Concepts and Compulsions (the third star on the right)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

The "Like" Policy (i dream in your actual space)

From when you are a little kid 'til you get to be of age or at least to a point where your outcomes become a direct, a more direct, result of your actions and inactions by turns, you are told to chase your dreams.

Some of those dreams happen to be being well adjusted enough to enjoy those social gatherings and incidents and accidents on a level a little more impactful than the entry fee of peace and goodwill.  It happens.  Nothing to write home about, though.  It's about getting into gear from a dead stop and that's fine.  Do not blow the stop sign.  Blow the stop sign once and you can skate.  Blow it twice; shame on you.  Blow it thrice and you're asking for trouble.  Blow it every single time you come in from the outlands and you're begging for trouble.

Some of those dreams do happen to be some of the things that are shared.  "Why do you like damn near everything?"  I don't really care about over liking and this is the last time I will bring up facebook.

There is a policy.  There is a set of rules.  There is a governing structure to many things that I participate in because there has to be.  If I screw up the policy, things grow increasingly more tangled in a show of one up, also it becomes increasingly difficult to quantify what a like is.  Hence, laughter comments.

It's really not that complicated.  It's all in good fun.  I know the chances we may actually hang out are slim to nary and that's cool.  I couldn't eat you in person for more than a few hours at a step and you myself neither.  And that's alright.  I like a lot of things.  That's why that word exists.  You can't love everything.  Or can you?  What if there was a love button?  That would completely wreck up some relationships.  The concept of a shared planet is very pleasing.  If I can live vicarious through you, your efforts, and your experiences and photographs and blitzes of wisdom, don't fault me.  I'm not stalking you.  I am stalking your food sometimes.  For the most part, I'm simply enjoying an aspect of life that I aspire to, and if there is fault in that "like" click go die.

It's fine to like a lot of things.  Life is so incredibly multidimensional and layered and there is no way to take it all in with one lens.  Pardon my use of the compound camera.  If you like nothing there is probably something seriously wrong with you and godspeed dealing with those issues.

Take time to have fun.  Like many things.  Enjoy many things.  Consume (obviously not at all costs) at some cost and feel good about it because the planet is a shared home and last I checked the stars are still light years away so don't pack bags and make extensive plans for a day trip just yet.  Take it light.  Take it on the heels.  And always bring a towel.  You never know when it may come in handy.

Whatever your policy is, do not be afraid to enjoy or upset about a giggle taken from you by force.

They meant well.

Also, I am stalking you, but just a little. In the same way a creature intelligent observes, studies, and dissects another.



///Bushwacka - "The Egyptian"  There's just one thing that I want you to do.

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.

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

Touching Down (t minus four)

I've been, uhm... out of touch. Broke loose for a few days. Had to find myself, and now I'm touching down again. Attempting reentry. Things got bad. Not worse than usual. It's hard to explain. I was walking to the store and I just broke into tears. Uncontrollable tears. The thing about crying is that, sometimes, once you understand why, what it is that drove you there, you can start to turn it off. Start to stand yourself down. I had tears streaming down my face and at the same time the armory was gearing up and my hands were in fists and I bit my lips so hard they started bleeding. I was a mess. I had to blow off so much energy I took it to a brick wall for a while and then came home and took it to my own wall for four hundred reps. The swelling is starting to come down though. Getting most of the feeling back in my forearms. The artifacts living inside my head were screaming at me so loud I couldn't bear wakefulness.

 I'm trying to hold on until my birthday at least. I know I don't owe to myself or anyone to do so. I want to know what tomorrow is. I know this is just a bad burn. A nasty hiccup of circuitry. I can handle it. I can handle it. I can handle it. I've lost control of them. The voices in my head. They just get so loud and the effort blows my mind apart. Parsing the information faster than it comes in. Controlling what goes out. It came apart so fast this time. Over night. And it really is all I can do to isolate myself, because I don't have clear answers to questions.

 

 "How are you?" How can I answer that? I can't seem to remember my dreams lately. They follow me wherever I go. Wherever I am, I am so rarely alone. How am I? I don't know. The question makes me sweat. What am I supposed to say? No one wants to hear that you're so thickly steeped in thoughts of suicide, but still find time to laugh. I don't know. Still looking for my way out. Back in the day, birthdays were the most violent times of the year. Birthdays and holidays. You got a shitty card and, if you were lucky, dodged a beating. I guess that still rolls over in my mind grave. Freezes me, even while my head burns from the inside out. So much chest thumping anxiety. What was I supposed to have been by now? Breaking waves. Burning up on reentry. I must have it.

