That Instant (_____)

you reach the meta level of justifying skipping workouts so that you don't have to feel the disappointment in yourself after you keep it rolling for three months and miss a few weeks because you vegged out and partied and flat didn't feel like it and can still honestly say that you will start again when you're ready but there's not point in starting right now because twelve weeks from now will still play out the same and who wants to feel like a waste of life after their first day back?

A Thought On Taking Ears

To take an eye is a bit excessive.  I don't care what fight you're in if it's not life and death.  Taking an eye is excessive.  Taking a tooth is, by a stretch, not easy.  By no stretch, 10/10 on the difficulty scale.  Let alone taking the seconds and minutes to pick it up and pocket it after smashing it loose in an uncontrolled environment.

An ear is about right.  It's pretty much a receipt and sensitive if not cauliflowered so it can be an end of itself, sending the "I am not alright with this" signal to their brain.  There is little lost beyond the cosmetic and pride to boot.  Next time you're in a scuff go there.  It's a fine and thoughtful and effective solution.  The chances are very good, after the tangle, it will not be able to be replaced, resewn, or glued back.

Win or lose, a trophy is a trophy and if you're terrible at grappling there is an answer.  An answer a notch below gouging an eye; striking a life long user blind is just sad,  and above clawing their ball sack; we're not savages.  They get the benefit of walking around with one ear and you get the benefit of nothing to collect because it is already in hand and you get to keep it, assuming you did not lose too poorly and were beaten to death by their friends.   It's a fairly fair trade as I see it.




///The Knife - "We Share Our Mother's Health"   ...god damn, do we still come down from the north?  still?  we're going to have to choose eventually.  new york city is garbage.  pittsburgh isn't quite the midwest.  is it?  we come out from the hills.  doesn't have the same ring to it.  we do have the same mother's though.  like it or not.

Love

"I love you so much."  Everyone's heard it before.  Everyone's been there, done that.  The kind of love I feel for you is the sort that forces me to roll up a newspaper and smack myself on the nose and hiss "No!  You are not allowed to do that.  Don't eat them!  And don't you dare try to figure out a loophole to gain the same sensation through different means.  They won't appreciate it and you know better.  NO!"  Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack.  It makes me laugh a little bit when it works out well.  Smack, smack.  Thank the maker for the guy who invented free weights. It helps burn things off.  I wish someone was holding my leash.  I have to keep my ears open for when the rattle of the woven plastic gets noisy and I know I'm moving too fast and am liable to outrun my vision.  If someone were holding the other end of it, problem solved.  Unless they are dragged streetlong behind me.  Problem multiplied.  I love you so much.  I want you inside of me so that I can see you all of the time, whenever I wanted to, and you could see me to.  I can't eat you, though.  Besides, if you were mated to my atoms you could never escape.  Everyone must escape from time to time.  It's for our own good.  I love you so much.  Bring your teeth.  Let's find something beautiful.  I'll roll with you, but let me howl.




///Blind Boys of Alabama - "Amazing Grace"  run run run run run run run run r

Concepts and Compulsions (the third star on the right)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

A Friendly Reminder

I was reminded today of what the creative process actually is and also informed or reinformed of what I've been doing.  Kind of a reanimation of what the mission really is and continues to be:

first and foremost and always foremost

We are a blueprint.  We are a map.  A map of the backwoods to go back to personally and also a map forwards for others in similar circumstances and also others who do not know what their circumstances are just yet, that they may not make the same mistakes again and also for the selves that they may understand each other and cooperate efficiently and do less damage to each other while they make their meetings and gravitas and coalesce instead of collide.

second

we are an outlet so that we do not make mistakes heinous and lesser, but mistakes nonetheless.   Travel comes from the front and history is written from behind.  Collision comes when the head and eyes go sidewinder.  There's nothing wrong with telling a good story.  There is something wrong with living a good story.  There is something very wrong with living the same story twice.  There is something very very wrong with not allowing a pop valve in the schematics so the engine does not burn itself into a solid chunk of slag.

