Revisiting Battlefields Gone Silent

How many years has it been?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


/// Hershey Kisses Bells

Dear (______)

Dear Santa,

I know we've been at odds over the last several years.  It's almost going on a dozen.  I don't hate you and you don't hate me.  I remember that year that I wished for only obtainable shiz.  I remember that other year that I only wished for very specific and obtainable shiiii... and I got what I wished for.  I'm back to setting my bars high.  I hope you're back to singing in four four/

Boiling it down:  I will not.  That's all.  There's no second part to it.  As close as we will get.





///what ive been waiting for all years

Thursday (explication of what came to be "I'll Come See You" the poem)

I don't know how you read it, but this is how I meant it.

Knock the slag off, with air piston jacked hammers.

When I kicked this off, the intent was to put something down in writing that was blunt force enough to make me need to go further to explain it because I know I do paint myself into corners, at least I feel that I do, to add clarity to what I say.  From that spark, the spark of shedding light, everything else developed.

Sitting on a crate opposite you
sitting on another,
printed in yellow block stencil
underneath, 98 mm high explosive x 75.

From that spark I imagined our meeting.  What I said before about knocking off slag with jack hammers was a reference to work.  From that reference, I immediately jumped into the warzone of language and how often times that is how I view my relationship with the world outside of me.  It really is a, put it on whatever scale you want to, some kind of war and this blog is a bit of a foxhole and we are literally sitting on our mental ammunition boxes. 

Underneath my ass 150 mm
aye pee
times 30.  My feet dangling like our cigarette's
smoke mingling on a windless afternoon.

This verse is kind of a wink and a nod because I do avoid actually smoking as much as possible, but I vape pretty hard.  The main thing about it though is that I am prone to large gauge action while most people are happy to work with suppressing fire.  My actions are much more leaned toward "kill them all in one sweep of gun barrel barking."  I can go accurate, but it is much more fun to swamp them in flames the way I have been.  Hence, the large gauge ammo underneath my bum and the smaller gauge, but still deadly, ammunition box underneath the interpolated.

The front is 220 miles out
East as the crow flies.
We will have to refuel
over the mediterranean
and I am looking forward to seeing
how you do it.

This is where we bring in the mechs and how the mechs will get to the front lines, where the action is happening and a short reference to how we wage ware once we get there.  This is a reference to the fact that what is about to happen is not new to either of us.  We know exactly where it is and what needs to be done to get there.  And also speaks to the fact that we have no problem with how the mission succeeds as long as it succeeds.

Our conversation has already broken down
into objectives and way points with a little
bet mixed in to the after action report.

This verse simply speakes to the fact that we've been there before.  Our conversation does not need to be enumerated here, only indicated, hinted at, ellipsed.   We've done it so many times that the only thing that needs to be done is counting up how many people, targets, installations, were destroyed by the time we succeeded.

It is unfair
to where we land and to whom we mount against,
because they are not in on the game.

Again, this verse is a reference to the previous verse, assuming we both got back home after the operation safe and sound 

Us both waiting for the KA-CHUNK
of couplings leaving us in free fall
to where our bombardier's decided
we could do our best
against the populace.

This verse is a credit to the people who get us to the target zone and an acknowledgement that we do not neccessarily know who exactly it is we are going up against inside of our mechs, however.  However we have full faith that they, the pilots and/or controllers of our evening will not drop us into a situation that our equipment and skills directly related to our equipment cannot handle well, if not outright destroy them.

A little cheers of coffee.
A little double check of flight suits.
Is the mic where it needs to be?
Trial fit the helmet again
after a quadruple check;
be sure the reticle is in line.
Double check my nail polish
before the glove comes on.
Smash shoulders and opposing tattoos,
before the top of the flight suit
is zipped on.

This is an inside joke to a close friend who helped me tattoo myself.    It is part inside joke and part coffee joke.  "the best way to start your day" when you are going over your manifest for the day.  You know whatever it is that is required of your skills will take all of your skills and you have to be sure when the time comes to pull the trigger, that trigger cannot fail, take practice shots.

