Fear

I haven't been scared in a long time.   I know that I am going deaf from blasting music.  I know that I am forgetting things intentionally from my childhood and some of being an adult.  The methods of deletion are bleeding across boundaries and I'm beginning to forget things I'm supposed to remember.  Long term memory redactions are becoming short term memory blanks.

I don't know where it ends.  I do know I forced the process on myself.  I don't know which part of it is engineered and which part is a symptom of myself .

I'm afraid.  I'm afraid that I may have caught the tiger by its tail or if it has sunk its teeth into my arm and I don't know it yet because I can't see it.

Steady As She Goes

Remember what that used to mean?  I do.  It used to mean taking the highs and lows in stride, but not to so much the taking in stride as cutting straight though the thick of the wave and coming out the back side and surfing her straight into dusk.  Straight into the fall and the winter of the upcoming crest.  It used to mean a lot more than it did before it became a platitude.   Not that it's a platitude now.  I guess what I'm saying is that steady as she goes is a bad way to describe the circuit of this ship.

Right now, I would place it somewhere between an oxygen fire in the vacuum of space and a flat spin dizzying enough to make the sublime a Picasso'd afterthought.  It's terrifying in the same way a car accident is serene in the seconds before contact, except those seconds are stretching out days instead of seconds, weeks instead of days.

Steady as she goes, though.  All flame and wreck and how many souls can she bring down with her as she spirals into a sun?

It's the wanting that is tearing.  Shearing bolts and bulkheads and turning bodies like soil and plow spades, succumb to forces and forced things.  Do not kill.  Do not see.  Do not hear.   The touch of force like a kiss from a stranger who knows your one sided name.  And no why.  No why ever offered.   It's thrilling and numbing and begging.

Waiting for another break and it arrives unannounced and unheralded and reasons for people to question never come up, but choke up like a batter for an infield single and everyone sees it coming except the pitcher.  It's been tough.  Songs for getaway car single shot thirty minute production reels.  Everyone needs commas.  Everyone needs comas.

You want it both ways.  I want it both ways.  I want the privilege of mistake.  I want the forgiveness and the forgiving to see me in the light of a human being flawed by default and on the same hand I want the respect and the conversation granted to the sound.  I want what's coming to me and mine and I want to fight it at the same time.  I want answers.  Sometimes I can't sleep at night because I keep asking myself "why me?"  I keep saying that over and over and it would be so convenient to point to some kind of god or chance or a version of determinism with some kind of optical illusion at it's end.  The best I can point up is some kind of medicated psuedo goodness.  Some kind of hard parsed commonality or functionality.  Is that enough?

What ever is?  Am I going to kill myself is a matter of convenience and circumstance.  When I'm sure I'll be sure,  Is all I can say I won't be able to write some kind of flowery death note.  I hold my loved ones, and they do exist, no more hostage than anything or anyone else anyone or anything else can hold a thing or person dear.  It burns me that things can be that simple.  That simple and that hard.  I guess that's what becomes what burns me so hard.

That a person can want all of the rights, all of the allowances, of personhood and still be counted as damaged and warrant of special circumstance and consideration.  It boils down, a little bit, to I am just like you staring I am nothing like you dead in the face.  Because I want with all of my heart to be just like you.  And I know I'll never be.  Do you know how special you are?

Do you know how special you are now?

How about now?

Okay, well, how about now?


///War - "Me and Baby Brother"  everytime I hear this song I think of fifth grade and all the growing up I had to do and how I took my siblings for granted and how we stole from eachother constantly, but lately I think about all of our adventures and misadventures and I think if I ever have kids there will be a two head minimum because every dog may have its day, but what is a day without some belloved arse you'll be forever linked with to share it with.

///Skrillex - "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites"  ...for I am just like you...

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"

Not Again. Yes Again

  I pretty much exploded just about every single breaker on my mind this past weekend.  It was rough.  Massive overload.  Massive violence.  Memory loss.  Found things in my apartment that did not belong to me that were covered in blood that was not mine.  Strange stuff.  Just a complete collapse that was punctuated by a friend in bad straits and there was nothing I could do really to help her, but god damn it I tried and I will try again if it happens again.  Powerlessness.  Is a terrible thing.  Drives me to do and exercise the things I can do.  Which are few.  And most of those things lead to bad circumstances.

