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.

Nine One One Two

"Every year, exactly this time of year."  Well every since and before.  The tension of the holiday season is already cinching.  Where will you go?  Who will you see?  Who can you adopt for family?  It does make me anxious.  Is alone okay?  OF COURSE!  Why all caps?  Am I crazy?  Did you hear that?  We've talked it over several dozen times and dozens of those more through the years.  Yes, of course it is okay.  No, you are not crazy.

"Pitter patter, my little heart."  It races from time to time.  Little panic attacks.  Solitary is the frontier and solitary it will be.  That's where you work best.  You'll still meet people and see families and couples and the like.  It is certainly less than the usual or equal.  Do not believe that holidays with yourself are anything less than their holidays.  They would be miserable in your concept of a holiday and you would be severely uncomfortable in theirs.  It's okay to peek between the slats from time to time.  That is universal.  Their anxieties are the same as yours with different window dressing and frames.  Rest assured, they feel something too and that is fine.

Nine eleven, however many years out, has changed a lot.  The rage of being denied enlistment has faded.  It only took ...  four ... seven ... shut up!  Far enough away to laugh about how I thought that idea could work.  Thinking back to the earliest years, it is funny to think that I thought I might've been able to make it by as a kept man.  Good god, I would've been far too bored.  Seven plus years separated from the bid to enlist, it has been reaffirmed one hundred times over that I would have gone insane trying to make a career out of it.  As a way to form a base and small nest egg, sure it could've worked, but my lack of mental stability would have failed spectacularly.  Maybe not the first year, maybe not the second year; the chances would have increased exponentially from day .0001.

I'm completely over the war on terror.  There are so many things that have come to light in the intervening time domestically that are so incredibly glaring and depressing.  So many more pressing internal wars that reached cease fires and truces without any actual resolution that are winnable & endable.  The fact that they still exist isn't the surprising thing.  It is.  Cultural change moves at a glacial pace.  As interconnectivity and access to information grows and shortens in its difficulty, the pace feels slower and slower because you can give a person a library of five books and a library of five thousand and it won't change how fast or slowly they choose to read.

Thinking about that day, I remember the anniversary that I couldn't remember for two years (was it three?) until I finally got it right.  Being in relationships is hard.  Do you remember the day you asked me if we were dating?  Kind of.  Is that today?  I don't remember the exact day, but I do remember being nervous as all hell and wondering about it for weeks and if I asked you and you said no would I ask you again or storm out or wait a few weeks and ask you again.  The day that you gave me a lollipop or the day of the formal dance?  Laughing thinking about it now.  I still cannot remember which day it was, but I know that it is a day to remember.  Wherever you are, I am glad that you know that you are loved and I am glad that you are with someone who is a part of you.  The years we spent were not for nothing.  The futures opened.  The years to come are their own.

Solitary progressions.  Nine eleven is also walking beside a cemetery.  A museum of displays and marble hand rails and floor tiles laced in sterling grout.  Rose and magenta tinted chrome and glass.  The past brought to life for a single day.  Compressed, labeled, and plaqued.  The westerly wing of the grand mezzanine of leTauran Atu Gothans, a 78 acre compound.  I don't visit there often.  About once a year, I try to look at the exhibits again.  Sometimes the maintenance men are about and they'll open up a case to let me get a close look at the taxidermy.  It is pretty amazing the way hairs are placed and tacked together to form entire swatches of skin that can stretch over the plaster molds.  The lighting isn't always great, but sometimes the exhibits are moved around to different enclosures to light them better.

I'm nowhere near a writing rut.  I can't stop doing it inside my head.  I have to take the time to do it outside of my head.  Part of how I've adjusted to protect myself from myself has been finding other things to do.  "If you can just stay distracted long enough!"  Out of focus.  I've been trying to do a lot in the physical world, however.  Trying to adjust to the modern world of smarter smart phones.  Trying to adjust to larger work loads and responsibility.  Trying to see the world with a larger lens.

Trying to see more possibilities and potential without getting swallowed whole in their ocean.

For some years, I mourned.

Part of me still does.

The deaths I died.

The deaths of possibilities.  So close to another and another friends birthdays and the lives that faded and blew out like candle wicks.  The scent of the smoke still fresh and undeniable and intoxicating in their aroma.  When does smell memory fade?

9,238 cigarettes before you lose your sense of smell, chief.   Oh.  Thank you, statistician?

