Another Way

Another way to think about it is in terms of shows.

How many shows are you willing to play?  If you play 24 shows in a year, you've done well.  If you play 36 shows in one year, it was worth it.  If you play 48 shows in one year it was a blast.  If you play 50 plus shows in a single year, you've gone above and beyond the call of duty.

If you play 100 and more shows of what makes up the bones of you, you've gone beyond what anybody asked you to do.  Everything else is just exploration and





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Captions Less Pictures, Bagging, Girls, Cracked Year, and Making Time

I saw a zebra printed Cadillac coupe today.  I saw it coming around the S curve, my favorite turn in the road in the two mile city where I live, and I was in awe from the get.  "Who is so ballsy as to paint their car in zebra camouflage print and rock it like: this is how I always dress" is what was going through my mind.  Then it got closer.  The car had a blacked out grille, but I could see a Cadillac logo nested in there, completely blacked out.  I looked harder while it got closer and I realized it was going, far and away, over the 25 mile-per-hour speed limit for the main road in my city and there was another blue Cadillac in its shadow going just as fast.  That's when it hit me: "its a test mule!"

Sometimes car manufacturers will throw a new suspension geometry and engine and transmission underneath an old cowl and body work to shake it out and make sure it does what its supposed to do.  I thought that might be what it was, so I didn't go for my camera.  There are thousands of pictures of test mules and chasis that won't match when it comes to production or even car shows that are wrapped in zebra camo and it was nothing special, until I started to make out the lines.

The lines did not match up to anything I saw before.  Two doors.  Shorter C pillar.  Thin B.  A really long A.  The thing was going pretty fast, but once I could start to see past the clutter of the zebra print I knew it was something new.  I ripped at my pockets and threw off my backpack to try and find my phone so I could take a picture of it.  It blew past me, with the chase car in tow and I was getting ready to chase it down just in case the streetlight changed.  The lines were awesome.  Way better than the last Cadillac coupe, but the light did not change and it went on.  The exhaust note was kind of weird, but I'm sure they'll fix that in post.  Watching it blow away, I knew I would never see it again.  Possibly never see another prototype in action again, underneath the zebra wrap.  If I do, from whatever distance, I know I should get my camera ready just in case.  I don't know why I love machines so much.  I do.  I envy them.  So damn sexy.  So damn easy.   So damn difficult at the same time.

I was going to tell my friends about it.  The backlog of knowledge was overwhelming.  They're good people, but they wouldn't get it.  They wouldn't get it and on top of it all there was no picture.  What I would be talking about would be a caption without a picture.  I'd ramble on and on and on and in the end I would say something like "whatever, you had to be there." My heart shook watching it slip by like a knife into skin.  The thing itself was so beautiful.  Once my brain resolved the lines of the machine, I felt like a cheetah caught sleeping while a gazelle pranced on by in a giant Sunday flower hat on its way to church.  Missed meals.

I'm not bagging on myself though.  It's the first time that's ever happened.  It wasn't a mule.  It wasn't a prototype.  It was the body design that will probably see production.  I guess part of me just wanted to be as cool as everyone else who breaks photos on the car blogs and magazines.  What it brings me to is bagging on things.  "Baggin."  Where does that come from?  I found myself saying it the other day after thinking about something I said earlier to someone.

It's the writer in me.  When you know you're a writer, you think about what you thought about when you said what you said and why you said it that way instead of another way.  I don't count myself as a writer anymore.  I see myself as a tool.  Sometimes as a tool and sometimes as a tool.  A tool that sometimes produces.  Maybe I'm just a producer.  Hah, no.  I hate producing.  A tool that generates?  Yes.  I'm a generator.  Autonomic generator, that's as far as I can take ya, do you wanna be a part of, oh yes, yeah, I'm on it.

