Looking at my own reflection at the river, a wolf's head mask in the crook of my arm, I wonder how many there are like me. I wonder how many times I can roll the dice with instability before an immovable object meets an unstoppable force again. I try to skip rocks. I try to bat rocks with an aluminum bat given to me as a gift after I left the last one I had at home, bent into the shape of a boomerang. I wonder where I am going and if someone out there is going the same way I am. If we will carpool together and shout at each other, trying to figure out where exactly "there" is while the driver tries to figure how to get two wolves out of his car and regrets being a Samaritan.
Many of the rocks hit the tips of breakers and sink. One of us trots off to find a stick, because the only thing better than being good enough at whipping rocks across the waves, skip tip skip, is belting one clear across to the other shore with an eardrum pounding snapthud. The other of us continues to troll the river edge for something shaped more like an atmosphere slicing star ship. Found. Away it goes: skip kip tick tink tock thock plop splash! Mid-river. The current continues. I can't see my face, looking down. The angles aren't right. The light is not just so. The sun is not cooperating. Statistics tell me, with time, the chances only get better.
Thinking about how people find their perfect match. At least, their better half, I worry that my best half may be a copy of me. Should I meet myself, the fusion would be fantastic. Impossible. Incredible in its perfection and destruction. Volatile and serene and volatile and serene and so far off of the periodic table as to exist for fractions of fractions of fractions of seconds, recorded only by some sort of quantum, liquid gas cooled, calculating machine, monitoring a torus of plasma whose only hint that the collision was made successfully is a slight fluctuation in its surface hundreds of meters in circumference, yet to be invented before its shear density of particles blew apart and ceased to exist. Insofar as that, I am satisfied to be alone.
Happy and satisfied are two different things. The instant of happiness would be without measure, however, exceptionally brief. As much as I would like to, as much as I say it is the only match capable of closing my circuits, I know it is ... I want to say that I know it is not true. Doomed. I laugh typing that. The two "oh's" in the middle make me giggle. Dooooooomed! Of course not. Should you meet an element that can absorb nuclear decay and heat. I wonder what quantum decay looks like. I meet so many people with so many names and I know none of them. Some of them, yes. None of them, also yes. Always at distance. Minding the fence. Minding the facilities. On the off chance they might be me. On the larger chance I am still myself and they are not.
A moat. Sometimes the bridge is there. The gates open and ambassadors cross. I don't know what madness is. Is it sleeping to protect yourself from yourself? Is it sleeping to protect others from yourself? Is it believing the best thing you can do is offer shade inside a bunker, outfit with everything you can desire and hold dear, in the shadow of your fusion climbing toward the exosphere? Recite: I am here, this is what I wanted. I am here, this is what I wanted. I am here. This is what I wanted. Few things truly scare me, in life. I would like to never meet my, atom for atom, better half. Inside that reactor would lie our mutual, exceptionally violent, end.
///Groove Armada - "At The River" ~ tempo and brass and sand and waving, not drowning.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label sleep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sleep. Show all posts
9/7/15
That Instant
you can't get the protective plastic off of the cap of your new bottle of off-brand Zzzquil and you pull your hand back to smash the neck on the side of your counter-top and realize nothing short of bricking your brain is going to slow you down enough to sleep fitful when you can't even control your breathing.
3/31/15
The Two Dimensional Garage, Jury Duty, and the Furnace
I continue to not eat. I don't know why. Well, I do know why: it's very difficult to do regularly. In short, it's hard. That's not a reason. That doesn't qualify as a reason. That's an excuse. It's a reason! I know it's a reason because I like food. I like shopping for food. I like looking at food. I like cleaning and preparing food. I simply cannot eat it and I don't know why it is so difficult to get food from in front of me to inside of me.
Eating with people is still so strange and, for the most part, to be avoided. It's incredibly uncomfortable. It makes my forearms itch to watch and listen to it. It's not disgusting, but mechanically it's draining to be around, and then people ask you why you're not eating and it turns into a whole thing and just thinking about it now I want to vomit. It's difficult to do. I don't understand it. I try to do it, the feeding, but even two a day is a break through. Once is enough. Get it down and out of the way and forget about it. Go to bed. Sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep. You can't run yourself into trouble if you're asleep.
I'm not sure what. You can see all of the colors and the sun's light and clouds and birds and it flattens and smears out to gray. There are things you have to do. Things that must be done. Feeding, washing, resting. Sometimes it feels like a two dimensional garage. A plastic play place facsimile of garage where everything is laid out inside white lines. You get up and everything is numbered in order. You take this off and put that on, brush this, comb through that, turn knobs here and there, check your fuel gauge, off to work little guy, home, and into bed to lie awake until your brain turns itself off.
There's nothing special. There's nothing important. There's nothing pressing. There's nothing. The routine is critically important. The more rigid the better, I used to think. I'm not so sure. With familiarity, brutal and starkly lit familiarity, there are fewer opportunities for mistakes, misreadings, miscues, misses. All of them. Destructive and damaging misses. Misses that can affect my relationships with friends or neighbors and strangers. Fewer opportunities for misses that can lead to depressions and emotional collapses. Fewer opportunities for problems to arise all across the board, because of something I saw or heard and reacted to or engaged with that later proved to never have existed at all beyond my own eyes.
Brute force coping. Except even that fails and begins to deteriorate and then you can't be at work and you can't be at home either and you hide from them by sleeping as much as you possibly can and maybe this time when you wake up they'll be gone and they're not and you're quietly terrified and you can't be out of the house for too long, and you can't be awake for too long. They'll know. Turn your world into a two dimensional garage and nail the windows shut and paint them black so they can't get inside and they won't be able to tell if anyone is awake at night by candle light. To be safe and certain. They'll try to fool you, but you know. You know what you have to do to live. It's all laid out by numbers and if something goes missing you know exactly what it is because its outline will be there in its absence.
I've tried for years to understand it. I say tried, but it is not as though the attempts to understand it have reached their conclusion. They are ongoing. It is very difficult to prioritize. There are many things to complete, and all they all strike me as the same. Eating or a glass of water are as important as going to work or placing critical phone calls. As important or as unimportant. Prioritization has stepped away and I don't know where exactly to. I want to feel the sensation of hot blood across the surface of my skin. I am trying to summon the rage that fills and fires the furnace that can push me forward into and through a day or a week. By the end, there isn't much left. The weekend or the month's end will be composed of reassembling what is left of the furnace when I have to use it and over use it. Picking up and bending sections and pieces back into place for having to contain for lengths and lengths of time roiling licks of anger and sheer rage.
