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.

When Is Enough

The difficulty of motivation is obvious to anyone who has bothered to write, or paint, or draw, or work, or invest any part of themselves in an activity or pursuit that is painful, uncomfortable, or plain not easy.

When is enough far enough?  What do I want?  What do I want to accomplish?  What do I need?  What can I disallow myself?  What must I disallow myself?  When I was younger, growing up through early adulthood, I heard so many "no"s.  Everyone and every system telling me what I can not do, where I could not go, who I could not speak to, when I must disappear.  Molded and shaped by the enclosure, dreams fade.  Fade until they're forgotten because it hurt too much to bring it back into consideration every day, every week, every year, to see that not only was I no closer to anything I set out to do to satisfy my soul and mind, but I was further from it than I was the year before.  The mind falling apart.  The costs of keeping it together steadily rising.  People telling you again and again what your ceiling is, not out of a fear of what I could do, but out of a strange compassion for seeing the war fought inside to maintain a level of sanity and "normal" against mental disorders eating away at the fringes of my consciousness.

Can I be content now?  What else do I want?  To be left alone.  There is still a lot of work to do to arrive there.  That may be the only ultimate goal.  To be left alone with the things living inside my head and a few animals to keep me company.  People are out of the question.  They can be trusted, but they are out of the question as quarters draw closer and closer.  There is not enough space now.  That is what I need.  I suppose a bit of both.  Can I be content now?  As long as I can avoid hurting myself too intensely, too viciously, I won't need health insurance.  I will likely only live to 60 or so.  Would it be that far a leap of madness to arrive to that end 15 years early?  No.  Would it be foolish to drag my feet to that end 15, 20, 30 years beyond?  Absolutely.  Don't be absurd.

I can hardly maintain a conscious coherent line of action for 12 hours because I have to lie in bed for 12 hours because I can't sleep for more than two hours at a time before I wake up and need an hour to get back to sleep.  To achieve an eight hour work day, I need four hours to prepare and four to undo the damages, eat, unpack the interactions, bathe, and prepare for sleep.  Every where I look I am losing time in human maintenance that is impossible to make up elsewhere inside the sweep of the clock.  Until I melt down, lose control, and fall apart in a heap of wails, tears, and broken tissue, begging for an end to the insanity of trying to fit myself into these chains of events for money.

How long do you keep smashing your own extremities with a peen hammer before you wake up and decide this is as far as I am willing to go and I am going to learn to live in this tiny cage and make it work because I know I or some around me will die if I try to reach any further.  Life is long.  Many people can race along it's rivers.  I am not one of those people.  I've got no use for your money.  I wish I had no use for your money, is more accurate.  I suppose that is where I am heading.  Retirement is another name for being left alone to leave life in peace and enough isolation to prevent anyone around you from being hurt and to be able to let myself live among the shadows in my head openly and happily with everything I need to survive until my body fails.  Retirement is a pipe dream.  I'll find another way.

When is enough?  When I have my own paid off house in the middle of a thickly wooded wilderness or some cottage at the end of a one lane drive to the vanishing point of a horizon plain?  When I've found a place in the world where I can not be found?  A place to hide and mend and dance with my broken brain and that's all I have to do to continue to see sun's rise?  I don't want to think about it now.  Enough is not yet.  I have to keep chugging along down the damned river, occasionally stopping to fish, at a blisteringly fast (to me) half knot and continue to hope and strive for the best and make due with repairs whenever its engine sputters and dies and hope I don't run out of supplies or the some day passerby who toss me a pipe, wrench, or a handful of wire harness to keep it going until I reach my tributary to one side or the other to glide down and stake claim to a bit of land no one will find for ages after I'm gone.

Who knows when enough is.  I do know I am not close yet and as much as I want now to be that place, it is not.  Wrestling with motivation won't get you killed.  Picking up the hammer eventually will.




