scanning overpriced textbooks for the common good

new album finished

2012-01-27T12:51:00.010-03:30

yeah, i've been working on an album for the last several months... a collaborative album with musical contributions by the clientele of the organization i've worked at for most of the past year and a bit, For the Love of Learning

now that I'm done there and focusing on universiticity, i've made the final push to "complete" the album, even though i could have easily spent another year refining all the tracks - but i gotta declare the thing done and move on... maybe i'll even start blogging again now - in words, even

but i figured, if i'm hardly writing anything on my blog lately, i might as well at least post some of the music i've been driving away at for a while now - two or three of the tracks are my own songs or compositions that feature rob keyes on guitar, or erin piatt on vocals, and stuff like that, so i'll link to them, cause they're the kind of tracks i would put up on here anyway, in the normal course of things...

some of the tracks are very much the property of the songwriters or lyricists themselves, so i probably won't post those on this blog, cause i don't know if it's cool with the authors, and i don't know if FTLOL would want me to just up and make the whole thing available - although, shhhh.... don't tell anybody... but it all IS in fact available, even before they've re-designed the album art! but that's a secret... between me my self-selected super-elite readership

Gower Street Jam (with Rob Keyes)
an instrumental that i put on cause there weren't enough songs, so it's sort of a slop art piece, but i liked how it turned out - gives a good sense of rob's live playing... even though it's not a live jam exactly - i had "tryppy keys" as a placeholder title, because of the keyboard track that i'd pre-recorded (and because it makes a stupid pun) - i got rob to play bass and then guitar to the track, live at the gower street church basement computer "lab" where we used to be before FTLOL moved to waypoints and then cookstown road

Taxing You (with Andrew Harvey)
the most recent song i've finished - lyrics from a poem i wrote, which i think the horsefly lit mag published a couple years ago, which was inspired by something that happened to my friend jennifer's oldest son while working at wal-mart - when FTLOL moved to waypoints, we had a social worker doing a placement with us, and he volunteered to give me some material to help with my collaborative album - that turned out to be a bassline which sounded like 3 chord punk to me, and fit perfectly with the melody i still had in mind that i'd use if i ever turned those words into a song... thus, a song was born - he also did some freaking out on guitar for me, using the little music room they had at waypoints, filled up with amps and axes - so every bit of guitar in that song is solely from that freak-out session, that was the challenge i set myself, and i think it creates a nice gritty cohesion, and also nicely de-popifies the sound, stylistically

and i'll post the lyrics, as is my custom, in case i didn't eq up the high end enough for you to hear the vox clearly:

yes yes, i'm taxing you
i'm taxing you for being an asshole
the government wasn't doing its job
i noticed when you got your third promotion

yes yes, i'm helping myself
the company has deep pockets
i know they can afford compensation
to me it's simply an ignoble obligation

swipe, swipe, another swipe
it’s another wrong partially righted
i want a new ipad, you want a new car
the taxes won't kill you but the price of gas will

so tired, i’ll take a cab home today
so here’s another ride on you
hope my entrusted ketamine-encrusted charge card
will get me back in time to watch tv
before i fall asleep, i’m so tired, did i tell you
i’m tired? it's true

yes yes, i was taxing you
you caught me with your video camera
you had to film me and good thing you did
justice has been served

you took it on yourself to film me
it wasn't company policy strictly
but you're your own man, a man of action
the superstore garden center vigilante

yeah yeah, put me away
i'm sure i'll learn a valuable lesson
i'll learn to use my fists instead of my brain
it wasn't working anyway

going for a new record

2012-01-24T22:03:00.002-03:30

in minimalist blogging

from the toshiba user's manual:

2012-01-13T00:04:00.002-03:30

always keep fingers away from the sides of the tray when closing the tray of an optical drive (CD/DVD/Blu-ray Disc Drive) to avoid pinching your fingers

awww... that's so adorable - cause when those disc drives start closing, they're gonna close, and if you have a finger inside the tray for some reason, when it closes, you're gonna get an awful... little pinch - owey! toshiba's like my doting grandparent

wish i could tell you about it over the phone, bb, hopefully soon - you'll be up "late", won't you? miss you, sweetie

ornt

2012-01-04T21:32:00.012-03:30

Remember that big wide world of shit? It's here again, cept this time I've got a cellphone. And something to write on it! Please don't you comment on the merits or lack thereof contained in me being "back" in school. It is what it is, might be muonic. That's my mnemonic.

Haha, never had no peers. Without peers, I. Calming modern pop, mildly "indie", not obnoxiously so... This is gonna be the start of a blogging season, if nothing else. Maybe I can even do it without drugs! I did once, long long ago, without even trying!

Maybe sketching season too... Under duress... Black dudes with dense bone structures, or is it light bone structures? Asian kids with natural work ethics, or are they nurtured? Everyone with cells. We can all burn idle time in this information age, but i need to torch it more ferociously than anyone because I'm the only one on the bleachers with this ridiculous backpack apparatus. I should have a slide rule in there. Yes, turn up the temperature on this idle incineration, increase the kelvins. Soon they'll be nodding their heads to references I don't get, but they won't be stupid pop culture refs, or next-gen acronyms, they'll be deep cultural and intellectual touchstones I should know. Hell, I should be bringing ones with me here to fertilize the soil. Grinding them into the ground. To belabor the metaphor.

Students working shit campus jobs. Why is this taking so long? Gonna have to break away from the pack by breaking out my headphones.

Okay, no space. Yeah, I know, gimme my space. Every province had its own brand of surficial stoopid.

Aah, my system of toxic comfort running on maximal efficiency. Toque pulled down, music cranked. In the downtrodden element. I can put this straight to blogger with a wireless text send, somewhat precognized in the morning's couch dream.

Well of course I'd be in high school again, having insisted on being stubbornly observant of the letter of the law for a token dash start, and signed up to be reoriented. Jacks of orient are surrounding me, with a respectful buffer.

Can I forget by osmosis? I don't want to hear this conversation happening next to me.

fuck

2011-12-08T22:51:00.005-03:30

2nd guess - oh wait, i already said that - head ache - i said it better before - grow up and blow away - toxemia and atrophy - sounds deadly, does it? it's sickly, i'd say

so, i need food, despite what my stomach says

i don't want to take instruction - fuck instruction - i know you know things, academicians - between me and gee oh dee, well, i think there's something to be said for this dirty cleanliness, and going to my meeting, the original twelve step meeting to do with substance abuse - but there's too much on my mind, plate - i want to slough off these ambitions, to be this great person

holy jesus, apocalyptic gusts of wind - maybe we need a disaster - by the way, that's a dumb thing to say

calcium tums taste lovely, tangy fruit flavoured chalk - tums and eno effervescing powder are the best things in life right now - calcium with sodium citrate in tandem break the back of evil, fill the gaps in my body and mind and soul and right this sinking ship, let's pretend - it'll keep me able to function marginally before the gig i will get through, the audition i won't pass - maybe i won't go - i want to run away, or hide, or both - i want to be somewhere else - i don't want to be entwined - i want to unhook from the gears of this people machine

whatever, just a whim - what i mostly want is some magic and miracle, and money, and the moon - i hate just about everything, my mood is awful as of this writing - it's nice to be able to write about it a bit, though, i haven't done that in a while - i'll write, despite how it sounds, in spite of how mediocre this is - it's a hide hole wallow hollow, but not entirely empty - there's not a lot of hope, there's a hole in the serotonin bucket, or something that feels like that - it's depression, but i can see it's a part of the cycle - i have to live and work with the hole, but some sort of gauzy layer will blow over it over in the next sandstorm, and cover the hole in the hydraulic thermodynamics of this machine, and then i won't have to live and work with the hole for another little while - and then it will be there again - i don't have to sleep with the hole though, my dreams bail me out

but they contain the beautiful person i'm on the rocks with, and that's okay, if it's in my dreams, it's okay - my mind is not, though - i'm in a hollow, and i want to be at peace in this hollow for a while, an indefinite period, hibernate - that isn't going to happen of course - of course, just to state the obvious, or make what ought to be obvious obvious, and qualify, and quantify, for insurance purposes, and append every possible permutation of caveat to every clause of the contract, cause everything is contractual and consensual, that's the only sense there is in it, chasing your own tail in hindu modernity, talking yourself out of buying the $100 i-rig

it's sad that i managed to turn spirituality into a dirty word - corruption, cancer - i made words dirty - i MADE everything CONTRIVED - haha

when i tumble out of the hollow, i'll meet life on life's terms halfway with fakery, and say: yeah, there's value in the real, that's where all this good stuff that i can't express in words really is, that's where it lives

the spider plants have gone without water for two extra days - but they'll be alright i guess - piles of things accumulate, obligations i heap on myself - setting myself up... what would happen if i stayed in my living room, and lived, and shrugged everything off? i don't know, it sounds lovely though - a wonderful fantasy - i can die now, or be dead to the world, go into a coma - i've strained and struggled and i haven't come up with NOTHING goddamnit, i've written a very good letter of support for For the Love of Learning to HRLE, so i've been useful that way, and i've pretty much finished that song of Rob's that's been sitting around forever, and he wasn't even expecting me to actually get it done, and it's quality work, and a good legacy, something i did for rob, and myself, and the place i work for, a high note to go out on - sure there's a thousand other projects that are undone, but so fucking what? i took on too much

i want to detach from everything, gee oh dee, i so want to do that - harder to do when there are no drugs allowed in my diet - so be it - i'll say it in my own way, how i want to say it

2011-12-08T00:37:00.001-03:30

calcium is delicious

the judicial branch

2011-12-01T17:29:00.000-03:30

quite frankly, if i hear the phrase "quite frankly" one more time, i'm going to scream - to give you my judicial branch credentials, i feel like many great things were said, and continue to be said, at the meeting - a certain amount of repetition and cycle is necessary - can you be judicial in return and take it on faith that from my perspective, being the fourth person and fifth wheel, not being acknowledged or looked at, that i'd gotten the gist of the feeling of the meeting an hour ago, and i had the gist before then anyway? i don't know what i can add, not being part of the managerial process - i didn't sign up for the managerial process, and wasn't asked to be part of it - so i get a little antsy at the long long meetings that repeat themselves endlessly, quite frankly - of course it's work, i didn't mean to imply it's not, just that it isn't a very good use of my time, when i'm not asked to be included in any decision-making or agenda-shaping

yes, i could be involved i guess - i guess you expect me to jump in and start skeet-shooting ideas for you to blow away in mid-air, but i'm a thin-skinned mofo, and i don't like having my ideas shot down, unless i think there might be at least one that has a chance of getting through - i have to know that i'm not fractally wrong, and that some effort might pay off eventually - and besides that, i'm a thin-skinned mofo, and i don't know if i know anything, except that

just between me and gee oh dee... and my poor blog - poor god - but god is a much richer entity for having gotten to know me, aren't ye, god? aren't you a lucky god? count your blessings

economics is for shoemakers, i won't place limits on my design - excess lace up stitch up fuckup - ah, mayun, i miss aesthetics, i didn't realize how much until now, feeling the pang, i've gotten the gist of that feeling, no meeting necessary

praying for the timestamp to disappear

2011-10-25T22:48:00.000-02:30

poor blog, i never write
poor woman, i never need
lethargically heartfelt
birth and death in a water-maze
i knew cheese

i will lean on trazzies tonight - it's almost like i need them - quasi-desperation - still can't say what i want - it's a situation i got into, entirely my fault - fyi - fmi - for my eyes

talismanic artifacts cataloged in an academic database

sublevel ten - what i think of as creativity these days would have been contrivance years ago - a sad slide - i'll call it wisdom - this isn't reaching out, honest - i'm lying down to listen to my stomach churn like it does now, this is my life now - artists are external, the world does music, not me - i'm making peripheral use of this infrastructure while galaxies die on the other side of the torus universe, fyi, fmi

asdfl;kjasdf;lksjdfl;ksjdf;lkjasdfl;kasjdfl;ksjdfl;ksjdfl;ksjdfl;aksjdf;lkjasdfl;ksjdfl;kasdjf

caulk the wagon and float it

2011-10-14T21:45:00.004-02:30

climb every mountain
ford every stream
write something random
until you find your dream

new track finished

2011-10-13T15:23:00.000-02:30

This Record

with Erin at For the Love of Learning - more to come...