I hate myself. I hate having to force on smiles and eat back tears and shake hands. I hate that I have so much trouble getting into and keeping jobs. I'm lucky enough to have a position now that is fairly flexible and accommodating. I'm afraid of the day the unpredictable nature of my disorder will strike me with no warning with a ferocity and depth of intensity that I. I just don't want to hurt anyone. Often I've said my main desire in this life is to be left alone, but that's not because I want to be left alone.
Isolation is the only way. Every day I know I am going to die alone. I cannot be married. I cannot raise children. I cannot take care of someone else. I cannot ask someone to help me take care of myself. I completely understand. It would not be fair. Beyond fairness, and the idea that trying to build a home with someone who is afflicted and, for lack of a better word, damaged it would be hazardous on many other levels. At least isolated there is a very large zone of dead space, neutral space, physically speaking, but isolated there is also a zone of communications that can be closed off and shut down until a time arises when they can be safely used again. Whatever damage is done is localized and hopefully hidden from those who would be part of relationships tended. That way when communications and visitations resume they can be pursued with the cues and tips and exchanges of normalcy and proportions near normalcy that govern civil life.
Which brings me to jury duty. There was the questionaire about all of the reasons why the prosecution or the defense may not want to select you for their trial and I came to the line item of: do you have any mental or physical disabilities that may impair your ability to perform the duties ... to paraphrase. I don't have a prescription anymore. That lapsed so long ago I can't remember the specific year. I don't have paperwork. I hate saying "what's wrong with me", but I tried to describe, during the interview portion when they ask you about your particular survey answers, what was wrong with me. It was terribly uncomfortable though they smiled a lot,but it was the evil smile. Not the understanding smile. You can't ask everyone to understand. They won't get it. If I struggle to grasp it myself, how can I ask someone else to?
Several hours later, we had to sit for all of the interviews even though we knew we weren't going to be selected, I still thought about it. There are many things I should not be allowed to do and serve on a jury is among them. It's upsetting. Feel fractional because you are. Parts of your mind are missing or maybe it's that there are many more glitches on top of and laced throughout what is supposed to be there, what is standard equipment, and there is no way to clean or tear down and rebuild the system free of them without killing yourself in the process. Feel and know that you'll never quite be up to par with anyone, as long as you live and know that it probably will not be all that much longer. Maybe another 30 or so years. Maybe less. When you were younger you wanted to die. Not far removed from then you realize, there's no hurry. Be patient. Don't fool yourself.
Or do. I try to laugh a lot. The idea is that maybe if I smile and laugh enough it will stick in place and remain. People will love being around me and I will love being around them because they will love being around me. Carefully and painstakingly construct it inside your two dimensional garage, piece by piece by piece. Power it up. Go through the movements and the timing and conversational spacing. Practice and memorize so that you can drum up this other self upon demand, slip inside of it and wear it effortlessly and with enough repetitions it will become not only effortless, but a full projection and extension of you to the point that it is you. Until your body violently rejects it and you blaze apart before your own eyes. We will see.
///TV on The Radio - "Wear You Out" let me to bed. please?
Eating with people is still so strange and, for the most part, to be avoided. It's incredibly uncomfortable. It makes my forearms itch to watch and listen to it. It's not disgusting, but mechanically it's draining to be around, and then people ask you why you're not eating and it turns into a whole thing and just thinking about it now I want to vomit. It's difficult to do. I don't understand it. I try to do it, the feeding, but even two a day is a break through. Once is enough. Get it down and out of the way and forget about it. Go to bed. Sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep. You can't run yourself into trouble if you're asleep.
I'm not sure what. You can see all of the colors and the sun's light and clouds and birds and it flattens and smears out to gray. There are things you have to do. Things that must be done. Feeding, washing, resting. Sometimes it feels like a two dimensional garage. A plastic play place facsimile of garage where everything is laid out inside white lines. You get up and everything is numbered in order. You take this off and put that on, brush this, comb through that, turn knobs here and there, check your fuel gauge, off to work little guy, home, and into bed to lie awake until your brain turns itself off.
There's nothing special. There's nothing important. There's nothing pressing. There's nothing. The routine is critically important. The more rigid the better, I used to think. I'm not so sure. With familiarity, brutal and starkly lit familiarity, there are fewer opportunities for mistakes, misreadings, miscues, misses. All of them. Destructive and damaging misses. Misses that can affect my relationships with friends or neighbors and strangers. Fewer opportunities for misses that can lead to depressions and emotional collapses. Fewer opportunities for problems to arise all across the board, because of something I saw or heard and reacted to or engaged with that later proved to never have existed at all beyond my own eyes.
Brute force coping. Except even that fails and begins to deteriorate and then you can't be at work and you can't be at home either and you hide from them by sleeping as much as you possibly can and maybe this time when you wake up they'll be gone and they're not and you're quietly terrified and you can't be out of the house for too long, and you can't be awake for too long. They'll know. Turn your world into a two dimensional garage and nail the windows shut and paint them black so they can't get inside and they won't be able to tell if anyone is awake at night by candle light. To be safe and certain. They'll try to fool you, but you know. You know what you have to do to live. It's all laid out by numbers and if something goes missing you know exactly what it is because its outline will be there in its absence.
I've tried for years to understand it. I say tried, but it is not as though the attempts to understand it have reached their conclusion. They are ongoing. It is very difficult to prioritize. There are many things to complete, and all they all strike me as the same. Eating or a glass of water are as important as going to work or placing critical phone calls. As important or as unimportant. Prioritization has stepped away and I don't know where exactly to. I want to feel the sensation of hot blood across the surface of my skin. I am trying to summon the rage that fills and fires the furnace that can push me forward into and through a day or a week. By the end, there isn't much left. The weekend or the month's end will be composed of reassembling what is left of the furnace when I have to use it and over use it. Picking up and bending sections and pieces back into place for having to contain for lengths and lengths of time roiling licks of anger and sheer rage.