I know I haven't been keeping track of holidays or birthdays.  I keep telling myself:  "we're just going to backtrack and bang them all out at once and get caught up to the now, piece of cake!"  That philosophy has fallen completely flat.  Of course I am beating myself up over it.  It is important.  Without consistent data points we cannot know where we are.  Holidays are perfect times for evaluation.  How the hell old am I anyway?  I need to take care of the backlog or at least try to ... at least let go of it.  That time cannot be restored.

Projecting a life span of 75 years with maximum outcomes: you live .205 years each day of your life if every birthday is a new beginning and a new iteration of yourself and you will only live a maximum of 75 years in each iteration.

147 days have passed since your birthday.  You are experiencing the rise of a new adult form convulsing through its last growth bursts.  You will not die soon.  200+ days until you return.  This is a strange time for you.  Adolescence continues to shed.  Try.  The carapace will split and you will free yourself for the wind.  The new skin will harden in the Winter.




Nine eleven is a quarter post of sorts.  So many things changed and so many things continue to.  Resolved to death, yes.  Resolved to its exact date, no.  In meta-jail, I have been granted so many larger and larger play grounds and exercise areas.  I've been granted larger and larger libraries and degrees to work and play on while I spend my time in solitary.  The clock is ticking on the next ring of the compound gates to open and I have to be patient while the paperwork runs through the levels of the office's in/out boxes and gets stamped and I have to go in for interviews and hearings and have good composure and appear civilized and remorseful and hopeful and aware and reticent and reflective and playful, but not too much, and deprecating and confident and ... all at once.  I don't have to do any of that.  I have to wait. I don't know how far out the compound goes, but I heard there is another gate over them hills once they fix to open this one.

As the years tick on, I learn how to be more like you and I learn what the differences actually are between us.  I know we are not the same.  Far from it.  It is incredibly reassuring, as we walk, to understand better what those differences are.

The mission: to leave a map for the next person that is at all like me.  "It's a great big universe!"

What helps get me through is knowing that I wasn't rejected as much as cast away.  There wasn't a fault as much as a rift in the known firm of space and time.  Blame dark matter.  "The stories you told were awful."  I hope that the maps will be artful.  You can only live but for so long with someone who is prone to spontaneous combustion before it changes from an endearing parlor trick to a recurring crisis.

Heave away!

Having an extra $200 shouldn't be life changing at age thirty two.  Something's not right.

Are all of your goals set so low that...  ...no.  Maybe?  Crossroads.  Is that all you wanted to accomplish?  Well, yeah.  For now.  It's pretty neat.  Hmm.  Hmm, what?  It's fine.  The door's over there if you need it.  I'm just saying-.  Don't let it goose you on the way out!

There is a lot of work still to be done and I am avoiding it.  Part of the reason why is because there are too many things I want to do at once and part of it is because I can only live for 12 to 16 hours a day without ending up cycling into spirals that will carry me up or down and anything that forces a deviation from that norm starts the engines that link and power chain reactions that will go in either direction and it is absolutely exhausting walking the rope and having to face constant failures because time ran out or constant failures because time drew on toward infinity.

I don't know what normal is to you.

I don't know what normal means to you.

Will I ever be?

Nowadays nine one one is a thermometer.  The potentials continue to cool while the core continues to spin and move plates and generate its own magnetic field. September, we dive through the thin layer of atmosphere and sweep and zip between billows of thunder heads, citywide lightning bolts and liquid metal rain drops against windscreens to land with the grace of a butterfly on the escarpment of a phase three elemental cave patio.  Grab our groceries, suit up, and walk inside to one atmosphere, proper oxygen mix that will not explode granted a match and cigarette, and turn on the satellite linked tele.

As the Septembers progress, I learn better what coming home means and what it means to me.  The distances will continue to grow and I will continue to fail at assimilating to common society, but in the meantime, I will explore more areas of the compound I was locked in when life began inside a cell.  It is a reminder that I am many years behind in my development and there isn't a time machine yet that will bridge that gap.

If this is the beginning of the solo-journey, I know I've spoken enough about being at one with the concept that life will be singular for the seeable future because I cannot ...... remembering the last time I was loved ..... laughing out loud.  Seven years and counting.  It really is dumb to expect to feel that again.  Think about it!  Let's say, one hundred experiences per day.  Five of them new.  Hell, one of them new.  That's 365 times your age.  No weight toward slate and how blank you were when you were young.  Now, to get an idea of the potential, multiply that by the people you've met that you can remember all the way to your earliest memory, just faces, not names.  You've met way more people than you can remember so it's still a gross underestimate.  If you spent the rest of your life meeting one new person a week your chances of recreating that chemistry are pretty much a lottery ticket.  Or you can recreate it.  The only person that will know is you.  That is kind of nice.  Or you can find something new.

