Funny Feedback Loops

To a point, there is a difficult loop of loops powering each other.  A tipping point is approaching where we're going to have to make major decisions that I keep kicking down the road.  I am completely torn between whether to go the prescribed medication route or not.  There isn't a right answer.  Most roads seem to lead to an early death and its kind of funny.

You pop the medication and wait for weeks to see if anything is going to happen.  If nothing happens then you take some more.  I guess "pop" is much too flippant.  You rearrange all of your life routines to take the prescribed medications and present as stable as possible a body environment to present affects.  If, with your new forced sleep patterns and dietary intake, there is no effect then you go back to consult and raise the dosage and wait a few more weeks and on and on until it clicks.  Or never completely does.  All the while, physical affects may manifest.  Weight gains, weight losses, tics, shakes, nausea, fatigue, it varies from prescription to prescription.  If it doesn't quite click, a new prescription is introduced to help.  You may be weaned off of what you are already taking, you may not.  Weeks upon weeks, months, of consultations and examinations and examinations and consultations and dealing with and juggling body changes and it may click.  The changes may stick.  And that is your new life.  X pill at this hour, every single day, without fail, until you stop breathing, because your head will shatter if you stop taking it.  In the mean time, enjoy the side effects, which will probably contain an assortment of shadows and echos in the corners of your consciousness that will follow you to your death.

Obviously, not a great answer.  If you can't cope with the body changes, you're not going to be able to keep up with any sort of regimen.  You're going to take the prescriptions inconsistently and exacerbate the already difficult process of ascertaining what, if any, affects are becoming present in your psychological make up from week to week.  If you do manage to make it a few months and falter later down the road and start to slip into an inconsistent pattern of medicating you may be torn apart by the reawakening of whatever it was you are trying to lock away, squash, and overcome.  If you do stick with the regimen, that pill is a constant reminder of the incomplete you.  The you that is only "complete" if you swallow this spot.  And if you can get past all of that and wear and break yourself into this life permanently linked to this pill and make your examinations and deal with the side effects that can be life threatening on their own, you still can and likely will experience periods where it doesn't work anyway.

Sooo we come to drinking.  Alcohol.  Good old alcohol.  I already drink some on and off to manage pain.  Between psychological scars and body scars, it kind of gets the job done.  It gets the job done well enough, I should say.  You don't focus on history and you don't feel the sharpest highs of the pain inside your body and it's easy enough to turn the dial up or down as necessary.  If what you are suffering mentally has stabilized itself momentarily or at least is not on an offensive within your being and your mind you can simply not drink until you reach a point where it begins to slip beyond that edge of your ability to cope and manage.  Of course, you do become more and more accustomed as your tolerance steadily and inevitably climbs.  It takes more and more alcohol to achieve the same affects.  It takes more and more alcohol to blunt the storms and voices inside your head and still more to numb the body and still more to blunt the cuts of history.  The side effects, by themselves are all horrible.  Shakes, shortened tempers, hangovers, appetite problems, light sensitivity, insomnia, deep depressions and apathy, fatigue, wanting to smoke cigarettes constantly, hot flashes, low and acute withdrawals depending on how much you had to do to get to a place where you could finally sleep.

The good news is, on the days and weeks when you don't need to turn the dial at all, nothing horrible happens beyond 24-72 hours of physical withdrawal.  The very bad news is the damage is done.  Your liver is hardening drink by drink and will eventually fail, your brain is losing its functions even as the psychological scars are faded and erased.  If you weren't careful you've probably injured or bruised yourself in some way you didn't notice from the overall body numb and even if you were careful you've probably bruised or injured yourself in some way from the body numb and coordination problems that come with consuming alcohol.  The depression will linger well beyond physical withdrawal even if everything else inside your head is muted and been flattened backward so you can finally hear yourself think again and you may wind up drinking just to escape that lingering depression.  The packs of smokes you breathed are a part of your lungs forever.  You are extending the depth of the foundation of your bodies alcohol dependence in small ways in that it will take at least the last peak dosage to get the effects you need to feel normal the next time your mind begins to crumble and pull itself apart.  And, oh yeah, you can overdose and die.

I'm not going to bother with a faith/religion approach.  For reasons I've laid out through the years, faith and religion is an enormous vacuum to.  As a way to see, cope with, reckon with, understand the world and understand people and oneself, I get its value to some.  I'm an atheist.  Moving on.

Taking the problem head on, no chemical enhancements with alcohol or pills, is a terrifying proposition, but it could work.  I can often easily go one to two weeks without a drink if my spine feels okay and I'm able to get out and play.  I don't take prescriptions.  Head on, however, there is no where to run and nowhere to hide when your head starts to come apart.  The best you can do is try to distract yourself and try to surround yourself with as many safe spaces to sit and do nothing as possible if you can't get outside.  You have to be able to position yourself within the larger fabric of life in a way that will insulate you and that presents major problems in itself in that life tends to be pretty damn inflexible.  You also have to understand that you cannot control when you will experience a major break and that unpredictability will also cause direct conflict with your ability to plan anything and everything from a phone call to making yourself lunch to being at work; with that in mind, understand that you will not know when the most violent spells will end either.

