Preparing For Changes and the Return of the Painted Dinosaur

We've been drinking a lot.  The nice thing about self medicating is that you can up or down your dosage as needed without the pain or risk of seeing "professionals", though the time elapsed has gifted a pro status to yourself.  That professionalism about the approach can easily get away from you in much the same way an infinite prescription pad can get away from you and the dulling of sensation and thought and process will become a pea beneath a mattress. 

We are going to strip some away.  Artificial feeling.  Artificial sense.  Changes are coming and they're going to be unpleasant, but carrying around the ghosts in the darkness constantly is not possible.  Face them.  Face them.  Face them.  Face them.  Face them.  There is no winning or losing.  There is fear.  You've been normal, you've been good,  you've engaged, you've laughed, you've loved, you've cried, you've walked back and forth three hundred and eight times and you can't push anything new until you open the box. 

So we're going to open the box so we can write our poetry again and stop pretending we're fine.  We're not.  Haven't been for months.  How great a run has it been?  It's been fun.  The muddy boots and gloves, the tools misplaced, the hysterics, the silence, they don't lie.  Eventually it feels like building a carnival atop mass graves and playing the music loud enough to drown out the way foot falls squeeze blood from between the blades of grass and insisting to the patrons it's just part of the show.  I'm looking forward to it.

Funny Feedback Loops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




///Gorillaz - "O Green World"

Little Ripples

There are many measures and routines to help ensure our stability and further existence in schizophrenia's shadow.  Not a single one is bulletproof or sure-fire.  They're more like an array of alarms.  A network of self-imposed checks that serve to help me protect myself from myself and help me maintain an awareness of what is happening inside as well as help me perceive how or why I am interacting with people on the outside.  It sounds elaborate.  It is.  It works sometimes.  Maybe 50% of the time.  That's too low, maybe 65% of the time.  I believe.  I would like to think.

The auditory hallucinations are always there.  Sometimes the best way to handle it is to drown it out or try to blanket it in constant music or reruns of radio talk shows or television shows that I've heard dozens, in some cases, hundreds of times so that it forms a background tapestry to latch myself to.  Sometimes the way we handle it is by drinking... a lot.  If you hammer your brain into unconsciousness, you can't hear anything at all and what's more is that you can skip entire days sleeping while your body tries to recover itself.  Those auditory glitches cannot hurt you and you don't have to engage with them for 7 days out of the week.  Through the gift of alcohol, your week becomes 4 days long instead of 7.  That's not the best way to deal with it.  That is a way to escape it.  Sometimes the best way to deal with it is to try to engage them outside of yourself.  Try to write to them or draw to them or just talk to them through your mouth if possible.  That never works.  Nothing ever works.  Don't kid yourself.

It does help us to feel secure for a while.  The acts help us feel grounded to something and allow us to move through the world and focus on tasks, conversations, and people in front of us.  It isn't always paralyzing, but it grows all its own.  Sometimes it's fun to think I can control it.  Will power.  Discipline.  Routine.  Everything where it belongs.  Simplicity.  All of these things.  Then I'm in a line at a grocery store asking the man behind me "did you say something" four times before it hits me walking to my car that he's the fifth person I've questioned that day and things are slipping from bad to worse and my little network of alarms is not helping.  Sitting up in bed, watching shows I've seen thirteen times, and getting up for an eighth time to check that I'm alone because someone else is in here and I heard them say my name twice and I know it's not the neighbor downstairs because she goes to bed at 8:45 every night.  Someone keeps turning the doorknob to the pantry and I heard them stub their toe and curse.  Jesus, they are inside.  We have to go.  Now!

Walk out underneath the street lights and it's 11:30ish.  Headphones turned up as loud as they will go.  Walk around the block.  We try to memorize every detail and compare it to what was there before we started walking.  We compare it to what was there after our evening lap.  We try to see if we are seeing things again and a shadow grunts "pssst, hey" so we decide to walk to the next town over and avoid the bridge because they will be waiting there to howl through our insides and if I could get to the park and lie down in the field for an hour or two to catch my breath the world might stop spinning for a moment.

I feel depression creeping in again.  A very light pressure behind my ears and chest.  A dull railroad spike through the near corner of my eye straight through the back of my head that will start to crystallize and splinter outward like a molten iron snowflake.  I start to question again.  Who wants to deal with this?  How could we have been so blind and over confident to believe love can iron out differences whose gulf spans literally every aspect of your lives?  You broke, dumb, idealistic, garbage, man-child.  What is that?  Who's there?  Lying awake in bed until the sun comes up wondering if he is going to come for you tonight.  Sitting on the cool bathroom floor telling yourself "never again, never again, never again."  You didn't really believe someone would choose this warped, scarred, perverse thing over a human.  Did you?  How sweet.  That is just adorable.

I still receive letters from time to time from the people that were my parents.  Some expressing concern and well wishes.  Some acknowledging holidays and other spiritual flotsam and sentiment.  I feel my fist close and my fingernails dig into my palm.  How dare they.  How dare they.  How dare they!  Still, not one acknowledgement of responsibility.  Not one acknowledgement that part of why I am here now, fighting every day to navigate through and undo the damages where I can, is because of their compounding actions for decades .  Not one hint.  Swipe at my twitching cheek that is curled into a stone snarl and spit out another piece of chipped tooth.  I have to stop doing that.  We only get one set of teeth.  We probably won't get to drink their blood any time soon.  That's a shame.

How can you love someone else, when you cannot love yourself?  I do love myself.  I love other people too.  The simple fact is we're broken.  Period.  Not fixable.  You can try all of the little things you like to lure someone else close: more money, a little land, cars and furniture, clothes and shoes, it is not going to change the base state of how you function.  What's more, and pretty funny, is that the base state of how you function also governs all of those things too.  You'll end up asleep in a bathtub chasing those things, we all know this first hand.  I haven't the stomach for it or the mental health and make up.  It won't take long to stop seeking meaningful intimacy with others.  I'm already just about there.  Roiling hatred transposes to the grainy, rattling, vision of rage.  Kill them all.  I have nothing to offer you and rare in this world is the human who truly needs nothing.  I am close.  I will find someone in kind.  Or I will stumble upon them in the dark.  Either way, I am not built for this world.

The hallucinations are growing in volume.  It is best to be alone when it starts to happen.  It's a lot easier to differentiate and stream thoughts apart from them when there isn't someone else around requiring attention and head cycles.  The frustration and irritation and embarrassment is greatly reduced and sometimes it helps to deal with and engage it when I can strictly control what I am sensing.  To a point.  There is a point where it doesn't matter what we do to insulate and protect ourselves because the assault is coming from the inside of our body and eventually there is no where to hide and nowhere to run and I try my best not to claw my skull apart.   I try my best not to scream.

Moving through the day and the little ripples tickling the hairs on my fingers and shins, I pause and whisper "not again."  That was not my name.  That was not my name.  That was not my name.




///Muriel Zoe - "Bye Bye Blackbird"

Fandom Changes With Age

Maybe there's less energy to go around in general as people age.  I think it has more to do with developing an identity.  Fandom is steadily fading year by year.  It will never go away entirely.  Football Sunday will still be football Sunday.  The Steelers will always be fun to watch and their games against the Ravens will always be my favorite games to watch and if they make the playoffs I'll watch those games too.  The Pirates are still the Pirates.  When I stumble across a game on the radio or on television I'll listen in or sit down for an hour or two to take them in.  The Penguins will still be the Penguins.  Their games will still be a lot of fun to listen to on the radio, especially on the radio.  Listening to hockey on the radio is one of those things that's actually more entertaining and exciting than watching it on television.