I know at some point my luck is going to run out and things will not go anywhere near the way I planned them.  I will be on the wrong end of the violence and rage.  Over my head without even knowing it.  Without realizing it until it happens.  I don't think I'll be all that upset though.  A way out.  Not the way out I would want, but how far I would go to resist is questionable.  I don't think I would, beyond reflex.  I did set out to specifically kill someone.  Ended up in tears and bloodless.  I suppose that was the second time.  I don't remember what happened the first time.  The point is I've got stop letting go like that.  Gotta stop letting myself be provoked.

Control.  Without control there is nothing.  I can't afford to lose like that.  Not yet.  Still too much work to do.  Gotta get my head back on straight if I'm going to live through the bull shit and the slippage and the blow outs and the


///Tosca - "Oscar"  I've had the most fantastic dreams over the last two days about stories I need to write.  I need to do it.  I'm not really afraid of running out of time.  I just know that time is running out of me like blood from a head wound.

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

Stand Up Act 7 (the sex chapter part deux)

Stand Up Act 6

I'll start this off by saying sometimes you just have to not listen to yourself. In fact there are a lot of times you have to not listen to yourself. It's probably the one thing that stands out the most, if there is such a thing, that tells you that you do in fact live in a society with rules and that those rules keep things civilized and that the reason this is called a civilized society is because these rules are in place to keep you from killing people and that you are not as civilized as you want to be, but not because you could, as Dov put it, kill someone if they were close to the couch, because you could on most days, but that these rules are in place to keep you in your place and let a very small fraction of the population do whatever the hell they want. And so that you can't off people that serve an essential function without repercussions. American Idol would not exist in a society without well thought out murder rules. You have to remind yourself that you can't kill everybody. Don't listen to yourself.

At most you get one. If you're crafty you get several dozen. If your religious you get several thousand. Civilization is nice though. You can go to the corner store and buy Wise potato chips. You get internet access and a toilet that flushes and a shower that can put out two kinds of water. Two kinds! Which is always good, because life is hard for most people and the stink of work definitely needs to be washed off on a regular basis or everyone will know just how hard everyone else is working. But you get one, and you have to spend it wisely. So don't waste it on a union rep.

I went to my union rep and asked about health benefits. A natural course of action. I haven't had health insurance since 2007. Or was it '06. I can't remember. When you're in college you go to the hospital only when going to the on campus nurse yields the kind of results where you are pretty sure you've been shitting blood and their best answer is not even a note that will excuse you from missing class, but is instead a baggie with a Popsicle stick and a list of instructions for getting your poo on it, as though you don't know that shitting black is probably a bad thing and that pain in your intestines that feels like pac man driving around on razor blade tipped twenty twos inside you is something you would totally fake to postpone turning in a paper you already finished. But anyway, my job is killing me, and I've gotten to a point where I feel entitled enough to ask that I not have to pay for the repairs, so I don't feel like my body is coming apart every morning, because I've been told several times by various upper management folk that I am a "good worker".

"Good" meaning malleable, I think. Easy to force. At any rate, I quit that job. Partially because I realized that I didn't need that job to be able to buy deluxe toilet paper. It was an insurance policy for a different time. And after I quit I went out and bought toilet paper that's like four sheets thick and still fits on the standard toilet paper roll bar. If that's not the joy of science I don't know what is. I mean, you're telling me that this thing has twice as many individual squares with four times the thickness and that engineers spent years finding ways to make every square centimeter of it feel like wiping my ass with a frostingless cupcake? You're telling me that every single time I have to use the toilet for an extended, and embarrassingly so, period of time, the upside is I get to wipe my ass with a slice of three layer wedding cake? Hell yes.

Everyone should get to enjoy that at some point in their life. "For just a few cents more, every child in the Congo can enjoy the runs in a way they never knew possible." Not that extreme though. I guess that's how you know you're kind of poor. When toilet paper and drinking too much milk because you're not getting enough protein through solid foods turns you way the fuck on and you're main thought throughout the day is "I am going to shit so good tonight, you have no idea." But that's beside the point. The simple pleasures in life should not be overlooked. Neither should the "everybody gets one" rule. Even with the everybody gets one rule, there's some flexibility. But anyway, let's get to the sex.

