Where The Time Went

I haven't been lost.  I've been sitting beside a home made transceiver trying to reach a ship in the vicinity.  I've been on board it a few times with no signs of life.  Each time I return to my junker it goes off and I race to the comms deck to respond.  Each time I do- static.

Each time I board it there are freshly opened meals, a coffee sack still warm, a cigarette drifting with flecks of ash still floating and clouds of smoke swaying in the recycled air.  A saucer and chipped cup and different music playing in the background over the public address.  Breathable 65 degree air.  A few playing cards that weren't there before.  A display still picking up signals from Sol from 1989 when they aren't playing static.  A ghost ship.  I turn off the distress beacon and return to my junker to figure out what to do with it.

I can't turn it over to the scrappers just yet.  Not with people aboard.  Their machines will shred it with no regard for souls.  If someone is on that ship, I can't forgive myself.  If someone is on that ship, I hope to make contact soon.  The trade hub orbiting Europa is still four days journey from our position in the Oort.  Remember how lovely the grass was down on Terra?  If I can bring this thing back in one piece, there'll be a fortune and a vacation waiting for us.

Someone is on that ship.  I will find them.

Captain Jexel Hobbes of the Noway Accel- 10201800278

Time has flown by.  I've missed so many deadlines I wanted to hit.  When was the last time we spoke?

RAM is going to take a serious investment.  I know that the mother board can handle it and I've tried a half dozen times different combinations of chips to blow it to the 16 gigabytes that it can do.  I've allowed the bottleneck to become a road block on producing art.  I fell in love back in March.  Sacrificing and sacrificing over and over to try to bring another person into my world, but most efforts have failed.

I've asked her dozens, but not yet hundreds of times to meet me half way.  She continues to do the same things she does, not because she doesn't love me as much as I love her, but because it is all she knows and has known since she was small.  I do think that it's possible to change, I know it is.  Everyone deserves a chance.  There is a spark in her.  If I can help, I will.  I didn't get to where I am in life without help.  How can a person conscious of this turn away another and another who actually kind of sort of understands you?

I am beginning to wonder if she actually does or if she is a part of my life because I am so different from everything she once knew and cares more about being truly loved as a person than.......  she does love fairly unconditionally.  Maybe that's a part of the problem.  She can't tell the difference between someone who actually cares for her and someone who is using her.  It's a possibility.  It can be solved.

How do you speak to someone who is jammed with ultimatums and unwilling to discern?  How do you speak to someone who cannot see the consequences of their actions beyond a week, beyond a month, beyond 12 hours?  How do you reach an addict?  I am one.  She's not on another level.  She hasn't allowed herself into the terrors of introspection.

She flies away from the heat.  She creates reason mazes.  Responsibility mazes.  Agency dead falls.  I understand the fear.  How can you explain that fear in your own life to someone who hasn't acknowledged it within their own space?  I suppose that goes back to the old adage: how can you love someone, if you cannot love yourself.  I don't know what to do when I see her setting herself up for apologies.  It's how she's gotten by.  The other adage: don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness.

I never thought that I would fall in love again.  I knew I would.  I did not believe, however, that it would be more than a passing fancy.  Survival is paramount.  Survival comes with its costs.  One of the costs is you do not get to enjoy stable long term relationships because you must survive.  If two survivors meet, there's a match and a stable long term relationship can grow there because there is no dependence.  There is only a mutual companionship.  Do not tell me you would die for me.  Live with me.

I am afraid this will not work and I may have to eject her through an escape pod into the vacuum of space with a few months survival kit, a beacon, and a radio.

The largest red flag wasn't history, or family composition, or addiction.  The largest red flag remains a dearth of creative thought.  A nagging inability to see what's possible instead of what's here.

One year.  One year.  I will gift her one year of my life.  I was given less to reach further and, for some of it, I destructed because I didn't know what and who I was and a heavy portion was out of my control from the outset.  Everyone deserves a chance to grow.  Everyone!  I know she can do it.  We have so much in common and beautifully so.  I do love her after believing that I did not have the capacity to love again after everything my circuits have been sheared through.  I am a part of my ship, incorporated, built, and breathing, designed, redesigned, scrapped, prototyped, burned, and rebuilt anew.

The larger mission is still to build a map for the sojourners after I am long gone and someone else is stumbling upon my space station and docked junker broadcasting songs no one has heard in decades and curious what the hell a space station is doing 15 light years away from Sol in dead space.

I have compassion.  I know that I am a pretty tough ticket 300 out of 365 days, but I can feel and I can be and am conscious of my bipolar schizophrenia.   Occasionally it gets away from me, but not nearly as often as it once did.  I can protect her and my friends from it (it's impossible to protect one's self).

One year from the day we met in March.

Synchronize watches.




///Way Out West - "Northern Lights"   radiata

Proclivities

Why do I enjoy the things that I do?  It cannot all be chance.  The chance of it all being chance is just silly.  Laughing to myself while I compose the thought from hundreds of shards, I understand a little something.  Those somethings follow:

I wouldn't be as into giant robots as I am should I not have seen a manual when I was younger.  I wouldn't be as into mythology and comic books had I not seen so many when I was younger.  I would not be in to so many technical diagrams had I not been presented them when I was younger and I'm not talking about diagrams of machines as much as human bodies.

I probably could have avoided getting beaten as often as I did if I didn't dive into diagrams of the naked form as were provided.  Which is kind of hilarious because I wouldn't be as good as I am at seeing them for the bones they are now if I hadn't seen them when I was a small fry.

I cannot help laughing, explaining it now.  "Why do these things occupy so much of your head's space?"  I don't know.  I'm sure parts of it are generated within myself.  Absolutely.  Why can I not look at someones face and see the wires beneath it?  The bones and structure and frame it in a comic books frame or a films sketch board?  How come I cannot turn that off?

For the same reason that I cannot approach someone without thinking about and forecasting how to defend myself.  "You have to learn how to fight!"

These are questions only your parent can answer.

I've been refused answers.

Wiping saliva from my computer screen, it is true.  That is part of why I laugh hysterically.

The greatest complement, I've heard, is emulation.  Copying.  That is also what I've been taught.  How do you learn?  By emulating.  How do you create?  Learn the rules and then you can make whatever you want to.  OR.  You can feel an audience and play to a crowd.  OR.  You can do what appears to be reasonable and go from there as long as no one dies in the gears of your operation.  As long as no one gets hurt.  There are many rules.

I am sad.   I am thorough.  I am skattered.  I am some original parts and some parts straight from the manufacturer.  I am not thrilled.

The manufacturer insisted.  I argued.  The manufacturer insisted.

