Not Over Yet

A man I love put the war accurately and I will use his description:  it's like kicking water uphill.  Everything that cannot be prepared for.  The degenerating functions and spider glass fractures.  Kicking water uphill.  One more day.  Yes, your shoes will get wet and soak the cuffs of your jeans.  Some will get in your eyes and ruin your belt.  You might drop your hat and slip and fall flat on your bum.  Kicking water uphill.  You cannot quit.  It's going to keep coming.  Just have to try to keep your balance and keep kicking.  A little at a time.  It's okay to rest.




///Amorphous Androgynous - "Rocket Fuel"  and all for the want of a horseshoe nail

Revisiting Battlefields Gone Silent

How many years has it been?

Revisiting and rereading them (Bits For Flames) for the umpteenth time I see and edit them in ways I could not before.  I still have so much to learn.

I do believe my resolution for the new year will be to rewrite every single one of them that I felt fit enough to publish back then with the knowledge and practice I have now.

Rereading them now, these pearls and machinations that I knew were not perfect, but deft enough to force upon other ears, they dance like puppet shows.  Telling too much and not showing enough.  Stilted.  Awkward.  Wooden.  Produced with what was the greatest understanding of the sweet science of writing and the cold magic of emotive sorcery that now reads like remedial math.

I used to set my goals to things I thought much higher.  Quitting smoking!  Learning and training to dunk a basketball!  Mastering the art of throwing knives and being able to defend myself and hold accountable all who dared to cross me with martial perfection.

In the background I plugged away at how a conversation is made.  How to engage someone actively.  I worked on my translator software and my lens and tape.  I listened to playback and learned how to speak with greater efficiency and economy of words.  The war was not multi-tasked.  Multitasking is a myth, we all know this.

After 10,000 hours I convinced myself I arrived at the best I can do.  The best I have done is a lie.  I can do better.  And I will.

The emperor will wear new clothes before I turn that engine.  First things are first and we have been waiting quite some time for the new design.  What we have is a goal.  What we will do is place the pen to paper once more and see what shakes out of our new branches that have borne fruit uncut just yet.

The blender awaits.  The knife is ready.  The cutting board is clean.  There are no attachments.  It is time to explore the old body and build a new one.  When you can get everyone at the same table at the same time you can rearrange the workshop and factory floor plan.  New weapons, new tools, new methods.

"...in the foxhole / where I hide..."


/// Hershey Kisses Bells

Return Of The Painted Dinosaur (New Limit)

To say that it is difficult to talk about is true.  Not an overstatement, not an understatement.  The wounds still feel like they happened in a dream.  When I wake up I feel like I am going to wake up again as soon as start to move my limbs, and I do not.  I wake up once and look at my hand and wrist and wiggle my fingertips and hold it up over my face and pinch myself and poke my eyebrows and sniff it and it is mine.  Check after check comes back positive.  "This belongs to you."  There was not a mistake.  There was not a swap of body parts while you were sleeping.  You are awake.  You are breathing.  The nerves are speaking to each other as they should.  Motor functions have all checked out.  You are indeed occupying the body you went to bed in.  Further damage has ceased.  Necrosis is staved off.  Healing has also ceased.  It is not going to get better or return to mint, though it will also not get worse.  Wake up.  Get up.

Some days I wake up, since it happened, and I scream into my pillow for long pillows for long minutes.  Pound my fists on the mattress.  Cry until I am exhausted.  And then get up and head to the shower, not to take one, but to get the bandages on my leg wet enough to peel off the still reforming skin without damaging it or tearing it because no matter how non-stick bandages claim to be, they will fuse with your newly regenerated skin and tear it off like a fine gossamer contacted with Velcro if you are not careful.  If you stub your toe or brush your shin against a coffee table corner or bump against a chair leg, that newly formed skin will peel free like over ripe peach fuzz and the healing has to begin all over again.

I've wanted to brand myself for some time.  A change of pace between scarification stints and a way to get a different look as I work on tattooing myself to help me mark time between the many different iterations of myself and stages of my life.  The pain brings an acute awareness that helps me cut through the storm swells and confusion and voices and whorls and weirs of manic depression and schizophrenia.  When your nerves are screaming out at you, it can drown out the noise.  When you can touch something concrete and constant it becomes a reference stone and constant reminder of your human elements, your and everyone else's pains and joys and emotional lives.  It allows you to access a reality that opens doors of sympathy and empathy you otherwise would not be able to see or understand.   It clear cuts a path to direct needs and functions.  In small doses, that pain is invaluable and a joy with incredible utility.  In large doses it is a nightmare.