The great news is there are no prescription side effects or organ destroying alcohol dependencies to fret over that will end your life early.  The bad news is there is nothing between you and the teeth of the beast inside your head either.  If and when there is a major break down you may end up hurting yourself or someone else far worse than the damage being done by either of the other methods.  If you can't find the right person or persons to speak to in order to ground yourself or at least get you outside of yourself, you may self destruct completely and become a suicide statistic.  You may lose significant friendships and jobs and intimate relationships because coping may mean that you have to spend days or weeks at a clip alone or heavily insulated and metered to bear with the voices and hallucinations inside you and the swells and shadows of visions.  All of the while you will be acutely aware of these collapses and broken connections and psychological scarring, perceived (real or not) judgments and stigma, and that the expectation from the outside in is that you see a professional and "get help" for being yourself.  Which kind of strikes the ear a bit strange, no?  In your necessary isolated states, in attempts to avoid self destruction and free yourself from the knowledge of the poorer life outcomes, you may resort to far more dangerous chemicals than any mentioned above and/or episodes of extreme alcohol use which will likely also lead to your premature expiry too.

Here's the plan: there isn't one.  Here's the funny part: you're not crazy; you are going to die early, it's really only a matter of how.  You can take the pills and the side effects until you can't take them anymore or slip up and miss enough of the regimen to come apart at the seams or quit altogether and default to something else that will kill you early.  You can incrementally (or quickly) drink yourself to death in an effort to manage and reign in the worst of your symptoms, essentially trading one pretty awful thing for the other.  Lastly you can try to live with your symptoms as much as possible and fit in to life where you can until you or life decides you simply cannot.  I'm somewhere between option three and option two.  The funny thing is cannabis seems to help the most, it's just hard to keep it stocked.  I'm working on it.  I guess that's the fourth option.  I guess there is a fourth option.

After all of this time, I'm still not ready to completely screw with my brain chemistry the way prescriptions will again.  Not yet anyway.  Not yet.  We're not misguided enough to believe that we're fine, no matter how "normal" we feel, but if we can stay between the lines of certain death from liver failure and attendant complications, side effects, and risks in option two and certain death from succumbing to suicidal thoughts, frustrations, and life complications in option three until we can truly try out the full spectrum of what option four has to offer, we may be able to avoid option one altogether.




///Gorillaz - "O Green World"

The Year End Look

Starting at the end of 2015 the year end look was a little rough, but hopeful.  I know I said the year end playlist was up next.  It isn't.  The look back at 2016 and forward into 2017 is.  We'll get to the year end playlist soon, I wanted to hammer this out before I get lost trying to locate music and because it has been weighing on my brain for quite some time and in the throes of a calm and a quiet and thoughtful depression, it is easier to piece back together.  I do firmly believe still: if you want easy, kill yourself.  If 2016 taught me anything that was it.

I thought fracturing my jaw was the worst pain I would ever feel and be able to stand through and that something like that would never happen again.  And then I fried off 15% of my skin with 370 degree oil in second and deep second degree burns bad enough that I couldn't walk or use my hand for weeks.  That was the worst pain I have ever felt.  The first week or so it was a chilly feeling, like when air blows across your teeth very quickly and it feels like you've just bitten into a snowball at the same time.  As hair follicles and skin began to grow back in odd colors and scales the pain got worse and more intense, but I was happy because at least I knew some sort of skin would eventually be there to protect the naked weeping flesh eventually.  It was so many weeks I don't even remember exactly.  I think the last scales scraped away to serviceable skin some time in late December after it happened in September.  It was an eternity.

Definitely not what I intended when I said I wanted to work on my scarification sleeve at the beginning of the year.  Looking forward: I don't want to feel anything remotely close to that again.  Can we please go back to dealing with occasional week long bouts of lower lumbar nerve pain and the occasional lancing ice pick stab of hip joint nerve pinch.  That's fine, by comparison.  I laugh saying it, but I am pressing my palms together and pointing them at the sky: please universe, don't hurt me like that again, but if you do - make it a clean break.

I did finally get around to procuring a set of tattoo guns.  I also did not get around to using them.  A third of my year disappeared trying to heal up from the burns.  It wasn't even just the burns that broke me low, it was learning how to use my hand again and build strength back into it.  It was rebuilding the musculature in my hips and joints in learning how to walk longer and longer distances and stand for longer periods of time.  At one point I could walk, but I literally had to sit down and raise my heel above my heart every five or ten feet because the throbbing pressure of my veins trying to push blood down and back up to my heart felt like my leg was getting torn to the bone by a leather whip.

The year started off pretty grand.  All of the work was more or less finished.  I'd survived, what was to that point, the worst injury I'd suffered to date and if you can take ten weeks of pain and rehab from a fractured and dislocated jaw, you can take anything.  Music was on the horizon and I had a keyboard set up that I was diddling with.  I got a cool old motorcycle with part of my Christmas bonus, an old Honda that I still have sitting in the backyard that I want to eventually build into a cafe racer style bike you might see on an old pastel chalk poster advertisement if you lived in racing country back in the 70's.  I had a new basketball and had free time to exercise and hit the basketball courts now and then to indulge my sports fantasies.  I was really getting into the video game Minecraft and was seeing poetry from a little bit of a different angle.

Graphic design was coming along and my friendships were pretty free flowing as far as I could tell.  I was making big plans to create sculptures and designs for some of my friends that I wanted to show instead of just tell them that I cared about them.  Some projects were coming along nicely through planning sketches and rough practice designs and concept proofs.  With some of my free time I was able to visit people I normally could not make time for and with that little extra bit of money I was able to go out with them to places they wanted to go and eat and drink things I never would under usual circumstances.  Life was wheeling and dealing and possibilities were turning into realities.  The only real problem I had was making time to keep up with everything at a reasonable pace and I was making it work.

