I was born at the age of 25.
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 violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
1/21/18
7/17/16
10/3/15
That Instant
you realize guns are the problem and the big "and" in the equation may also be the lack of physical harm and being able to identify with physical pain. Emotional pain is very hard to describe and very very difficult to relate. Physical pain is universal and grounds to the primal circuit. Everyone understands. Emotional or mental pain, few will understand or be able to identify with you without deep and lengthy contact. Anyone can fire a gun. Many fewer can speak. Fewer still can converse. The problem is there.
Everyone gets in a tiff about gun control. Fine. If you are not willing to attack and control it from the top, at least allow people to begin walking at the foundation. I don't know if the previous sentence ends with a question mark or a period. Violence and communication can be quite the self reciprocating machine and it's something else to be inside of it and hoping someone would stick a bar into the spokes of the wheel.
Everyone gets in a tiff about gun control. Fine. If you are not willing to attack and control it from the top, at least allow people to begin walking at the foundation. I don't know if the previous sentence ends with a question mark or a period. Violence and communication can be quite the self reciprocating machine and it's something else to be inside of it and hoping someone would stick a bar into the spokes of the wheel.
9/3/15
Nearing the End of the First Week With a Fractured Jaw
The fracture or break is very high up the ramus and very close to my ear. Every time I poke it hard enough I can hear and feel it flex a little so I try not to touch it or shift my jaw left or right when I do yawn with my teeth locked together. Of course I didn't go see a doctor. I have no health insurance. What's the doctor going to do? Wire my teeth together and tell me to get plenty of rest and not move my jaw. I can do that without the wires and the $5000 bill. Sure there may be other fractures along the side of the jaw bone, but inspection says they're only fractures if they do exist and not clean breaks. Thanks to wisdom teeth that were never removed growing up because they were so badly impacted the surgery was out of the question for one reason or another by the time I was screened for them, the inside of my cheek took some thick lacerations at the point of impact. I think one or two of molar roots may have cracked causing swelling and pain in the angle. Time will tell. Hell, if my wisdom teeth on that side die and eventually fall out, I'm all for it. Who am I going to be kissing in the next two- three years anyway.
The first week of a liquid diet and I'm down 17 pounds. I'm not fat, but I always feel fat, so it's helping my body image issues a great deal, oddly enough. I keep thinking over the evening last Saturday. After a great pow-wow with a buddy and his friend who had to leave a little earlier we decided to head out and grab some ice cream and, I was thinking, a pack of smokes on the side for me, happy to be alive and a little agitated, but more than anything else, happy to be out for a walk in the deep night air with a gorgeous moon. Hopping along, we came across a bunch of teens loitering in a schools front yard and a police van telling them to disperse and we walked on, exchanging glances. They were obviously doing it wrong. Mulling in the shadows instead of out beneath the street lights on your way to get some tasty ice cream and smokes and then hop back home to finish the night off with a few beers and your friend.
They were doing it wrong and it was funny and in my happiness and joy with the night and my pal and the prospect of ice cream, I shouted to them so, with a few more curse words and some gestures, but simply poking fun at how they choose to spend their time when they could be walking to get ice cream instead of haunting a schools front lawn. They shouted back and I shouted back, because there's so much more to life than trying to intimidate people all of the time. There's friendship, and the moon, and ice cream, and cigarettes, and the fun a Saturday unperturbed by anyone who dares believe they can rain on my happy day with a friend I haven't seen in far too long. Who cares if a couple of happy travelers don't clutch their purses or speak in hushed voices as they pass you by. You're a bunch of kids on a schools closed front lawn trying to intimidate and strike fear into the "mean streets of Pittsburgh" from the shadows. Ooga booga! It was hilarious.
Those boys took it the wrong way and decided to follow and encircle us. "All of this happiness must be stomped out!" is what I think they said collectively. I had no desire to fight. Those roads are way behind me and ice cream was ahead of me and the police were just up the block a moment ago. I do not live in a world where I will trade ice cream for police questioning. Ever! I figured there'd be some yelling and shoving and they'd go on their merry and moody and belligerent way after pushing us around and we'd continue on ours and get those evening treats and continue our happy Saturday. It wasn't to be. I was hit from a blind angle right in the left corner of my jawbone just beneath my ear and dropped like a bag of rocks for a few seconds. My friend, struck too, was lucky enough to get hit from a direction his head was more or less facing and did not suffer more than cosmetic damage in a black eye and a cut or two.
I didn't realize the discomfort I felt the following day was far more than a bruise on my cheek until the day after when the pain got worse and worse until I couldn't chew anything, much less open my mouth. I guess those boys won. My happiness silenced by a fractured jaw bone and quite possibly broken molars inside the bone itself (hoping that's not the case, but we'll know in another week or two or if the violence of them being forcefully shifted a few millimeters out of their homes has caused inflammation that will take some time to heal [or if infection is underway as we write *cue doom music*]).
I keep thinking through that fateful stretch of night. I keep asking myself why the hell would they do that? Keep telling myself it was entirely uncalled for. I know why I was sucker punched. Their fear. That moment when my friend was hit and they thought "now or never because if this other larger guy wasn't going to put up a fight before he just may A: decide to put up a fight now, B: shout or call for help, C: both a and b." I keep wondering why they didn't just yell back and go their separate way. There was no chance they considered he and I, a couple of drunk 30 year old men out on a walk together, to be a threat to them. Why would they do that? Why would they attack us so viciously?
And then it dawned on me. Thinking back 12 years. How righteously furious I was then for dozens of reasons, some complex some as simple as I wanted an excuse to pass on the hurt inside of me to anyone who gave me an excuse to. Ready to fight anyone and any inanimate object that didn't "respect" me no matter how pointless or stupid. I didn't want to rob you. I wanted to hurt you as badly as I could get away with. Year after year after year, getting more angry, more sensitive, more irrational, but always questioning it, breaking it apart, tearing down the engine, trying to figure out what the hell it was making this bomb of my body go tick tick tick. I still haven't figured it out exactly.
Through years of study, years of violence toward others sometimes warranted, often times not, culminating in things I will never be able to take back, I left those courses behind me. Thirty years old all I care about is writing, getting home in one piece, spending time with my cats, seeing my friends when I can, and taking care of the only body I have left until my brain breaks apart or my body just will not run anymore. I could care less who respects me and who doesn't. I could care less who breaks my jaw and who decides to be merciful. Save for a handful of very specific, very important, exceptions, if I ever get so mad that the only language I can speak is the original dialect, violence itself, I will speak through breaking my own skin and nerves, not someone else's. The simpler truth is that for most of those kids, they will never learn or even begin to learn how to learn that things could be different. Some of them will end up dead. Others will circle their private drains until their live's dwindle and die out.
Those idiots aren't there yet. It was stupid of me to believe a 12 year gap in understanding what a good night with a friend really is, and what it can mean in the face of a world, in the face of my world once dominated by violence. They didn't silence my happiness. If worst comes to worst and I can never quite use my jaw the way I could before that night again, I have always wanted to learn sign language.
Do I hate them for it? Of course. Would I like to find one of them, knock him senseless, wrap him duct tape and put him in the bed of my truck and take him home? Would I like to duct tape his arm to a sheet of plywood after gagging him with #0 steel wool and use my belt sander grind away the first knuckle of each digit of his immobilized hand and then shatter the wrist of his other? Would I like to drive down river and dump his body at a drainage gate? Of course. That would achieve nothing. I'd be happy for a while until the next week when the pain set in again and I would need to find another one and that life is not for me as long as I continue to refuse it and allow the rest of myself to flourish. Maybe they'll learn. Maybe a few of them will think about and ask themselves essential questions.
Happiness and love are precious and not to be squandered under all but the most extreme circumstances. Especially not in this world's economy.
///=sigh= I could really go for a slice of pizza right about now. I'll melt some ice cream instead.