There should be another rule. Besides everyone getting to wipe their butts with cupcakes, and getting to off exactly one (sometimes more) people. There is another. That rule is this: if you are not at all athletic you are not allowed to propose threesomes. Ever. I'm just saying, three people engaging in sex at once is a difficult proposition to wrap a head around, mentally. It's a pretty huge burden. Especially when the three people already get along decently well to begin with and just like hanging out. When you throw the three banger on the table it's like placing a stack of unbanded 100 dollar bills on a table with a bunch of drunks and waiting to see who will move first.

Is someone going to try and sneeze and blow it off the coffee table and offer to pick the bills up and pocket a few. Is someone going to place their beer a little off and spill it and rush to be the first to clean it up. Is someone going to spill their beer and everyone just watch the liquid spread. Who's going to be the first to touch it? The answer is me. I am going to grab that stack, hold it up to my nose, and fan the bills, because it smells so damn good, but I'll put it back down, sans Criss Angel magic tricks. Because I don't have time for nonsense and staging and camera work. For instance, I know this trick called "is this your wallet" and in this trick you have to guess what I'm holding behind my back. If you guessed one standard red clay brick, you are correct. The illusion is complete when I come see you in the hospital two days later and ask you "is this your wallet?"

But that should be a rule. Have you ever tried having a three wide NASCAR race with cars that can't keep up? It's frustrating as hell. It's like trying to cross the street when you're six years old, on your way to school, and the crossing guard keeps shoving you back onto the sidewalk, saying "stop right there. no wait. not yet. hold on. Just sit still for a minute" and half of the hour is waiting for them to get back into the state of the moment and green light you while you do suicide sprints across the two feet of concrete before the black asphalt. It's insane. If you can't have effective sex with one person, you are not allowed to talk to a second party period. Because, believe it or not, masturbating on your knees on someone's coffee table while everyone else watches, gets old. Pretty quick.

It's like taking children out of remedial mathematics and believing they can somehow do differential equations. It's just not going to happen. What do you mean you need a smoke break? Are you insane? We're ten minutes in to this and you need a breather... to be able to breathe less effectively? What kind of sense does that even make? And then you're standing in the middle of the room with one person nodding off from too much alcohol and the other dry as a sandbox, but trying to fake their way through it like a job interview, so you wipe your spooge on their collection of tv remotes and pack up shop and leave expecting to be done with it and you go to bed and the first thing you wake up to is a text message asking what you're up to at 8 fucking A.M. when you just left their place at 5, didn't get home till 5:15 and didn't fall asleep til 7:30 A.M. because you had to yank it all over again except this time everything went the way it was supposed to the first time you schemed it up when they first asked you.

If you are not athletic enough to entertain one person you are not allowed, at all, at anytime, under any circumstances, to complicate, what is otherwise a healthy relationship by Rocco Siffredi's standards on a reserved day when he's not feeling it or otherwise coked out of his mind, a healthy friendship between persons. Let's face it, it's easier to hang out with people that meet your criteria of people you don't mind being seen with without people asking questions to the tune of "wow he/she must have a great personality because they're ugly as hell... I wonder what keeps them together", than it is to hang out with ugly folk with good hearts. The bonus being they're attractive and have good hearts to boot. If you physically can't keep up, you keep your Goddamn fantasizing mouth shut. Period. It's not that hard. Nothing worse than an orgy of one. Well, there are some things worse, but the list is thin.

Alls I'm saying is, there have to be rules. The rules that are in place are there for a reason and there need to be more rules to cover other basics. If you are grossly overweight, you do not get to propose anything. If you are not grossly overweight, but have exceedingly poor musculature you do not get to propose anything, because keeping yourself happy is sometimes a chore, and the last thing anyone needs is to have their hands full trying to do the jobs of two other bodies and yourself at the same time. It's like going out with friends and everyone says: yeah lets get the giant nacho boat. The truth of the matter being that the friends just want to watch you eat it. How is that fun, at all? Spoiler alert, it isn't.

Goddamn, people are retarded. But rules are important. You can't kill idiots. At least not all of them. Apparently you can't fuck 'em either. Life lessons. Just trying to pass on the knowledge with a smile. A bitter smile? Sure, why not. They both look the same if your toasted.