The Summer was hot and long and I did get into a funk wondering what was next.  Who doesn't feel some of that funk in the middle of Summer?  When everything feels okay it is natural to wonder if everything is supposed to feel that okay.  Are you supposed to feel happy, content?  It's normal to question.  I did get to thinking about other people I know and where they are in their lives and where I am in mine and I started to think about what more I would have to do to experience that kind of comfort and security.  I started to, after my birthday in April, start to believe that there could be a way that I could have that too if I kept at it and kept on trucking with high hopes and kept in touch with people and kept allowing them in to my lives.

The facts started to creep in.  Started to trickle in.  The realization broke in that nothing would change.  They're still drifting away faster than that distance can ever be closed.  They've only been kind enough not to tell you that you're messaging a part of their lives they don't have time for.  So I spent more of the Summer falling away into the night skies and fire pits and walks through the storm tunnels to sit by the river's edges and pull back the fabric of those nights to watch the bridge lights glimmer on the inch high breakers.  It was my time to love the air and sky and earth and whomever happened to pop by my backyard or asked me to hop in to theirs.  Touring star ships and space stations of all kinds.

And then my body was scorched to hell and back and here we are.

Letting them go was ... you know how when you are discussing something over a hot cup of tea, and you stop to blow the steam away for a minute and touch the cup's edge to your lips to see if it's still too hot to drink and you set the cup down and look up and realize you've been talking to an empty saucer with a dry tea bag on it.  Letting them go was ... you know how when a video cassette finishes it's run time and the credits have finished and it goes black for a few minutes and then snaps to static and you realize you are still holding the remote and peering into the static waiting for the television to turn itself off, but there is another several minutes of static instead and you find yourself watching the blue input screen while the player labors, hitches, and then begins to rewind itself.  Letting them go was like that.

Part of me is angry that I didn't realize it sooner.  Part of me is angry that I let myself trot along, tail wagging, tongue out and teeth yip yapping away, not understanding the hands waving were from the insides of car windows, not the other side of the road on the side walk, a couple of paw skips away to pat my nose, scratch my ear, and let me lick their palms.

Part of me is a little lost.  So what now?  The business of being an adult?  The business of being single?  Thirty two is around the corner.  Some people I know will be retiring at fifty.  Fifty five.  Some people I know will be thinking about second kids, third cars, vacation homes, second marriages... my life expectancy is somewhere out there in the high sixties, low seventies.  So what now?  The game is halfway over and what?

Am I ever going to write anything of significance.  I do write for myself first and foremost.  I used to do it with the hopes of being recognized somewhere or paraded around like something special.  Am I special?  No, just a little weird.  Okay, a bit weird.  I will.  Not yet.  At least not in my mind.  Thirty years to go and many more times to keep trying to set the type just the way I want it.  Thirty years to make the words hit other ears the way they hit my own.  I don't know if it will ever work.  It would certainly help if I could go one year without some cataclysmic injury eating up a third of a year to heal.

Will I be single forever?  Yeah, probably.  I've been torn up and spit out enough times, unrequited enough times, blissfully lulled to nothing, cut off and scorched enough times, left behind enough times, pushed away enough, to where I simply don't want to feel that again.  Much like having your skin cooked off, the scars are forever.  Maybe in ten years I'll think about it seriously again.  Maybe I'll quit smoking too.  Maybe I'll just croak off quietly long before then from some odd organ failure I can't see coming.

There is, oddly enough, a dent in all of the fingernails of my right hand, from the burn where all of the cuticles were traumatized and cooked, that has been slowly growing it's way toward the finger tips to be clipped.  Consistent along each finger.  I now know exactly how long it takes for my fingernails to grow on my right hand.  Look on the bright side.

So what now for 2017?  I don't know.  I was, as I wrap this up, thinking about going to buy a pouch of tobacco to roll some cigarettes.  I might.  I stopped enjoying smoking five years ago.  It's a way to mark time, nothing more.  Thirty some odd years to go.  I'll probably have to start some kind of heart medication in my 40's if I don't fix what I put into my body and stretch food stamps more effectively... maybe cut out the beef and pork, more frozen vegetables and dried beans (fruit never keeps long enough).  What's the use?  An extra ten, maybe twenty, years for what?  May as well, push on, I suppose.  I still can't grow a full beard or shave my face to bare skin.  I'm not getting any taller.  I'm not exactly waiting around for anyone.  Might as well go for a walk, come home and burn a couple.  Get some good sleep.  Wake up and do it again.  We'll have time for music, 2017.  Time for more poetry and stories too.  Short ones, long ones, whatever strikes your fancy you scruffy little rascal.  Whatever happens, I'll be there for you, never forget that.  We'll forge some aluminum and keep exploring.  Do it for the love the art and the unknown.  There are worlds I've only begun to map.  The star fields are massive.  Time is not.




///Daedelus- "Perchance A Bit"

In Consideration of Empathy

You attack and beat yourself up over your inability to see eye to eye with your brother.  Eye to eye about what?  Everything.  Not everything, just things now.  The formation and configuration of our immediate family.  Who funds what and why.  Who goes and does what and where.  Who can.  Why do you want to see eye to eye with him on that?  You just watched a video of yourself dancing and you thought it was awesome, but the truth is if bodies could have Tourette Syndrome, you would probably be the poster boy with Elaine Benes as the prom Queen.  Why do you want to see eye to eye with him at all?  You are two completely different human beings, down to sexual orientations and the arrangement of your individual eyelashes.  You are not supposed to agree.  You are about as different as they come between siblings.  You do realize this, I hope.  You are a stamped coin.  Do you get it now?  You are never going to see eye to eye about just about everything.  If you want to see the other side, you are probably going to have to bend time and space and, last I heard, that shits pretty difficult with a thousand acre facility so good luck trying to do it with a few cubic inches of fatty gray matter.