///Jon Hopkins - "Candles"

A Brief Return to B6

After the diagnosis there was a lot of disbelief before understanding that I am wired differently and there is nothing that can be done about it besides modification.  Modifying my physiology and the chains that come with modifying.  Keeping schedules and junk and folding money into paying for medications and things and paying for visits to psychiatrists.  You can't spell psychiatrist without tryst.

I'm golden.  Understanding how I'm different was very difficult.  I still don't fully comprehend it.  I'm not okay with being different.  Expectations change a lot.  Do you want an exception or not?   Yes, we do, but we do not because we are efforting being a part of common society.  Aye yo, check it out, here's the baseline: getting exceptions makes us softer and enables if what we want is to be fully assimilated.  When we wreck it's hard to deal with because whatever it was we did made perfect sense to us.  To you, it's grounds for divorce.

And yep, my phone is officially broken.  The worst part about the diagnosis, the initial one, was my ignorance.  Let's keep this tight and short, but not to the point of complications.

I hated my psychiatrist.  I still do.  I know we are long passed the point of forgetting, but I have not forgotten him.   He has forgotten me though after I lost insurance.  Everyone has to get paid.  I refuse to check out.  I was bold before then, I am more bold now.  Capital lock.

Have you got my back?  I've got yours.  I tried to smash my skull apart on the side of the police car when I first got reigned in.  When I realized I had to reign myself in the morning after and they explained what I tried to do when they were putting me inside the squad car.  And it's alright now.  I'm not angry or mad.  They're different things.  Mad is angry without reasoning.  Mad dog.  Shoot him down.  Angry dog... alright, he has reason still.  I am neither mad nor angry.

After the diagnosis I had no idea where I could possibly go.  It was a true diagnosis and I have to lie out of the ass to avoid internment again.  After the diagnosis and hearing what it would cost to make me better, literally hundreds of dollars per month (and hearing too that the trial period ends, hence the name "trial period" until they get the milligrams right) and knowing what I was bound to make...  it's like being stuck with a home you can't actually pay for and you cannot move either.  You cannot pull up sticks and pick a new lot.  It was terrifying.  I had no idea where I could possibly go, so I decided to move off grid.  No meds.  No pills.  Just force.  True force.

Sometimes thing come apart a lot.  Sometimes control does not talk back to you no matter how many signals you send out, out of reflex.  If I could afford it, I would go.  Easily and quietly, I would go.  Let's go though, and keep it brief.

Back to basics.  I know I need help.  It's part of what I am working for.  Why I go to work everyday.  Start your day group was nice.  It was excellent.  I do not want to go back there.  I am damn near 30 years old and I do not belong there.  I know who I am.  I have to work harder and as time increases I know I have to work harder yet and I am okay with that.  I'm not and will never be a made man.  I am willing to work and that's something!  Diagnosis is not, I will prove it to you, ever a death sentence.




///Minamina Goodsong - "First Movement"

Growth Is Hard, the Burna

Growth is hard hard hard.  I don't like change.  Routine is a life saver.  Regulation.  Having to think about what to wear and what to eat and when and how much and how many layers and what's clean and what's not and the questions mount up so damn fast.  Is there gas in the car, is there not, is there enough gas to get to a gas station, is there milk, are there eggs, did you put your socks on before you put shoes on, did you wear a belt, did you need to, are you wearing pants, is your shirt buttoned, tucked, or untucked and should it be.  Did you brush your teeth, did you brush your beard, where are your sunglasses, do you need them, did you check the weather, where are your keys, are your cards in your wallet, did you get back to the people who left you messages, did they message you at all, what's your schedule like, do you have a schedule, where's your cereal, do you need more, what's for breakfast, what's for dinner, did you smoke yet, should you be, what's the month budget for it, did you budget, shouldn't you be quitting, did you make time to draw, did you make time to check up on the engine light, did you do laundry, is your stuff in the dryer, did you vacuum the rugs, have you brushed the cats, did you water the garden, where's the coolant you picked up, have you gathered the scattered spare change, where are your shoes, where are the good jeans, did you hang up your good tees, how are the ice trays, did you take out the trash, did you look into buying fans, where are the new fish hooks you bought, who keeps letting their dog poo at the corner of your house, have you checked the mail, where's the other set of keys, where's your good hat, have you changed your water filter, what's the beer situation, did you buy new brushes for work, have you paid your phone bill, when are you changing your tires, have you washed your hair, have you checked your piercings, did you wash your sheets, have you clipped your nails, did you tie your shoes, is there an undershirt beneath your top, have you looked into ... brain explosion.