The other thing is I really have no idea how to look.  I have some idea of how others look.  I have no idea how to look.  "So put yourself out there!"  Okay.  Sure.  That's the other odd thing: we have no idea if someone is looking.  Would it change anything if we did?  Probably not.  Secrets make terrible stories.

I think I would like to live with someone else.  Another human.  That day is not now, not six months from now, not 24, not 36, not four years, not four years and 14 days from now.  Nothing is wrong with me.

We're never alone.

It has a dual purpose.  In part to map and in part to guide and in part to track.  More of an organic willtuary.  A way to know that you have indeed pinched yourself and you are not dreaming.




///Marnie Stern - "Proof of Life"

Bonus Track

///Imogen Heap - "Daylight Robbery"

Origins

What fascinates me the most was his unwillingness to let me in.

At every turn there was a guard and I got tired of trying to break them down.  It became a fools errand.

I am disappointed in him.  A child should never have to reach a point where it is forced to scorch away it's parent.  I still get the chucks even admitting that I have a father.  Thirty one and seven years out to open life and it's boggling.  When I finally grew enough to understand that he couldn't break me, he didn't want to discuss why we got to that place in the first.  I won't say I'll never be able to understand it, but he made it clear, many years my senior and able to make decisions on a much more vast scale, that he would never come to the table to view my entire history objectively.

"Where are you from?"  I will never know.  I can speak on it, but I will never be granted 360 degree vision.

"What were you before you entered citizenship?"  I will never know.  It's all hearsay from my siblings and I believe them because they would not lie to me.

"Where is he now?"  Rotting, I hope.  I'm waiting for him to die.  I won't be any better for it, I certainly won't be any worse.  I will be better.  The questions will have answers then.  The "I" will be dotted, the "T" crossed, and the pain inflicted, the trauma, accounted for.  The books closed.

"Given the opportunity, would you kill him?"  Yes.

"Why will you not have an audience with him?"  When I reached my own voice and understood I was an individual, he would not have an audience with me and it went on for five years and I had to stop taking refusals because it made me want to kill myself.  I will never return to that state.

Everyone talks big about love.  Demons.  Addiction.  Religion.  Shan and shan.  It's not all bullshit.  I tried my best to love and care for him.  I don't know why he heeled me to the curb at near incalculable turns (I've faded some memories because I couldn't deal with them so they are dungeon locked and will remain that I may live).  I don't want pity.  I don't want his love.  I don't want his ire.  I don't want to hear his voice.

I wanted him to let me in.  His resistance and fortress will be a mystery until the day he dies.  I may go to his funeral to hear the eulogizers put his unsung thoughts on wax.  Not for closure; to get a view into what was behind those brown eyes.  Rose tinted?  Of course.  I can parse with terrible efficiency.

He was the first iron giant I ever knew.  Scaled up to city proportions. I learned not to fear him when I realized I became one.  I've chosen to use my bones differently.  When I reach through the atmosphere, waste is not laid to communities and vessels.  Virus does not spread.  The horsemen do not ride at once.  I'm not ashamed to have been born.  I'm not ashamed to have come from a fire and furnace.  I'm baffled as to the why.  That's all.  I've asked for many things through my life, is it too much to ask for straight answers from your point of origin?  In this world, half created, half designed, the answer will always be yes.

Original equipment manufacturer fail.





///Thom Yorke- "The Clock"

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.

Vicious Paranoia

Saw the opportunity.  Memory songs.

Some days it is difficult to remember that you can piss in your own pot and not avoid windows and keep as erratic as possible a schedule because the truth of the matter really is that no one is coming to get you.  There is a boogie man, but he doesn't live outside the window.

Living by night is great when you are trying to control every aspect of sun up.  You can avoid the grift entirely if you work at it.  If he is trying to get you it'll have to be a crime in broad daylight.  There is a weapon in every corner so grab whichever one you want because, be assured, I have one closer to me than you, day flyer.  And I know where the spares are.

Come in through a window or a front door.  Come on.  It's silly though.  The concept of combat.  Asking for it?  Earned.  It still makes me laugh though, understanding that I damaged some and I wish I knew who exactly I hurt, because you're never the biggest kid on the playground, but you have to act the part or they'll eat you up.