You don't have to see anything his way.  He doesn't have to see anything your way.  What is this weird aggression toward a shared emotional experience?  It's not there.  Stop looking.  I don't say that as a warning sign like marking something so damaging and toxic you will die immediately, if not soon after.   I say that as a time saver.  I say that as a wayfarer.  Stop looking.  There is nothing at the end of that ocean.  There is nothing on the other side of that desert.  The globe does not loop around.  It is infinite in the darkness beyond the stars.  Stop looking.  Occasionally whip your binoculars up to your face and take down the range, time, and windage and then duck back down into the reeds.  You do love him, but you do hate him too.  Not for any particular reason.  Just envy.  Change positions.  Skulls, skin, bones, you do know you wouldn't be able to change circuitry.  Can't I?  No.  Mightn't I?  No.  Impossible-r-y-ing I?  No, and that's definitely not a word or fragment.  What the hell is that?   I just stroked off for a minute.  What were you saying?

I was saying, we're never going to see eye to eye, so stop beating yourself up when you try and do not.  You're not a bad person.  You're not a flaming heap of garbage to be kept at arms length all of the time.  Sometimes you cannot control your volatility.  It's a fine problem to have.  You don't have to kill him and you don't have to fight him.  Just let him be himself and you be yourself and the chips will land where they please and are directed.  Your engagement with the world can never be his.  It can be emulated.  Where's the fun in tracing?  Where's the existence in tracing?  Do not get angry with yourself for being irrevocably, irreconcilably, different.  No, you are not stupid for trying.  Anyone in their right mind would see their closest genetic match and want to touch it like a mirror to make sure what they saw was not a reflection.  You are me?  No.  I am me and you are you, and never the two shall meet.




///Dan Deacon - "Feel the Lightning"  polishing the brass on warships that will and need never leave Earth.  Fear is healthy.  A degree of worry is healthy.  Don't take it too far.

Knowing Where You Have No Business and That You Are Expected On Occassion

You don't have to front load everything you say.  You don't have to translate at the end either.  You may be coming across better than you believe.

One of the most hilarious things was the whole "they took our jobs" rhetoric at the last election and the come back that they're doing jobs we do not want to do.  The funny part was my challenge.  It's a matter of geographics and debt.  I took the challenge knowing that.  Just to see.  Because they were taking our jobs here too, right?  What I got back was paperwork.  It's a little bit a lot of bit hilarious.  If you cannot laugh at that, you have no soul.  I still get email updates on it, but I am passed caring.  Yes.  Passed.  English, the most, hands down, complicated language.

My relationship with America?  It's complicated.  And I am dating myself.  And I am dating myself too.  We wreck up sometimes.  Slang for fight, no?  Yes.  I do not agree with everything we do.  I do not.  Sometimes I am on damage patrol.  Some times I am on altitude control.  Sometimes I am just sometimes and I am, having learned, not apologetic because people do get tired of sorrys and start to ask "why the bleep do you not just do it better?"

I will not give you the run around.  I'm just American.  I'm a little gangster circa 1925 and a little modern circa "what's the date today" and a little 90's grunge and a little 80's synth, a little bit of a late 90's "get money" and a little 70's rhythm and blues, a little bit of #$%^'n disco and a little bit of late 80's space rock, a little bit of 1960 fuck you and a little bit of 1950 be easy and every one is working for something greater because no one actually wants to be here, and a little bit of drum and bass tongued in with a little bit of pop talked down through the ages and distilled and reanimated.  I'm just American and I will make no excuses.

And I will fight you.  And then discuss.  And then fight you harder because I only wanted a breather and we may as well butcher language in the mean times.  They only get meaner.

I wish I could get along with people like me.  I cannot.  I am not going to stop trying.  It is a little bit of playing with where you know you have no business being.  And you know it.  You do not understand why you are excluded.  There are the times you are expected though and you do not show up.  To reverse the two would be gold out of lead.  Less cameos.  More booked seats?  I have no idea.  What I do know is this: if they ask you if you can make it, you had better go.




///Pulp - "Like A Friend"

Uncle Scar's Cross Dimensional Fortress

There are days of dread in trying to cross the bridge into dreamland.  Days when I've convinced myself everything will stay stable if I keep my eyes open.  Days when I'm afraid of putting on clothing, because once it's on, it cannot be turned off.

Some nights you just gotta take that slow breath and put on the helmet and close your eyes and wait for the assault craft to crash into the beach.  From the second the floor rumbles and rattles your teeth upon landfall to the instant the long range weapons open up is sleep.  In those moments, that very long blink, listening to the engines hum and forgetting where you are and where you're going, worlds congeal.  Cities twine together like muscles sliding over bones and lives burn into being like veins inside.  And then it all blows apart in the morning.  Crying face down and screaming and laughing at the same time.

Sometimes the most satisfying minutes are those early ones where the tears on cheeks are dried by the heat of combat and flames run high and blood runs.  They're the minutes where you know you know what you know and you know whatever happens next could be the next that changes everything.  I do not want that.  I think there are times people mistake free wheeling for extremely extensively planned.  The back up to the back up back up back up plan allows for flexibility that mimics carelessness.  Walk with the wind on your mind.

I think I'm done trying to be funny.  It never comes off right.  Days of dread.  Open your eyes.  No.  I've been mapping fantasy time lines across several sheets of paper and now there are twelve of them taped end to end.  There were twelve of them.  I got extremely upset about the inefficiency of the entire exercise and tore it apart.  And now there's packing tape everywhere packing tape need not be and a severe longing for a time machine to undo what I did because I did not take the time to think, the time to breath, before I took action.  To die with rage instead of rage is a win.

