Focus Divided by Time and Keeping the Fire (what the hell is the point)

Creeping and creeping and creeping like dawn.  I am a romantic and the world is not fit for romantics.  Then again it may be entirely geared for romantics.  Someone has to balance out the blizzard of the hall of horrors.  Then again, the world is not at all fit for romantics.  Then again it is perfectly suited for romantics.  Romantics survive and thrive despite what comes their way.  The only thing better than the horror are moments of brilliant romance in which romantics thrive; the difference being (I really need to brush up on my grammar) half of the experience becomes imagination and projections overlaid and the other half becomes visceral and inlaid and breathed through existence.

What the hell is the point.  Is it possible to be a furious romantic?  I would like to believe so.  That is beside the point.  My apologies, romanticism is entirely beside the point.

With the onset of a new year and the end of an old one it is clear that it is, barring catastrophic failure, inevitable that you will be one year older.  And it is a little disappointing.  A little disappointing and a lot of frustrating.  What is one more year?

You look at your car and it needs work.  You listen to your body and it needs work.  You hear your head and it needs work.  One more year on the odometers and everything needs work to make it run better than it does, but never as good as it did when it was built.  You look at your insurance and you go through the hundreds of lines of your policies and nothing is actually covered.  You are essentially paying for a card that says you cannot be put in jail for leaving your home because you have paid into a pool that says you acknowledge that if anything happens to your person or your property you are screwed and if you do anything to anyone else or their property with your person or your property to damage them in any way you are more than likely screwed.  These things are difficult to look at and absorb and be okay with.  What the hell is the point?

I think about how many ways so many junctures could have gone differently all the way back to my birth and hate and rage simmer a sideways glance beneath a rolling boil.  A nudge here, a hand there, a push here, tire screeching stop there.

Everyone has a ten year head start on you.  That is not going to change.  There is no way to somehow work so hard that the gap goes away.  Wherever you go, whatever you get up to, everyone else living marginally productively will always be at least ten years ahead of you from a developmental stand point.  If you want the insurance that is more than a "please do not put me in jail for being alive and mobile" card you will have to work twice as hard and twice as long and essentially kill yourself to get it anyway.  What the hell is the point?  Go back to school and get a better job and then extend your retardation to twenty five years to pay everything back for a degree you do not want and a career that will probably end with your body dangling from a rope because you could afford a gun, but forgot to budget for ammunition.  To top off your glass, the time spent at home learning to be an adult was spent largely learning how to avoid pain and punishment heaped out by the bucket for things that beg explanation to this day, and so you are essentially 12 when you should be 30 years old.

The mathematics are overwhelming.  Standing back from the numbers it takes on the shape of a massive impact crater you landed in America inside, the walls high enough to block out the time of day from dawn to 11 A.M. and 2 P.M. to night, with you at its center with a sun dial wondering why people are phoning you at night when in reality the suns been up for 6 hours with no clue otherwise.  A hurricane seen from the bottom of a well.

Staying focused is not easy.  Time continues to multiply.  You do not.  It is an effort and choice and a way of life to maintain focus.  How simple and easy to quit.  Quit is too strong a word.  How simple and easy to decline engagement.  

Problematic situations.  Unsolvable and unreasonable problems will remain so and perhaps, in many cases, get worse over time and you are only responsible for you.  Time will keep doing its thing regardless of you and when your focus, you, divided by time approaches zero, you are failing.  You are dying faster than you should be.  Faster than you have any right to be.  You are committing suicide and that is never acceptable for reasons I do not need to go into here.  Focus will save your life, whatever value you place on it.  Stay away from zero and, if you can, stay as far away from zero as you can.

Forget everyone else.  Forget your starting point.  Acknowledge the nature of your sun dial, the make up of your world, and the existence of a map beyond your own.  Without a balance of forgetfulness and presence, what the hell is the point?

Do not spend all of yourself trying to forget and do not spend all of yourself trying to be present in a world that is not yours.  Both roads amount to declining engagement.

Ten years from now I will be 40.  I will, in all likelihood, be driving the same car.  I will live in the same city.  I may own a house or still be renting an apartment.  I will have health insurance that does nothing for me beyond an occasional check up.  I will probably have all of my teeth.  I will have a few friends and a lot of people I know or can say I have met or worked with.  I will still enjoy fishing.  The lumbar portion of my spine and my hip will still give me problems on extremely cold days or humid days or days when the air pressure or humidity is not right for me.  I will still be romantic and ornery and searching for interfaces.  Time will have multiplied.

Keeping the fire that spawned my consciousness, my awareness that I am different, my awareness of the world outside and the world inside, is not easy and will become a stiffer challenge as the people I know have their children and families and connections.