Fandom will not completely go away, but as I have more things to get done and have built a life in Pittsburgh I feel connected with the city without needing to feel like I have to embrace and demonstrate that connection through waving a sports flag.  Sitting in front of a computer screen, waiting for a fantasy draft to start, I had a moment where I heard a voice in my head say "what the hell am I doing" and I closed the screen.  No fantasy sports this year.  It's extraneous.  It's plastic.  I realized I didn't want to spend weekdays keeping an eye on waiver wires and fretting about teams I don't care about at all.  I follow the Steelers and that's good enough for me.

There's not much more to enjoy about your local teams besides watching them play once in a while and feeling a little civic pride when they win and a little let down if they lose.  However, as you grow into a person with your own loves and affections for the place that you live, your civic pride comes less and less from what happens to your sports teams and more and more from what you do within and around your town and city.

Two years ago, a Steelers loss could make the entire rest of my week until the next game absolutely miserable.  Three years ago, it was misery, screaming at the television and throwing things at the walls of my apartment.  The following year was screaming misery and jubilation and throwing things.  The following year, fandom faded to shouting at the television and occasionally jumping up and down.  This year, I'll probably still shout at the t.v. from time to time, but other than that, it'll just be a fun diversion once a week for the Fall and Winter.  I know some of the roster, but it's not encyclopedic knowledge the way it used to be.  I don't know when they play the Ravens, but I'll find out and probably mark the games on my calendar.

I'll still buy the occasional Black and Gold trinket as years go by.  I'll still go out of my way to hear about some sports news every day.  I'm going to be a fan for life.  As I get older, the fanatic in me fades away and I'm not unhappy to see it go.




/// Jimmy Pol - "Steelers Fight Song"

The Year End Look

Never forget that any day you do not think about killing yourself is a pretty damn good day.  Let's run the damage report to begin.  One concussion.  One fractured jaw.  Pretty okay.  What the hell, did we learn?  What is the outlook on this year?  I am afraid of saying "I don't know."  It's all there.  I don't want to sift through it.  Slug through it.  I want to try to take my reference point from the year end look to begin 2015 and see where we go; so let's go!

First of all, caution paid off.  Before the major injury to my face, everything was humming on the hardware.  When you suffer a debilitating injury, a person cannot help slipping into ways to deal with that pain.  No friends were lost and no new real friends were won.  Relationships grew deeper and more sovereign.  The realization that the only person who can take care of you at the bottom line, when bone strikes metal, is you and the only person you can rely on absolutely, the only person you can control with high fidelity is you.  Everyone else are variables.  Your friends will help you and attempt to intercede and interject.  Some who do are tourists.  That is acceptable.  Emotional tourism is a fact of life.

Nice guys finish last, but they finish clean and if that means something to your heart then it is absolutely worth pursuing.  You cannot wear hats that do not fit before they blow off in the wind or constrict the blood vessels in your forehead hard enough to give you a migraine.  Through the incident, I learned that I am a violent person at heart, but the jacket around that bullet is a jacket formed in a forge of love, kindness, emotion and the ability to feel.  Sure, sometimes you feel nothing and sympathy and empathy are things I have to manufacture, but I realized very quickly, unable to eat, laugh, smile, frown, grimace, sneeze or cough, that manufactured or not, however you arrive at it, rage and violence is not the way to go.  Thinking back on it, had I lashed out and taken the governors off of myself and won the day instead of trying to talk it through and getting cold cocked, I would be sitting at home afraid to go out at night, worried that someone I did something to still remembers and is looking for me and I have no idea what their faces look like.  In retrospect, I am fine with the outcome and more comfortable in my own skin for it.  I know the switch is there.  They do not.  That is all the security I need.  Sometimes I ask myself if I am being too nice.  I ask myself if I am behaving too well.  I shrug.  I tell myself I am not a rat on a sinking ship.  Certainly, I am not the king of the rats.  There is much more to do with my life than project my violent heart on the screens of the world around me.  What happens when the video skips and the rainbow scaled dragon leaps across the screen and azure clouds belching constellations and weapons blueprints?  Focus less on projections and more on allowing that mean streak to roll.  Why guide it?  Kick back and watch the waves break and listen to the sound.  A person doesn't stand at the sea's lip and scream at the waves.  Attempt to enjoy it, understand where they are from, listen to the sound, and watch the sun set.  Nice guys finish last; violent guys finish dead.

I am pressing myself toward creating music.  A good friend of mine is fairly deep into the art and it is intriguing.  I didn't talk about it much last year because I didn't expect it to come forward in the ways that it did.  I didn't compose a single story last year.  I did, but I did not write a single one down.  There is no writer's block.  Task lock engaged pretty hard through the year.  What I thought would be three months off turned into three, then four, months of person to person tasking.  Exchanging information at a very high rate.  Person to person relationships are still amazing difficult to me to this day.  I can do it.  I CAN do it.  It takes heaven, earth, and hell out of me to make it happen.  It is like cutting off one's own digits one at a time.  Day by day.  Another knuckle.  Another knuckle.  Another knuckle.  At the palm?  Next digit.  Fingernail.  Knuckle.  Another knuckle.  Another knuckle.  Another knuckle.  At the palm?  Next digit.

On the cusp of actual free time, I am typing with nubs.  The fingers are growing back.  Healing the psychological wounds.  It's amazing to think about how I am still alive.  Think about the conversations that lead to continuing to soldier on.  There were two very bad psychological breaking points that I did not see coming.  I know it does not mean that I am getting better.  It doesn't mean that I'm getting worse either.  I haven't abandoned writing.  It's grown distant.  More intangible than it's ever been.  "What's the point?"  When so many outside forces are bearing down on you and you don't answer the phone and it goes 'click'.  I laugh and cry because you never know if the next phone call is going to be the one in the chamber.

The year was severely back loaded with surprises and paperwork.  I am still working on the sleeve of scarification.  I still use the strokes on my face as a daily reminder to never forget what I cannot go back to.  I am envious sometimes that some people have "home"s.  I nearly slipped up.  It was a phenomenal year for seeing my sister.  She is wonderful and sprite.  The suggestions creep in: open the door a little.  Do not.  Do not ever.  I remind myself each morning that I am where I am with what freedom and freedoms I do have by, to coin my father's phrase "pruning."   To let them back in is to let years and years of work fall away.  The garden is not beautiful.  It is in animal and entity.  Do stellar objects have a soul and intent?  Yes.  I will not subject myself to it again.  Ever.  I will never go back.  "I don't hate you either, but I really don't like you."  The kind phrase he put together after I finally told him I didn't hate him.  I wasn't lying.  No one was asked to be born.  You cannot hate your point of origin.  It is you.  Whether you like it or not.  The only thing separating him from outright hate is the blood connection.

If you will, allow me this thought experiment:

Your memories begin where they will.  Your father is just some guy you are forced to live with for the first 24 years of your life.  Can you hate him?  Yes.  Now, that guy happens to be the person who impregnated the womb you came out of.  You realize you would not exist, save for his cock.  Can you hate him?  Well, we're all here now and conscious.  Yes and no.  If there is a flake, a sliver, a hair between hate and intense "fuck him and his whole set up" to quote Josh Norman,  yes.  The only thing stopping me from outright hatred is the unfortunate fact that he decided to create another person with her (which holds her culpable too; is where the pass card comes in, but the general manager and the head coach come and go as a pair).  It is kind of funny to wonder who the owner is.  I laugh thinking about a god as the team owner.  God is like "what the fuck, we need to move this franchise and clean house."  The commissioner is saying, god's god, is saying "aye Danny, you've got to do something with this team, ticket sales are bombing."

The early months of the year was a fantastic cruise of steady work and hand tools.  When everything boiled down to getting people to talk to one another and getting people to a place to sign forms, things got dicey.  I left a few relationships behind in 2015.  I realized I will never be my brother's equal and he will never see the world through my lens.  Same thing with my older sister.  If I never see either one of them again I will not be better for it, but I will never be worse for it either.  Not the case with my little sister.  Every time I get to see her I learn something new and a new way to be.  My family doesn't shrink year by year.  The depth of my connection with the folks around me that I can call and respond with as family grows.  No love has been lost, though some has changed as their relationships to their loved ones and their religions changes.