third

is what you believe in.  There must be reminders to guide the way toward belief and above all belief systems is a belief in the fellow man.  There is no reason for extinction, not now, not ever, and I wish I understood that sooner.  Caveat being that there are some lined up for it.  Some exceptions.  Though they are very very few, they still exist.  It's an almost bulletproof belief.  Almost bulletproof is as close as can be had, so we'll take it.

fourth

this and her children are outlets.  The majority of the work is still unsung.  This is a manual and the parts and pieces are still, for the most part, in the parts bin.  This is the parts bin, as are her children.  There may or may not be a masterwork coming down the assembly line, but these are the parts.  These are the parts.  These are the parts.  Say it with me: slag.  This is not a summation.

fifth

the real work is done by day.  By night we are exhaust fumes.  The output of what comes from days of combustion and fire and fuel.  Never forget the process.  Never forget that what comes of work unrelated is a photo album and what comes of work ignited can and must be refined.

sixth

never forget the first.  Never forget where the bounds end and further expansion is absolutely mandatory.  Never forget the jail.  Never forget the cell.  Never forget, however pleasant, the yard still exists and the fences are still there no matter how far off they are and how easy it is to miss them, though you need binoculars to see them.  Never forget why the motor does what it does and that you are connected, whatever disagreement it is, objection you have, to it.  Never forget, but also do not fail to work with it, embrace it, and modify to the best of ability.  Because that will be, that failure will be, the end of the game.

Creation will always come from focus, sweat, a clean mind, organization, a healthy garbage heap, and a clean slate near or far.  However warm the fire is, you've nothing until you've walked away to build a pit of your own.  If it takes days, months, years, take the time to move stones and build that pit.  Until you take that time... it's just another fire.





///Bjork - "Hyper Ballad"  ...we live on a mountain...

The Year End Look (part two)

Two thousand twelve was a banger.  A lot of truly excellent things happened.  Some truly awful things happened.  Mistakes were made and successes enjoyed.  I thought after the debacle of 2010 I would not be surprised by whatever could come next and 2011 actually ended up being fairly swell.  2012 was jam packed with more change than I could see coming.  I'm pretty sure I didn't write any fiction in 2012.  I don't know why.  2012 was a war with the clock.  I think that's why.  I did sort of rediscover a pair of old friendships that I thought were pretty much blown to flaming kingdom come and that was nice.  My memory fails me pretty regularly.  Too many blows to the head (chemical and otherwise).  Speaking of chemicals, I still haven't gone to get help.  I don't know that I ever will.  I don't know that I'll ever be able to on my own.

I'm trying to think of what the overarching lesson of 2012 was.  Nothing particular comes up.  2012 was very much a blur.  I became a car owner.  That's nice.  I also became quite broke keeping that car on the road and functioning.  I became a paper towel owner.  That was pretty huge.  Do you know how hard it is to justify paper towels?  Pretty damn hard.  Mostly I was using my dirty laundry to clean up floor spills.  Dish rags to clean up counter top spills.  Worked perfectly, really.  It's not like I was going to wipe up spilled floor milk and then put the shirt right back on.  I also became a soap and toilet paper stockpiler.  I used to buy it in four packs and then string it out as far as it would go and then find alternatives already in my apartment when they ran out.  That's not what grown ups do.  I got car insurance for the first time.  My car is better insured than I am now.  I think I did that one wrong.

You know what?  I've got it.  Twenty twelve was about taking steps toward being an adult.  Meshing with other adults.  Not that I succeeded with the meshing at all.  I tried to pay for cat litter with sex. That didn't work out too well.  Especially when I found out there was no cat litter to begin with.  I have to stop being so easily convinced in twenty thirteen.  I am on the tail end of my twenty seventh iteration.  Can't make rookie mistakes like that or I'll end up smoking bath salts and living in the woods.  Which doesn't sound particularly bad on the surface, but try finding a hot shower off of an interstate and you'll end up with a hobo pissing on your back while you sing Disney anthems in the pre dawn light of another Thursday, wondering if the pair of pants you named after your dead dog will ever find their way back to your cardboard shanty town.  That's what 2012 was.  A lot of learning how to do grown up things.