The first week of a liquid diet and I'm down 17 pounds. I'm not fat, but I always feel fat, so it's helping my body image issues a great deal, oddly enough. I keep thinking over the evening last Saturday. After a great pow-wow with a buddy and his friend who had to leave a little earlier we decided to head out and grab some ice cream and, I was thinking, a pack of smokes on the side for me, happy to be alive and a little agitated, but more than anything else, happy to be out for a walk in the deep night air with a gorgeous moon. Hopping along, we came across a bunch of teens loitering in a schools front yard and a police van telling them to disperse and we walked on, exchanging glances. They were obviously doing it wrong. Mulling in the shadows instead of out beneath the street lights on your way to get some tasty ice cream and smokes and then hop back home to finish the night off with a few beers and your friend.
They were doing it wrong and it was funny and in my happiness and joy with the night and my pal and the prospect of ice cream, I shouted to them so, with a few more curse words and some gestures, but simply poking fun at how they choose to spend their time when they could be walking to get ice cream instead of haunting a schools front lawn. They shouted back and I shouted back, because there's so much more to life than trying to intimidate people all of the time. There's friendship, and the moon, and ice cream, and cigarettes, and the fun a Saturday unperturbed by anyone who dares believe they can rain on my happy day with a friend I haven't seen in far too long. Who cares if a couple of happy travelers don't clutch their purses or speak in hushed voices as they pass you by. You're a bunch of kids on a schools closed front lawn trying to intimidate and strike fear into the "mean streets of Pittsburgh" from the shadows. Ooga booga! It was hilarious.
Those boys took it the wrong way and decided to follow and encircle us. "All of this happiness must be stomped out!" is what I think they said collectively. I had no desire to fight. Those roads are way behind me and ice cream was ahead of me and the police were just up the block a moment ago. I do not live in a world where I will trade ice cream for police questioning. Ever! I figured there'd be some yelling and shoving and they'd go on their merry and moody and belligerent way after pushing us around and we'd continue on ours and get those evening treats and continue our happy Saturday. It wasn't to be. I was hit from a blind angle right in the left corner of my jawbone just beneath my ear and dropped like a bag of rocks for a few seconds. My friend, struck too, was lucky enough to get hit from a direction his head was more or less facing and did not suffer more than cosmetic damage in a black eye and a cut or two.
I didn't realize the discomfort I felt the following day was far more than a bruise on my cheek until the day after when the pain got worse and worse until I couldn't chew anything, much less open my mouth. I guess those boys won. My happiness silenced by a fractured jaw bone and quite possibly broken molars inside the bone itself (hoping that's not the case, but we'll know in another week or two or if the violence of them being forcefully shifted a few millimeters out of their homes has caused inflammation that will take some time to heal [or if infection is underway as we write *cue doom music*]).
I keep thinking through that fateful stretch of night. I keep asking myself why the hell would they do that? Keep telling myself it was entirely uncalled for. I know why I was sucker punched. Their fear. That moment when my friend was hit and they thought "now or never because if this other larger guy wasn't going to put up a fight before he just may A: decide to put up a fight now, B: shout or call for help, C: both a and b." I keep wondering why they didn't just yell back and go their separate way. There was no chance they considered he and I, a couple of drunk 30 year old men out on a walk together, to be a threat to them. Why would they do that? Why would they attack us so viciously?
And then it dawned on me. Thinking back 12 years. How righteously furious I was then for dozens of reasons, some complex some as simple as I wanted an excuse to pass on the hurt inside of me to anyone who gave me an excuse to. Ready to fight anyone and any inanimate object that didn't "respect" me no matter how pointless or stupid. I didn't want to rob you. I wanted to hurt you as badly as I could get away with. Year after year after year, getting more angry, more sensitive, more irrational, but always questioning it, breaking it apart, tearing down the engine, trying to figure out what the hell it was making this bomb of my body go tick tick tick. I still haven't figured it out exactly.
Through years of study, years of violence toward others sometimes warranted, often times not, culminating in things I will never be able to take back, I left those courses behind me. Thirty years old all I care about is writing, getting home in one piece, spending time with my cats, seeing my friends when I can, and taking care of the only body I have left until my brain breaks apart or my body just will not run anymore. I could care less who respects me and who doesn't. I could care less who breaks my jaw and who decides to be merciful. Save for a handful of very specific, very important, exceptions, if I ever get so mad that the only language I can speak is the original dialect, violence itself, I will speak through breaking my own skin and nerves, not someone else's. The simpler truth is that for most of those kids, they will never learn or even begin to learn how to learn that things could be different. Some of them will end up dead. Others will circle their private drains until their live's dwindle and die out.
Those idiots aren't there yet. It was stupid of me to believe a 12 year gap in understanding what a good night with a friend really is, and what it can mean in the face of a world, in the face of my world once dominated by violence. They didn't silence my happiness. If worst comes to worst and I can never quite use my jaw the way I could before that night again, I have always wanted to learn sign language.
Do I hate them for it? Of course. Would I like to find one of them, knock him senseless, wrap him duct tape and put him in the bed of my truck and take him home? Would I like to duct tape his arm to a sheet of plywood after gagging him with #0 steel wool and use my belt sander grind away the first knuckle of each digit of his immobilized hand and then shatter the wrist of his other? Would I like to drive down river and dump his body at a drainage gate? Of course. That would achieve nothing. I'd be happy for a while until the next week when the pain set in again and I would need to find another one and that life is not for me as long as I continue to refuse it and allow the rest of myself to flourish. Maybe they'll learn. Maybe a few of them will think about and ask themselves essential questions.
Happiness and love are precious and not to be squandered under all but the most extreme circumstances. Especially not in this world's economy.
///=sigh= I could really go for a slice of pizza right about now. I'll melt some ice cream instead.
6/20/15
Memories
Designing the fish line and hook system around my notebook in high school. A marvel of engineering. Should it get out of my hands for any reason, uncorking it without knowing how the lines were connected led to a four pointed fish hook whipping around it's spine to snag whatever hands held it. I hoped someone would try to open it to hear their wail. Now it's pretty fun to not have to design ridiculous booby traps.
7/15/14
A Thought On Taking Ears
To take an eye is a bit excessive. I don't care what fight you're in if it's not life and death. Taking an eye is excessive. Taking a tooth is, by a stretch, not easy. By no stretch, 10/10 on the difficulty scale. Let alone taking the seconds and minutes to pick it up and pocket it after smashing it loose in an uncontrolled environment.
An ear is about right. It's pretty much a receipt and sensitive if not cauliflowered so it can be an end of itself, sending the "I am not alright with this" signal to their brain. There is little lost beyond the cosmetic and pride to boot. Next time you're in a scuff go there. It's a fine and thoughtful and effective solution. The chances are very good, after the tangle, it will not be able to be replaced, resewn, or glued back.
Win or lose, a trophy is a trophy and if you're terrible at grappling there is an answer. An answer a notch below gouging an eye; striking a life long user blind is just sad, and above clawing their ball sack; we're not savages. They get the benefit of walking around with one ear and you get the benefit of nothing to collect because it is already in hand and you get to keep it, assuming you did not lose too poorly and were beaten to death by their friends. It's a fairly fair trade as I see it.
///The Knife - "We Share Our Mother's Health" ...god damn, do we still come down from the north? still? we're going to have to choose eventually. new york city is garbage. pittsburgh isn't quite the midwest. is it? we come out from the hills. doesn't have the same ring to it. we do have the same mother's though. like it or not.
An ear is about right. It's pretty much a receipt and sensitive if not cauliflowered so it can be an end of itself, sending the "I am not alright with this" signal to their brain. There is little lost beyond the cosmetic and pride to boot. Next time you're in a scuff go there. It's a fine and thoughtful and effective solution. The chances are very good, after the tangle, it will not be able to be replaced, resewn, or glued back.