At some point the alarm goes off that the amount of blood you are losing will have a stiff impact on your ability to continue effective consciousness.  I suppose it was a bit disappointing to have someone I did not know all that well recommend something to me with the caveat "...if you like huffing you will love...".  Irregularities.  An overwhelming desire to remain on schedule.  I will follow you down.  Any deviation is unacceptable.

Protection is invaluable and hard to come by and harder still to compromise for any reason, but compromise is necessary and not without it's own value too.  We need to get back on mission.  An operation unto itself.  Obstacles have been attacked and sent down and the path is clearing to make a good run at the main objective and it feels good.  It feels really damn good.  What are all of those jars of piss for?  If I knew, they would be used already!  And frankly I do not appreciate the line of questioning.

Come play with us, Arthur.  That is not my name.  That is not my name.  That is not my name!  Stop calling me!  I do not know who that is!  We match, don't we?  Leave me the hell alone.  I need a whetstone.  Who doesn't?  I've been dying to put together a new theme tailor made to what I want to see and what I want others to see when they come here.  Sometimes we're struck unexpected again with the death of a friend.  I did not know him that well.  Am I wrong to be violently upset about it?  Years removed.

Sometimes I weigh how well or poorly my brothers and sisters know me.  The now me.  The today me.  Oddly enough, my brother in law may know me better than them.  It's difficult to contemplate.  Processing and it comes back not a number.  What do I actually know, though at the mouth of the bridge.  Do it for you.  I will get it working.  I have to.  Back up back up plans fly well at the interface and through interstice, but nearer toward the core they blow apart like tissue paper origami in a squall.  Get it right.  No will do, can do.  You're having a hard time, aren't you.  Nope, just downloading the patch.  The short that makes the radio turn on without having to turn the key because the battery is still good.

No gods, no kings, no high down, and for christ's sake no god damn rings.  Especially pinky rings.  Boosters on.  It is not me you have to worry about, it is the rest of me.  We have done life by committee pretty satisfactorily going on a decade and a half.  I see no reason to make sweeping changes just yet.  Obviously at some point we will run into the person, faced up, who does not get the joke, but deal with that when it arrives.  And by deal with that I mean make extensive back up plans now.

I am still going to make music this year.  We cannot not do it.  It has been too long already.  "...We're only in the first few minutes of the first of January..." we'll evolve.  Walk with the wind on your mind.  Let go.  Open the gate.  Do not be afraid to walk with the wind on your mind because you are not alone.




///Underworld - "Second Hand" gear up.  slingshot around the sun.

Cliffside Funeral Wedding Dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Bricking the Computer

All I want to do is fix a hit and I know that I can't.  That's the fast track to crack and it tastes so good.  People get all concerned about weight loss and image that it grows insane.  How about a powder that takes away the urge to snuffle?  That would be nice.  Get on it science!  Help me rewire my brain maps.  That's the pill conversation again though and that is looped over as many times as it can be without taking action.  In the meantime I have a good stable of Krylon calling my name.  I want to try the chrome, but my lungs are not having it.  In fact they're not having much of anything lately.  Just how it goes.  At least I'm not pulling knives on anybody.

I hope people feel safe.  Distance is its own thing.  It's not a buffer though.  As long as your legs work you can literally go anywhere to do anything.  Been trying to figure out alibis.  I could walk to New York or Virginia.  The hard part is gonna be explaining my absence.  That's also the easy part.  I have a habit of disappearing.  It happens.  Sometimes you just have to tag up.  If I disappeared for a week to walk to D.C. the only problem would be fueling myself along the way.  Then it's mission accomplished, duck out back home, and problem solved.  Still aggravating though.  A bad kind of hassle.

Shrinking the maps, it gets easier.  Shrinking the maps further, it's a day trip.  Further still, it's a nighter.  We don't do that anymore!  Jexel.  If you're going to accelerate, make it worth it.  The hardest part about burning down a house is sealing the exits.  Or at least making them difficult enough to dissuade navigation.  Then again, you have to take into account the body types you are trying to ash.  It's all math and I struggle with math a lot.  I've always been more geometric.  Visual spatial.  One of the best days I ever had was guessing how many jelly beans were in a jar to the nearest ten.

Sure I could have estimated the volume of a jelly bean, the volume of the jar, and gotten fairly close with a little error mixed in for air space, but it was so much easier to hold in my head if I took a cube slice from one corner and moved it around in my head to form a disc and then raised the disc up to reach the lid.  Same deal, I suppose, but different ways.  Screw math.  What have you done for me lately science?

I jerked off for twelve hours.  Twelve god damn hours.  Twelve gotdamn hours!  I need a boyfriend pretty hard.  Pretty sure I ran through half of my entire library between watching full length videos and skip tracking it to money shots.  I'm not shamed or ashamed by the activity.  At least I know my heart and my cock are still functional.  I'm just head hung cuz I know I'll never get those hours back and I want them.  The toughest thing about free time is figuring out where to spend it.  I want those twelve hours back to draw and sketch and explore the things I can't put into words but I know I can put into pictures if I used that hand to do something besides stroke my pud.  I'm pissed because it was supposed to be a fifteen minute quickie and I couldn't do it on my own that fast.  And I'm pissed because I'm horny so often that it's become a problem that needs solved.  Gotdamnit!