Not just that.  My literary voice changed so much through 2012.  My whimsical spirit did not die well and I think I want to make the effort to rediscover it.  So much of my life became brutally concrete.  There was no time to write down extensive dream logs and what explorations I could do and enjoy across the dream bridge were lost.  There was a massive task lock.  Huge gridlock between where I was and where I was going mentally that suffocated and snuffed out so much of what I wanted to achieve.  Obviously, everyone wants to be loved.  On some level.  A lot of that need was torn out of me.  It's still there, latent and active by turns and expressed and expressible and not in different forms.

I had a final falling out with my birth parents.  Good riddance.  Things were going quite well until they demanded a response and I gave them the one I'd been holding back for years (which was a fairly simple death threat).  Which spiraled out of control and had to be reigned back in to an even simpler "Hi, you've hurt me for the last time and I'm not going to give you the opportunity to ever hurt me again."  Which went over slightly better.  So I do have that peace of mind to look forward to.  The emails have stopped and that's what I wanted.  BKB (bitches know better) than to ever try to contact me again.  Some things can be forgiven.  Some things can only be atoned for.  Some things can only be paid for, and the checks they wrote on my skin in bruises and welts and blood and on my mind in so many lines of unforgettable screams and shouts can only be paid for.  It was good though.  A link so thoroughly destroyed that I will never have to worry about it threading itself around my neck again.

I did find love again, briefly, in twenty twelve.  Online.  I also found that most of the people in BDSM chat rooms are full of themselves and fake.  But I don't even have to go to any other online dating sites to know that it's probably not unique to my bag.  Back to love and friendships.  I'm fairly certain I may have lost a friend I really wanted to keep, but who knows, maybe it'll come back around in thirteen.  2012 saw a pretty severe drop in production in general.  Adult problems.  Remember that three banger I put out of its misery early last year?  That came back to haunt me when one of them got a job at a store I used to frequent (they had good prices, can't argue with that).  Well, that cut my neighborhood in half.  Can't go to that side of town anymore without looking over my shoulder, or occasionally ducking down in my car at red lights.  Like I said, mistakes were made.

My only new years resolution this year is to not get concussed.  I think that might be aiming too high.  Too many bar fights happened last year.  Between the life drama and tracking myself down rage blew off me like sunspot flares.  Yes, you can punch anything with a face, but can and should are two very different things.  I'm not saying I'm going to be a saint, but I am saying the world is only so big and eventually someone is going to recognize you when you least expect it and remember that thing you did the weekend before to one of their friends and they'll even the score and then it's all bad news bears from there.

Style wise, I was lost as 2012 tailed out.  Spun out.  Ate the guardrail and burned it's way to the bottom of a ravine.  Shifting identity.  Events and exchanges, human exchanges external to my brain pan, brought up so many questions I hope to answer to myself in the coming year.  The identity I believed I had was drastically revised.  Am I still a writer?  Am I a poet?  Am I a songstress?  Maybe just a bard?  I don't know.  I've given up on trying to calculate how many hours I've gone in and what mastery means.  Mastery means nothing.  Exposure means nothing.  The new foundation is framed quite simply as passion.  I have a passion for words on paper.  Whatever that makes me to you, I'm down.  To me, I'm a kid with a pen.  That's all.  Calling yourself a writer or not, calling someone else by the same, is like having embossed ink on a business card.  Doesn't mean a damn thing beyond image.  Do I still want a house in the middle of nowhere to invite people to that I might cut them up, eat the good parts, and burn the rest of their remains?  Yeah.  That's kind of the ultimate goal.  That and having a place to write that I only have to pay taxes on.  That'll work.  A wonderful desert compound.  Somewhere near the border.

Twenty twelve taught me that I'm nowhere close to where a lot of my peers are fiscally, mentally, and emotionally.  My concerns are still fringe.  My furniture still sparse.  My needs are still fairly small and my dreams equal and as difficult to access.   I always thought I'd die in Pittsburgh, but maybe that's not good enough.  Last year made me question my capabilities, but not in the way some people down grade themselves.  I'm not a smart cookie.  I'm not brilliant.  I'm not particularly resourceful.  I can, however, create to no end, my only limitation being the cards I have to play with..