Win or lose, a trophy is a trophy and if you're terrible at grappling there is an answer. An answer a notch below gouging an eye; striking a life long user blind is just sad, and above clawing their ball sack; we're not savages. They get the benefit of walking around with one ear and you get the benefit of nothing to collect because it is already in hand and you get to keep it, assuming you did not lose too poorly and were beaten to death by their friends. It's a fairly fair trade as I see it.
///The Knife - "We Share Our Mother's Health" ...god damn, do we still come down from the north? still? we're going to have to choose eventually. new york city is garbage. pittsburgh isn't quite the midwest. is it? we come out from the hills. doesn't have the same ring to it. we do have the same mother's though. like it or not.
1/26/14
What Is and Should Not Be
I'm pretty sure, fairly certain, that what I am is asexual. Ambivalent to any and all ranges of sexual encounters. Does that make me some kind of freak animal? No. Does that make me open to any and all sorts of encounters? Yes. Does that make me bored with sex? Also yes.
It also makes me very disappointed and disinterested in every and all things involving sexual parts. Interest peaked? Sure. Able to love, again, sure. Able to participate? Also, again yes. With enthusiasm? Of course.
I understand the artistry of it. The mechanics of it. The connection as well. What I am attempting to define is the isness of sex. I can no longer participate in the action and experience the subtexts of it in a meaningful way. Meaningful being defined as a further connection or a connection that helps define a further relationship. For better or for worse I do believe I am evolving into an asexual state.
Monotone perhaps. Evolution not necessarily meaning some sort of higher or greater sense, but simply a thing not defining the current state. Every attraction being a curio and nothing more, but being something and meaning something more than the cellar dweller slut.
Maybe meaning something more like "yes this or that feels good, but if an inanimate object could give me that on occasion I would actually marry it and talk to it and have tea with it and sit and watch television with it and adopt a child with it and help he/she learn how to play baseball with it and introduce it one day and explain the birds and the bees and the birds and the wind to it and disclaim immaculate conception to him/her while it sat on a chair beside us" kind of way.
A relentless pursuit of violence through love. Where that one is divides the ground by gashes and swathes of earth scorched and the question persists: "can you live on this, because I can go lower?" The question persists: "I have seen the floor and seen yours, are you ready to hold hands and see how deep that rabbit hole goes?"
It is difficult to rake the years and every time we hang out I cannot understand why you did not let go too. I wonder for seconds if I did something wrong. I want some times to attack the people you call home because they know nothing and I read them right and, if not, can at least scream to you that they read me wrong and the only thing protecting them from me is you and the respect therein and the laws they built their bullshit on and the same laws keeping me from spilling guts and skating toward the door on intestine.
No one is as intense in person as they are on paper. That's simple fact. Give me one day of freedom. True freedom. And everything done on that day will remain inside those 24 hours. I will make tracks and make tracks, and close loose ends, and if you need more than 24 hours to catch me, tough luck because the statute of limitations says so.
I am plushy. Everyone needs. Everyone wants. Each and everyone has something to forget. Sometimes it is easier to erase everything else than make edits.
///Fergie - (Clumsy) "...some day, we'll have a two car garage, a tea nook, and a butcher locker..."
It also makes me very disappointed and disinterested in every and all things involving sexual parts. Interest peaked? Sure. Able to love, again, sure. Able to participate? Also, again yes. With enthusiasm? Of course.
I understand the artistry of it. The mechanics of it. The connection as well. What I am attempting to define is the isness of sex. I can no longer participate in the action and experience the subtexts of it in a meaningful way. Meaningful being defined as a further connection or a connection that helps define a further relationship. For better or for worse I do believe I am evolving into an asexual state.
Monotone perhaps. Evolution not necessarily meaning some sort of higher or greater sense, but simply a thing not defining the current state. Every attraction being a curio and nothing more, but being something and meaning something more than the cellar dweller slut.
Maybe meaning something more like "yes this or that feels good, but if an inanimate object could give me that on occasion I would actually marry it and talk to it and have tea with it and sit and watch television with it and adopt a child with it and help he/she learn how to play baseball with it and introduce it one day and explain the birds and the bees and the birds and the wind to it and disclaim immaculate conception to him/her while it sat on a chair beside us" kind of way.
A relentless pursuit of violence through love. Where that one is divides the ground by gashes and swathes of earth scorched and the question persists: "can you live on this, because I can go lower?" The question persists: "I have seen the floor and seen yours, are you ready to hold hands and see how deep that rabbit hole goes?"
It is difficult to rake the years and every time we hang out I cannot understand why you did not let go too. I wonder for seconds if I did something wrong. I want some times to attack the people you call home because they know nothing and I read them right and, if not, can at least scream to you that they read me wrong and the only thing protecting them from me is you and the respect therein and the laws they built their bullshit on and the same laws keeping me from spilling guts and skating toward the door on intestine.
No one is as intense in person as they are on paper. That's simple fact. Give me one day of freedom. True freedom. And everything done on that day will remain inside those 24 hours. I will make tracks and make tracks, and close loose ends, and if you need more than 24 hours to catch me, tough luck because the statute of limitations says so.
I am plushy. Everyone needs. Everyone wants. Each and everyone has something to forget. Sometimes it is easier to erase everything else than make edits.
///Fergie - (Clumsy) "...some day, we'll have a two car garage, a tea nook, and a butcher locker..."
5/5/13
Dear (_____)
I'm not checking out your girl. I could give two shits, but it's not even worth that. I'm worn out and tired of trying to hide my glances. Talk to her about it. Not me. Skin is skin and rare skin is rarer. If she flashes it holds my attention the same way the rat man going into the crawl space showing crack catches my eye. It's nothing personal and in fact is farther from the sun than the dirt beneath my feet, but if you see armpit I'm going to look. It's not striking fire in my pants anymore than a turtle upside down, but grant me curio. I don't have a hardy for her bralessness anymore than you do for him in trunks sans wear. Relax, bro. Relax. I came here to fight like you came here to eat glass. Ain't happening. However, if you want to throw down for the spirit of putting blood on cement, I'm all in, homie. Let's go.
11/29/12
That Instant
you realize you are going to go do something you've gotten good at but that you do not like to do, and it is no longer optional. The choice is gone. And all of your happy songs will have to be learned again and all of your happy places will have to be overtaken again. Let's make it a short trip. I just got back to loving myself, I'm not about to give that away for a forgiven debt.
Last times, sugar.
Last times, sugar.
5/9/12
Not Again. Yes Again
I pretty much exploded just about every single breaker on my mind this past weekend. It was rough. Massive overload. Massive violence. Memory loss. Found things in my apartment that did not belong to me that were covered in blood that was not mine. Strange stuff. Just a complete collapse that was punctuated by a friend in bad straits and there was nothing I could do really to help her, but god damn it I tried and I will try again if it happens again. Powerlessness. Is a terrible thing. Drives me to do and exercise the things I can do. Which are few. And most of those things lead to bad circumstances.
I know at some point my luck is going to run out and things will not go anywhere near the way I planned them. I will be on the wrong end of the violence and rage. Over my head without even knowing it. Without realizing it until it happens. I don't think I'll be all that upset though. A way out. Not the way out I would want, but how far I would go to resist is questionable. I don't think I would, beyond reflex. I did set out to specifically kill someone. Ended up in tears and bloodless. I suppose that was the second time. I don't remember what happened the first time. The point is I've got stop letting go like that. Gotta stop letting myself be provoked.
Control. Without control there is nothing. I can't afford to lose like that. Not yet. Still too much work to do. Gotta get my head back on straight if I'm going to live through the bull shit and the slippage and the blow outs and the
///Tosca - "Oscar" I've had the most fantastic dreams over the last two days about stories I need to write. I need to do it. I'm not really afraid of running out of time. I just know that time is running out of me like blood from a head wound.