Bagging.  I thought about it way too much.  Bagging.  To bag on someone.  Bag on something.  The Urban Dictionary was no help.  What I think it means, as I've understood it, is to understand that what you are going up against is not at all what you wanted or needed and so you bag.  You bag your street clothes because there's no work to be done.  No actual work.  Bag your street clothes.  Whatever was thought to be done was already done or otherwise not doable, so bag your street clothes because the minute you get there is the same minute you know you didn't need to be there.  Bag your drugs.  The minute you get there and get a feel for what's going on you know you didn't need to be there, but you are, so you might as well enjoy the time you've already set aside.  Get to a good place and everything else will follow for you.  Maybe not for them, for you it's golden.  Bag your expectations.  Bag 'em up.  Bag 'em up.  Take them home with you and flush them down the toilet when you get there.  Bag your lunch.  Remember how they said you were going to eat good when you got there and lunch turned out to be finger sandwiches and punch and sandwich cookies?  Nope, because I brought my own from home and I gotta tell you this chipped ham sandwich with springs and spicy brown mustard and pepperoni tastes so much better than.  Bagging.

Hedging is bagging.   Hedging is bagging with a backhand because everyone knows when you're doing it.  Everyone knows, once you bag, that you came in with low expectations and those expectations played out.  It's not an insult to get bagged on.  If anything, besides an insult, it says your friends love you enough to show up at all and your enemies did too.  To see you fail, maybe.  Faces get scarce the older you get when life changes veins.  We all know that.  Most of us know that.  At least make their ticket fee worthwhile.  It's not easy to bag.  Sometimes you have to take a chance.  Everyone bags sometimes.  Sometimes bagging on someone or something is as simple as making back up plans or coinciding plans so there can be an ejector seat button that lands you somewhere more comfortable.  Nothing wrong with bagging.  Most of the time.

Girls are crazy.  I'll just say it.  They are.  I sat through a very long exposition about how some other girl was going crazy and kicked people out of her house even though it wasn't her house or her right to kick anyone out (I would have felt the same if it was a guy doing it and relating the story).  While she was telling the story,I kept remembering all of the times she went ape shit while we were hanging out.  A diagram.  A verbal diagram.  Ladies take note.  They don't teach you this in college orientation.  They only teach the rape threshold.

1 drink: Guys) alright it's official.  Girls) Did I get my ride home set up?

3 drinks: Guys) what time is it.  Girls) oh my god, why is no one dancing?

6 drinks: Guys) games? how about yes!  Girls) i feel sick.  this is the song I requested!

9 drinks: Guys) game two, muthafucka!  I rule you.  Girls) this is fun. I'm having fun.  Can you see my tits?  I can see my tits.  I bet he can see my tits.

11 drinks: Guys) game two, I'm up!  Girls) what are you guys playing?  Can I play?

14 drinks: Guys) game three, I'm in.  Fugg that.  I'm winning this round.  Girls) You look great, what are you talking about?  Oh my god, I go to the same place!

16 drinks: Guys) hah, no way.  what he should have done in that fight is... Girls) oh please.  That's bullshit.  You're better than that.  Have you seen my shoes yet?  They're discount, but...

22 drinks: Guys) no, let me show you.  Okay, okay, okay, let's finish this.  We're too grown up to fight... unless you want to.  Girls) [throwing up and/or passed out.... if not the latter, forward to the next...] I'm tired/want to go home/what time is it/i'm fine {not fine}.

24 gender war

Girls are crazy.  It was simply hilarious though, hearing a woman rail against another about her behavior at a party and it was a kettle calling the pot black.  I kept snickering while she was relating the story and getting really into it and painting her as this kind of horrible villain.  At the same time, I was thinking about her moments and she's a fiery girl too.  It was beyond me to try to explain to her that she did the exact same things except she was hanging out in my place and there's no way to kick anyone out of my house so she left and tried to kick her boy toy out of my place by proxy, but the attitude and acclimation that I have is: if you want to stay you can stay; if you want to leave you can leave.  It's that simple.  Feel obligated if you want to. If you don't then don't.  If you're invited in, you're in for as long as you want to be.  I'll do what I want and you can do what you want and if you over step I'll let you know.  If you don't over step I'm good too.  It might become uncomfortable for you and that's fine with me.  I'll be comfortable.  Do what makes you.  If you don't like it, cash out.  No one's holding you here so don't feel obligated, because I don't.  Girls are crazy.