It was a strange year.  There were many tears in 2012.  Some earned, many not.  Many involuntary and inappropriate to the subject.  That's not going to change.  I'm crying right now typing this and it's silly.  My weight keeps fluctuating wildly between 155 and 185.  Every month.  It makes no sense.

Gather.  Fads go out of style.  I've had a few of my own.  I realized through the year that they were constructs to help me express concepts that come to me and help me live from week to week and month to month, but also help me relate.  Junior psychologist over here.  There was some real damage in 2012 and I don't know that 2013 will be that much better, but I like to believe it will be.  Maybe we'll get back on the pills this year.  Just to see.  Just to see and stop talking about talking about doing it.  Twelve was also a year of addictions.  I don't know how to fix that.  They were all, largely, necessary.  But at least I know the side effects will or won't do what they do.  Maybe that's the big thing standing guard these days.  This turned pretty dark in a flash.  I used to think I would be a great candidate for surviving the zombie apocalypse, and then I realized I would probably risk everything for a pack of smokes and dozen cans of spray paint.  Unless I have my desert compound by then (I'll pass the time writing poetry and taking head shot breaks with a .50 cal and whiskey on the rocks).

The major issue I want to resolve this year, given last year, is my writing.  Let's do better.  Let's be better for us.  Shooting for late forties.  I want to at least make it to being a weird uncle.

What did 2012 teach me?  What was the takeaway?  Christmas lights are awesome.  People can't be programmed.  My morals and principles don't translate by default and no one else's do either.  God is still a work of fiction.  I am still figuring myself out and trying not to implode.  At least not completely.  Still so far away, only because I have to be.  I am my own best company and my own worst friend.  The things I don't own are things I should not have yet.  The relationships I don't have are relationships I'm not and may never be ready for.  The spaces I occupy, I am grateful for and will continue to be.  The spaces I do not are spaces I have given back to the ones who belong there and will use beyond my ability to and that's okay.  Twenty twelve was strange.  Twenty thirteen is a big old bag of TBD, but I wish it was a big old bag of LSD.  You can't go through life asleep, but a boy can dream.


///TRACK NOT FOUND - year end playlist up next
defining moments of a finest hour?  yeah, something like that.

Burna

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

As promised:  two pack.



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

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

No Country, No Courtship. The Noble State.

I don't understand this country. At all. It's not my country. It's goals aren't my goals. It's means aren't my means. It's ends aren't my ends. I suppose "ends" are also covered by "goals", but bear with.

I had a bad day. Everyone has those. Tuning my bicycle has been first and foremost, most recently, because it is the gateway drug to planes of existence I cannot reach and enjoy without it. Tuning the bicycle has been very important. At first tuning it was important because, as hobbies and fascinations go, playing with and exploring the machines performance is a risk/reward, work in/pleasure out, formula that is so often reserved for lesser and greater intellectual pursuits. What you put in is what you get out. What you risk is proportional to how far and away from the initial investment you will potentially succeed. The nice thing about the tuning is being able to feel and play in that sand box with your hands instead of just your head.

Well the bad day ended, or maybe continues to roll beneath the surface like wave functions through deep water, when I realized the tuning was important for other reasons. A machine powered by, and linked so tightly to, your body has to be properly tuned or one or the other will suffer damage at the interface. Well I damaged myself and didn't realize it until taking a shower and swiping at my nether regions to find I was raw as hell, but didn't realize it thanks to how hard I ride and all the adrenaline soaked hours I put in. Seat post is about half an inch too high. High enough to max out my strokes and stride, but too high and high pressured for my nuts. And the gear shifts for the drive sprockets are about a quarter inch to tensed, hence several agonized seconds spent trying to lock in high drive and pull away from a bus that ended with me having to bail and pull the bike up on the sidewalk after stripping the skin of my knuckle trying to engage the shifter. After that I didn't try to do anything else above the call of duty. The requirements of the moment. So maybe the bad beat is over. Maybe the adjustments will work. Maybe I'm just not making any sudden moves so I can't really know if things are tacking the right way or not.

