you probably have to lick them like licking a nine volt battery to see if it works to get the full suite of diagnostic information available through smells. What am I talking about? I get lost in theory sometimes. So I have been eating some. Enough to keep things going, but little more. Mainly because my sink doesn't work and I don't want to have to slog all my dishes down six flights of steps to the sink that does work. Naturally the answer to that problem is: don't do anything that requires the use of dishes. So I've been skipping a bunch of meals. I don't really miss them. I do miss them in that it makes it a lot easier to stay awake. Staying awake has become a full time job again. Partly because of the lack of intake and hypermile-ing my body, but also because dreaming has been so incredible I can't help but want to be there constantly. It's becoming less of a second life and more of a single joined seamless in phase existence. You know people that complain about how they "already did that" in a dream and then like have to go to work again? That used to happen to me. Long ago. Now it never happens.
Of course I feel completely unrested because I am basically alive and in phased consciousness for twenty hours a day, but the people I've met and things I do... it's been ridiculous. Also pointless to tell you about it in those terms because you weren't there. Definitely a "dude I saw this movie and it was awesome, you should have been there, but let me continue to talk about the movie in terms of superlative adjectives because if I frame it in enough paper thin hammered gold you will totally be inspired by the blank space inside the frame containing the picture only I can see."
So the dish thing I learned from my dog, Jack, rest his angry, fun loving, visitor hating, best friend for life, little Shelty bones. We would go on weekend road trips and he didn't want to poop in the house so he would basically not eat or drink, though we always left him plenty of food and water, until we got back. Maybe it was equal parts "if I don't eat then I won't have to poo" and vigil for me. "That's giving an animal too much credit," shut your face. I can't give that old bastard enough credit. He was the man. Seriously. Except for his fear of thunder and lightning and his rage toward fireworks he and I were basically two of a kind and alternated top dog roles depending on the situation, but we were basically 1 and 1A. Learned that little trick of no input equals no output, body wise, from him. More bravery per pound than most people who are not also Marines. Probably more stupidity per pound, but we were, again 1 and 1A on that front too. If you are a cat person I don't hate you, but you have no idea what you're missing.
Which is why I should never be a parent. Me and my kids will be the baddest family on the block. Partly because I would be way too fair to them. With my dog, he would bring me a sock for tug of war and being like three times his size, maybe four if I just ate a couple burritos, the only fair thing to do was meet him at his level. I figured his teeth were probably a lot stronger than mine, what with his eating bones from time to time (never understood that, but I do have a propensity for walking around with spoons in my mouth), maybe four or five times so naturally I used my teeth for tug of war. If I lost a couple, no big deal, so we got it on. "I'm a take you down to China town!" That's how we threw down. Gotta be fair. So instead of setting a curfew I would probably tell my kids they can stay out or stay up as late as they want, but they have to fight me for it and if I win then they have to go to bed when I say. I wouldn't kick the crap out of them. I never actually hit Jack. I would scuff 'em a little. More like lioness to cubs kind of stuff. Only minus the breast feeding. Do they even do that? Or do they come out of the womb craving a hearty meal of lightly chewed, but still fresh, Giraffe. Instead of telling my kids not to go set fires, I'll probably stop them at the door and say something like "make sure you bring fireplace matches so you don't have to stand too close to the accelerant, because I'm not driving up to the woods to put you out." Sure, I wouldn't let them blow themselves up. I'm not a monster. But I will make sure they know how to set a charge properly and it would be the best father/son or father/daughter tandem ever. We will be feared. Probably. Anyway. What I'm saying is every day I'm shoveling so don't cause any problems and there won't be any problems. I'm just a dude with a shovel out for a walk.
Trying to get back to writing fiction, but it's been a long and heady road full of potholes. I'm not dawdling as much as I am reflecting. I wrote a fairly long draft of a science fiction short called Scanlon, but I haven't back over it in almost eight days now. I'm trying though. I apologize. I will try harder. Life's too short not to try, so don't spend all of your time "doing".
