The Year End Look

Starting at the end of 2015 the year end look was a little rough, but hopeful.  I know I said the year end playlist was up next.  It isn't.  The look back at 2016 and forward into 2017 is.  We'll get to the year end playlist soon, I wanted to hammer this out before I get lost trying to locate music and because it has been weighing on my brain for quite some time and in the throes of a calm and a quiet and thoughtful depression, it is easier to piece back together.  I do firmly believe still: if you want easy, kill yourself.  If 2016 taught me anything that was it.

I thought fracturing my jaw was the worst pain I would ever feel and be able to stand through and that something like that would never happen again.  And then I fried off 15% of my skin with 370 degree oil in second and deep second degree burns bad enough that I couldn't walk or use my hand for weeks.  That was the worst pain I have ever felt.  The first week or so it was a chilly feeling, like when air blows across your teeth very quickly and it feels like you've just bitten into a snowball at the same time.  As hair follicles and skin began to grow back in odd colors and scales the pain got worse and more intense, but I was happy because at least I knew some sort of skin would eventually be there to protect the naked weeping flesh eventually.  It was so many weeks I don't even remember exactly.  I think the last scales scraped away to serviceable skin some time in late December after it happened in September.  It was an eternity.

Definitely not what I intended when I said I wanted to work on my scarification sleeve at the beginning of the year.  Looking forward: I don't want to feel anything remotely close to that again.  Can we please go back to dealing with occasional week long bouts of lower lumbar nerve pain and the occasional lancing ice pick stab of hip joint nerve pinch.  That's fine, by comparison.  I laugh saying it, but I am pressing my palms together and pointing them at the sky: please universe, don't hurt me like that again, but if you do - make it a clean break.

I did finally get around to procuring a set of tattoo guns.  I also did not get around to using them.  A third of my year disappeared trying to heal up from the burns.  It wasn't even just the burns that broke me low, it was learning how to use my hand again and build strength back into it.  It was rebuilding the musculature in my hips and joints in learning how to walk longer and longer distances and stand for longer periods of time.  At one point I could walk, but I literally had to sit down and raise my heel above my heart every five or ten feet because the throbbing pressure of my veins trying to push blood down and back up to my heart felt like my leg was getting torn to the bone by a leather whip.

The year started off pretty grand.  All of the work was more or less finished.  I'd survived, what was to that point, the worst injury I'd suffered to date and if you can take ten weeks of pain and rehab from a fractured and dislocated jaw, you can take anything.  Music was on the horizon and I had a keyboard set up that I was diddling with.  I got a cool old motorcycle with part of my Christmas bonus, an old Honda that I still have sitting in the backyard that I want to eventually build into a cafe racer style bike you might see on an old pastel chalk poster advertisement if you lived in racing country back in the 70's.  I had a new basketball and had free time to exercise and hit the basketball courts now and then to indulge my sports fantasies.  I was really getting into the video game Minecraft and was seeing poetry from a little bit of a different angle.

Graphic design was coming along and my friendships were pretty free flowing as far as I could tell.  I was making big plans to create sculptures and designs for some of my friends that I wanted to show instead of just tell them that I cared about them.  Some projects were coming along nicely through planning sketches and rough practice designs and concept proofs.  With some of my free time I was able to visit people I normally could not make time for and with that little extra bit of money I was able to go out with them to places they wanted to go and eat and drink things I never would under usual circumstances.  Life was wheeling and dealing and possibilities were turning into realities.  The only real problem I had was making time to keep up with everything at a reasonable pace and I was making it work.

The Summer was hot and long and I did get into a funk wondering what was next.  Who doesn't feel some of that funk in the middle of Summer?  When everything feels okay it is natural to wonder if everything is supposed to feel that okay.  Are you supposed to feel happy, content?  It's normal to question.  I did get to thinking about other people I know and where they are in their lives and where I am in mine and I started to think about what more I would have to do to experience that kind of comfort and security.  I started to, after my birthday in April, start to believe that there could be a way that I could have that too if I kept at it and kept on trucking with high hopes and kept in touch with people and kept allowing them in to my lives.

The facts started to creep in.  Started to trickle in.  The realization broke in that nothing would change.  They're still drifting away faster than that distance can ever be closed.  They've only been kind enough not to tell you that you're messaging a part of their lives they don't have time for.  So I spent more of the Summer falling away into the night skies and fire pits and walks through the storm tunnels to sit by the river's edges and pull back the fabric of those nights to watch the bridge lights glimmer on the inch high breakers.  It was my time to love the air and sky and earth and whomever happened to pop by my backyard or asked me to hop in to theirs.  Touring star ships and space stations of all kinds.

And then my body was scorched to hell and back and here we are.

Letting them go was ... you know how when you are discussing something over a hot cup of tea, and you stop to blow the steam away for a minute and touch the cup's edge to your lips to see if it's still too hot to drink and you set the cup down and look up and realize you've been talking to an empty saucer with a dry tea bag on it.  Letting them go was ... you know how when a video cassette finishes it's run time and the credits have finished and it goes black for a few minutes and then snaps to static and you realize you are still holding the remote and peering into the static waiting for the television to turn itself off, but there is another several minutes of static instead and you find yourself watching the blue input screen while the player labors, hitches, and then begins to rewind itself.  Letting them go was like that.

Part of me is angry that I didn't realize it sooner.  Part of me is angry that I let myself trot along, tail wagging, tongue out and teeth yip yapping away, not understanding the hands waving were from the insides of car windows, not the other side of the road on the side walk, a couple of paw skips away to pat my nose, scratch my ear, and let me lick their palms.

Part of me is a little lost.  So what now?  The business of being an adult?  The business of being single?  Thirty two is around the corner.  Some people I know will be retiring at fifty.  Fifty five.  Some people I know will be thinking about second kids, third cars, vacation homes, second marriages... my life expectancy is somewhere out there in the high sixties, low seventies.  So what now?  The game is halfway over and what?

Am I ever going to write anything of significance.  I do write for myself first and foremost.  I used to do it with the hopes of being recognized somewhere or paraded around like something special.  Am I special?  No, just a little weird.  Okay, a bit weird.  I will.  Not yet.  At least not in my mind.  Thirty years to go and many more times to keep trying to set the type just the way I want it.  Thirty years to make the words hit other ears the way they hit my own.  I don't know if it will ever work.  It would certainly help if I could go one year without some cataclysmic injury eating up a third of a year to heal.