I know at some point my luck is going to run out and things will not go anywhere near the way I planned them. I will be on the wrong end of the violence and rage. Over my head without even knowing it. Without realizing it until it happens. I don't think I'll be all that upset though. A way out. Not the way out I would want, but how far I would go to resist is questionable. I don't think I would, beyond reflex. I did set out to specifically kill someone. Ended up in tears and bloodless. I suppose that was the second time. I don't remember what happened the first time. The point is I've got stop letting go like that. Gotta stop letting myself be provoked.
Control. Without control there is nothing. I can't afford to lose like that. Not yet. Still too much work to do. Gotta get my head back on straight if I'm going to live through the bull shit and the slippage and the blow outs and the
///Tosca - "Oscar" I've had the most fantastic dreams over the last two days about stories I need to write. I need to do it. I'm not really afraid of running out of time. I just know that time is running out of me like blood from a head wound.
3/22/12
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
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
11/6/11
Cycling, Greyhounds, Inherited Vision and Home
Walking home from the Greyhound station downtown I was sincerely struck by the beauty of the river and my new home town. I haven't really felt homesick for a place as much as I feel homesick for Pittsburgh whenever I'm gone for a long time. It's not like I miss the people. I can count the number of people that I see and know on one hand that's gone through a meat grinder and lost two digits. I get homesick for the atmosphere. The lack of pomp and circumstance. Of course there's the college town part of Pittsburgh, but the part plays a lot bigger than it is. I don't miss that scene or the people that frequent it religiously all that much.
Sure it was great to play drinking games and have laughs and dress up on halloween and all that shit. Sure it was great to get anxious on Sunday when you know papers are due and oh so many tests next week and I haven't studied at all but you know you'll do well enough to get a decent grade, but you need something to worry about so you don't feel like a waste of life and loan money, or trust fund money, or whatever the fuck money has gotten you in there. I do miss the drinking games and the general camaraderie largely absent in life after age twenty two when people decide what they really want to do and the doing of that thing does not include meeting you every weekend to exchange war stories and play fighting and choruses of the songs you have in common and hitting on the birds. Everyone grows up eventually and it makes me sad, because my investment schedule definitely does not include the things people my age are supposed to value which puts me at direct odds with what those people want to do. Not by choice. Everyone inherits vision to some degree and I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to inherit a vision of the future that is not worlds apart, but different enough to make common ground a scratch and tumble affair at best. I don't know where to find the people that share my vision, because I spent all of my time with people who didn't share that vision, but shared temporary past times that I thought would last forever.
People aside I get homesick for the fabric of where it is that I am. The smell of it. The starry sky that just won't quit. The bridges and hills and the chopped sidewalks. The bad architecture and the good and the fact that the people there make it work and shut the fuck up about it. The low rent, maybe low brow, of it all. The fact that I don't have to make 20,000 dollars to live a life with amenities and enough security to know that I won't be ass out on the street living out of bus station rest rooms if I don't pull in 32,000 dollars a year, much less 18,000. I miss that I can go do just about anything I want a couple times a month if it's expensive and most everything else I can do at will when I'm there and working.
As I'm walking home and crossing the last bridge across the river to my town I can see the stars sitting in the water like giants blue white lilly pads looking for frogs and it's the calmest I've seen it in a while and, yeah, it made me misty. No neon lights, no car clogged Saturday night streets. Just hills rising on either side dotted with orange street lights and a few windows and an empty bridge. The moon on my shoulder, the river at my feet. It was beautiful. It is beautiful. I could walk out to that bridge every day and it would never get old. The only thing I wanted more was a joint, a cooler with a couple 40s, and a fishing rod to pass the time til sunrise. I love Pittsburgh. She makes me wicked homesick.
The only downside was the Greyhound ride from Philadelphia. I took the fools gold. I grabbed the open seat with a few open seats around it and sure enough a family sat around me. A couple of fat mothers and their snotty kid and baby and dazed and confused husband. Not a problem. I had headphones. So I thought. Immune to crying stinky children being changed in the aisle. The real problem was the extremely portly mother. Nothing against big girls, but if you can't sleep on a red eye without falling over on the person next to you and wedging your purse into my hip and lolling your arms against my ribs, I will have a problem with you.
The worst part wasn't that she baby talked to the baby for two hours. My problem wasn't that the baby kept smacking my arms and kicking my thighs while I tried to make myself as small as possible. My problem wasn't even that she refused to acknoledge that allowing her baby to run rough shod over a complete stranger was probably a bad idea, as I had to continuously repeat aloud "do not strangle them" to keep myself in my seat and facing away. Verbal reminders keep me in line. My problem was that she kept leaning herself on me with enough perfume to hide a skunk in her vagina and have the world none the wiser.
Honestly, I would rather people smelled like people. People stink. It's part of being human. Everybody has their odor. I can deal with it. Hell, I wrestled in highschool. Ever been in a practically air tight, pad walled, wrestling room for three sweaty, teen funked, hours with unwashed knee pads, shoes, singlets and sweats everywhere? Hell, ever been locked in a 90 degree house with elephantine parents spending entire days sweating into a couch with the windows locked tight and you on the top floor where all the heat and stench gathers regardless of what you do? People stink. I would rather smell your feet after a twenty mile run than stomach whatever essence of flower musk from some far off land synthesized in a lab and sprayed on rabbits. It was hard enough to breath. I had to get out on the rest stop and smoke just to get the odor out of my nostrils for ten minutes before diving back into the air freshened nightmare.
Eventually, between the run amok children, the lolling woman leaning me so hard into the wall I thought I would pop through the emergency window like a turd through a clenched bum hours away from a stall, and the perfume I took the passive aggressive route. I read a book. I was the only one on the bus reading. Got the book out and hit that light switch and within an hour the seat next to me was vacant. Had to pat myself on the back for that act of cunning. And then I put the arm rest down for good measure. I can sleep sitting stock still. Doesn't bother me. Luckily enough it bothered them enough to get every last one of them to piss off.
But anyway, wanted to mention cycling. I almost high sided the other day. A low side fall is alright. You take the shortest path from your seat to the ground. Not terrible usually. High siding is a different story. High siding is flipping over the top of your cycle. Not laying it down and going down with it, but hitting something or wrenching it in such a way that you come over the top and land. Hard.
I was coming down a nice winder. Nice tight sweeps in heavy traffic. It's usually not a problem, but I was coming to a tight sidewinder that I flirted with about a dozen times. I pushed it hard and it took it softer on rainy days, but I felt comfortable enough to give the old all or nothing pass. The pace setter. The pass that would define how I judged my future success or failure navigating it in coming months.
Of course there is a fucking minivan charging up my ass. I don't know what it is about drivers. It's like they feel they aren't driving as well as they can unless they can chase down a bicycle as though the bicycle is somehow superior in grip when in fact it is superior in dense traffic patterns and perhaps marginally more nimble, but on open roads all the advantages go to having more contact patches. And an engine. So I take the turn tight. Too tight. I have too much speed and my apex misses the ideal by several feet and I come wide toward the road's shoulder and I can see the early morning gravel from rain wash the night before not yet cleared by a day of traffic and I am coming straight for it with a big white van charging in behind me expecting me to hold the line.
The gravel and sand are two wheels mortal enemy next to ice which usually equals instant low sides, but I see it coming so I'm sliding and correcting and sliding and correcting trying to slow down enough without taking too much of my tires capacity to steer and grip by over braking and as I basically fish tail the curb is coming up and I feel that sick few seconds when you know someone is about to blind side check you straight into the hockey arena boards. As I'm trail braking and correcting I can see my wheels jamming the curb and me flipping into the fence in what would have been the worst accident I've had to date, but I pull it together and recover about six inches out and get up off my saddle and chug with everything I'm worth to keep the van from pasting me.