I hate myself. I hate having to force on smiles and eat back tears and shake hands. I hate that I have so much trouble getting into and keeping jobs. I'm lucky enough to have a position now that is fairly flexible and accommodating. I'm afraid of the day the unpredictable nature of my disorder will strike me with no warning with a ferocity and depth of intensity that I. I just don't want to hurt anyone. Often I've said my main desire in this life is to be left alone, but that's not because I want to be left alone.
Isolation is the only way. Every day I know I am going to die alone. I cannot be married. I cannot raise children. I cannot take care of someone else. I cannot ask someone to help me take care of myself. I completely understand. It would not be fair. Beyond fairness, and the idea that trying to build a home with someone who is afflicted and, for lack of a better word, damaged it would be hazardous on many other levels. At least isolated there is a very large zone of dead space, neutral space, physically speaking, but isolated there is also a zone of communications that can be closed off and shut down until a time arises when they can be safely used again. Whatever damage is done is localized and hopefully hidden from those who would be part of relationships tended. That way when communications and visitations resume they can be pursued with the cues and tips and exchanges of normalcy and proportions near normalcy that govern civil life.
Which brings me to jury duty. There was the questionaire about all of the reasons why the prosecution or the defense may not want to select you for their trial and I came to the line item of: do you have any mental or physical disabilities that may impair your ability to perform the duties ... to paraphrase. I don't have a prescription anymore. That lapsed so long ago I can't remember the specific year. I don't have paperwork. I hate saying "what's wrong with me", but I tried to describe, during the interview portion when they ask you about your particular survey answers, what was wrong with me. It was terribly uncomfortable though they smiled a lot,but it was the evil smile. Not the understanding smile. You can't ask everyone to understand. They won't get it. If I struggle to grasp it myself, how can I ask someone else to?
Several hours later, we had to sit for all of the interviews even though we knew we weren't going to be selected, I still thought about it. There are many things I should not be allowed to do and serve on a jury is among them. It's upsetting. Feel fractional because you are. Parts of your mind are missing or maybe it's that there are many more glitches on top of and laced throughout what is supposed to be there, what is standard equipment, and there is no way to clean or tear down and rebuild the system free of them without killing yourself in the process. Feel and know that you'll never quite be up to par with anyone, as long as you live and know that it probably will not be all that much longer. Maybe another 30 or so years. Maybe less. When you were younger you wanted to die. Not far removed from then you realize, there's no hurry. Be patient. Don't fool yourself.
Or do. I try to laugh a lot. The idea is that maybe if I smile and laugh enough it will stick in place and remain. People will love being around me and I will love being around them because they will love being around me. Carefully and painstakingly construct it inside your two dimensional garage, piece by piece by piece. Power it up. Go through the movements and the timing and conversational spacing. Practice and memorize so that you can drum up this other self upon demand, slip inside of it and wear it effortlessly and with enough repetitions it will become not only effortless, but a full projection and extension of you to the point that it is you. Until your body violently rejects it and you blaze apart before your own eyes. We will see.
///TV on The Radio - "Wear You Out" let me to bed. please?
2/9/14
Uncle Scar's Cross Dimensional Fortress
There are days of dread in trying to cross the bridge into dreamland. Days when I've convinced myself everything will stay stable if I keep my eyes open. Days when I'm afraid of putting on clothing, because once it's on, it cannot be turned off.
Some nights you just gotta take that slow breath and put on the helmet and close your eyes and wait for the assault craft to crash into the beach. From the second the floor rumbles and rattles your teeth upon landfall to the instant the long range weapons open up is sleep. In those moments, that very long blink, listening to the engines hum and forgetting where you are and where you're going, worlds congeal. Cities twine together like muscles sliding over bones and lives burn into being like veins inside. And then it all blows apart in the morning. Crying face down and screaming and laughing at the same time.
Sometimes the most satisfying minutes are those early ones where the tears on cheeks are dried by the heat of combat and flames run high and blood runs. They're the minutes where you know you know what you know and you know whatever happens next could be the next that changes everything. I do not want that. I think there are times people mistake free wheeling for extremely extensively planned. The back up to the back up back up back up plan allows for flexibility that mimics carelessness. Walk with the wind on your mind.
I think I'm done trying to be funny. It never comes off right. Days of dread. Open your eyes. No. I've been mapping fantasy time lines across several sheets of paper and now there are twelve of them taped end to end. There were twelve of them. I got extremely upset about the inefficiency of the entire exercise and tore it apart. And now there's packing tape everywhere packing tape need not be and a severe longing for a time machine to undo what I did because I did not take the time to think, the time to breath, before I took action. To die with rage instead of rage is a win.
At some point the alarm goes off that the amount of blood you are losing will have a stiff impact on your ability to continue effective consciousness. I suppose it was a bit disappointing to have someone I did not know all that well recommend something to me with the caveat "...if you like huffing you will love...". Irregularities. An overwhelming desire to remain on schedule. I will follow you down. Any deviation is unacceptable.
Protection is invaluable and hard to come by and harder still to compromise for any reason, but compromise is necessary and not without it's own value too. We need to get back on mission. An operation unto itself. Obstacles have been attacked and sent down and the path is clearing to make a good run at the main objective and it feels good. It feels really damn good. What are all of those jars of piss for? If I knew, they would be used already! And frankly I do not appreciate the line of questioning.
Come play with us, Arthur. That is not my name. That is not my name. That is not my name! Stop calling me! I do not know who that is! We match, don't we? Leave me the hell alone. I need a whetstone. Who doesn't? I've been dying to put together a new theme tailor made to what I want to see and what I want others to see when they come here. Sometimes we're struck unexpected again with the death of a friend. I did not know him that well. Am I wrong to be violently upset about it? Years removed.
Sometimes I weigh how well or poorly my brothers and sisters know me. The now me. The today me. Oddly enough, my brother in law may know me better than them. It's difficult to contemplate. Processing and it comes back not a number. What do I actually know, though at the mouth of the bridge. Do it for you. I will get it working. I have to. Back up back up plans fly well at the interface and through interstice, but nearer toward the core they blow apart like tissue paper origami in a squall. Get it right. No will do, can do. You're having a hard time, aren't you. Nope, just downloading the patch. The short that makes the radio turn on without having to turn the key because the battery is still good.