In the backwoods of civilization, the margin(?), the nights are very long.  There are things and beings and people back there in the darkness, myself occasionally among them, that fire keeps at bay.  Tending the fire and humming songs to us to stay awake, you can hear them, smell them, sometimes see them, drawing near the wavering circle to see if you are asleep yet.  Ten years from now I will still go out during the day to gather more wood, bits of jetsam, refuse natural and not, to keep the fire burning through the night and the days when the sun refuses to rise and the off chance of eclipse. 

I know I am not going to magically get better.  I know I am not going to boot strap myself to prosperity.  I will have a greater distaste for company.  A more combative spirit.  As you grow older in the wild, the things you fear grow older and more capable too.  What the hell is the point?

The point is you.  The point is decay is inevitable.  The point is you have lived a scant 20% of your entire life under what can be deemed more freedom to explore the world, embrace yourself, and see without blinders or taint or outside in corruption than you have ever known.  Do not be swift to let your fire die.  The only thing better than eating is an opportunity to eat you alive.  Time will not change course.  Debts will not evaporate.  Closeness cannot be manufactured or faked.  The people and places you know now are not the extent of everything you will or may know.  

Stay focused.  Remain passionate.  Sing your songs.  Love nature and all that it has to offer.  This thing called you is far from over.  You say you want to make a map?  I present to you the wilderness.

Rereading

I am disgusted with my flash fiction.  It is a house on fire.  Electrical fire with buckets of water.  Perfect is the enemy of good, but ... holy hell they're bad.

The path of best intentions is paved.  That path is raucous.  It is passed time to remake them.




///Air - "Radio #1"

Are You 8 Years Old?

Sometimes things happen in life and you continue to trip over them mentally.  The constant tripping makes us more and more upset and before we know it we're pacing and running our fingers over our scalps and shaking our heads and then shaking our arms and hands at empty air.

What follows is one of those things.  Do you hear yourself when you say to me it's my fault for saying "yes, help yourself" when you ask me if you can have a portion of something I have.  Do you hear how ridiculous you sound?  Are you fucking eight years old?  You do understand taking almost all of the thing you asked if you could have a portion of is the same thing as stealing, correct?  Do you believe that I am two years old?  Do you snicker to yourself and say something in your inner monologue like "teehee, I'm going to take way more than I should, but he won't notice because I'll leave a little bit and even if he does notice he can't say anything because I didn't take everything, teehee."

Are you eight years old?  You're older than I am.  Do I actually have to walk you by the hand and take out exactly how much you are allowed to have and set it aside and then hide the rest of what I have just to be sure that if I leave the room more won't disappear into your pockets?  I don't really consider having some consideration to be an adult attribute.  It's a communal attribute that manifests at all ages.  A hallmark of civilized community.  A certain level of trust afforded to someone you consider to be a member of your community, much less a friend as well.  Friendship should, if anything, heighten that attribute within yourself.

What the hell is wrong with you.  Do you hear yourself?  You have the nerve to say "you obviously don't want me in your home" after I tell you I can't have you over because you basically steal from me when what is clear is that you obviously don't consider being in my home or my friend to be a part of your community.  Are you kidding me?  Be playful, be imaginative, be a little immature and fresh from time to time, but do not fucking steal from me and expect me to nod along and say "aw shucks, you're right.  I should've known if I was at all considerate toward you I would end up broke and hungry.  I'll be on my toes next time, a-hyuck."

Be a better person.  Have some consideration.  Life's not free and friends don't fall from the sky everyday.  You'll find yourself without community fairly swiftly.  Don't be that shifty and somehow all too casual eight year old in the room always looking to see how far and for how much you can take people.  Chances are very good you are known and it's only a matter of time.

Are You My Mommy?

Look for answers and we will give you rush.  Full on the face.  Full b l u s h.  It's very unpleasant.  It's very taken aback.  It's very lyric song.

I think I'm ten kinds of thousand push toward ten kinds of peach blush,
I think I know
what's ten  kind cuz.
I think I know what's ten kind huuuutsch.

Rabbit in the whole.  Bot a fox for a troll.
Got ten kinds of the golden rule
for the scroll.
A shark for lagoon.  Got a mother#$%^er
harp for the wound.  A way to say everything
is tiny violin for fingertips on a spoon.

Flak in the air.
Body bags going home.
How about instead of putting up a plaque
set a gnome.

Light a candle.  Change what you're wearing.
Think about how you'll be dressed
when you're burr9ed.

Are you my mommie?  I know you can't be.  Can you?