2011-10-05T15:44:00.002-02:30

it's the old civic center circus - i don't know how they fit this dark, bowl-shaped auditorium in the civic center - there's a ringmaster of course, shouting in between snippets of bears, elephants, tigers, rings of fire, showers of popcorn, hordes of children with the odd parent or guardian like a dandelion poking out a field of grass - there's all the expected circus stuff

the circus segues into a coloring book, with trademarked images of looney toon/disney characters, also with a circus theme - the coloring book becomes something like a crossword puzzle, which is superimposed on the circus scene which has become a tall ramshackle wooden building with many rooms that wraps, thematically and structurally, to the contours of the crossword puzzle, it's not a grid but rather, it's got lines crisscrossing a field of dim purple twilight sky - the solving of the clues involves keenly observing the circus scene overlaid on the house/crossword and figuring out what certain events transpired, and what the narrative of the circus is overall - this necessitates skipping around the timeline, forward and back through the events of the circus/cartoon - there are cartoon characters, but the scenes have a live-action look

i'm still trying to solve the last few clues, there's some frustration, but also exhiliration, that i'm almost there, i'll get it with just a bit more strain, and what will i get if i get all the clues? something pretty cool, no doubt - but i'm whisked away from this scene because i need to be in a planetarium - i feel microscopic though, a miniature being next to a giant chair next to an imax dome screen - it's got the same dark/flashy feel as the civic center circus but less crowded - there are massive looney tune characters floating above me in 3d projection, but they're more than projections, they're real somehow, and they're a family of mooninites, like the aqua teen characters, there's a massive Inignot, and several more members of his "family" who look like variations - they're floating with zen austerity, and i wish they would acknowledge me, but they're on some other level - i wonder where Er is? there's a salvia feel to this part too, with all of existence to one side of me being an infinitely regressing taffy-chasm - the mooninite family is constructed of light particles forming a dense laser lattice - i'm awed at the spectacle

then i'm in a room in the crossword puzzle building - i didn't realize the building was so big that it could contain a whole disparate section with its own office-like theme - this room has a "being in a school-room during summer vacation" sort of feel - there's a post-secondary physics teacher here in the room with me and no one else - actually, the physics teacher is in the next room, which is an office next to the classroom that i'm in - there's a flourescent yellow glow and sterile tables and chairs - i'm at a desk - this is my first day on the job, before school starts, and i'd better hurry up and get to it, and prepare some sort of a lesson plan for the students that will be filling this room in a week or two - because i'm not at all prepared to present material i don't even know myself

the physics teacher comes into the classroom, because he knows he needs to actually teach me the math before i can teach it to anyone else - there's a cold and impersonal feel to this - i'm in a vast system and i'm going to get ground by the gears, probably - no, don't take that attitude, pay attention, time is of the essence, i tell myself - the teacher opens a textbook and quickly breezes through several math problems by way of demonstration - i nod, pretending to understand, but i don't have a clue, i don't see a way into this - i can't talk to this guy...

interesting how transcribing a dream destroys my ability to recall it with any fidelity afterward - as soon as i commit words to describing a part of it, that part becomes terminally ensnared by the words, and the memory is compromised - still there, but twisted thereafter, distorted from the purity of the cerebral mockup that i call "pure", because it has a certain integrity, but is also a distortion of the actual dream itself, if such a thing exists

2011-09-29T19:07:00.004-02:30

can i say, what the hell i will, that i'm especially sick of the good - the goody goody, everything that's supposed to be healthy - i know how ridiculous that is, how ridiculous i am - how twisted my attitude is - how nearly everyone else is better, they've got something to offer, they do more with less - they've got character - unless they'd rather not be saddled with such a label, in which case, nevermind, forget i said anything

where does A get his attitude? i could go for some of that - surely it wasn't bestowed on a platter - even if it was genetic birthright, that right would come with the duty of cultivating said character in an arduous trial and error ordeal with hard lessons and all that

there's something about low character and mediocrity and the freedom to shrug off the burden of the good, that appeals to me - is this organic excursion in any way compatible with my nature? the simple well-worn rut of the effort equation doesn't seem all that humble, rather simply high and mighty on itself - now to do a low, mediocre thing for a cheap tin thrill and read this back to myself

hiding in the car on a beautiful sunny warm late september day because i don't want to weed - i'm refusing, because i can, because i'm taking a swoon, i'll call this a harmless substitute for the old-timey alchemical mega-swoon, that lapis philosophorum water skipping thing that i can't forget - if i could forget, things would be so much easier and softer, and maybe harder in all the right places - this is the living-sober equivalent to the old swoon, and it's vital to what remains of my spirit when i have to stay here out on the farm, to be, ostensibly, "working", but not weeding - i hate weeding, i really do - and plus, i'm not really interested in... anything - not a damn thing - that being said, there are still microscopic degrees of disinterest that make all the difference i can muster, in order to see color and hear pitch for some reason, or some seeing-hearing thing

there are still limits to expression, i wouldn't say this shit - and i wouldn't want to be caught by the weed tourists in this car on this day - so many hard swallows - you can swallow hard and acknowledge the heavy truths, but it doesn't change a thing, not even attitude - oh, that five minute rule for obsessing about things, i shot it to shit - but i'm still doing ninety meetings in ninety days

at least this day is nice for people who appreciate that sort of thing... which means my decadent self-indulgent decrepit attitude will not seem so unbearable - to those feeling warmed, body and soul, by the sun - it'll be a peripheral irritation

Weeding is Fun! :)
for ya'll, i'm guessing
it might be fun if i was concurrently on amphetamines - i can remember tasks like that being fascinating and euphoric on drugs like that - but even then, i'd be too amped to do one thing for more than ten seconds - when i'm on the crank, i burn through any and every potential activity like the wehrmacht through poland leaving scorched earth and sadness, and perhaps, doubt in god's existence, or at least, god's love - and look, here i am thinking about drugs again... scenarios

ow! car door in the solar plexus - or just the stomach - why do exclamation points seem so friendly? i'm sure that A's earned his car - he did something good, lots of things maybe, not in past lives, but in this one - the temperature in here is nice now - warm after the hammock in the woods - "davey boy, 26 years old... counting his curses, counting his curses" but a few blessings too - counting curses and blessings alike in the manner of a sour-faced accountant working overtime, paperwork off the grid - tallying the blessings with no emotional links

i wouldn't agree that i'm one of those brave new world citizens - i like my walks in the woods now and then - i have my neologism i call "sacredity" - i need more than Natureland, but i'm sure i seem pretty post-nature to a lot of these people - i'd like to be seen in the hammock, not in the car, but i'd rather be in the car right now, it's more conducive to the swoon - the swoon is synthetic in its natural form, to get it au natural, one must build an artifice of synthetic conditions - it's a fake swoon, a crude mimic, but it's something

these people, i respect them so much - i like them - so how come i'm always sneering and sarcastic in my head? maybe because i can't sway and swoon how i want anymore, and it makes me spiky and pent up and unsatisfied sometimes

heavy lids, gordian knots

2011-09-28T15:02:00.004-02:30

sitting empty, as jenn said, about her journal - this calls for extreme measures - a stretch of limbs that'll congregate in holy matrimony between earth and sky, a neverending parabola, a zeno's paradox of whatever that feeling is you get when you stretch for lack of anything better to do, a quadratic equation mostly

or maybe the extreme measure of filling up a wall with words, or more appropriately, a column, or several columns that fill the first foyer of a temple, floor to ceiling pictographic scrawl, it looks pictographic enough to me, even within the helvetica contours of digital stencils

or maybe the peaceful co-existence with megafauna, when they're never out of season, but the season is slow-paced, and we don't take so many of them down that they die out, cause god doesn't care for those big beasts, poor things, even if i do, but not enough to be an activist, like a friend of mine

it certainly comes back to heavy lids and the waiting for miracles... what is the prognosis, cocaine psychosis? no, can't be that, but it might be synthetic, could be this chemical or that, could be laundry detergent, cell phone radiation, mercury poisoning - and okay, could be psychological, cause if i can get perked up from the chronic recline of the damned by the simple thought that i could slash through the lethargy by doing something bad, really bad, but oh so fun, then the body is the brain's bitch in that case, isn't it?

well, that's whot itis, and coodn't be any tis'n'ter

selected stenographical notes

2011-09-08T23:06:00.001-02:30

the time for drafting
is past the horizon - "oh fuck", overheard at the rooms

flip flop flip flop
can you hop like a frog?
enDuress
skipwhisper ~ living in low-def scorcery
blah's better than the cursive slur
plug-ins are good too

can't do that
cause i gotta do this
be at a meeting
humility
is bringing such ideas to even this sanctuary
give me a medal now

SUB
level 4

2011-09-08T23:02:00.000-02:30

"Are you sure you're good?" Liz asked her again.

"I'm good," Gabby said. Good as angelic. Smug as a bug in a sarcasm security blanket. Good to go, keep you going through the show. Not that there was anything to play. Backstage work here, the chores. But they called her "manager".

"Good," Liz said, still with the darting eyes, unable to meet the gaze that wasn't there. Gabby could see the darting in her own peripherals, of course. She didn't miss much. But there wasn't much to do about it. Only a tight knot to behold, maybe influence but not in the intended way. Would Liz have called it "creative" or "destructive" interference, Gabby wondered.

"Are you really sure you're good?" Liz asked. Why not? Let her make conversation. Let her plant and farm it, reap what she sows. Or maybe you don't reap what you sow, not when you're a maker, making things for the takers and fakers - they just take and fake and fake and take until the maker and the baker run away together, find an island and drop out of society until the nuclear war happens and we're all in it together again, for the last few hours of life.

"Well?" Liz asked.

"Yeah I'm good, what could be wrong?" Gabby said.

"You sound sarcastic," Liz said.

"I know. I'm not though. It's sound and fury."

"Ooh, Faulkner," Liz said. "Or Shakespeare."

"Yeah, they exist," Gabby said. "You sound as sarcastic as me."

"I know," Liz said. "I'm not though. Forget it Gab, it's Chinatown."

"Ooh, Polanski," Gabby said.

"I know," Liz said. "It's a psychotropic reaction."

"Psycho-whatnow?" Gabby said. It's black and white pre-paradigm shell-casings. And it must be read or it's tired clenching eye-rubbing okay-ness.

nail clippings

2011-09-08T22:51:00.003-02:30

flourescent
luminous failure following design principles home to the Atlantic Center foodcourt like a lost puppy.
Health clubbers master stairs, cycle, and tread behind screens through the windows above.
meditation bitch
Today, she says, erase everything, every symbol you can find on every flat surface of your cubicle. Tomorrow she'll say: fill those surfaces again, do a dance routine, a rote jiggle of writing, sometimes typing, for the inevitable information archive at the outer edge orbital plane of the biggest li'l electron in the world.

Cuticles sound like cubicles, crucial when you're bobbing your head in a sufi swoon, and the main theme exposition is glued symphonically to subject B, or maybe simply welded, crude efficiency, maximum chromosomal distortion of thematic intent, mainly.

The meditation bitch reminds me there's a first person here, and there is a 72nd floor room where that american can-do guru journalist tripped on microdots from a pillbox and used the experience for a chapter of a hardcover that sold copies, presumably.

i don't still not have it

2011-09-02T09:49:00.000-02:30

questions for Ian

extra

2011-09-02T02:57:00.001-02:30

ordinary mudbricks
in the next
nacropolis

see-saw

2011-08-07T16:13:00.008-02:30

a bowl of rice a day

tomorrow is a latter day

b plus for penmanship

a manly art, the captaining of the pen

a glowing collection of random
blinking things

a can of whoop-ass
and catharsis

the seasaw is next

tell me somethin i don't know playa

lemon twists

2011-08-05T16:49:00.000-02:30

why can't i be one of those people that just flitters from here to there every few months, like it's natural, like that's just how they roll, man, like a rolling stone... i know a lot of those people, or i knew them for a time - and i never questioned it, i just felt grateful they were around with me for a while - maybe i'll catch them later, at least on facebook

why do i feel so guilty about even thinking about going anywhere, like i ought to be here, like it's the Right Thing to Do, like i'd be so foolish and ungrateful if i packed up and tried some place new? oh, i guess there's a lot of good reasons for that feeling, but really, are there enough?

it's this weather, perhaps, it's not that it's that bad, it's that it's this bad in august - and it's like the sun is a godayum novelty - a little trinket dangled above the crib every now and then - and i never even got the chance to get bored with it - yeah, there's too much mood here - oh, i'm sure i'd find a way to bring massive nimbus moods with me anywhere

it's the age old churning of the substrate, to consign it to near-meaningless visual metaphor - but i like the sound of it - like the sound of geese honking and melding with the highway traffic - i'm going to eat another candy even though the teeth on my left side are protesting, but i'm going to use the teeth on my right side - they'll be good for a while longer

spike

2011-08-05T16:07:00.000-02:30

yes, i think i'll go to a meeting - if i don't get sucked into the couch first - and lay my head down, and let the alien waves, now too-familiar, wash over me - demoralized - i think i made a bad choice - i don't fit here, with this job - the social dimension is what's strangling me - when i can work with people at all, it's individually, not as a group - i miss the savoury room, it's cut and dried there

oh no, don't make snap decisions, don't get off track because of an emotional spike... but this isn't just a spike, i've known this for a while - i've felt nauseated and embarrassed getting paid for nothing - so find something to do then - well after everything's been cleaned up and organized, or i've found what's left after all the happy dappy volunteers have rushed to fight over the chores... there's this awkward lack of purpose - i've been saying this for a while, and it feels truer than ever: the introvert is not being nurtured - all these attempts at extroversion are wrong-headed, so strained, so needlessly entangled, so compromised

and the center meeting goes on, and on, repeating itself, solving nothing - so, as i see it, we're faced with this problem - wait, didn't we just bring up twenty solutions, potential directions? oh, but i know how much you love hearing yourself talk, and cycle back around to the start of your grievance list again, prattle on...

what is it i do here? i dread telling people - i don't talk about it - well now i'm fucking talking, okay? every time i opened my mouth at the meeting, i felt like a jackass immediately afterward - i was trying to compensate for not talking hardly at all otherwise - a meeting gives me the impetus to speak my mind, a sanctioned sharing - but my words bounced off - i thought i had some useful suggestions but i just felt disrespected, like an idiot for talking, should have shut up - why am i here? fucking music? musical commitments are a drag - it's my play, not my work - i miss the savoury room - i don't want to be renting out my head

i should write a letter to the admins or something - maybe i can get out of this morasse

it's just been a frustrating meeting, that's all - okay? or maybe it's more than just that, maybe i'm realizing things - like, sure, this center is great and all that, but it's not part of my mandate, i'm not enthusiastic, i'm not here for these people, i'm here for myself, so i could just as well be there for myself, back home - do i really want to help bring in more high school people? i can barely stand the people that are already here - oh, i appreciate their personalities, there's no ill will, it's just that i can barely stand them - i don't dislike them, i just can't like them too much either, they don't like me, we don't get along - i'm peripheral - just as i appreciate the personality of the admins i have to deal with, they're witty and good-hearted, but interacting with them is like getting an unanesthetized root canal - speaking of which, i could probably use some dental work too, that's another thing i'm noticing today

a two hour meeting about contriving demand - fuck man, i just want to say, if it's not there, it's not there, why kill yourself trying creating it? i don't believe in advertising, it's not my thing, what do you want me to say? i'm not saying your PR sucks, i actually admire it, the posters are tastefully done, nice layout, good, on-point message - but if you see people as potential consumers, be prepared to be massively disappointed, unless you're barnum and bailey - sorry, i've been through that whole process, i'm not interested, at this stage in my life, in becoming an ad man - and yeah, it's my fault, i picked the wrong job - cause it is a whole lot of nothing

why kill yourself trying to create demand? oh, because you can't sound defeatist - never give up! we must ride this gravy train into the ground - the last days, the decaying republic, no more soup for you - or maybe it'll all get better with a new space - ebbs and flows and square dances and slack jaws... why is giving up such a bad thing? it doesn't mean i gave up on life - less is more - maybe it's an economical streamlining, or a minimalist thinned-out mix... i'll have to admit to feeling like a defeatist today, about certain things, anyway - but this is enough whining - let's all forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice-cream . It is your birthday. After all.