Routine really is a life saver.  I'd kill myself without it.  Without routine it is impossible to identify brain shrapnel apart from reality.  Impossible to separate the notes of a song from synapse misfires.  I haven't been slipping too much and I'm proud of that.  I've been doing a good job of managing schizophrenia and delusion.  I've been sharp and on my feet enough to know when control was slipping and intelligent enough to understand when a decent time to step back and lock my body in arrived.  I'm happy for that.  I'm happy that I've been able to not just see my friends and old family, but divide those conversations from the larger dialogues with other people and keep them private.  I am happy that the ones without names can be separated from the ones with.

I've been trying to keep ourselves busy in the factory and it's going good.  The warehouse is buzzing and everyone's happy and still yapping at each other and it's fantastic.  Everyone is accounted for, the first time in a long time.  I can't sit on it though.  They will start to wander away and then we won't be working together for half a damn.

I've been thinking over the last time I was in the hospital when they brought me in and made me intern myself as a bargain.  That night still itches me.  Still makes us furious.  I didn't do anything wrong that day!  I shut my mouth too, but they had us hooked up to a couple machines and I was lying through my teeth the whole time and to this day we're sure my heartbeat gave us up.  I stood up and it jumped real hard from rest to joy panic and the doctor winced and I winced and started sweating and everyone started screaming in my ears and I tried to run, but the door was locked from the outside and that's just plain unfair and I got mad.  Mad as hell.

Routine is a life saver, though.  Do X at Y time.  Z comes after.  A comes first, followed by B.  Sometimes D, but it's okay if C jumps in before D as long as A and B come before and X and Y follow.  Without it, without that, things get jumbled and then dreamland starts to bleed into reality and then things I shouldn't say and people who have no business in my circles start to have conversations with people they have no business meeting and then those people start to get mad at us because we've been talking about them behind their backs and once that check is cashed there's no going back on it.  Then I get burned because they make me pay and there's no way to explain to them because as hard as I try to explain it to them they don't hear me and I've already gone too far and that's far enough.

Growth is hard.  It hurts.  Learning what you can and can't do.  What I can and cannot do.  What is and is not acceptable.  More than anything else I want to meet someone who can sit down with me and them and have a good long coffee conversation.  I know they're not real, I know they are real.  I have to constantly monitor sounds.  I have to consistently monitor their footsteps so I know when and whom I'm looking at.  It's not fair.  It's not fucking fair!  I want you in my world.  I want you in my shoes so you can understand the kind of ...  it's not fucking fair.

I play music so loud so I don't have to hear.  I hope I go deaf.  I wouldn't mind still having eyes because I love to look at nature.  I love looking at nature.  Sometimes we hate what I see because they are there always now and it's terrifying and it's gorgeous.  Seeing where they've been and we talk about it across fields.  Are you hiding from me?  You with the-  I hate it.  I hate it!  Are you alone?  Did you come alone?  No!  Not ever!  I'm never alone!  Do you know what that's like???  Do you know what that's like??????  Get away from me!  Stop lying!!  Stop lying in my ear!!  Just go away!!!  It never happens.  It never happens like I want it to and I try not to take it out on us.  Not to take it out on you.  Growth is hard.  My dad used to assure me it was just angels and devils talking to me and if I chose the path of loving Jesus I would be able to sort them out and I would know which ones it was because "the Bible tells me so."  Goodnight and good luck.