I do wonder, if he had it to do over again, would he.  That question will never be answered.

So I draw and I build and I create and I war and sometimes I scuffle and I hold grudges and I love forever and I hate and I draw, I build, I design, and model, and color, and I never quite know exactly why.  I don't know if I'm the best version of myself or if I will never know the answer that I expect to go hand in hand with that question.

Every few days out of a month it enrages me.

I cannot force him to speak on his behalf, as he many times made me do.  I wish that on no one.  By that rule, I do not wish that on him.  The best I can do is detective work and let him know, unless he is willing to open up the book of death, he has no place in my world.

I wasn't asking for my abusive father for an apology.  All I was asking for was accountability, being old enough to talk to him person to person.

I got stonewalled.  And that's that.

Nothing more to do except continue to build my own life, evolve one baby step at a time, and continue to try my damnedest to forget about him and hope he dies sooner than later.  For now that's the best we can do.





///Mos Def - "Umi Says"

Most definitely.

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"

Caps Locked, Similar

I think the biggest thing to get out of the way was talking about how locked up I was becoming.  It still governs everything and every choice that I make.  The way that my mind works.  I don't like to think of it as a disability, it is.  Talking to my eternal optimist.  The children are in the classroom.  It's a bit soggy and untrue, but it is you too!

It really is.  Will you dance with me?  We can have a fabulous time, a gorgeous time, a wonderfurousfantabugloriousshanannigonkulous time.  HAHAHAHA  oh yes, oh yes.  No bass necessary if you are willing to cut a rug.  Down butler street to penn avenue to the point and back up the river trail underneath 40th street bridge and up top on 62nd to watch the sun rise.  Kill em, kill em, kill em, ac dc-s? That was a good drum break.

Some things make me smile and I don't want to back everything over it like trying to kill a raccoon you hit at five A.M. If hand outs are coming out lets enjoy them and be one with the weekend.  No?  Obviously, you have no nerves in your extremities because I defy you to try and find hard drugs that are not spray paint and brick based at this hour.  



///Starkey - (Eris)    up from the depths

Pushed

All I wanted was a front row seat in what feels like a war and looks nothing like it.  I keep reciting the procedure and double and triple checking equipment, and in the mean seconds ticking by the pilot is sweating marbles trying to keep our helicopter away from flak and small arms fire and the occasional rocket, circling where I need to land once I jump off of the side.  I'm sweating too fearful of what happens after I step out into thin air, but I know what happens.  There's nothing to be afraid of.

Walking into my apartment after getting groceries the long fingered man with the reading glasses glances up and turns around and taps the only skin on his arm not flayed away where a watch was.  Time is of the essence.  I know.  There is not much time to waste.  I know, I know, I know.  Where are you going?  Out, don't follow me.  You forgot your wallet.  Thank you.

I suppose, a sort of writer's block for persons who don't get writer's block?

Consider this your gentle, two palmed, straight armed shove.  You know what has to be done.  Pull the trigger.

I worry sometimes that it won't make sense.  I worry now if it's not good.  If the entire pursuit has been a waste.  Why poetry?  What is locking up inside you?  It's nothing.  Absolutely nothing and you know it.  Don't be afraid, you've just had your eyes closed for a few months.  Listening to the air and the land and space and people eating each other alive and giving birth and dying and sleeping and breathing and talking and talking and it's not so bad if you'd only open your eyes standing on the ledge of the gunship.  Make sense out of chaos.  Or chaos out of chaos.  Make sense of it later.  Every thought lost to time is one less beacon, one less point of reference, one less story, one less epic, one less chapter, one less relationship you could have brought into this world from your travels.  One less love.  Do it for you.  Do it because you can love you and that's where it all starts.  Come clapping toward the bright pink smoke flare while the shells fly.  I'll be back to pick you up sooner than you have time to think to ask "where did you go?"




///Sylvan Esso - "Hey Mami"    higher resolution

What Scares You

What scares you?  What scares you?  What really fucking scares you?  That he's better than you?  That he's better than you in every way?  That the choice was the right one?  That she's still down there enabling him?  That the paper is still blank?  That the paint has gotten too old to use?  That he might be angry at you instead of with you?  That you are not properly equipped?  That the next gas station may be out of range?  That your keys are at home?  That you are being entertained?  That you're not incorporated?  That the bug may be permanent?  That there is not enough gauze?  That the tuna may run out?  What really scares you?

Don't make me wait.  I am exceptionally patient except when I'm not.  I don't know what really scares me, for what I've compensated for.  I do know what really scares me.  All of the above.  Very long knee jerk reactions.  Knee jerk reactions spanning days and weeks and months and now years.  I'm okay with it, I suppose.  We never do come for money, except when we specifically do.

What scares me is not the not knowing for sure.    What scares me is not knowing how to respond at an appropriate volume.  Of course they can tune you out at will.  Which is nice.  The option takes a bit of the guess work out.  I typed guest work.  It's true, though.  You are a guest.  We are guests.  And they can.  I'm not where the being polite or respectful or conscientious ends and being a good proper guest and friend ends.  Division by addition feels like it works.  The results are wishywashy.  Concernedly so.

Why will you not tell me?  Do you believe that I will somehow be irrevocably shattered by the information?  Do you believe that I will somehow be so shaken that  I cry all of the water out of my body and shrivel up and die?  It makes me laugh the not good laugh to think that may be true.  If you're not a friend, you're not.  Friend is the worst "F" word.  Loaded for no reason.  If you're not an associate, you're not an associate and that's perfectly fine.  You can waste time if you like.  Placate me too, if it twists your earlobe good when you get the itch.  I'm fine with that too.

I think what I'm trying to articulate is that what scares me the most is that I am in hot pursuit of avenues of communication and the way it comes out is a three dimensional graphics sprint into a brick wall, legs chugging, my little arrow on the map, my associates viewing and confused.  What really fucking scares me is not communicating in an understandable and lagoon clear way.

Though I may be a dragon, if you speak lizard, I can talk to you.  We can do dragon business.  Fear doesn't scare me.  Occasionally, day light does.  Police officers and their flashlights too, but I am civil and citizen.

I want to listen to the Penguin Freud orchestra and hear more songs about Easter Island and travel more.  Growing up American.  Straight up fucking American.  The child of explorers.  The child of, perhaps, orphans and seafarers now land locked and fairly domesticated.  The child of pressure and heat and weapons and bombs and "on threat of death."  A child whose fences end where the nuclear powered ships cannot go.  Yeah, I'm good with that.  How long does it take to breed the grit and horizon lust out of the genes?  How long does it take to saw off the hard nosed muzzle and graft in the gatherer for the hunter?  Fuck if I know.