They won't.  You also have to analyze value.  At the same time though... running over recent conversations... it is impossible to really know who any of them knows and who, in that party, is game for leaving things behind and making a decision estranged to you, because, let's face it, you are the extent of your staff and there may or not be an extended staff beneath the person you wronged and or the person you wronged may or may not be connected to a very extended pack of wolves that you may or likely will not be prepared to deal with on one versus one basis.  That's why bar fighting is never good and part of why I quit.  You never really know who they know and it'll come back to bite you, if not now then later.

Mistakes have been made.  Exhaustive turbulence.  Watch your shoulder.  I'm not at all prepared to move up sticks, but I am.  It's difficult.  SR.  That was the gambit though.  Like it or not.  If it ever comes down, as shiii tends to roll, just be ready.   I was born ready.  I wasn't.  If they ever do come in, though, if they ever do.  A battle for the ages.

It'll be a fine night.  And in the mean time?

It's been difficult to keep NORAD going.  Never falter.  We'er not at tying loose ends up yet.  Right now, take your choice when you walk in and I will match metal for metal.




///JDSY - "All Shapes"   ... shadow specifications are...  geometric ghosts are... hallucinations resolve into be ready for anything.

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.

Cliffside Funeral Wedding Dream

Massive dream.  There was a procession across a hill side and on that hill side there were hundreds of tombstones.  The hill side was a little over grown and as it sloped down the entire thing was cut off at the far edge by a cliff.  There was a procession happening there, the women dressed in gowns with all kinds of frillies and big brimmed hats with white flowers in them and all of the men dressed in tuxedos with black ties and shiny shoes

I was watching it from where the birds sit in the air and I wanted to get a closer look so I dove down and sat on one of the tomb stones to watch them walk.  They were hiking on a narrow trail that led around the curve of the hill top and I couldn't see where they were going or from where they walked.  I noticed some of the men wearing top hats and it was kind of cool.  It made me want to have a top hat of my own, but not enough to actually make one.  There was no music, only the sound of their feet kicking up dirt, but it rained the day before so there was no dust.

Some of the women had really thin canes and used them to help themselves push farther up the hill while they walked.  Everyone there looked so stately and I wanted to be a part of it so I pressed myself into the grid, but I wasn't thinking and ended up there with a football and shorts and a dirty tee once I got the address right.  That was the only hard part.

I kept throwing the football at people, but my resolution wasn't good enough and it kept passing through their bodies like they weren't even there.  It would take a bounce or two and go off the side of the cliff and I felt worse and worse trying to make it happen and every time I kept saying "I'll go get it" and I would hike down the hill, navigating the gray and black and mossed over tombstones to the cliff side and then start the climb down.  The view was incredible.  There were birds flying beneath my feet dipping in and out of the canyon and there were trees growing down there where the cliff would ledge for a few feet and then drop down hundreds.

I fast forwarded the climb and return and clicked back on when I got back to the top.  The procession must have been miles long.  I was doing it all day.  Another pass, another pass through, another climb.  "I'll go get it."  And they kept on walking.  Some of the men had taxidermy turtles on the tops of their hats, spray painted black.  I started to follow the procession to see where it was going.  I liked being up in the air, but I liked being in shorts better and the football felt good to hold and toss even though I couldn't make anyone in the procession catch it.  It felt good to walk.

I got distracted though.  One of the tombs was a mausoleum.  I wandered off of the trail because I was really interested in the iron work of the gates.  They rusted over beautifully and I wondered about the hands that made them so pretty.  The tomb itself was a simple white box of big blocks.  No angels or ridiculous adornments.  No saints.  Nothing grew on it.  The gate was unlocked so I walked inside.

The floor sloped down and into the hill side.  There was nothing inside of it except a stone work tunnel.  Inside of the tunnel there was a waterfall that arched through it.  Thinking back the water probably was blown up from the right side and across the roof to terminate in the left side gutter.  I started walking down it and then running because the air smelled so good and earth filled and wet and oxygen rich and I wanted to blow as much of it down my lungs as I could.  I wanted to take my shirt off so it dissolved in bits of dust, pixel for pixel, and while I was running my friend started running too and caught up to me.  I heard him and his shoes going step for step, but he still caught up to me because his stride was longer and I was thinking I could beat him to the end.  I started off with quick feet, the same tempo, but we both got to our top gears and once you're there the only thing that matters is how far your footfalls can distance themselves from the one coming before.