Melange.  I think I may peirce my own nipples today.  So much energy.  Throwing off U two thirty something, or maybe fifty.  Uranium all over the place.  I don't know how to shut it off.  Shoving carbon into the pile, but I can't undo Chernobyl no matter what I try.  Part of the issue is dealing with getting my body back.  I wanted it back so badly and now I have it and I can start building up from the foundation because I finally got back there, but the house that foundation wants only knows how to speak in terms of violence instead of the next step; love.  That misunderstanding and shadow and grift breaks my heart and hurts.  Does violence to me and I want to reverse it and I don't know how and if I could, a pure reversal, I do violence to everyone and everything within the radius.  It's a lose lose.

You're breaking my heart, sweatness.  Spill the bucket.  We are weak ends.  I need you.  I need you to explain to me how rain comes about and tell me the little squirrels running at the corners of my eye are just shadows and not black lizards doing a slow hat dance.

I'm trying to brick the computer.  I'm trying to reset it.  If I can't reset it, I would be happy to silence it.  Stop making noise you tire kicked fall out bumper bad doored dumb coded winkied rusted out piece of .... clawing at myself.  I want that soft tissue out of me.  I know a few ways to do it, but none of them are acceptable.  Rip.  Rip.  Get out of me.  Get out!  I want them out.  I want the caucus to end.  I want the factory to shut down.  I want there to be no more discussion.  I want to be normal.  I want to be you.  I'm tired of tears strolling down my fucking face unprovoked.  I want to love the idea of children.  I want to be married.  I want to be skilled.  I want to be able to do math.  I want to be able to be relied on.  I want honey shots.  I want more tree climbing.  I want to hear less and nose more.  I want shot for.  I want dap.  I want candy hahaahahahahahahahaha.  I want ... I want a lot of things.  I'm trying to brick the computer so I can start over again.  And wanting to start over again is sometimes hard to admit.


///Junkie XL - "War"  sunrise on Titan.  I got your pith.  I raise you 400 horse power at the brakes.  Eat me.

Communications Fault: Line 446890-C0-CC1 (circuit a1 >> branch 9)

I've had a very difficult time with communication.  The heat hasn't helped.  The pressure cooker of my apartment hasn't helped.  I know what it's an extension of, and yes, I don't want to talk about it directly because it has been all consuming.  Requiring maximum effort to distance myself from and hide from others, but even the lack of communication is telling enough for the people that know me, so even the hiding has been a full time occupation.  Let alone maintaining myself.  That has also been a full time occupation.  Missing too many consecutive days of eating.  Not too many in the personal book of what too many days is, as I once went a solid week without eating until a friend intervened.  But, I've come to understand that one day of not eating when the option is available, is too many days.  A new standard that makes me feel glutinous, but shouldn't by any means do so, but it's a hold over from another time and another segment of my life that refuses to go away.

Communications have been strained.  Within myself.  Production is down.  Simply not happening.  Close to zero cooperation from the parties involved, but that happens.  Hallucinations are up.  Managing them has sucked up a lot of "up" time.  Sleep is off the charts.14 to 16 hours.  Cross bridge explorations, however have been phenomenal.  For quite some time I couldn't remember anything and then I started coming back with pieces and parts.  It got to a point yesterday where I woke up and reached for a pocket watch I found after I asked a dead body in a half crushed fully rusted barge (it was an interstate race across a state made up of only islands arranged in a rapids a half continent wide [the waves were high enough to bury the Petronas towers if they were perched on top of the Dover cliffs, and then some], but I got off course and ended up trapped in an island surrounded by weirs that made it impossible to get off it without something with an engine) if there was anything of value and he woke up and pointed to a muddy box with a finger that had a key ring dangling from it.  I opened the box and there was a spring loaded clock as big as my fist with a vest fob attached to it, and I was honestly surprised that it wasn't there and I realized I was dreaming again.

There was a very large bear in my room yesterday.  A very large, unusually square shaped, bear.  Which tipped me off that I was probably dreaming, but then my cat popped up on my pillow and poked me in the face and the bear was still there and I realized I was symptomatic again and so I pulled up my covers, rolled over, and tried to shut it out.  The sun came up, though, so everything was resolved well enough.  Daylight has its uses.  My sleep cycle went completely out of whack.   As far as it could possibly go without looping over on itself.  And then I got sick.  And slept for 36 hours.  I needed to.  Things have been righting since.  A little bit on their own, a little bit through my own efforts to force them to.

What comes next is a re-assumption of some kind of routine to protect the balance.  Shield myself from the bad wiring.  That's really all I am trying to do.  Remake the failsafes.  It was one of those rare times when one breaker fail set up the ability for the next one to fault.  And the next fault set up the next two to fail.  The next two set up the next four.  A large part of the mental restructuring is redeveloping the system to avoid that kind of expansion.  That kind of breakage leads to zero to atmosphere times that feel like blinks of the eye.  I was still talking about today as though today were Sunday.  With the understanding that today was Sunday.  Functionally that was where I left off.  Imagine your body is a car.  You jump in after dreaming and turn the key and halfway to your friend's house you realize there are 30,000 more miles on it than the last time you can remember driving it.  Not fun.  A little scary.  Where the hell have I been?

So much unmounted rage.  Learning all over again how to deal with it.  How to manage it effectively.  How to operate within a range of reason and reasonable values.  Your base language is either violence or love and the communicator operating system between them either works or it doesn't.  1 or 0.  I envy the analog.  They really are a different species of human being.  A holdover from another time that still procreates and propagates with great success.  Us digital human beings still propagate, often despite ourselves.  I don't mean digital in the respect of the how our communications are moved between people.  We're all digital enough to make that not matter in that respect.  The step before digitization though is a separate story.  A separate breakdown for another time, but it's there.  Digital communication at its root is violence or love.  Extreme to extreme and the methods and ways, the words and letters provide the ability to create shades of the experience.  For some.  For others there is an increasingly fine number of ways to say things and the translation to digital fields is easier to the point of effortlessness.   It's like an exam paper.  Every paper being different depending on who you are and how you were engineered.  Some people receive a paper where every question has twenty boxes.  Some people receive a paper with two boxes.   They both have the right answer to the question on them.  Expressing that answer is a lot easier when you have twenty boxes to choose from instead of two boxes and a bunch of blank space to try to scrawl in explanations and clarifications and other junk to help the twenty boxers understand what you meant.