When the deep fryer began to fall over, time did not slow down.  I knew my two cats, rescued from negligent homes some years ago, were both in my efficiency kitchen with me, waiting for me to toss a little food on the floor for them to nose and paw, maybe eat, maybe pass on.  The fryer was in the same space it'd occupied since I bought it and first began using it.  Hundreds of times.  This time, whatever balance struck that slowly shifted through the years made its final move.  It began to fall, my cats looking up at me, and I threw my hands out at full speed to stop it.  From all of the previous times I'd dropped bowls, or a bucket slipped off of a shelf while I was filling it, I knew the cats wouldn't move until it hit the floor and I didn't have time to try to scare them out of the splash radius with words.  The speech centers of my brain were an afterthought.  All I could engage was "protect them!"

Weeks later I can understand why.  I can't afford to take them to a veterinarian to treat them long term for hot oil burns, especially what would likely have been second to third degree burns over 50% or more of their little bodies.  I would have had to put them down or take them to a vet to have them do it.  The whiff, the scent, the lightest breeze of a notion of having to mercy kill them was enough to send me into action because they are two of my mates.  My family in my outpost here in Pittsburgh as I build a life for myself, a single early thirties male permanently estranged from all family save for my immediate siblings, and even they not all as close as siblings are often assumed to be.  They mean the world to me, no matter how often I bellyache about them keeping me up all night with their little paw paw games and wrestling with my feet and ankles with a little too much claw now and then.  They're my shipmates that take care of the place while I am away and while I'm hurtling through the universe, trying to make sense of other people, and maybe stumble upon someone or ones to accompany me, in my hodgepodge, homemade, Tardis.  My companions.

I lunged and the fryer moved along the shelf and slammed against the wall and 367 degree oil rolled up its side like water in a blender.  Below, the skitter scratch of cat claws scrambling against floor boards reached my ears, my leading foot planted against the plastic tile to balance me.  Relief washed over me knowing "they will be safe" as the sheet of amber oil hanging in the air began its descent over where the fryer basin used to be.  Where my hands now were.

I snatched my left hand backward, my right still connected to the arm putting as much force as possible into the basin, now against the wall to drive my body backward.  The oil sloshed over my right hand and, knowing I could not withdraw it without allowing the entireity of my torso to fall into the shower and shelf and further shake the ball of solar flare to catch the rest of its contents on my face, I pushed back and took a shower against the skin's hand.

The thump and tumble of my cats running away collided with the immediate shock of hot oil across my hand and wrist and once my body began traveling backward, the oil beginning to slap and clap against the floor, I began to raise my leg against the back splash.  What splashed and dotted my left leg cooled enough as it dotted my pants to leave no mark.  What landed in the bin turned around its base like a tsunamic rip tide, crushed against the basin's rear wall, curled around as sport, cameras flashing, snap, and teeth bared came for me.

Balanced, I tore my right hand away, the curling aftershock cresting.  It spilled.  The wave covered my knee and washed my shin and right foot and that was when a scream cut loose.  I cried out.  Prime and howl.  I screamed to the skies as the last of it dribbled off of my toes.

The deep fryer, spun with the terror of my flash fried hand, fell backward and spilled the rest of its contents to the floor that I, loosed from protecting cats and certain further was easily, by miles, too far, could leap clear and land against the kitchen sink.  I breathed hard for wasted minutes in a mental gridlock, hips perched on the lip of the kitchen sink, before I ran to the bathroom.

The cold water was turned to its maximum setting with the tub to shower knob turned to full shower.  Water washed all over me and I held my paw up to the chill spray and only brought it down to rinse over every other part of the right side of my body that was vibrating at death levels.  Sometimes when I lose my temper and cannot corral it I will fire off a punch into an inanimate object to pop off steam and that tingle returned is that tingle that tells you every part of your skin that was between flesh and bone and the rock and the hard place you found yourself in to bring ya to a point where the only release was the flood of endorphin and whatever other enzymes cover up disappointment and rage has died and maybe given up a fragment of solace to the rest of the mad house.  That tingle, rushing over the right side of my body and the nerves shouting out for soft words brought me back to the point where I understood I could not put enough cold water on every part of me that needed it.