The whole day was a lot like getting ripped out of hyper space with the boards lit up red and having no reason to believe anything should be that wrong. What the hell happened. Why are we stationary? Why now? We haven't gotten to the next destination. Not even close. And all the why trying to remember the lines and lines and lines of information in the manuals that tell you what all the little lights mean and how to fix them and they're related, but it's all over whelming when it strikes thirty at a time. So we troubleshoot and wait, dead in space.

The concept of the noble state struck me today. We are all familiar with solid state being, as I am absolutely obsessed with it. The phase of existence that is pure beingness. Zero wetware. Pure production. Pure interaction. Zero latency. Zero sleep. Zero diversion. This bad day has brought to my table another state. A state with much in common with the noble gases. A state of zero sleep, latency, diversion, and interaction whose mode is one hundred percent wet with zero production. A mode of existence predicated on pure focus to the maintenance requirements of the wetware to keep it functioning and spinning in place and whose pured focus requires the abandonment of all production, whose main symptom is not the decision to interact or not, but the incapability to do so. In the same way noble gases cannot react. A natural cross terminal reaction to the remediation of solid state existence. The "one step too far."

I have been gripped by the noble state recently and I'm trying to break out of it to that happy middle ground of balance. Which brings me back, in circuit, to the titular object. This is a place I cannot understand. Here's why (or at least the most recent example):

My work ethic got my friend promoted. I was happy to be part of it, but I didn't realize until now how large a part I played. My ability to do my job is par infinity. The intensity and strength and focus I brought to my work place is without equal. Literally. There is not a single person in the building who can do what I do, as well as I do it, as often as I do it, to be found anywhere. The manager who is getting deposed, failed to take advantage of what I do. The coworker who is being appointed successfully ascribed his name to what I do and is getting appointed to a higher position that pays double and more. I am, easily, more capable than both of them combined. However, the organization that staffs my place of work prizes seniority, and so my coworker who is half as capable as me but more senior by six months will reap all of the benefits of my toil. Which I was okay with, until the true degree of the leap frogging came to light.

I applied to the program to train managers; an opportunity to enter a phase of employment that would evaluate my ability to manage through an 8 week process. I was denied what amounts to an opportunity to participate in an opportunity to possibly enjoy greater success and use my skills to better the organization as a whole. Because, and as a direct result of my work, my coworker, six months my senior and half as capable, has been called in to fill out paperwork that will assign him to managerial status at another store. So what's wrong with that?

One: he did as little work as the current, temporarily deposed, interim manager. Two: he was the keyholder for the store when the falling temporary manager was not available and I still fulfilled all of the duties with greater fidelity than he did. Three: it was my ridiculous work ethic that got shit done in the face of call offs and short staffing and heavy (1000+ case orders) that made the store immaculate each day. Four: I had to actively manage his incompetence on a regular basis to make sure things ran relatively smoothly (the guy didn't even know how to turn on his two way radio). Five: when the shit hit the fan and there were four people available to put up one thousand cases, more than ten thousand individual items, to shelves, I was the one governing and delegating and executing the processing of the order so that when the peons came to work everything would be laid out correctly for them to do their jobs.

It is just massively aggravating that, in the face of everything that transpired he is instantly appointed, through a few moments of paperwork to a position HE DID NOT EVEN APPLY FOR. I did the paperwork, I went through the three stage interview process. It was something I wanted. I was denied for having "interpersonal issues" that "once resolved and signed off on" would allow me to reapply and be re-evaluated on. He gets to skip all that. Despite constant video surveillance and consistent day to day review of the tapes by the head honcho he still gets credit for "motivating" me? Despite the fact that even with incompetence of the interim manager and the steady output, the steady, ridiculous high numbers I put out, with no direct supervision ever, he gets credit for somehow working magic when it was that morons incompetence that failed to complete the days order after I left?

I don't understand the courtship dance that I'm not doing. I don't know where the "i"s are that I'm not dotting and the "t"s I'm not crossing. Just tired of getting passed up. I would be less jaded if the person skipping all the bullshit I had to go through to get the door close on my foot wasn't white. I would be less jaded if he wasn't ten years older than me. Less jaded if he wasn't six months longer in the bullshit of a union we're forced to join by accepting employment. Less jaded if I didn't do both of their jobs better than them. Less jaded if the only knock on me was having "interpersonal issues". Less jaded if we hadn't been written up the exact same number of times. Less jaded if the videotape, supposedly reviewed daily, didn't show I did twice the amount of work of them both combined. So, I am jaded and disappointed, despite myself.