It sucked. I damn near shat myself with the effort and nerve racking tension. Why do I mention it? In short, certain turns don't care what you're driving or riding. I'm pretty sure part of the reason the van didn't cream me was because she had to slow down to take the bend too and I didn't think about that. The sharpness of it. Had I been riding or driving anything I'm pretty sure the fastest that hairpin could have been taken was probably ten or fifteen miles an hour without aero package grade downforce keeping you glued. And I need to keep that in mind when I'm riding too. I know I can't out maneuver most cars on open sweepers and pins, but I also need to remind myself not to push too hard, because when the turns get tight enough, they can't out maneuver me either. And I guess that's part of the human experience too. When things get tight enough the only thing that matters is how much downforce you can generate, not what drives you.
///Junkie XL - "War" on the road of life there are drivers and there are the driven
Sure it was great to play drinking games and have laughs and dress up on halloween and all that shit. Sure it was great to get anxious on Sunday when you know papers are due and oh so many tests next week and I haven't studied at all but you know you'll do well enough to get a decent grade, but you need something to worry about so you don't feel like a waste of life and loan money, or trust fund money, or whatever the fuck money has gotten you in there. I do miss the drinking games and the general camaraderie largely absent in life after age twenty two when people decide what they really want to do and the doing of that thing does not include meeting you every weekend to exchange war stories and play fighting and choruses of the songs you have in common and hitting on the birds. Everyone grows up eventually and it makes me sad, because my investment schedule definitely does not include the things people my age are supposed to value which puts me at direct odds with what those people want to do. Not by choice. Everyone inherits vision to some degree and I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to inherit a vision of the future that is not worlds apart, but different enough to make common ground a scratch and tumble affair at best. I don't know where to find the people that share my vision, because I spent all of my time with people who didn't share that vision, but shared temporary past times that I thought would last forever.
People aside I get homesick for the fabric of where it is that I am. The smell of it. The starry sky that just won't quit. The bridges and hills and the chopped sidewalks. The bad architecture and the good and the fact that the people there make it work and shut the fuck up about it. The low rent, maybe low brow, of it all. The fact that I don't have to make 20,000 dollars to live a life with amenities and enough security to know that I won't be ass out on the street living out of bus station rest rooms if I don't pull in 32,000 dollars a year, much less 18,000. I miss that I can go do just about anything I want a couple times a month if it's expensive and most everything else I can do at will when I'm there and working.
As I'm walking home and crossing the last bridge across the river to my town I can see the stars sitting in the water like giants blue white lilly pads looking for frogs and it's the calmest I've seen it in a while and, yeah, it made me misty. No neon lights, no car clogged Saturday night streets. Just hills rising on either side dotted with orange street lights and a few windows and an empty bridge. The moon on my shoulder, the river at my feet. It was beautiful. It is beautiful. I could walk out to that bridge every day and it would never get old. The only thing I wanted more was a joint, a cooler with a couple 40s, and a fishing rod to pass the time til sunrise. I love Pittsburgh. She makes me wicked homesick.
The only downside was the Greyhound ride from Philadelphia. I took the fools gold. I grabbed the open seat with a few open seats around it and sure enough a family sat around me. A couple of fat mothers and their snotty kid and baby and dazed and confused husband. Not a problem. I had headphones. So I thought. Immune to crying stinky children being changed in the aisle. The real problem was the extremely portly mother. Nothing against big girls, but if you can't sleep on a red eye without falling over on the person next to you and wedging your purse into my hip and lolling your arms against my ribs, I will have a problem with you.
The worst part wasn't that she baby talked to the baby for two hours. My problem wasn't that the baby kept smacking my arms and kicking my thighs while I tried to make myself as small as possible. My problem wasn't even that she refused to acknoledge that allowing her baby to run rough shod over a complete stranger was probably a bad idea, as I had to continuously repeat aloud "do not strangle them" to keep myself in my seat and facing away. Verbal reminders keep me in line. My problem was that she kept leaning herself on me with enough perfume to hide a skunk in her vagina and have the world none the wiser.
Honestly, I would rather people smelled like people. People stink. It's part of being human. Everybody has their odor. I can deal with it. Hell, I wrestled in highschool. Ever been in a practically air tight, pad walled, wrestling room for three sweaty, teen funked, hours with unwashed knee pads, shoes, singlets and sweats everywhere? Hell, ever been locked in a 90 degree house with elephantine parents spending entire days sweating into a couch with the windows locked tight and you on the top floor where all the heat and stench gathers regardless of what you do? People stink. I would rather smell your feet after a twenty mile run than stomach whatever essence of flower musk from some far off land synthesized in a lab and sprayed on rabbits. It was hard enough to breath. I had to get out on the rest stop and smoke just to get the odor out of my nostrils for ten minutes before diving back into the air freshened nightmare.
Eventually, between the run amok children, the lolling woman leaning me so hard into the wall I thought I would pop through the emergency window like a turd through a clenched bum hours away from a stall, and the perfume I took the passive aggressive route. I read a book. I was the only one on the bus reading. Got the book out and hit that light switch and within an hour the seat next to me was vacant. Had to pat myself on the back for that act of cunning. And then I put the arm rest down for good measure. I can sleep sitting stock still. Doesn't bother me. Luckily enough it bothered them enough to get every last one of them to piss off.
But anyway, wanted to mention cycling. I almost high sided the other day. A low side fall is alright. You take the shortest path from your seat to the ground. Not terrible usually. High siding is a different story. High siding is flipping over the top of your cycle. Not laying it down and going down with it, but hitting something or wrenching it in such a way that you come over the top and land. Hard.
I was coming down a nice winder. Nice tight sweeps in heavy traffic. It's usually not a problem, but I was coming to a tight sidewinder that I flirted with about a dozen times. I pushed it hard and it took it softer on rainy days, but I felt comfortable enough to give the old all or nothing pass. The pace setter. The pass that would define how I judged my future success or failure navigating it in coming months.
Of course there is a fucking minivan charging up my ass. I don't know what it is about drivers. It's like they feel they aren't driving as well as they can unless they can chase down a bicycle as though the bicycle is somehow superior in grip when in fact it is superior in dense traffic patterns and perhaps marginally more nimble, but on open roads all the advantages go to having more contact patches. And an engine. So I take the turn tight. Too tight. I have too much speed and my apex misses the ideal by several feet and I come wide toward the road's shoulder and I can see the early morning gravel from rain wash the night before not yet cleared by a day of traffic and I am coming straight for it with a big white van charging in behind me expecting me to hold the line.
The gravel and sand are two wheels mortal enemy next to ice which usually equals instant low sides, but I see it coming so I'm sliding and correcting and sliding and correcting trying to slow down enough without taking too much of my tires capacity to steer and grip by over braking and as I basically fish tail the curb is coming up and I feel that sick few seconds when you know someone is about to blind side check you straight into the hockey arena boards. As I'm trail braking and correcting I can see my wheels jamming the curb and me flipping into the fence in what would have been the worst accident I've had to date, but I pull it together and recover about six inches out and get up off my saddle and chug with everything I'm worth to keep the van from pasting me.
It sucked. I damn near shat myself with the effort and nerve racking tension. Why do I mention it? In short, certain turns don't care what you're driving or riding. I'm pretty sure part of the reason the van didn't cream me was because she had to slow down to take the bend too and I didn't think about that. The sharpness of it. Had I been riding or driving anything I'm pretty sure the fastest that hairpin could have been taken was probably ten or fifteen miles an hour without aero package grade downforce keeping you glued. And I need to keep that in mind when I'm riding too. I know I can't out maneuver most cars on open sweepers and pins, but I also need to remind myself not to push too hard, because when the turns get tight enough, they can't out maneuver me either. And I guess that's part of the human experience too. When things get tight enough the only thing that matters is how much downforce you can generate, not what drives you.
///Junkie XL - "War" on the road of life there are drivers and there are the driven
4/2/11
Counting Down Seconds
Counting down the seconds until I have to go outside again. It helps when it's dark out. It feels like there are two inch diameter screws pushing into the space behind my ears and doing their best to touch in the middle.