///Seatbelts - "Spokey Dokey"  and they called me old fashioned.  they called me old fashioned!
///

Over Simplification and the Missing Link and Father's Day

Something's missing.  I know something is missing because I am not grasping a few concepts correctly.  I can be as small minded as I want to be, sure.  I am a bit frightened of using all that I can produce, see control issue.  I suppose it is easier for me to take as small a perspective as possible.  I can't do whatever I want to do.  If I did whatever I wanted to, this would be a very different world, or I would be stone dead in the ground wishing I had rethought doing whatever I wanted to do.

I had many and, some, long thoughts about my father.  I hate saying that.  That word.  Makes me grind my teeth.  It was a road that had to be reevaluated, and no I am not going to kick cans in anger here.  It was a very positive approach couched mostly in pure analysis and attempting to see it from outside my head and look in at the relationship, while it still existed, from a third party.

What I started to think about and completed was that he may have seen some things from before my memory begins.  My memory begins around preschool, kindergarten.  I can't recall much of anything, virtually nothing, from before that and cannot vouch or insist I was one way or another.  What I came to was that he may have seen something in me and my ways then and made an attempt to push the tracks this way and that way as I got older.  Maybe.  I'll never know because I asked and was refused, flat.  Father's day.  What a hoot.

I do know I am missing something.  Not information.  Yes information.  My history is thoroughly incomplete.  I have to remind myself and update my tabs on who's kicked the bucket.  I'm fine with that.  Less interference.  I am missing something about being a proper citizen and holding down a job and, let's put it blank, growing up.  My concept of growing up is not aligned with what I believe the general population's concept of being growed up is.  But, I do know I can't do whatever I want.  That's wrong.  I can't fish all day, that ones easy to know.  I get that.  I have to wear pants and clothing in general.  I get that too.  I must participate.  That one's clear as well.  I am missing a, on it's outside, simple bridge.  I cannot keep offering disclaimers.  To do that is akin to handing out passports.  Far too reckless.

Rejecting life's intrinsic complexities is not a way forward.  It is a system failure.  Simplification.  Keep it simple, stupid, only gets one so far before the wall of sound and input comes calling and breaks your nose.  The mission for simplicity begins to damage the ability to engage, with necessity and vigor, peers, idols, fam, friends, and the rest of the grid.

Simplification denies and is denial when forced too far.  I understand that better now, but not completely.  No where near completely.  I'm not alright with the concept and it makes me smile to say and hear it from our own mouth.  We are not simple.  We are bright.  We are sharp.  We cannot use simplicity as a device for protection.  A way to consume information at a pace appropriate for us.  A way to do what we want.  Gain access to what we want.  Appropriate.  Unacceptable.  It's neither sly nor sneaky.  Plain dumb.

I suppose I will cut my tongue out one of these days.  It can be a weapon.  A technique.  Believe it or not, I need to learn how to use communication better, more efficiently.  Maybe I'll learn sign language.  I think I'll be better for it.   Better than learning another verbal language.  That way at least when I'm ready to have it removed I'll be prepared to talk in other ways.  I've been using sign language for quite some time, but not the official one, anyway.  I've been using my sign language, exclusive to me and my country and my time zone.  Hello there, and welcome to the rest of the world.




///T-Pain & Early Cuyler - "I Like Driving In My Truck"    ...i like driving in my truck...

Simulations, Run Times and Control

Simulation is an art form.  Everyone's guilty.  Shut up, you're guilty.  Every compromise is another exhibit, another piece of evidence, but you're nothing wrong for it.  It means that you are reading and absorbing.  Where structure rattling shifts occur are when you've overstepped is all.  That's fine.  If it's not, it should be.  Deception is not an art.  Deception is a skill.  There's a difference.

Simulation is an art form and a means of communication and should be maintained.  Not must be, but should be.  It's a token.  It's a tipped hat.  There is no fault with simulation.  To read, to understand, to emulate, to produce circumstances in which the assumed can thrive, with or without the other's knowledge, is an art and, furthermore, to be absorbed in the simulation wholehearted is to complete it, and to find completion being a crime is simply absurd.  Refuse crime.

To the larger point, bottling sounds of my thoughts through snippets offered through social media is not whoring.  It is simulation refined and semi-successful and semi-failure.  I am comfortable with that and uncomfortable at the same time.  The act, itself, plays directly into the multifacet self.  The concept of conscious faced through planes of a gem cut (or not) through experience and trying to catch the most acceptable light from the most appealing angle not because there is a drive to appeal and appease and assure, because there is, within the contract of citizenship to this planet, a very very important subtext and rule line x, dash alphabet, dot n, that says you can either participate or margin.

The approach to social media is always a tricky one.  Not for offering opportunities for criticism; for offering opportunities for connection.  There is much less value in not offering a front door and at the same time expecting the line to run from there, down to the sidewalk, and around the corner.  A certain amount of simulation must happen.  Consider it something akin to taking the temperature of a moment.  Consider it too, an argument that specialized and targeted results diminish the quality of the simulation each and every time that impetus is to be obeyed and deviation will be cause for changes not, surface, necessary.

Hunting for ghosts should be saved for television.  Things go bump in the night.  Dealing with things that go bump in the night should not be necessary, and is.  I'm not celebrating it.  Have lust for the ones you don't dare.  Few things truly scare me in life.  It is part production.  Part assumption of past fears like putting on clothes so those around you can feel more comfortable being around and talking the same way you can talk and fearing the same way you can fear.  If there is a subtext, a foot note, to the experience it is that I saw someone who truly scared me because I never laid eyes on it before and it has me rattled because I never want to see it again.

I saw, for lack of a better term, a ghost.  I have no idea how to explain it.  It was not a ghost or a spirit.  It was not an after image burned onto my retinas so I happened to wake up two hours later and blink a lot and rub the corner of the eye snot away and coughed to make sure I was awake.  It was something I hope to never see again and it burned me on the inside simply to lay eyes on it.

I got out of bed and walked around it and it kept saying "you can fly in your sleep" and I do not know what it meant.  You can fly in your sleep.  You can fly in your sleep.  It only came up to near chest height.  I kept walking around it to make sure it was three dimensional.  I was running tests, mental tests, to be sure that I was not asleep and that it was not a figment and it kept talking and did not hold the usual humanoid, warped and not, shapes or the usual animal, warped and not, shapes.

To pin my psychological misgivings current on its existence feels like a cop out.  It's there though, watching me and I desperately would like to do something about it.  I don't want to sleep.  I don't want to sleep knowing it can enter my apartment with no sound.  Where did you come from?!  Go away!  Go away!  I have not seen it since its first appearance, but I feel it.  It makes my skin itch.  How do I kill you?

