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

The Best Thing

about listening to conversations is hearing the notes and seeing the sheet music.

Time Locked (meta jail)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that we don't forget.

The End of the World Came, The End of the World Went

Do these people know how many times they've completely screwed up other peoples plans by making incorrect predictions about the end of the world?  I get why they do it.  There are a few reasons.  I think the main reason is because who doesn't want to be right about something that absolutely huge?  For the rest of time, what little there is left of it, you will be known and revered as "the one" who truly could see the future.  You will have the satisfaction of knowing that what you believed all of your life was worth it.  And maybe, in a farther reaching sense, the sense of if you are able to predict it correctly from enough years away, maybe you will have changed someone's life for the better.

Every time you get it wrong you really get it wrong.  As unhelpful as cults are, for the few ones that really do help people turn their lives around for the better (for whatever insane reason they're able to convince them to change), what happens when you're wrong prediction produces mass suicides?  I think that was the funny and also frustrating thing about this whole Planet X thing.

For a while, I was absolutely thrilled.  Finally, it's over.  How great is it that I'll be able to die!  We're finally checking out, baby!  Free of all guilt about what'll happen to the people's lives you've touched directly or indirectly and free from all sadness about the people that will actually miss you and free from the anger about the people that never had time for you, but will put on a show because they're emotional tourists.  It's over, it's done!  No more bills, no more trying to fit in or getting pissed off with trying to fit in and having to give the world the finger and go your own way only to be dragged back around to trying to fit in because that life gets exhausting and sometimes you just want a damn hug to get through another week.

All of our hopes were running high and the day came and the day went and nothing.  Just a big fat nothing.  More bills.  More bad deals from companies and services that know you can't really go anywhere else and are going to continue to screw you royally because ... well, where else are you going to go?  More stupid rhetoric from Capitol Hill.  More disappointments in policy making.  More losses.  More frustrations.  More "why the hell am I even bothering with this garbage."  We were all supposed to be reduced to superheated plasma two days ago.  Instead we've got more... more... what do you even call the new "this"?  What is this? 

Well, good talk.  I'm going to go to sleep and wake up, I suppose.  Adventure through dreamland until the sun comes up and those businesses open again and we all get on the road and start jogging toward our graves, or maybe just sit down and run out our clocks doing nothing, or try to mate with each other or ourselves.  Maybe I'll just read something.  Or listen to someone read something.  Another day gone by and the world is still turning.  I want out.  I'll wait my turn.  What's the hurry, right?  Not like anything else is happening in this arm of our galaxy.  Might as well go skip some rocks.




///Daedelus - "Special Re:Quest"  bed time.  but I'm not tired!  you've got to get some sleep sweetie.  try for me, would you?  will you leave the christmas lights on?  sure, nite nite.

Texts From A Stoneissuer

"The stoneissuer is particularly distasteful because as soon as theirs runs out you are the first one they call.  You are the first one they try to buddy up with and then they come over and try to be modest about how much they are taking and go out of their way to point it out that they are somehow doing you a favor because what they usually get is more pure and they're not used to smoking a gentler high and the taste is way off but they can get accustomed to it."

Remember the stoneissuer.  Remember they are not your friend.  Do they?  So the texts come in.  Texts about hard times and market fluctuations.  People too busy to do X or Y and on and on until you get to the bone and your teeth crunch a little as you grind them: "can I buy some to get by 'til...".  Oh, no they don't.  The stoneissuer never does.  Forgive and forget and all.  I get it.  Break through the bone to the marrow.  That chain of texts months and months ago still burns bright despite the ash and dirt of time packed over it.  Despite the months of rain to douse it.  The clock has struck and the ringtone chimes for thee.

Remember when you told me it wasn't that good.  You said "well, on the street I can get this and that for this and this isn't even as good as what I usually get so I don't see why I should have to pay X and Y when... if you need the money my husband can loan you some.  You don't need to up charge me when what you have is basically street."  Oh, I remember, stoneissuer.  I only smoke what I can get myself.  If you weren't willing to pay more for the lengths I had to go to in order to fill the requirements of what I need to enjoy and fill my prescription then, guess what: it's not worth your money now either.

Stoneissuer.  Poor stoneissuer.  I'm not trying to teach you a lesson.  I'm eliminating a blight upon my land.  Ring back later when your head isn't licking crumbs out of your jean pocket and your fingers aren't cramping trying to extract dreadful resin from a crack in the glass of your picked clean wares.  Then, I'll be a believer.  Until then, plan a little better.  Or have a little restraint.  Better yet, do both.




///JJ Doom - "GMO feat. Beth Gibbons"      

At The River Near the Lowline and Clarity

Looking at my own reflection at the river, a wolf's head mask in the crook of my arm, I wonder how many there are like me.  I wonder how many times I can roll the dice with instability before an immovable object meets an unstoppable force again.  I try to skip rocks.  I try to bat rocks with an aluminum bat given to me as a gift after I left the last one I had at home, bent into the shape of a boomerang.  I wonder where I am going and if someone out there is going the same way I am.  If we will carpool together and shout at each other, trying to figure out where exactly "there" is while the driver tries to figure how to get two wolves out of his car and regrets being a Samaritan.