///Deadelus - "Taking Wing"
Second of all: why can't I sit in a park with a shovel after the sun goes down? That is just unfair. I walk halfway across town because I saw an awesome shovel out for trash and I forgot to go back and get it until the evening and besides my hands were full at the time. I walk halfway across town, granted I live in a pretty small town and get this nice, heavy handled, spade shovel that would be absolutely perfect for some yard work I'll have to do later and on the way home I cut through the local park and it's a pretty nice night out and the hills are all dotted with little Saturday evening fires of people in doors so I sit for a moment on a bench with my new sweet ass shovel, staring up and letting my mind wander over who those people might be and just enjoying the weather cold enough to drizzle the air with the smell of fireplaces. I've never had a fireplace of my own. I like to imagine what it's like. I saw a duraflame log once, one of those fake wood things for people who don't like to burn real wood I guess. Or maybe for people who like fire places, but don't want to do the things that having a fireplace requires you to do. That really is the story of modern America. I want things, but I don't want to do the things having those things will require me to do.
Anyway, I'm sitting there and a car comes rolling up real slow and I don't look back to see who it is. I know it's a car. I know that pebble crunch anywhere. I also know people don't like it when I make sudden moves, and besides I have nothing to hide. I'm just a dude with a shovel. I keep listening to this car rolling closer and then, in the background of my mind because I'm still thinking about the hillsides and the gorgeous night, but my head is also running through all of the sound clips of tires and pebbles and speed equations, I realize the tires are doing police cruiser and/or drive by speed and/or jump out and stuff in the backseat kidnapping speed. So I stand up and I figure one of those three things will happen and sure enough the flashlights come on and the questions start in and why the hell do you have to shine that shit directly in my eye sockets anyway. I have a shovel. I'm not running anywhere with a damned shovel. Or at least not far anyway. So now I know. It is officially not okay with society to just be a dude in a park with a shovel between the hours of 7 PM and 7 AM.
I haven't really been eating. Not my fault though. I have been eating. Because I'm pretty sure I give off this pheromone when I don't eat. I'm kind of obsessed with how I smell. I try to match it with what I've been doing and putting into my body. Not farts. Those are totally easy. I'm pretty sure you can tell how someone's body functions based solely on how their ears smell. Well maybe not solely. And you probably have to lick them like licking a nine volt battery to see if it works to get the full suite of diagnostic information available through smells. What am I talking about? I get lost in theory sometimes. So I have been eating some. Enough to keep things going, but little more. Mainly because my sink doesn't work and I don't want to have to slog all my dishes down six flights of steps to the sink that does work. Naturally the answer to that problem is: don't do anything that requires the use of dishes. So I've been skipping a bunch of meals. I don't really miss them. I do miss them in that it makes it a lot easier to stay awake. Staying awake has become a full time job again. Partly because of the lack of intake and hypermile-ing my body, but also because dreaming has been so incredible I can't help but want to be there constantly. It's becoming less of a second life and more of a single joined seamless in phase existence. You know people that complain about how they "already did that" in a dream and then like have to go to work again? That used to happen to me. Long ago. Now it never happens.
Of course I feel completely unrested because I am basically alive and in phased consciousness for twenty hours a day, but the people I've met and things I do... it's been ridiculous. Also pointless to tell you about it in those terms because you weren't there. Definitely a "dude I saw this movie and it was awesome, you should have been there, but let me continue to talk about the movie in terms of superlative adjectives because if I frame it in enough paper thin hammered gold you will totally be inspired by the blank space inside the frame containing the picture only I can see."