Working hard and hardly working.
Are you my mommy?
On top of the junk yard
picking up pieces and putting together a great vinyl.
Are you my mommy?
Ms. Lady, are you my mommy?
Beautiful, no.
Are you my mommy?
No!  Stop!
Are you?
No.
I found something I thought you may like.  No.  I will take a look.  Are you my mommy?  No.  I will see.  Will you see?  Yes, I will see.  Are you my mommy?  No, but I will see.

Stand Up Act 10

Stand Up Act 9

Don't be a quitter.  You can say you're not funny, but you are a little funny.  Everyone's a little funny in the head.  Knee slapping toe tapping funny?  Yeah.  I was just thinking about my very confused moment when I thought it was raining while pumping gas because it was overcast and I wasn't paying attention and it's pretty funny.  Imagining the view of someone waiting in line inside the mini mart and the line is eight, maybe nine, people long and it was a pain in the ass to find parking and when you did you still had to watch one of the fueling stalls with a hawk's eye until you realized the car you were watching had someone in the front passenger seat, but not the driver's seat and you knew you may as well go and pay at the register instead of at the pump because chances were good they were in there anyway, it's pretty funny.  Standing in the mini mart, eight bodies deep, and the person you're waiting for four feet in front of you and instead of staring flaming arrows into the back of their head you glance to your left out of the mart front's windows and see me whistling away the afternoon and nodding my head to a killer soundtrack entirely between my ears while gasoline pours all over the ground and my shoes instead of into my car's tank... kind of hilarious.  Until you ask yourself "is he about to commit suicide?  Am I about to witness an act of terror/protest?  Immolation?  Is that the word?  Buddhists aren't violent!  What is going on???"  That's when it becomes semi-not funny.  Still funny though.  Don't be a quitter.  Quitters cannot be relied on for shit.

Quitters tend to be non-showerers.  Soap dodgers.  "Why should I take a shower?  I'm only going to get dirty later."  Yes!  That's it!  That's exactly the point!  You're going to get dirty later, so take a shower!  What is so difficult to comprehend about that?  Why should I change my tires?  They're only going to wear out later.  No!  Terrible logic, sir or madame!  The entire point of changing your tires is so that you can still get to where you need to go without driving on the inside parts of your wheels after your rims melt into white hot vapor and you destroy the infrastructure of society by going to get a loaf of bread.  That's the entire point of changing your tires.

Do you really want to be that person that provokes violent and sudden and detrimental change to the fabric of citizenry itself with the funk emanating from inside your clothing?  That makes you a disease to the American body.  You, person skipping bathing, are literally a disease and what you have made airborne is going to get into someone else's nose and push them right over the edge on what was probably a sub-par day of the office.  That person is going to go home with a little extra essence of pure rage from having to deal with your soap dodging ass and sit and fume for hours, perhaps days.  That rage is going to fester and grow and fall out of that persons brain like lightning bolts while you sit at home and think about not taking a shower while you eat some microwave heated shit dinner that comes in three different flavors, and have you tried the one with the pudding square?

That person is going to slowly fume and every time they smell anything normal, but slightly off, they will squeeze their mental stress ball until it can't be squished any smaller and they will find a board with a nail in it while they're at work and just start cracking peoples brains open.   All over the place.  Brains everywhere.  That person's kids will grow up in a single parent home and become a serial killer.  Not that your spouse didn't try, but fucked up is fucked up, let's be honest.  That serial killer will shut down your cities night life and going to the bar will be a fucking shit show because no one will be there.  You'll have extra time to think about not bathing yourself and I hope you feel terrible because you'll have ruined it for everyone else who does take showers, created a psychopath, and ruined a marriage, and quite possible a necklace of future children who will never have a normal childhood.  All because you didn't take a shower.  Be better than that.

Showering is important.  There's a shower graph.  It's the graph of inward and outward perception.  At the bottom of the graph is zero.  As the "Y" axis goes up, it heads towards an actual physical intervention.  As the "X" axis goes across, it heads toward infinity number of days without washing your body.  The green line is the array of points indicating what people feel about the condition of your dirt suit.  The red line is the array of points indicating what you feel about the of your dirt suit.  Day 1 through 2, depending on your deodorant situation, even at zero.

Day three the green line starts to inch upward.  The red line is still zero.  Day four, you're at "maybe shower, but my clothes are still clean so whatever", the green line is at "I'm pretty sure he's stopped showering."  Day five, the green line is at "does he wipe after number 2?"  The red line is at "I can still tie my shoes without being able to smell my own groin.  We're good."  Day 6, they're asking you if you are okay and if someone has died in your family or has your heart been broken recently.  Day 6, you are realizing your skin has been chipping off pretty easily and no matter what you wear it feels kind of itchy.  On day 7 people are beginning to actively avoid standing near you and it's great because you can't hear their bullshit conversations or are obligated to make conversation because they're out of the range of politeness.