I miss my crack year.  It was fun.  A couple bars closed near me.  You'd think they'd have the courtesy to let their patrons know.  I miss the not knowing.  The not knowing where you're going to get it.  Those were the original adventure times... hold on... gotta change to headphones with better bass response... not knowing where you were going to wake up, but knowing who you were going to wake up with because there literally was no one else.  I loved it.  Still do love it.  We're not low lifes.  Don't put us there.  Every night was time well spent.  Now it's like those plastic chatter wind up teeth, except you're sitting on them.  They're in your chair.  All wound up.  Every time you get up to do something, your butt holding them fast shut, they go off.  CHA CHA CHA CHA CHA CHA CHA CHET CHET CHET CHET CHET CHET CHET CHET CHATATATATATARATATARATATATARATATARATARAATARATARAT.  Wish they whispered.  They don't.

They go ritttttereretetetet and I second guess what I'm doing and wonder if I could do it better breathing it, because some things I can.  I don't know if that makes addiction.  I don't want to know the answer.  I just kicked paint.  That was harder than kicking rock.  Bad things, really bad things are still too fresh in my head from kicking it.  At least with paint everything got super buttery.  Like, seeing light, sunlight, made me taste green butter buds with fuzzy tips on my tongue when I saw leaves of plants and leaves of flooring interlocking.  Endless energy came to me like I was whispering into the ear of Zeus himself when I was smoking.  Something above and away beyond cannabis.  There's no replacing that.  I wish I could, but there is no way beyond it past pretending it never happened.  You sit on that set of spring activated teeth and they don't go off until you stand up and then doubts crowds in hard and fast.  Hundred million ----ing strong like a riot where your brain meets your mouth.  How your ears get hot when you're about to fuck except it's right there in the back of your skull where you can't scratch and you know if you did itch it the entire thing you are trying to do will treat you so good you will never troll craigslist again looking for the desparate night flyer fuck to help you feel better without the peace between your lips.  Fuck.

I miss the time I spent already.  Only 4 years removed from abuse.  4 years of being myself.   4 years of knowing how to be and who I am and how to enjoy and how not to be.  Her name came up in my head today.  I was walking.  It came up right after I saw the zebra and I was thinking about one times.  I'll live it down.  I will.  She was nothing.  I like to think  I got lucky.

Growing up fast.  I will give his name that shall never be spoken this one credit: he once said to me "you didn't have time, or you didn't make time" that was before he beat me for not cleaning my room.  It stuck with me for different reasons than.  What it taught me was that sometimes you just have to make what it is that you want.  If you're always short of coke by the end of the week and have to go through the hassle every friday, what you should be doing is budgeting out to double or triple up your order.  If you keep running out of fresh fruit by mid month, you need to buy the unripe fruits and mix them in with the ones ready to eat so that by week three you're golden.

A little planning goes a long way.  You will find a way to make time for the things that you want.  You will make time.  What you do with that time is debatable.  Once you have that time it's a matter of control.  It's a matter of control and liberation because that freedom comes at cost to your doorstep and there's no way to flip it for profit out of the gate.  Photoshoot?  Writing?  Sleeping? Everything that you paid to get that time free bears down guns blazing,  Which bullet strikes your heart is not up to you.  At least not as often as the wounds would love it to be.

Life is viscous.

Life doesn't care.

Life is what you can make out of it.

Life does not turn the other cheek.  Ever.

Don't kid yourself.

Love yourself.

Never.  Ever.

Lock yourself

into fear.




///Hot Chip - "You Ride, We Ride, In My Ride"  its out here I may find my reasons for.  ...  found some distance.  The distance that I needed to be... whatever the hell it is I am supposed to.  Still figuring it out.  Ghosts have returned.  Hallucinations.  I want the simpler times.  But where you're going you never really come back from.  Some of you comes back.  A little bit always stays out there.  I just wonder when the numbers run over years what it is that adds up to.  How far away is it do you have to stay to make sure everyone else is safe.

Busy Signal and Dedication

I was just a person you would love to love, but then. I went through a week of pretty wild depression. Like depression uncharted. I want this to be up beat and I will try to make it as much so as I can, but sometimes things are unexpectedly gory. So I will make light whenever possible.