 I want to live among the stars. I know, it's unreasonable. Untenable. Un everything except a dream. I finally blew apart the three part relationship that owned me. It was a bad thing. Burned it to the ground for good. Flat earth policy. And I miss the ownership. The being needed. Having my leash held. I'm a stray again. But not unloved, I have to learn again. It's gonna take time. Sometimes being alone with your thoughts is a good thing. Sometimes you just unravel and want to take the world apart as you go. Sometimes you'd give your right eye for sleep. Sometimes you break your body apart just to be able to breath again. Bringing myself in for a landing. Coming in hot.


 ///School of Seven Bells - "Love Play" ...bass up.

Over The River and Through The Woods

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

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

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



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

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

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

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


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

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

Comrade Super Code

Life has been strange. A lot of big boy decisions. Decisions I haven't had to make before. Like what? Like none of your damn business. It's been difficult. Then again, when has it ever been easy. My dreams have been phenomenal. I've taken again to recording them when I can as I wake up. The first thing I do is grab hold of my phone and press record and just talk, sometimes for hours. Sometimes just to hear a voice that I know is real. Sometimes just because there is so much information brought back from there that I know I am going to lose that I know I will need later. I promise I will get back to serials.

The thought of dying has not been as intense as it used to be. I had a conversation with someone about that specifically. Ten iterations ago I was sixteen. I don't know what I was thinking then. The documentation is largely destroyed. The record really begins to come into it's own when I was 18 and really began to apply myself to writing. That's been the literal paper trail. It hasn't been as intense as it used to be. Probably part of the blunting. Which is fine. I can deal with that missing edge. Sometimes you just have to beat yourself in the head with a bat until things quiet down. The kid hasn't been missing. That's not the problem. The problem is that we're all on the factory floor, guns to each other's heads, knives out, and if you say one word, just one, I will cut you so bad they will need your dental records to put a name to your body.

I just have to get them to work together again. They're all here. Just off on different projects. Different passions asking each other to pass the mashed potatoes, but never directly. It's been great hanging out with them on an individual basis, since they're not talking. We've gotten close. Which is nice. Not together. Which is not nice. Variable occupancy. Not healthy. We do drugs. No we don't. Second hand spray. Collusion. You owe me. I have been managing rage. Easier to do when you don't own standoff weaponry. In my life everyone has lied to me. That is not entirely true. Tomorrow is my 67th birthday in my 26th iteration. There is a certain amount of pride to be had in not joining the under 27 club, I think. A certain amount of disappointment, because joining that club is pretty elite in terms of prodigious production, but I have not done enough or come close to where I want to be in terms of body of work to be happy enough to pull that trigger, and a certain amount of relief because I am sure the majority of under thirty something suicides go unheralded and how sad is that? It's off and on. Wires close enough to arc, but the force of the spark and ignition of air shoves them apart until they work their way close again.

The shadows have been crawling. The little faces in door jambs closed. The weeping man in streaks of dry paint laid to a door decades ago. What the hell. Who made that and why. The shadows have been crawling and blooming for lack of a better word. When I'm not looking. When I'm barely looking. When I'm trying not to look. The world is a war zone. A fantastic warzone. I have been imagining the most fantastic weapons to expedite exterminations. If only I had the staff and the means. An angry boy can dream.

The world cross bridge is haunted. By my father. I have to kill him there. If I ever want to enjoy it again. I've had to rip chord out of there more times than I would like to admit in the last seven days and I can't kill him here. Not yet anyway. Still too much to do. He will pay though. Eventually. Matters of course and convenience. There was a word I was supposed to look up and I didn't. It's going to bother. 24 years of compensation. I just have to make sure I don't take it out on the people I love.

I gave women a pretty hard rap sheet yesterday. And I'm sorry for that. Not because it wasn't true, but because it came across so chopping blocked. There's no vendetta. Probably a lot of buried issues with my mother. They come up as I dig into the ground. Trying hard to not be found. I'm not going to go on a serial spree of slaughtering women to make myself feel better about myself. The shadows have been crawling. Actually moving. I don't know what to do about that. If there is anything I can do about that.I had this dream where darkness poured out of light fixtures like little waterfalls and it was gorgeous until the shadows grew so high people started to drown and I looked for days and couldn't find the switch to turn them off. Ghostly swims. Turning off the lights and trying hard not to look back into the rooms and believe there really is nothing there more than what was when the switch turned the other way. The freedom. It's been strange.