Will I be single forever?  Yeah, probably.  I've been torn up and spit out enough times, unrequited enough times, blissfully lulled to nothing, cut off and scorched enough times, left behind enough times, pushed away enough, to where I simply don't want to feel that again.  Much like having your skin cooked off, the scars are forever.  Maybe in ten years I'll think about it seriously again.  Maybe I'll quit smoking too.  Maybe I'll just croak off quietly long before then from some odd organ failure I can't see coming.

There is, oddly enough, a dent in all of the fingernails of my right hand, from the burn where all of the cuticles were traumatized and cooked, that has been slowly growing it's way toward the finger tips to be clipped.  Consistent along each finger.  I now know exactly how long it takes for my fingernails to grow on my right hand.  Look on the bright side.

So what now for 2017?  I don't know.  I was, as I wrap this up, thinking about going to buy a pouch of tobacco to roll some cigarettes.  I might.  I stopped enjoying smoking five years ago.  It's a way to mark time, nothing more.  Thirty some odd years to go.  I'll probably have to start some kind of heart medication in my 40's if I don't fix what I put into my body and stretch food stamps more effectively... maybe cut out the beef and pork, more frozen vegetables and dried beans (fruit never keeps long enough).  What's the use?  An extra ten, maybe twenty, years for what?  May as well, push on, I suppose.  I still can't grow a full beard or shave my face to bare skin.  I'm not getting any taller.  I'm not exactly waiting around for anyone.  Might as well go for a walk, come home and burn a couple.  Get some good sleep.  Wake up and do it again.  We'll have time for music, 2017.  Time for more poetry and stories too.  Short ones, long ones, whatever strikes your fancy you scruffy little rascal.  Whatever happens, I'll be there for you, never forget that.  We'll forge some aluminum and keep exploring.  Do it for the love the art and the unknown.  There are worlds I've only begun to map.  The star fields are massive.  Time is not.




///Daedelus- "Perchance A Bit"

The Year End Look

2014 had many moments I would like to take back, but not too many.  I didn't break my nose again, which is awesome!  Thinking back through it I cannot remember a single concussion, which is also awesome and very good.  Awesome and very good are different things.  Awesome can be tanking on purpose to see if you can get a flat line goose egg.  Awesome is also seeing if you can bust the high score.  Very good is taking care of business and dotting every single "I" and looping to the correct depth of the drop liner each "P".  Very good is washing your hair every time you must do it, but awesome is having a great shampoo without a schedule.

Twenty fourteen saw a battle between myself and a close friend and another close friend and another close friend that required more time to heal than any physical injury.  Fully healed?  Yes.  Full confidence?  No.  The third piece of the puzzle is entirely lost.  As is the fourth piece.  I never believed it was possible to force or be forced beyond the edge of limping the object into a shop and getting blow torches out and suitable scrap, but sometimes, no matter how the repairs go, you can never look at the finished product the same way no matter the lighting.

The year presented no new physical projects in terms of repurposing homes and was difficult in that respect too.  The hardest part about being on call is that you are waiting for something to go wrong.  In that zone it becomes difficult to see everything going right.  By the second quarter of the year I could see better that when I am doing my job well I will not receive calls.  I always strive to do the best work because while I am doing whatever job it is the goal is to never hear from them again.  In the time it takes me to get home I can, and sometimes do, forget that is the primary objective.  I do not work to make friends.  If I make friends after or during a viewing it is business.  Business does not cross over to farming.  Sometimes farming crosses over to business.  I confused the two in 2014.  Because I work a small job for you does not mean we have to be friends for life.

I thought I could make significant repairs to my lower lumbars, but I do believe the back injury is in the nerves.  It's not a structural injury.  It's software, not hardware.  I learned through 2014 that some tissue explosions/implosions cannot be fixed by tending or work or loosening or tightening.  Bring all of the wrenches you choose, unless one of the tools in your kit is a new gold plated circuit board, you are screwed no matter what you plug in, replace, or renew.  It took a year, still feels like yesterday, to figure that out.  I became very aware of my age last year and the limitations that age brings.  The new year will bring a secondary mode.  Caution.  Beside the hatswitch for go is a new button installed to activate precision.   Everything cannot be solved by a hammer.  I knew that before 2014, but the application was aimed outward.  The application will be aimed inward in 2015.

Everyone who shares a drink or breaks bread with you is not your friend.  They may have motives aside from smiling.  Believe it or not, I have better things to do today than laugh and clap my hands.  So do they.  That does not mean that they need to be cut out of your life entirely.  That remained silly through the previous year and that point will remain sharp, if not sharper, through this year.

I performed a great deal of reading through 2014 without any specific schedule.  That should continue.  No books were finished.  There was a boost in output that will take more discipline in 2015.  It is a steep ask, but I am prepared for it.  I do not like that my discipline grew slipshod enough to not finish or even map a new story though they ping ponged around my skull.  It's pathetic.  It's awful.  You screwed up and I am saying it now: we dropped the ball and it hit you in the teeth.  All we had to do was open our hands and we were too busy adjusting our emotions to see.  We do not appreciate that.  At all.  And I want to make sure you know.  "Why am I picking up my teeth?"  Because you were punched in the mouth.  You didn't trip.  You didn't fall out of bed.  You didn't scrap.  You were punched dead in the mouth and didn't have the wherewithal through an entire year to defend yourself.  Do better.  I do not care if it is garbage.  I do not care if it is too rich.  Do you really believe years will keep falling out of the sky?  Ignorance is not a defense.  Do better.  Stop reading, stop audiobooking, stop trawling, start layout.  Start mapping.  Stop talking about "I started this universe in highschool and"... what since then?  I'm sick of hearing about it.  Yes, physically ill.  Begin to finish it and stop spit polishing a trophy no one else can understand.  "But there's no translation..." so translate it!!!  Do you hear me???  Look at me.  Look at me!   Translate it!  Damn it, you are thick skulled.  I want notes out of 2015.  Stop dancing and screw like you dream.

 I began a few tattoos in 2014.  Progress is going very well.  The sleeve will not be completed at the close of 2015 however there is very specific direction and direction is extremely important as they cannot be erased, easily or ever aside from through growth and the normal cycling of skin cells like tectonic plates.  The reminders still remain on my face and are used daily.  They are pretty much worth every second of the process.  We are building a lens on our left hand to remind us of our ability and scope and potential and violence.  That we can and should hold back at time as a window can be opened or closed or screened.  Not zero and not one.  Infinite, yes!  Singular yes!  The real pleasure is in the curve, not the approach either way.