Managing is harder.  It's difficult boxing that part of me away.  Walling and fencing it off so I can still be a part of the rest of 'merica.  Hard not to play into their hands.  The whole thing burns to malfeasance.  Reciprocal engine with no off button.  The only thing you can do is try to avoid putting gas in it.  I want new genes.  I want new genes.  I want new programming.  I've been doing good.  Little star.  Little little skittish star, but I've been doing good.  Been doing good with putting words the right way and conversations the right way, and containing, but it's exhausting and it hurts us on the inside parts.  It hurts a lot.  I want to be alone so badly and I don't know how to get there.  I don't know how to get back to good sleep.

It's not about my parents or the violence pushed way too far or relationships with friends or dating or god or  medicine.  Battling.  Don't celebrate the battles, celebrate the war.  I want nature to stop talking to me.  A billion dollars for silence.   A trillion dollars for blindness.  That's the wager.  Just give me one less eye and blown out ears.  Still no guts to do it myself.  Take it away from me.  Just shut up!  Shut the fuck up!  Growth is hard!  Being adult.  Sometimes I wake up and I know I'm still stunted, but inside a giant robot that has capabilities far beyond what my head is prepared to command.  I didn't want it, but I know I have to deal with it, continue to learn how to use it to become a part of the rest of the structures or destroy it so it doesn't damage the space it occupies and the rest occupying the same space.  It hurts.  It hurts a lot.  It's confusing to us.  I've been doing good though.  I want to keep it going.  I want to blend in better.  I am working on growth, but it's hard as hell.


///Bjork - "Pluto"  ... a little bit tired, but brand new...

Development

I haven't transcended, but, God knows, I've tried.  I will keep head banging.  I will because there's no other way.  Explorations and serial failures.   I did not use to approach writing as work, because I never got paid to do it.

It was a hobby and still is.  What changed inside myself was perspective.  That and doing more reading.  The reading has been tremendous.  Just opportunities to see the constructions in different light.  Not even different light as much as opportunities to see the same constructions spun by other brains in the same kind of light.

It's been ...  refreshing.

Refreshing and disconcerting.  It's been a very thorough, bridge crossed, work in progress.  I can't recall being this high over so extended a period of time without gumming up the workshop.  It has been silly even keeled.  You and I

Where are your papers?  Where is your documentation?   Where is your passport and your photo identification?   Where is your veteran of foreign wars certificate and your color bar?  Where is your jacket and your weapon?  Your cap, your boots, your wares, and your ounces of drug deals and your tears for times only you can relate to?   Where the fuck is your memorial?  Where are your headphones?  Where is your ethic and your lorn and your degrees?  Where did you leave your books and, holy shit, where did you leave your other set of keys?


///Skrillex - "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites"    ...you don't need to hide, my friend, cause I am just like you...

Reiterate (Life's a gun that's always pointing in my face)

Starting over.   27 iterations.  Begin again.  Are you now or have you been?  27 shots.  Done deal.  I was much more composed at Carnival this year.  I guess a little distance helps.  Found some closure over Jee.  Found some connection too.

Sometimes all you've got to do is stay the course.  Sometimes the only thing you've got to do is not fuck up.  It was nice seeing people in real life.  It was even nicer being as happy to see them as they were to see you.  Wasn't expecting that at all.  So much mutual love and understanding.  And you feel it and it's like "is this really how the majority of people get to go through life?"

And the answer is an emphatic yes.  Or maybe it's a no.  But for two days it was a big old yes and it was beautiful just to be in it for it a little while.  Just to be in it and forget about all the rest.  It was nice to be a stand up guy and ready to throw down for anybody and not have to.

It sucks going back.  I don't wanna go.  I never do.  I want to be there forever.  I want to be loved and looked after.  I want to wake up naked and happy all of the time.  Driving home the sky accelerates.  Going back out to space.  Giving everyone their due and their distance.  It hurts, but I know I have to.  They're not prepared to be close to me and I them.  A long letting go-ness.  Compressed into hours instead of days.  I'm one years old again.  It feels amazing and stupid.  And amazing all over again.