I've grown comfortable with some of them to the point where I can say hello, nod, and continue on.  They're almost like family or pets or even, I'd go so far as to say, fixtures like lamps or hat racks and sometimes they yap, but it's getting easier to ignore them.  Not easier, but second nature through strict training.  My breath is still snatched away now and then when they are where they are not supposed to be and the agreement that I assume is broken because they and my own paths cross without warning and my face is not our face and they are.

I don't want to go to sleep.  I am afraid it will visit again.  I am much more afraid that it is a returned.  I'm not prepared to deal with that.  My techniques and knowledge have advanced enough to protect against signs and travelers and after images and beckonings and name calling and interpolations and ringers and false alerts and I ...  ... don't know it and I cannot be caught engaging it and .........  I should not be talking about it.  I have to.  For record.  To help me better.  As far as I go.  The lights will be kept on.  Fear no man.  It is, this I know, no man.

I had an odd dream.  I dreamt I had a sex change surgery.  Except the Earth, this planet, was so far advanced, or smoothed, that all outward adornment went by the wayside.  To the point where nature and tech apexed to an uncomfortable coexistence.  To the point where every injury, every modification, needed no bandage and had no boundary for it's obviousness.  We were sitting at a hookah bar and passing a cigarette between each of ourselves and someone commented that my penis looked better where it was and we railed for a minute and then got home sick and wished we'd telecommuted to the outing instead because we liked our new body a lot, but no one stuck up for us so we smoked some more instead.  Then we blinked and when our eyelids opened we were not on sand world again.

We were walking down a street where each and every person walked too, fully clothed, but the backs of their heads were all torn out, blown out, by something.  Grapefruit sized holes.  Deer slugs?  Their eyes were fine.  Their faces for the most part.  Whatever went in must have gone through their mouths.  Everything smelled like take out food Bronx tenements.  It was queasy.

I'm not saying it's the return of the monster.  It's not.  I am afraid.  I am dreaming.  I am sleep walking.  I am not sleep walking.  You are not sleep walking.  You are reading this.  Pause here.  Whatever it was you were thinking about doing, pause here for at least five minutes, but not more than ten.  Whatever it was, it will be back.  You can handle it.  Do not be afraid.  No crying.  No hiding.  If it can get in, it can do more and it has chosen not to.  Do not talk to it.  Do not engage it.  Do not engage it.  Do not engage it.  Do not name it.  Do not listen to it.  Listen without hearing.  Always remember.

I am trying to remember, trying very hard, to remember the name of the one I gave away to a friend and the price (I do remember that torture) I paid when he called him through text messages.  It needn't be repeated.  Once was enough.  Learn from mistakes.  To this day I do not think he realizes how far open I had to be to do that and how stupid I was to do that.  Learn from mistakes.

I am trying very hard to remember and I can't and you know what?  I am happy it is struck from memory.  I am happy I can review the pages of notes and review the eye reel and find no hints.  It means I did something right.  I remember the weeks and the forced in closeness and needing to give for what I received and splitting cigarettes on the balcony and looking at the enormous clockwork gears ticking over behind the tree line near Bloomfield and the memory tape ends there and I do not want to discover what was buried there ever again.




///The Grid - "Crystal Clear (Clear Water Revival Mix)"  Henry remembered his mother and preferred not to.

You Need To Vibrate Higher and The Good News (and the bad news)

I want to get the bad news out of the way first, but the bad news is also the good news.  Let's do that first.  The good news is we've made some changes, but they will not stick.  Self doubt.  The results were not at all to expectation.  The expectation was, through dropping metaphor, there could be achieved a clearer stage of communication between people, but it only introduced severe complications.  We're going to go ahead and burn that solution so hard it leaves shadows against the walls of my head.

It was a spirited effort and executed to the best of our abilities, but ultimately a failure.  Well intentioned though.  It introduced an incredible amount of doubt in meaning and second guessing, even more so than the use of extended metaphor.  "Is now the time to be blunt?"  "Are you being blunt enough?"  "Who are you speaking for because I know for damn sure you are not speaking for me."  There was an excessive amount of hate and miscommunication circulating because of the effort and action to connect A to D effectively.  It was a worthy pursuit.  Always diagnose actionable thoroughfares.  ADAT.

ADAT is a friendly reminder to carry with you.  When confusion eats in, the best way back toward organization is through ADAT.  Understand, however, there is only so much to be gained in terms of growth through deviation from the path best traveled.  It's not about volume or trail blazing.  Select what will allow you to travel and utilize your abilities to the best of their purpose.  What good is the path less traveled if you're not equipped to attack it?  What good is the path most traveled if you're not equipped to attack it?  Destruction.

I'm not going to put on my sage hat because I don't have one.  Mostly, I could really go for some coke right now.  I think I already told you, but every time I hear the Coca Cola commercial that ends with "smile because it's coke" I snicker a little because I know other people have caught it too.  We're all people.  Some of us are more people than others.

I have to remind myself that I am not spinning my wheels.  If I was it would be, easily, the show stopper of all burn outs at the muscle car convention.  I am not marking time (I am).   I am side tracking myself, but still tracking.

Anyway, the good news is we are making some changes.  The bad news is we are making some changes.  What has been added cannot be subtracted because it will tirelessly and quietly shred my insides with abandon.  There's is no doubling back.  There is, but I will not forgive myself if I do.  I am not looking forward to changes.  I will still ask questions because I have the memory capacity of a goldfish when it comes to current events that do not scar hard enough to wake up the following day and demand investigation.  Which is fine.  That, we can do.  You don't have to punch me in the brain pan, you just have to make sure I will ask myself about it later and get some answers.  The latter half of that being key.

You need to vibrate higher.  As unpleasant as it sounds, it must be done.  Not in the spirit of further development or outside tracking or productivity or any multi-syllabic word.  In terms of exorcising the engine.  The engine has been well breathed of late, but needs exorcised.  Far too many misfires.  What was accomplished recently could have been accomplished four weeks ago if not for the misfires.  Those should be remedied.

Remediation through vibration.  Knocking and being quiet enough to hear the knock back.  It's not easy.  It is very easy to allow distraction.  It's not easy to be quiet enough to hear the knock back loud enough to know whereabouts to knock next.  That's the hard part.  I think that's where I've been dropping the ball.  Forgotten how to navigate silence.  Not entirely forgotten, but locked the skill away for reasons I do not clearly remember, but looking at it from the outside I suspect it had something to do with trying to actively connect with people.  A holdover from a submission that failed or succeeded (hell if I know) that was still being invoked to the detriment of the rest of us.