Are we addicted to tea now?  Yep.  Significantly cut down on the drugs through 2014.  Management & things.  One of my cats died.  Actual cats.  Not "cats" cats.  I took it rough.  Too rough.  Harder to deal with than I anticipated, but it reminded me that my pets are closer to me than my cousins or extended family.  I think that's when the extent of my cut off really hit.  My family, direct family, includes my brother and two sisters.  It ends there.  My father is dead to me so that I do not fuck up and go back to Maryland to kill him myself.  I cannot do that.  If I do that everyone will know, no matter how I mask it or plan it or do not plan it or just get in the mood and take the trip and kill him and my mother, because she'll either be in the house or somewhere within ear or eyeshot, no offense but it's best to keep things tidy, because I said it here and it's public record.  I am closing that door, but it's dead bolted from both sides.  Very good.  Not awesome, but very good.  Call it a standing threat if you want to; I call it a restraining order.  If you come into my space I will kill you.  In return, we will do everything we can to stay away.  Deal.  The cat's death was very sad.  I mourned for quite some time.  More than I mourned for any of my extended families deaths through the year.  The sensation was arresting and unexpected and taught me the depths and exhaustion true hate goes.  His death also taught me the danger of dehydration and the ties I have still with local law enforcement and the patience they have with me and the value of a friend who can tap into your nerves in ways we thought we only tapped their structure.  The year heightened my self awareness and heightened my awareness of my emotional footprint.

I cried a lot in the last year.  Much more than usual.  I began to understand the actual details of outcomes through 2025.  There is a lot of potential there and more danger than I would like.  Many of my peers are pairing up and gearing themselves toward producing families and I became acutely aware of timelines.  I'm not sure how to govern the sensation.  I suppose I will have to start graphing... I can't.  It will be the struggle of 2015.  What do you give up, what can I give up, what can we give up, to make a family.  I cannot.  Not for me.  Not for you.  I will get up for a child, not for you.  I will not fight for a child, not for you.  Ever.  I will not crack a beer on an off day for a child, not for you.  It's a strange equation and I'm not sure how to change it.  I'm not sure what is supposed to come on the other side of the equal sign.

One of the other things I realized through twenty fourteen is that I am fiscally trapped.  Free as a mongoose in every way besides the wallet and the wallet is where futures are made when you look at families.  I am damaged goods in that way and can be as free as I want to proclaim, but jailed for quite some time fiscally.  Going for jogs, playing catch, buying food with EBT, unable to hold a credit card, unable to get loans (even though I refuse to, but cooperation will require it) or car notes, impressing other's parents with charisma, buying them shoes, going to dinners and lunches, going on a paint craze, shutting myself in a room for a few days because I cannot listen to anything because it hurts, all of these do not help a child's upbringing at all, but they are instrumental.  I have no idea when or if they will change.  I became acutely aware of the maintenance I require and it made me cry.  Take what it takes for me to relate to other people my age without falling apart like crushed salmon in a frying pan with burnt butter.  Add a marriage.  Add a child.  Desire came in the last year.  Twenty fifteen will include learning how to better understand what exactly that desire is and not consciously or subconsciously destroying it wherever it arises, be it from outside in general or specific environments or from within or side effect to proximity to others.  I will try to be more reliable and predictable and acceptable to your children or child rearing or child bearing circumstances.  Failure to do so will cause increased isolation and we all know where that heads.

2014 taught me that no matter how I feel I have to get up.  2014 taught me who to trust.  2014 taught me to let go a little bit and who to hold on to without hanging on.  It taught me change is inevitable and you cannot wish everyone a happy birthday because at least half them muthas have no idea who you are now and you have no business wishing them well because you have about as much idea of them as they do you, so stay out or at least don't go balls in to their affairs, unless they ask, which gives us a little gray area because it's fun to play even though not everyone would like to play with you.  Understand better when no means no in fifteen. Just because you would like to laugh does not mean everyone else you encounter does too.

Let's draw this to a close.  The last thing I socked away for 2014 was that you still definitely get what you pay for.  That and given enough time anyone can be a mechanic if you study well and stock a good garage.  You get what you pay for and through repairs to my truck I got exactly what I paid for: a running truck.  I love the sound of a "V" layout 8 cylinder more than an inline 6 cylinder engine.  It's really throaty.  It has some gargle and growl and purr to it more than an inline 6.  Sixes sound closer to a four cylinder screech now that I've become accustomed to an 8.  I'm not sure where I was going with getting what you pay for.  I wish a little bit that I was heterosexual.  I envy it a lot and often and at many times intensely.  Even more than perfect sanity.  At least then I'd be married and crazy instead of just crazy.  It makes me cry.  It makes me furious too.  It makes me violent.  I want access.  I don't want to just understand, I want access!  I fucking want access!  What do you do?  Do you fake it?   Do you sleep walk it?  I'm laughing now because I am crying.   I hate my circuitry.  Let's not beat ourselves too hard in 2015 and let's keep that streak of no nose breaks and no concussions going.  I said I will never cut my face again.  That promise will be kept.

XOXO




///Daft Punk - "Giorgio By Moroder"   the year end playlist is up next.  shoot em dahn.

The Year End Look

I am tempted to attack some things there is not time enough yet to tackle.  I am okay with and respect and receive the temptation because the day is nearing and we stand on the cusp of something truly deafening with nothing between us beyond time itself.  Time's only enemy is patience.  The armory is stocked.  Let's knock down time first.

The 2013 year end look is a strange one.  Strange to me.  I crashed a car again.  For the second time in my life totaled an automobile.  The injury was an injury I never knew before and thought I would never return from.  It was probably something near or spot on to a partially herniated disc.  I am used to pain.  Used to adjusting for pain because a voice inside says it'll end eventually if you simply don't do it again.  This pain brought me literally to my knees every time I got out of bed for work or to meet someone or otherwise do anything that did not require lying down.  It was unbelievable.  Literally unbelievable.  It made me tear at myself and my bed sheets and scream in the afternoon and throw fits.  Everything worked fine except standing and walking.  In 2013 I became very aware of my age.

A friend of mine put it best: ten years ago, you hurt your back, you shotgun a beer and a whiskey short, have a smoke, and get on with life.  Now?  You hurt your back and you can drink 'til you cannot feel a damn thing, but that shit comes back as soon as your spine comes back on line.  You can't go through life partially shut down.