So the dish thing I learned from my dog, Jack, rest his angry, fun loving, visitor hating, best friend for life, little Shelty bones. We would go on weekend road trips and he didn't want to poop in the house so he would basically not eat or drink, though we always left him plenty of food and water, until we got back. Maybe it was equal parts "if I don't eat then I won't have to poo" and vigil for me. "That's giving an animal too much credit," shut your face. I can't give that old bastard enough credit. He was the man. Seriously. Except for his fear of thunder and lightning and his rage toward fireworks he and I were basically two of a kind and alternated top dog roles depending on the situation, but we were basically 1 and 1A. Learned that little trick of no input equals no output, body wise, from him. More bravery per pound than most people who are not also Marines. Probably more stupidity per pound, but we were, again 1 and 1A on that front too. If you are a cat person I don't hate you, but you have no idea what you're missing.
Which is why I should never be a parent. Me and my kids will be the baddest family on the block. Partly because I would be way too fair to them. With my dog, he would bring me a sock for tug of war and being like three times his size, maybe four if I just ate a couple burritos, the only fair thing to do was meet him at his level. I figured his teeth were probably a lot stronger than mine, what with his eating bones from time to time (never understood that, but I do have a propensity for walking around with spoons in my mouth), maybe four or five times so naturally I used my teeth for tug of war. If I lost a couple, no big deal, so we got it on. "I'm a take you down to China town!" That's how we threw down. Gotta be fair. So instead of setting a curfew I would probably tell my kids they can stay out or stay up as late as they want, but they have to fight me for it and if I win then they have to go to bed when I say. I wouldn't kick the crap out of them. I never actually hit Jack. I would scuff 'em a little. More like lioness to cubs kind of stuff. Only minus the breast feeding. Do they even do that? Or do they come out of the womb craving a hearty meal of lightly chewed, but still fresh, Giraffe. Instead of telling my kids not to go set fires, I'll probably stop them at the door and say something like "make sure you bring fireplace matches so you don't have to stand too close to the accelerant, because I'm not driving up to the woods to put you out." Sure, I wouldn't let them blow themselves up. I'm not a monster. But I will make sure they know how to set a charge properly and it would be the best father/son or father/daughter tandem ever. We will be feared. Probably. Anyway. What I'm saying is every day I'm shoveling so don't cause any problems and there won't be any problems. I'm just a dude with a shovel out for a walk.
Trying to get back to writing fiction, but it's been a long and heady road full of potholes. I'm not dawdling as much as I am reflecting. I wrote a fairly long draft of a science fiction short called Scanlon, but I haven't back over it in almost eight days now. I'm trying though. I apologize. I will try harder. Life's too short not to try, so don't spend all of your time "doing".
///Deadelus - "Taking Wing"
4/19/11
Under Consideration and Lesser Titles for Greater Things
Having experienced various points of system shock through various psychological breaking points over the last five days there are so many facets of existence to consider. I guess first and foremost is the relationship between- brake fail. Entry point. New thread. Same thread. If I want to enter into steady state society, contiguous existence, beyond the high speed passes, lower the charge without damaging consciousness- skip break. how far can you go. how far are you willing to go to make sure you don't die alone. Found it.
The hole. If the break cannot be controlled and it has been demonstrated that the entry points are getting. Growing in number beyond traceability to a point of trustlessness and protection to enter to ask. We already know we can't ask without. The offer is real isn't it? Standing for the claimant. The ability. To reject the known for the unknown again. To start it over. We did it for her once. For both her and us and now we face ourselves and potentially the division from. And entry into not just the hole, but what lives inside.
I'd forgotten what great company was. For some time. I thought I understood to an extent. And the reality apart from the extent of understanding was more incredible. More fantastic than I could have hoped. I've heard that heaven's gonna burn your eyes, but I didn't believe it. The noises were amazing. Would we still feel it inside. Could we know it if we did.
I'm trying to reconstruct the memories. They are without sensations. The ones from that earlier time and rocky trial of prescriptions. Disconcerting eveness. All things advance. Could it really be any different from the functional calls to operations and sectional being. Yes. It would have to be. Out of the reason that the responses are all. Why not have access to. that's part of the issue. The access is cut apart. But how badly do you not want to die alone. And there's the fear that comes without description. Because there is no description for what exists apart from the ability to describe. But released from what can be described and known though invisible artifacts of the corrupted and tuned highly tuned circuit. Facing a way. A way in. A way out. A way in. To become less and a part of.