I think, as we loop around the year and close in on the last things, we are moving in an appropriate direction.  The death threats are real.  Make no mistake.  My love for the friends that I can call family in my new colony is real.  My love for my little sister is real.  My ambivalence toward my elder siblings is real.  As I get older, my tolerance for pain increases as a function of my diminishing indestructibility.  I feel sad for connections that burned out faster than I thought they would, but everyone has their own lives and what is convenient and warm and loving to you is harassment and pipe dreaming and gaudy and ancient and plastic and misplaced to them.

The reason no one talks to you may be because your ability to survive is so tightly tied to your ability to carry a conversation with yourself and the other human beings around you are polite enough, kind enough, human enough, to not interrupt.

The takeaway from 2015 is that we are more conscious than ever before.  We still feel and we still can.  We can love and we can hate and we will take caution.  Our days are numbered and taking the most out of each one is not important at all.  We will never be famous.  We will never be complete.  Our family is not the family we were born into, but we can run operating systems on top of each other to make a complete system.  You're not born alone and you will not ever, ever, die alone.  Waste your breath, waste your time, but do not trick yourself into believing a moment is ever wasted in putting down your hammer, your knife, your gun, your fire, your heart string marionette, your pen, your piss jar, your hat with matching gloves, your shoes, your cigarette, your car keys, your lube, your teeth, your comb, eyeshadow, rubber band, your space suit, your glasses, your sword, your helmet, means nothing.

2015 taught me about faith in people.  Faith in friends.  They don't have to know everything about you to know where you are from.  They don't have to tell you what you mean to them to understand you should pick up the damn phone now and then.  Sometimes it works the opposite way.  You don't have to worry your pretty head about tabs.  They're watching and waiting the same way you are.  Fires on hillsides miles apart on the same planet.  Give them the credit due yourself.   I love you.  It was a good year.  The friends that I do have and the friends that I can call family sincerely, from Houston to NYC to California to Washington to Baltimore to Michigan... well, it's America off of the top of my head... ain't no family overseas.  The point is this: I am not alone in 2015.

I don't know what 2016 will bring.  I am taking on new jobs and expanding limits of circuitry and I am afraid.  It is going to be messy by my standards.  The outlook is heavy and hardline and will take a focus I have not had to muster before.  The bonus will be a new body for this red dragon.  And, and, and, no one will have to die to get there, yeah?  Yeah!  How good is that.  How great is that.  It will not be nose to the grind stone.  2016 will be about how far do you trust me?  I promise you that you will not be able to throw me that far.  I weigh upwards of 185 pounds.  It's only going to get heavier as I get back into the gym after being forced to take three months off when I screwed up and got my face fractured.  How far can you throw 200 pounds?  Joking.  I do think trust will come into play in a big way this year.  Trust in caution, trust in going through the motions of writing to find my muse again, trust in friends to standby and trust in friends to see their vision along their lines and do what is asked of me without question.  

Let's make 2016 about trust and make progress on our scarification sleeve.

Let's do it.  It's not going to be comfortable.  It's not going to be easy.  If you want easy, kill yourself.




///How To Dress Well - "Us In The Sense of Forever"

///*the year end playlist up next

Nearing the End of the Third Week With a Fractured Jaw

With roughly 75% of the range of motion returning and constant pain beginning to subside for several hours at a time I feel pretty good about not going to a hospital on this one.  Had there been a clear break in the bone I definitely would have gone to get whatever metal was needed implanted and get wired shut.  Sometimes it baffles me how interconnected the bodies musculoskeletal system is and I am constantly reminded of how layered its concert is.

I didn't realize how many different ways and how often I shift my jaw and slide my teeth against each other when I am processing information or thinking through conversation or using my eyes and ears to take information in.  Left, right, backwards, forwards, clenching some sections of teeth and relaxing others at the same time.  Everything from pulling on a door knob, to swinging a hammer, to stretching, sitting down, standing up, turning my head, opening a mailbox, to driving a stick shift is tied to the muscle groups around the neck and jaw.  Suddenly hundreds if not thousands of long memorized motions and activities that you could perform with blindfolded confidence are thrown into doubt.  "Is this going to hurt?"  "How will this affect the healing cracks?"  "Will this pull apart soft scar tissues not yet stabilized and calcified into bone?"  In the third week I am starting to regain some confidence.

For most of the first and second week the pain never felt less than a five or six on a 10 point scale throughout the day from waking to sleep.  Depression became a huge factor.  You are not sad because of what happened or how it happened.  You become depressed because you cannot laugh without shooting pain.  You become depressed because you cannot fall asleep because of sudden spikes of pain that cut through your over the counter pain killers like the barrel of a bat slamming into a light bulb tucked inside a pillow case.  You become depressed because the muscles of your tongue and throat put enough pressure on the angle of your jaw, right on the side of the cracks, to make your eyes tear up when you swallow what you can.  Everything you casually associated with happiness in sleep, smiling, laughter, rest, sustenance, is hot wired and reprogrammed to fear and ache and apprehension and anger and it weighs on you hour after hour after hour until depression becomes crushing.

In week three many self imposed restrictions are beginning to lift.  I can get through the day and night without a single pain pill.  The constant background ache has dropped to an occasionally noticeable two or three.  When I press on the impact site gently, the bone doesn't flex and make crunching sounds.  In the second week I successfully set the condyle back into its natural position.  I couldn't help crying for several minutes afterward.  It was important and necessary as my bite was out of alignment from front to back.  Once I did that the grinding noise right at the ramus's tip finally stopped and when I bandaged my mouth closed with a thick elastic wrap my teeth sat almost as evenly as they did before.  I think that dislocation is probably what saved the angle from snapping clean through.

I can almost yawn again.  I still have to brace my chin when I sneeze.  At the end of this third week I can chew very soft pasta and cheese and drink thick soup relatively pain free, but I am taking it extremely carefully to be absolutely certain I don't retard the healing process or get too enthusiastic about my food choices.  It felt so good to finally be able to scrub my beard again without fireballs of pain shooting through my face.  Nothing changes the complexion of the day like starting it off with a good deep beard scrubbing, good god I missed that.

All of my anger and hatred toward the people that did this to me is gone.  What really makes me happy is not caring what happens to them.  Being able to let their aggression go and not have a second thought about retaliation or feeling like I'm owed something or that I owe them something.  The transaction is over.  What matters is what you decide to do next for yourself.  What matters is that lying in bed your jaw doesn't sag and fall to one side like a screen door with one hinge.  What matters is that you survived and you can physically laugh again without fear of splitting bone apart from the spirited ways in which you normally like to jump on life's comedy.

I still cannot laugh too much or the pain piles up and grows to wince worthy proportions and twists my face sour.  I still can't make some facial expressions.  I still can't sustain hours of conversation, but then again I was never particularly great at making conversation as much as listening to it, but it is still something to get used to realizing that I can only say so many words before I have to rest and close my mouth tightly.  I still can't clench my teeth in consternation.  I can feel some lingering instability and pain in the healing dislocated joint when I run up or down stairs or shake or nod my head too vigorously.  Hopefully these things and instabilities will pass as week four progresses.

I know there is potential for some level of permanent pain in the joint since it was not reset by a professional and was not wired shut to ensure speedy and complete recovery of the fracture site.  There were evenings when I slept and would wake with a start in the second week so abrupt I could feel the joint strain and hear the angle click and flex.  There was a day when I woke to a spider landing on my cheek and a slapped at my face and new before the pain even registered that I screwed up big time in doing so and set myself back all of whatever healing occurred through that day.  Common sense tells me this too, as my back injury from two and a half years ago still bothers me from time to time and sends numb sensations down my right buttock and thigh if the barometric pressure is too far off from my body.

