That Instant

You realize you are pushing your cycles and cams and pistons and engraved toothsets of finished brass over to force change so the person who loves you can see your moss and lichened belly clearly.

When Is Enough

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




///Jon Hopkins - "Candles"

At the End of the Seventh Week (damage report)

Out of the fog of wars, asked for and not, comes the final damage report.

The total bill:

1 fractured left jawbone submandibular fossa.
1 dislocated left jawbone condylar process.
1 dislocated left jawbone coronoid process.

The total paid:

1 healed jawbone submandibullar fossa.
1 healed jawbone condylar process.

I don't think the coronoid process will ever heal correctly.

Total bill:

Zero $.
Constant pain in the coronoid process, but bearable and adaptable.

Final result:

No crippling pain.
Unforgettable pain.  The kind of pain every morning and every evening and every time I think about eating.  However, the kind of pain that will remind me to be a better a person.  The kind of pain that is unforgettable and good in its way because it will diffuse further scuff ups and other opportunities to speak my mind whenever I feel like, be it the thrill of getting ice cream or the the assuage of killing off the thrill of murdering someone else because I ... a good deterrent.  There are only so many ways to explain so many things.  This one is adequate.

I can eat.  I can chew.  I can tear.  I can exercise.  I can use the rest of my body.  I refuse to incriminate myself.  And I will not start here.

The healing has been amazing.  I am able to smoke again.  I wake up every morning feeling like a railroad spike has been shoved through my skull from the left side, right up through my ear, behind my eye socket and I've never had a migraine by definition, but this must be close to it.

I choose to let it go.

I choose to move on.

I have to.

Head hunters don't lead good lives.

I am furious and love struck and oh so amber and rose and pink in the joy of being able to wake up with 90% of my function back and if that's as good as it gets, hell baby, I got off lucky.  I will take that and dance and swing hammers and think about the next time and maybe I will strike first or maybe I will disarm myself before what you are carrying becomes an issues, but for fucks sake, it is good to be able to laugh free again.

The final damage report is this:

Mistakes were made on one side.  Mine.  I ate it.  I came out on the other side, tempered and galvinized.  A shorter fuse and a shorter leash too.   I expect less of other people and more of myself.  And that is flipping pretty good for a prognosis of a wire job.

I've known what it is to not be able to speak for days at a time, not because you couldn't, because you were literally locked closed.  A blindness.  I've known unprovoked hate in the shade of unbridled happiness.  Your spectrum is Roy G, Biv.  Mine is unspeakable in its range and color and temperature and length.  It has no name yet and I may not be able to give it a convenient one.

I now have the power to teach, and I will not.  Unless you press me.




///TV on the Radio - (Lovers Day)  of course, there are miracles... the people we think you are.  give me the keys to your hiding place

Breaking the Horse

Sometimes it feels as though I can do no right.  What happened in my past lives to be cursed so?  I lost a cat yesterday.  I gave him everything he wanted.  I gave him everything he needed and then some.  It makes no sense.  I can still feel him.  I can still see bits of him in my vision.  I can still smell him.  His ears smelled like french toast sometimes.  He was only about two years old.  I have to remind myself that I didn't kill him.  I wonder if I did perhaps by accident.  I flushed my fish down the toilet a while back, but that was because I shouldn't have had them to begin with.

I thought I did pretty good with him.  He was my chief officer on board my ship.  The other guy was my first mate.  The first mate has been promoted.  I'm sure he didn't want to get his promotion that way.  He keeps meowing constantly to call up the deceased.  He doesn't understand that our chief officer is gone for good.  I kind of don't understand it either.  As soon as I touched him I knew he wasn't just sleeping.  He was my cooking buddy.  I'd meet him in the mess hall to talk about our course and how to squeeze a little more oomf out of the engines.  He was my napping buddy too.  My sleep in pal.  He'd lay on my phone so I wouldn't have to hear it.

No, no, no, sweetie.  Come back to me.  I need you!  My first mate needs you too.  We had a good crew.  Was the music too loud?  Was the bass too heavy?  Did I not keep the temperature high enough?  I couldn't turn it up any higher.  It made my nose bleed too much.  What did I screw up?  Who's going to wake me up in the morning now?

