What Was Meant and What Was Done

I have a hard enough time sleeping at home, let alone sleeping in other places.  Always believing I am going to be raped again for passivity or robbed or worse.  They're coming for you.  They always are, it's just that sometimes you get to see them coming and sometimes you do not.

I'm not afraid of death.  That's silly.  Everyone dies.  Everyone suffers.  I've gifted you the daylight hours so stay out of my evening.  Is simple enough to say.  Much more complicated to live by.  Why is it necessary?  A matter of control?  To an extent.  A matter of provocation?  Also, to an extent.  Consider it a dictation of terms.

If I am to die, let it be beneath a sun.  That's not asking too much.  Constantly hunted, can a body be blamed for wanting a reversal of roles?  Outfoxed the ghosts.... this time.... not really.  Still outside.  Every time I open my front door they're there.  Monsters underneath the bed, if you will.  Acceptable terms of endearment.

I don't understand.  Call me atheist or call me fractured.   Or call me by my name so that I know you are and are not a glitch trip.  I'll appreciate it.  I may not say so, but I'll appreciate it.  I may not say so because I know they're listening too and watching too and it took them some years to be vocal as they are and a division had to come or risk carrying on with, for lack of a better term, phantoms.

Paranoia has been nibbling.  I've been thinking very long and very hard about a reasonable solution.  What we came to was, this year, we will wear a straw woven hat.  It'll look good on me.  And that's something!  Something to roll on with.

No one means to stand watch all night.  Everyone breaths a little easier knowing another one has passed and the weapons can be laid down again because the sun is a very very very reliable and undeniable night light.




///Sneaker Pimps - "Wife By Two Thousand"  mr. noename

Fingers Come Back

Hard notes, you know?  Taking hard notes.  Something like that.  Something like that.  Trying to get back into my own head.  With a pick ax.  You get locked out sometimes.  Sometimes never.  And I keep watching it all through the key hole in the wall, but I can't see what's going on.  Eventually you have to kick down the door.  Or something like that.  More than anything you just want to be home.  By home I mean here.  By here I mean creating.

I've missed this dearly.  The cost escalated unexpectedly.  I abandoned the analogy of a fellowship a while ago.  It's not.  It has it's price, just like school.  I haven't won anything and been magically transported to a place where my work is its own reward.  It isn't.  It is, but I still have to do other things while.  That's the problem.  The while.  That's the only reason why I work.  To resolve the "while." It's voluntary homework, in a way, I guess.  Not doing it feels like time thrown away, because it is time thrown away.  Dabbling has its worth too.  Perpetual dabbling is dedication.  My scars itch.

The important thing is the silence is broken.  Silence is like ice.  It floats and cools and makes more silence and then that silence grows larger and cools more efficiently and before you know it silence governs states and the only sustainable state is a block of silence.  I'm not afraid of blank pages as much as I am afraid of animated silence.  It takes on a life of its own.  And there are enough things living inside my head already without the standing invitation of paranoia, paralysis, and perceptual gridlock.  So consider this not some kind of apology as much as a declaration  of continuity of the project to map the constellations before sunrise when everything fades to some kind of cloud stippled blue.

Return of the space oddity.  Just in that cycle.  Sweet dreams to you and yours.  Communications from the farther reaches.  My knuckles have healed nicely.  Considering again the ethics of murder.  Still coming up short, but resolution is.  Something to work for and all that.  Hard notes.  Combing through heaps and heaps of notes and trying to describe what constitutes a soft note.  Still looking.  Money can buy a lot of things, for everything else there are armories?  I dunno.  Wrx in progress.  But at least we can rest easy knowing we are not forgeries.  Not even close.