Some of the nerves likely died as well as there is noticeably diminished feeling along the left side of my jaw bone.  I expected as much.  I expected the worst, but progress has been good and some levity has returned to day to day life.  I am not out of the woods yet.  Two to three more weeks to go before I'll try to bite into a piece of meat that hasn't been blended to the consistency of mashed potatoes.  At least three more weeks before I try to bite into an apple.  I think I may attempt a sandwich next Saturday... a grilled cheese or peanut butter and jelly.  My tummy can't wait to have fun with food with my mouth.

The food has been spectacular.  At first, the only things I could eat were nutrient shakes and very thin liquids for the first two weeks.  Very finely blended and extremely water heavy meals put through the blender and then only a half cup or so every few hours because the pain was too intense to do much more than that.  Since then the horizons have begun to grow and meals become more intricate.  Right now it's an assortment of pastes and soups of varying composition, from fresh bell peppers ground into bacon pate with rice and spinach soups drizzled all around to sweet bean mashed potatoes with soft sharp chedder shredded over the top alongside peas carrot beef mash and oreos in a little cup on the side blended into a desert syrup.  Nothing makes lunch quite like peanut butter and jelly paste beside a cup of milk.  It has been a little bit of a challenge and through the first two weeks I lost 25 pounds, but as time is getting on, some of the weight has come back.

I still feel weak from not being able to work out or move much, but some strength has returned and will only increase as the healing progresses.  At the end of week 3, I feel alright about the future.  There's a decent chance I will be close to what I was before my jaw was fractured and dislocated.  I know I will never be the same, but I am alive and can continue and I am happy for that.  Happy with that.  It kind of mirrors my mental problems that I deal with and constantly manage without medicine.  I know I will never be better than I was, but I can try to make sure I don't completely unravel and if I can be close to as sound as I was the day before then I have done the best I can.




///Deptford Goth - "Objects Objects"  the bass filled silence between the searing walls of the chaotic

Summer Days Are Beautiful

Summer days are beautiful.  Walk around in the grass that probably should have been cut yesterday and feel how fluffy and wet it is before the sun dries it out.  Take time away from watering the garden to blow a bubble of mist around you and spin yourself around to see the rainbow halo around your waist.  The birds are off on their errands.  By now you do not hear their 5:30 A.M. alarm, but you will miss it a lot when it is gone and cold water chills instead of refreshes.

Sit in the wet grass and feel it soak through your shorts and underwear to the hairs and through to your skin.  Wiggle down a little and lean back on your elbows and wait for the sun and the breeze to start drying your hair for you.  Blowing kisses on the backs of your ears and neck and every few minutes a touch of lips to cheek and eyebrow, no more.  A slip of hands around your wet hips and up your back until you cannot help a giggle, no more.

I am just like you, though we are different.  Thinking about what my insides look like after patching things, jumping circuits, replacing parts, swapping connections, and fabricating new ones over and over again to keep on going, to function in place of everything that was torn out or never mounted or heavily damaged from the beginning.  Thinking about the engineering and trial and error and discovery it took to get there, sitting in a backyard, watering a garden, and laughing at the sun, cooing in the palm of earth's hand, content.

Though we are different.  The obstacles are unbelievable sometimes.  Taking responsibility sometimes crosses into blaming myself for everything and hating myself and my make up more and more and more until all I can feel or think about is killing myself and it feels so good, so great, to remember the afternoon, even as obstacles to continued or increased or even maintained success close the horizon in every direction like the lips around an enormous crater.

It makes me smile wry: 30 years old, crippling social anxieties, manic depression, paranoid schizophrenia, anger management "problems," bringing in a whopping $12,000 a year, and ... what?  I don't know.  I don't know what is next.  I've been lied to again and lost all confidence in what I thought I would do until I retired or never retired.  That sweet sweet 12k paycheck.  It is a joke.  At 30?  Is that really the best I am going to be able to do?

After I discovered that I had no job security whatsoever and a friend explained to me how my job has allowed me to stay in place and build a foundation for my life, but that the very nature of my job would not allow me to grow much further than that, she asked me about what I wanted to do.

I always want to write, but that's not a career for me for the foreseeable future.  That's for fun.  My passion and deep rooted connection to writing has its origins in my inabilities to communicate and express myself and my ideas through normal everyday means a lot, I would say most, people enjoy.  It is a love and desire best described as an unexpected, exceptionally useful, child of the continuous process of patching and repairing and placing new equipment where normal/standard/necessary/"born with" equipment was never mounted to begin with or ripped away or smashed in.  I don't love and pursue writing as a career, I have come to realize.  I love and pursue writing because it is the best developed, low loss, way I know how to communicate like a normal person.  When it works the way I need it to, it allows me to bridge myself to friends and people and know that I am not howling at my otherwise mashed, screwed, and missing communications centers and abilities with nothing coming across the interface at all in line with what is being spoken from inside.

The question was strange to me and it shouldn't have been.  I had to think very hard.  Being used to doing whatever I had to and was allowed to do for so many years after college flamed out against my will and things fell swiftly to pieces, taking whatever work would have me and clinging to what work would have me that I could also do and do well, the thought of what I wanted to do was foreign.

After an evening, I thought "master electrician" or "master plumber," since an MLS is completely unrealistic for the next decade or two at the least and I have loved the under the table work I've been able to do to help ends meet working on peoples homes for years.  I thought "how great would it be to actually be paid the way you should for what you have in the skill files inside your head."  After another day thinking about it, I knew it wasn't what I really wanted to do.  It is something that I am good at that I like doing that fits well around my psyche, but not at all what I really want to do.   Auto-mechanic.

The realization dawned on me.  All of the schematics books I used to take from the library diagramming aircraft and race cars and automobiles.  The perfect mix of tinkering and testing and results and giving life to machines and mechanisms.  The smiles on folks faces.  The tools and machines that allow the systems to be manipulated and molded to various functions.  The solitude.  All there.  After so many years of being forced or trying to force so many paths in an effort to put food in my mouth and stay connected to life and society and have enough to sit in a backyard and smile at a garden, I forgot that I've wanted to be a mechanic for decades.  I've only been alive for three, but I'm pretty sure I knew after decade one.

Thirty years old and getting no younger.  A foundation finally established in this life, though shaky at times, an undeniable starting point.  I am starting to see it as leaving a dying world.  You have finally broken gravity's hold, do not concern yourself with trying to undo everything and erase everyone on the world's surface that brought it to its demise.  Worry about what comes next in the stars.  I have to try to find some security while there is a foundation.  With no real job security, what was built could go away at a moments notice, a flash, a bang, some confetti, and a "thanks for playing, best of luck."  So what?  One more step through the yards to the next fence further away from the cell than you have ever been.  Slip your fingers through the diamond wire links.  Squeeze them until your fingers hurt and sniff the air on the other side.

It tastes different doesn't it.  Oh it does!  When the answer to the question "what do you want to do" is longer than "live another month."  I cannot be happy living in the shadow of annihilation.  I do not know if I will ever escape its reach entirely the way my insides are wired, dealing with, fighting, embracing, irreparable mental dysfunction.  Will I ever make living money?  Money that allows me to keep growing instead of treading water?  Hold a standard 40 hour a week job without exploding into fragments or medicating?  I have to find out.

Summer days are so beautiful.  Even with warships of uncertainty hovering in orbit and peace negotiations fraying, feeling the tiny cool pricks of water landing on every inch of exposed skin feels absolutely wonderful.  Chew a dandelion stem.  As far back as can be remembered, love for the outdoors.  The mysteriousness of the shadows infecting the gaps in the greens of the tree canopy smothering a hill across the river.  Walk fingertips through blades of grass and poke a beetle's glimmering carapace.  It is pretending to sleep.  T-shirts almost dry.  The garden dirt probably is too.  One more go 'round.  It is going to be a hot one today.