I thought about burning his body for a very long time.  Give him up to the air and the stars.  I'm giving him back to the city instead.  It's where he came from.  If I gave him to the stars, he wouldn't know what to do with himself.  I am from there.  He is not.  He'll be home.  I am glad our paths crossed.  I do not know how to explain it to my first mate.  If I spoke cat, I might be able to.  I'm not sad.  I am angry.  Why didn't you tell me?  Did you?  Did I kill you?  Involuntary manslaughter? Agent 001 Jack: K.I.A.,  Mr. Morton codename "Lauren": K.I.A., Chief Officer Torus: K.I.A., First Mate Boots "Hatswitch" Mustachio: T.B.D.

I am happy though.  One of the last things I remember doing with him is letting him climb up my jean leg and hook his claws into my hoodie all the way up my back so he could get a good perch on my shoulder and ride around up there while I walked through the ship and pointed out the things he liked to sit on from the view of his colossus.  We were a fabulous team.  I thought we'd have more time to enjoy our voyage.  He loved to sit in my lap while I wrote in my notebooks.  He'd rub his face on the corners of the pages and make little wet nose prints on the backs of my hands and the paper.

Each week, each month, each year, I am trying to break the horse.  I am trying to break myself and exercise control better than I did the year, the month, the week, before.  Sometimes with success.  Sometimes with failure.  Some of the voices scream "somebody has to pay!!!"  It is unreasonable.  It is irrational.  I want to cut you open so badly.  I want to hook my hand into your mouth and press my fingertips underneath your tongue until the break through the skin behind your chin and rip as hard as I can and hear the sucking pop of your jaw breaking away from the rest of your skull and listen to you drown bleeding into your own esophagus.  Somebody has to pay.  I am trying to break that horse.  I am trying not to hurt myself to show you what we want from you.

Happiness is fleeting.  Pain endures.  Pain is infectious as is happiness.  I am not broken.  I am tired of dealing with death.  The horseman that rides with me.  Our ghost army behind us.  Having to continually modify not by choice, but necessity.

I know I have to use my words more.  Not just more, but with greater frequency.  I have to use art more to break the locks and the seizing to escape the killing fields.  I have to pay more respect to the blast radius and recognize that it is not a game and if I take it too lightly, if I lull myself into believing it will sort itself out without careful and constant monitoring I will wake up too late and infection will spread far and wide defeating the entire purpose of closing the cycle of violence began a generation before my birth.  I am trying to break myself.  I am trying to limit myself.  Meta-jail is real and I have to do my part too.  You are there for a reason.  You can manufacture happiness.  The children are always present, do not listen to them, no matter what they say.  While you've been ignoring it, the factory floor has been busy and now coming to that basement and seeing the stockpiles of things you only imagined existed my heart falls.  Where the hell were you when the furnace fired again?  Where the hell were you when the new blueprints were spread out and the flywheels started turning again?  I tried.  Try harder!  This is not a game!

It is good that some mobility has been lost.  There are those you cannot reach and it is good.  It is important.  Remember why you laugh, jackal.  The freedoms you have were hard won, do not give them up easily.  Do not give them up lazily.  Take time.  We have been patient and we will not shed it.  A crew of two instead of three may not be so bad a thing as you imagine.  The first mate will adjust and embrace his promotion, regardless of how it came about.  Know that, do not say it, know it.  You did not skin him.  You do not wear him.  He will be remembered.  Bury the tools and keep an eye on us.  I will.  Somebody has to pay, but not today.