No gods, no kings, no high down, and for christ's sake no god damn rings. Especially pinky rings. Boosters on. It is not me you have to worry about, it is the rest of me. We have done life by committee pretty satisfactorily going on a decade and a half. I see no reason to make sweeping changes just yet. Obviously at some point we will run into the person, faced up, who does not get the joke, but deal with that when it arrives. And by deal with that I mean make extensive back up plans now.
I am still going to make music this year. We cannot not do it. It has been too long already. "...We're only in the first few minutes of the first of January..." we'll evolve. Walk with the wind on your mind. Let go. Open the gate. Do not be afraid to walk with the wind on your mind because you are not alone.
///Underworld - "Second Hand" gear up. slingshot around the sun.
Some nights you just gotta take that slow breath and put on the helmet and close your eyes and wait for the assault craft to crash into the beach. From the second the floor rumbles and rattles your teeth upon landfall to the instant the long range weapons open up is sleep. In those moments, that very long blink, listening to the engines hum and forgetting where you are and where you're going, worlds congeal. Cities twine together like muscles sliding over bones and lives burn into being like veins inside. And then it all blows apart in the morning. Crying face down and screaming and laughing at the same time.
Sometimes the most satisfying minutes are those early ones where the tears on cheeks are dried by the heat of combat and flames run high and blood runs. They're the minutes where you know you know what you know and you know whatever happens next could be the next that changes everything. I do not want that. I think there are times people mistake free wheeling for extremely extensively planned. The back up to the back up back up back up plan allows for flexibility that mimics carelessness. Walk with the wind on your mind.
I think I'm done trying to be funny. It never comes off right. Days of dread. Open your eyes. No. I've been mapping fantasy time lines across several sheets of paper and now there are twelve of them taped end to end. There were twelve of them. I got extremely upset about the inefficiency of the entire exercise and tore it apart. And now there's packing tape everywhere packing tape need not be and a severe longing for a time machine to undo what I did because I did not take the time to think, the time to breath, before I took action. To die with rage instead of rage is a win.
At some point the alarm goes off that the amount of blood you are losing will have a stiff impact on your ability to continue effective consciousness. I suppose it was a bit disappointing to have someone I did not know all that well recommend something to me with the caveat "...if you like huffing you will love...". Irregularities. An overwhelming desire to remain on schedule. I will follow you down. Any deviation is unacceptable.
Protection is invaluable and hard to come by and harder still to compromise for any reason, but compromise is necessary and not without it's own value too. We need to get back on mission. An operation unto itself. Obstacles have been attacked and sent down and the path is clearing to make a good run at the main objective and it feels good. It feels really damn good. What are all of those jars of piss for? If I knew, they would be used already! And frankly I do not appreciate the line of questioning.
Come play with us, Arthur. That is not my name. That is not my name. That is not my name! Stop calling me! I do not know who that is! We match, don't we? Leave me the hell alone. I need a whetstone. Who doesn't? I've been dying to put together a new theme tailor made to what I want to see and what I want others to see when they come here. Sometimes we're struck unexpected again with the death of a friend. I did not know him that well. Am I wrong to be violently upset about it? Years removed.
Sometimes I weigh how well or poorly my brothers and sisters know me. The now me. The today me. Oddly enough, my brother in law may know me better than them. It's difficult to contemplate. Processing and it comes back not a number. What do I actually know, though at the mouth of the bridge. Do it for you. I will get it working. I have to. Back up back up plans fly well at the interface and through interstice, but nearer toward the core they blow apart like tissue paper origami in a squall. Get it right. No will do, can do. You're having a hard time, aren't you. Nope, just downloading the patch. The short that makes the radio turn on without having to turn the key because the battery is still good.
No gods, no kings, no high down, and for christ's sake no god damn rings. Especially pinky rings. Boosters on. It is not me you have to worry about, it is the rest of me. We have done life by committee pretty satisfactorily going on a decade and a half. I see no reason to make sweeping changes just yet. Obviously at some point we will run into the person, faced up, who does not get the joke, but deal with that when it arrives. And by deal with that I mean make extensive back up plans now.
I am still going to make music this year. We cannot not do it. It has been too long already. "...We're only in the first few minutes of the first of January..." we'll evolve. Walk with the wind on your mind. Let go. Open the gate. Do not be afraid to walk with the wind on your mind because you are not alone.
///Underworld - "Second Hand" gear up. slingshot around the sun.
7/6/13
Cliffside Funeral Wedding Dream
Massive dream. There was a procession across a hill side and on that hill side there were hundreds of tombstones. The hill side was a little over grown and as it sloped down the entire thing was cut off at the far edge by a cliff. There was a procession happening there, the women dressed in gowns with all kinds of frillies and big brimmed hats with white flowers in them and all of the men dressed in tuxedos with black ties and shiny shoes
I was watching it from where the birds sit in the air and I wanted to get a closer look so I dove down and sat on one of the tomb stones to watch them walk. They were hiking on a narrow trail that led around the curve of the hill top and I couldn't see where they were going or from where they walked. I noticed some of the men wearing top hats and it was kind of cool. It made me want to have a top hat of my own, but not enough to actually make one. There was no music, only the sound of their feet kicking up dirt, but it rained the day before so there was no dust.
Some of the women had really thin canes and used them to help themselves push farther up the hill while they walked. Everyone there looked so stately and I wanted to be a part of it so I pressed myself into the grid, but I wasn't thinking and ended up there with a football and shorts and a dirty tee once I got the address right. That was the only hard part.
I kept throwing the football at people, but my resolution wasn't good enough and it kept passing through their bodies like they weren't even there. It would take a bounce or two and go off the side of the cliff and I felt worse and worse trying to make it happen and every time I kept saying "I'll go get it" and I would hike down the hill, navigating the gray and black and mossed over tombstones to the cliff side and then start the climb down. The view was incredible. There were birds flying beneath my feet dipping in and out of the canyon and there were trees growing down there where the cliff would ledge for a few feet and then drop down hundreds.