Many of the rocks hit the tips of breakers and sink.  One of us trots off to find a stick, because the only thing better than being good enough at whipping rocks across the waves, skip tip skip, is belting one clear across to the other shore with an eardrum pounding snapthud.  The other of us continues to troll the river edge for something shaped more like an atmosphere slicing star ship.  Found.  Away it goes: skip kip tick tink tock thock plop splash!  Mid-river.  The current continues.  I can't see my face, looking down.  The angles aren't right.  The light is not just so.  The sun is not cooperating.  Statistics tell me, with time, the chances only get better.

Thinking about how people find their perfect match.  At least, their better half, I worry that my best half may be a copy of me.  Should I meet myself, the fusion would be fantastic.  Impossible.  Incredible in its perfection and destruction.  Volatile and serene and volatile and serene and so far off of the periodic table as to exist for fractions of fractions of fractions of seconds, recorded only by some sort of quantum, liquid gas cooled, calculating machine, monitoring a torus of plasma whose only hint that the collision was made successfully is a slight fluctuation in its surface hundreds of meters in circumference, yet to be invented before its shear density of particles blew apart and ceased to exist.  Insofar as that, I am satisfied to be alone.

Happy and satisfied are two different things.  The instant of happiness would be without measure, however, exceptionally brief.  As much as I would like to, as much as I say it is the only match capable of closing my circuits, I know it is ... I want to say that I know it is not true.  Doomed.  I laugh typing that.  The two "oh's" in the middle make me giggle.  Dooooooomed!  Of course not.  Should you meet an element that can absorb nuclear decay and heat.  I wonder what quantum decay looks like.  I meet so many people with so many names and I know none of them.  Some of them, yes.  None of them, also yes.  Always at distance.  Minding the fence.  Minding the facilities.  On the off chance they might be me.  On the larger chance I am still myself and they are not.

A moat.  Sometimes the bridge is there.  The gates open and ambassadors cross.  I don't know what madness is.  Is it sleeping to protect yourself from yourself?  Is it sleeping to protect others from yourself?  Is it believing the best thing you can do is offer shade inside a bunker, outfit with everything you can desire and hold dear, in the shadow of your fusion climbing toward the exosphere?  Recite: I am here, this is what I wanted.  I am here, this is what I wanted.  I am here.  This is what I wanted.  Few things truly scare me, in life.  I would like to never meet my, atom for atom, better half.  Inside that reactor would lie our mutual, exceptionally violent, end.





///Groove Armada - "At The River"   ~ tempo and brass and sand and waving, not drowning.

Year End Playlist 2014

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

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

in no particular order

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

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

A Brief Intermission and Yes, I Know You Don't Work Here

I just want to know if you've seen tea bags anywhere in Wal-Mart.  That's all.  I'm not hitting on you.  I've been over the aisles six times now multiplied by six aisles and I cannot for the life of me find any tea and it's getting frustrating and I know I'm a little not all there, but it makes sense that if there is a coffee section with a very wide selection of coffees and methods of making coffee there should at least be a shanty town for the people who are not allowed to have coffee and do enjoy the brewed beverages containing caffeine who still worship at the teapot instead of the press or grinder.  It makes perfect sense.

I know you don't work at Wal-Mart.  I only ask so I can know that I'm not losing it and my map is still relatively accurate.  No need to flip an attitude Ms. Ma'am.  No need to ignore me Mr. Guy.  It's a genuine concern.  Not a conversation starter.  I don't get out much and I like it that way.  Who wants to start a relationship based on the search for tea at a store that has no business selling foods and potables in the first place!  Absurd.  It's a yes or no question.  And for that matter, what's wrong with working for Wal-Mart, you classist....  ugh..... it's weird sometimes how closely the town I love abuts a town a have a distinct distaste for.  Well, guess what, mister... we share the same store and I don't like it anymore than you do.  I'll clip the mirror on your double parked Bentley GT on my way out.

It is kinda funny though.  My truck is difficult to park sometimes.  I don't bother with trying to park close to the shopping center entrances because that's asking for a cluster fuck.  Every few times a year though the excessively wealthy find their way to parking in the lots at the shopping center equidistant, them to there and there to me.  They usually park in the way back.  Where I park my horse.  You know where this is going.  I snuggle my beast right up next to them whenever I can.  Inside the lines.  Perfectly parallel.  The ambassador from the other side of the tracks.  As you get older, the games you get to play increase their restrictions and demand more creativity.

I know you don't work in my factory.  I know what you build is not what I build.  I know what you make is not what I would make, given the same choices.  Don't be offended if I ask for help because, when I ask, I've already been over the information and the outcomes and the paths and I know going it on my own is begging disaster.  I don't want your help.  I need your help.  Need makes strange things out of us.  Cookies and milk and a nap?  You can have a nap, or cookies and milk, not both.  I know you don't work here; can you save me some time?

Never did find the tea.  When I got home, though, found a full box of 100 bags of black tea in the pantry, still in it's plastic wrap.  Yep, already solved.  It was one of the happiest cups of tea I had in a little while.  Massive relief.  I could see why tea leaves could and have started wars.


///Stereolab - "Space Moth"   ...i've been here before, haven't you?