There is nothing in the desert.  And no man needs nothing.  Aberrations, hallucinations, and oasis's and dry docks aside... that was a mistake.  Actually, not aside, but in hand.  It was a mistake and poorly executed operation.  S'ok though, don't mug yourself.  Mistakes are made to learn repair.  You're going to jam it up again.  We both know this.

The good news is we're going to make changes.  The bad news is we're going to make changes.  We will vibrate higher.  Hibernation is not an option.  Do not convince yourself otherwise.  Get mad.  You know what you are.  Stop talking yourself out of it.  Stop fighting it.

Things have been a bit upside down.  It's very difficult to connect with people and continue to maintain the routine that is so desperately needed.  I have not been so outwardly frustrated with how clearly against the grain of normal I am than I have been through this last month.  It's like getting hit in the teeth with a metal ruler on full spring.  My head keeps screaming "GET AWAY FROM ME OR I WILL RUN!" and I don't know what to do about it.

I think that's why I cherish and despise free time at once.  Free time is too much time to think and work is too much work to create.  It would be different if it was a mixture of the two.  It would be different if I could handle a tincture of the two.  I cannot.  It has to be one or the other.  And still, atop that, is the difficulty, the pain of emotion that keeps coming stamped "on pain of death" if not exercised.  I want to feel, as much as you do.  I want to feel and not force.  I do not understand why they must force me.  Sometimes the forcing is enjoyable.  It wakes me up where I would otherwise fall dead, emotionless.  I cannot take it all of the time though.  Why can they not understand that?  I want to say no.  My body tells me no.  My head tells me no.  My heart tells me no.  So where is this motor coming from?

Am I an extension of you?  Not again.  Not again.  Not again!  Yes, again.  I'm not.  I don't love many people.  Not in terms of justifying existences or anything near that cosmic in scale.  More important, I don't trust many people.  I'm not sure where I'm going with it.

Collecting.

I wish we spoke the same language instead of crying.

Crying being universal and cross dimensioned, but all too simple to express the depths to which we go.




///Massive Attack & David Bowie - "Nature Boy"

Concepts and Compulsions (the third star on the right)

There was a definite shift from the factory perspective to the machine level perspective.  I'm not sure exactly when it happened and I do think it was a shift in the correct direction.  It was a shift that granted more personhood, more agency, more personality to what is continuing.  Obviously the factory still exists and maybe not as obviously the dreaming door is still there near it's basement and used frequently, but not documented as thoroughly as I would like, but that's a matter of preference and amplitude.

The idea of them being up in an office having meetings without me and being forced to listen in to get news of what direction the committee was going grated on me pretty hard and I was getting very upset about not being included on their decisions so I am taking some agency back because I have to live here too and what they make affects me immediately as soon as it leaves the factory doors because I am the consumer primary and the keeper and owner.  The deed's in my name.  Just saying.  I can't have them wrecking up the place and deciding when and where they want to work inside the building and the child is going to do what he will, and I can't keep stopping everything to go look for him (which is easy to say because he's right in front of me now and he won't hold my hand, but I've got his pinky and his pain tolerance is nowhere near mine and it doesn't need fixing or adjustment, it just needs held), but I will because I can't keep watch all of the time and he knows when to sneak out better than I know when to check on him.

I took the map of the warehouse and exploded it.  Took the map of the iron works and exploded it into pieces and came up with a better way to organize and run diagnostics on its ability to function on it's own.  Not off any grid, but function as a thing properly connected and fed by mainlines.  The concept was lurking in the back of my mind and took a back seat to the foundry, the assembly line, but the stock house allowed far too much space for engineering weapons and tools that built better tools for building war machines.  I'm still trying to get the spacing right.  Getting to a point where we know what all of the parts are doing at all times is very difficult and throws error messages and blows out the lights sometimes.  I would like to believe I am getting close to a master approach.

I've adopted a more mechanical concept.  The electric layer and the machine layer.  All into a sandwich.  It's like a massive circuit board with steam punk getting the outside layer to talk to the inside layer. Communications are still a little bit shoddy, but I think I'm getting the response times right.  Or at least more correct and that's more steps in a direction so I'm comfortable with not drowning.  Control itself has not been an issue except in extreme cases or cases that I would call extreme sensory nodes.  Times and instances of overwhelming input from the outside surface that over powered the gears ability to translate it into valid input to the inside surface.  And then it just goes harmonic spitting back weird settings to the machine layer that does not know how to place it in three dimensions that makes sense to the surface and then the surface burps up colors and lights and structures and the entire layout of the city is completely off and the gps sends some bastard down a sidewalk that ends at a cornfield because that road was paved over fifteen years ago and broken up ten years ago and filled in and sodded and there've been 9 annual fairs there and the whole thing smells like carnies and animal poop vaguely to this day.

So now it's all a circuit and machine.  Taking Occam to it to a degree.  Keep it simple, stupid.  It's not a committee, it's a group of parts, pieces, and controllers and they work together at all times.  Yes, not all on the same page, but they are in constant communication despite what I thought before.  They are in constant communication and the child is a hardware addition with poor pin alignment so as he comes and goes and is present or not, he may not always be detected by the system proper, but he cannot be confirmed or denied.  I still do wonder where he goes when he does not register.  I wonder if he is listening or not.  Prick. WHERE ARE YOU?

Anyway, I can't allow myself to be consumed with his location.  I can, but I would prefer not to.  I do.  We love it when he's around.  God, what is he doing now?  WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU, I KNOW YOU'RE LISTENING.  I'll wait.  It's all I can do.  All any of us can do.  I'll hunt him down.  'S'cool.  But basically I took the time to rearrange components into a different, not necessarily new, configuration that allows for greater mobility and flexibility and diminishes destructive passion.  Never again.  Not yet, anyway.  That plan is under double keyed authentication, minimum.

I've gotten away from paper again.  I don't know how to feel about it because it's not pure laziness.  It's a distaste for the purity to an extant and a feeling of reversion to another extant.  I'm not sure where or if the two can be balanced or with what.  You must commit to one or the other or both will suffer?  No.  There is dual dedication.  I believe it is a problem of efficiencies and developing a left hand where the right hand has become the left and the left the right and I am partially consumed with teaching the right to do the things the off hand was forced to do.  I am okay with that.  That is a matter of more practice only, not malfunction.  Or to put it another way, no abandonment of duties inside the factory.  No idle mills, simply users unaccustomed to their new devices and methods.