I fast forwarded the climb and return and clicked back on when I got back to the top. The procession must have been miles long. I was doing it all day. Another pass, another pass through, another climb. "I'll go get it." And they kept on walking. Some of the men had taxidermy turtles on the tops of their hats, spray painted black. I started to follow the procession to see where it was going. I liked being up in the air, but I liked being in shorts better and the football felt good to hold and toss even though I couldn't make anyone in the procession catch it. It felt good to walk.
I got distracted though. One of the tombs was a mausoleum. I wandered off of the trail because I was really interested in the iron work of the gates. They rusted over beautifully and I wondered about the hands that made them so pretty. The tomb itself was a simple white box of big blocks. No angels or ridiculous adornments. No saints. Nothing grew on it. The gate was unlocked so I walked inside.
The floor sloped down and into the hill side. There was nothing inside of it except a stone work tunnel. Inside of the tunnel there was a waterfall that arched through it. Thinking back the water probably was blown up from the right side and across the roof to terminate in the left side gutter. I started walking down it and then running because the air smelled so good and earth filled and wet and oxygen rich and I wanted to blow as much of it down my lungs as I could. I wanted to take my shirt off so it dissolved in bits of dust, pixel for pixel, and while I was running my friend started running too and caught up to me. I heard him and his shoes going step for step, but he still caught up to me because his stride was longer and I was thinking I could beat him to the end. I started off with quick feet, the same tempo, but we both got to our top gears and once you're there the only thing that matters is how far your footfalls can distance themselves from the one coming before.
He said "do you want to race?" I said "Hell yes." We booked it toward the light, running underneath the procession. I still had the football in the crook of my arm. I beat him out by a step and came to a skidding halt. The tunnel was a field of gravel on the other side. All of the pebbles we kicked up stopping went over the other side of the cliff and made little pock pock noises on their way down. I looked over my shoulder and the hill top was still dotted with tombstones. Some of them broken and graffiti on them. The procession was gone though.
Catching my breath I realized I was breathing hard outside of dreamland and it woke me up before I was ready to leave that place.
/// Lionrock - "Packet of Peace (Chemical Brothers Mix)"
I was watching it from where the birds sit in the air and I wanted to get a closer look so I dove down and sat on one of the tomb stones to watch them walk. They were hiking on a narrow trail that led around the curve of the hill top and I couldn't see where they were going or from where they walked. I noticed some of the men wearing top hats and it was kind of cool. It made me want to have a top hat of my own, but not enough to actually make one. There was no music, only the sound of their feet kicking up dirt, but it rained the day before so there was no dust.
Some of the women had really thin canes and used them to help themselves push farther up the hill while they walked. Everyone there looked so stately and I wanted to be a part of it so I pressed myself into the grid, but I wasn't thinking and ended up there with a football and shorts and a dirty tee once I got the address right. That was the only hard part.
I kept throwing the football at people, but my resolution wasn't good enough and it kept passing through their bodies like they weren't even there. It would take a bounce or two and go off the side of the cliff and I felt worse and worse trying to make it happen and every time I kept saying "I'll go get it" and I would hike down the hill, navigating the gray and black and mossed over tombstones to the cliff side and then start the climb down. The view was incredible. There were birds flying beneath my feet dipping in and out of the canyon and there were trees growing down there where the cliff would ledge for a few feet and then drop down hundreds.
I fast forwarded the climb and return and clicked back on when I got back to the top. The procession must have been miles long. I was doing it all day. Another pass, another pass through, another climb. "I'll go get it." And they kept on walking. Some of the men had taxidermy turtles on the tops of their hats, spray painted black. I started to follow the procession to see where it was going. I liked being up in the air, but I liked being in shorts better and the football felt good to hold and toss even though I couldn't make anyone in the procession catch it. It felt good to walk.
I got distracted though. One of the tombs was a mausoleum. I wandered off of the trail because I was really interested in the iron work of the gates. They rusted over beautifully and I wondered about the hands that made them so pretty. The tomb itself was a simple white box of big blocks. No angels or ridiculous adornments. No saints. Nothing grew on it. The gate was unlocked so I walked inside.
The floor sloped down and into the hill side. There was nothing inside of it except a stone work tunnel. Inside of the tunnel there was a waterfall that arched through it. Thinking back the water probably was blown up from the right side and across the roof to terminate in the left side gutter. I started walking down it and then running because the air smelled so good and earth filled and wet and oxygen rich and I wanted to blow as much of it down my lungs as I could. I wanted to take my shirt off so it dissolved in bits of dust, pixel for pixel, and while I was running my friend started running too and caught up to me. I heard him and his shoes going step for step, but he still caught up to me because his stride was longer and I was thinking I could beat him to the end. I started off with quick feet, the same tempo, but we both got to our top gears and once you're there the only thing that matters is how far your footfalls can distance themselves from the one coming before.
He said "do you want to race?" I said "Hell yes." We booked it toward the light, running underneath the procession. I still had the football in the crook of my arm. I beat him out by a step and came to a skidding halt. The tunnel was a field of gravel on the other side. All of the pebbles we kicked up stopping went over the other side of the cliff and made little pock pock noises on their way down. I looked over my shoulder and the hill top was still dotted with tombstones. Some of them broken and graffiti on them. The procession was gone though.
Catching my breath I realized I was breathing hard outside of dreamland and it woke me up before I was ready to leave that place.
/// Lionrock - "Packet of Peace (Chemical Brothers Mix)"
3/23/12
But Really the Moral Is
The moral of the story is if someone offers to make you french toast and you just met them at a bar, the chances are pretty good that there will be no french toast at any point in the upcoming hours and what they really wanted went so far over your star eyed head to begin with that you probably should have just stayed home and had french toast on your own. And for that matter, why would you even go out if french toast was what you wanted to begin with. And attendant, if you are turning conversation toward food at a bar at 1 A.M., why would you believe anyone would take it any way besides having breakfast for dinner.
I don't know who outsmarted whom. I do know "well, if there's not going to be any food, I think I'm going to go" is probably the most awkward exit line in the history of exit lines. Probably right up there with the food poisoning excuse and the "I'm tired, I think I'm going to go to bed" excuse when there is a bed not ten feet away from you at their place.