The wind blows up through the corner of my building where all the boiler rooms and utility closets align. I'm pretty sure I could climb down through the entire building to the basement through there. I'm pretty sure whatever's in the basement can climb up if it wanted to. I try not to think about that space. Sometimes I come home and that door is open. The lock on it is broken. Or maybe it never worked. I stuff socks in the door jamb to keep it shut, but socks don't have magical powers and it doesn't stay shut. I'm thinking about nailing it up.
Yesterday I was working so hard I started drooling and I didn't realize it until I felt the little tug on your shirt that tells you your taco just let a glob of skin temperature oil loose on the middle of your chest. I took it down a notch. The work is hard, but not hard enough. I like it when it's demanding. It helps me forget who I am. I'm no longer me. I'm levers and pulleys and little motors and wires and for loops and if then switches and I love that. Part of me wants that to be all. To rip away from the rest in a maniac's pursuit of perfectly synchronized movement. I'm clumsy. But when I've memorized all the actions it feels so good to make the calls to the functions and then revise them knowing they can't become worse.
I'm thinking about teaching myself to be a butcher, since I didn't get the post. It would be a fun pastime. By the time I can afford to buy the animals I'll be able to afford a freezer to put the parts in and have a nice place for all the tools too. Then I can extend the work from my job through the anxiety of my home and feel that relaxedness roll through me again. But that's a little ways off. It'll be fun.
I had this dream that I went forward in time to the same burned out bakery next to the house I want to buy. The house with the door boarded up in the front and all the doors and balconies open in the back where there was a fire that started at the furnace exhaust and worked it's way forward across the roof and slashed through the face of the third floor like a stroke of side armed bull whip. The place wasn't lived in. Or at least, when I looked in the one open window at ground level I didn't see any blankets in there. The day was already getting on by the time I came to and walked next door so I decided to head East toward the blight and see if I bought any property down that way since I didn't end up taking the home in the shadow of the bakery after all. It was a long walk and things were turning the blue gray of a rainy evening going dark for coming overcast more than precession. I came to the fields of weeds and tumble bricks and lost shopping bags and knit hats from past years turned into multicolored sidewalk band aids glued to the ground by leaves and dog pee and I started stopping at each building standing singular and appearing unoccupied, but none of them were mine. It took me an entire season to move as far ahead as I did and the trees were shedding and blowing across the ground and I was watching them go when my eye took on charcoal writing on the wide boards of a porch with empty windows. There was writing everywhere and it cut and curled like the shadows of crossing tree limbs if the sun were striking at first daylight. I didn't know whose house it was, but I had to know who would trace the veins of a building like that so I walking across another field where a home was knocked down into it's basement and covered over with dirt and crossed a street empty of cars and kicked an empty milk carton on my way up the stairs. There was thick black writing everywhere and on every single step and some dead vines that tried to impress, but were cut at the roots and left to rot. I went inside through the window into the dimness and walked through a living room that sagged in the middle where rain must have collected year in and year out. Walking along the walls to avoid the softest parts of the floor I found a sleeping bag with me inside and I took off my gloves to maintain a slip free grip and I started strangling myself until I felt my larynx collapse like a matchbox and I knelt there squeezing as hard as I could waiting for my eyes to open, but they never did. I left. I went back to the bakery beneath a starless sky and I didn't lay down to go back to my own time until the rain threatened earlier started to fall and I felt peaceful. I slept so good. And then I woke up.
The whole thing made me wonder how many unsolved murders are suicides. It's probably in horrible taste. I'm sure someone somewhere is probably being brutally raped and murdered by someone else who will never be caught. Maybe I'm already on some course for that to happen to me in my bids to connect with people I don't know. But how many people are killed by their time traveling suicidal selves. I don't want to meet myself. Not yet anyway, but I'm counting down the seconds until I have to go outside. I need some time to work on things. I hope I get some time off soon, even though I don't want it. My head hurts.
///Groove Armada - "At The River" Let's dance a little. Please? Don't make me dance by myself again.
The wind blows up through the corner of my building where all the boiler rooms and utility closets align. I'm pretty sure I could climb down through the entire building to the basement through there. I'm pretty sure whatever's in the basement can climb up if it wanted to. I try not to think about that space. Sometimes I come home and that door is open. The lock on it is broken. Or maybe it never worked. I stuff socks in the door jamb to keep it shut, but socks don't have magical powers and it doesn't stay shut. I'm thinking about nailing it up.
Yesterday I was working so hard I started drooling and I didn't realize it until I felt the little tug on your shirt that tells you your taco just let a glob of skin temperature oil loose on the middle of your chest. I took it down a notch. The work is hard, but not hard enough. I like it when it's demanding. It helps me forget who I am. I'm no longer me. I'm levers and pulleys and little motors and wires and for loops and if then switches and I love that. Part of me wants that to be all. To rip away from the rest in a maniac's pursuit of perfectly synchronized movement. I'm clumsy. But when I've memorized all the actions it feels so good to make the calls to the functions and then revise them knowing they can't become worse.
I'm thinking about teaching myself to be a butcher, since I didn't get the post. It would be a fun pastime. By the time I can afford to buy the animals I'll be able to afford a freezer to put the parts in and have a nice place for all the tools too. Then I can extend the work from my job through the anxiety of my home and feel that relaxedness roll through me again. But that's a little ways off. It'll be fun.
I had this dream that I went forward in time to the same burned out bakery next to the house I want to buy. The house with the door boarded up in the front and all the doors and balconies open in the back where there was a fire that started at the furnace exhaust and worked it's way forward across the roof and slashed through the face of the third floor like a stroke of side armed bull whip. The place wasn't lived in. Or at least, when I looked in the one open window at ground level I didn't see any blankets in there. The day was already getting on by the time I came to and walked next door so I decided to head East toward the blight and see if I bought any property down that way since I didn't end up taking the home in the shadow of the bakery after all. It was a long walk and things were turning the blue gray of a rainy evening going dark for coming overcast more than precession. I came to the fields of weeds and tumble bricks and lost shopping bags and knit hats from past years turned into multicolored sidewalk band aids glued to the ground by leaves and dog pee and I started stopping at each building standing singular and appearing unoccupied, but none of them were mine. It took me an entire season to move as far ahead as I did and the trees were shedding and blowing across the ground and I was watching them go when my eye took on charcoal writing on the wide boards of a porch with empty windows. There was writing everywhere and it cut and curled like the shadows of crossing tree limbs if the sun were striking at first daylight. I didn't know whose house it was, but I had to know who would trace the veins of a building like that so I walking across another field where a home was knocked down into it's basement and covered over with dirt and crossed a street empty of cars and kicked an empty milk carton on my way up the stairs. There was thick black writing everywhere and on every single step and some dead vines that tried to impress, but were cut at the roots and left to rot. I went inside through the window into the dimness and walked through a living room that sagged in the middle where rain must have collected year in and year out. Walking along the walls to avoid the softest parts of the floor I found a sleeping bag with me inside and I took off my gloves to maintain a slip free grip and I started strangling myself until I felt my larynx collapse like a matchbox and I knelt there squeezing as hard as I could waiting for my eyes to open, but they never did. I left. I went back to the bakery beneath a starless sky and I didn't lay down to go back to my own time until the rain threatened earlier started to fall and I felt peaceful. I slept so good. And then I woke up.
The whole thing made me wonder how many unsolved murders are suicides. It's probably in horrible taste. I'm sure someone somewhere is probably being brutally raped and murdered by someone else who will never be caught. Maybe I'm already on some course for that to happen to me in my bids to connect with people I don't know. But how many people are killed by their time traveling suicidal selves. I don't want to meet myself. Not yet anyway, but I'm counting down the seconds until I have to go outside. I need some time to work on things. I hope I get some time off soon, even though I don't want it. My head hurts.
///Groove Armada - "At The River" Let's dance a little. Please? Don't make me dance by myself again.