fold tab A into slot B

2011-08-05T02:03:00.002-02:30

ugh, how can i get rid of that bright white serrated sidebar demarcation? couldn't find any setting in blogger - does look nice with briar's artwork on top though

oh i see, it's bound to the text color - damn

oh wait, if i use a different template... well well - now i should actually write something for this pretty little blog - damn this drop-off - what am i, a fucking musician now? nah, screw music

2011-07-26T22:46:00.003-02:30

the blue oyster cult concert second newfoundland city dream

existential ennui break

2011-07-22T13:25:00.002-02:30

beautiful latin babies and the music of tito puente

respectication

testing the limits of procrastination

2011-07-19T23:27:00.000-02:30

nothing's gonna happen
or if it does, you won't notice

must reject philosophy
can't think anymore

facebook could be a portal
closest thing to that on my bookmark bar
nothing worth getting sucked into though

still haven't written about the plywood house
still haven't written about the collector
the shelf is crammed full of projects
can't pick up anything

gotta experience something else
sniff out oil money
save the whales, save the world
flip a coin

memories, compilation album
even that, i can't be bothered with
there's many ways to say it
no one told me when to run
this is it... this is it? okay
this is it too - see? i can "this is it", just like you
this is what i do

it's stanza-esque here in this river - gasoline rainbows, i wonder what they taste like - a gum eraser kneaded into an ear flap - an imaginary cochlea - ah - she's going to sing

sucrets sticker on the savoury room wall - i owe the patron god of medicine a rooster - in my own words - this is enriching, in some shining crazy diamond way i can't see, like a fox

the oblivion of being, that sounds about right - it doesn't need a referral - it doesn't need a script - but it is a script - this is a script - i'm so deep in character, i forgot i was playing a role - i still don't even really believe that that's what's happening, but it is

at least i want it to be - how long can this go on? nirvana still smoking, blowing smoke out, up, around - an equilibrium of not quite enough rope to hang

2011-07-12T18:41:00.001-02:30

maintaining sinking equilibrium
no rocking the boat, only a slow slide down
it doesn't roll off the tongue
but it sticks in the first person's craw
gender neutral pronoun comma

maybe the grapes are sour
actually it wouldn't surprise me
although i can remember sweet feelings

another last ounce of strength
empty can rattle

holes in sarcasm

austerity for lucidity?

2011-06-30T01:04:00.003-02:30

austerity measures
oh yeah, what else?
case in point
pointless poetry

i haven't been this dry in some time
incidentally, in the thick of quitting caffeine and zoloft
there's too many variables, i can't tell what is affecting what
and every attempt at describing that is
this scraping the bottom of the mediocrity barrel
getting to hear about better men, themselves better than the ones
who are better than me

no, i don't think something to fight for in itself is worth newsreel nightmare suffering
but i don't think this is worth much either
of course suicide correlates to this and that
and of course i know
that newsreel nightmare suffering would shake the malaise out of me
and shock me into savouring my daily ration of goat's eyeball
my best part of the day, so i could endure a fake scare real scare
every twenty seconds and sleep on barbed wire to survive, cause i rolled a six
and they rolled a ten, and it all came to a pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel
based on me and my son, our claims to fame and value as people intertwined with a work of art
cause art matters, like it's purpose, or i thought it did, seemed to, or was that a dream?
the best part of waking up - no, can't incorporate folgier's jingle into this mexican jumping bean cutup of crappy laptop keyboard

had some hope that there was a state of purity that would correlate with happy
that i was paving over with the SSRI, that was waiting for me, if i'd just clean out my system
so i'm cleaning, but of course, i'm re-using filthy rags in a misguided attempt to recycle, and everything i clean
just gets smeared with new grime
maybe clean's the wrong concept, well sure, why wouldn't it be wrong?
maybe all i can say is, i'm getting closer to baseline
but all i feel is a void, a hazey nothing, no clarity either, no lucidity
not that my mind was working much better in an overmedicated whirl of concentric cycles
but maybe a little better, at least for functioning as a decadent wastrel, that was not an aspiration, but it was inspiring while sufficiently wired - a coffee-cream combo sort of thing

and what can i say about family? i should say something - something nice to start off with, some buttered bread for a compliment sandwich - cause there's so many things i could say - but i don't want to say anything

2011-06-26T00:06:00.002-02:30

just frills

2011-06-24T16:40:00.001-02:30

more to come

essence-less

2011-06-20T21:36:00.003-02:30

don't think i can get more succinct than the title - so why not quit now? burrow a den?

i'm recalling dashing cliffs, a rocky inlet, Maddox Cove - i walked a beaten path through dogberry shrubs with briar - i love it when she shudders, makes me want to hug her as tight as i can, it's adorable, not beyond my control - outside of it, yes, but receptive - i took a long pause to see if i could see the end of the cave, but i couldn't, just ocean rushing in, deeper and deeper, then passing out of view --- on a later day, i fantasized about living in a cave, my cave, like gollum - it wasn't romantic, but it was a fantasy - after a minute it hit me - how gloomy it would be when the novelty wore off: i wouldn't enjoy the stoicism of owning the wetness like a home - a cozy cave, how cagey of me

you're not guilty - don't worry
by association
bye association

it's not ink - spring reverb in fetal summer, a glacial mutant, blind, for that reason - the one that fell off the truck, that got snatched, that turned into an heirloom in a century and a half, collected dust behind the siding of a self-aware house for decades

there's masterpieces left, under display cases in the museum of hypothesis - tomorrow's mills and processing facilities - oh, where is process? process me, will you? i'll get used to the smell, it only takes six weeks - it may be largely sarcastic, but it's that sweet oil of sincerity that's the point! it's there, floating in little rainbow swirls in out of the way swampools under the canopy of cobalt foliage in the shadows of the city of ought sixteen

yes, essence-less, now we're getting it! we're getting to the root of it; synesthetic break-neck hit the deck calisthenics! no, not really, just wanted to say that

2011-06-15T22:44:00.000-02:30

there's no god of dabblers
no have your cake and eat it too state of grace
nothing in the middle of the road but dead armadillos
and was there anything else i was gonna say? not here, nah

fuck it always on the tip of my tongue
nothing on the tip of my tongue but taste buds and fuck it
fuck it, just words, in poor taste
rarely backed by action
fuck it might be said, but it won't be fucked
it'll act on impulse, despite the executive decision
to fuck it, if not all, at least this particular fucking dead end

but there's never-ending stories in zeno paradox corners
and regressing floorboards, dust families in dust fables
in crack ecologies

update: general error
avg says, like it would
general failure reading disks
general failure, captain obvious, major semantic antic adjunct to second leitmotif
now that's a gold leaf inlay i can get with, maybe melt down for some credits
for BMW showroom chrome

sounds good

2011-06-11T00:41:00.000-02:30

You'd best believe we gonna be mixing it up with somebody... or some thing... Or, cut to the chase. Yes, fuzzy-head friend, I know, I'd do it too, I'd trade every hair left for a right word. The problem is the venue, gotta code your way to an escape, for what? This Bastille sideshow? Hell no, don't go, wallow, till the apocalypse finds you, assuming it'll ever make it to this crevasse - crease? Carcinogenic gas will suffice, six thousand sided dice, pass the time, your time, whoever cares to drop by. Wish you could make trades, a friendly shadow for these dime a dozen sallow faces in high-def.

It sounds good, but it's empty, by which I mean simply stymied. I mean that simply, it's a simple matter of meaning. A full complement of trazadone might pass through the sky, missing both dream-eaters and semioticians on speed - but I'll know there's a difference between those other ego-trips on the couch, and those scrap metal epics under the bedcovers - what that signifies, i will pose as an unanswerable question in the margins of a pop rock anthem

2011-05-25T17:49:00.001-02:30

the purpose ofsaving money is so you can waste it – you get the long-term satisfaction of beingsmart and prepared and slow & steady, and on the good purposeful path – andthen you get the carefree satisfaction of burning it all in a weekend – win-win

fuck the fucking pixies

2011-05-23T20:29:00.002-02:30

they're not that cool

just wanted to say that

placeholder

2011-05-22T21:27:00.001-02:30

[oh, how there needs to be some placeholders - some, not one, but several placemats under plates piled with filler, garnished with cool arugula banter, distractingly flavorful, cause that's where the flag people are waving me in

so here, cause i can hide the frustratingly flat nature of this plateau with sculptures of ice and gum, squeeze my stress into a squishy blob, put things up around me, hide the horizons choked with electromagnetic noise, they flicker but never change substantively, there's still a feeling lying under everything, eternal sleep, not death, but not life

manyana caffyana hadn't done that balls-out balls-deep shuffle in a while, don't know when it'll be gotten to again, or if that's even possible today or tomorrow - castaneda's leading me on, or so i thought a minute ago - not enough whitley streiboids per capita here in the desert to avoid talking to myself, but that chatty castanet almost sounds like somebody, i'll go with that

i'll keep the severe photo up on my wall, and maybe it's not handsome, maybe not my best pose, but it tells more truth than the good photographer captured]

the human spirit, etc.

2011-05-09T00:17:00.000-02:30

i was meant for greed
coulda been a greedy contender
the greediest
i coulda been so good at being rich and nothing else
i remember the money games that were like spontaneous training
work is play, tofuti break today!

If I don't do it, somebody else will.
So let them. Let them get the credit. Let them get laid. Let them be the horny holy prophet.
We're all capable of expressing genius and power...
I'll wave my arms in an inclusive manner as I listen to the ring of spring reverb
We've all been deputized to do this or that, but changes could be made, internally.

What is my purpose?

2011-04-26T18:18:00.025-02:30

What is my purpose in life? At least, at this stage in my life? I need to figure this out, because I feel so lost.

My purpose is... to package savoury. It's a job, jobs are good, they give people purpose. They give people income. I can get lots of hours, and steady pay. It's a recipe for insanity, but it's better than other jobs I've had. My co-workers are pleasant, in spite of, or because of their possibly-dangerous levels of blood-savoury content. We have savoury in our blood, literally, it's so dusty. My eyes are heavy, I just got off work.

It's no dream job, and yes, I'm a cog, but Cogswell isn't all that bad in the live action version, though he does have a mustache like in the cartoon. Wait, wasn't that Mr. Spacely who had the mustache? Anyway, when he drops by, it's not a drag. A purpose, not the purpose, could be found in packaging savoury. Running out the clock. Running on auto-pilot to keep the hands busy because it isn't break time yet, but break time is coming, Timmie's time, candy junk smoke cards time, am radio game-show time. Purpose in making enough money to live, if not independently, at least more than I have been thus far.

My purpose is to stop backsliding into the indulgences of protracted adolescence and ugly ego-trips. I've done those juvenile delinquencies to death, but it's been so wrapped up in this image of The Artist as Rebel, or something, that I still worry about becoming a goody-goody. It's time to leave the carnival funhouse mirrors. But I still get to look back and laugh every so often. And even take it seriously too, like a libran on tramadol.

It would be purposeful to accept that the "party like a rock-star" days are over for me. There's just no point in continuing to try and recapture unrepeatable, context-bound past glories. Until I find a new way to party, or to be a rock-star, I can deal with my nostalgia for the lifestyle I grazed by using the notes, song scraps, memories, and experience I accumulated over those quasi rock-star nights and days, for creative endeavors. For fuck sake, that's what I've been meaning to do since I started aping the rock-stars in the first place. But the means became an end. Many ends.

My purpose is to stay ahead of my opponent, the part of myself that's always dragging us down (slow anesthetized suicide, anyone?) in our neck-and-neck race - just in time for turning thirty, which is the new twenty, thus, adulthood, or something. Thirty! Fuck, that still gives me the creeps, that that's happening this year. The stupid waves are at record amplitude. I'm going through the wash, but I don't feel clean. I feel nauseous and out of place - a bit like Bingo the Clowno, except he did have a place in the circus, upon accepting his role. I don't have that luxury. But I do have a salvation army bed to fall back on, if things get too hairy. I haven't yet burned the bridge to the Wiseman Center. I'll even eat the Newfoundland fish brew they serve there sometimes - if I have to, in order to be polite, and take nourishment, literally.

Purpose could be had in quitting caffeine and re-growing the capacity to feel actual energy again. It's like I'm on pharmaceutical-grade proletarian speed all day. I substituted the high-powered club-uppers for a shitty drug that got its hooks in me. It burns out my brain just the same - it's just less noticeable, that's all. But I'm clueing in. It might be nice to digest normally, and sleep and wake normally, and have more than a two hour time window to get anything done. While I'm at that, I could quit the trazadone, and learn to sleep naturally again, and allow my dreams to flow naturally again, and be something approaching recharged in the morning. Staying of the cigarettes goes without saying.