So we'll walk into it. And find what has been seen. And see it again. Charting space and spaces. We'll see what happens through this week. Thursday and straight on till morning. Not goodbye. An extended hello. To further modification. Answers. A heaven that will burn your eyes. A start of beginnings. That are loops and waves. On our insides drawing together divisions. Of necessity and being. It will throw our ways. I'll catch you yet. And maybe there really is nothing inside of that hole anymore. Or maybe the only way to deal with it is entry into. We'll find what lies and lower the charge and enter into the gravity of society. Space is just too cold. So I've learned. And it's taken loss to unravel that concept. I'll catch you if you'll wait for me. I don't like to promise much, but just don't leave too soon. I'm gonna drive it straight into the atmosphere. The flames will be gorgeous, but by the time my wheels touch the ground the tiles and plates and cooling vents will be easy on the eyes and ears and to the touch. The runway's not as long as it used to be. I didn't pack a chute when I left.
///Thievery Corporation - "Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes" ...you can't be afraid forever... so I'm going to try a different way to be brave and maybe there will be a hero's welcome yet. Don't wish us luck. Save it for the day I shake your hand. That's when I'll need it. And we'll sit down with some coffee and I can tell you all about where the fuck I've really been and maybe there'll still be something left behind my eyes familiar to you and we both.
The hole. If the break cannot be controlled and it has been demonstrated that the entry points are getting. Growing in number beyond traceability to a point of trustlessness and protection to enter to ask. We already know we can't ask without. The offer is real isn't it? Standing for the claimant. The ability. To reject the known for the unknown again. To start it over. We did it for her once. For both her and us and now we face ourselves and potentially the division from. And entry into not just the hole, but what lives inside.
I'd forgotten what great company was. For some time. I thought I understood to an extent. And the reality apart from the extent of understanding was more incredible. More fantastic than I could have hoped. I've heard that heaven's gonna burn your eyes, but I didn't believe it. The noises were amazing. Would we still feel it inside. Could we know it if we did.
I'm trying to reconstruct the memories. They are without sensations. The ones from that earlier time and rocky trial of prescriptions. Disconcerting eveness. All things advance. Could it really be any different from the functional calls to operations and sectional being. Yes. It would have to be. Out of the reason that the responses are all. Why not have access to. that's part of the issue. The access is cut apart. But how badly do you not want to die alone. And there's the fear that comes without description. Because there is no description for what exists apart from the ability to describe. But released from what can be described and known though invisible artifacts of the corrupted and tuned highly tuned circuit. Facing a way. A way in. A way out. A way in. To become less and a part of.
So we'll walk into it. And find what has been seen. And see it again. Charting space and spaces. We'll see what happens through this week. Thursday and straight on till morning. Not goodbye. An extended hello. To further modification. Answers. A heaven that will burn your eyes. A start of beginnings. That are loops and waves. On our insides drawing together divisions. Of necessity and being. It will throw our ways. I'll catch you yet. And maybe there really is nothing inside of that hole anymore. Or maybe the only way to deal with it is entry into. We'll find what lies and lower the charge and enter into the gravity of society. Space is just too cold. So I've learned. And it's taken loss to unravel that concept. I'll catch you if you'll wait for me. I don't like to promise much, but just don't leave too soon. I'm gonna drive it straight into the atmosphere. The flames will be gorgeous, but by the time my wheels touch the ground the tiles and plates and cooling vents will be easy on the eyes and ears and to the touch. The runway's not as long as it used to be. I didn't pack a chute when I left.
///Thievery Corporation - "Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes" ...you can't be afraid forever... so I'm going to try a different way to be brave and maybe there will be a hero's welcome yet. Don't wish us luck. Save it for the day I shake your hand. That's when I'll need it. And we'll sit down with some coffee and I can tell you all about where the fuck I've really been and maybe there'll still be something left behind my eyes familiar to you and we both.
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