I've been in face time mode for a bit. Partly because happiness is contagious and sadness is, well, sadness. Not for any particular reason. Well, for particular reasons, but none of the reasons are valid. I have been experiencing very acute separation anxiety. And it's hard to describe. It's not like losing a mother or father or losing a method to madness and being left with only madness. How can I describe it? Asking myself. Separation anxiety for life? Not a fear of death, but a maddening anxiety for losing life? And then not even that so much as, by turning days, a separation anxiety that has echoed down the years back to my ears for my ex. But that's dead and gone right? Yet it comes swimming back against the current to the bridge and treads water long enough for me to notice, as I'm pitching rocks and counting the skips, to drown again like it was yesterday. Like it was five minutes ago. Panicking. Panicking as though I let myself go to the wave tops, even though I didn't. I made the right call, but the right call is calling me back and leaving messages and I am wishing there was a way to send things not to voicemail, but to nonexistence, and I am knowing that there is a way, but that particular way, in all of it's means, turns the good call into a terrible one.

I was talking to someone about suicide. Indirectly. Talking about the reasons people choose to make their lives matter. The biggest one is always religion. The second biggest one is narcissism. The third is family. And so on. But there is another reason that is a little harder to get at and more valuable than all three. If we accept that there is no god, and there isn't, and that math and science can, given an infinite timeline (or at least from the perspective of human life times, infinite), come to grasp and describe all, and that life is essentially just another system, of which we all are a part, it is clear that there is little actual wiggle room for agency. Not that there is none. The actual sphere of impact is simply a lot smaller for the vast majority of human beings than we are lead to believe. It's not all predetermined, but the actual outcome of my life, your life, is smaller than the bill of warrants would have you believe.

Killing yourself might hurt some people. Those people compose a micro fraction of the total people you could possibly hurt by not killing yourself and killing them instead. More importantly, unless you are part of a very small fraction of the populace, your death will have the chances of winning the local lottery, assassinating a head of a state, and getting struck by lightning later that day when the forecast for rain was less than 1% the hour before, of impacting the future outcomes of the rest of the worlds occupants, let alone the rest of the country's or even the state's outcomes. Probably even the locality's.

The thing that can keep you alive though is knowing that for the local set of outcomes there are a few very much intertwined equations. These equations, known or not, make up your value and you can assign whatever figure you want to your variable. Your variable on the long scheme of the interactions makes up very little of the master equation. The sun will still die. Mankind will still continue to implode and explode by turns until that happens. Science will still advance. Math will continue to prove and disprove itself. Life spans will still extend at increasing marginal cost for every five years gained. People will still be happy and miserable and happy because other people are forced into misery and miserable because other people will have done nothing to be happy except be born into it. You, however, do mean nothing to those final outcomes.

People will be sad for a time. They will be entertained, repelled, satisfied, and disappointed with what you do, or not. Ultimately though, you may never be forgotten but they will be entertained, repelled, satisfied, antagonized, placated, contented, and disappointed by someone else after you. And they will remember them too. The inherent value of you, just you, is your local, temporal, impact. The master calculation will still end up the same, the only thing you do is change how it gets to that final conclusion. Therein lies the value in life. Every time two plus two adds up to three billion and you and those connected to you can see it and laugh and cry about it for a while and forget that the 3 billion will be adjusted for down the road.

What we read as anamolous or some kind of discrepancy is all accounted for ultimately. In the moment, however, it's why you're here. You're here to contribute to the math of life. Not destroy it, not change it necessarily, but just to leave some chalk on the board. And once you are happy to swipe the eraser, and draw faces with a spit soaked fingertip, and scrawl away, you can be happy. That was the conclusion I tried to draw through the conversation. And I hope it came across alright.

The depression was manifold. Part sexual crush on guys I knew I would never actually gain access to. Part anxiety. Part screwed up brain chemistry. Part longing for things I have no right to long for. Part wanting to just fucking be someone, anyone, else. Some months you would trade your skin for anyone else's. But all you can do is wake up and be you again. Part of the sadness was not making time to do this. To talk. To talk with psychiatrists. Part of the sadness was the pain and not being able to express it. I still can't. All I want some days, in terms of expression, is to make someone else hurt as much as I do sometimes so I can know that I am not alone. But I am.