Finish the coffee, with pills in our mouths.
They will learn what we live for,
they will learn what is loud.

They will learn that you do need coffee and that you do live for challenges and that you do know what horrible drugs are and that you are not about it.

Our flights will be long.  I'll sleep inside the mech
along the way.  I don't know what happens to you
while we wait out the sandbox for play.
The thup thup thup thup thup thup
I can hear, because I never turn off
the audio input once I am strapped in.

We both understand how to get to the battlefield.  I don't understand how you are so calm.  I feel like you've been here before and I have not.

For me, it is a very long long long grin
to watch you work.  Guilty.

You know I have not been there before but youare looking forward to my struggling.

Watching, zone cleared against spear chuckers
who happened to have come into
a fushionable pile
and needed reckoning before
something terrible happened,
you break out a "grenade"
two tons strong and willing to-\
-/Christ, where is the pin?

A mixture of edge of tommorrow and starship troopers the book.  In Starship Troopers the book they had miniature nukes.  Miniature nukes could clear an entire area as long as they got clear. In edge of tomorrow the whole deal was differremt.  

Mech against mech.  Dust to dust.
Die another day.
Why can you not understand I do
feel the same?

This is myself, dropped onto this planet trying to stop you and yrtying to fighht you hardcore because what I would like to do is save everyone but I cannot.  What I would also like to do is kill everyone but I can also cannot.  I'm good with figthing you though.  I am good with where you RE COMING FROM.

Fire the shell in my mechanized palm
to fire it just that strong
and knock it four miles out
to change the time of day from moonlit to
high noon in a fire ball that could eat city blocks,
but she's in the air.  Fair.  But "what the f@#$?"

Apologies, but I turned the palm and the gun built in to accelerate  it against the what?  The elbow cannon that went off and blew the palm muzzle off to an odd degree shot it off toward the dark horrizon and it lit up like noon day.

Overkill.........  underneath your left foot,
underneath your left pedal inside your cockpit and
underneath you left foot outside your cockpit
you are grinding human flesh into a paste.  And now is
the fucking time.
Do you remember being small?  I do.
You don't get conscripted by chance.

Hearing him over the comm, realizing that the action he just did with the arm of his mech just required him to smush some people with the foot of his mech....

You find detonators.  You stumble upon detonators.
Land mines   Mines.  I've never met a land mine like you.

Me on the ground amongst the  flattened human beings trying to offer encouragement to my friend (the other pilot) while shaking my head at the damage he did without thinking about the power at his fingertips.

I will know how to move forward
regardless ,after you.
Everyone talks big.  Yack, yack, yak yak yak, waaaan.

Him trying to make another move and myself watching, back in my own mech while our communicators crackle and guns go boom.

Cruiser.  Angry.  There was someone else here.  I will find them, sonavubitch.  Fail.  My fault.    Reset.

Reset.

Reset.

Reset.

Me trying to wipe my memory and undo the entire operation in my head.  Each reset a muzzle flash.

Clutch in.  Match revs. Time to the light.  Gas pedal.  Clutch out.
Release brake.
Gas pedal down.

Slowly.

Burnout.

Me, over the comm link trying to coach him and failing, instead focusing on what I can do.  The work.

A Brief Return to B6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




///Minamina Goodsong - "First Movement"

Prelude

Yesh, we are gaming up toward a pouring out of emotion and bad sets.  Better than bad sets, though, we're gaming out toward a pouring out of hearts and fauxpaux.   Toward an analysis.  It's been a long time coming.  Put offs and put offs and further put off.  Decision time.  Decision time not ready.  One hard month survived can make another, no?  Yes.  If we do not go, what can be said.  If not now, when? Go!

Passports

Visitors are always welcome, but those passports expire same day.  It didn't always used to be that way, but the policy has grown out of necessity.  An offshoot of the "protection" arc.  Is it necessary?  Yes.  If you pick up nothing from the course of life you've never lived and one of the things I've picked up is the fact that passports should not be granted on a long term basis.  Complete citizenship.