///The Future Sound of London - "Among Myselves"

Stay Positive, Opposite Day, Detours, and Paper

How funny would it be to wake up in your own car in the middle of the early morning after accidentally blowing your steering wheel airbag into your face the night before tinkering with the switches and wiring around the wheel?

The thought crossed my mind, walking home from the local store to buy smokes and chips.  Almost as good as chips and ice cream.  When I feel horrible, I prefer cigarettes because they make me feel a little less horrible without making me wish I felt an unsustainable joy derived from ice creams sweet and cooling goodness.  If only anyone could always be that smooth, creamy, and soothing all the way down to the belly.  The thought crossed my mind after walking away from my truck to go buy some comfit after I noticed my fuel gauge was malfunctioning and realizing the problem's solution was going to cost me at least $120 and 10 to 20 hours of labor at worst and 20 to 40 hours of labor, learning, trial and error, and no dollars at best.

I kept chuckling thinking about how angry I felt.  I kept chuckling thinking about reaching under the seat for my hatchet, letting out a bloody war cry, and smashing the wheel to pieces.  Only then, ditching the hatchet, pulling and tearing wires out of it with my bare hands until the airbag exploded and shoved one of my closed fistful of wires straight into my face and I basically ended up knocking myself out cold with a rocket powered fist to the dome.  Then waking up the next day with a deployed airbag, swollen knuckles, one hell of a headache, and one hell of a fist shaped bruise between my eyes.

Part of the reason for the rage is that I finished fixing another small problem with a steep learning curve and dozens of hours of labor and learning rolled inside only days before.  The truck is not falling apart around me, though it feels that way sometimes.  The problems are routine problems and I wish I could take it in for routine maintenance instead of d.i.y. desperation weekends.  The other part of the reason for the anger is that if I were paid more in line with my actual skills and level of higher learning, I could shrug, say "okay", and rent a car tomorrow while my truck sat in a shop for an afternoon.

Living near the bottom of the middle class is deceptive.  Bottom of the middle class, top of the lower class.  Living in the region can be deceptive if you have some imagination, some confidence, some helpful friends, and some ingenuity.  I have a one bedroom apartment with a closet bath/shower and mini kitchen.  If I take away all of the furniture a friend gave, all of the furniture I built, and all of the furniture I found on curbs or being given away by strangers, I have cinder blocks, two folding chairs, one of those university lobby lounge chairs, a sheet of particle board, and an end table.  Remove every worldly possession, so to speak, and there'd be a truck parked outside, a few pots and pans and plates, a desktop and pair of monitors, a console, a found tv, a few books and magazines, some shoes and goodwill clothes and multipack tees, some mechanical gadgets, some home and auto repair tools, and a printer and phone.

Imagination allows me to see what can be and holds the hand of ingenuity to find ways to make it happen.  Call it humility or call it living within your means or call it mining gold or a hobby, thrift stores are one of the keys to forgetting that you are part of the working poor.  The cream of the lower class.  Keeping good friendships is a huge part of the puzzle.  Without them, my life easily fits inside a 10' by 10' cell with a hole in the ground to eliminate and a spigot somewhere to drink and bathe.  Part of the anger stems from those parameters.

I have been heavily detoured.  Charging along the roads as quickly as possible in an effort to get back on some kind of track while wasting as few years as possible is frightening.  I ask myself what will happen if I miss a black on orange florescent sign letting me know my next turn is coming three turns from now and the sign at the third turn was never erected so commit this one to memory.  First and final warning.  The reason why it does not feel fair to me is because it is not fair.

I continue to consider the many branches not followed that have lead here, fighting for time to write.  I began to believe my father was trying to teach me a lesson about his pain all along and I am finally beginning to understand it, but I will not be able to understand until I am 48 or 50 or whatever his age was when I stopped talking to him.  Before that thought grew too large, I remembered he hasn't the subtlety or emotional imagination to allow him to pull that off.  I can see where some of his resentment stemmed from.  Losing all of the prime years of life and talent at the cutting edge of art, design, and martial arts bad-ass-ery to childcare.  Who wouldn't be a lot angry all of the time.  Though extremely dissimilar in their divination (did you see what I did there), the results are similar.  Cut away opportunities, trim an effective gesture here, clip a nudge there, ....

... I don't know.  I do not know why I never got the same support.  It would not have taken much.  Some days I am alright never knowing.  Some days it all comes to a head staring at your broken fuel gauge and doing the right thing and getting the hell out of the car without slamming the door and spinning 180 degrees to put your fist through the window and slash your own tires.  The world could've been miles from now.

I could be writing about my third year working as a librarian somewhere and moaning about coding database systems and dealing with angry patrons and making time for dates between writing short stories and working on my two part novel about warfare and keeping up to date on my space opera hopeful crown jewel I'm still searching out an editor for, however the third poetry anthology is going pretty great.  I'm tearing out the kitchen in parts on my down time when I get tired of writing and it should be finished in another week or two.

Today felt like opposite day.  Loading my truck up with bale after bale of carpet, a refridgerator door, water logged drywall, a cane and broken umbrella, armfuls of empty paint cans, a screen door, and three dozen other pieces of jetsam from the home I'm renovating's previous occupants, it was opposite day.  What I was doing should be my hobby.  I should be putting that sweat and blood and cuss into my own home, not someone else's.  When I go home I should be thinking about what I am going to tear down and visit the hardware store to work on next.  When I go home I should not be thinking about what I can write next that can be packed into the time it takes to shut my body down to hit the hammers and brushes and trash bags and saws again.

As much as I love working with my hands, I could find a way to work with my body in the face of an occupation that demanded I not.

"You're poor!  You're poor!  You're poor!  You're poor!  Do not be deceived; you're poor!"

Independent life is a horror show and funhouse of mirrors broken and whole.  I am staying positive.

What brought me back to a semblance of balance is remembering that the day is still young.  Independent life is 5 years old.  Five.  Five years ago you started stepping outside of your cell.  A year or two later you walked down a hallway and into a cafeteria.  A few months later you learned there was a yard and no time restrictions.  A few months later you found a gate into another yard.  It's getting larger and larger as long as you do not screw it all up and have your privileges revoked.  All of the time you lost will be compounded by the time you spent finding a way back out.

No one pays you what you're worth unless you have the paper to create the market.  Or the portfolio and charisma, in lieu of paper.  Portfolio and charisma is an absolute "and" statement.  The one and not the other turns into a luck base number system.  I will never know my actual value.  Maybe that is the worst of it?  I will never know if I am being over paid or under paid, valued appropriately or not.  The optimist inside, the petitioner, tells me that if and only if we suffer for as much time as we spent pursuing the degree, our penance will be met with paper if and only if we are gracious through our turbulent era.  The eros inside whispers about penance through joyful degradation,   The musician adds another kick drum, knocking over cymbal stands.  The child snaps crayons in half so both hands can draw at once inside the same lines.

It is difficult not to fantasize about getting my degree in the mail, tearing it in half, driving to their house, and suffocating them to death in turn, each by half, with a wad of paper.  That would be thoroughly satisfying.

What are you supposed to do when the toys you want to play with are above the grade you are licensed for?  What are you supposed to do when what you are allowed to do you can do very well, but the ceiling is opaque and the sounds coming through it are not in a language you can or maybe will ever understand?  Maybe I am paid exactly what I am worth.  If I have reached my ceiling and given no indication that I am prepared for or understand in the slightest or am equipped for beyond that ceiling, I am paid exactly what I am worth.

That's frightening.  Also true.  Harrowing.

Sometimes I understand that I'm getting too fixated on true freedom.  I get a taste of working something I can enjoy to support the writing habit and expect everything else to fall in line. There's a luck element to it, that I cannot unlock through work or optimism or faith or trust.  That operates on its own time table.  If I do win the lottery, I will take out full page ads in major cities for the hell of it, but only once.