He said "do you want to race?"  I said "Hell yes."  We booked it toward the light, running underneath the procession.  I still had the football in the crook of my arm.  I beat him out by a step and came to a skidding halt.  The tunnel was a field of gravel on the other side.  All of the pebbles we kicked up stopping went over the other side of the cliff and made little pock pock noises on their way down.  I looked over my shoulder and the hill top was still dotted with tombstones.  Some of them broken and graffiti on them.  The procession was gone though.

Catching my breath I realized I was breathing hard outside of dreamland and it woke me up before I was ready to leave that place.


/// Lionrock - "Packet of Peace (Chemical Brothers Mix)"

Crying and Everybody Gets One

Sometimes I feel like all the tears I did not get to cry from the age where my memory starts in patches, five and sometimes six, to where it starts to form a continuous timeline, ten and on, are coming now.  Balancing books and things.  I've been thinking about it somewhat hard nosed and what I came to was, especially given what came down the pipe at twenty, I'd rather have them now than not at all.  

Playing emotional catch up.  

I'd rather be emo now, however, than be emo at age fifty (assuming I can make it to fifty iterations.  that's a pretty tall order, nah mean?).  Part of what I was taught, in writing classes that were worth their weight in gold when they weren't taught by tenured dick faces and holier than though masters ph.d cock tip cum nuggets whom I would still like to punch in the craw and who prevent me from going back to the English department because I will try to strangle them with their own belt, was that you have to exorcise the junk first and everything else will come with time.

That's what she said.  Still, there's some merit to that.  Problem is I have junk for years.  When did everything turn into a fifteen year plan?

Anyway, when I'm rich and famous I'm going to work out my short list of simple assaults.  When I'm set for life I'll start chipping into my kill list.  First things first.  Gotta lay down the work first.  Get the junk out of the way.  Everything else will come in due time.  I can abide by that principle.  The hard part is not letting other people jump your gun.

///Vangelis - "One More Kiss Dear"

Low Lighter

I've been mulling craft over. Disappointed in the body so far. I try to grade myself week to week. Did I nail it? Did I glance it? Did I make something I can stand behind? The answers are easy in a lot of fields. Harder in writing. One thing I miss about college was workshops. Sure, half the people there are only there because they need to have creative arts credits or just needed something to add to their schedule they could coast through. That's the major difference between writers and other people. At least at that level.

The classes are only as hard as you make them. Writers make them some of the hardest classes they've ever taken. Other people don't. Humanities and social studies is like that. How deep do you want to drive into the subject matter? The same goes for many of the other largely subjective classes offered at university.

I've been asked more than once and probably too many times how a person, or how I, know that I am or they are a writer. The answer can be answered fairly simply in many different ways using very simple, and also very personal, tests. I am not saying the answer to the question is simple. It's always complicated, but can be simplified in terms of the writing being done. One of the tests, I believe, is the level of dissatisfaction with "good enough." Not the good enough that tells you that item A or B is amusing or digestible to other people, but the good enough that hits the points and edges, lines and graphs, of the things you want to map. If that lack of good enough directs you to work harder than you are a writer. If that lack of personal good enough draws you to an "oh well, I tried" sort of answer than you are probably not a writer, but did manage to put words together into a coherent string. I dunno. It's tough. Goes without saying at this point.

I haven't been disappointed with the effort as much as the second effort. I usually relied on working with criticisms to see where things were failing and where things work better. Part of learning how to write is learning how to simulate workshops within yourself. Time consuming stuff. What I have been doing is working on very short time scales. Hours instead of days and weeks and months. The pressure works well at sharpening the blade or at least keeping it sharp, but does not do enough, for me, to make progress. So I'm working on a new idea, an old one, but new to the times, on a new channel. A low line.

I've been riding the high line for a very long time and the problem is it does not leave enough time for gestation and things get excessively hit and miss and I'm not happy with that. I have to give myself time to step away and look at it again and punch it right in the craw until it's disfigured and see how I can make it better and then do it better and then look at it again. Give things time to precipitate. I haven't given myself that time partly because I over estimated what I can do (arrogance), but also because running back over what you've done is rarely pleasant. It's not fun or enjoyable to see how badly you put something together and that's a lack of discipline.

So a second Auralport is coming at a much lower line. It's not going to be about cranking out and pushing forward as much as it will be trying to put one gem together in a week. We're going dual channel. A thing for every place and a place for everything. Or something like that. Just trying to satisfy the urge to put pen to paper and make it something worth seeing just once. I want desperately to be better at it, but all I've got is me, so we're gonna figure this shit out and make something ill.