I'm sure part of the passport policy's origin lies in mental dysfunction and it's many symptoms, but part of it also lies in a love for the ones worth loving and preventing them from being damaged by the many symptoms more numerous expressions.  If you do insist on being issued a passport I can only stand in your way for so long.  I used to go out of my way to issue them, until the activity bit me in the ass so hard I could not deny the recklessness with which I was stamping books.  So I stopped stamping books.

To help me and to help you.  I want nothing to do with you, not because I want nothing to do with you, but because I can have nothing to do with you.  It is, in all actuality, just actually, very simple.  Or not.  At least to me.  I don't understand what I have to offer you.  Further from that understanding, is getting that it is okay to have nothing to offer you explicitly.  I don't get it.  Guilty.  I still have yet to grasp that.  Does that make me wrong to reject closeness?

Fear of change?  Yeah, sure.  That's already established.  I hate change like I hate playing with a board of objects wired to voltage.  Why does this one shock me now when it didn't on the last go round.  Fucking scientists.  Fucking psychologists.  Fucking experiments.  I don't know what I'm supposed to say or what I am to do or is an acceptable response.  So I am myself and I worry if that self at that time is acceptable or not.  After the fact.  Paying forward to increased anxiety.

Everything a study.  Too plodding.  Too thorough.  And knowing letting go is an option.  Still and caged.  Not caged, but trying to figure out how to gift wrap appropriately.  Gift wrap in a way that will be received to expectation.

Visitors from other lands.  No one belongs here except the ones born here.  It's a simple fact that helps me make the most of my interactions.  It's an understanding that helps me make sense of where froms and how tos.  They could never live here and I could never live out there for too long.  The things chasing me to sleep.  Not over thinking it or taking on some stance of god failure or "waaah, no one gets me," just adding up without trying to be ridiculously deterministic.

What shines brightest are those willing to dive in and take the chance that I'm wrong, which is wholly possible, pending my own ability to give them a chance to do so and also pending on my ability to accept a "no" on whatever grounds they find necessary or pertinent or fact.  I'm not sure I'm ready to do the first yet and I damn sure am not ready for the second.

My heart is made of glass.  I know this.  My brain is made of glass too.  Which one is a person to trust less?  Beats the hell out of me.  Let's find out.  "You don't belong here.  What are you doing here?!  What is your objective??""




///Bowery Electric - "Electro Sleep"    a lull in the battle

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.

Overkill

Having a difficult time taking Is and Yous and Mes out of my poetry.  I wish I had a different face, but apparently I am no longer allowed to hack away at it.  I want to get back to wonder.  I want to get back to visions of enormous dinosaurs, but the real world continues to push back and it's not fair and I can't figure out a way to circumvent the charges.

I will.  Stand up act 9 is coming.  Long dark tunnel.  I conquered my fear of absolute darkness a while back.  Doesn't mean that it's comfortable though.  I want to pick up house and walk away from it all in a bad way.  Maybe a good way.  Tough to think about.  Do you just throw your hard drives in a ruck sack?  I don't know!  I'm asking you!  Who helps you plan that sort of thing out?  I have no clue.

Do ya have to bring an umbrella or something or do you count on finding one along the route?  Could probably thieve one.  Do you really want to do that?  That's not who you are.  You can take whatever you really want, but don't.  Every single time you take you are taking something from someone else and that's no good.  Let someone hold your leash.  They're not holding you back.  They're just checking you.  You have to allow yourself to be checked at the hip.  Take it and bounce off or try to run them over, but whatever you do correct your path.  Not correct, but make adjustments because you have to and understand that it is alright to make adjustments.

Adjusting the dials is okay.  Not everyone likes to hear music at 11, hell you don't either.  Not everyone wants or needs a kiss or needs your face two inches from their own.  Not everyone can be famous and not everyone will remember events the same ways you do.  You're losing your memory and maybe that plays into part of why you are losing connection fidelity with your dream states.  Be okay with working on it.  There's no breaker  to fire off in between where you're going and where you can never go back to and that's perfectly fine.