Day seven too, you realize when you dig in your pockets it pulls the waistband of your jeans far enough from your hips to release an ungodly plume of b.o. the world has known only in stories of lore.   It's not that your nose was close either.  The mushroom cloud of violently decaying nuclear fissionic waste rolled up your tummy and chest and hit you right in the chin from underneath your shirt and jacket like NES punch out Tyson.  At a grocery store.  And now that's on camera forever.  They'll be looking at their loss prevention footage and cue you up and point you out when you went to get your wallet out of your pocket and recoiled from yourself like a ghost held it's index finger up to your nose after finger banging someone and said "check this out!"

That's when the graph points match again.  Right at the top of the graph around day 7.  What's crazy is if you hit day 7 and that happens and you're completely unphased you just go back to day zero.  That red line falls straight back down the "Y" axis and the thought process changes from "why not take a bath" to "why take a bath, I'm good with this."

No, don't be good with that.  You're going to ruin someone's life with the way you smell.  Don't be good with that!  The truth is, when you get back to zero, that green line indicating how you are perceived by the world outside your skull goes to infinity.  People start to really consider if they should ask you some deep ass questions.  Maybe you're hiding some sort of extremely deep seated trauma or maybe you did something or something happened to you that you really need to talk about, but can't put the words together.  No.  None of that.  You've just accepted that being a dirty assed human being is acceptable enough to you.  Selfish prick.   Take fucking showers.  Don't be a life ruiner.

Also don't be that guy on public transportation that sits next to whomever to prove that they're fine with all walks of life.  You're not impressing anyone.  Anyone in their right mind knows the old man at the front of the bus in the handicap seat has shit his pants and was not wearing a diaper this afternoon.  Arm sleeve tattoos are not a nose clip.  Everyone on this box on wheels can smell the fact that he has shit his pants and is not at all concerned with the fact.  Join the rest of the green curb at the back of the bus.  It doesn't make you any less of a person.  I'm sure you're a really great person on the inside and a free spirit, but shitting next to.... sitting next to a steaming pile of happily oblivious is still sitting next to a steaming pile.  We live in America, people.  You have the option to object.  Trust us, we're not judging you from the back of the bus.  We are sometimes shaking our heads and wondering what the hell is wrong with your reasoning capabilities, but we are not judging you that harshly.  Come back here where the music is live on cellphone speakers and I am not acknowledging you because we have the same dealer and I remember you from two Saturdays ago, but did not realize we live close enough together to have gotten on the bus within a few stops of each other and you didn't call me back.  Asshole.

Clubs and bars are like giant sleepovers.  The only caveat is that everyone does have to go to sleep eventually, but everyone's sleeping bags are miles apart so that conversation you would normally have while falling asleep get's sent out through text messages and various post outlets instead of mouth to mouth to your friend.  The thing is it would be creepy to send them those messages directly, way too affectionate for society now.  Society is way too sexualized.  Way too sexually charged.  If I send you a text at 2 A.M. there's no sexual connotation to it.  It's just an extension of a conversation I wanted to have earlier, but it took me a while to put the thought together, just like at a slumber party when all you can think about is all the rest of the shit you did that day.  All you can think about is the cookies and the iced tea and the video games and playing tag and hitting that three on the backyard hoop they have and your friend's mom's tits and while you're trying to fall asleep you remember that thing that occurred to you that was kind of poignant and wanted to break it out for conversation and analysis before you forget that the thought ever occurred.  And now you're creepy trying to talk to your 32 year old friend about a ridiculous theory that, though apt given the days events, now sounds like Silence of the Lambs pillow talk.

Social media is a lot like a giant sleepover.  A giant massively multiplayer sleepover.  Think about it.  What did you want to do at every sleepover?  Stay up as late as possible.  Check.  You can stay up as late as you want to whenever you want to, every time.  What else did you want to do?  Drink as much soda as you wanted to?  Check.  Play whatever game you wanted to for as long as you wanted to and cut out the players you did not want to play with at will.  Check and check and check.  Watch movies and talk about them as much as you wanted to?  Check.   Talk about current events?  Check?  That kind of makes you an awful person to have at a sleepover, but whatever floats your boat.  Alright.  It's basically an enormous, wonderful, slumber party that you have to pretend to be asleep during parts to avoid the other people at the sleepover that are not your friends.  It's great!