It was a bad day. Capped off by a lack of harmony between myself and my machine. I don't understand what it is that I have to do to court America. What it is that I have to do to make it a more perfect union. As far as I can tell it is a thing imperfected and continuing on specifically because it is such. Because if the right people are selected to the right posts all the time, capitalism fails because everyone succeeds and in order for it to succeed very talented people have to be made to fail, not because of their talent or their offerings, but because someone can capitalize on their talent and their offerings at cut rates and generate a psuedo free market, a market free of close evaluation for its emulation of its own ideals warped just here and so to generate enough complacency that the end result is the best possible outcome at minimal costs and subterfuge.

I don't know where that last part came from, but it sounds like the start of a fine and provable thesis. Continuity, profit, and production ahead of ability, common sense, and equitable consideration. In the grand scheme, the scheme of things larger than myself I would probably accept that with huzzahs and go get 'ems and fuck yeah Americas. On the scheme of things in which I exist, however, I the words stick in my mouth in favor of "there has to be a better way." So I settle back into a noble state. And preserve myself. Tooth and nail.



///Muse - "Falling Away With You" I think our lives have just begun. You can feel the guitar climb and claw with the vocals and a scissor dogfight for superiority and it is beautiful. Beautiful in the way the fight for conscious can sometimes be.

Touching One Half of the Interface, Old Contacts, and Still Making Fire

Well, I finally got up the parts and pieces to contact him. Now I just have to work myself toward opening the response. I'm sure it's nothing. Well nothing more serious than a rejection of any one thing can be.

I found rechargeable batteries for my camera. It's nice to have to use again. It's funny how the good days bleed away like sand. I need an extra set of hands to collect them and keep throwing them in my hair till it get's stuck that way permanent like.



I made a portrait. My head is tired again, but I'm working it somewhat relentlessly. I have a bad personality tick of punishing myself for everything. It's part of what motivates me to operate. I should switch that maybe. I'm not entirely sure how. I should probably get some sleep before I go to work. It's strange. The feeling approaching the punishment breaker. Artifacting. Ridiculous. I'm still and learning. I was discussing the idea of normal. It struck me that there are people who like the burning half baked you because it is. Normal isn't good enough. Or maybe. I just need a little more sleep. I'm not just telling myself that. My self is telling me.

I miss the people I've never met and the people I can never really meet because my head comes apart so easily. It's been raining today. It's been nice. I remember hearing about the water cycle in fifth grade and thinking about how awesome it would be to ride with those molecules through aquifers to the sea. That's not an occupation. It's a preoccupation? I'm thinking about finally giving in to it. I think I've already missed. I'll find out soon enough once I talk to him. We will see if it's the last thing these pupils do. And add it to the blueprint.


///Autechre - "Kalpol Introl"

The fire is still being made and the forge is still powered on, but it's starting to feel like pulling the guts out of the underside of a fish by hauling on it's jawbone. What I'm getting out I can't eat. Still gonna try though. Today is a mess. Was a mess. No vision. No visibility. I've gotta fix these road signs before I get lost again. Must get dressed and put on my face and skins. We ride for dawn. Or some place else as warm.

Behold Again!!

Pchow Pchow, goes the Buck Rogers laser gun as I fire off good idea after great idea. Seriously though, I am just tired. While it's great to exercise my brain it also makes me tired, especially because the fridge has been particularly short on brain food and good scotch.

Check out that new banner! Is it or is it not the cats pj's. It counterbalances the chaos down that right side bar pretty nicely. I got rid of that text obstructing thing down at the bottom of each post too. See, I listen to you sometimes when I'm not arguing amongst my selves.



Speaking of arguments, I watched 500 Days of Summer recently. Great movie. Great writing in the movie is what I think made it so spectacular. The subtle bias toward the male pro-stagonist/underdog was very well done. It played off of the understood theme's in relationship movies and then flipped it quite handily on its head through- actually, hold on. I was going to talk about something else, but now I can't remember what.