3/19/11
Yikes. Oh Wait, Everything's Still Fine
Well, the hit parade came to a punch drunk halt. And my relationship with my job has also been resolved. It's fallen back into just another place I go and do stuff and wait to come back here and live again. Which is nice. Disappointing, but nice. It was a great honeymoon Both things coincided. It did, however (I'm littering balled up conjunctions), let me see what is possibly the only upside of sending and spending people to University study: it puts them in direct contact with similar people. Even if not similar, people possessing the capacity to understand human complexity, or maybe just ... ah whatever. Universities are full of people who do not have that capacity, but if you need that and have the money, it's where you'll have your best shot of connecting with the world and a purpose and those kinds of people. Which is neat.
I thought the internal interview went awesome, but what I realize now is that not answering the questions with made up situations no more complex than See Spot Run with Little House on the Prairie moral endings means the HR woman, who more than once asked the same question, was not understanding what I was trying to say. I should have picked up on it when she said "I don't understand how the conflict was resolved with the coworker," after I explained that through introspection I understood that my disagreement wasn't between the coworker and I as workers, but between my ethics and her practices and as such only needed an attitude adjustment on my part because, according to the union agreement and policy book, she wasn't technically doing anything wrong by not staying later than her shift regardless of the amount of work still left to be completed.
I've got to learn how to lie on these things. Or learn how to get into situations specifically to create simple answers to questions like "talk about a time you had a disagreement with a co-worker". Possibly both. I think the next time I'm at work I'll just throw cans at the manager and then we can talk about why I disagreed with his right to life and then we'll resolve the conflict by... no that's too complex. I can't even orchestrate the dumb two dimensional conflicts I'm supposed to be getting into. At any rate, it's nice to know this position has gone as far as it will so I can relax and poke around for something that pays a little better and let's me use my brain parts as much as my hands, and what's even nicer is that it's not as ridiculously urgent as when I had to punch out of New York or die.
Waking up today has been alright though. Took a personal day. I can get away with three of them every 90 days without getting written up and having a little sad is as good a reason as any. Also duct taping a butcher knife to your back, going to work, and stabbing the shit out of everyone and then beating them to death with a 15 pound chain and lock while they bleed out is probably a good reason to stay home and have some self reflection too. All of us talked about it and the consensus is that it's their loss, some of me more angrily than other parts. It was kind of funny hearing the collective gasp in my head and the one that said "see told ya" when I opened the email with the bad news. It probably also didn't help my chances that the Ass Mngr butt into the room I was interviewing in over the phone and spent several minutes loud talking at me how he was upset with me for having an interview instead of finishing my shift and banging around the office for several minutes before leaving in a huff. So I'm glad. Yesterday was way too good for too many reasons and I'm still feeling high and it's a thin world out there, but I'm okay with that. I'll find the depth I want eventually. In the meantime I'm gonna lace up and keep loving this Pittsburgh weather.
///David Bowie - "Space Oddity" "...here am I sitting in my tin can far above the Moon / Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do..."
I thought the internal interview went awesome, but what I realize now is that not answering the questions with made up situations no more complex than See Spot Run with Little House on the Prairie moral endings means the HR woman, who more than once asked the same question, was not understanding what I was trying to say. I should have picked up on it when she said "I don't understand how the conflict was resolved with the coworker," after I explained that through introspection I understood that my disagreement wasn't between the coworker and I as workers, but between my ethics and her practices and as such only needed an attitude adjustment on my part because, according to the union agreement and policy book, she wasn't technically doing anything wrong by not staying later than her shift regardless of the amount of work still left to be completed.
I've got to learn how to lie on these things. Or learn how to get into situations specifically to create simple answers to questions like "talk about a time you had a disagreement with a co-worker". Possibly both. I think the next time I'm at work I'll just throw cans at the manager and then we can talk about why I disagreed with his right to life and then we'll resolve the conflict by... no that's too complex. I can't even orchestrate the dumb two dimensional conflicts I'm supposed to be getting into. At any rate, it's nice to know this position has gone as far as it will so I can relax and poke around for something that pays a little better and let's me use my brain parts as much as my hands, and what's even nicer is that it's not as ridiculously urgent as when I had to punch out of New York or die.
Waking up today has been alright though. Took a personal day. I can get away with three of them every 90 days without getting written up and having a little sad is as good a reason as any. Also duct taping a butcher knife to your back, going to work, and stabbing the shit out of everyone and then beating them to death with a 15 pound chain and lock while they bleed out is probably a good reason to stay home and have some self reflection too. All of us talked about it and the consensus is that it's their loss, some of me more angrily than other parts. It was kind of funny hearing the collective gasp in my head and the one that said "see told ya" when I opened the email with the bad news. It probably also didn't help my chances that the Ass Mngr butt into the room I was interviewing in over the phone and spent several minutes loud talking at me how he was upset with me for having an interview instead of finishing my shift and banging around the office for several minutes before leaving in a huff. So I'm glad. Yesterday was way too good for too many reasons and I'm still feeling high and it's a thin world out there, but I'm okay with that. I'll find the depth I want eventually. In the meantime I'm gonna lace up and keep loving this Pittsburgh weather.
///David Bowie - "Space Oddity" "...here am I sitting in my tin can far above the Moon / Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do..."
2/12/11
Observation Continues Undocumented
Well, I have a mouse now. How swank is that? I'll tell you how swank it is: it is pretty ridiculously cool. I can't tell you how nice it is to not have to use a crappy touch pad. I had to pop one of the buttons off of the laptop and stuff a dime in there because it was malfunctioning so bad. With a mouse though I'm now in version 2.0 of my new technological life. No more will I have to scratch crude horsies on cave walls with burnt sticks. Speaking of horsies I really need to buy a few rolls of heavy paper so I can start writing on the walls. It's where words go. They go on the walls. End of story.
I was telling someone the other day, a friend of mine, we were hanging out and having a pretty good blast, that I'm pretty laid back and I told this rambling story about how I told some girl that I would shank her if she stepped on my ping pong ball and at the end of the story I realized that all it really said about me is that I'm incredibly neurotic and unpredictable in social situations involving alcohol. So I tried to save it. I forgot why I jumped into the story in the first place so I had to mentally talk myself back to the starting point, go back down the segments of the story, and hit the junctures correctly like a choose your own adventure book. Then, having retold the story to myself I realized the entire point of it was that I am laid back through 95% or so of life, but 5% of my life is governed by arbitrary and inflexible rules and I don't entirely understand why.
I know why I have to do certain things. I have to put my t-shirts on like a dolphin diving through a hoop. If I don't hold them and look through the neck holes while I'm putting them on then I run the risk of unknowingly entering an alternate dimension through the shirt hole and not realizing it until it's too late because I didn't see that things were different because the body of the shirt blinded me. That has to be done. No exceptions. If I make food I have to eat it no matter how awful it turns out. If I throw up because of it or get really sick then good for me. How else will I learn to not make bad food? If I cook for other people and portions don't turn out right I am responsible for eating the worst of whatever I prepare as a penalty for being a bad cook. There has to be accountability in the kitchen. A door to a pitch black room cannot be left open for any reason. If you don't divide the lit room from the dark room with some sort of physical boundary you run the risk of invitation of the things of night into the realm of day and the last thing I want is to be trying to do daytime things in a daytime room that happens to be dark and have to deal with nighttime things outside of ... well ... I don't even like talking about that sort of stuff in great detail anyway. It makes me sound crazy, but more importantly they don't like me talking about them and I'm the one who has to deal with their bad feelings so that's all I'm going to say about that, but the point is there are rules for reasons.
So what I don't understand is - people? I understand people. People don't understand how I understand them. People don't understand the rules. I guess the rules are in place so that I can be more socially normal. More functional. That's why they're important. I think. Maybe. This is boring me.