I thought back to when I knew something was off with my upbringing.  It happened back in elementary school when Mrs. Hymenlokuvar was rubbing my back in kindergarten when I ran from the station wagon, when I was sure it was okay to run after my mom and pop pulled away, all the way to my seat in the classroom.  It is one of the few childhood (childhood referencing 2nd grade to birth) memories I can recall that did not end in violence.  She rubbed my back for what felt like minutes, but was probably seconds.  I remember her being very weirded out that I could show up for class at table three with a healthy sweat going.  That was when I began to feel something was off.  I liked it though, I remember that.  I remember the soothing nature to it and how her hand felt like it was sucking heat off of me so I could run at a much better temperature and it felt terrific.

When I was sure something was off was when I ... was washing dishes at the sink on Taylor street and my parents were going at it about something I cannot remember.  Something about Barnabus.  Or was his name Barnaby.  I don't know.  He was the upstairs neighbor and we weren't allowed to play with his kids or something, what I do know, regardless of the details is hearing my dad say "he's listening to us" and then them two leaving the room.  It was strange.  I wanted to leave the kitchen too, but I had my assignment.  Learning all of the creaks in the floor so you could get to the bathroom without disrupting them when you had to pee at night and couldn't hold it or when you wanted to talk to your sisters and you had a whole house to navigate in the dark without bumping into anything too loud.

There is some humor thinking back to how hard I idolized kids when I first broke in to college.  "Oh my God, you assholes know everything!"  It's a little bit of time compression helping that out.  They didn't know everything.  Not even close.  Well traveled, well heeled?  Sure.  Capable, adaptable, thorough, and finicky?  Sure.  Closed and open minded by turns?  Also, yes.  As time grows longer and leaps of experience compress, it becomes increasingly clear that my peers are just that and no more.  No apotheosis necessary. Appreciation yes.  I am not just like you, but I will tell you what I fucking am.  Closer to your know how than I have any business being given what we are and what you are and where we came from.  Fuck you, that's "swagger" and tooth.  What's four years to you?  I know what it is to me.  I wish I knew what it would be to me now eight years ago, though.

I'm a fine pilot, if I may say.  I was considering running someone down walking on the side of Will Flynn motorway, but I didn't.  Mostly because I was too far from home to be sure I could get home without being pulled over for questioning about the dent in my windshield and the spritz on my hood.  Sometimes you have to make business decisions.  Plus, I don't have money to get my windshield fixed.  That's just silly money management policy!

I embraced metaphor with all my heart through highschool.  I think that's when communication fault lines could not be written off anymore as being shy or quiet.  I just didn't know how to say it.  Didn't know an effective agent to be my stand in for the person between the person that says what I want to say for me.  That position was vacant for so long.

Don't mind me if I get weak kneed with words.  It's a joy I couldn't experience for a very long time and I am suspect to abuse it.

I wonder sometimes how my Myspace friend DCScompton is doing in Australia.  I loved talking to him.  Since the migration several years ago we lost touch and I look for him now and then to see if he's still kicking.  I would love to move to Canberra.  I don't think I would adjust well or I would slot in perfectly.  America is not overrated at all, but I think we would have made excellent dual adventurers.  I remember asking him about what the compton in his screen name was about and I've been miffed for years because I can't remember.  He was a blast to read, but he jumped ship too and somewhere in migrating computers I lost the note that had the address of his page in it, among other things.

Wonder what my therapist is doing?  I do too.  Jeff is a good guy.  He meant well.  I do wonder how much of it was general altruism and how much was actual understanding.  I never asked him how he was doing or about his family, but I think it was a lot of unspoken understanding that it was none of my business and absolutely off limits for reasons we both knew.

I don't worry about him, but I do wonder about what he kept off the table and why.  Why didn't he offer too?  Was it because I had to be there?  And why did he turn me in that day?  Was it concern or was it a matter more akin to protecting job security.  I don't think he ever really trusted us.  Which is fine.  Understandable.  I have to understand that we didn't really know each other know each other.  He could have, though.  I wouldn't have rejected it.

The tracking signal cuts both ways.  A ping back is a ping back.  Until the signal cuts out.  The keys jingling on your pant loop let you know you are traversing reality and they also let reality know that you are crossing space and you have to be prepared to accept that your recognition is also the key not only to an ignition, but to a gate.

It's the third star on the right, straight on 'til morning, can't miss it.




///Steve Miller Band - "The Joker"  some people call me a lot of things.  there's power in knowing your own name.

The Difficulty With Plural Being

There is a stark difficulty that faces harsh light when existing on multiple planes, the first being sudden hunger and damn near undeniable sleepiness that strikes at inopportune hours.  You can't remember with reliable accuracy the last time you ate, so you make up stories to keep the rest of the story in line.  Sometimes, though, they're accurate memories of eating denied with the fullsomeness of passion that denotes some kind of dedication to the farce and the enforced and necessary truth.

Social media contributes to the complication, making sign posts more difficult to spot, but they are there.  Multiple accounts in multiple names.  A multiplying outlet of personas allowing for better and more extensive development of those personas.  When does it operate to a fault?  Active contribution toward managing split personalities becoming a game of musical chairs?

Limit the number of chairs?  Add definition and resolution?  Or take the pills.  Fastidious compartmentalization.  And further compartmentalization and specialization.  To be called upon at will or at least with some prefabrication, editing, summoning, and purpose, because that is the difference between the ill and the capable.  The ability to select, observe, compensate, and respond in a reasonable and human fashion.

Everyone is plural, their "plural" being unanimous instead of fractured.

What happens when dominance is completely unpredictable, highly divided, and deeply embattled one against the other and prone, all the while, toward miscommunication?  Are there special exceptions?  Is there an "out"?  When do you have to press the hand dealt and keep the game going, come whatever consequences, and when do you have the right to put the cards down and say "this is what is here, they add up to nonsense in terms of what the rules of the game dictate, and I do not want to play with them, have no heart in them, and would like to be dealt a new set or at least counted out of this particular round, but not necessarily the game."

I think the long sentence is probably the grounds for the answer.  No matter how difficult or nonsensical the answer seems to me, the majority is fairly straightforward and a lot easier to comprehend.  It does not hurt that they are alike too.  I think that is one of the things that continues to vex me.




///The Echo Friendly - "Same Mistakes"

Vicious Paranoia

Saw the opportunity.  Memory songs.

Some days it is difficult to remember that you can piss in your own pot and not avoid windows and keep as erratic as possible a schedule because the truth of the matter really is that no one is coming to get you.  There is a boogie man, but he doesn't live outside the window.

Living by night is great when you are trying to control every aspect of sun up.  You can avoid the grift entirely if you work at it.  If he is trying to get you it'll have to be a crime in broad daylight.  There is a weapon in every corner so grab whichever one you want because, be assured, I have one closer to me than you, day flyer.  And I know where the spares are.