Part of me continues to say it is not supposed to be this hard to make massive uncertainty and day to day, week to week, at best month to month living a thing of the past.  My state is, however, that fragile.  At the ripe old age of at least 1/3 dead the best I can do for myself is knowing I have at least a month to figure out a new lowline.  Fear the high lines because you know a low line is around the corner... ....what to do when you are following low lines?   High lines have to be engaged.  My spider sense is not tingling.  Shake the wrong tree and a warship mine may fall out of it, let alone a tank or soldier sized one.  The other story of America.  Every body wants to be a cat.  If you have enough money you can do whatever you want to.  Not that much money.  I mean enough money to swap cars, or pick up and move, or add and subtract clothing, or change lighting, or paint colors, flip what you walk on, change shoes when you feel like it, add and subtract channels, modify whatever you want to when the moment strikes you, eat out, order drinks for other people, pay for other peoples gas, buy extra fresh fruit.  It's nice.

I am still going to try to brew my own beer this summer.  Do not give me that horseshit "God works in mysterious ways" because chance does too.  The only thing better than chance is ingenuity, and the only thing more important and better than ingenuity is imagination.

I am trying to stay positive with some success.  Frustration and rage are part of being us.  Born here?  Sure.  From here?  No.  I've missed you.  Don't lose touch.  If you ever need to talk, do not forget my ear.                 I love you.                    I love you.       I love you.  I love you. I love you.I love you.Iluvu.Ilvu.Iu.U.I.

We'll get this thing sorted out.  We have a lot of time ahead of us, like it or not, we do.

Do not quit.

You have the rest of your life to make that decision.

It is opposite day, okay?

It is not wasted time.

Opposite day.

Time becomes more valuable as it accumulates.

Okay.  I am
with you.  Agreeing to never throw hands up in frustration.  Agreeing to ride it as long as there is still track in front.  Agreeing to dance as long as there is a beat to dance to, be it from within or without.  I am okay with you as long as your are
okay.  With me.





///Aesop Rock - (Gun for the Whole Family) ~ i've missed you for a very long time.  things got bad.  things were getting bad.  i had to remember that they weren't as bad as they'd been.  we're working toward a utopia of coexistence.  we're not there yet, but damn sure we're going to keep on trying while helping lay the ground works and maps and blue prints for the next iteration of our being.




/
//
///Alanis Morissette - (Thank You) ~ passive mobile adaptable armor.

I Don't Know, Man

It's difficult not to get sucked into a way of thinking that spirals out of control.  When you consider how many of your lines of thinking, projected outward through time, end with a force quit the entire prospect of a future or futures gets dim.  When you consider how many of your avenues end with the phrase "I try not to think about it."

Five years from now, I will still be working for peanuts.  What's the point?  Why bother setting goals at all?  The ones that are attainable are so near and so small they mean next to nothing beside your peers.  Change you can deem actionable is so incremental from outside perspectives as to appear to be no change at all.  Five years from now you'll be able to afford to go out and socialize twice a month instead of once a month.

Life up to now has been heavily geared toward learning how to do more with less.  Learning to deal with scraps and put pieces and parts together to make whole and useful things from what others discard.  Learning to maximize and squeeze potential out of every little thing you find and adopt and consume.  Will you ever get your degree?  By the time you do, will you be able to do anything with it, twenty years behind the curve?  What are your useful skills?  "I can turn a pretty good wrench.  I am terrified of crowds.  I sometimes am paralyzed with depression.  I've been told I cook pretty good chicken.  I don't know, I try not to think about it."

The way of life I am capable of sustaining is far afield of most folks.  Even if I were to "settle down" the undeniable and stark contrast between myself and the environments that have held sway in my engineering and make up will be more than enough to strain just about any relationship to a breaking point, given time.  Love can only cover and suture so many fissures and canyons before a lover will realize my planet is not capable of supporting new life.  So are we protracting our own death?  Killing time and energy and spinning entropy into something beautiful enough that our decades long throes to come can at least bring some light and warm some hearts before it sputters out as the parts steadily fail beyond repair?  "I don't know."

A reminder that you've worked so many years for freedom.  While you are freer than you've ever been, you are still inside the compound.  You still have to trick yourself into believing to keep on running.  Perhaps adopt a belief system or religion.  Not too fast or too far lest you ram headfirst into the bars.  Sitting cross legged, picking at the grass beside the river and skipping a stone now and then, the undeniable scent of wrought iron creeps into the wind and you know the bars are there if you bring yourself to focus your eyes just inside the horizon's line.  I try not to think about it. You've gotten out of the cell and into the yard outside of the yard where you're allowed to roam.  You've earned visitation.  A meal card for better food.  The compound is vast.  I try not to think about it, but I cannot forget.




/// Phantogram - "Running From the Cops"  staring into a still lake of bass

4 Years Is a Lifetime, Music, and Summer What?

Sometimes I wake up and it's hard to believe it's been four years since I made it clear of the 24 years that came before when it comes to my parents.  When people ask about them, I'm still tempted to say they died. They are dead to me, but just because they're dead in my mind doesn't make them dead in real life, even though it would be great if they were.  It's hard to believe I ever did love them.  I suppose I once did.  My mother anyway.  Is it better to be feared or loved?  They decided it was better to be feared.  It is easy to receive gratitude for putting out a fire.  I suppose it is easy to cling to those firemen and women rescuing you from that fire and believing you owe them a life debt.  A water debt.  A blood debt.

It is easy, until you find out, when the blinders come off, that they set that fire that took your body down to it's foundations.  Then it's not so easy.  When that sun dawns and the city you've been inhabiting in the dark comes into sharp relief and you realize you've been living downtown for 24 years and didn't know it and from the tallest skyscraper there you can't even see the city limits, you cry.  And I did.  For years.  I wanted to jump back then.  Break my heart on the pavement into beads of pomegranate flesh crushed.  I didn't.

I walked.  I ran.  And then I walked some more when my lungs and legs quit.  I camped.  I broke into abandoned homes and raided food and threw it in my back pack and kept going.  I slept on concrete and hid in basements when creatures roamed and cached weapons to defend myself.  Taught myself how to use them, because the day you come face to face with the monsters will be the day you are least prepared to fight for your life and the blood in your veins and your heart beat.  I walked for years until the buildings and bridges grew smaller.  The shells of "civilization" as I knew it grew fewer and far between, and one day I was outside of it all, on a hill top looking back in and I could see the towers so tall back then.  I could see the flag poles and radio towers atop the things so massive they crowded out the sky and blanked the stars at night with their ferocious brilliance.

And it's strange to be outside of it.  Strange to feel myself breathing.  There was a time, right after I took myself away from it all, that it felt odd not to be hurt.  I felt like my skin didn't fit.  My face didn't feel like my face.  It was difficult to walk, like my legs forgot how to do it in this new frame unburdened.  It felt strange to stand up straight.  Strange to deal with my bosses because I was constantly afraid that they might hit me if I messed something up or forgot to do something or did what they wanted, but they changed their minds halfway and did not tell me.  It never occurred to me that people are not supposed to be allowed to do that to other people.  It never occurred to me that people are not naturally inclined to do that necessarily.  It never occurred to me that there would and could be legal recourse for me if they did.  Shedding the things, piece by piece, that I once thought to be absolute truths of power relationships and interchange with "authority".

It was a difficult transition and four years removed from it, it feels like a lifetime away.  The longest four years of my short life.  I've done so much living, it amazes me and I love it.  I love being able to look forward without immediate apprehension.  Some days I wake up and my first thought is "so this is what everyone else has been feeling like all this time."  I wish that I did still retain the good memories from when I was little.  I've spent so much of myself and so much time eradicating the bad ones, but you can't pick and choose when it comes to that.  There are huge blank spaces in my memory now.  Massive expanses that I should have some recall about, but I don't.  Struggle with whether that's a good or bad thing comes up sometimes, but I'd rather recall nothing than wake up sweating at night.