Established frameworks of communications.  No one's to blame.  At least I'm not blaming anyone.  I'm just frustrated with my machinery.  But I already explained, you can't build new machinery with bad tools.  Perhaps I didn't.  A lot of things do not make it passed the cutting floor, believe it or not.  The idea was this: if the tools that make new tools are broken already or offset somehow, the new tools those tools make will be off by even more.  And those tools will build structures off by that much more.  And those structures will house tools constructed with that offset and be poor to look at to begin with and it just continues rolling up until it all collapses and you start again with the same crappy hammer and chisel and furnace trying to build a lathe to turn some sense out of something and you end up with nothing all over again.  So I dunno.  I do not know.  Maybe just try to enjoy the work more than the product?  Maybe?  Anthem of my life if I ever had to write one.  Probably needs more gunshots.   And more cowbell.  A little more clap hands and foot stomping and a little less dirge.  A little more "remember the mission and all you might do" and a little less "quarterly review for the noble and 'a societal remove' sorts of moves.  Nobility, much less nobelity, is passing and as beholden to the eye as anything ever was.


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

Redesigns and Motions and All Kinds of Crazy S--- (with disclaimers)

The summer redesign of Auralport is coming.  It's in the factory works right now, as we speak.  It's been autumn way too long over there and frankly the browns are starting to get to me and darken everything I do when I am there.  I need some green going on.  Some color to reflect the growth and all that.  More importantly I need to incorporate some pinks and purples.  Yeah, it'll look a little gay, but that's what I am.  Sue me.  For gayness.  Cuz if you try to sue me for anything else you will find pretty quickly that I am, as they say in the business, "judgement proof".  Not saying you won't win the case.  All I'm saying is what you win will be a big happy bag of nothing.  Except maybe self satisfaction.  However, you can go home knowing that the only reason I am judgement proof is because I have nothing to take.  But more importantly (this just keeps going on, right?) the only reason why I have nothing to take is because of the decisions you made that put me in a position to have nothing.  So basically we're even.

Not really though.  I got off scott free (where the hell did that saying come from?  a reference to free balling in kilts maybe?  I dunno) after a fashion.  You got to screw me or at least feel like you taught me a life lesson.  So we're even right?  Nah, I'm going to cut your face off and feed it to you the next time I see you.  LOL  that is happening.  Which is why I can't see you.  Because I will make a sincere attempt on your life.  Jokes aside.  I will kill the weaker of the two of you.  Do not come to my house, parents.  Because I will kill you.  I hope that's clear enough.

So anyway.  The redesign is coming and I'm really looking forward to it.  The hard part is trying to find a good shot of nature to work with.  I'm out there all of the time, but I just have to remember to bring a camera one of these days.  So many pictures to take.  So little time.  I looked into dslr-s and realized pretty quickly there is no way in hell I could afford one.   There is a way, I just lied, there is a way, but if I ever ponied up the money I would have to spend it on a car first.  Which brings up other mommy daddy issues but I'm not going into that.  I am.  Just this once.  Caps locked.  WORST GRADUATION GIFT AND SUBSEQUENT CHAIN OF EVENTS EVER, I HOPE YOU HANG YOURSELVES IN SEPARATE ROOMS OF THAT SHITHOLE YOU LIKE TO CALL A HOUSE.

Okay, so, not to be entirely bipolar on this.  I would like to present a motion to do some art.  Everyone at the table, yay or nay my friends.  Yes, we are taking a vote.   All present?  Alright then, moving forward on the motion to attempt some cartooning.  All in favor, say aye.  All opposed?  Let the record show that the motion is passed.

I've got my fingers back into poetry and short stories again.  God knows I damn near had to handcuff myself and blindfold my eyes to do that.  It had to be done though.  A life without creation is self destruction.  I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing with facebook at this point.  For me it kind of does well as real time memoirs.  It all depends on how far back the record will go.  If the timescale ends after so many years, it's pretty much useless in that regard.  I hope it doesn't.  I'm pretty much writing a book on there, though some probably think I'm just a loon.  Which is fine, because I kind of am.  I gave up on trying to find the secret of life because I know the guy who knows the guy who has it.  It's frustrating because he gave it to me once and knew that I wouldn't remember.   So I have to try again, but now he knows that I know so I'm going to have to pull some kind of double fake to get it this time.

So what is the crazy shit.  The really really junk that still makes go "wait a minute, what?"  There isn't any.  Smiley face.  Not today.  Alright here's one.  Just one.  I woke up in a trap house again.  I used to call them house parties until a friend of mine introduced the concept of the trap house and I had a little revolution in perspective and was like "that makes absolute sense."  Mostly because it does.  That is exactly what they are.  Which explains a lot about how the people in there behave.  Yeah, I felt like a nub the first time it happened.  But now, it's just like, "alright, got all your shit?  okay, time to roll."  Where was I going...  so yeah I woke up and rolled out and someone said "Hobbes, where you goin?" as soon as I got out the door, and I was like ... yeah, that's my gotdamn name.  And I realized alot of the people I used to know, don't know that I changed my name.  So I let them call me by my old name, fam aside, because they just don't know. And I'm okay with that, I think.   For now.  It's not legal, but what is?