I took a long walk around the city.  A very long walk.  Control rage.  You were born.  Get over it.  I was born on the twenty second of April in nineteen eighty five.  Remember what you are doing.  I was born into conflict.  I was born into violence.  I was born into love too.  I was born onto a battlefield not of my own making and that is okay.  That is alright.  We learned, we grew, we got stronger, we learned how to kill and how to eat, how to feed ourselves, how to breath, how to hide, how to fight, how to see in the dark, how to trap, how to sleep, we learned and we grew.  We learned our genealogy was a lost cause and our history before our time will never be mapped.  We figured out the tree was a hangman's and the damage was already done well before we opened our eyes for the first time on Staten Island.  We understood hunger and the sound of an empty stomach and the shiver.  Do not forget the mission.  Lay a road map for those that are coming after you are gone.  Do not forget what it is you must fulfill.  Even though your heart is kind of small you were built for something more.  Embrace it.  Learn the truth and love your life because you only get one shot at it.

Your shipmates will help you.  Your inmates.  Your internees.  They will help you along the expedition through space and time.  They are part of the fold, jackal.  Use the words, not the weapons.  The child will come and go.  Supernature is simply part of the spectrum you were born with.  They are not demons or angels or phantoms and errors.  They are not only that, please stop crying sweetheart.  You will die and you will take all of them with you and they will be gone for good too.  That's okay.  I don't know if Torus saw them too.  I don't know if he felt them.  I kissed him before I let him go.  I rubbed his fur into my nostrils and ate some of his whiskers before I put him back in the trash where he came from.  I hope you're happy you disparaged him saying he came from a dumpster.  Pluto used to be a planet.  We want to name a constellation after him.

I dislike my bad wiring so much.  I know I cannot increase my strength, my power.  I cannot be allowed to break down the electrified fences and razor wire atop.  I cannot let it go.  I cannot be allowed to make more money, it will turn into more combustion chambers, more cylinders, more lead, more trigger mechanisms, sights, and chemicals.  More wires, dead man switches, boxes of nails and washers, nitrogen, ammonia, and springs.  More casings and pellets and carpet knives.  Bang on the left ear so it all falls out of the right ear.  With greater knowledge comes greater responsibility and I am not sure I am to the task.  We absolutely are.  For the love of God, get the hell away from me.

Who massages your shoulders?  Who plucks your eyelashes?  Who sets your makeup?  One gold tooth.  Break that horse.  Change those shoes.  Wash those gloves.  I need more power.  No, you don't.  I do!  NO YOU DO NOT!  Imagine the kingdom we could have.  No.  Do not lie to me.  I am not lying.

I definitely wanted to become a musician.  A composer.  A librarian.  To get lost in the stacks and get paid for it because alphabetical order never lies.  Growing up, so many have lied to me.  Washing dishes and playing the bubbles like a battlefield always put a smile on my face until standing on a milk crate on Brighton Avenue I heard them screaming at each other and I tried to wiggle my ears to remind them that I was standing there and they started to say he's listening and they took it upstairs, but I could still hear them.  My nose is running again.  No blood though, that's good.  I haven't pissed blood in a while and that's good too.  I know how it ends, I do.  I am halfway home.  Remind ourselves not to do anything stupid.  Remind ourselves the visions are just that, visions only.

Time will fly and before we know it we'll be polishing my skull and looking at the healed fractures and running our fingertips over them like welds on an engine block trying to reverse engineer the forces and machines and hands that made them.  Do you have a torque wrench?  A shoeing hammer?  An arc welder will do in a pinch.  A continuous retrofitting.  We were built for a war, but the war is over.  It is not.  We were built in war time and repurposed.  Built not to feel.  Built to not need to see.   I got out.  I got out.  The horse must be broken.  Distance must be kept.  Do not lose heart.  Finish the deal.

Enjoy the view from the edge of the arm of the Milky Way and do not curse Sol or Terra.  Aboard the ship we are secure and secured.  Take care of the equipment and don't stay long.  Coexist.  Someday you too will shut down, but understand there are many paths to that end and much to be explored before the channels go dead.  Do not forget where you came from, do not be consumed by where you're going.  I am not broken.




///Chairlift - "Guilty As Charged"   ...footprints on the carpet....go on and punish me...

///El-P & Killer Mike - "Early"

Dear (_____)

Dear ghosts,

I will not desert you.  I have to understand that I will not be able to protect you, that's on me.

Sincerely,

the mission.