A choice I decided to make.  The most vivid memories still remain, both good and bad; the worst of the worst and the best of the best.  Every time I speak to my siblings something new and minor comes to light for better and for worse and I forget all over again.  Strike it from the library.  Continue on my way.  I feel like, really for the first time in a long time, like I'm going the right way and ... there's no price to put on peace.  Peace at any cost.  Call it selfish.  Call it whatever you want to.  There's beauty in grace and grace is not killing your parents to square your own books.

There's music stored up in there.  I have about 120 tracks and sounds and machine sounds stocked up.  I really do want to do it, I haven't made the time to learn.  Really learn.  I'm passion infused about it.  I need it.  I'm terrified of failure the same way I used to be years ago when I first decided to share and open myself up to criticism.  Not just open myself up, but open myself up to criticism on something I thought I was pretty good at.  Music is an entirely different bucket.  I want to do it, I've taken the first steps, and now I just have to make one foot follow the other.  Never did download that manual for the autoharp.  It's not collecting dust though.  Every few days, I drag it out from under my bed and lay it down and pluck it's strings and see what comes out of it, but I'm happy to be a dabbler.  And unhappy to be just.

Beats, notes, and rhythms in my head and the struggle, I know, will be exhausting.  It's a problem of effort and I know that's a me problem, not an environment problem.  I've had some trouble with scheduling.  Trying to keep yourself out of trouble by sleeping on a max schedule will only drive you so far.  Eventually you have to step out of safety if you want to accomplish anything.  No one ever won a football game by kneeling down in the first quarter.  Crunch time is never convenient and I can't imagine the force of the crush that will drive me to try and I don't want to experience it.  I'll get on it someday.  To do lists grow long like finger nails.  Eventually you have to cut it down or at least paint them.

On another note, you know it's summer when the girls are out in flip flops and the guys are losing their shirts. That's the usual metric.  Everyone is out in their Ed Hardy tees and old men are jogging, red skinned, down the middle of side streets and kids are pushing their strollers and little carnivals with tractor trailer ferris wheels start popping up.  You know it's summer when you can't get a spot to fish on the river shore if you show up any later than noon on a Tuesday.  Opening your car door is like opening an oven door and you sweat from the effort of fixing yourself a bowl of cereal for breakfast.  You know it's summer when you head down to the basketball court and you'd rather stand than sit when you're not playing because the asphalt is just that hot.

The real tell about summer, though, is when the ladies start to come out doors in shorts and Ugg boots.  I have no idea when that nonsense caught on.  What I do know is that every year it happens.  Inevitably.  It makes no sense.  I am a huge fan of form following function, but there is no function to it!  None whatsoever!  I am taking a stand against it.  I was walking down to the gas station in the middle of the day and a nub wearing Uggs and a jean jacket strolled by on the other side of the street and I tried to contain it, but I couldn't.  I guffawed for a second, choked, and then laughed at the top of my lungs.  It's okay though.  She's doing her and I'm going to do me.  No big deal.

Still though, come on!  Really?  Watching it from the corner of my eye all I could think about was gross, stanky, lady feet.  I don't care how pretty your face is, guy or girl, but if your feet stank something awful or are horribly deformed or even noticeably deformed, that's a deal breaker.  Call me shallow.  I don't mind, but there has to be limits.  Still chuckling while I walked into the gas station I was at a loss as to what planet that was considered attractive.

I'm not the style police.  90% of what I wear serves a function and a purpose and if that purpose or function requires something off putting or ugly, hey... go f#$% yourself.  Form will always follow function for me.  If I happen to net up some good form along the way it's just the bonus.  I love summer.  I love the absurdity of it all.  I got into a long back and forth with a girl friend about style.  Sometimes I do make style considerations when it comes to choosing the best function/form ratio.  She was dressed to the nines and I asked her why she would put herself into such nice clothes.  Turned out she just wanted to dress up on a Friday.  I scratched my beard.  She elaborated.  "Sometimes I'm just in the mood to feel a little different."

I got it, then.  When function governs there's less room for expression.  Everything can't be mechanical the way I want it to be or would like it to be.  Input equals output not always and it shouldn't always be.  Reproduction being what it is and kind of necessary.  Hard wiring.  And there I go, back to the mechanical.  I can't help it.  She had a point though.  After the conversation I felt myself starting to want to be a slacks and button up guy.  She explained that even though she was dressed to the teeth with shiny earrings, they were still her play clothes because if anything bad happened to them, they're not her actual dress clothes.  I might try to wear button up shirts more often.  Without buttoning them.  To pull that off I'll probably need pants without latex paint all over them.  That takes money.  Maybe not.  I love function.

I'll have quiet dreams about wearing dumb slacks and ripping the crotch out of them doing what I do.  In the meantime, I'll just do me and wear what I want.  I guess, in very short retrospect, I respect that Ugg jean jacket girl.  If I see her again I'm still going to laugh.  The same way people probably laugh at me strolling down the main drag in clothes with no form, scratching their heads like "did you look at a mirror before you left your house or did you grab the first four garments you could find on your floor and jump out of your door to conquer the world?"

And that's how you know it's Summer.

Kisses.  Later on, kids.


///Ladytron - "Soft Power"  ...daylight is the enemy...  I love the night.  Everything smells wet and good at night.  I want to sleep by the river again and talk to the fish while the fire goes out.

Sex Sells, and Tolerance Versus Promotion

Sex sells.  Everybody know's that.  America is becoming a more tolerant place, probably more tolerant than ever before when it comes to homosexuality.  It's becoming a little more tolerant when it comes to smoking weed, but that's something for another time.  Still, though, a soused conversation I had, a quick back and forth really if not for doing it through twitter drawing it out over a couple hours (if we were speaking face to face it would have been maybe a two minute conversation), brought back to mind that actual tolerance is a long way off and it's kind of annoying.

Sex does sell.  Everyday, everywhere you go, everything you watch on television, every fourth commercial on the radio, hetero sex is promoted.  It's fired into you constantly.  It can't be avoided and as a gay person I don't really have a problem with it.  Sure sometimes it gets particularly awkward or annoying when I'm hanging out with straight friends and they want me to comment and I'm completely blank faced because it has nothing to do with me or what actually tips my scales or fires me up.  For the most part though, I'll make something up or laugh or do whatever to move on and just like that, it's done and I'm fine and they're fine and the world turns on and everyone is okay.  Sex sells.  It is promotion of the hetero relationship and it's not the end of the world.  I'm tolerant.  I don't go grab pitch forks and torches and raise a mob every time some couple gets married or a guy and girl get all kissy touchy feely in front of me.  I'm okay with it and it doesn't hurt me, but I also don't go out of my way to express the fact that I could care less.

Back handed tolerance is different.  The back handed tolerance is the kind where people do go out of their way to express that "hey, whatever, I don't care, that's your business" sentiment to the point where it becomes obvious that they do care, and it does irritate them, but they are saying what they're supposed to say because they're supposed to say it because it would be a million times worse for their image and relationships with others around them if they did express whatever hate or revulsion they felt.  It's better than nothing, but when it happens it makes me want to roll my eyes, yawn, and just walk away from the crap coming out of the person's mouth.

Back handed tolerance comes in other flavors too.  It also comes in the "I'm okay with gay people, but you don't have to promote it, come on" flavor.  Which is simply silly.  If the world is to become a more tolerant place you can't say tolerance and "shut the hell up about it" in the same sentence.  That's just asinine.  Obviously there is going to be some degree of promotion.  There has to be.  Sex sells.  If sex sells you can't just say you refuse to sell to an entire segment of the population.  If you did simply black out promotion that would be pretty intolerant.  That sort of behavior would also reduce people's exposure to homosexuality as a normal thing or at least damage their ability to observe and understand it as a normal thing.  It's aggravating.  It's annoying.  And it's pretty back handed.  