Do you bring a knife or no?  Do you need to?  Would you need to?  I don't know!  You can take what you want, but you don't have to.  Are you expecting battle?  It's a funky kind of war we fight and I've been seeing some strange things I don't know how to handle off of the top of my head.  I need time.  No picking up sticks.  No running away.  No abuse.  Abuse is shorthand for sadists.  What's short hand for saints?  I want to plow into a wall and obliterate my body in a mist of red and bone.  I want humor.  Get the fuck away from me!  I swear to god I will taste your eye fluid before the night is out, you mother fucker piece of shit, do you not know there is no such thing as a fair fight?

Rules are in place to keep me out of you.  Period.  Maybe it's all a matter of timing?  That may be what I'm getting wrong.

Wanderlust eats away at me and I nibble back.  I almost lit a cat on fire again.  I'm doing good though.  Being on good behavior and going to work almost every time I am supposed to go.  I want to keep it up through the end of the year.  I am not expecting much from Santa.  I still ask him for a 1911 against my better judgement.  No resolutions forthcoming and none will be given.  I think I'll treat myself to a box of ammunition this year.  One step at a time.  Baby steps.  We'll travel, but I'm not pulling up sticks just yet.  I'm trying to monitor my speech.  I've been speaking much too fast and running words together and feeling like I need to apologize inside my head every time someone says "what did you say?"  I said exactly what the hell I said.  It's hyper frustrating.  It's like a stutter, but backwards and difficult to correct and heart stabbing when I notice it flowing out of my damned mouth.  Not fair!

Howling in my head wont stop.  I haven't snorted anything serious in a long time and my sinuses feel like they are about to shatter.  "...turning the music up so ya don't hear the engine falling apart..."  by hook or by crook we are going to fix this thing so it runs smooth.  Chatty Cathy.  Slow the fuck down and take a moment.  The world's not crazy.  It is just you.  Everything does not smell like burning metal.  It is just you.  Space invaders.




///Kelis - "I Don't Think So"     just dont think you're at my speed

Coming Back

Your customer service representative will be with you in a moment.  Please stand by.  We are aware that you are having some problems with your account and we very much enjoy your business and you are a valued customer.  Please hold while the next available representative ...

finishes their shit.  I cant slam my phone on the coffee table hard enough without breaking it.  I hate dealing with people.  I love dealing with people.  Nothing happened to me, everything happened to me.

Please hold.  I don't know what songs you like, but here, have this one.  It's an elevator and a stabilizer so enjoy it for a minute while we talk about your request and jump around it for a while and weasel.  Okay, that's fine.  I'm glad I chabbed up on something to munch.  I'll hold.  Please, continue.  It's not like I had something to grind on today.  Not at all.  I'm just blowing in the wind, but okay.  Please hold, please hold.

We are experiencing some technical difficulties, but here, this is the weather for the next nine days and 22 hours.  Here's the news.  In case you were wondering, nothing has changed so here's more of it.  Smile a little?   Here's more junk.  Here's what time it is and here are some pundits and here is some humor.  Here's some tosh and some cartman.  Here's bart and toys turned into cartoons and cartoons turned into toys.  Here's PBS and here's NOVA and here's are you being swerved.

Enjoy.  Here's ducks and hitler and dams and bridges and pawn shops and tits and dicks and marriages and food and chores and nannies and dads and children and scooby fucking doo and courage and beers and beers and beers and liquor and shampoo and lipstick and gloss and appliances and payment plans and retirement and cars and shrimp and outings and beef and socks and shirts and underwear and

I can't take it anymore.  I can't eat anything anymore.  I used to starve myself because I was paranoid about my weight and now I can't eat anymore because everything is getting shoved down my throat.  I can't do it. I can do it.  Everytime they ask me if I want to go out to eat I just fucking can't and I don't know how to explain it.    I can't eat anymore! Fuck.  I'm sorry, I want to and would love to, but I cannot fucking afford it anymore and on top of that I cannot digest it.  Fuck.  Sorry.  No.  No mores.  Can't do it.