This lethargy problem is the bane of my existence. I never tire of saying that, anyway. It would be purpose enough to solve that problem. Whole chapters would follow from that, novels even, spin-off prequels, motion picture adaptations! Easier said than done. I don't know what the root of the lethargy problem is. Could be so many fucking things. That's why I'm always on about drugs, if not on drugs. Well that's reason number fifty-nine. Maybe it's parasites. Maybe it's what everybody feels when they get on the wrong side of their twenties but most people don't complain about it as much as I do. Maybe I can't solve the lethargy problem and I just gotta live with it. That suuuuuure wooooooould suck. But even if that's what has to pass, I could at least avoid using drugs as a quick and stupid way of feeling alive again. I could stabilize. It would take time, and more patience than I currently have - a lot more. But purpose would flower from just that state, the state of stabilization, manifold function like a marigold, unfurling. Crazier things have happened - not to me, but they've happened, I figure.

I could take purpose in keeping a clean head, if I could cultivate just a little more discipline. I'm not talking monastic shit, just more willpower than I've got now, the little that's been whittled to a sliver since addiction. With a clean head, I could work on my spirit - not with brute force, but a light touch - addition by subtraction, Japanese gardening. But I shouldn't drive myself crazy trying to live up to my fussy detail-obsessed standards concerning things that don't matter much really. They results in manic depressive cycles - no harmony or equilibrium.

Perhaps most importantly... I could continue weening myself off the zoloft, until I get to zero, and stay at that baseline, that I haven't known in so many years - and see what it's like. Reconnect with the full weight of my emotions. Something like that really happens after quitting anti-depressants, I hear.

Purpose could be had in going about my day-to-day life with sufficient satiating focus on the here and now - and not worrying about a goddamn career or a degree, or where the start of my path to martyrdom or artistic maverick is. I don't know what the hell to study or do with my life, what my vocation is, what I'm suited for, if anything - and what's the point in banging my head against a wall trying to solve that koan?

Purpose could be had in playing one or two more shows with "In The Flesh", polishing those cover tunes, then quitting the band to focus on my own stuff. There's also.... sigh.... the For The Love of Learning collaborative album project, tentatively titled "The Drop Ins", that I started last February, since abandoned. It's more than worthwhile, for so many reasons. I want to finish that. But in the purpose-driven future, I shouldn't take these draining logistical nightmares for art projects. Rather, I should be true to my own artistic drive, and follow my creative bliss. It's still in there somewhere, I feel, but my compass doesn't work too well here. There's so much noise. Ringing in my ears, campaign signs on the streets in clusters.

My purpose is in keyboard improvisation technique. To be a one man Keith Jarrett, that would do. I mean, the attempt is purposeful, obviously the goal is absurd. Improvisation is where my damn soul is, I'm just realizing that! Maybe if I was in Nellie-town with Malik and one of his many fine bass-playing colleagues, my purpose would be in doing the power trio thing we talked about, but here and now, it's improv, and not for an audience! It's my improvs, that's exactly what I should be throwing myself into, if I had to pick one thing - and maybe I fucking well should pick one thing, cause I'm spread thin and stagnant, at least to the behaviorists. My mind is smoldering, but the fuel to set it blazing is buried under some uncooperative brainlobe. Maybe in the next life chapter I could incorporate an audience. I want to get away from ego trips. Okay, and into solipsism, but that's not quite the same I don't think.

My purpose is to gradually improve myself. Let's be realistic. Run with Briar, around town, around the lake, down the jogging paths - and see if it's really true that there's such a thing as going from this flimsy body I'm stuck in, to something noticeably fitter. Watch her when she starts a new painting session and learn the basics. Conquer my fear of the canvas and give in to my latent fascination with oils.

Purpose could be had in eating better - and allowing that to be a new paradigm. Cooking with Briar. It's amazing what I enjoy, that I would never think of myself. I could see there being a chemical spiritual interface there. I already have an inkling about how to eat a peach and not merely consume it. Zen may not be purposeful, but it could serve, for me. There are shadows of forests, but it's hard to make sense of it.

My purpose is to love my woman. Yes, I feel possessive these days. Not like I own her, but like there's a bond. I don't know if that's that the done thing, to blog about this sort of thing. But just because I was sentimental once, on a blog, about a relationship that failed, well, that doesn't mean I ought to censor myself forever after, does it? I'd refer you to The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - you know, that sort of thing. Things rarely feel worth blogging about. Nonsense is usually the best subject matter, it takes a rare bit of sense to attract words from me, in sentence case, no less. I could become someone she could lean on, one day, when she would trust me and herself enough to fall like that, into my arms.

My purpose is to love my family. And let them know that in ways less run of the mill than my standard repertoire.

My purpose is to love my program family. Not take them for granted or forget how many times I've been welcomed back into the rooms. We could go on hikes again, that's the best way to break the ice with them, things were gooey last summer but they froze a bit this winter. Purpose could easily be in not letting anything drive me to drink again - but rather to reach out - even pick up the fifty pound cellphone.

My purpose is to love this land, as an adopted home, for now - especially over the coming spring and summer. Enjoy the days.

My purpose is to love my friends back west. Write them more often, pick up the phone occasionally with the faith that the dread I feel when dialing someone I haven't talked to in forever will, before long, fade to laughter and informative Kootenay trivia. Use Skype for god's sake. Maybe get a webcam.

This is my purpose now, and I need to write this to feel right, cause I'm lost and exhausted and a little messed up. But there could be purpose in a few things, hypothetically speaking.

let the world turn without you tonight

2011-04-25T23:48:00.002-02:30

team america pangs, for the record

feeling off

2011-04-25T00:33:00.001-02:30

feeling off in her company is better than on with me
it's plenty to work with

all i really have to worry about for tomorrow is bus fare
that's all i told myself i have to worry about, when considering the list of things to do that rarely get done

something's off with me, chemical, emotional, spiritual, all that, y'all
i can't even be pithy or poetic, can't externalize soul, can't feel it inside
i can sort of draw hydro-electric whale-bone channels that may be good for something
on everybody-gets-a-trophy day

that's a symptom of what's off, that i can't express
it's a blockage, i feel like i need to snap, maybe that could be done
with feng-shui and synergy

nothing is working quite right, even if i got the right idea
do the next right thing, right? even if the feeling don't come with it
this is how the writing is coming out, even though this pseudo-poetic style is pointless, but it's where my patterns have landed, in this culvert, let's call it, sure, why not, question mark - superfluous park bench squatter's right - actually
nothing as simple or sophisticated as that - you can tell, it's fallen to tired eyes
i need a kneaded gum eraser - to turn the background into a figurine, to make the figurine a fissure in the graphite glare and park myself there and justify
tired eyes self-justify, nothing works, but i'll work tomorrow
my feelings feel well enough to take the night off
off in her company is better than on with me

it's gone beyond conventional scale
graduated from gratitude

humil

2011-04-24T00:46:00.001-02:30

break up homes, bury bones
it's all very meaningful - if only minimally symbolic

dream girl 227.290
so named because she appeared in a dream
at such a location, in the chronological succession
{with a linear time bias}
of demarcated cerebral forms and sawfigures and such

oh i forgot what i was gonna say
except it's so feelingful
if not meaningful:
a conjunction of images and gnosis
the tiny tip of the information iceberg trans-codable to this realm
sluice from the sunken colony
deep in the turquoise mines of my dreams

i'd say i'm blessed, but i don't know who blessed me
i don't know what blessed me, i think i'm still hallucinating
in alpha waves of cognitive superstition
i don't know what cursed me, i don't like the idea of a deity buddy
that's just not me, you know? and i know that's the point
don't wanna think about it, that thinkin thing

2011-04-18T19:08:00.004-02:30

at last, SPRING has come to this miserable windswept peninsula! (i'm not slagging the whole island, you see)... just thought i'd share the thought, since it's so original

dry ablation

2011-04-12T00:52:00.000-02:30

now what?

revolution's happening on some other bread slice

evolution's acting on some other scale

my tongue is bleeding and it tastes like blood

desires are dry ablations

keats is scattered bones in a plane crash in country C

an anonymous island jungle

where it would be poetic to be

nothing works

when you're living in a bukowski book

i live a little life

on a big island

so much space

carpeted ground

exposed rock, fierce cliffs, raging surf

and where are the delusions? i miss those things

can't see the ones i'm in

people ask me if i'm writing anything

i don't know what the hell to tell anybody

something's missing, a chicken and an egg in country kitchen

and a hen and a rooster and a conjunction preposition

pre-supposed to wake you up in the morning

i'm not blind

2011-04-09T01:29:00.000-02:30

i see that she's a gift

orthographic

2011-04-08T21:49:00.000-02:30

"it's never good to isolate"
is the kind of thing you expect to hear
and often do

maybe it is good to isolate sometimes
maybe it's good for me, anyway
maybe it's not bad, at least
maybe it doesn't matter

what if i promise it's not meant as a fuck you to you, or society, or anything?
then is it alright? then do i come by it honestly?
what if i promise it's a finite isolation?
don't believe i'm clairvoyant, but i'd bet on that
if i said it was infinite, that'd be less credible than a 14-day weather forecast

it does seem atmospheric, anyway, it does, yeah, it features
earthlike seasons, titaneous gas, sysiphean contra-indicative purpose
and electric heat
it's like rain, mate, it'll pass
although here, it's the rule, not the exception
except when it's freezing
which is the exception not the rule according to the oceanography institute's latest climatalogical study
we should be happy, it's a harbinger of a slower apocalypse, a beverage best served chilled

2011-04-06T01:47:00.001-02:30

It has become entirely plausible

synthetic peace

2011-04-05T22:03:00.000-02:30

life's a bitch, but she's got a soft spot
a light touch on the death-bed, let's say
through this tube, it reads as peace to me

lame lion or tamed lion?

2011-04-05T03:10:00.000-02:30

which is better? i'd go with the latter, most likely
...
things ain't all that tame, but i was that lame
with pockets and drawers full of crutches and canes
now i'm running, like jim fix, not quite like jimmy connors
not chasing tennis balls
not dying of a coronary
in lieu of that, clefting bangs in twain, leaving a wane
mane strain, the silent killer, the lion de-fanger
a parasite, attacks on a jungian level
you'll step in front of a bus, so, therefore...

i'll make an executive decision and shave it off, no wait
i'll wait until i'm rejected for the job, THEN shave it off
as a big bald fuck you, like as if i would ever do anything for THEM, no
i'm incidental to that, but until then
all this rockin hair and me in a rocking chair
retired... dio, time to go, he's such a gentleman, they say

these are the collection of ailments, something's always wrong...
it'll be a golden age in retrospect, gilded powerslave cap
as they mostly are, if preserved in cerebro-spinal fluid at appropriate temperature
some memories evaporated through the ear canals and ocular interface
some sweated through pores

Me Fans Are Scheepid Piglets

2011-03-18T02:16:00.000-02:30

One Two Three Fourraye am an antique wrist!
and i am a novelist!
oh don't worry, i'll remember that song
i'll file it away for future reference
future reference paves slumberland freeway
four bald manservants stand at the corners of my bed
stop-sign, ain't your rules a fucking game?

was this worth getting out of bed for?
never end a friendship with a preposition
you've changed man
it used to be about the sex and drugs!
what's this music shit?
was it worth getting out of bed for?
i remember when you would take a sleeping pill at midnight
and blog till 3 in the morning anyway
what happened?
now it's an event, getting out of bed
and for what? this non-ironic happenstance?

slag off! o slag off!
water water everywhere yet not one drop to drink
sha-bang! there's plenty more purple flasks where that came from
o kinetic energy, o graphic calisethenics of caligula-like overkill
o phenotype pheromone hairspray from the photogenic genome
yo gnomish hearsay, boy, where's my late boy, tell murphy i said
slag off!
i'm drinking purple-flask juice to forget about the excess saliva
it could be this, or it could be that, i could be too thin, or i could be too fat
it could be the traz, it could be the serts, or it could be
i'm thinking when i could be drinking, fuck the thoughts, time to bask
in the purple flask

austere food and lots of it

2011-03-15T23:34:00.000-02:30

no howl, no foul
or yes foul, no fair, scratch that
win this, tomorrow's agenda
write this
type set yes please
laundry ball
i can unsee a round slab of garlic fingers
but i can't uneat said slab
won't regurgitate
will digest as fate, for good or ill
this is what i call forward motion through linear time

i hate music

2011-02-24T14:57:00.000-03:30

i used to love it, now i hate it

useless, self-indulgent bullshit

sandalwood dreams, troll the zen bridge

i'm sick of not measuring up - when i think i did something great, outside opinion is that it's crap - when other people say i did something great, my opinion is that they're full of shit - never the twain shall meet

i'm sick of trying to be a producer - nobody asked or suggested that i do it, i took on this great task myself, thinking it would not feel like a task, but a labour of love - it was for a while, but now it's become a labour of raping myself in the ass

no, you didn't ask me to take this on, i can't cast blame outside my fevered ego, but all i can say at this point is, go hire rick rubin if you want it done right - i don't know what i'm doing, i'm not up to the task, i'm sick of treating it like it's important and worthwhile, and worth pulling all nighters for - it's devastating to get that creative rush, and work all night on something, and find that i'm no further ahead when i land back on the ground - having to re-do, re-do, it's never good enough - and why would it be? what can i expect, it's pathetic, this fragility of mine, my inability to deal with reality - this RPM thing, maybe i'll release it later, when i've got some drive back, if that ever happens - i don't want to work with other people anymore, and try to read their minds - i'm totally burned out, i don't even want to work on music anymore, fuck music

the worst part is how people try to be nice, but i see the effort involved, the strain... i got no one to be angry at except myself, and i'm not meaning to separate my self from people - we do this for our own benefit, avoid drama at any cost - i know this, i hate drama - i know when people are bullshitting me, you can't bullshit a bullshitter - and jesus, what do i want, a fucking ticker tape parade? i guess that when i devote myself to a project like this with religious intensity, there develops a craving for an appropriate level of validation - i try not to make assumptions, but it's also hard not to assume that if there was anything like a shared appreciation for my work, i would know - and i know how moronic i'm being letting this letdown feeling run rampant - at times like these i WISH i was a cold autistic calculator bound to my own self-generated holodeck program like people think i am, then i wouldn't have to feel like such an idiot spinning around in this loop