It's true.  Another year older, just one year removed from invincibility, or something damn near it, I am aware, acutely aware of physical limitations.  Invincibility has been thoroughly dispelled in 2013.  Respect for the injured and more feeble than I has been reinforced to incredible degrees.  Of course it didn't help falling down multiple flights of stairs after the car accident.  That one is on me.  I should have known where I was standing on the fire escape and not allowed someone to high five me hard enough to push me backward into the night air.  I guess I'm kind of a good fall guy.  I should have broken my neck or an arm or at least a finger on my way down, getting something stuck in the stairs and landing made of iron grating, but all I remember, three days after the car accident, was waking up looking at the top of the fire escape and their back door and the little light and thinking "wait a minute? wasn't I just there?  Why am I here?"

I went to a casino for the first time (with no money) and someone gave me a $100 chip.  I can count the number of times I've held $100 bills in my hands with intent to spend instead of pay on one hand.  Two of the five times were to pay for cars.  I didn't get to use it for fun.  I did get some long standing necessities taken care of though and a bill paid.  One step closer to actual freedom.

I taught myself to drive stick for real in 2013.  On a rear wheel drive truck.  I also learned how to use torque and how to use horsepower.  Yes, they're linked, but now I understand when to use which.  When to use a little work fast and a lot of work slowly.  Of course there's always the golden peak when you can use both at the same time, but high end cars are out of the cards for at least another half decade.  I'm salivating thinking about it.  My dream garage is still the same.  Still stocked up with late 80s Japanese machines and American muscle.  Some day, sweetheart.

2013 also taught me who my friends are and who my friends are not.  For much of the year I tried to be a friend to the world.  A friend to everyone who would have my ear and have my words, however fleeting, but I soon recognized (by soon, I mean it took the entire year) that what I was counting as friendship was not being counted or similarly given weight by the people I was ascribing it too.  It was heart breaking.  Truly heart breaking.  I remember crying on and off for several days as each episode unwound.  The penultimate was a multiple day thanksgiving celebration that was supposed to be fun.  It was, to an extant.  I was too much a different stripe to blend in and it was hurtful to me to be expected to do so, but maybe they didn't really expect me to blend that well.  Maybe they expected me to realize sooner than later that I should've left.  As it stands I only over stayed by a day or two before I recognized where I was and where I could do myself better.  Coming home was beautiful on that day.  

The ultimate was when I was left stranded by people I thought I could count as friends.  My truck died and a true friend bailed me out.  I've grown intimate with my truck of late.  Gotten to know her inside and out.  2013 reminded me of the bullshit premise my birth father put to me about a car that was supposed to be my reward for graduating Carnegie Mellon (which did not happen) that was his vision for us rebuilding a beater BMW (which flew in the face of everything automotive I actually do espouse and believe in) and it's been tremendous and heart stoppingly gorgeous keeping that truck on the road and at the same time by turns puzzling that anyone, let alone the sack of nuts that raised you for 18 years, could miss your values that hard.

It does make me laugh though, because there have been more than a few times I could've used an extra set of hands to get the job done and I thought about the gents and lassies that could call up their dads or moms and schedule a weekend under the hood or chassis without getting violently ill or stomach ulcers.  I appreciate that about people.  Sometimes I ask them about their parents because it's practically porn to me.

In 2013 I learned to slow down scarification.  In tandem with realizing that time is getting on I also realized if I ever do have children or adopt children there will be questions for me to answer too.  Questions I am prepared to answer and questions that will have to be answered as my nose and ears get bigger and nothing else does and my eyes continue to sink and my brow continues to crease.  The reminders still remain necessary and beautiful obelisks and world wonders to human history and I thank us for them always.  I need them.  Some mistakes you can make multiple times.  Some mistakes you cannot afford to retread because lives are in the balance and the house does not always win, but you can never go back.  You will die.  You will be consumed, make no mistake.  Every time I look in the mirror I am reminded and I need to be.  Inside of your skull you are your friend more often than not.  Outside of your skull is a flipped story.

The same problem does abound, though.  My development, my passion for writing, remains far too grounded for my tastes.  There is patience though.  There is gestation.  There is still the thirst for whimsy and dreamland.  There is where I lie and I know it.  I can feel it.  The attack is coming.  The all hail that tells me "forward now!"  I can taste it.  2013 was about defining starting points.  Defining relationships.  Defining the scope of the maintenance necessary for progress.  Did it have to take a year?  Yes.  2013 was about defining severance.  Defining which and what kinds of quests were worth pursuing.  2013 was a very long think.

The funniest part about 2013, it came around the tail end, was realizing that just because you can identify the group of people that you are attracted to does not automatically make them accessible or easily located.  You meet just as many air heads and space cases exploring your same sex as your opposite sex.  The worst, the most lip curling, the most eye squinting, experiences are had when you meet a carbon copy of someone you'd cultivate a relationship with straight, gay.  In my mind I'm thinking ten minutes in to the conversation: "god damn it, not this again.  Really?  You exist here too?  Who dropped you on your head?  Why do you have fifteen pairs of shoes and a $200 dollar love seat in an apartment you're paying $900 a month for?  Why are we going out to a bar downtown when there's one at the corner while you have a fridge full of wine and candy imports?  Three pairs of sunglasses?  Sunglasses??"  

I don't know what 2014 is going to bring.  I think my year to year expectations have grown foggier and foggier so I will add some definition.  I think this year (no resolutions) I will try to fuck a woman for some variety.  The whole "no concussions" thing failed miserably.  I had four in 2013 so I think it's fair to rule that out.  Broke my nose twice too, so that's out.  I want to do more art in 2014 too.  Life's demands put way too much on my plate to really put anything outside of my skull to look at and enjoy, and I'm not saying for you to enjoy, I'm saying for me and we/us to enjoy. 

Now that things have been better defined through thirteen, in fourteen I would like to explore that framework and see what and where it builds to.  New territories and frontiers.  I want a new scar for 2014.  A scar for the turn.  A scar for the "maybe" identified because in twelve the maybe had no identity.  2014 will be a quest for the whimsical.  A seeking out of the imaginary and a protecting of the physical.  We achieved many grown up tasks and came into adulthood through 2013 from its humble beginning in 2012's confusion.  It's time to explore the limits of what that adultness and understanding and thinking and domestication can ring when our bell is rung hard enough.  What music will it make?  Will it make music or fall apart with the strikes?