My leg continued to burn.  For hours afterward.  I was able to wash my arm in enough cold water, enough of it falling into the tub, as it scattered from the shower's head against my hand, to cool my foot.  Second degree burns, superficial as superficial second degree burns can be, set in on my arm and foot as second degree burns ate into my leg, starved of cool.

I got out of the shower and pat dried myself.

Skin came off in palm sized chunks.

It stuck to the towel.

I got back in the shower.

Skin clogged the drain.

I cried.  I grabbed a bar of soap and rubbed.  More skin came loose.  It stuck to the walls of the shower.  It stuck to my own face.  It caught in my chest hair and groin.  Tendrils drifted from my beard.  I shouted "no!"  I shouted "this is not happening" over and over and over.  For many seconds it was all I could say.  Every part of me felt like it was coming unseamed.

I was in shock for two days.

I didn't know what to say to myself or anyone else.  I didn't know what to believe.  I slept.  When I woke I did not move.  While I stayed frozen I tried to sleep until I did.  When I was not sleeping I tried to.  When I was sleeping I waked with a recurring nightmare every handful of minutes I could forget.  Terror stricken.  It was not real.  I was in shock.

Waking, I looked at my hand and it was not mine.  It was a raw thing.  It stank.  The smell of it was raw meat opened two days too late.  Sour and slimy and sticking to everything it touched.  Blood oozed and wept from its every divide.  It was a scene in that movie that you cannot watch start to finish because it turns your stomach just enough to make your eyes cross and tinfoil rattle in your mouth until you are too sick to stand.  For some time, waking and looking at it and having its smell fill my nostrils so close to my face and knowing that if I lifted my blanket enough to look down at my leg I would see a sea monster colored in a sickly greenish yellow full of lint, cat fur, exudate, and blood scab as far as light can carry, I would sweat and convince myself if I just lied still it would heal itself fine like a rug burn.

On the third day I threw up.  60 some odd hours in bed hydrating with only a two litre of Barq's root beer I happened to toss over there before deciding to make food before bed took it's toll.  Waking up the third day for the twentieth time in that period, pain spiking, and the odor of raw flesh beside my head, unable to shake it away and unable to cut it off, took its toll.  I wretched.

Rolls of heaves began working their way along my spine.  I began to scramble with my good left hand to make sure my face was pointed toward empty floor space instead of mattress, pillow, or wall.  I could not walk.  Wherever the projectile went, it had to be somewhere I would be able to lie near without getting it into open wounds.  I succeeded and ralfed, sickened by the furious turbulent grotesquery of my own body parts.

On the fourth day I came to grips with what would become my new modernity.  Without health insurance, there was no one to fix me except me.  I tried to walk and succeeded.  I pissed.  In my own toilet.  Deep brown syrup.  I found my fridge.  There was food,  I walked to my sink.  There was water.  I drank and drank and drank.  I pulled food and food and left arm's full of tupperware and placed on my night stand.  I found my cubby of strange and sudden items and found my scarification kit and breathed a sigh.  Relief, joy, love for the friend who came over prepared for a one time dual scarification incident I ribbed him for (coming over prepared) that he left with me.  With a little improvisation I was able to repurpose the kit to cover the open wounds enough to return to bed on track to recovery instead of on rails to infection.

Days went by like barges trying to force their way over harbor reefs.  The stench of my hand continued to get to me as I left it bare with the kit nearby.  The flesh continued to sweat and the swelling did not go down.  Slicing it off became an option.  I could not sleep with any fidelity.  I could not rest and when I was awake the pain I felt was more than anything near the throb I felt inside my skull when I fractured my jaw.  It was more than anything I felt when I fell down stairs or was in my second car accident or slipped off of the odd side of a hand rail and landed on the concrete bordering the stairs beside a 21 foot decent from a porch to a sidewalk with a hill between us.  I wanted to cut it off as the bare flesh continued to weep that slimy clear goo.  Cut it off!  Cut it off!

I wrapped it.  I wrapped it.  Healing began.  The recurring nightmare, the recurring dream continued.  I was able to make bandages and while it healed I was able to order in specialized products for attending to burns.  I researched for days whiles my leg and hand and arm stuck to my bed sheets.  Every time I tried to move, they stuck to me.  Belief set.  "If I don't move while I'm waiting for these products to arrive, there is no way it can get infected because it is sealed by the plastic fabric so further movement will only create more problems and possible amputation."  I had to figure out a way to urinate.