i'm on the verge of hitting the "burning desire" button, but, nah, i don't think so - i don't want to - i dread what would happen - stranger danger - i don't want a bunch of anonymous life-coaches showing up on my digital doorstep - maybe i just won't use, i don't have to use over this, and i don't want to - i'll just be miserable... so i didn't get my validation from the universe like i said i needed "or else" - i got confirmation of my mediocrity instead - of course that would happen - it's supposed to be a lesson i guess - fucking lessons, fuck you and your opportunities, i'm going to exercise free won't-power and opt out, my hand is not out, i'm too lethargic to learn - i feel like leaning on fatalism and growling FUCK IT! but i don't feel like running out for drugs, the idea is horrific, the way it would compound this negativity... i'm thinking about it constantly, but i can't imagine getting any relief from it, even in the early stages, i wouldn't enjoy it, at most i would reach a delirium with a heavy solvent stink before the grinding comedown

pit boss

2011-02-23T17:55:00.000-03:30

one is in the fate groove, one is in the sawtooth, one is in a wagon rut, applying leverage to send selective bloggers flying, as a scheme to hedge bets, but the application was filed in triplicate centuries before it was a gleam in one's eye - throwing your hands in the air doesn't mean you don't care, just that it's impossible to know what to do, and even if you did, it would require re-aligning the poles, and mackin hos, and finding good cheer in hardy barley which ain't in the cards as far as i can see

between the serts and the trazzies and the whatnots, i think something may be wrong with me, physically for sure, and therefore by extension, mentally - these symptoms keep adding up, to what i don't know, i'll call it a slagheap, a droolslathered muckscape, if this is health then the ideal isn't worth a dime - i hope it's a disease of some kind and not my right mind, the kind that tricks me into thinking there was never any healthy living, a new-age devil to play the villain in that fairy story - well smurf villages are becoming real, briar showed me, maybe i can pin my problems on gargamel, an easy target

either way i'm against myself - the cycle of self-flagellation - the bio-feedback makes everything worse, useless information, enough gnosis for a bird's eye view of the nursery, ages since demolition, nothing to see here but a union stymied mob connected crew on another no-show job, no evidence or even inkling of anything other than the loop - it's enough for a life-time, i guess, i didn't ask to not be born, so, forty years of this and it'll be a fait acompli, the self-contained cycle, from here it has a horizon underground, but it's been a while since any sort of purge, what doesn't kill it, me, one, you, her, them, makes the strength weaker, the dark and drowny logic of its spiral, so hypnotic that i'm still in the trance: it all becomes clear when i say that i'm a machine for producing phlegm - and it doesn't explain the allure of those magic faders on my fingers, the worst drug in the world that's more immediately addictive than anything ever, the amen corner chorus for acapela floor splatter

some people think it's a robot - maybe a turing machine, so they'll call it an honorary soul - but if it acts like a robot, those analog folk can't be blamed for thinking along those lines, can they? if it don't throw no big flashy empathy party, how can it be thought to be empathic? they'd need an almost saintly level of empathy to extrapolate that ability to the calculator

i think if i just plunge that cast-metal shovelhead down into the coalpile again the delightful kaJUNK of that crunchy gravelly black stuff aflyin into the furnace will make everything burn bright for another interval, or at the very least, the experience will allow me to get away with that assumption for a temporal period to be determined at a later date... this train ain't headin that way, no, intelligence isn't even on the line, but that's what you get for hoppin on, boy... shoulda read the tag, didn't it say something about, something? boxcar young adult told me that, you know? yeah, you know him, he's got that cheek-length head of hair you thought was the gold standard of cool when you were ten - yeah, you know what i'm referencing, don't be denyin

what's all up with you anyway? you just angry cause you don't got a hobo name? okay, i give you one - ima gonna call you: "MC disc jockey" - yeah, hehe, that's the one - you MCDJ - no, i like MC disc jockey better - whadayou think boxcar douchebag beard? yeah, suit him, don't it? no, you can't be "boxcar transient", we got too many boxcars in this boxcar - i get confused m'self sometime - i get confused bout a lotta things - like am i black, or white, or pirate? whada you think boxcar douchebag beard? nah, i ain't no puerto rican, that's fo sho, you be trippin again - i remember my first twistareefer

Retinal Grain

2011-02-12T01:53:00.002-03:30

yes, i've finished a new song tonight...
Mike Hodsall on guitar
Janet Smith on violin

listen

desperate cause i have no inner strength
deprivation, in a hibernation
bed bugs help me to hallucinate
same old nothing, dead weight

you ask me why i'm so quiet
you ask me why i'm so quiet
it's not my place to speak to you
i speak only when spoken to
i speak only when spoken to

i don't hate them, i just look that way
i love them too much, i was made that way
it's not the grimace of misanthropy
it's precognition, it's my destiny
don't wanna be who i'm supposed to be

i'm sorry i'm so sick
i'm sorry i'm apologizing unneccessarily
i'm getting used to vomiting
it doesn't purge anything
except the day's overdose

desperate cause i have no inner strength
mercy fuck granted 2028
it's a date, it's fate
made a good enough impression for a second to cash in
post apocalypse

no reason to stay awake
no reason to stay awake
bedbugs bedbugs

i'm sorry i'm so ill
a desperate invalid
you wear designer clothes
i take designer drugs

i'm sorry i'm so ill
a desperate invalid
i can't take care of you
you won't take care of me

i wish i could take care of you
i would i could be the one
i wish i could take care of you
what do you do with the drunken sailor?
too bad for me you got someone

reptilian riddle
in a limousine tryptamine
reptilian riddle
in a limousine tryptamine
don't ask me what it means

bless one

2011-01-27T23:20:00.000-03:30

i guess one doessound like that sometimes ~ when the fog clears, there's still the meds andamino acids intermingling - leaning on the rusty wall, chips of oxidized tinflaking down my shirt collar

there's beenmoments of bliss, a kind of joy that is natural and pure, so clear, likeglacial streams, that doesn't smack of this or that, that doesn't need to becalled this or that - so, there's that - there's things to be grateful for -there's the fact that i'm really doing it this time, doing the next rightthing, and i could keep doing that

then there's thisfact, that there are trials coming that are beyond my imagining right now, thatwill really test me, and my willingness, and my strength - cause i'm in theglow of fresh recovery – and on top of that, as lady luck would have it,infatuation with a girl, but maybe a cool infatuation, like a cool breeze, andmaybe there's glades of love beyond the hills, hazy on the horizon, lovelythings, that are always mirages aren’t they? or whatever that is, love andmirage and the baby carriage, and there's categories - maybe one doesn't haveto say it, maybe me and her, we don't have to create roles, or even be aware ofthem, we could de-telescope to a pre-natal garden ~ when one is green, one isgrowing, when one is ripe, one starts rotting -~- and what of it? does thatdevalue the youth, or re-value its rare slice of the cycle?

i know i can rideout the storms, get through the moments that test me - there is only thismoment? that never seems all that profound to me, it's not clicking - the feltpresence of experience is over-rated by sages - except when i'm in that kind oftight embrace with her that i know i've never had with anyone else, there'sglades of unsaved waves, and amazing things on the horizon, maybe the labyrinthscould dissolve - maybe tonight’s irritability is a blessing, it certainly couldbe

and besides that,now i get to sleep - been working overtime on waking life, exceeded my quota,now i get to sleep and hopefully not sweat, it's not too late to trend in adesired direction, but that's up to the good and orderly, which has often beenan insoluble problem for me, best not to get involved with that brand oftrigonometry

win it ba ck again

2011-01-10T22:55:00.000-03:30

"win it ba ck again" the sign said
with a gap between the 'ba' and the 'ck' stick-on letters
it looked like some gang of pro-bono hobos
gung-ho for the lottery industry
had vandalized a gas station for the purpose
of pimping gambling, just that
no particular casino or scratch and win
win it ba ck again
sounded so desperate as a proselytization
some amateur solicitation for dreaming through gaming

win what back?
the soul you lost in the '80s?
the crack you vaporized?
"you're a winner just for playing"
the sign said to me, "and not hating the game"
really, you, you win hope, double-plus good
right here on freshwater road, just for hearing the message, yo
double or nothing
whatever you lost, and we're sure it's a lot
you can win it back in equal measure
you can, yes, you, you can be a fat cat
like wall street wants, that's what wall street wants
fat cats, some conditions may apply

painful reminders

2011-01-10T13:48:00.000-03:30

artistic expression
reminds me of ego
"look at this thing i made, aren't i awesome?"

ego makes me do things for instant gratification
reminds me of drugs
"look at this drug i took, aren't i awesome?"

drugs remind me of hangovers
"look at this pain i've caused, aren't i the scum of the earth?"

that's why it's hard to do anything creative when i'm down like that
it's painful
maybe i should play bach, instead of trying to improvise
but that takes work, playing bach, requires a lot of memory
i did manage to get a few good feelings while improvising
when i'm this depressed, i get more expressive than practically ever
even though it's hard to play even a note, it's the tragic feeling
of nothing having any value, nothing i do being of any use
no light at the end of the tunnel, no more chances
but i put it all into the music, that feeling sometimes
i guess it helped, a little, just now
as does writing, a little
don't want to lie down, i haven't earned it yet, haven't lived enough normal life
for a day yet

why do i get pissed off

2011-01-06T16:57:00.001-03:30

at people who play music
that i don't like

when i actually even like it

it's MY music - you're not allowed to like it!
territorial pissings

i'm not like them

2011-01-06T11:37:00.001-03:30

but i can pretend

2011-01-01T14:00:00.001-03:30

lucky rocketship underwear aren't gonna work

2010-12-31T12:20:00.000-03:30

i look desperately forward to the time that they will - i remember times when they have, but no date has been set, it's so indefinite

2+2=5=god is my summary of kirkegaard's spiritual outlook
you must believe in spite of rationality to get near the place that god exists
that's sort of how cyril thinks too, i think, or feels
he says something like: if there was no necessity for faith
there would be no power or point to god
that makes sense to me, but it also seems coldly utilitarian, self-serving
it's paradoxical, kirkegaard would agree

i can neither feel or think to any purpose these days
poisoned in mind and body
and certainly soul, wherever that is
this is a bad place to be
but there could be chasms even below that
maybe that knowledge is keeping me alive
or the thought of lucky rocketship underwear being useful
like in some barely remembered happy enough time

trying to get healthy
been coughing for so long
i threw my smokes in the garbage
which i've done many times
i thought, let's see how i feel when i get my next urge to smoke
i'll look down at the garbage and think about digging them out
if i think long enough, i'll decide not to
anyway, i thought to force some future thought
maybe i won't take that shortcut to thinking i normally do

upon reflection, i realized i also had to tear them up
because if there was the convenience of pre-rolled tailors lying there
i would probably dig them out

existential xmas

2010-12-25T10:55:00.001-03:30

a sort of camusian "why not?"
sure, why not, it'll do

2010-12-23T23:16:00.000-03:30

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio cumque nihil impedit quo minus id quod maxime placeat facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. Temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. Itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat.

that's why pencils have erasers

2010-12-15T14:36:00.000-03:30

rubber pretense - but it's a cleansing feel, to wash away the words that shouldn't have been said - light hurts, but it's been worse - might be a resolution, no damnit, it will be a resolution, i resolve, even jumping the gun on the new year - well, new years eve itself doesn't count - or maybe it will - it's just another brick in the wall, all in all, rubber pretense - i need an accountant to add up all the damage i've caused, maybe then i'll get the picture

the terrible prospect of struldbrugian necessity

2010-12-10T08:20:00.000-03:30

the struldbrugs are immortal beings, or near immortal, as iremember – they live on an island once visited by gulliver – they’re a race"cursed" with immortality, living long past any sensible limit, growingmore and more decrepit in both mind and body, wishing for their misery to end -i guess it was swift's way of, stating, something

those are the shitty years, denis leary said – but anythingwould be preferable to death, wouldn't it? therin lies the reactionary posture,the necessity for believing in the void

but you wouldn't attempt to string out a beethoven symphonyas long as possible would you? water it down to nothing to make it last as longas possible? you wouldn't pad it with mediocre beethoven for longevity, you'dbe happy to have heard a great symphony, and accept that it was over - it wasas long as it needed to be, right? a well written symphony, not a note too manyor too few

but, what if you were never ever ever going to hear anymusic again, for eternity? then might you string out medicore beethoven? that'sthe more crucial question, in this context

and plus, most of our lives aren't beethoven symphonies,some of them are too full of crap, or cut short abruptly, as least that's howit seems to me - so why not rage against the dying of the light?

"and accept that it was over..." (and go home) -well, when you extend the metaphor like that it doesn't sound so bad - what ishome? where i was before i was born? a realm of spirit? but that's manichean,right?

what i mean by the title is that the idea of this beingnecessary, for intellectual logic, or emotional logic, or whatever... is sort of dreadful, aweful, uh, et cetera...nevermand

safe house

2010-11-28T09:27:00.000-03:30

dark house, lonely house, safe house, with a hidden door, not well-hidden
and one window - and a bed

safe house with a lego replica - some cleaning to be done, but 24 hours to do it
some more ill-gotten rest in the safe house, unconscious fingers might accidentally
turn down the guilt knob at some point

short-lived activities in the safe house, waiting for time to stretch again
or contract - not under contract - it's the off season

convalescence in lausane

2010-11-25T12:04:00.000-03:30

i'm a lazy mexican - you can't see me
i'm not even life-like, i'm a cheap knockoff, a statuette
an inanimate object, so you can't see me
if you thought that was a human being, you're hallucinating
run along, go about your day

i'm impenetrable - there's nothing to worry about
i'm immortal, probably, or thereabouts, every day's a holiday
please ignore me today, i need to rest
rejuvenation, i'm trying to be all things to all people
but it makes me tired, to do that

good morning world!