///Bowery Electric - "Freedom Fighter" ... cue dreams.

Have and Half Knots, Making Dead Lines, and Explosive Decompression

So I think I am finally approaching upper lower class. Inching toward car ownership and consistent internet access that doesn't cut off if I watch ten feature length pornographic movies in one month. It only took a year to save up the money for both, but I'm not mad because that was roughly the time span I estimated so many moons ago. Not that I'm some kind of social climber, but it certainly makes life a lot easier for me (being that at least half of my waking time is dependent on connectivity). If I think about it the only reason why I have a job, let alone two, is because of the internet. A major factor in my escape from New York was the internet. My creative outlets, well three out of the five, are internet dependent. Not originally, but since I opened myself up to being read, along with the good and bad that comes from it, that is what they've become. A pair still remain personal and internet independent, and they are my babies, whom I coddle and pet unceasingly. So I'm not quite a "have", but I am the possessor of many knotted ends.

Everyone likes to sew things up. Who doesn't. From the youngest age you can remember some of the most satisfying moments are the moments when you connect one and one and get to bask in the glory of your hard earned, bent spined, but elegant in that way, two. Whatever operand falls between the two slivers of symbols matters little. All that matters is you put in the hard think and the finger fumbles and drew something out of two separate things that ended up being beautiful, simply, the answer. Not just an answer, but the only answer possible within the frames of the rules of everything else that described the world around you. That is clutch. That is what I want to be able to do, but instead of sewing my things up I have ended up with knot after knot, with some fine stitch work in between.

It's not failure. Every time you tried to tie your laces and ended up knotting the threads when you were little, you did not just sit down and cry. Well maybe sometimes I did. Eventually, though, I ended up going outside to play regardless because the fact of the matter was that I was not concerned so much with the ending. I was not so much concerned with the fact that eventually I would have to take the shoes off, as much as I knew, no matter what I did after the episode of frustration, the things were going to do what they were designed to do, and that was stay put. So although I am a possessor of more knots than neat and fixed loops, and although I will sit and cry about it for a while, I know that I can still go out and get it done with the best of them. The difference being when I get home and the game is over I have to cut the laces apart and rethread them.

Making deadlines is hard, in that way. Not that I have to start over every week, but the things people take for granted are things I have to redo every week and make them work like new all over again. I would be more upset about it, if I had not had to live with it for so long. It's the standard. Part of the allure of medication is that it offers the promise of a consistent starting point. It simplifies, to the detriment of other experiences. I alternately accept and reject that promise. It depends on how frustrated I get tying knots when I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they refuse to respond. When I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they answer and accept and then absent themselves from the chain of command altogether because it turns out I did not have the con to begin with.

Making deadlines is hard, but having deadlines helps the continuity. I think that's why I hate days off so much. Days off are like being thrust into the airlock of my ship half suited, half relaxed, half giddy just to be there without having a reason, and then the count begins for the hatch release and I realize it is for real. I realize there was something I set out to do when I entered and soon I will be sucking vacuum if I don't get it together and I have to fumble and scramble to abort the entire venture because my helmet is still sitting right where I left it, in the lounge, and there is no way I'm going to manage to make something meaningful out of the next ten seconds (ten hours) besides flailing for molecules.

That analogy was a stretch, but that's what it feels like. Trying to get things done without a hard plan is difficult. Days off are always unplanned. Uncharted and unplannable. The hardest thing about it is going without contact. When I'm down on the surface among people I know what's real for the most part. Well, for the some part. When all I have is time spent with myselves it's a dicey affair. Tremendous amounts of necessary dialog and balance checking and enforcing limitations. I wonder sometimes why I sleep so much. What is wrong with me? And the answer often comes back that I cannot afford not to. A little escapist as the life across the bridge is so damn rich and half the time I am awake I want to go back there, but also because it's so certain there. A is A. B is B. C is C. And D is D. Every time. Not like here. Here person A is sometimes Z. And B is an irrational number. And C is A, but only when Z is B.

Maybe that's why I like to work so much. Formulaic. Math in action. Inactivity through action. Long story shorter, I want to finish the gift for Christmas. A gift of intent. A gift of a promise that I won't stop fighting. Not yet anyway. So game on?

Yeah, I think so.


///luke slater - "Hectic Bag" ...start as you mean to grow on.