Oh, the banner up there! Yes. So I might tweak it some more later on, and by later on I mean tomorrow. Just to help it blend more seamlessly. On second thought, scratch that. I think I may play up the difference to highlight and cut it off from the rest of the page to give the entire blog a more clearly defined personality instead of a mix mash of boarders and impressionistic pictures.

Ah, yes. Arguments. Today has struck me as something of a frustrating day. The two people I really want to talk to are not talking to me. Petty and self centered of me to say that right? Wrong! I am never wrong! You are wrong for even suggesting I may ever be wrong about anything! Mainly, I wonder what they're doing because I want to be a part of it, but I'm beginning to suspect that the role I thought I played in their lives is actually a tiny forgettable fraction. Or perhaps not so much forgettable as extremely occasion specific. I've niched myself. Or have I. The whole thing is confusing and the most frustrating thing about it all is that its probably almost entirely a product of differences in free time and my own insecurities. God damn it, just answer your phone and tell me you don't want to talk ever. That's what a nice person would do. Or maybe that's what an asshole would do. My interpersonal skills might be regressing, but the plus side is that my amateur psychology is progressing. No, wait, that might be a negative too.

I bet Kanye West thinks he's being a nice person every single time he opens his mouth (old I know). I wonder if he's having fun in India finding his soul. Ha, more like finding his soul's "dear john" letter! Pchow! Buck Rogers. Count it. Look out for the addition of more bells and whistles in the future. This place is always developing. Occasionally moping along like the progress of a blinking light around a string of Christmas lights still on in August of the following year, but like those lights we keep it changing.

///Jay-Z - "Empire State of Mind" maybe I'll move to NYC and seek my fortune there. Or even anywhere else in the state of New York. I think I'm out of options here. Either way, from where I stand the coasts feel like they're glittering.

you know what ive realized?

doing what you love for a living is not really anywhere near as important as making time to do what you love regardless of what your living happens to be.

ive also realized that i will likely never recieve a giant robot for a birthday gift and i will have to build one myself.

ive also realized that i can make this thing look even better with a little more work. well a lot more work, but itll be good work.

ive also realized...

... no thats all. thats it.

i have a very strong urge to weld something. maybe ill build ... no thats a bad idea. i was going to say maybe i should build my own metalurgy thingy... black smithy furnace thing with the anvil and the hammer and the sparks and the bucket of molten metal. but that is definitely a bad idea. the first reason being that i dont have a way to get raw metal. the second reason being that i dont have a way to transport raw metal if i found it. the third reason being that i know nothing about welding.



what else... no thats it. sadly. im busy with book learnin. and book writing. isnt it ever disappointing... like thrillingly upsetting that the people that hold the keys to your future know nothing about you?

well not so much that they know nothing about you as much as they are completely ignorant as to the ramifications of ... well no thats too super villain...

does it ever just punch you in the jaw some nights? knowing that you're holding back because you have to?

i dunno. the prospect of a perpetual caging leaves me with mixed emotions, but then what else is new.

///god lives underwater - "from your mouth" a song that struck me when i was younger that still has a mixture of sounds that rings my guts like metal pipes in a zen garden. it makes me laugh a little bit thinking of my little head in my little hands back then, rocking back in forth on my bed and staring out the shitty bedroom window onto a view of the broken shed/patio roof that always stunk of mold and thinking of how overwhelming the problems seemed then. just a little bit. sometimes it feels so unreal as to become unreal.

do you ever wake up

and find yourself encased in ...


... well who really cares. basically ive been feeling kind of weird for the past three days. i keep getting a rising urge to pull my body apart. its not mine. i dont want to be in it anymore. i want to see whats underneath, but the problem is that what im looking for is not going to be found by digging and its frustrating. where did i go? my room is a lot like a cage... with bells to let people know when im moving around. its like privacy without the private part.

so much anger and discomfort and racism and prejudice and mommy daddy issues and anger and splitting and sharp edges and simple machines and spillage and anger and splitting

///angelo badalamenti - "red bats with teeth" its all building and growing into something that makes my intestines ache.

women with children 03/15/07

Subject : women with children (a.k.a. young'ns)
Posted Date: : Mar 15, 2007 2:32 AM

alright... so walking through the old food court today around 2 in the afternoon after a hard days shopping for some sexy man pants (for myself) and some tighties (for mr. wangthony) and a duffle (for my shotguns) I realized something that other people have probably noticed too: the vitality of younger mothers with their children. I mean seriously... the food court is a pretty shitty place most of the time... especially the one at the mall near my house. Every five to ten seconds someone is thrusting some free sample in your face and the dumb thing is 4 out of the 7 places to eat are all asian food so they basically sell you the same thing at varying price points.