Today I had to get out of bed a bunch and I damn near broke my neck scrambling to accomplish things and get back into my bed to keep the sheets warm. I've got the heat set as low as possible now so the only warmth around is what I'm producing and throwing off into the air.
Someone lied to me the other day. It made me very angry. I wanted to beat her up, but how ridiculously stupid would that have been. It's against the rules to lie. Before, it was against the rules to upset other people. Now those two have flipped places. The only problem with that is, of course, memory bleed. Things disappear and get transposed and interposed and juxtaposed all the time, not to mention out and out manufactured. She said something about me needing to perform some task for her and I'm pretty sure I already did it, but it is also entirely possible that I didn't do it because I went to visit her and her husband at their place in one of my dreams and we had a great time and went out to a parade and they dropped me off at work and it was great, but if I asked her about that later she would have no idea what I was talking about let alone remembering something that she wasn't actually a part of at any point. So maybe I never did explain or perform the thing she needed me to and I just think and remember vividly that I did (because I do). It can't be her fault for not having physically been there to see it.
Life is still stupid. Well, stupid funny though I don't really report on the funny all that much these days. It's probably because I've seen it so much it's stopped being funny and now strikes me as just painfully aggravatingly human. Plus I think I already established that I am nowhere near as funny as I thought I was. If I ever become a stand up comedian I'm going to call my act "talk out the stupid", but - there's probably no need for a but there. I wasn't thinking of any follow up when the sentence ended, but then I got there and it was like hitting a wrong street, but you don't want to look lost, because that's when they mug you and take your laundry money and call you a pussy faggot, so you walk down the street and go another two blocks before doubling back on a side street in a big loop so that you're gone long enough for the porch sitters to think you were just going to the gas station for candy and not wandering around scratching your ass. I hate it when the houses are watching me more than I watch them. They could probably eat us if they wanted to.
I was working on some poetry the other day and I jammed a rhyme scheme into a poem about a feeling and it completely screwed it up and the end result was this gross sort of mannequin looking piece of poetry with a colorful baseball cap on it. I was ashamed, but I shared it to share the shame and the accomplishment hanging around it like a fart of impressive proportions. I don't know, it just felt like the right thing to do. The rules of production dictated action be taken. In a way I had to punish myself for forcing it through to an end and wasting precious time before work in creating so odious a turd. It was a still birth. Sad times.
I'm tired again, but I don't know what rest will help me accomplish in the next few hours. I'll let me know. And by me I mean you. And by you I mean the part of you that.... that is... not really a part of me, but... I am fantastically thirsty. I have a mouse. Maybe I should draw us something?
It's not much but I was already starting to get a mouse cramp by the end of it. I don't know if life is sweet. I had this really strange feeling while I was making dinner that there was no one left to beat me and that made me sad for longer than I thought it would. I dunno. Sometimes improvements take some getting used to I guess. Oh well. Time to try and travel.
=sigh= miss that wacom pad. But at least we have you. Sort of. :)
///Luke Slater - "You Butterfly" "...come, let us walk..."
I was telling someone the other day, a friend of mine, we were hanging out and having a pretty good blast, that I'm pretty laid back and I told this rambling story about how I told some girl that I would shank her if she stepped on my ping pong ball and at the end of the story I realized that all it really said about me is that I'm incredibly neurotic and unpredictable in social situations involving alcohol. So I tried to save it. I forgot why I jumped into the story in the first place so I had to mentally talk myself back to the starting point, go back down the segments of the story, and hit the junctures correctly like a choose your own adventure book. Then, having retold the story to myself I realized the entire point of it was that I am laid back through 95% or so of life, but 5% of my life is governed by arbitrary and inflexible rules and I don't entirely understand why.
I know why I have to do certain things. I have to put my t-shirts on like a dolphin diving through a hoop. If I don't hold them and look through the neck holes while I'm putting them on then I run the risk of unknowingly entering an alternate dimension through the shirt hole and not realizing it until it's too late because I didn't see that things were different because the body of the shirt blinded me. That has to be done. No exceptions. If I make food I have to eat it no matter how awful it turns out. If I throw up because of it or get really sick then good for me. How else will I learn to not make bad food? If I cook for other people and portions don't turn out right I am responsible for eating the worst of whatever I prepare as a penalty for being a bad cook. There has to be accountability in the kitchen. A door to a pitch black room cannot be left open for any reason. If you don't divide the lit room from the dark room with some sort of physical boundary you run the risk of invitation of the things of night into the realm of day and the last thing I want is to be trying to do daytime things in a daytime room that happens to be dark and have to deal with nighttime things outside of ... well ... I don't even like talking about that sort of stuff in great detail anyway. It makes me sound crazy, but more importantly they don't like me talking about them and I'm the one who has to deal with their bad feelings so that's all I'm going to say about that, but the point is there are rules for reasons.
So what I don't understand is - people? I understand people. People don't understand how I understand them. People don't understand the rules. I guess the rules are in place so that I can be more socially normal. More functional. That's why they're important. I think. Maybe. This is boring me.
Today I had to get out of bed a bunch and I damn near broke my neck scrambling to accomplish things and get back into my bed to keep the sheets warm. I've got the heat set as low as possible now so the only warmth around is what I'm producing and throwing off into the air.
Someone lied to me the other day. It made me very angry. I wanted to beat her up, but how ridiculously stupid would that have been. It's against the rules to lie. Before, it was against the rules to upset other people. Now those two have flipped places. The only problem with that is, of course, memory bleed. Things disappear and get transposed and interposed and juxtaposed all the time, not to mention out and out manufactured. She said something about me needing to perform some task for her and I'm pretty sure I already did it, but it is also entirely possible that I didn't do it because I went to visit her and her husband at their place in one of my dreams and we had a great time and went out to a parade and they dropped me off at work and it was great, but if I asked her about that later she would have no idea what I was talking about let alone remembering something that she wasn't actually a part of at any point. So maybe I never did explain or perform the thing she needed me to and I just think and remember vividly that I did (because I do). It can't be her fault for not having physically been there to see it.
Life is still stupid. Well, stupid funny though I don't really report on the funny all that much these days. It's probably because I've seen it so much it's stopped being funny and now strikes me as just painfully aggravatingly human. Plus I think I already established that I am nowhere near as funny as I thought I was. If I ever become a stand up comedian I'm going to call my act "talk out the stupid", but - there's probably no need for a but there. I wasn't thinking of any follow up when the sentence ended, but then I got there and it was like hitting a wrong street, but you don't want to look lost, because that's when they mug you and take your laundry money and call you a pussy faggot, so you walk down the street and go another two blocks before doubling back on a side street in a big loop so that you're gone long enough for the porch sitters to think you were just going to the gas station for candy and not wandering around scratching your ass. I hate it when the houses are watching me more than I watch them. They could probably eat us if they wanted to.
I was working on some poetry the other day and I jammed a rhyme scheme into a poem about a feeling and it completely screwed it up and the end result was this gross sort of mannequin looking piece of poetry with a colorful baseball cap on it. I was ashamed, but I shared it to share the shame and the accomplishment hanging around it like a fart of impressive proportions. I don't know, it just felt like the right thing to do. The rules of production dictated action be taken. In a way I had to punish myself for forcing it through to an end and wasting precious time before work in creating so odious a turd. It was a still birth. Sad times.
I'm tired again, but I don't know what rest will help me accomplish in the next few hours. I'll let me know. And by me I mean you. And by you I mean the part of you that.... that is... not really a part of me, but... I am fantastically thirsty. I have a mouse. Maybe I should draw us something?
It's not much but I was already starting to get a mouse cramp by the end of it. I don't know if life is sweet. I had this really strange feeling while I was making dinner that there was no one left to beat me and that made me sad for longer than I thought it would. I dunno. Sometimes improvements take some getting used to I guess. Oh well. Time to try and travel.
=sigh= miss that wacom pad. But at least we have you. Sort of. :)
///Luke Slater - "You Butterfly" "...come, let us walk..."
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