Where the hard stops start. Toxic involvements. I do have to clean up the circuitry at some point. My willingness to engage has been the source of certain difficulties. What happened to your face? I can't say, honestly. If I told you, I would sound crazy. And then you wouldn't want me around at all. I swear it's all above board. My boards. Not yours. Your square one, your nothing is different from mine. Maybe connected on some flattened levels. When you pick through them with zero and one forensics. I thought maybe if I scratched my ear hard enough I could pick my brain. No luck. We had this dream, right? About a house made out of cardboard and dried leaves.

I was wondering, you know, if you knew where I'd been. I have this sneaking suspicion someone's been lying to me, but I don't know who. Many loves of the dragon. Maybe I should get a kitten. At some point. I need to draw more. Now that I have the time to. The time to sleep dive almost at will. It's going to be amazing. I'll try to take notes better than I have. I've been gone for some time, but I'm back now. Bolting through space. Hell hound on a thin leash and learning boundaries the while. Dog bites man and man bites dog and dog bites dog and man bites man. And everybody wishes sweet dreams into your head as though there isn't fire filling the coils of your bed.


/// Starkey - "Eris" stoop sitter blues high

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?

Under Consideration and Lesser Titles for Greater Things

Having experienced various points of system shock through various psychological breaking points over the last five days there are so many facets of existence to consider. I guess first and foremost is the relationship between- brake fail. Entry point. New thread. Same thread. If I want to enter into steady state society, contiguous existence, beyond the high speed passes, lower the charge without damaging consciousness- skip break. how far can you go. how far are you willing to go to make sure you don't die alone. Found it.

The hole. If the break cannot be controlled and it has been demonstrated that the entry points are getting. Growing in number beyond traceability to a point of trustlessness and protection to enter to ask. We already know we can't ask without. The offer is real isn't it? Standing for the claimant. The ability. To reject the known for the unknown again. To start it over. We did it for her once. For both her and us and now we face ourselves and potentially the division from. And entry into not just the hole, but what lives inside.

I'd forgotten what great company was. For some time. I thought I understood to an extent. And the reality apart from the extent of understanding was more incredible. More fantastic than I could have hoped. I've heard that heaven's gonna burn your eyes, but I didn't believe it. The noises were amazing. Would we still feel it inside. Could we know it if we did.

I'm trying to reconstruct the memories. They are without sensations. The ones from that earlier time and rocky trial of prescriptions. Disconcerting eveness. All things advance. Could it really be any different from the functional calls to operations and sectional being. Yes. It would have to be. Out of the reason that the responses are all. Why not have access to. that's part of the issue. The access is cut apart. But how badly do you not want to die alone. And there's the fear that comes without description. Because there is no description for what exists apart from the ability to describe. But released from what can be described and known though invisible artifacts of the corrupted and tuned highly tuned circuit. Facing a way. A way in. A way out. A way in. To become less and a part of.

So we'll walk into it. And find what has been seen. And see it again. Charting space and spaces. We'll see what happens through this week. Thursday and straight on till morning. Not goodbye. An extended hello. To further modification. Answers. A heaven that will burn your eyes. A start of beginnings. That are loops and waves. On our insides drawing together divisions. Of necessity and being. It will throw our ways. I'll catch you yet. And maybe there really is nothing inside of that hole anymore. Or maybe the only way to deal with it is entry into. We'll find what lies and lower the charge and enter into the gravity of society. Space is just too cold. So I've learned. And it's taken loss to unravel that concept. I'll catch you if you'll wait for me. I don't like to promise much, but just don't leave too soon. I'm gonna drive it straight into the atmosphere. The flames will be gorgeous, but by the time my wheels touch the ground the tiles and plates and cooling vents will be easy on the eyes and ears and to the touch. The runway's not as long as it used to be. I didn't pack a chute when I left.




///Thievery Corporation - "Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes" ...you can't be afraid forever... so I'm going to try a different way to be brave and maybe there will be a hero's welcome yet. Don't wish us luck. Save it for the day I shake your hand. That's when I'll need it. And we'll sit down with some coffee and I can tell you all about where the fuck I've really been and maybe there'll still be something left behind my eyes familiar to you and we both.