And I did.  Three weeks in.  My neighbors stopped by to see if I was okay.  I still could not leave the bed for any sort of extended period.  Dropping my burned hand below my heart produced an incredible throbbing pain the likes of I have never felt.  To put the sensation in perspective: do you know when recommendations say to keep the limb elevated?  Imagine that every time you are lying flat on your back that limb crosses a plain.  Now imagine that plain is wherever your heart is located.  Now imagine that every time that limb crosses south of that plain you instantly feel like it is about to burst apart as though a truck tire, connected to a 3/4 ton truck, is rolling over it and if you do not raise it above that plain IT WILL BURST INTO HAMBURGER MEAT.  Yes.  That.  Now imagine that while you are trying to find a comfortable way to lie in bed and sleep.  Now imagine that happens instantly for 18 days to everything from your elbow up and your knee down!

Coming in to something close to normal.  I hope that was coherent.   How else can we survive?

The pain remains.  It feels indescribable though I've done my best.

People you knew before look at you differently.  More so than your scarification. They look at you as though there is something contagious about you.  The root of your being is love for animals.  Perhaps they should.

As I've healed and become a human being again through the last weeks, looking at my hand and my leg, I almost feel like I am wearing a human costume.  All of the skin was flash fried off of my hand save for my palm.  The skin underneath each one of my digits and my palm is original and up to date.  Looking at it, seeing it clinging to the rest of my flesh, it is out of place.  I want to peel it off and it will not go.   It will not go away.  There is no transistion between the old, the original, and the new.  It is stark.  If you shake my right hand you will feel the transition in the form of many tiny spikes where the original skin meets the new.  Where the rough and weathered meets the baby smooth; fingers crossed bounds, hands clasped in a firm grasp.

I still find pieces of skin around my apartment.  It is disgusting.  It is revolting.  Vomit climbs through my body and I know I have to pick that part of me up and put it in a garbage can and it is...   ....   ....    ..... ..........................  I know I can go on.  I know I will.  I know I have to.  It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.  


Fuck.  It hurts so much and I know I have to go on and it just fucking hurts so much.  I want to shake it off.   I want to be able to shake it off.   The pain is .................  ugh.  I know I'll beat it.  I think part of the pain it gives me is that I didn't have a choice.  And now I have to wear a permanent and exceptionally visible reminder of how I didn't have a choice through the 24 years of my life my Dad destroyed myself.  I broke away from that, finally.  It took cutting my face apart to see.  To finally split his noose.  Now I have to wear the scars of chance and love right along with them.   It hurts.  It fucking hurts.  It wasn't supposed to be this way.  I have to wear it.  I will and have and will continue to do so.
















I am happy to close this chapter.  If I didn't talk about it I would still find myself living in it months, maybe years, from now.




At least now,

at least now,

we can get back to comedy, true tragedy (instead of misfortune), and stories untold in fiction.  Close this book and open a new.  Carry on, soldier.  How many times do I have to change?  How many times do I have to be changed?  People already look at me so many different ways from what I am.  And they will look at me differently again.

Ever becoming.

We have been patient.  We will still.

You thought you new hell.  It was one of many.

It was a long month.  Come back home, darling.  The worst is over.  You may have set a new ten.  Many, most, if not all, is lost in translation, however-   -there's still a lot of work to do.  Do not quit on me and I will not quit on you.

/////Bjork x Deathgrips - "Thunderbolt" fourteen birth of the painted dinosaur.   Molt.

Move Town

I get so caught up with making the people around me things as a way of saying thanks and payment that I forget to make myself- to do what I want to do because I owe my existence, my here and now, to those people by a currency that will never translate because they don't know fully what they helped me reach escape velocity away from what I saw as an insurmountable margin and I don't view it as penance or clinging to the past or misplaced.  I see it as a continuous consciousness of how tenuous life can be and a ten four toward how the smallest gesture, the smallest show of what someone outside of a relationship might see as pity pence or enabling weakness can actually be a point and moment where you've helped someone's life turn a corner.  It's burdensome to think about and it takes a piece out of myself to do it, but everyone is thanked out of reflex and I feel more comfortable in my own skin, helpless and power filled at once, when I have taken the time to let them know the fact that I am still alive now is not by chance or the grace of a supreme being and is by their taking their time to pitch a penny or several thousand into my hat.  To fool yourself into thinking you've done it by yourself or by chance or by blessing or sheer hard work grind is something I want to make sure I never do.  So maybe it is an anchor.  Maybe it is an unnecessary sacrifice and can be framed as a guilt or a confirmation of sin and imperfection.  A penance.  I don't see it that way and will never come around to that frame of mind.  So much of life is decisions and whether it suits me or not a lot of those decisions happen outside of myself.  I accept that.  So please, accept my outside decision to thank you and the universe outside of myself that you have had a hand, direct and indirectly, in forming.