The best thing is, if you want to get up for a glass of orange juice or something at 3 A.M. you don't have to sneak around.  You can get up like a boss, go get the quart of O.J. and chug that shit straight out of the bottle.

That Instant

You realize you may have been bred to be a good guard dog.  Even so, be the best guard dog you can be.

A Very Confused Moment

Confuzzlry.   It's not bad, but it's not good either.  I took my truck for a routine fill up.  I've yet to put a full tank in her and I thought the day might be the day to push the needle full to "F".  It was not the day.

Traffic was terrible and all of the legal side routes were taken and you can't hop curbs no matter your clearance level.  I stared at the curbs.  My head up display showed the alternate route and I had to keep pressing cancel, breathe easy, and listen to radio.  Clutch out.  Clutch in.  Clutch out.  Clutch in.  Clutch out.   Oh, wait!  No, nothing moving.   Clutch out.  Clutch out.  It was not my day to be had and I was not going to be had on this day.  No sir.  No thanks.  I'll wait.

Get to the pumps and every stall is taken and my baby is thirsty as hell.  Even I can taste it.  I set it to hover mode and blocked all ways of ingress and egress.  Except one.  Sure enough that stall cleared out and I took two glances and shot the gap backwards.  Full reverse!  Aye aye, captain.  I can't hear you!  Aye aye, captain!

Straight into the path of a little rabbit car.  We had a face to mirror to windshield to face show down.  One of the times when having a giant rusty hook hitch bolted to your truck frame helps.  It's that extra incentive to "do you really want this through the hood of your car?"  I slipped her in to the open stall, easy as cake.  Or pie.  Take your pick.  The point is, if you talk to her well, the battleship has hunter killer maneuverability.  You have to suss it out though.  And know her limits.

Gassing up, my eyes went upward too.  I started to day dream while fueling the tank and I really wished for rain or at least snow, but I'll settle for rain.  I heard it.  Rattle rattle rattle asphalt rattle and I smiled very wide.  And then I noticed that it was not raining.  The woman on the other side of the pump was staring at me.  I smiled and winked back.  She kept staring.

That's when I realized gasoline was pouring all over the side of the truck and collecting in a great pool beneath my feet.  "Oh?"  is what I said.  It kept pouring.  I looked at her and she wasn't staring anymore.  I looked at the sky and it was in fact not raining.  I looked at the front tank's hatch and it was indeed pouring gasoline everywhere beginning six dollars ago.

I cut the feed and adjusted the nozzle and gasket.  Perfect pour.  She started drinking real well with no spills.  I cast my eyes around to see who else saw and then I realized everybody gets one.  Two fudges in five years is not bad.  It's not good, but it's not bad either.

How'd you die?  Freak gasoline fight accident.  I couldn't help chuckling while I pulled away.  A good horse is a happy horse.  The things I do for you, truck.  You owe me one.

The cockpit reeks of gasoline now.  No shoes in the house!




///Miss Kittin - "Happy Violentine"  .... do you like me [y] [n].  my truck gets moody.  so do i.  red aura'd capital underscore night terrors

The Best Thing

about discovering that song you are going to bang until, after an intervention, you have a private intervention with yourself and come to grips or triggers about how you will live your life, you say to yourself "the world of sound is passing me by in leaps and bounds and I am going to die inside this bubble"              is that you can bang it the @#$% out til then.

Dear (_____)

Dear corporate,

I'm on my fucking lunch break.  Unless you want to talk about the Sunday games or varieties of reds, I'm not interested.  Anything else?  Alright, sounds about good.

up yours,

the union

Facebook

Facebook is funny.  It's obvious as a bunch of gate switches, on and off.  Zero and one. It's funny because there are so many ways to have full conversations using only gate switches.  It's obvious, but it's still funny imagining an ever flipping map of things and you can hit whichever switches you want to in a side scrolling self describing toggle machine.  It's pretty swell and still funny.  Rudimentary, but a chuckle.  All the positions begin at off.  No point fives.  I'm not sure where I'm going with this, oh yeah, just remembered.  And forgot.  It's back, okay, got it, the hook is that with only being able to describe yourself through on or off it becomes possible to predict what's coming next and it grows formulaic.  For a ball of nerve endings that require routine to survive it becomes a joke.  For a ball of nerve endings that are a ball of fat and salt it's very funny to watch and also to participate.  It's fun I think is what I'm getting at.  Fun to create and fun to acknowledge.  The equivalent of a wave to say that I am me and you are you and "hi, how are ya."  Its neat.



///DJ? Acucrack - "Captain's Waterlog"