2010-11-24T18:41:00.000-03:30

or actually, forget i said anything, just leave me alone

President of Vice

2010-11-23T16:15:00.000-03:30

muddled, so sa so mu-muddled - all i can think to do is write and write, even though writing feels bad and muddled as well - so often it's exasperation and desperation that move me to write - maybe it'll feel better later, maybe it'll seem worthwhile - material and words are dark magic at the moment, a lot of trickery i don't understand or care to

but i get cool shivers here and there, those are nice - they're like the woodsprite matrix, those cool shivers - the fairy dust that exists nowhere except in this ultra-rare limited-edition cerebral cortex that i wear like a fashion statement - only in there - it's a neurocortical pathway in many dimensions - when the subject thinks of the woodsprite matrix, it shows up on brain scans the same way as optical information received through the retinas, only dimmer - like an imprint

i need nice things very badly now - people are nice, even mean people are nice in their own way - should i kiss the viper's fang? material isn't so nice, but it could be kind of nice with some spice - it's something tangible anyway, when living in my head is so torturous

i've got a killer idea for a drawing though, i want to follow it through - it's what i need at home, a window into another world

can't stand some of these conversations i hear around me - such immense possibility, to get involved with people, and yet, the frustrating implausibility of it - i can't get in there, i won't bother - i just want to lie down, i've done my time - this computer is so slow - the duck is dead - the party's gettin' low rent

Zero -~-Crosser, or, everyone is better

2010-11-23T15:32:00.000-03:30

the heart strings can resonate loudly if i let them... there they go...

i wish i could draw you - that would seem worthwhile, if i had the ability - once upon a time, you let me into your life - i can hardly believe it in retrospect, how did that happen? me of all people - i remember how it felt for a while - like being in heaven - presumably - and that feeling faded and i got complacent in the relationship, as most people do, but it still felt pretty pretty good - it would have worked for me - oh well - i sold my share for credit default swaps, or something, i dunno - this economy confuses me - justin said it makes sense for a while, then the econ textbooks come out of the blue with all this abstract strangitude and you're screwed

there ain't no devil, that's just god when he's drunk - apparently we're not nutty bunnies after all, we're just college guys

fyi, i attempted suicide - not really, but it makes a good story
the kind you can't share with certain people
but strangers, sure, giddeyup!

i'm only as sick as my secrets, someone told me
so i spilled the secrets, but i still felt pretty sick
almost felt like i needed some new secrets to feel a bit better, so i did that
but i still felt sick

my tapeworm doesn't run me, but i run my tapeworm sometimes, for fun, presumably - a fun run, is the idea, i exercise my parasite - but it don't come to no good

clench, relax, clench, relax... clench
cardiovascular masturbation
going up the elevator of perception today, the
eternal moment...

been a long long time since enlightenment - don't feel entitled to it anymore - but a past self could serve as well as a future self - for a role model - i was better then, like everybody - healthy, compared to now, in a lot of ways, although i wouldn't want to bring the naivete of those days to nowadays

i'm seeing nelson's front street in my mind's eye, even feeling nelson's front street in my mind's... whatever it is - our deepest fear is that we are all powerful beyond measure - all-powerful, or we're all powerful? what did nelson mandela mean? hmmm...

i drew a tower stretching into the sky from the perspective of an observer looking upwards, cause i can draw buildings much better than people - it felt alright - i might like to draw a good poster-sized version to put up on my empty walls - something that means something, or that i feel something from, an image - no pattern virtuosity, but a big bold statement of some kind, that's what i need - i also drew a person today, imagine that, who can be clearly seen to be lifting himself off the ground by his own bootstraps - he's actually levitating - i like that drawing - the ridiculousness of it - the impossibility - a cartoon paradox to express my dread and hopes and the confusion of it all

it's pretty okay to work here, when i don't want to yell SHUT THE FUCK UP! at people around me - that happens a lot, but otherwise, it's alright - maybe i need to vent somehow - like by doing this, for example - i got a bad attitude, sometimes - like i wrote this rant about the guy who walks around with earphones blasting pantera so loud that everyone can hear it - i wrote: fuck your music - it stinks of you - i'll gladly grant you ownership - wear it, advertise - be a buffoon - walk around, walk proud, look around to see if anyone is recognizing your coolness - rest assured, they are, how could they not, with music that cool? and it reflects your coolness for choosing it, like it's an identity - i remember when i was ten, i empathize

then i wrote: "presumption on all sides", to admit how presumptuous i was being about people's motivations and thoughts and such - i was sitting at a table with a bunch of people at the love of learning center - well-read people in dire straights, intelligent people - i couldn't presume any kind of superiority in anything, really - "everyone is better", i wrote - "but right now i've got no patience to listen to people who aren't addicts, or who say they're not, drug-a-logging about the crazy shit they used to do... byee..." i don't know how to spell that newfoundlandism, where they say a heavily-accented "boy" to finish every sentence

i drew a cloud bank regressing to the horizon behind the tower - reminded me of that drawing i did with a girl that i had a thing with years ago... and she wrote a song about it too, "my dragonfly" - so i wrote "no shrine" - i'm not building a shrine to anyone, though i do write about people from the past quite often, usually in codes

no, there's no crak on junk street and that's okay, it's a peaceful day, i've made peace with that, in my way, which is half-assed, but that's better than no ass - you know, i can't live with myself like this - i can't live like this with myself - there's a better place for me - i don't have to die first - there's a tower - writing these words is a first step

blues dues

2010-11-23T14:18:00.000-03:30

no reason to STAY AWAKE
stay awake

so, i stole one from the devil, did i?
no, i don't think so
i didn't steel anything
and the toque don't mean a thing - i don't have what you need
and you got nothing for me

vacuum, vacuum kiss, vacuum kiss
i flunked out of grade school
never went to trade school

desperate, cause i have no inner strength
deprivation... in a hibernation
bedbugs help me to hallucinate
same old nothin'
dead weight

affectation... affectation
i could sound more street if i cut the suffix
with baby laxative
the toque don't mean shit

are you still awake, girl?
you still look a girlish thirty
your face is so pretty
our eyes are open... our eyes are open...

oh friends, not these sad sounds
i'm just doing depression right, paying my dues to the blues
that's all, okay? i'll let, i'll let, it'll scab over

i want to go to the meeting tonight, but i'm not ready
but there's worse things than that, i remember there's a banquet for my soul
there's a free lunch there, and fellowship, i remember
i'll stay awake for that, cause i feel like just lately
things would follow me into sleep
but i have a place on blatch street that i've made my own
there's a kind of comfort there
and there's a place on bavidge for me too
with less toxicity, and family

and so, there's four hours left here
hard at work, or hardly working
and there's even fellowship in the toxic
i can plant a house, build a tree
it's not as much fun to be me
and it's not all that fun to watch me
dignity in letting go, letting
good orderly direction follow
no need to qualify, just
mellow spirituality
pre-mature gentleman, byee

affection - love is a power beyond me
even if it sounds like a trope
even if i can't say much about it
especially cause of that

i've let you go, yeah, i've let you go
what else can i do?
there's other people in the world
i might cross paths with one, one day
until then, i've got a room, in which i can
keep myself company, i've got my music
tailored playlists, soothing sounds
i make a science of comfort, to fill the void
i learn things about myself, even if it's a drop
in the chasm of ignorance and delusion

flitter

2010-11-23T12:58:00.001-03:30

avoiding the news... i can, at least, say that i'm no longer a news junkie - never was a participant, now no longer a spectator

snowpants are insulation and distraction

2010-11-12T21:44:00.001-03:30

Testing Blatch

sorry lynze, no chat bleeps in there cause i had the recording set on "line in" - kind of wish they'd got in the mix - anyway... first improv i've recorded in the new place - i have a tradition of giving the first one in a new house the title of the street it's on

2010-11-12T08:12:00.000-03:30

liar-eborts n

a

2010-11-11T22:18:00.001-03:30

constant
and
verifiable
miracle

2010-11-08T18:47:00.000-03:30

how the hell can i get out of it? services services services... could pretend i'm being productive, it would be so easy... but i can't fucking stand running out the clock... pretense... dot dot dot... blind leading the blind leading the blind... it's a miracle you're here as often as you are when there's as many rocks to be smoked as i hear there are out there... beyond that, i see no goddamn miracles...

can i get through this, while feeling the futility? just keep up appearances, reflect later when the pressure's off? should i try?

can't stand getting paid for nothing - even if it's effort, that alone is a sick joke, there has to be output - it's so sweet of these people to take a chance on me, and assume my capacity in education and youth work - but i'm out of place and besides that, i just plain hate it - i don't love to hate it, i hate to hate it... but i do, damn it, every time i try, it's torture, shortness of breath, stress pains in the joints, feeling like an idiot and a failure, sysiphian schemes, yeah

act as if

2010-11-04T11:40:00.001-02:30

What to do now, rearrange the deck chairs? I'm unimpressed with it all, it's unimpressed with me, fair deal I guess.

If the big one really hit now, I would probably realize it was real and that I wasn't tripping, in that instinctive way organisms respond to calamity, and would therefore assume my role as scurrying lowly survivor, begging for scraps from the universe. I can check reality and stand outside it, or at least reach outside it, and call that periphery home, illusionary safety, can one get away with it, until nothingness?

"Came to believe" in the void...
"Act as if" anyway?
"Restored to sanity"... by the void?

What if belief in nothing is the greatest leap of faith, the one gripped tight with such unconscious fervor that the mind won't see it as belief? Belief in nothing, a positive belief in the negative, a need to believe so deep that the mind will create a shield of wishful thoughts as decoys, to mask the fundamental desire for a void, to pretend that it's a reality, instead of a desire. Ha, talk about wishful thoughts. Think about wish and talk. Walk to work or play at work.

slack heart strings

2010-11-04T01:46:00.000-02:30

not broken, just slack

does the world need me? i hope not, i want to be peripheral
get to the culmination and be done with it
then slip into the margins, be at peace with that
instead of conflicted and compromised
and thinking i ought to do this or that, but what?
well THAT would be good for something, at least, wouldn't it?
if i could rouse myself from this slouch

traz won't do it tonight, nor even the professor's soothing fractal rap
can't fucking sleep, too many details in my mouth
not even the decency for a dark night of the soul
merely dim, no dusk, no dawn

can't be bothered to not write this on my blog
won't shape it into anything of aesthetic value

this is where this life has brought me
laden with all this stuff that half-works
i want to get rid of it and simplify
instead of trying to make it all work

emptiness, patterns, virtuosity, digital information, poetry
white-knuckling it, hanging on for the next meeting
the upcoming show, guess i'll practice a bit more, at some point
the closest i got to satiation was a little sedative glow
maybe when the trazzie kicked in, made me dream
about substances undone, yeah, just writing
not trying to say or do anything

no direction, higher power?
yeah, maybe, i dunno, i feel nothing
just the constant irritation of being alive, sort of
live for another sandwich
forget to eat
gotta express at least, don't know what else to do

oh, people are okay, can't be mad at them
i just hate that i'm one of them, and they're one of me
mirror silver, that's all, nothing magic
i take it the reflection would be explained
if i thumbed through that physics textbook
lying on the shelf of the room that happens to be there

music is the worst, an arrangement of pitches, so what?
slack heart strings, i could still feel the sting
if the cookie crumbled that way, if things went too far
and one way or another, i'd keep from going so far
that strings would snap cause i wouldn't want that -
would prefer the annoyance of life to the draining drama
the self-correcting mechanism would kick in
keeping me in gear
the same gear, keeping other gears
in theory, pie in the sky when you die

i'm in the vicinity of becoming a buddhist just to be something
and have faith in something, or believe something
belief or faith, whichever one was the non-clingy one
in alan watts' semantics
just something, whatever, eenie meenie minie moe

yggdrasil dream

2010-10-30T10:45:00.000-02:30

why do i keep dreaming of you, damnit?

you should be a drop in the bucket

i should be over you

i thought i was

cluttered clusterfuck dream geography

to my left was a tree with little leaves

dark and heavy, drooping like benji

the houseplant, flush with unexpected vitality

an ancient tree, couldn't think back to its youth

seemed as if it had always been there, part of the landscape

seemed as if i'd stopped looking at it, but now i noticed

there were little figs here and there, figs!

when did that happen, figs?

i'd never seen them before and after all this time?

wasn't it fall or early winter in this tree's lifetime

and it had decided to grow figs now? how ridiculous

i hadn’t even known it was a fig tree, and the little greenbulbs

looked back at me inscrutably, pathetic fallacies

i looked at the tree and knew the roots went to kansas

in dream geography it seemed plainly logical

so i thought i would send you a letter

in amalgamation of thought and postal service and virtualreality

to ask if you know about the tree, is it true

that the roots really reach to your ground?

blue's clues, silly whimsy

leave it to dreams...

came to believe

2010-10-27T21:24:00.000-02:30

dreaming of ayahuasca... dreamed of ayahuasca, rather... no quilt, but some reality... a seasaw... controlled conditions here and there -- even puked the first time, like you're supposed to, but i didn't freak out about it - and it was just the one time... i was at a cabin staying with some friends, some hippie-ish freaky friends that i've never had in real life - we dosed and wandered off separately, around a campground, reconvened at the cabin, compared notes

still within the dream was the context of my new paradigm apathy toward psychedelics - i recognized this, but felt rejuvenated all the same, like hey, there's something to this, after all, you know, something grand and pure and beautiful and terrible, that i took a wide detour around by "graduating" to narcotics - there's something sometimes okay with reverting to a babbling drooling infant in the face of pixies that will sing you iridescent songs while they tear you apart with their jeweled steel jaws

i did it a second time, hoping for even more hallucinations - so they poured me the extra strong tea - and i gulped it all down - and a feeling came over me, a dis-ease, that reminded me of the times, as a child, when i'd be playing with my friends, and we'd be doing something daring, like swimming in the chilly may lakewaters, or adventuring in the snow on the coldest day of january, and we'd be pumped up and hardcore, and egg each other on to do more, and some of my thicker-skinned friends would be going back out to the wilderness for more "fun" after a brief and soothing respite from the elements - and i'd be sitting there on the beach dreading the moment that one of them would call to me, hey you sissy, aren't you coming out with us again? and the inevitable call would come, and i'd say, nah, i'm done, i've had enough fun for now, and then i'd resent my "friends", okay, friends, whatever, operational definitions, and think, christ, didn't i do enough, enduring the cold for as long as i did? doesn't ten minutes for me count for like sixty for normal people? but apparently not

but it was too late to go back, this was the plunge that you take without a parachute - so i tried not to worry too much, utterly failing, and this feedback loop of paranoia seemed to start bringing the trip on way way premature, like the walls were already breathing - and it was then i thought, DAMNIT, why did i scarf down BOTH of those tasty ham and cheese wraps just ten minutes ago? and what else did i eat before that without thinking? i was gonna take AYAHUASCA, which i did, and now i'm gonna be puking up god knows what god knows when? and i didn't even think about the mono amine oxidase inhibitor restrictions that could turn me into hypertension boy for as long as my heart's beating at least, fuck, did i eat any blue cheese? christ, can't remember, can't think, thoughts are moving, moving pictures...

then there was the spinning wheel ride, but i'm too tired to try and recall that right now...

poco adagio

2010-10-25T22:18:00.000-02:30

Sometimes a new paradigm can sidestep a jinx - even when it's talked about. Sometimes it can't be seen but approached with a blind stagger.