Once we're clear of that, we can shift focus back to fantasy lands and dreamscapes.  There isn't much more distance to cover and I am happy for that.  Excited for that.  There are times when I feel like every other word is about some future date when the resources are at their correct levels and processes have synchronized and the planets have lined up into something close to a grand cross and if I am twenty minutes in to 5th Element while listening to acid jazz with my heaphones in my key tray and I've already consulted my little sister and am suitably numb mouthed from too many cigarettes and just the right amount to dissuade me from running to the gas station to purchase more and the moon is a waning gibbous on a clear night with rain in the forecast for early before the sun comes up with the option to sit outside with a fire at any point prior barring the anything prior to the immediate because it did not rain the day through at work, where I box myself in to unrealistic expectations as a way to never have to actually execute anything.  If you never pull the trigger, you never have to learn whether or not there is more to learn about what you want to do.  Whatever you have conceptualized is its best and most perfect form.  You never have to translate.  I wanted to have children.  I can have children.  Meet my family!  It's almost like every idea is that part of you other people talk about and love, but if they ever did meet you, the rest of you, they'd screw their nose up and rub their squished shut eyes like they just saw an apple snap loose from a twig and fall up to disappear into the sky.

I get very caught up, but I have not forgotten my own needs.  It eats me out from the inside, but I never forget the gnaw and the sound of it and the feel of it, the blood cough taste of it, nose running, water eyed mechanics of it.  They scream at me.  I'm moving forward as fast as I can.  I swear, I am.  The days disappear swiftly.  The nights are restless, strapped to a mattress.  Fear lurks in corners.  Cats ask questions.  Notes are taken on walls and skin and misnamed folders.  Bite a lower lip and squeal from the top of the foothills of the mountain range, the clouds ahead of the temperature front doing strange things above the peaks and the ground bellowing thunder lake swells and strikes days distant, birds moving town in brunch sky above.  Sip.  Nod.  Please pass the olives.  Cross a leg and scribble onward.



///Sylvan Esso - "Uncatena"

Year End Playlist 2015

January - MF Doom - Lightworks
February - Beck - Soldier Jane
March - Starkey - New Cities (feat. Hitomi)
April - Big Sean - Paradise (extended)
May - AWOL Nation - Hollowmoon (Bad Wolf)
June - Odesza - Memories That You Call (feat. Monsoonsiren)
July - Dan Deacon - Wham City
August - Dem Gettaway Boyz - Imma G (Memory Tapes remix)
September - Hot Chip - No Fit State
October - Gorillaz - Dracula
November - Drax & Scott - Sublime (Darkstar Mix)
December - JJ Doom - Guv'nor

The honorable mentions in very particular order.  The higher up, the closer to the final cut.

Dirty Projectors & Bjork - When the World Comes to an End
Kodak to Graph - Pleistocene
Deltron 3030 - Stardate (feat. Joseph Gordon Levitt)
Kendrick Lamar - Backseat Freestyle
The Knife - Rock Classics

This was the year of the wolf divining new methods of self governance.  Rewriting it's own rules and amending it's doctrine.  Enjoy.  Honorable mentions tell no tales and get no links.  If you want to talk to them, you can find them in the clink.  A little place where we keep half ideas.  Things we fear.  Say it three times and they'll appear.  The body you thought stayed buried is floating by the pier.  Next time, put more concrete in the socks.  Everyone stopping by is not a bot.

It was, though, one of the roughest and strangest and smoothest to date.  With the year end look and this, the bookend to 2015, the only thing to do is look ahead to two thousand oh one and six.






///the year is written.  let it go.  thank you for loving me.  thank you for being there.  one of these days we may be eating at the big table.  in the meantime, you know you have a place at mine where the reeds are just high enough and the shade just thick enough for no one to notice we're there by their fire too.

The "Like" Policy (i dream in your actual space)

From when you are a little kid 'til you get to be of age or at least to a point where your outcomes become a direct, a more direct, result of your actions and inactions by turns, you are told to chase your dreams.