It wasn't that strange of a night though. I did a lot of dream hunting. The hard part is disconnecting from yourself to a degree that will allow the prey to make an appearance and still be equipped well enough to make the kill. Like playing chess against yourself. It takes skill to make that sort of divide between consciousness and unconsciousness.
I had the shakes all day. The stupid and silly repetitiousness of motor action. The thing is, it's not stupid or silly, but necessary. Very really necessary. Very nearly. Part of it was tracking time. Part of it was sonar. Part distraction so I wouldn't have to think too much about time and space. The knock knock go of music in lieu of music. It got better and then worse and then better. The never ending search for answers. In lieu of. The important thing is I washed my hair for the first time in a while and that was an achievement because washing my hair takes forever. On the scale of 1/8th of a day dedication.
I am supremely disappointed at the failed hunt. But I will take another crack at it now that I know what I have to do. My scars have been itching more than usual. Someone asked me what happened to my face. It's all history. The local bar opened up again after the drug sting with some new bits and pieces, but it is essentially the same place with some new jerk wads there who saw the sign out front, I guess, and thought "aw yeah, a new bar", but it's the same bar. Exactly the same except for them. I don't think they understand that. Understand that the only thing new about it is them. Which is fine. I just hope they move on sooner than later so I can get a damn game of eight ball in without having to ask to be cued into their relationship roulette.
Things are going to get weird tomorrow. Not because I want them to, but because they're not going to work any other way so you embrace the weirdness, after a fashion. A familiar clip.I'm getting closer to something. I made some art today. I almost started to read a book in my spare time. I am trying to turn that almost into an already. I still have to pierce my ears and my eyebrow. Things aren't stacking up though. Not the way they used to. Now they're just roads waiting to be walked and sometimes I stand still.
Carnival is rolling around. Basically a reunion. I don't know who wants to avoid me. I want to see all of them, but knowing who wants to avoid you helps to make things easier to handle. Expectory. It's like a rectory of memories that maps outcomes over logic trees and points, graphically, to ends. It's not a place any more than a chalk board or map is a place, but it places places.
I don't know what I am going to do when I find him.Not exactly. I am going to try to bring back a trophy, if at all possible. It's a big world in there, though. A lot of places to hide to say the least. I've never been in the active position before. Then again, I've rarely had to be. There was nothing so assiduously beyond my control there to warrant active eradication. There were instances and events there I had nothing to do with (the war, the dust storm, the heart discovery, the mass migration, the shopping cart cats, the end of fossil fuels, the underground train system's metastasis, the rise of loose villainy) that I tried to roll with. Varying levels of success and confusion abiding. This is, this is different. Like getting hacked from the inside. Tampered with. Abused all over again. So we go back to war.
Summer is coming. You can smell it in the air. I want to look forward to it. I don't know when or why summer's prospect began to touch me in a bad way. Summer makes people do untoward things. It's like a full moon that last for four months. And then dies in your arms just when you've gotten to know and appreciate each other. Summer makes everyone want and try to win time. But it's just grass. Grass and leaves and yard work and half faked memories of times that didn't quite materialize the way they do in movies, but everyone thinks that this year is the year they do. The days are long and the nights are short and everything is hot as hell and restless. Restless so bad you would take your skin off if you could.
Everything that should not be alive comes to and slow wakes through spring. Houses start to breath and crack and groan in the night and the trees start to laugh. The ground gets soft and wet and comfortable and everyone brings out there best and worst outfits and nobody where's appropriate footwear and it all makes me so damn nervous. Do I look, do I not look, and for that matter what the hell am I looking at or for. The cattle train does it's dance and everyone wants to mate and sweat soaked nights turn into a search for steel sharp enough to cut through the bullshit bandied. When you're inside you want to be out and when you're out you want to be inside. And you can't wear a spacesuit when it get's that damn hot and you can't hide your face either without sweating harder than a crook at a creek with a dead body in a trash bag and locals fishing, eyes peeled at the water ahead. It's tough to deal. Everything with half an ounce of soul comes alive like it'll get into heaven if it breaths hard enough.
I just have to calm down, you know? Not just say we're going to get through this, but believe the words that I am saying to myself. Believe in the next step. Understand again that, yes, summer is going to maul my heart like a cat with a wad of toilet paper, and tear me up in ways familiar and ways I will learn anew, and not be afraid of the ... pain. Maybe this is the iteration it works out okay? That's always out there too.
I've been shaky all day. Needing to swap bodies. Bad command lines. Bad time code. But not bad everything. Some good, you know? I never know how to answer questions. The shakes. But maybe this is the summer that makes good.
///Dntel - "Rock My Boat" ...I wonder if you were alright...
I don't know who outsmarted whom. I do know "well, if there's not going to be any food, I think I'm going to go" is probably the most awkward exit line in the history of exit lines. Probably right up there with the food poisoning excuse and the "I'm tired, I think I'm going to go to bed" excuse when there is a bed not ten feet away from you at their place.
It wasn't that strange of a night though. I did a lot of dream hunting. The hard part is disconnecting from yourself to a degree that will allow the prey to make an appearance and still be equipped well enough to make the kill. Like playing chess against yourself. It takes skill to make that sort of divide between consciousness and unconsciousness.
I had the shakes all day. The stupid and silly repetitiousness of motor action. The thing is, it's not stupid or silly, but necessary. Very really necessary. Very nearly. Part of it was tracking time. Part of it was sonar. Part distraction so I wouldn't have to think too much about time and space. The knock knock go of music in lieu of music. It got better and then worse and then better. The never ending search for answers. In lieu of. The important thing is I washed my hair for the first time in a while and that was an achievement because washing my hair takes forever. On the scale of 1/8th of a day dedication.
I am supremely disappointed at the failed hunt. But I will take another crack at it now that I know what I have to do. My scars have been itching more than usual. Someone asked me what happened to my face. It's all history. The local bar opened up again after the drug sting with some new bits and pieces, but it is essentially the same place with some new jerk wads there who saw the sign out front, I guess, and thought "aw yeah, a new bar", but it's the same bar. Exactly the same except for them. I don't think they understand that. Understand that the only thing new about it is them. Which is fine. I just hope they move on sooner than later so I can get a damn game of eight ball in without having to ask to be cued into their relationship roulette.