Nothing has changed, but everything has and I don't want to cry and I can't help myself at the same time.  There's nothing keeping me dry.  Time slicks by like a sinking ship with more passengers than rafts.   Shoving off to pluto and all collected.  Another year older, another year bolder, another year just a little bit colder.  But not alone.  Turbines to speed.  Birthday wishes pending.


///The Postal Service - "Brand New Colony" ... when you're drowning in an open tub and your judgement's on the brink

Seventy One, Count Down to Twenty Seven

Ten days until the clock ticks over. I don't expect anything fantastic. It will be nice to be one again. I don't like being old. It takes too much energy, too much reflection, even the effort to look forward. A time consuming affair, the growing old. The metering. The constant gauging if older is keeping pace with wiser and if wiser is keeping pace with double faults and if ... how many times did I almost die this past iteration?

Let me see if I can recall. Not going into detail, but trying to recall. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Hmmm. Eight. The ninth time is a stretch so I won't count it. It was just before the tenth time, but even that one was more of a panic than a definite thing. So we'll leave it at eight. I believe I did say at one point that if you're not nearly dying more than ten times a year, you're not living hard enough. At the same time, though, that was a much more reckless me. Not careless. There's a difference. Intent is plastic explosive.

Not that I am that much more reckless then. Maybe, more unconscious. I do have some things to take care of in this body before I go skipping off in my next one. The seventy first birthday step. I definitely miscalculated how many birthdays I could pack into one year. Seventy one sounds about right. Well, seventy three, come day zero. Nothing like a midlife crisis at your twenty sixth iteration. Mostly I suppose I am trying to work out a way to celebrate my last iteration in tandem with my last birthday, so it'll take some fine tuning. Some years of fine tuning.

I think this year I'll go for eight day spacing. See how that turns out. I can't remember what happened on my last birthday so I assume nothing. Checking... no results found. Nothing is right. This iteration I want, I want to be a real trip. A real jumping off point to wake face up in a river with nothing but stars, beloved. It's going to be great. It might be my delusions of grandeur. My all knowing, all loving, stupidity with no regard for real or reasonable conclusions. Maybe I'll go get my ears pierced or something. There must be something to mark the occasion this time. Maybe a 27 shot poem. I was thinking about a 54 post facebook status. Maybe both. Because I know no one is taking me out.uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum, <<< thats what my kitten typed. His mark for posterity. I'm not going to die. Because I have a kitten to take care of now until he is at least a cat. So that's good timing. No space for oopsies for a while. So I'm kind of forced to commit to another year. Happily so. Apparently kittens don't like less than 55 degree weather. The little bastard keeps shivering. I can see my breath. Which means I should probably get to bed soon. But anyway, where am I going with all of this? It's been a long time since I had reason to be excited about a new iteration. A lot has changed. A lot has stayed the same. I'm going to continue to reflect on it as the days tick down. Hopefully with more clarity than I am mustering now. Trying hard not to muss new year resolutions and birthday wishes. Trying to aim low and let the reciprocating action of my mental Kalashnikov land me a headshot this time around. Don't force it. Be the leaf. Be the leaf in the wind, and for eulogy's sake don't die before dawn. In terms of goals though, gotta set goals, I have a few for the upcoming set of birthdays. Finish the crappy book I started to write. Make the mistakes I don't need to make when writing the second book. Get laid by people I can remotely care about. Embrace the dark side, and by dark side I mean myself. Consider flaunting it. Take more pictures of myself and distribute accordingly. And take a fantastic drug trip on something, anything, without dying halfway through. And finish the tricky dream hunt. Because that kind of big game hunting blows back and backfires way too easily. Not huge goals. Just real ones. We'll see what happens. ///El-P - "The Dance (Instrumental) ...one more year at the never ending prom