///Beck - "Devil's Haircut"        pistols are pointing at a poor man's pocket, and he don't give a fuuuuuuuuu

Comrade Super Code

Life has been strange. A lot of big boy decisions. Decisions I haven't had to make before. Like what? Like none of your damn business. It's been difficult. Then again, when has it ever been easy. My dreams have been phenomenal. I've taken again to recording them when I can as I wake up. The first thing I do is grab hold of my phone and press record and just talk, sometimes for hours. Sometimes just to hear a voice that I know is real. Sometimes just because there is so much information brought back from there that I know I am going to lose that I know I will need later. I promise I will get back to serials.

The thought of dying has not been as intense as it used to be. I had a conversation with someone about that specifically. Ten iterations ago I was sixteen. I don't know what I was thinking then. The documentation is largely destroyed. The record really begins to come into it's own when I was 18 and really began to apply myself to writing. That's been the literal paper trail. It hasn't been as intense as it used to be. Probably part of the blunting. Which is fine. I can deal with that missing edge. Sometimes you just have to beat yourself in the head with a bat until things quiet down. The kid hasn't been missing. That's not the problem. The problem is that we're all on the factory floor, guns to each other's heads, knives out, and if you say one word, just one, I will cut you so bad they will need your dental records to put a name to your body.

I just have to get them to work together again. They're all here. Just off on different projects. Different passions asking each other to pass the mashed potatoes, but never directly. It's been great hanging out with them on an individual basis, since they're not talking. We've gotten close. Which is nice. Not together. Which is not nice. Variable occupancy. Not healthy. We do drugs. No we don't. Second hand spray. Collusion. You owe me. I have been managing rage. Easier to do when you don't own standoff weaponry. In my life everyone has lied to me. That is not entirely true. Tomorrow is my 67th birthday in my 26th iteration. There is a certain amount of pride to be had in not joining the under 27 club, I think. A certain amount of disappointment, because joining that club is pretty elite in terms of prodigious production, but I have not done enough or come close to where I want to be in terms of body of work to be happy enough to pull that trigger, and a certain amount of relief because I am sure the majority of under thirty something suicides go unheralded and how sad is that? It's off and on. Wires close enough to arc, but the force of the spark and ignition of air shoves them apart until they work their way close again.

The shadows have been crawling. The little faces in door jambs closed. The weeping man in streaks of dry paint laid to a door decades ago. What the hell. Who made that and why. The shadows have been crawling and blooming for lack of a better word. When I'm not looking. When I'm barely looking. When I'm trying not to look. The world is a war zone. A fantastic warzone. I have been imagining the most fantastic weapons to expedite exterminations. If only I had the staff and the means. An angry boy can dream.

The world cross bridge is haunted. By my father. I have to kill him there. If I ever want to enjoy it again. I've had to rip chord out of there more times than I would like to admit in the last seven days and I can't kill him here. Not yet anyway. Still too much to do. He will pay though. Eventually. Matters of course and convenience. There was a word I was supposed to look up and I didn't. It's going to bother. 24 years of compensation. I just have to make sure I don't take it out on the people I love.

I gave women a pretty hard rap sheet yesterday. And I'm sorry for that. Not because it wasn't true, but because it came across so chopping blocked. There's no vendetta. Probably a lot of buried issues with my mother. They come up as I dig into the ground. Trying hard to not be found. I'm not going to go on a serial spree of slaughtering women to make myself feel better about myself. The shadows have been crawling. Actually moving. I don't know what to do about that. If there is anything I can do about that.I had this dream where darkness poured out of light fixtures like little waterfalls and it was gorgeous until the shadows grew so high people started to drown and I looked for days and couldn't find the switch to turn them off. Ghostly swims. Turning off the lights and trying hard not to look back into the rooms and believe there really is nothing there more than what was when the switch turned the other way. The freedom. It's been strange.

Where the hard stops start. Toxic involvements. I do have to clean up the circuitry at some point. My willingness to engage has been the source of certain difficulties. What happened to your face? I can't say, honestly. If I told you, I would sound crazy. And then you wouldn't want me around at all. I swear it's all above board. My boards. Not yours. Your square one, your nothing is different from mine. Maybe connected on some flattened levels. When you pick through them with zero and one forensics. I thought maybe if I scratched my ear hard enough I could pick my brain. No luck. We had this dream, right? About a house made out of cardboard and dried leaves.

I was wondering, you know, if you knew where I'd been. I have this sneaking suspicion someone's been lying to me, but I don't know who. Many loves of the dragon. Maybe I should get a kitten. At some point. I need to draw more. Now that I have the time to. The time to sleep dive almost at will. It's going to be amazing. I'll try to take notes better than I have. I've been gone for some time, but I'm back now. Bolting through space. Hell hound on a thin leash and learning boundaries the while. Dog bites man and man bites dog and dog bites dog and man bites man. And everybody wishes sweet dreams into your head as though there isn't fire filling the coils of your bed.


/// Starkey - "Eris" stoop sitter blues high

Concept Space

Feeling out the weight of the concept. I've gone with fingerslip as the title for the high latency, slow poetry, space. I'm conceptualizing the banner and side bar and general feel of it and working out the colors.



so far so good. I whittled the list down in terms of originality and mouth feel and intent and urgency in terms of what I really wanted to connect the content with the most.



And now it's just a matter of getting it all to gel in a web page friendly atmosphere.

Happy times.


///Starkey - "Eris" chasing dreams in a golden forest and night breathing cold on your heels.