Over The River and Through The Woods

It's been a long trip here. Back here. I should say. A lot of different pressures. A lot of losses. One of those peculiar things. Not one, several. I got dumped. Not exactly big news. I also broke up with someone. Two different people. At the same time. In the same span of conversation. And then was propositioned again. By the person I just dumped and the offspring of the person who left me. Mainly all I could think was "how is this even possible." Mainly all I could do was do nothing and ask for some time to think about the entire course of the 48 hours.

A lot of my creative time was damaged leading up to that point, which was part of why I had to leave and be let go. Part of it was biological incompatibilities. Vaginas and tiny dicks. What's a boy to do? The proposition is worse than the original make up. Better in it's emotional make up. Worse in it's biological make up, but closer to normal than the previous one, but altogether worse because the venue is the same, with the same accouterments and attendant chemical problematics and it would be so much less, if it wasn't so much more. Hours to land on the same page, hours to read each other, hours to post script to everyone's satisfaction. Hours and hours of time I would rather spend writing. Hours to spend dreaming spent instead in interaction I need, but don't want.

Tripping round and round town and all the while stalking through my own dreams when I do sleep to find the nemesis. The dreaming has been spectacular in it's depth. And also time consuming. The hunt largely unsuccessful. The body count, however, relatively high. I have found, in there, many things to fear and many things that could bleed that I never thought would until I tried in moments I would normally wake from, but instead followed on. It's hard sometimes when they're the ones hiding from you and there is nothing to do beyond waiting. Sitting and waiting to feel well enough to wake up. Charged enough to support waking hours. Pacing through dreams. I've been over the territories. Every god damn way. Without success. I'm beginning to think he won't show until I stop looking. Like those stupid Super Mario ghosts. I'll get him though. Just a matter of time. Patience.



Things have been scatter formed. Trying to get back on a pace. Any pace. I had a pace you could set an erratic watch to. A watch that was missing some teeth. And had a cracked face. And the watch band was either too tight or too loose, but you could never lose it because the minute it was not on your wrist you knew it because you didn't feel anything at all. I lost my watch. I'm finding it again and I can't fuck it up again.

I mean, I can. I will. Because I've fucked it up at least ten times before. Closer to twenty. But I'm trying. This makes twenty one. Or something around there. The quality of the poetry has been. That is all. It just has been. Not too dark, not too light. So I have to keep doing that. I just wish the erratic and hit and miss was just one long string of things I could stand next to and be proud of instead of a whole lot of things I have to read twenty four hours later to understand and begin to appreciate or begin to hate and then it's like picking up old photographs on a coffee table at grandmother's house and you scratch your chin for a minute and then think oooooh yeah, I was there, wasn't I. God damn that sweater is terrible. What was I thinking. But, damn I looked good then. I hate grandmother's house.

Over the river and through the woods, to dreamland's houses we go. Off to slay the thoughts of the day and retrace my footsteps in snow.

I'm not going to talk about my mental state. There are things in the dark and there are things in the light and all of them would kill you given the chance. Stay alert. Watch the corners. Don't point at the sky, because one day it will point back at you. Don't chase the sounds, unless they are following. Don't chase the splits in the seams of your vision, because people will think you are crazy. Don't listen to the voices. If you ignore them long enough, they'll tell you something special you wouldn't have thought about on your own. And that thing will be so amazing the only way you could relate it to someone who was not there, inside you, is by saying nothing and leaving it all up to the rattle of tree leaves and two A.M. hounds that think they are scrap metal boatswains to rails.


///Mono - "High Life" ... all you live is the high life and never come down... loved this song in high school. still do. Mono always had a sound that completely took me in and I loved them for that.

///Mono - "Life in Mono" I never know exactly what to do, but they never make it easy to walk away. Expectations too great. I want to say. And then the little voice in the back of my head whispers, maybe this is it, for now. So leave nothing on the table.

Year End Playlist

I almost made it out of 2011 on my own. That statement is a huge exaggeration. It wasn't even close, but I'm getting there. Still spent as much time in the depths of space as I did in 2010. A lot of it took a lot of time to remember and reconstruct. To allow the construction of a playlist. Last.fm and scrobble helped a lot. There were several dead spaces of weeks where I was nowhere to be found and they were like wildlife tags, homing beacons to where things really fell apart and even that negative space, the nothing, could tell me a lot about what I was listening to on my headphones, apart from my desktop and sometimes here and sometimes gone internet connection. Wild.

It was difficult and joyous combing through the year week by week and trying to sum up months in a single song. Here it is, though. The music that made life a little easier to comprehend and, frankly, live through last year.

Jan 2011>> Menomena - Muscle N' Flow Go
Feb 2011>> Björk - Wanderlust Go
Mar 2011>> El-P feat. Camu Tao - Oxycontin Go
Apr 2011>> Mono - Mere Your Pathetique Light Go
May 2011>> Matthew Dear - R+S Go
Jun 2011>> Hot Chip - No Fit State Go
Jul 2011>> The Black Angels - Better Off Alone Go
Aug 2011>> Gorillaz - To Binge Go
Sep 2011>> Mouse on Mars – Circloid Bricklett Sprüngli Go
Oct 2011>> Cold Cave - The Great Pan Is Dead Go
Nov 2011>> Lo-Fidelity Allstars - Weather 2 Go
Dec 2011>> Daedelus - You're The One Go

This is the official tax return for 2011. The books have been, after a fashion, balanced. The door is officially closed on what was a year of unexpected highs and grim marched lows. Looking forward to doing another one, but no promises. Hopefully something there connects with you, but it is, kinda selfishly, mostly a record for me. Validated parking? In a way, yes. But hopefully, it'll paint the year, my year, for you.

Massive thank yous go out, regardless of what it is, to the people who left and came back, the people who left and never did return, the people who made life great, and the people who made me wake up some days with that twinkle in my eye that said "today is going to be incredible." Extra special thank yous to the people who got me out of doors when I least expected to be called out, to the people who shared drinks, and the people who made sure, as I went down in flames, that I had somewhere to land where there would not be any collateral damage to other lives. Thank you to the rescuers, and the warners, and the policemen and policewomen without badges, the damage controllers, the picker-uppers, and the cheerers. The shooters and the hand claspers. It was a transformative year like few before it. An enlightening, disheartening, nearly dying more times than I would like to admit go at being more human than the human I was the year before and I'm sorry it took so long to put together for many a several reasons I don't need to get into right now.

I'm happy it's over, but more than that, I'm happy I'm alive to see it go.


///múm - Dancing Behind My Eyelids ...see the fog on the horizon

Behold Yall

The Auralport

Bang! It's sort of up and running. It Still needs some minor tweaks and twists, but for the most part that will be the look. I feel good about where it's going.



I didn't get to redesigning the banner here, I know, but on the bright side I did manage to create a whole new layout over yonder at the nexus of poetry so it's not a total loss. In fact it's not even a major loss. If anything it's kind of like a 40/60 split decision win.

We'll find the time to redo this page's banner tomorrow for certain. That is a guarantee I can get behind. I hope I didn't guarantee that last time (that would put a serious dent in my truthiness).

///Mono - "Penguin Freud" I don't know if I told you, but this was the song I was listening to when the towers fell all those years ago.