Some of those dreams happen to be being well adjusted enough to enjoy those social gatherings and incidents and accidents on a level a little more impactful than the entry fee of peace and goodwill.  It happens.  Nothing to write home about, though.  It's about getting into gear from a dead stop and that's fine.  Do not blow the stop sign.  Blow the stop sign once and you can skate.  Blow it twice; shame on you.  Blow it thrice and you're asking for trouble.  Blow it every single time you come in from the outlands and you're begging for trouble.

Some of those dreams do happen to be some of the things that are shared.  "Why do you like damn near everything?"  I don't really care about over liking and this is the last time I will bring up facebook.

There is a policy.  There is a set of rules.  There is a governing structure to many things that I participate in because there has to be.  If I screw up the policy, things grow increasingly more tangled in a show of one up, also it becomes increasingly difficult to quantify what a like is.  Hence, laughter comments.

It's really not that complicated.  It's all in good fun.  I know the chances we may actually hang out are slim to nary and that's cool.  I couldn't eat you in person for more than a few hours at a step and you myself neither.  And that's alright.  I like a lot of things.  That's why that word exists.  You can't love everything.  Or can you?  What if there was a love button?  That would completely wreck up some relationships.  The concept of a shared planet is very pleasing.  If I can live vicarious through you, your efforts, and your experiences and photographs and blitzes of wisdom, don't fault me.  I'm not stalking you.  I am stalking your food sometimes.  For the most part, I'm simply enjoying an aspect of life that I aspire to, and if there is fault in that "like" click go die.

It's fine to like a lot of things.  Life is so incredibly multidimensional and layered and there is no way to take it all in with one lens.  Pardon my use of the compound camera.  If you like nothing there is probably something seriously wrong with you and godspeed dealing with those issues.

Take time to have fun.  Like many things.  Enjoy many things.  Consume (obviously not at all costs) at some cost and feel good about it because the planet is a shared home and last I checked the stars are still light years away so don't pack bags and make extensive plans for a day trip just yet.  Take it light.  Take it on the heels.  And always bring a towel.  You never know when it may come in handy.

Whatever your policy is, do not be afraid to enjoy or upset about a giggle taken from you by force.

They meant well.

Also, I am stalking you, but just a little. In the same way a creature intelligent observes, studies, and dissects another.



///Bushwacka - "The Egyptian"  There's just one thing that I want you to do.

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.

Birthday Sex (minus sex [also birthdays])

So I'm thirty five and a half again.  For the second time.  Since I've been keeping track of iterations.  I'm on my twenty sixth iteration.  I will not admit a lot of things, but I will admit it's kind of nice to be thirty five, and it's also nice to spell out numbers.  There's something that gives them more weight and pizzazz when you spell them out.  Maybe it's the greater visual volume and maybe I'm just a sucker for language and textual conflagrations.   Mostly I think I like to feel my fingers fly across the keyboard and tap out music the only way I know how, but not the only way I can learn, but the only way I know how just yet.  It's fun.

I've come to some realizations in being thirty five for the twenty sixth time.  None of them make particular sense with regard to each other.  It's kind of difficult to get the points to match up beyond courses of life times, let alone multiple life times.  Really, it's going to take a significant amount of time, I assume, to parse backward and piece together iterational check ins, but I do not believe in doing so that I will be at all disappointed with what the effort turns up.

So here I am.  This is a place holder for future reference to me.  Yes, it is all about me this time, but not really.  It's about the overarching work, but mostly I want to fire off a buoy to mark the spot in the sea of experience.

Sub-mostly, the mostly that bangs across the finish line just after the most mostly, I want to document a child singing a song about birthday sex.  Because it was hilarious, and we were hot boxing the car, and the kid was loving it.  And jumped up, after unfastening himself, on the back seat and started to sing birthday sex just like that time in Chicago, minus the drugs and the easily disarmed anti kid windshield splatterification device.  I almost died laughing.  And that's why, ladies and gentlemen, we park before boxing.  We're not savages.  We're forward thinkers.  Or something like that.

Either way.  Birthday sex might be one of the greatest songs ever and I hope it makes it to a Kids Songs album at some point.  It's good to be 35.  The only male enhancement drug I need on my twenty sixth iteration is every extends extra extreme.  Look it up.  It is the greatest arcade game ever made.  Because when you're this old and this young all you need is a D pad, a lettered button, good music, and explosions and you'll be half masted all day.