Things are going to get weird tomorrow. Not because I want them to, but because they're not going to work any other way so you embrace the weirdness, after a fashion. A familiar clip.I'm getting closer to something. I made some art today. I almost started to read a book in my spare time. I am trying to turn that almost into an already. I still have to pierce my ears and my eyebrow. Things aren't stacking up though. Not the way they used to. Now they're just roads waiting to be walked and sometimes I stand still.
Carnival is rolling around. Basically a reunion. I don't know who wants to avoid me. I want to see all of them, but knowing who wants to avoid you helps to make things easier to handle. Expectory. It's like a rectory of memories that maps outcomes over logic trees and points, graphically, to ends. It's not a place any more than a chalk board or map is a place, but it places places.
I don't know what I am going to do when I find him.Not exactly. I am going to try to bring back a trophy, if at all possible. It's a big world in there, though. A lot of places to hide to say the least. I've never been in the active position before. Then again, I've rarely had to be. There was nothing so assiduously beyond my control there to warrant active eradication. There were instances and events there I had nothing to do with (the war, the dust storm, the heart discovery, the mass migration, the shopping cart cats, the end of fossil fuels, the underground train system's metastasis, the rise of loose villainy) that I tried to roll with. Varying levels of success and confusion abiding. This is, this is different. Like getting hacked from the inside. Tampered with. Abused all over again. So we go back to war.
Summer is coming. You can smell it in the air. I want to look forward to it. I don't know when or why summer's prospect began to touch me in a bad way. Summer makes people do untoward things. It's like a full moon that last for four months. And then dies in your arms just when you've gotten to know and appreciate each other. Summer makes everyone want and try to win time. But it's just grass. Grass and leaves and yard work and half faked memories of times that didn't quite materialize the way they do in movies, but everyone thinks that this year is the year they do. The days are long and the nights are short and everything is hot as hell and restless. Restless so bad you would take your skin off if you could.
Everything that should not be alive comes to and slow wakes through spring. Houses start to breath and crack and groan in the night and the trees start to laugh. The ground gets soft and wet and comfortable and everyone brings out there best and worst outfits and nobody where's appropriate footwear and it all makes me so damn nervous. Do I look, do I not look, and for that matter what the hell am I looking at or for. The cattle train does it's dance and everyone wants to mate and sweat soaked nights turn into a search for steel sharp enough to cut through the bullshit bandied. When you're inside you want to be out and when you're out you want to be inside. And you can't wear a spacesuit when it get's that damn hot and you can't hide your face either without sweating harder than a crook at a creek with a dead body in a trash bag and locals fishing, eyes peeled at the water ahead. It's tough to deal. Everything with half an ounce of soul comes alive like it'll get into heaven if it breaths hard enough.
I just have to calm down, you know? Not just say we're going to get through this, but believe the words that I am saying to myself. Believe in the next step. Understand again that, yes, summer is going to maul my heart like a cat with a wad of toilet paper, and tear me up in ways familiar and ways I will learn anew, and not be afraid of the ... pain. Maybe this is the iteration it works out okay? That's always out there too.
I've been shaky all day. Needing to swap bodies. Bad command lines. Bad time code. But not bad everything. Some good, you know? I never know how to answer questions. The shakes. But maybe this is the summer that makes good.
///Dntel - "Rock My Boat" ...I wonder if you were alright...
10/29/10
Fruits of a Labor and Where We Left the Bodies
I drew some pictures for you. I like the colors. I was in a kind of bloody soil mood and the taste was not to be denied so I didn't.
I don't know what to say today. It happens. I don't really know what I'm thinking tonight either, but I'm doing it with clothes on. Oh there it is. Found what I was asking for. There really is a certain security in sleeping with clothes on. It's a completely different quality of sleep. I feel a real security in the closeness of the clothing that at the same time can grow to be entrapping. Whatever. That's kind of stupid. When I sleep with clothes on I get hotter and hotter and then my dreamworld flies seriously out of whack and scary things happen in there and, not that I've been able to exercise control over the individuals and things that happen, but what security I do feel in the reality of the landscape dissolves into chaos.
Across the bridge of consciousness, the ground is just as firm and even more comforting in its expansiveness and unrestricted isness. Much more so than here. I prefer to be there. So when things get screwed up there by what happens here it becomes particular upsetting. Especially when the solution is as easy as taking off my pajamas and going back to sleep. Because the only limitation on the place is that I can't be there forever, I can't get stuck there like I get stuck here, its particularly aggravating to end up wasting valuable time. Its enraging.
At any rate, the public transportation there is strange. Not really screwy as much as it is that things come and go on the subway system that I sometimes prefer not to meet or see. Usually everyone minds there own business. I never used the trains there by myself because whenever I do I end up getting lost. Just the other day I spent the entire time I was there lost in the subway system. At one point I got so sick of trying to get the right train I climbed down off of the platform and decided to walk it and I don't know if those trains run at the speed of sound or what, but it took me five hours to walk between train stops and then, of course, by the time I got back to the stop I wanted near the apartment complexes I nearly get my legs cut off by the train I was tired of waiting for. I think that's really my only complaint about the place.
I was thinking about the best way to burn down a house with the people inside it without giving them a way out. It would take a lot of effort. It wouldn't be easy for the logistics of a floor plan and unless they were stone asleep they would probably hear you hoofing around in the grass with your arson kit and caboodle. Definitely low on the list of ways to solve problems.
We're altogether now and I'm happy for that. I hope it lasts forever, but I know it won't. Actually that's not even true. I don't hope it lasts forever. It just felt like the right thing to say to express the glowing feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know things have died up there in my head. But when they die they don't get buried. There's no cemetery up there. I should probably take care of that at some point. I wonder if that's the thing. When you finally die it's because your head is full of bodies and there's no more space for anything else to live. The casualties, relationships, dreams, efforts, ideas, whatever, all the bullshit that mattered to you and no one else that no one, including you, could resurrect with Dr. Frank and a million volts of Earth's pulse pile up and some people bury them one by one and some people have to bury them in mass graves, but they're there. I'm just glad they don't talk too.