Do you want to go to the bar?  No!  Do you want grab lunch?  No!  I'm buying some food at Burger King, do you want anything?  No!  No! No1  Stop asking.  Please!  At the same time, though, I run headlong into a problem.  How will you see them when they're not eating or barring or ... it burns!!!  It's not fair at all.  I'm trooping it and trying to be friends and I'm literally getting eaten.

However, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  I understand that.  At what cost?  At what fucking cost?  I'm coming back and I know I love to laugh and I know things can be easy, but I want what I wants and it's not expensive at all and I don't get why everyone is charging so much sometimes when all I want is a scratch off.  Jesus.  If I can navigate a day, alright.  Sweet.  Stop stomping on me.  I didn't want a fight, but hey, you got one on your hands now.  It turns me inside out sometimes trying to break down differences in understanding.  Yes, no one asked me to.  I get that too.

But if we're going to live on the same planet we better be seeing something close to eye to eye because otherwise you or I got's to go.  I've missed so many people for so long I just can't do it anymore.  I've accidentally estranged and shoved away some people too.  People that I couldn't afford to lose, but I was so wrapped up in being myself I forgot that the planet is a shared one.  I forgot about their knuckles and their dreams and tore my skin up and I'm just now getting back.

Pluto is great.  It's a fine place to stay.  Unlike New York, you can actually Winter over there and not get sick of yourself and population.  I don't care about being the first man on Venus or Titan, but I would volunteer to go if only to be alone and reasonably so.  Not needing a reason to have to be there.  Meltdown much?  I know I have a brain made of glass.   That's probably why she moved on.  Falling asleep in class wasn't an action as much as a symptom.  I wasn't born this morning, but I did stay up all night.

Shadow people.  Courage the cowardly dog.  My favorite color is still yellow.  I'll get there.  I'm coming back.  Out of orbit and nothing but gravity.  This is not my planet, but I live on it sometimes.  This is not my jail, but I walk in it sometimes.




///DJ? Acucrack - "Time For You to Leave"  ... turn the radio on, turn the radio off but you never never...  I don't know if thems the lyrics but this song is close to my heart.

A Definition for Addiction

Searching for a definition of addiction, I came to an impasse.

If you think about it every day, are you addicted?

If you think about it sometimes, maybe once a week, are you addicted?

If you run into your dealer and have an exceptionally awkward conversation, are you addicted?

Does it really matter what it is that you're talking about?

If you run into the son of a bitch that sold you crack at the dollar store are you less for not having talked to him while you were buying cereal?

I don't know what the rules are.   I don't pretend to.
Sometimes, however, I do wonder though.  It's not a matter of being clean or dirty or anything along those lines.  It's just a matter of defining what is.

Are you addicted to television?  Are you addicted to the thrill of the mainline, no matter what is?   The surprise of what you get versus what you paid for?   Are you addicted to the cliffhanger of a t.v. show?  Are you addicted to crossing words with people?  Are you addicted to waking up?  Are you addicted to waking up fuzzy?  Are you addicted to waking up next to another body?  Are you addicted to waking up to a body, live or not?

I dunno.  Spending a few days thinking about addiction and definition and words, and most importantly, trying not to try to mimic voice sounds from other people while they're in earshot.  that's all.  a life without definition is no life at all, right?  said a wise someone to a soon to be wise soandso.  Right?


///Ellie Goulding - "Only You"   This one goes out to you McCourghty.  I miss you.  I hope you're not dead. Haven't seen you around in a long ass time, but whatever.  For what it's worth, you were a project to find and a handful to corral and I had an easier time keeping a glass of water in my hand sans glass than it was to keep track of you.  I feel awful cuz I still can't spell your last name right.  Anyway.  Miss you, bro.  Thanks for everything.