///Cleveland Lounge - "Drowning (Joshua Ryan Mix)"  ...3:59

Three Hundred and Eleven, Stupid Fucking Christians, Foreignness, and Musing

I want to have something important to say today, but I don't. Still working on the dream. I'm gonna muse for a minute, well several, as I am mentally drifting. While at work, the pressures of so much unpleasantness force my thoughts into a water jet that cuts steel, but away from those pressures it diffuses and runs easy and slipshod and quiet, or quieter, and my adrenal glands are gonna be shot by the time I'm 30 iterations old because so much of the day, well the night, is spent trying to wrestle control, heart charging, mind racing, all for nothing. There's nothing I can do to undo that. That shit job will still be around long after I leave it. The same people will still be there enforcing backward policy and rewarding incompetence. And that's the way it has to be. Competent people leave. They don't stay there. The only way any sort of structure can be maintained there is to reward stupidity, soft mindedness, weakness, and buffoonery and it is upsetting to me and it should be upsetting. All it means is that I have to leave before my head explodes.

I was working the other day and growing sicker by the moment. Physically sick to my stomach. The sounds being pumped down from the speakers in the ceiling were like ice picks touching my brainstem behind my throat and pricking it over and over and the pain of it was turning my stomach and making me dizzy. I considered after some time asking if I could leave at 3 AM, lunch time, and call it a day, but my stupid loyalty and pride in the work that I do told me to gut it out. Don't be weak and stupid and candy and thin. Gut it out. I don't care what you want, you came in today to do a job so do the job and then, when it's finished, go home and rest. You're not like them, is what I told myself until finally, while kneeling and shelving my body basically rebelled and pulled a knife on me. To which I answered, you wouldn't. And then it did, but it missed. Shattered the blade of the box cutter on the floor tiles taking a blind left handed downward swing at my leg and caught a rebounding shard in my mouth. So I met myself half way and took a long lunch break. It was a shitty day. I gotta get outta there.

So for the anniversary of my initialization my parents sent me a card. One of their signatures said live in peace. Which made me want to immediately purchase the next available train ticket down there to end their lives and burn the house to the ground. But I can't do that. I have too much I need to work on finishing already without the added difficulty of trying to do it in prison where materials would likely be even more scarce though free time would be in abundance so potentially that trade off might become more interesting if scarcity becomes a greater issue out here. It mostly made me question, though, how backward can a human being be. How stupid can a person truly be. To tell someone to live in peace. While simultaneously denying them every single last avenue open toward a life of peace and stability. It just reminds me of so many Christians. So many good Christians. It's in God's hands. She's with God now. He's in God's protection now. What the hell is wrong with you idiots. It's not in God's fucking hands. It's in your fucking hands. It just stymies me that people can be so oblivious. So learnedly oblivious to the obviousness of the impacts their decisions make on other peoples lives, especially, especially when so little effort on their part can make titanic changes for their own flesh and blood. Which is why I no longer consider them to be. They are an unfortunate do while loop that erred and spawned a NaN variable in me, but that has picked up where it left off doing nothing except cancer consuming it's surrounding while time left to live is not equal to or less than zero. I need a new mommy and daddy. Or a used set. Or even just one or the other as I have a pair of glaring vacancies. Apply within.

This is the three hundredth posting. My eleventh birthday is this Saturday. I might take myself out for ice cream. You can come too. I had another attack of something last night. It sucked. I woke up in the middle of it. Maybe it was a siezure. It was kind of funny in retrospect. I tried to get up and my whole body just want stiff and I fell back into my blanket with my face on my pillow. Funny because if someone were just walking by my room they would think I was fast asleep. I suppose if I hadn't woken up I wouldn't be composing this. I wonder sometimes where I am in the alternate reality when that happens. I wonder if maybe I touched something and received some sort of static shock and this state of contraction is how it crosses the bridge and stings me here. I wonder if assaulted by sound here what happens to me over there. I don't think it's just me crossing. Well I know it's not just me crossing. I wonder if I'll ever meet me over there. It is a rather large world.