The poetry has cut off in a new direction that I'm enjoying. It's stumbled on a rhythm I'm rather liking. Answers are as far away today as they were yesterday, but I'm not really looking for specifics anymore. I'm not sure if I should be. It's not that I want to care about concrete details of living a life, it's that I already care so much about things that so often stand defiant in the face of description and I'm focused on trying anyway because that's what is worthwhile. Maybe it's what I'm here for. That should count as something important. The cats came back. In lesser numbers this time. There was a day I thought I could see individual molecules of air. Turns out it was a whole bunch of blood vessels in my oculars. Is that a word? Things here would probably be so much more important if things across the bridge weren't equally so.
No fruits of the labor yet. Or maybe there is and I just have no idea where it lands. At any rate I'm content to keep doing dream work where the wild things are. Where up is up and down is down and I'm remembered by the people I've seen and I can go anywhere and the only limitation is my body and sometimes not even that.
Still planning the suicide diary. I know right. It is taking forever. I'm not putting it off. I just haven't been here to do it. Promise.
///Unkle feat. Big In Japan - "The Answer" ...perfect weather...
8/8/10
Front Concepts and the Update Status
This is taking a little longer than I expected, hence a lack of fiction updates. Hopefully now that I have a much better idea of where I want to go with it, the actual php execution will flow fast and hard.
Concepts below.
I'm leaning much closer to doing something in line with this:
This one feels a little to much like cut and paste clip art to use as a header for the more organic processes I go through in creating the fiction on Bits, even though I feel it does capture how I feel about the story ideas that strike me and burn up my brain cycles until I get them down on paper:
Maybe a cross between the two we let me rest easier.
And with that, I am hitting the hay. More tomorrow, and I will do my damnedest to add one story to the fiction content every two or three days while I work on the graphic presentation. Promise.
///Ladytron- "CSKA Sofia" A dreamy anthem for a sleepy kid.
Concepts below.
I'm leaning much closer to doing something in line with this:
This one feels a little to much like cut and paste clip art to use as a header for the more organic processes I go through in creating the fiction on Bits, even though I feel it does capture how I feel about the story ideas that strike me and burn up my brain cycles until I get them down on paper:
Maybe a cross between the two we let me rest easier.
And with that, I am hitting the hay. More tomorrow, and I will do my damnedest to add one story to the fiction content every two or three days while I work on the graphic presentation. Promise.
///Ladytron- "CSKA Sofia" A dreamy anthem for a sleepy kid.
7/21/10
"Weed Is For Slackers..."
...a good friend of mine once said a long time ago. I wasn't arguing. I think the fist she drove into her open palm for good emphasis was directed mainly at the "across the hall" neighbor (who ended up working for Microsoft somehow) and their fragrant escapades.
Not that you would ever doubt me (or that I would ever doubt myself... EVER...) this is where Bits is at right now. I have not been slacking:
I'm ironing out the php and creating page templates from scritcha scratch so that they do exactly what I want them to, every single time I ask them to. It makes it a little bit easier since I plan on doing all of the graphics for it, but also it'll be a nice thing to put on my resume when it's done. The wealth of knowledge I'm gaining from this project is enormous. At first it was like trying to bite into an uncut watermelon straight off of the vine, but through ceaselessly kicking that mother fucker I've broken it up into pieces that sort of fit in my mouth (or at least fit in my hands comfortably enough to chuck them at the birds outside my window when I get really frustrated, which is almost as satisfying, but I digress).
I now know more about sql, php, js, and web hosting than I ever thought I would. The best thing about it is that sitting down at my terminal feels less like walking up to the black mouth of a cave belonging to an agitated dragon, and feels much more like going to visit a somewhat grumpy uncle. I guess I'm trying to say that the thing has finally become doable. I can look at the code and csv and the tables and css and I can see what they're doing between the lines.
It's like if Tony Montana did so much coke that he finally became permanently wired and no longer needed coke to become super Tony. Or like Peter Pan smoking so much pixie dust that... I'm not really sure if this is making sense anymore. I've been up way too late.
Onward to the morning star. Well I wanted to do a drawing for you. It was going to be a self portrait. Then I wanted to make a teddy bear face. In the end this is what came out of my head. I'm not happy with it. But more than unhappiness, I don't want to have nothing to show for the past hour of my life, sorry in advance:
Hopefully next efforts will turn out better in that department.
///The Orb - "Vuja De" "It's the way that you hold me."
Not that you would ever doubt me (or that I would ever doubt myself... EVER...) this is where Bits is at right now. I have not been slacking:
I'm ironing out the php and creating page templates from scritcha scratch so that they do exactly what I want them to, every single time I ask them to. It makes it a little bit easier since I plan on doing all of the graphics for it, but also it'll be a nice thing to put on my resume when it's done. The wealth of knowledge I'm gaining from this project is enormous. At first it was like trying to bite into an uncut watermelon straight off of the vine, but through ceaselessly kicking that mother fucker I've broken it up into pieces that sort of fit in my mouth (or at least fit in my hands comfortably enough to chuck them at the birds outside my window when I get really frustrated, which is almost as satisfying, but I digress).
I now know more about sql, php, js, and web hosting than I ever thought I would. The best thing about it is that sitting down at my terminal feels less like walking up to the black mouth of a cave belonging to an agitated dragon, and feels much more like going to visit a somewhat grumpy uncle. I guess I'm trying to say that the thing has finally become doable. I can look at the code and csv and the tables and css and I can see what they're doing between the lines.
It's like if Tony Montana did so much coke that he finally became permanently wired and no longer needed coke to become super Tony. Or like Peter Pan smoking so much pixie dust that... I'm not really sure if this is making sense anymore. I've been up way too late.
Onward to the morning star. Well I wanted to do a drawing for you. It was going to be a self portrait. Then I wanted to make a teddy bear face. In the end this is what came out of my head. I'm not happy with it. But more than unhappiness, I don't want to have nothing to show for the past hour of my life, sorry in advance:
Hopefully next efforts will turn out better in that department.
///The Orb - "Vuja De" "It's the way that you hold me."
4/10/10
pic of the night 3
this is what i did yesterday instead of sleep. im not sure im unhappy that i didnt hit the hay.
12/5/05
beat off and get some sleep 12/05/05
Subject : beat off and get some sleep
Posted Date: : Dec 5, 2005 2:36 PM
today is one of those days when all i really want to do is beat off and get some sleep... yeah.... thats about it.
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