Burna

I don't know.  That's not true, I do know.  I get scorched sometimes.  Emotionally.   Not by anyone specifically or the selves within myself.  It's that the act of creation is a burner.  I have to crank it up to high and hear the igniter tick over and tap and I do not always know what the igniter will be.  The ignition coil accepts voltage over the course of hours and sometimes days and sometimes months.  It does not always click.  I would go as far as to say that often times, more often than otherwise, it does not click and the ignition coil never accepts enough voltage to arc and I have to hold a lighter down on that gas line and hope it takes before the house burns down and I'm sitting in the backyard smoking with no eyebrows wondering how I got there because the kitchen exploded and I was high off of my ass on fumes well before it happened.  I want it to work every time.  That's wishful thinking.   I get scorched a lot.  I am highly flammable.  Just the way the genes shook out.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of a writer I would be, could be, with greater mental stability, and then I laugh.  Because I would have bored myself to death in high school with pen and paper and I realize I would be the mathematician or the economist or the engineer or the welder who did it because it was something they could do mechanically and do well and do with hi fidelity in a very stable pattern and my interest would've waned and I would have sought out something more dynamic.  No wait.  That's me.  Me now, projecting myself backward and extrapolating to now.  Not what I was trying to describe at all.  I would have done those things and been happy to do them and never would have branched out to something I could be wrong at and still pursue with passion as though I was baseline perfect and sometimes brilliant, but not nearly enough to make that one diamond sparkle to my eye enough to push me to try for something with more cuts and more shine and more heart.  At least that's what I like to think.  Would happen if I were more stable.

Do I want the things that come with stability?  Of course.  You'd have to be a moron not to.  Do I want the things that come with instability?  Of course.  Not all of them, but at least 70% of them.  Maybe closer to 60%.  Thinking back, I never really was a very stable human being.  I remember getting into a spat at a summer camp when I was very young, came back to me today, cannot remember for my life what camp it was or if it was bible camp or something more or less or forced or if I asked to go to it.  It was a moment where myself and my peers were unsupervised and they were making fun of my shoes again because I had very bad knock off shoes.  Very bad.  Not even stylistically speaking.  Simply very poorly engineered shoes.  The soles were made of this weird psuedo plastic, translucent, compound so whenever we played "Duck Duck Goose" or "Steal the Bacon" in gym I would have to work ten times harder than everyone with regular rubber to make cuts and accelerate and slow down because the plastic stuff would glide on the waxed wood floor like skates.  I still won my fair share.  Unfair share?  I should have been undefeated.  It's probably how I got to be so fast early on and kept going from there.  Also probably how I got to be so frustrated when I get a job and don't have the right equipment today.

Anyway, where was I going....  so myself and my peers were unsupervised and I was being teased relentlessly and I didn't do anything for a while except shut up.  Partly because I knew however I spun it I would get the beating of a lifetime up until that point once I got home, and partly because I wanted to go grab a chair and beat him to death.  So I went straight for his throat because the middle ground was dealing with them making fun of you for having dirty nails, them not realizing you were keeping them as long as your mom could stand before digging that hook thing underneath or cutting them specifically for the instance when you may need to claw someones throat out of their neck.  It worked out pretty well.  He bled some and I was not nearly as strong as I thought I was then so he only lost some skin, but he was so freaked out he didn't even tell on me.  Or maybe he did and I've just blacked the aftermath out of my memory.  Anyway, I just remember thinking "awesome, why did I not do that sooner."  Strange days back then.

And now.  I know I can't be, but I believe I can be the greatest of all time.  I get scorched.  I melt down.  I've been so high strung emotionally with human contact.  It's rough.  Parsing things.  Knowing what to tell and what not to.  KNowing who to tell and who not to.  Going over events to parse what happened and what did not happen, but was later re-engineered from memories I didn't have, but took to heart regardless.  People I thought I talked to in depth, but never said one word to.  Real people that I see that I know I will not see again for some time.  Longing and wanting more and knowing I would mismanage it if it did happen.  The things that did happen that are stranger than fiction that I hesitate to retell to anyone because they wouldn't believe it either if they were there.  It's gutting.