I remember when I would devour war movies like pringles - even fantasize about being in the shit. Sure it would be horrible, sure, sure, but what a fucking thrill! This thrill-craving extended to any kind of violence or carnage as long as I was safely away from it. There was something stylistic about the kinetic energy of steel on flesh, blood splatter, bullets, smoke, destruction of any kind, that turned my crank. The same way chemicals do today - that same stubborn obsession that laughs at reason and rationality.

I went through a paradigm shift in the last ten years - without expending any conscious effort to bring it about, or even realizing that it happened until recently. It involved an expansion of empathy, and a deepening of knowledge, about suffering, about the human condition, about the different ways people think and feel. A lot of that “knowledge” I KNEW before, and I had reason enough to KNOW that suffering is a consequence of that thrilling carnage, but feeling it is another matter. This empathy was a downer quite often. It soured my enjoyment of movies and 3D shooters and everything I used to live for, because I would be forced to identify suffering that I would feel no obligation to before, when I had the ability to be distant. It took the fun out of my passions, and after a few years, it completely killed the craving for them.

Today, I heard some sad stories at my NA meeting. The woman who was jonesying to leave the hospital room where her dad was dying, so she could get out and use, so she could numb the grief for at least ten seconds, and go from there... The guy who gave up his wife and kids - I know these people. And even now, when they tell their horrible stories which I can relate to, with just a smidgen of extrapolation, I still feel the thrill of that destructive power, combustion of chemicals, flooding of neurotransmitters, stark consequences good and bad, kinetic energy!

But lately, more and more, I feel the dark and bitter tragedy of it all. The ratio changes a little more each day, on the whole. But the dynamics are so spiky and serrated and sea-sawing between insanity and sobriety. And there’s so many stumbles and step backwards for every little patch of ground gained. I can only hope that this new paradigm mirrors the last one, where I graduated from half-hearted aims at mass murder. I did say “half-hearted” mind you - whoever might take that the wrong way. But “half-hearted” is far too close for comfort, coming from a later, more-seasoned vantage. But Christ, not nearly enough, cause there's so far to go, so little peace of mind, and sometimes I splinter chips of skull into my brain trying to get past a blockage - when the whole time, the blockage is on its merry way out of my head on its own terms. That's as spiritual as I get these days.

but more importantly:
poco adagio pics to start off the next chapter
which i'll only label such to be goofy, to recognize the silliness
of these sincere stutters - reality, fantasy, all a rich and tattered tapestry
stained and strained, and texture fabric spun metaphor, signs of the chocalypse

pluck luck

2010-10-25T14:53:00.000-02:30

pluck up
buck up
give a fuck about a fuck up

this is as close to heroism as you'll ever get
so go for it, there's no better way out of here

fake it till you make it, trust
you'll make it some day
then you can put the fakery away
until then, pluck is luck, it's the only way

artists are a fucked up breed
self-indulgent, even with their hearts in the right place
and the only chance for heroism, i once imagined
was to express through the chaos
and bonus points for making a way out of that
i know it's so hard to do that sometimes
and you're not much for hard work
when the energy isn't there, but man
it's amazing how far a little effort goes
steel yourself to the setbacks now
brace yourself, thicken skin
get a few licks in while you get your teeth kicked in
bleed on the floor as you crawl through the door

control isn't gonna end up in a noose
cause you got enough balance to stand on your feet
maybe you didn't wobble well at all
maybe that's not your forte, hey?

it's an artistic crutch to talk to yourself
not good writing, but necessary
to let the expression through direct messaging
maybe later you'll develop a philosophy
that abolishes all responsibility
until then, push the expressive pedal to the floor
sometimes it must be said like a nursery rhyme
sometimes you gotta lull yourself awake
sometimes you gotta march to the beat of that drummer
who sang a song about a revolution on that daily death-march
down carbon monoxide road, to the youthea camp kosang

there's more horizons than you know
keep a dream journal though, they're important too
if you could only shake off the morning malaise
and rise to the opportunity of the faintest hint of energy, man, i tell you
listen to me

down to a sentence

2010-10-20T07:52:00.000-02:30

oh my ducks are in a row and i don't give a damn

they couldn't be any straighter and i couldn't care less

oh, i shoulda fucked oh what's her name?

should have shagged and tagged her

STD a claim to fame

heaven's little pinwheel spinning in mid-air above thesidewalk

up the winding road past warfield, under the gray sky

themes evaporate to dreams

meaning melds into a skeleton key for a fretboard

discipline i out of the system

and streamline ego pistons

stopped engine stepping stone to a sunken passageway

the shadow's mind is chewing

on a problem like the well-intentioned over-corrective

reflex of the immune system, foaming over with excess

a phonebook in a dream, gear i left

in a mountain crevice above trail, candy and money

and a car tangled in a cable

nature of necrophilia

2010-10-19T12:21:00.000-02:30

more meaning now than ever in confusion and noise

this sorry state of surreal

patheticism, a state of pitifulality

next to sacredity

low down pettiness

next to cleanliness in its purity of foolishness

something that would seem sublime if connoted

from a system of hypnogogic recall

this sorry state

i'll call my nature

nature means so much now

as a way of distinguishing from artificial

an operational dichotomy, this exhausting jangle ofartificial shards

is my nature, there you go, a metric conversion, a sum

let there be more sweat-slathered daysleep

let, nevermind the blood, i won't go there again

just haze it out in delirium shy of disturbance

opaguerated opinions

what the fuck? why won't the page lounge?

i won't put this or that in context, don't feel like playingthe blame game

it's okay, i don't expect anyone to throw rocks from theirglass trailers

this is such a base haze, but it's got curly-cues thatintellectuals

would call pseudo-clever, but they're good enough for me,they're my

style, when i can savor the filth and decay, the kineticenergy of

degeneration, the expansion of diffusion, that's my economy

i need escape, it'll have to be poetry, everything will haveto be

this well of bloodless sweaty skin-flakes

narcotized on nothing with no narcotics

not numb to the nothing

i could see a trip in this

could vaguely imagine one

trying to hallucinate hallucinations

weak snap

this is the oldest the universe has ever been

this is the last day of the preceding portion of my life

this would seem more worthy of posting

if i was high, or even low shortly after being high

it would seem to be the fitting denouement following thecrescendo

of a well-crafted music video

still, words can be company

even when they’re dead

my sub-hallucinogenic imagination

can sort of animate them

i'm breaking free of context

can't stress enough how confining that's been

goddamn motherfucking crushing context

could barely breathe

how about the donut tree instead?

or instead of instead, in its stead

the donut tree? houses

one of the later blackouts of my botched

return to nelson... my thoughts are necrophilic

even my precious subconscious is living off toxic substrate

the only salvation is in words, sans context, that's all, just gotta write

for no reason, no crowd pleasing

i might kick the rotten wood off a fence post

as per my nature, really, it's in the taxonomy, within the fine print

rarely-expressed rage, the basis of which is... i wouldn't presume to say

when i shut my eyes, and writhe a bit the thoughts will turnto jelly

the neurotransmitters will run out of them, leaving weaksoup

the frustrated emotion will remain

leading to another spike of rage, then a long slow descent

to slothful malcontent, then a quarter sleep, then as muchas a half-sleep

maybe the hint of unnoticed hypnogogia, void-willing, oh ibelieve in the void

yes i do, i pray to the void, i think it can help me ifanything can

down to a science

2010-10-13T14:47:00.000-02:30

blank shooting gallery
shell casings over frozen ground as far as eyes can see
still, it's a thrill, a desolate thrill
echoes far as ears can hear
such ugly echoes from natural beauty, natural
beauty with natural cosmetics
the human animal lenscrafter cast self portrait
my heroine, the image counts as natural i say
seems to feel natural to me

ugly cackling echoes, ruined soul reverb, but it could be worse
yes there's worse things than the ruination of soul, cause
bullshit makes the flowers grow and that's beautiful, princess
play some beautiful dreamy music der prince...

so beautiful you want to kill yourself, just end the torturous frustration
and skip straight to consummation, or death, liberty or fate, either way
but straight, no chaser

gratification down to a science
the climate is under control, calculated, frozen, the optimal temperature
my appliances read my mind while i read theirs, it's a monologue

it hasn't put a dent in the OCD fingers
they still probe for what, i dunno, lost soul?
i never even got a good hit out of whatever that was
just chasing the ideal of a rush that never existed or will exist
it has all become a binge mentality but there ARE worse things than that
and there might be infinitely better things too, like regular life, except
you're ten feet off the ground, maybe i should buy a pair of stilts
and mustache wax, and rogaine, and then i can do cocaine
and feel alright about it, but until then, tundra beckons
me to the horizon, dragging behind me an ever-growing
array of scientific instruments

The world is everything that is the case.

2010-10-07T10:49:00.000-02:30

Gustav Mahler and THC are a good combination but I won't say why. Can't be bothered. You'll just have to take it on faith that I'm right, the same way I take it on faith that when I said that years ago, while pleasantly cannabinated, there was a reason. It was something about the THC freeing me from my thoughts. The thoughts kept me on a low frequency. But there was something under the eyelids, running through the blood, coded in the body, that was beyond thought. The THC trance let me slip behind thoughts, unnoticed, so, sensation. There I could soak in more sensory detail than when consumed with thoughts, and I would trip on that detail with more detailed thoughts, and become consumed with those. Okay, I guess I can be bothered.

This feedback loop did a lot to music, but there was something about Mahler's in particular that was like kindling for a fire. Especially in the case of a freshly cracked-open mind, there was synergy. As I pretend to remember, with the trance in effect I could break through that obnoxious edifice of german romantic affectation - to savour the meta-musical motivations on the other side, the Gustav gravy.

One of the first times I ever got stoned - and it was from two or three pot cookies no less - I was listening to a Mahler symphony, the first maybe, and writing writing writing till my wrist was sore, then writing some more, and actually feeling what I was supposed to feel from it, what I'd felt inadequate about not feeling before, that this music contained a world - and I was living there, not here.

Now my world contains everything, even Mahler's music, neatly digitalized and categorized. Everything's been made case sensitive, it's either this or that - that's just how things ARE. I can distract myself by thinking of possibilities, states of affairs that should be, that would make the world a nicer place for me, but that grows tiring, and why bother, cause really, there's just THIS WORLD. Case closed.

The world is everything that is the case. So said Wittgenstein, like it meant anything. Like everything followed from that.

Accordingly, I exist. Well, I'm starting to believe it now, if I remember anything that's real. Wouldn't say I feel it. I feel about as real as a can of Coca Cola Classic. That's about right. But I can believe in things that I can't feel, right? Like electromagnetic fields. Or the suffering that is beyond the spectrum of normal human experience, that presumably happens when circumstances trigger an organism with a highly developed nervous system to alert its central processing unit to mortal danger - danger that is, in THIS hypothetical circumstance, unavoidable. Too late - C3PO forgot to shut down the garbage mashers on the detention level. So yes, you're being crushed and it hurts beyond all reason, and the only thing that ever came close was the nightmare of eternal tickle torture trap, and yes, we know there's nothing that can be done to escape the garbage masher, so all this pain is redundant information - but we can't re-wire a million years of evolution in 30 seconds. Just be glad that your highly developed, or at least moderately developed nervous system will be shorting out in 30 seconds. If it's not even moderately developed, well god bless you, you probably won't give a damn anyway.

Yes, you, I'm talking to you. I can't go so far as to believe in your suffering, not only have I not felt it, but I think you probably need more than a few million neurons to rub together before suffering like that can be felt. You might as well be clay to me, you're like Gumby, except you're not cute and anthropomorphic, you're Grungy. You're a substance, you're scum. Not that there's anything wrong with that, everything in its right place. Maybe you're spongy grunge, and you'll even survive the garbage compactor, that's a perk of not really feeling much, I figure.

So why do I worry about these creatures I say are "presumably" living on this planet with me, these living creatures, ones I can lose seconds of sleep over killing, because they're pests, or I'm hungry, seconds, but not nights, nowhere close to that - who do I worry? If they don't even have moderately developed nervous systems. Well because... what if they DO have that? What if they're developed enough? How the hell would I know? It's worrisome - being complicit in a system that blithely slaughters and tortures anything that's other, if it's convenient to do so - even organisms we wouldn't pronounize with "it", but rather "he", or "she", like animals with genitals that walk and squawk, but don't really feel, presumably.