Not in terms of a unique pain, but in terms of identity. No one can hurt the same way you do. It's quantum mechanically impossible. Sure, you can hold up Rorschach tests and see similarities, but no one hurts like you do. No one loves like you do. No one's been there before. No one will go there when you're gone. All I wanted was a day off to mourn for ghosts. How do you request a day off to do that? How do you request a day off to rest your teeth? I don't need them removed. I just need a day off to rest my mouth. How do I express that? I need a day off to not move my body. I need a day off to get back in touch with my heart. I need a day off to talk to my hands and coach them to be better than what they're giving me. How do you express these things and get a valid response? How do you talk to your superiors and tell them that they need to forget the book for a minute, forget the guidelines, forget the established, and understand me for a minute as a human being before opening their mouth to deny me the things that keep me alive? Where do you begin to describe to them that the things essential to them are vestigial to me and things essential to me come across as figments of imagination, but bleed me as real as a brick to a forehead? There are no doctor notes for "love sick". There are no doctor notes for being stalked by your schizophrenic counter parts. There are no doctor notes for being chased by the animals of your dreams that have bled into reality. There are no doctor notes for the things that stop me cold like an engine run so hot it melted into a solid block of steel in seconds.

I'm sorry for giving you the busy signal. I just don't know what else to do. I am trying, though. Trying to get back here and get back to functional. Trying to gather up the caucus. Trying to find the kid, and the chief financial officer. Trying to get the engineer and the interface specialist in the same room, but when I can get them talking over pizza the kid runs out. When I can get the weapons specialist to stop for a minute, the toxicologist starts up again. It's just been absolute chaos on the shop floor and I can't get any of them to work together, let alone spend significant time together and it's a public relations nightmare. Circuits are breaking and many of them are new and unlabeled with poor documentation. Addresses point to places that don't exist. Thing that do exist point to breakers that don't cut power. Switches turn things on that shouldn't exist, things I thought were dismantled or were never actually built, but were. Things change over and I find myself in places I didn't know I was with people I already met, but are new again and I have to reintroduce myself.

Across the bridge everything is in tumult. I'm trying to figure it out as fast as it is happening and when it finally does click it's gone and it's time to wake up again. I just need a week to explore and find out what and who is there and who I am seeing. Who is sneaking in and who is lingering. But I have not had time so things are dangerous again in a way that they have not been since 2004. Not for you, but dangerous for me. I am so scared sometimes. It's a terror with which I am not familiar at all, because it's been so long and I forgot. How do I explain that to people? There are things over here that have no name that do what they please and should not exist, but do. They wait and they follow and they chase and they stalk and they talk and it's all I can do some days to pretend none of it is happening and I took the exceptionally long route to work today because I felt like taking a walk. It's fucking terrifying.

Ultimately though, the busy signal rings loudest. I have to undo that. I think the more I at least talk as an outlet the better off I will be. It's not a key, but it is a hammer to a single bar of the cage that I might find at least a way to get the hell out a little more. And to make that happen I am going to get a dedicated internet line. I am dedicated to you. I am dedicated to your math and your variables and your short lived value. Because it's all I have. Without being a religious nut case. It's not settling. It's understanding. And to make that easier and, in steps, by jumps, help myself I am dumping mobile broadband because rolling the dice every five minutes is nerve racking too and when I finish something, or start something, conversate, image trawl, explore, and in short live, I need to be able to know that I can complete thought. So I consider it less a luxury and more of a necessity. Maybe even a necessary exchange for the grossly inflated cost of medication. A monthly stay of execution. Of sorts. A re dedication and affirmation that I am doing everything I can to not completely self destruct. I want to be with my friends. I want to stay connected. I haven't left you, I promise.


///Unkle - "Heaven" dedicated to being alive until it's time to go.

pic of the night

delicious refreshing crack

futurama season 1 episode 7

little neptune: "the place to get exotic gourmet ingredients - among other things..."