For the first time, in 2013, I had to shave down my knuckles with a pumice stone.  The scar tissue accumulated so thickly that I couldn't open and splay my fingers easily without fighting against it.  Too much contact.  I cannot fall into the trap of abusing myself in lieu of taking abuse just to feel normal and normalcy.  That's not okay.  It is not okay to do that.  2013, a lot of 2013 was about learning what it is not okay to do.  Platonic spooning was okay.  Talking about platonic spooning to their friends indirectly and accidentally by way of mentioning conversations they were not a part of, but must have happened after they left, later on when we and they met again is not okay.  It should be though.  Don't break my heart that way.  Break it any other way, but that is pure... muffed intent.  I do not have time for that in 2014.

I have accumulated old man hands at the ripe age of 28.  I am a destroyer parked in a lagoon and rusting.  You fucking cowards.  2013 was also about rebuilding my space craft.  I had to tear it apart and rebuild it.  It was gathering too many parts and pieces superfluous and useful once and never again.  When one part failed I hooked and slaved another component to keep it running.  Fourteen is streamlining.  Keep the violence down at all costs.  The love too.   Control.  2014 is focusing on control and dynamics.  It's easy to glass a city.  It's hard to embrace one and construct.  Consider the "what will and what can we build here?"

It does make me laugh though, to consider that I may be at a new base line measurement.  It is enticing.  So many things happened.  So much time spent alone and too much time spent in contact.  It does not add up to my satisfaction.  I will boost literary output in 2014.  It does not matter if you want to do it, it has to be done for your own sake.

2014 is action.  Redesigns are on the table.  Stand up act 9 is on the table.  Before both will come the year end playlist.  Let's go!  No sneak peeks this time.  So much left out too, but we'll get it in later.

///Shiny Toy Guns - "Major Tom"   ...near Earth orbit

The Year End Look (part two)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Year End Look 2

So I'm taking another crack at it, this time before the night is running on fumes. I was thinking earlier today how ridiculous it is, how ridiculous it would be if someone said to you "I'm going down to the store, do you need anything" and the first thing you said was "an 8 ball." The last year end look was pretty much a huge fail. Like slamming your phone down when you're angry and the face of it shatters. The first thing being that the person you were talking to has absolutely no idea how upset you were and the second thing being that now you are out one hundred dollar piece of plastic and the third thing being that now you can't even phone a friend to talk about it because your temper has burned you once again. Thrice burned, like a college kid who went to a bar, slept with a stranger, got gonorrhea, lost his wallet, and his girl friend found out later and broke up with him. Thrice burned, like burned refried beans? That's probably funnier. And I can see that because I'm not coming apart in flames.

The goal is still the same, though. Still trying to mash the door closed on 2011, except this time, not on my pinky finger. For a lot of reasons. The number one reason though is that I can't turn away from an open door. Not because opportunities might be beyond it. More like monsters might come in when I'm not looking and rip out my guts from behind while I'm walking away. Gotta close them up when you're done with them. Especially the time doors. I only have one mirror, and I only want one. I have to look at myself before I go out so I know I don't have lint in my beard before I leave the house. Everybody does. Everybody with beards anyways. That's the main reason. But mirrors are a lot like doors. Things coming and going. They're like doggy doors. Always open. It worries me sometimes. And I now realize this is making less and less sense as I'm talking.

Anyway. 2011 was not horrendous. A lot of working. A lot of over working and over reaching from solid world standpoint. I expected a lot out of myself and sometimes those expectations pushed me deep into the red and it was the least I could do not to crash. Far too much speed. I did start biking. Which was amazing. I also crashed said bike more times than I would have liked, the operating idea being that one crash is generally too many. I learned all over again that no matter how nice your managers at your customer service job are, they are really only trying to lull you into exploiting yourself to a breaking point so they get nice bonuses and you get to lay in bed at home not moving because your body is dead, recuperating just in time to go to work the following day to be run down again.

That made me sad. I thought they genuinely liked me. They liked what I did. They liked my stupid enthusiasm. They, however, did not know me or were invested in me anymore than a person is invested in a toaster because it helps them toast bread good. I don't know. I'm trying to understand how to relate to people in the real world. It's hard. I keep believing I am beloved, best friends for life, with people who are actually complete strangers and I end up getting robbed by a 65 year old woman smoking crack while I watch Dream Girls in her living room. Reaching out to the darkness in the darkness. Trust everyone. Trust no one. Trust everyone. Trust no one. I don't know why my head operates in binary. One of the things I'm going to try and fix in this year.

I did finally complete the gift and put it in her hands. It was great closure for me on that level. I finally made good on a promise I could not let go of. I still consider myself a man of my word. When I say I am going to do something I still fully intend to do it, because I don't have money so people can't trust that, and I have education (still kind of don't though as the debt situation with that is pretty much a smoking hole in the ground), but really all I've got is my words and my hands. And my knife. But yeah, one more thing off of my bucket list.

Other than that though it was a pretty erratic year. Far too much movement. But less than the year before. I am officially no longer a nomad. I have a place to stay and actual desk. No car yet. No gun. Both of those will be addressed this year at some point. I tried to write some out and out comedy with mixed success and discovered that it's pretty hard to do it while holding enough of yourself back to keep it entertaining to anyone who is not a sadist. I added to the "dear soandso" vein of what I do to include "that instant" and "the best thing" to capture little bits of things I find funny without including the burden of completely framing everything. I got to hear a lot of new music, which was great, and see some art. I can't remember if I went anywhere. Anywhere faraway. I did get to see some friends too, and I think they were happy to see me too.

I started drawing again. Haven't gotten any closer to making music. Or any closer to being closer with people than the current and necessary distance for a few exceptions. I'm trying to fix that too. Not too quickly though. Trust. You smash, they grab. Pick ya apart. Sleep navigation has been incredible. Difficult. Terrifying. Awesome. Hard to document, however. Partly because the erratic work schedule has pretty much taken a torch to my sleep schedule and all the ashes blew away when I sneezed because I got horny for a second there. I don't know why that is. My nose and my penis have a psychic connection, I guess. Oh wait. They do don't they? By default? I dunno, I'm not a doctor. I guess I still do live to sleep on some levels. The adventure in the territories and the outlands are awesome. Most exciting parts of a lot of days.