Come in through a window or a front door.  Come on.  It's silly though.  The concept of combat.  Asking for it?  Earned.  It still makes me laugh though, understanding that I damaged some and I wish I knew who exactly I hurt, because you're never the biggest kid on the playground, but you have to act the part or they'll eat you up.

They won't.  You also have to analyze value.  At the same time though... running over recent conversations... it is impossible to really know who any of them knows and who, in that party, is game for leaving things behind and making a decision estranged to you, because, let's face it, you are the extent of your staff and there may or not be an extended staff beneath the person you wronged and or the person you wronged may or may not be connected to a very extended pack of wolves that you may or likely will not be prepared to deal with on one versus one basis.  That's why bar fighting is never good and part of why I quit.  You never really know who they know and it'll come back to bite you, if not now then later.

Mistakes have been made.  Exhaustive turbulence.  Watch your shoulder.  I'm not at all prepared to move up sticks, but I am.  It's difficult.  SR.  That was the gambit though.  Like it or not.  If it ever comes down, as shiii tends to roll, just be ready.   I was born ready.  I wasn't.  If they ever do come in, though, if they ever do.  A battle for the ages.

It'll be a fine night.  And in the mean time?

It's been difficult to keep NORAD going.  Never falter.  We'er not at tying loose ends up yet.  Right now, take your choice when you walk in and I will match metal for metal.




///JDSY - "All Shapes"   ... shadow specifications are...  geometric ghosts are... hallucinations resolve into be ready for anything.

Wrecks, Dreamland, and Reconstruction

I went back to the scene of my car accident tonight.  Dreamland has been corrupted.  I keep having a recurring dream about it.  Cruising through dreamland last night I built a house of a little more than normal proportions.  My friend Matt and his buddy Ernie called me up after I finished eating lunch (sardines and fried centipedes... it actually wasn't that bad... all the legs and fish ribs were super crunchy inside the perogies).  Tom was there too.  Finished up eating, and the phone rang so I got up from the indoor beach with the five foot wide tv perched over the far water and went to go let them in.  Put on my fleece robe and tossed Tom the remote.  Walked down to the freight elevator and closed the gate and punched the ground floor.  The elevator went all the way down past the mech garage.  I had my bright red candy shell finished R 29 with extra plate and F990 shoulder mount long barrel with aftermarket cooling fins parked right beside it and it was awesome watching the light glint off of it.  Sometimes I spend days on the scaffold hand polishing it's entire body when I'm not joy riding it through the clear southwest desert night sky.

The elevator went all the way through to the floor and then ten feet below to the car garage and hillside entrance.  It's a short walk to the door and I let Matt and Ernie in.  Ernie asked me if I remembered going to his place the night before and showing up at three in the afternoon.  I said no.  I didn't.  I wasn't lying.  He asked me if someone hacked me, but I told him I wasn't online at all yesterday, but it's possible I might've caught something because I was online the day before pretty much the entire day looking for some rarer copies of an Ultraman graphic novel I used to have when I was a kid, but can't find in my library anymore.  He laughed.  That was probably what might've done it.  Matt offered to hit me up with a few patches to make sure whatever it was that wiped my memory didn't get passed around while they were over.  We took the lift back up and they asked Tom if I was a little off yesterday and he said "definitely."

I don't know why he didn't mention anything to me, but I guess that's what good friends do sometimes, and he's probably used to my oddness and figured it was the usual fare.  Or at least, the Tom I constructed and built into the dream did.  I told them we were out of sardines.  Because we were and if we were going to hit up the bars later it would probably be good not to over do it.  I don't know where the extra beach chairs came from but by the time we got back up to tv room they were already there.  We all started talking about whether or not we would blaze on our way up to the Silver Tusk.  I have a pretty sweet mech garage so there're plenty enough for each of us to blast out to the exosphere and dock at the Silver Tusk space station in geocentric orbit above our heads.

And then a giant tan sedan crashed through the wall behind the flat screen.  It blew it apart and was going so fast it skipped across the water and bit into the beach.  As soon as it touched down it started flipping and parts began whipping off of its underside like a pipe bomb built and stuffed with three foot long aluminum fence posts instead of nails.  I was standing behind them and it rolled right over them and chewed them up into meat before my eyes before a door came zinging off while it spun and I woke up with that door heading straight for my neck.

Every other dream since it happened has been like that.  No matter how I construct it or if I let it play and go along for the ride, they keep ending with cars careening through and killing everyone in one way or another.  So I went back to the place tonight.  It was weird walking up the off ramp.  I tried to think about what that kid could have been thinking that morning walking between the off ramp walls.  There's no where to go on either side.  If you leap off the far side of the corner it's a good ten foot drop.  Off of the inside corner there's some grass, but cars come much closer to the inside of the turn so your chances are much slimmer of even having time to react or think about jumping.  I like to drive in wide and then turn in tight and let the car bleed off speed while it grips in.  He was lucky for that.  If I came inside he would have been through my windshield.

The mark on the far wall when I swerved to avoid him was nothing tremendous.  It was mostly a tire scuff maybe a foot long at most.  It didn't speak at all to the damage done to the car.  There was no traffic tonight.  I walked out to the middle to pick up a piece of my bumper that was still there.  Just a shard.  I don't wonder why he ran away.  I would have too.  Was he daydreaming?  Did he want to die?  Was he just high?  Crouched there I started to remember when I was younger and I walked into traffic trying to get hit on Forbes avenue.  I wasn't particularly upset or anything, but I was ready to let my life go.  No one would hit me.  I did it again a few nights later with my eyes closed and I distinctly remember a bus blowing by me so close it spun me around when it brushed my black hoodie.  I wasn't upset, but I was impossibly trapped at the time and finished trying to figure out how to pick that particular lock.

I'm still putting my body back together.  From the car accident and the fall down the two flights of stairs and the bike accident (which was my own fault, just pushed my bicycle too hard after having it laid up for most of winter and a too cold spring).  Two hours a day of rehab work getting my back right.  A lot of my power comes from my torso and I messed up my hip and tailbone pretty ugly.  Nothing broken, but the deep bruising and muscle strains took their toll, but I'm getting back to a point where I can consider running again and hitting the weight room hard.  The reconstruction, the process of it has become consuming.  I was at a point where I could mess with whomever I wanted.  Sure, I didn't win every scuff, but I had confidence in my bones and tissues that spoke to having a decent shot as long as I wasn't piss drunk.  Not so now.  There's hesitation now.  There's memory tape now of the waking up in pain and not being able to sit up straight even in a well made chair.  Not being able to breath because my sternum hurt so bad.