Just the other day I was there and apparently there were some sweeping changes made while I was away. There concrete viaducts and underpasses everywhere and all biege and everyone was busy moving here and there and it took damn near half an hour to stop someone and ask them what was going on and where I could find the train station, because I hadn't ridden it in some time and I wanted to lose myself for a while. The man I stopped was about my height. Brown leather jacket and a shirt crushed with sweat and what looked like engine oil. He explained to me, after adjusting his glasses, that cars were banned. He wasn't mad at me for asking an apparently obvious question. He told me the upcoming action required that as much crude be saved and that the viaducts and underpasses were all light rails and that everyone pretty much took the light rails or biked where they needed to, but I didn't see a single bicycle or train car pass me while I spoke to him. He left. The city was a mess of design, but clean in the same way a beach is clean after a really bad windstorm. The whole thing was off putting. And then I woke up. No sign of other me. I think if I ever did see him I'd be roundly terrified. I hate talking about him. Any of them. They don't like being talked about behind their backs, but it's not fair because I'm always behind their backs until they show up and then I'm just fucked. I don't know.

Still haven't made the call. Still trying to land. Still no where to touch down if I wanted to. I've gone back to making necessary long term repairs. Things chance. Things change. There are times when things keep fucking up and keep fucking up and keep fucking up no matter what you do. And you know this because it is the same situation that you've approached two dozen different ways and it never ends up mattering by the time your bones hurt and your eyes are pools from finger bloodying attempt after attempt. And times like that force you into a position where the only agency you can really exercise is to fuck it up yourself. It is real. You can do it. It's the only way you'll ever be able to say you did something for yourself. I smashed in that fucking fender. All me. The only control you will be able to revel in is to decide where you want the hammer to touch down instead of letting someone else decide it for you. Something to revel in. Anything to revel in. To feel a part of the inside out and bizarre and upside down world you're in. If you live in a world of systematized counter productivity and human waste long enough, does the opposite become foreign? Absolutely.

I do believe from a civilization spanning viewpoint... well that just sounds cockneyed. Well probably not even cockneyed. Just stupidly grandiose. I do believe from the standpoint of socialization into the fabric of Americanisms that I am more or less feral. Defining feral as undomesticated and domestication as a state of obedient harmony with established standards and practices. But more on the nose I was raised like a dog. The more I think about, well I'm done thinking about, I've gone over the evidence internally through committee several times over and it's all there. I'm still learning to be American and person, but I feel like several of my key behaviors are kanine first and reasoning person second. I should probably make that call sometime. Trying to domesticate myself. To relate to people better. But the thing no one tells you about making sacrifices to relate to people is that none of it will ever matter if the people you are trying to relate to have no interest in rejoining your sweat for connection. Shove away then.



///The Cardigans - "Losers"

time to play... 01/24/07

Subject : time to play name that mental disorder
Posted Date: : Jan 24, 2007 8:15 AM

"characterized by delusions (of persecution or grandeur or jealousy); symptoms may include anger and anxiety and aloofness and doubts about gender identity; patients are usually presentable and may function in an apparently normal manner. can also suffer from hallucinations, thought disorder, poor social functioning, disordered perception, retreat from reality, regressive behavior, and flattened emotions."

that sums me up almost too perfectly. big surprise. sometimes i love being unmedicated... sometimes i dont.

its that time of the year again 01/23/07

Subject : its that time of the year again
Posted Date: : Jan 23, 2007 7:41 PM

writing contests. the two big ones at Carnegie Mellon University. oh boy. another chance to get stiffed by my favorite group of insiders at the X review (insiders meaning the circle of friends i dont have at the journal's core that run the submission selection process including the professors) and ignored by the wonderful Y judges. i think my writing just doesnt quite fit here.

i mean two years running ive gotten polar comments on everything. either its over written or its under developed. its too dense or its too cliche'. its too "in my own world" or its too simple. that last one is my favorite though. i take that last one as knowing im doing something right. im aware of what other poets have done. im aware of what other story tellers have done. i might not be aware of what everyone else is currently doing, but if i was i would be less aware of what i want to do. one thing ive learned about myself as a writer is that i like what i do. what i do has changed and continues to change over the days and months. i know im not writing well when im writing the same things i wrote at the same time last year.