I learned a lot about myself. Managing. The managing. It is partially successful. Mostly a failing effort though. Putting the parts back on the engine just as fast they come off and blow apart on the good days. Not nearly fast enough to keep up, on the bad days and weeks. Gained a lot more familiarity with my sexual identity which is, I learned (if one were to draw a box plot), on the extreme outlier. Like if that graph were to be printed on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, you would need to tape another sheet of paper to it and draw an X somewhere near that sheet of paper's edge. Which helps to explain why it was a sexless year. Not too many other Xs out there to get in bed with, let alone talk to, and not too many other Xs out in that neighborhood that are also gay. So that's been tough to deal with. Trying to figure out how to fix that, but it's low on the list. Just kind of a thing I have to accept as being the nature of the version of America I live in. America, your user experience may vary. Is what should be printed on the Statue of Liberty. Or maybe the Constitution. Whichever is more relevant.

I realized I have to go back to the doctors at some point before I self destruct trying to force my head to work, because I can't do it. It's not that I can't do it, as much as it is a thing that is impossible to do. Think of it this way: you can fix yourself, but only with the tools you build with your own two hands, but you're hands are connected to a dysfunctional machine shop and the tools they make are broken so everything you do with them is damaged and it'll work for a time, but the things you construct for the machine shop in your head to make it better only make progressively worse tools.

The writing last year was better than the year before, but in my opinion not by much. Some experiments turned out fantastic, many turned out so so. It's a love in progress. I haven't given up on churning out. Prolific. Volume shooter. It's the Beatles theory. Do enough writing and something is bound to be decent and listenable and maybe even catchy. Kidding, but I'm trying to put in my 10,000 hours to mastery. I should probably do a calculation or two to figure out where exactly I am on it, but I know that I am north of 6k. Just not how far north. I learned a lot about my voice. A lot about the writing I can do easily and the writing that is still exceptionally difficult. Overall I'm happy with it though. Happy to be doing it. I just wish I had more time to put things together instead of click tracking my way across the stars. It's all love though. Pain filled love.

Nomadic no more. No plans to join the under 27 club either. The warring segments of the parts of my heart trying to live and trying to die. We're altogether though. Crushed together into a caucus shoving around a body and everyone trying to live their life. The hallucinations got worse and then better and then worse. The paranoia hit new highs and occasional lows. The biggest challenge last year was control. Controlling what people saw and knew about you and learning how to begin to understand that transparency is not always great. Understand that closeness and revelation are not hand in hand by necessity or even by course. Over exposure is not something exclusive to film. It's okay to hide sometimes, because not everyone, in fact few people, are ever even prepared to see you for who and what you are. What composes you and informs the things you compose.

2011 was also scarred by the death of a friend. I suppose, a friend of a friend as I was not even close to being a close friend with him the way my other friendships developed. I never had a chance really. By the time I met him I was already pretty far to the fringe and probably ear tagged as "avoid whenever possible", which is fine. It still hurt a lot though. The loss of even an opportunity watch him cut up with the people much closer to him. Just that much, being a window licker, brings me happiness many times because I know I can't support most friendships. Not that they're bad or good or anything like that, but just in terms of accessibility, reciprocity, and the like. A computer that can't run programs as easily as other computers do. When you're that way, it just makes you happy to see other people, and knowing that the opportunity was gone was stunning, and confusing. He was just an awesome person to be around. I'm still broken up about it, but not as violently as then. I still feel part ashamed because I didn't know him as well as his closest and closer friends do and I feel like I'm not entitled or allowed to feel the loss that I do and I don't even know where to begin to talk about it with them or anyone. I don't even know if he actually considered me to be a friend or not. I wonder about it all the time. Worry about it. I don't know.

2011 was one very very very long day. So many wakings from so many dreams into other dreams and having to remind myself that it was real. That it was happening. 2010 was rage. Blood red rage. Are we moving in a right direction? I hope so. I want to believe so. I want to believe we are coming to a calm and I want to cross my fingers that there is no storm chasing after. Love is probably not around the corner any time soon. But a lot of other things are and a friend did walk back into my life last year so maybe another one will this year. Who knows. Things not really to hold onto, but things to at least hold off killing myself for. Things to wait and see another year for. Plus I am not nearly the writer I want to be and that by itself is enough some days to see what more there is out there in the headspace, on this side and the other of the dreaming door. Here's to another one. Let's get started.


///year end playlist up next

Year End Look

I have finally gotten there. To the end of my psychological year and prepared enough to begin digesting it in the headlights of another year hot on my heels. I think getting this out of the way will help me move on in many ways and more than helping me move on it will help me move in general. Not necessarily to happier places, but just help me occupy space more meaningfully.

It just makes me sad I guess. the living in it. Not necessarily the living in it as muchas the living with it. But we are a match made in some kind of heaven, aren't we? The year end look. The year end look. Have to close the fiscal book. What note do we want to leave it all on?

Goodbye 2011. We had a lot of great sex. We didn't. goodbye 2011 we had a lot of great talks. We didn't. Goodbye 2011. We had a lot of heart to hearts. Okay, we'll run with that.

The Ice-stache (grow one for your own safety), Hotwheels, No Age, and Serial Commitment

So I'm taking the next step toward building something to get me closer to making the writing I want to be able to make. Not necessarily the next step toward it as much as a reanimation, reorganization, of the effort. Partly, I want to get more from short stories and I can't expect to get more character development and practice from trying to cram more into small jars. Not that I haven't enjoyed the challenge and sucked at it and succeeded in parts and pieces (by my measure), but it presents problems with having a job and other things to chase after that are life necessities not granted. I have to step into something that won't force me to make endings where they don't belong and rush souls into bodies, and while there are people to animate and worlds to create, I have to give myself time where time is all too often short. And I need the pressure of show and tell to push it forward. The answer? Serials. One chapter at a time. The thing is, I can't even press myself into that old trap (I did once and it worked out well until a stretch of weeks where work overtook time available to chop a story into chapters and commit to staying put at the pen and paper to force out entire chapters, because, let's face it, not all chapters are created equal, so some days I could sit down and bang out a magnificently lengthy, but appropriately so, chapter and others days I couldn't because I had to go to bed at some point or stop to get ready for work, and things simply would not resume the same flow and grip it had when I left it and I ship wrecked myself repeatedly between the start of one and its end.

An organizational thing. Maybe show and tell is not the right motivator. It's hard to systematize it. I guess, part of it is that I don't trust myself to continue. I'm sure I could learn, at least I think I am sure that I need to force myself to learn. Learn the low lines, the high latency, and it's benefits. Put less pressure on myself and shift that strength of worry and fear of failed completion into something more positive, more enduring than the eye crossing, tongue chewing, wind sprint of watch hands across freed hours to produce things less panicked, scattered, and hit and miss spiny. Actually, as I'm talking this over, I think the best commitment to make may not be a serial one, but a commitment to development with fewer showings. Going farther down the rabbit hole is by necessity a thing that divorces a person from constant communication and seeing little dividends every day in views is encouraging. Encouragement is fairly impossible to come by. I envy the people that can get it often. So, in doing this I would be giving myself fewer opportunities to enjoy the little pats on the back, but I would also be putting myself in a position to work longer and more thoroughly on everything.