My body is gathering force though.  Regaining moxy and it's difficult for me to have my limitations still in view.  I keep having internal arguments with myself shouting "don't do that, you're not ready yet."  And myself shouting back "or what?"  But I know what.  Humiliation, failure, more time lost in recovery.  What the reconstruction has also done though, is forced a new view upon me.  A new way of going about conflict. Handling passions I can't always contain effectively.  War bringing peace, in a way.

More than anything, I want so badly to speak to that kid face to face now that I don't want to skin him alive anymore.  I want to know, and I want to tell him I forgive him.


///Lo-Fidelity Allstars - "Smash and Grab World"  looking to the stars on a fucked up night.  Year end playlist is still in the works.  Just five months late.  No worries.

Redrum and Other Origins and Valuation

Is it wildly addictive, yeah of course.   Does it change you?  No not really.  There's a certain amount of disappointment that comes with it.  A certain amount of asking yourself questions that persist despite the time of day.  It's a pretty weird thing.  A confluence of circumstance and luck so thick I can talk about it now almost a year removed.   Can you imagine sitting on anything for a year?

I tried to talk to my friend about it and she pretty much shut me out.  That sucks.  I did not anticipate at all how I would be re evaluated.  That part of it has been hard to parse and it really has been across the board with each person I've shared it with, chosen to share it with.  It's an odd difficulty but I can understand the rejection.  I can understand it, but I don't have to accept it, I would like to think.

Do I feel better?  Not really.  Not as good as I thought I'd feel.  Kind of reminds me of paint snuffling. Very short lived and very gorgeous and very forgettable, but so far away from everything enjoyable on a common basis.  A rare sadness that presents some unforgettable joy.  It's difficult to talk about.  Because I know there are people missing her and all that.  It's difficult to relate because on top of that there is the knowledge of the missing and maybe that's why I don't sleep so good these last years.  Getting away without really getting away (heart in the floor kinda shit except ...)

The most difficult thing has been trying to relate this story without who I relate it to drastically reevaluating who I am as a person.  I'm still the same.  What's so difficult to understand about needing and finding practice?  I understand that I am a very strange and enchanted boy and eventually luck runs out, but how does that mean love evaporates?  Or should evaporate?  How come once suddenly doesn't mean enough?  I could understand trust lost.  I could understand that.  Total abandonment still stymies me.  I don't care what you did or what you do.  If I love you I love you.  That's it.  Where it starts and ends I guess.  I think that's all I wanted in return.  That's all.  Step by stepped is what I got.  Oh well.  let's explore more.  It's a big world and I've a small heart and there's a hell of a lot of music along the way.  we'll see where this goes, but honestly i want more comedy.  I don't think that's too much to ask.  Trying to increase my value to others, you know?   It is the first and last time I'll talk about it, so enjoy.

The Seatbelts - "Rain"  -  its a strange balance. even to me.  the worst being that i dont know its been struck yet.  knowing how i feel afterward i will try, but i cannot promise anything and i never will.

Cell By Cell

Had a bad run in with myself.  I'm laughing just saying it and hearing that phrase come out of my mouth and wondering how it is still possible.  Still possible to mount surprise attacks on my own fortress.  Woke up today in a fine mess of pain.  The important thing is the drought is over.  I had to break some ground to get at the well.  Wake myself up again.  The dreaming has been fantastic.  I wish I could sleep forever, but that's unreasonable.  Not irrational.  There's a difference sometimes.  Even in my country.

It is odd, I do suppose.  The sensation of being outside yourself and watching the sublet drive it straight into empty air on the wrong side of a cliff.  It's nice to be back.  It always is, even though I know it won't last and never does.  Pull the circuit board out and wave it in the wind until it stops smoking.  Pop out the fried resistors and solder in some new ones with the same ratings; their the biggest baddest ones you can get on the street.  Slide the board back in and fire it up.  Note the time and date.  Log the lost information and missing sectors.  Build new ones in the virtual environment.  Repopulate.  Repeat as necessary.

Reconstruction.  It's like a gunman went cell by cell through the complex.  Cell by cell through the prison and gunned down every inmate.  It's an unfamiliar quiet.  And then you remember you told someone you were a sociopath trapped in a citizen body.  I wonder what Jeff's doing right now.  I wonder if he'll take my call on a Saturday even though I'm not seeing him anymore.  I don't know what he would have to say.  He said if I ever thought of a good joke I should drop him a line.  Psychiatrists.  I've been trying since our last meeting two years ago to think of one and for the life of me I can't.

He'll laugh anyway, to make me feel less awkward and it'll work.  Maybe I just want to hear him laugh.  He'd be proud of the work I was doing.  He wouldn't entirely get it, but that's fine.  Poetry is a fickle beast.  Half the time I don't get it either.  He'll put it up on his fridge if I wrote him something on the couch.  He'll take it down after I leave and add it to my file.  I wonder if he still has that file. Probably not.  I vaguely remember him telling me, when I told him I was thinking about joining the army, that he is obligated to destroy records older than seven years.

I miss him.  I had a bad run in with myself.  I'm laughing just saying it out loud.  How did this happen?  Why?  I don't understand.  I like to think it's somewhere down that rabbit hole.  I used to wonder if I was color blind.  Then I stopped worrying about it.  I think I scratched my eye ball yesterday.  I miss his note taking.  You might be out of your god damn mind.  Eventually he stopped taking notes.  Which was fine.  It is kind of a tall order getting to know someone that close out of nowhere without taking notes.  I wonder sometimes what he was doing or expecting his week to be like that first Monday I walked in there.  I wonder if he still thinks about me too.  If I still populate his cells.


///El-P - "Stay Down"

Circle Back

I am circling back and taking my time to do it.  Care is the order of the day.  I posted some old stories to Bits.  It's funny sometimes looking at how the composition has changed.  How some of the sentence structure has remained the same and some has mutated.

I edited the names out.  Not for protection against embarassment, but because it was a collective effort and the whole idea about collective effort is not knowing who contributed what to make the final product.  More than that though, I was trying to hide my voice.  I want to rework that story.  It's good, thus far, lower case letter t$$$, but seriously, it is a good start and was a good start to something really violent and heavy and it needs a good twenty to thirty thousand more words to make it polished.  I'm willing to do it.  You know I'm willing to do it.  I just have to do it, and that's why I put it out there.  That, and just to say thank you too to an old friend I ain't talked to in far too long who put a good idea in my head and then vanished.  I'm on the hunt for several a thing.  this is one of them.  Chasing my tail.

Not Again. Yes Again

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

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

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


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