A tough road, the feeling it.  The feeling writing.  Taking it beyond exercise to experiment and beyond experiment to theory and beyond theory to intent.  Taking intent back to exercise to ingrain it and then back to experiment to expansion packs.  Managing circuitry.  Without tripping breakers is a 99 by 99 game of Windows 95 vintage Minefield.  I was trying to explain to someone how communication, as I've learned it, is an experience of exchanged violence.  The base set of symbols.  Love growing from that basic set of characters.  Sometimes writing offers no release.  I can deal with that.  It's not so much that it's something that has to get out.  Someone else tried to put it to me that way and I accepted the assessment because I had no rebuff at the time.  To a small degree it is.  To a much larger degree it is conversation, within and without. Some internalized and leaking and some extroverted and speaking.

I'm taken back to the original mission.  The blueprint for the creation as a method of legacy.  I go back and forth often between life and death.  Self extermination versus procreation.  I do not play into it as often as I would like, or maybe, more likely, as often as I would feel comfortable with.  Is there a way to commit altruistic suicide for the greater good?  Yes.  I toy with the idea of dying of natural causes.  Thinking about having children and the million reasons why it would be better for that kid to never meet me.  I toy with big ideas of retirement and doing what I love, but even on that time scale of 60, 70, years, it's a long pipe.  What you want, sucka?  Not much.  I already have most of it.  It's getting to the point of formality and self improvement.  Competitive spirit.  How good can I possibly get?  I think that keeps me awake more often than any other meter.  When I know the answer, I'll rip the chord and bug the fuck out.  Selfish.  It makes me laugh to feel that way sometimes.

I get scorched.  I get thoroughly displeased with the quality of what comes out of me, but I know there's so much psychological garbage to sort through, there is no way I'm going to knock anything out of the park on a regular basis.  I play against myself.  It gets troubling.  Becomes troubling.  When your heckler is you.  Your clown is you.  You are your dealer and your fiend.  I used to do it for other people.  I used to do it for my mom and my dad before I realized the packages of carefully selected works were doing little more than collecting dust as soon as they unwrapped them.  When I realized sending them books for christmas was a waste of money and passion.


One of the best experiences I ever had was taking some of them back one of the times I was back home and never once hearing a single question about where any of them went.  XD.  I still get a rise out of that.  I was hot blooded for so long over it and then I realized it wasn't worth holding against anyone.  I think that's where a lot of my happiness stems from.  The knowing that there are people you can love and people you cannot love.  And I'm okay with that.  I still get scorched sometimes.  The factory floor fire spreads and work stations are abandoned and the fire spreads and the suppression systems kick in and they can't contain a god damn thing on the scale of what you are experiencing because you designed them in good times with hypotheticals and grossly miscalculated how swift and vast the psychotic destruction would advance.

So now I am back again and kicking at embers and trying to reimagine what it all was before the fire broke out.  Gathering the caucus.  Sending the calls and hoping to get a ping back from somewhere.  Anywhere along the rise and fall of consciousness.  Reinstalling routines.  Rebuilding structure.  Recreating from memory the blueprint and it's different every time.

If, at the end of it all, I can assemble something to make a future iteration of myself feel less daunted, or less alone, or less wrecked, or more hopeful for sunrise, or more comfortable with no one to sing to but the moon and the tone deaf clouds, I will be happy.  I don't always do good, but I do the best I can.  I know the cycle will eventually end and I won't be blown clear and the fire will consume, but what is the high worth if you'll never know just how high you could've been?  I'm not talking the highs that come with squared proportions.  False peaks?  I mean, would I trade the 40% bad outcomes for 100% decent outcomes?  No.  I don't think so.  In the worst times, yes.  Of course.  No.  I don't think so.  And it is difficult to wrap my head around.  Difficult to work around.  Difficult to not fall into myself standing on the foundation slab in a wilderness where a home used to stand and not feel something for everything and everyone who died in their beds who would have gotten up to jobs and friends that morning when the leaves were still wet with night and the paper boy was sucking oxygen looking at the weeks rounds on his front porch and the dogs were still dreaming and the shots in the dark were unreported and the spiders still had games to play and the cigarette burns still bled and fuck

As promised:  two pack.



///Five Deez - "So Good"  it's nice to be back.  nice to be feeling something.

///Amon Tobin - "Untangle"  slow verbs.

Development

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

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

It's been ...  refreshing.

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

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


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