It's not a question of motivation anymore. At first it was. At first it was overcoming the fear of being connected to the things I do that I am passionate about that people might not agree with or could say "wow, you're terrible." I'm comfortable with that now. Have been for a while. Motivation came up when I lapsed for months and swore off all communication because I didn't feel like it. I couldn't feel it. I lost touch with the worlds in my mind and couldn't care to find them again, until things fell apart and I realized they are one of the few steady states, though changing, one of the few places where I feel myself all of the time. Anywhere can be learned to be home, but within my head everywhere is always home and it's like pulling up a chair with old friends I love and love to hate who know me and talk to me about things and we mull things over and they ask me about you and everyone else and they love and kill and do things I wish I could do and sometimes I do things they wish they could do and it's a back and forth that's so much a part of me I completely took it for granted for a while until I was utterly miserable and realized what was missing. It's not a question of motivation anymore. I have to engage it deeper and add taking care not to let the reduction of constant connection to a couple times a couple months get to me (it's not like I connect with people everyday this side of the bridge). Then again there will still be this in between to keep me company so it's not all bad. Not even half bad. Just not the conclusion I would have drawn this time last year.

Consider it a year end retooling of the factory. The final sessions of congress in a year that's not quite closed yet in my head.

Which takes me up to the ice-stache. So I'm walking home and it's a good 25 minute walk if I'm not running on most of my cylinders and my nose is running. Which is fine. You get used to it. Working in a cooler for hours a day, you can't rub your nose every single time it runs. By the end of the day you would have a red coke nose-ish hole in your face where your nostrils should be and then when you got home you'd have to deal with that junk all night only to go back to work in the cooler to repeat the process and get so nicked up about it that you end up putting a hole in the wall (that you'd have to fix) or putting a fist sized dent in your locker (that would probably get you suspended for a week and assigned to anger management when you got back [not that a week off from that crap would be a terrible thing, but I sat through anger management classes three times before and it's more of a pain than nursing busted knuckles and wrecked up wrist bones). You get used to it in the Winter.

The best thing about letting your nose run though, is that if you don't want to be talked to while you're out and about, letting your nose run is the best way to do it. People either assume you are a badass who does not give a fuck or are too retarded to realize your nose is running and therefore would not acknowledge, understand, or participate in a conflict along understood, predictable, or reasonable manner. Not to say that you wouldn't still get mugged by a coke head or someone not looking for reasonable conflict that sticks to standard rules of engagement. Which is why you can't just let your nose run. You have to make sure you are outside long enough for the snot and the condensation of your breathing against your upper lip and stache crystallize into ice and grow into a full on mustache of icicles. Then you are not just careless, retarded, devil-may-care, but you are also tough enough to be outdoors for long periods of time, possibly under dressed, with people and places you need to be that demand you be there regardless of the mode of transportation and that, potentially, these people will be looking for you if you don't show up when you said you would, and maybe you won't respond to threats and maybe you're late and have already had it up to your eyes with the weather, and walking untold distances, that you will absolutely blow up at the drop of a half smoked cigarette or suspicious footstep or even a "hey you" if you are kind enough to respond at all. So ice-stache it up. Worst comes to worst someone might yap at the back of your head, but all you have to do is turn around with your viking face on for a second and who wants to deal with that at any time of day? And then keep walking, because the only thing more certain to produce a fight, than engaging idle talk, is staring at groups of individuals when the only thing at stake is their bogus sense of pride. And after all, it is half past two A.M. and you still have a ways to go.

Hotwheels are amazing, by the way. Walking through stores and seeing the blue displays doesn't really bring me back to any particular period in my life, but I love cars. I dream about cars. Next to viking ice-staches, cars are awesome and every time I see them I want to know what exactly, which car exactly, is being modeled to scale and whether or not I can add it to my garage someday. Half the time it turns out to be some dopey made up car with ugly body work and funky orange tinted windows for some reason and chrome wheels in enormous flared wheel arches that pretty much touch the apex of the A pillar and the whole thing makes you scratch your head and wonder who thought it was a good idea.

Then every now and then, the thing that makes you stop and look every damn time, you stumble across a model of a DMC-12 DeLorean, or a Boss Mustang, or a bright blue and white Yenko Camaro, and you know you'll never make enough money to own them. You see a 240z in that hotwheels orange and blue blister pack and your eyes go wide because someone thought that fair lady from the 80s deserved to be forever immortalized on some lucky kids shelf and if you had a little less sense, maybe yours. You could have them all, and it's not at all about saving them because they might be worth something later, it's just to have them all in your fantasy garage made real, in a way, and be able to stroke the body work and see the curves from every angle you will never get to see them in person, quite possibly for as long as you live. It could be there, just for you, for a scant two bucks. That Ferrari GTO, right there at your fingertips, right there. You can feel the speed and feel the air slipping by the rear views and splitting away clean across the spoiler. I don't know when I'm going to outgrow hotwheels. Quite possibly never.

So that's it for now. That and there will never be that party that makes me feel my age. At least not in a physical sense where a person is like "oh my god, this hangover is too much. I can't drink like I used to." I already had that sense of that party where I was like "wow my beard is way thicker than the pubes any of these people have ever experienced in their lifetime if they never shaved them at any point between the time of their birth until now" and my beard wasn't even that thick. I definitely had it in terms of "wow the music I remember fondly in the club is all music by artists that stopped making music before these people owned their first discman. Oh wait, they've never even held a discman before. The hell am I doing here?" I also definitely had it in terms of overhearing fights and thinking "really, is it really that serious? Don't they have bills to pay or something?" But in terms of raw "too old to throw down..." never gonna happen. This old panther still has moves that'll make your mullet spin. That's from venture brothers. The best cartoon action series, possibly ever.

Let's work on it as we wrap this year up and catch up with the rest of the Earth. Orbit adjustments aboard the good ship.


///no song today. just some thought.


///just kidding. music is life.


///Paul Murphy - "Soul Call" This jazzy jem from Paul Murphy always makes me happy to be alive to hear it. It was a dead heat between this and Aphex Twin's Girl/Boy Song. Maybe next time around.