I usually hate it but today was different. really kind of weird in a fun way. instead of the usual dark, dingy, fat people, consumerist, gluttony that usually hangs in the air i felt a kind of lightness... like standing between two statically charged sheets of plastic... or maybe to state that better... like entering a pet store and finding all of the critters had something to say to you about how good you looked. alright well, anyway, the point is, what was different was that the place was full of mothers and their little kids running around and playing with eachother and taking care of eachother. the whole place just effused life.

I always thought pregnant women were pretty hot. yes ive seen pregnant porn... its not very good most of the time. pregnant erotica is more the ticket. but this was on a whole separate level. I think pregnant women are hot because of that feeling i cited before... that sense of utter, glowing, vitality that colors their faces and their voices, even when they're puking or complaining or just feeling awful. It comes out even more when they're in a good mood. It's like walking through a rainy day and suddenly finding yourself in the presence of a sun shower though seconds before everything was cold dark and rotten.

i wanna have kids some day. two of them. a boy and a girl. right now i want to see my girlfriend become my wife and have my kids. i want to see her smile at them and wipe the ice cream off their faces when they decide to use their hands to eat from the bowl instead of their spoons. i want to see her getting rest when she's full with them and taking off from work. i want to cook dinner for her when she cant and change the channel for her when they're born and growing and stealing the tv remotes to use them for space ships.

women with children (inside or outside their bodies) are beautiful. they are beings capable of producing transformative experiences with their mere presence, but to put it differnetly, they are love personified on so many different levels and through so many different relationships and interactions that it would be silly to list them here, so i will shut up and think about my future and hope that it incudes one in a few years. im sure you've probably heard the above before from someone else... so just let this be confirmation to you and stick your snide commentary about "heard it before" up your nose, swirl it around, and when you pull it back out i hope your frontal lobes are dangling from the end of it.

disclaimer - they are not all beautiful. there are some that are frieghtening, repelling, and just plain gross (for reasons that need not be enumerated here). so here's to hoping that the latter (the most recent statement) is //not// in my future... cuz that shit will be difficult to deal with keeping in my mind my dreams and ambitions. sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyit.

on another note... my next and last year of college is shaping up to SUCK ASS. thankyou. that is all.

///pink floyd - "wish you were here" just a lazy, rainy, maryland thursday by the marsh and the train tracks kinda song. i havent thought of the deeper meanings of the lyrics. i havent even heard the song recently, but i keep thinking about that chorus fragment... because well... i wish my country mouse was here right now and i wish i was in pittsburgh and ... im just feeling full of wishiness (sans washy. i dont get washy... i get wistful... jerk).

lifetime voyeur 12/23/05

Subject : lifetime voyeur

Posted Date: : Dec 23, 2005 12:06 AM

everyone has their "perverted" side. right? well maybe not. Maybe that's just what i tell myself when i neglect to close my blinds... ever. Its nice though waking up and finding your room full of sunlight, and nothing inspires more poetic thoughts than say a room full of the glow of city lights, a mattress in heaps, bare skin, and nothing else.

to each his/her own. maybe. I can't really explain why this turns me on, but it does. I suppose when I become a kept man my hot blonde in her middle 60s will want to show off everything she does with her sweet, dream boat catch, of a sexaholic kept man, so i suppose its not really a bad thing that I like "showing off" already. Or maybe it is because after all it is a little perverted.

Maybe its just the knowing that something is considered a little perverted that provides the turn on. Maybe thats how everyone feels about everything sexual. If so then I think im just going to go ahead and keep my blinds open. all the time. and hope my future employer feels the same way.

no flash photography please.

the training continues.