still though... these are the dread hours. will this year end with more dissappointments? probably. in fact... almost assuredly. im pretty sure who the favorites already are. im pretty sure of where the student bodies work has a proclivity to wander (usually toward work that makes pittsburgh or city or just college life "come alive" or sad tidbits about family and rent hearts or the difficulty of "growing up") but im still going to write my way, my stories, my poems and if i dont win i may give them all the murderface for a few days... then a look of hurt puzzlement... but ultimately i'll be just as happy as if i did win. cuz i wuz last year. im not graduating anyway so i dont even have to worry about resume' padding.

i think im actually looking forward to this. win, lose, or draw. i still hate them though.

email anxiety 01/22/07

Subject : email anxiety
Posted Date: : Jan 22, 2007 5:18 PM

email anxiety has kept me from going anywhere near textual interfaces on the web. i know there are a million emails there. i know they are unread. i know many of them have absolutely nothing to do with me... but i dread seeing them. i hate thinking about them building up like ticks on my in box. can you imagine what a dog absolutely covered in ticks looks like? i fucking can and its disgusting. absolutely disgusting. i would rather just throw the dog in a furnace than go to the trouble of de-ticking it into a big bloody but somehow tick free mess. plus my inbox hates me. nothing good ever turns up there. just a whole lot of imperatives.

so thats where ive been. ive essentially been hiding from the internet. but ive buckled down and took it on the chin like a champ and bought a new dog to replace the old one. mass deletion isn't a bad thing. chances are good most of the stuff wouldnt even be relevant since most people i know send emails about things they want or need within a day or two. its the rare email thats even worth archiving if you ask me. ill never understand those people that keep every single email ever. that's just scary. and inefficient. im gonna go eat cake now and temporarily vegitate.

a mutual slump

Subject : a mutual slump

Posted Date: : Nov 5, 2005 4:18 PM

I am very tired of not having money. Demoralizing, disheartening, and depressing is what it's like to have no money. You don't care about much of anything and you don't want to work at anything. But you do work, because that is the only way to get out of the slump of negative dollars.

What about life? I have no wealth, no steady state of capital. I have debt. gobs upon gobs of debt that only work will erase. I tell myself that I am tired of being poor, of being on the higher end of the have nots. I tell myself that my kids are going to have everything that I don't have, but that isn't true. It's just a wish. This is not an emo rant, this is just letting off some of the pressure that stacks up over the years when it becomes more and more clear that you are very likely not going to be "successful, grounded, rich, dateable, married, healthy, a grand parent, a good father, provider, on top, stable." The world isn't out to get me. It also is not out to make amends or make things better either.

Don't tell me life isn't bleak and then tell me I have no way to advance myself upward through the class ranks because its just who I've grown to be. You're lieing to yourself if you think everyone gets a fair crack at anything. Life doesn't suck all the time for anyone, but that does not mean life doesnt suck alot of the time for someone.

Difficult days. Not enough is going to change by the time I graduate and not enough minds will change about who I am, how I work, what I know, and what I believe to make a difference in the paths that have been laid out today. Life is like a box of slant rhymes. Or maybe its like a bowl of soup and some people get silver spoons while other people get stirring rods.

What is there to look forward to? The "mutual slump of body and soul"? New beginnings; don't get too excited about those. they always start right where you left off. There is one thing to look forward to and that is consistency.

They may not leave you, but if they do it'll be for similar reasons.

You'll work hard and it won't count for anything much.

No one will give you anything you haven't earned or won't pay for later.

You will always be the best company you'll know.

Beer will always taste like beer, weed will always get you high, and money will always feel like eels in your back pocket, foreign, uncomfortable, and itching to slip away.