The Music that Made the Living 2010

I didn't make it out of 2010 on my own. I had a lot of help from a handful of friends and a lot of help from a handful of artists. If there's one thing that music can do it's make the living a little easier and a little more worthwhile.

My last tracklist was pretty sprawling, so in the spirit of the changes in structure enacted on the posts here sometime ago (changes that have kind of worked out alright I think) I'm going to structure the year end playlist too.

12 months -> 12 songs that tell the story of the year. Enjoy.

Dec 2009>> Nine Inch Nails - The Four of Us Are Dying Go
Jan 2010>> Yoko Kanno - Fish ~ Silent Cruise Go
Feb 2010>> Mum - They Made Frogs Smoke
'Til They Exploded Go
Mar 2010>> Deep Dish - Mohammed Is Jesus Go
Apr 2010>> Aphex Twin - At the Heart of It All Go
May 2010>> Evol Intent - The Foreword Go
Jun 2010>> The Black Angels - Young Men Dead Go
Jul 2010>> Massive Attack - Girl I Love You Go
Aug 2010>> Primal Scream - Higher than the Sun Go
Sep 2010>> Diplo - Summer's Gonna Hurt You Go
Oct 2010>> Danger Mouse - Insane Lullaby Go
Nov 2010>> Sage Francis - Lie Detector Test Go
Dec 2010>> Mathew Herbert - You Saw it All Go

Thank you to everybody that made being alive a joy by parts. Thanks for hanging in there. The caucus squalls on and smiles around the face. xoxo. I'll catch up with you later this week maybe. Sleep tight.

///The Cure - "Plainsong" I love you.

Year End Retrospective 2009-2011

Somewhere in the middle of all the bullshit and heart break and fucked up bullshit heart break that filled the skies of 2010 like a flock of severely underfed ravens wheeling over a field hospital whose tents all blew away in a freak hurricane after the worst days of shelling the war saw since its start left a record number of open flesh wounds and completely overwhelmed the nursing staffs ability to even begin to sanitize them all, let alone beat the rats back... where was I going with that? Sort of lost track along the way in there. It's been a while since I've written any fiction and sometimes all I do is close my eyes and it comes bubbling up like gold oil in a blue toilet bowl.

2010 had its downs and its ups. I learned a lot of things about myself and about other people. I learned that most people are probably not my friends, but they are polite and a lot of times because they have to be. I come back to that a lot don't I? It feels like a lot. It's one of those things that I have to keep reminding myself because I'm not wired to accept it. In my head it's a circuit breaker that keeps opening and I have to keep going down to the basement to close it and it's a big hassle. Or is it the reverse? The reverse conditions being assigned to ... you get the point.

Back to 2010. 2009 was the break. The complete unraveling of the assumed and constructed reality. 2010 was the rabbit hole. More like the ocean. 2009 was the break from land. The acceptance that what I was leaving I will never return to because it is not only out of my control, but under the influence of things set in motion and built and conceived years in advance of my ever setting foot on the place I had the foolishness to plant a flag, however intensely the pole was thrust into the Earth and however proudly the wind took to my banner. The ground fell through as though my stupid ambition, well stupid is actually the wrong word there... my misinformed ambition were a fist and the dirt was the crust of a 99 cent store brand pot pie in a tinfoil bowl.

It's not to say that 2009 was fundamentally flawed well before it arrived. It is to say that through my and others efforts the collapse of 2009 was delayed for as long as it was because we didn't know just how thin and cheap and empty the ground beneath my feet was back in 2006. Or maybe I knew and I just did not want to believe. I think that's what it was. It was coming apart back then and I wanted to will it together and make it mine and not be the kid with a future and family so far out of line from everyone else he knew, but that kind of thinking is a recipe for catastrophe.

It wasn't all terrible. The collapse was, but there were things that happened apart from it and I tried to separate myself and compartmentalize the personal wildfire from the person I thought people enjoyed hanging out with. There was some success in that. I discovered the most intense smile is the smile mustered in the face of pains that refuse to be denied. Things burned off left and right in 2009 and then the descent to the ocean floor of 2010 was just as eye opening and faith demolishing. Not in faith in religion. That was long gone. There were still lingering faiths in parents that were systematically slaughtered, there was faith in decency that was blown away, then there was faith in systematic accountability that failed, followed by faith in language and reason, give and take, compassion, the senses, right on down to ... well, I don't know exactly where that fire ended or if it's still eating away inside of me.

Sorry I got distracted again. Just talking about it I sometimes think I can feel that fire touching the insides of my skin. It's comforting. That's all I have faith in now. The consuming flame of discovery that burns in the heat of destruction.

2010 was touching the void, but more than that it was my throat constricting and me screaming out, in a voice I wish I had 15 years ago, a simple no. 2010 was learning that I didn't have to take it. Learning that what I thought I needed and what I knew I needed were so far from what I was living and what I was living was so close to complete emotional rape mind fucking physical slavery was hard to deal with. Tracing the roots back to the abuse was even harder. Tracing the branches that grew from those roots was the hardest part. Right around there was when I finally found me. I guess I'm still the same, but I'm conscious in ways I didn't know I could be and it's made some things easier and some things harder, but it has also allowed me to move on. It was more than finally waking up to the actual dimensions of the cage. It was waking up to the universe outside of it, it's history, my history, how I got there, who put me there, what happened to me and because of me while I was inside of it, and who I was. It was like seeing for the first time with absolute clarity the person I was supposed to be, right there in the room with me, understanding that I could never be that person because of what came before, and finally being able to begin to let that go.

2010 was rage and heat. 2011 is going back to the soul that burned down to find the valuables left, if any, and started over again with free eyes. I still have a lot of letting go to do. There is still so much rage that still smolders, but I have the ability now to understand where it's come from and to direct it, at least partially, to where it must go. 2010 was also the discovery of who the people I could understand to be friends really are. One of the major reasons why I'm not dead in a basement in Queens is because of them.

The world is a fucked up place.

2011 I'm still on fire inside my head. I'm still learning to manage paranoid schizophrenia. I'm still trying to be human. The witticism of taking life one day at a time comes to mind. That's complete bullshit. Life is nothing without goals. I have some deaths to look forward to, but closer in I have the rest of Pittsburgh to look forward to and talking to you and with everything else burned to the ground I think that is finally enough to make sunrise so much less a spear through my heart.

///The Future Sound of London - "Among Myselves" I can hear myself. They were drowning me... your tracklist is up next. Three finger promise.