What does that even mean?  To be okay with gay people, but intolerant of them talking about their lives the same way other people do because it's promoting a gay lifestyle?  Didn't America finally more or less get beyond the "is it a choice or not debate"?  What are these people even worried about?  Promoting homosexuality is not going to turn people away from heterosexuality.  It's not going to magically revolutionize someone's long held beliefs or belief system.  What are they possibly afraid of?  If anything it would make life more comfortable or normal for homosexuals.  Could you imagine seeing commercials with gay couples selling things like lawn mowers, dinners, dating websites, concerts, and credit cards.  Are these promotion haters afraid they'll see a commercial for something they like and refer to it to their straight friends and be made fun of because it was a gay commercial?  If they are, I could understand.  How hilarious would it be if the major hang up was feeling that tiny pang of discomfort I feel throughout a day, that I'm so used to it barely raises a blip in my mind most of the time.

I don't understand what the big deal is, but I do understand back handed tolerance and I do understand that sex sells.  Maybe it's not a bad thing.  It's a step in the right direction for people and I'm happy for that.  I just wish people walked a little faster.  It makes life a little more comfortable for me and people like me to at least know if someone were to openly persecute us, there would be massive support for us, not them.  It's tiring and annoying knowing that the newer intolerance is this whole anti-promo sentiment, but at least no ones telling me I'm going to straight to hell and should be killed for my sexual orientation.  Don't be scared 'merica, sometimes a little discomfort is part of life.

///Grimes - "Genesis" gots to start somewhere

Bricking the Computer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Have and Half Knots, Making Dead Lines, and Explosive Decompression

So I think I am finally approaching upper lower class. Inching toward car ownership and consistent internet access that doesn't cut off if I watch ten feature length pornographic movies in one month. It only took a year to save up the money for both, but I'm not mad because that was roughly the time span I estimated so many moons ago. Not that I'm some kind of social climber, but it certainly makes life a lot easier for me (being that at least half of my waking time is dependent on connectivity). If I think about it the only reason why I have a job, let alone two, is because of the internet. A major factor in my escape from New York was the internet. My creative outlets, well three out of the five, are internet dependent. Not originally, but since I opened myself up to being read, along with the good and bad that comes from it, that is what they've become. A pair still remain personal and internet independent, and they are my babies, whom I coddle and pet unceasingly. So I'm not quite a "have", but I am the possessor of many knotted ends.

Everyone likes to sew things up. Who doesn't. From the youngest age you can remember some of the most satisfying moments are the moments when you connect one and one and get to bask in the glory of your hard earned, bent spined, but elegant in that way, two. Whatever operand falls between the two slivers of symbols matters little. All that matters is you put in the hard think and the finger fumbles and drew something out of two separate things that ended up being beautiful, simply, the answer. Not just an answer, but the only answer possible within the frames of the rules of everything else that described the world around you. That is clutch. That is what I want to be able to do, but instead of sewing my things up I have ended up with knot after knot, with some fine stitch work in between.

It's not failure. Every time you tried to tie your laces and ended up knotting the threads when you were little, you did not just sit down and cry. Well maybe sometimes I did. Eventually, though, I ended up going outside to play regardless because the fact of the matter was that I was not concerned so much with the ending. I was not so much concerned with the fact that eventually I would have to take the shoes off, as much as I knew, no matter what I did after the episode of frustration, the things were going to do what they were designed to do, and that was stay put. So although I am a possessor of more knots than neat and fixed loops, and although I will sit and cry about it for a while, I know that I can still go out and get it done with the best of them. The difference being when I get home and the game is over I have to cut the laces apart and rethread them.

Making deadlines is hard, in that way. Not that I have to start over every week, but the things people take for granted are things I have to redo every week and make them work like new all over again. I would be more upset about it, if I had not had to live with it for so long. It's the standard. Part of the allure of medication is that it offers the promise of a consistent starting point. It simplifies, to the detriment of other experiences. I alternately accept and reject that promise. It depends on how frustrated I get tying knots when I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they refuse to respond. When I know and tell my fingers how to do things better and they answer and accept and then absent themselves from the chain of command altogether because it turns out I did not have the con to begin with.

Making deadlines is hard, but having deadlines helps the continuity. I think that's why I hate days off so much. Days off are like being thrust into the airlock of my ship half suited, half relaxed, half giddy just to be there without having a reason, and then the count begins for the hatch release and I realize it is for real. I realize there was something I set out to do when I entered and soon I will be sucking vacuum if I don't get it together and I have to fumble and scramble to abort the entire venture because my helmet is still sitting right where I left it, in the lounge, and there is no way I'm going to manage to make something meaningful out of the next ten seconds (ten hours) besides flailing for molecules.

That analogy was a stretch, but that's what it feels like. Trying to get things done without a hard plan is difficult. Days off are always unplanned. Uncharted and unplannable. The hardest thing about it is going without contact. When I'm down on the surface among people I know what's real for the most part. Well, for the some part. When all I have is time spent with myselves it's a dicey affair. Tremendous amounts of necessary dialog and balance checking and enforcing limitations. I wonder sometimes why I sleep so much. What is wrong with me? And the answer often comes back that I cannot afford not to. A little escapist as the life across the bridge is so damn rich and half the time I am awake I want to go back there, but also because it's so certain there. A is A. B is B. C is C. And D is D. Every time. Not like here. Here person A is sometimes Z. And B is an irrational number. And C is A, but only when Z is B.

Maybe that's why I like to work so much. Formulaic. Math in action. Inactivity through action. Long story shorter, I want to finish the gift for Christmas. A gift of intent. A gift of a promise that I won't stop fighting. Not yet anyway. So game on?

Yeah, I think so.


///luke slater - "Hectic Bag" ...start as you mean to grow on.

Good Things and Some Updates

I've updated the Auralport. I'm liking it. A little more grimy to fit the tone of what I've been putting out. It's the autumn look.

Header:

teh header. That's right; teh. Trying to capture some urban swell. Some of that urbany grungery.

Background:

the verbal refinery

Summer's gonna hurt you. It hurts me. Pretty much every year. But, insufferable bastards make poor friends. As we all know. I'm glad I put the hours in to make it happen. It was long overdue. And God knows I've been trying to brush up my design language and delivery. There's an aerospace themed remix of oem coming soon as well. I want to say it'll be hammered out this coming Saturday, but there are a lot of things I want to say that never make it to the light of day. I'm workin. Trying not to be some kind of insufferable bastard, because those sorts of people make shitay friends. So looking forward to the cool of day and cooler night.

So much to say that I haven't yet. But I'm composing. Every hour of every waking day is spent, part way, in composition and refinement. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. Maybe that's what makes the job interviewing process difficult. Every time they ask me where I see myself in five years the answer is always "retired to a ranch and spending every waking minute writing and thinking and getting outside to do the things industrial society left behind." I'm a terrible liar.

Anyway, hello as always. Do I really have to tell you I love you after all these months and years? Well I'll do it anyway, because I have so much love and so few faces to spit it to. I love you.
Ciao. Is that how that's spelled? Well, let's safety dance it: chow. Also I'm pretty hungry. My fridge is mostly empty, but I'm happy, so who cares. Not I.


///Gorillaz - "To Binge" ...love yourself some, they're not going to forgive you. You can do another day, but don't be afraid to help yourself make that day a little more "fukyeh". We've all fallen out of favor some way some how. Details are for mooks. Sunshine is for kooks. Moonlight is for spooks. But you, you just are in the sunshine and the moonshine and the details and the broad visions and that is something. Who's really keeping score in this economy?