Basically, if we're picking our nose, or jerking off, or whatever, and there's a creature with eyes, staring at us, and we don't feel embarrassed, or really care that this creature is there, then unless it's our mother, or doctor, or significant other, it's fair game, to be eaten, or experimented on, or whatever. It doesn't really count. By some inscrutable calculation, it's deemed not to be on the complicated neurological level where suffering matters, so why should we burden ourselves with concern? And concern would be a burden too great to even imagine. I mean, if we could start from scratch we'd have a good start at being saints, or at least noble savages, but going from here to there means admitting that business as usual is comfort, and able - and luxury needs and breeds blood.

In this vicinity is also the solution to the problem of solipsism. It actually worked for me! Imagine that - thinking my way out of a philosophical problem with ethical ramifications - well, Sartre helped.

Not that it was REALLY a problem, though it's caused me worry. Cause I always felt that other people were real. It just felt right, like a can of Coca Cola Classic. But I always wondered, on what basis could I believe it was true? I couldn't really think of one. I was stuck in my head, though I'd deal with people as honorary minds, on a pragmatic level. No reason not to.

Then it was explained to me what I'd intuited all the time, which was that it makes sense to extrapolate from my own experience. I can, and do, believe in my own existence, insofar as those words have any meaning. I can feel it. Dasein, I'll say, since I'm quoting existentialists today. So, as I observe myself and feel myself act and re-act to life, I attribute values to things, most crassly in pleasure and pain. I can observe others doing what seems to be the same, more or less. I can observe them with all my senses. But I can't feel them. Not like I feel myself. Still, by extrapolation, it's not hard to imagine them as thinking feeling beings like me, given their behavior, particularly in response to suffering and joy. And I'm not talking about a narrow range of observable behavior like you get with studies of rats and monkeys. I'm talking about a hugely nuanced and sophisticated palate of behavior, colored and shaded and mutated and facilitated by language that I share in. More or less.

That's enough I guess, though unsatisfying in a way that even love can't cure. I have loved, even romantically, and hopefully I will again one day, and back in those glowy glory days, I felt others in a way that still wasn't feeling inside their minds, the dasein of their experience, but I could feel their touch - and their contours, tactile tips stretched out for me and only me, of all the others in the world, that was quite something, enough to make me a believer. Cause I'm not so different. I may have been born on Altair-4 but I'm feeling more human every day, for better or worse, mostly worse, though I haven't died in a car wreck yet. I wasn't born yesterday, I've had at least a week on this planet, enough to learn some of the conventions for fast-moving city traffic. And when I observe the functions of these earthlings, I find that they're mostly consistent with my patterns.

Mostly consistent...

Yes, it's the crack in consistency that's so fascinating! How the deviations in their behavioral patterns, implying still more perverse deviations in their thinking, make me feel like I'm from an alien homeworld. Sometimes I call it Altair-4, a little private joke. In some ways I deviate so radically from everybody that I don't want to consider them real. And sometimes I hurt so much and life seems so hard, that I want to think I'm a special case, and my level of suffering is off the charts, and the rest of the world, they don't really feel as deep as I do, and that's how they can function so well, and be so much better than I am.

But everyone's a little weird to everyone else I guess. Some are a lot weird. And it pains me to think this, but it's probably true, that my suffering is nothing special. I think Rob Wright, or whoever wrote the lines to that Nomeansno song, once felt exactly as I do, when he sang: "It's hard enough - hard enough - just to survive, just to be alive." So often, everything feels so heavy, like someone turned up the gravity, and there's so much I know I should be doing, but what to do first, and the first thing is the hardest thing, and anything is like moving a mountain, and what's the point anyway, what good will come of it? The only good that ever seems to come is accidental and unpredictable and gone before you know what hit you. You can only look back and think, shit, how did that happen? That was awesome, how can I make that happen again? Let's see, I did this, and that, so I'll just try that again, but, fuck, why didn't it work? Goddamn gravity, it's 2010, where's my jetpack? I think somebody DID turn up the gravity, and when the gravity's on high, things are SO so goddamn serious, and it's not like I want to be a queen, but I'm stuck in this costume drama, they locked the playhouse doors. And when that happens I try to make gallows humour of it, and turn the script into a farce for my own amusement, but I always somehow skip the gleeful cynic stage and bottom out to dry meaninglessness - it meant so so much, too much, a minute ago, then somehow instantly inverted to no meaning at all, that undead feeling like someone scooped out my brain and I'm just sleepwalking through life for no purpose.

But I'm not that special charity case. The world is full of cases. Things that are the case. Is it the case that I would think these same thoughts if I felt differently, physically, and how much differently would I have to be wired neurologically? And what if you took that neurological structure and planted it in a different body, one of these other creatures I presume to be real? What would I feel? What thoughts would that drive me to? HOW MUCH DIFFERENT WOULD IT BE? That question fascinates me. But it's not as interesting when I'm "planting my neurological structure" in another body. But I said that cause I'm trying not to be straight up Cartesian, and be dualistic about mind and body, cause that's obsolete so I hear, even if the mind-body problem still exists. But say you just take my experience, my dasein, puree it nice and smooth in a blend-tec blender and funnel it into someone else's brain - what the fuck would that be like? I want to know, not that I ever will. On what grounds can I say to someone, stop your whining, this is nothing, or you know nothing, or all the things I usually don't say, but think instinctively.

I don't know. But it was a whammy for me, to have a reason to believe in others. I had to re-invent the wheel, for myself. I'll re-invent a thousand more wheels before I'm through, surely. So, I make the leap of faith to other humans, as existing, and deserving the rights and privileges of beings on a level of neurological complexity comparable to my own. Complexity = feeling, which seems like a crude calculation, like I must be missing something, but it's the best I'm willing to offer, excepting philosophical asides on these issues - cause I live in a jungle with pests and tasty flesh and I can't be arsed to be a vegan. When I'm licking the MSG-laced residue off a bowl of instant noodles I've just drained, and my cousin bursts through my bedroom door, I feel in that instant that his existence can't be trivialized away. If he was just an illusion, a projection of my mind and nothing else, why would I be embarrassed under his gaze? Even though he's just a kid and gives even less of a shit about etiquette than I do, I still extrapolate to his perception of me, and see myself through an external other's eyes, and feel chagrined at what I must look like, licking up the noodle residue like a pig in a slop bucket. My cousin is on this level, of perceiving that, or at least the potential is there, and the potential of a vast spectrum of experience that we can share in. I know this and feel it.

That's how I get out of the problem of solipsism, and also how, come to think of it, I can live with myself, for being complicit in the global industrial meat-grinder - by that I mean, the system that has such little respect for life, other than narrowly defined conceptions of selectively sanctified human life, that differ from culture to culture. I can't reach out and feel a neurological sophistication that I relate to in the creature that looks back at me before a baffled series of sniffs, what is this thing, will it harm me, does it have food? If it's a cat, I think it's cute and pet it, and imagine it takes comfort in my presence as I indulge pathetic fallacies. What I observe is obviously a neurological structure in the case of most animals, but the level of complexity seems to matter. Gives my moral code some flexibility. A lot actually. But that's so convenient. I get to think cats are cute and cuddly, and thus, more worthy.

Man, I can't believe it took me this many words to get here. And now that I have, the point has slipped out of my grasp, I haven't really solved anything, for me. I relate to humans by extrapolation, generally. I relate to other creatures differently, in ways ranging from cuddling them, to buying their frozen carcasses at the supermarket, to spraying them with raid, to being blissfully unaware of their existence, or perhaps miserably unaware, if there are, say, trans-dimensional beings of energy who would be happy to enlighten me to an exponentially more harmonious existence if only I would be open to their reality. But if I try and extrapolate to the other creatures that I callously write off as non neurologically sophisticated, I arrive at... what exactly? I thought I had an answer to this that would fit into some kind of scheme, but, what do I arrive at? I can only extrapolate in a negative way, well, I'm this, they're NOT this - a certain amount of common ground can be guessed at, if we both have a nervous system then we both feel pain probably, but how do you perceive pain, etc. etc, fuck, I gotta put this post down.

Anyway, this is nothing like a justification. I'm still not comfortable with my place in the system. It troubles me. I can only come up with post-hoc arguments for intuitions that feed my addictions, to food, fuel, comfort, technology, digital media. The intuitions that don't feed those addictions? Well, at least I have them. I lose seconds of sleep over them, minutes, sometimes hours. Good thing I still have a few hits of trazodone left.

2010-10-05T03:19:00.001-02:30

2010-10-01T18:20:00.000-02:30

if i just wait
and wait and wait
and wait and wait and wait
eventually, one of us will do something great

my network people, that i'm a part of
those i know, that i'm allowed to call my peers, one of them
will eventually reflect well on me, as a minor participant
in the scenethat created their greatness
it hasn't happened yet, but eventually, i'll know someone
who went on to do things, great things, filling me with the feeling
that i could do great things too, it's a statistical certainty, or actually...

not really, it won't happen to my people, the people i'm allowed to know
because the great people, anyone who's anyone, is in high society, ie
outside my society, not someone i'm allowed to know even tangentially
so maybe someone who's someone will make it to semi-greatness, maybe
i'll hear about someone i sort of know, on the news
who did something noteworthy
and this person will be, at most, an aloof acquaintance

i'm over-caffeinated and under-motivated
lying on the bed doing nothing, what the fuck?
music and cleaning and nothing is motivating
think i'm done doing things

the rich are the good, and the good are the rich
in master morality, the only one that counts
seven figures, that's the new rich
three figures, that's the new poor

bargaining power, that's what determines worth
i'll trade peace of mind for pocket change
you give me your change
and i’ll also take your guilt

exhortations

2010-09-27T02:29:00.000-02:30

hedonicexhaustment – oh, hedonic exhaust ment – now, time for a mint, a melatonin mint- pop it under my tongue and let it dissolve, slowly - the flavour pervadeslike a fog - melamints - why do i take them? to help me sleep, or more likelyto help me dream, because tonight in particular, i need dream therapy - i'veexhausted options for waking life, having focused maniacally on pleasure to themaximal sum possible when sober - materialist mechanized gratification ad abdurdum- i struck an oil pipeline, found out it was flammable, warm and somehowchilling at the same time, i tapped in like there was no choice, mainline, ididn’t know stuff like this existed, i was so lucky, so so lucky, it was sogood, so fucking good that it had to be the devil and i had to make a deal, istill don’t know what to do with that incendiary stuff except get more and moreand more, there will be blood, i guess

mint-flavoured melatonin, though imostly sleep in the dark these days, but it doesn't hurt and the peppermintstings a little, cool burn, and i like the taste - so, there's any number oftemptation gauntlets in the future but i can't think about them - i only figurei won't have to pay the piper for this sort of pleasure, it's as empty asanything else, as substantial as chemicals, as disgustingly real as that, andas fleeting as an artificially induced serotonin spike, but it hasn't got thesame cruel neurological aftermath, this digital indulgence

still, i feel abused, like i usedmyself, which i did, in a lot of ways, and the world used me, and i grabbedahold of the world’s giving hand while the other took from me, pride forpleasure, as i collected, collated pleasure, categorized beauty, aesthetized ina big crunch, conditions similar to the birth of a universe, second time farce,could scarcely breath, pumping blood like a muthafucka, and i used the world asa way, for narrow will and no purpose, just a metabolic sub sub-routine,pathetic and inhuman and i'm still a lil buzzed on the caffeine or maybe somedealer fifteen floors up flushed a kilo of blow down the drain and into thesewers where i swim and that’s why that thing is whatever it is

there's fucking knobbing beautypopping out of every grate, goddamn cocksucking beautiful blossoming metalhoops and body piercings, nose-rings and clitoral chandeliers, cheeseballbeauty i could never think of myself, a glut of style, style inside style,chintzy VR utopia - when i finally got to the ultimate junk of that productline i wasn’t even consciously looking for it, i was just looking lookinglooking, in every direction for the next thing which i didn’t think existed andit was called SPH, it was a thing - a full body orgasm, localized, but itwasn't crack

it did remind me a bit of that,though, and in a way it’s just as blunt - but i declare i MUST possess a viceof some kind, i demand to have one, and if i can't get down and dirty anddisgusting and sleazy and bad and bent in the conventional way, i'll do it insome mediocre and pathetic way that doesn't fry my brain in the blatant upfrontallobe way, and buzz on that for a while, and then take melatonin to steady themind a bit, and facilitate dream therapy which is truly nature's medicine - andthat’s almost enough for me, but i’ve been known to add synthetic sprinkles forinscrutable exhortational flavour

so, what have we learned, anything? consummationof consumption is not actually a con game, only fair trade, but this is why i’mwriting, hence, producing something, instead of taking and faking and fakingand taking, and using, and spending – i need this, to feel anything again, ineed to piss in the wind, 0s to 0s, 1s to 1s, i’ll never be done

if i was really that tied up withthe CHUDs, i wouldn’t be writing this – even though i used them to get my cheapthrill – and they used me to make money – and we’re mutually low, we’re in thesame abysmal bracket, even if you two are in a chasm above my pit, what used tobe a dishpit - i never called that pit a dishpit but “they” did, and they stilldo – so we’re basically low and attached to that sleazy system, consumers andabused producers, aren’t you? haha, that makes me laugh, cause i’m in atragicomic mood and things are dark through the life frequency modulatingalgorithm i’m seeing in everything – but the system didn’t count on this explanationof it, did it? so, i’ll call it elevation, and actually feel elevated writingthat, even as i’m hedging my bets by self-deprecating with sarcasticinflection, via the “i’ll call it” classifer

Symmetry is Redundancy

2010-09-19T19:53:00.000-02:30

the path of least resistance.

Low Torso Guy is listening to Pantera. He's got five quadrillion funbucks in his pocket. They talk trivia in apparent enthusiasm. On obvious enthusiasm, like it's a plane that Evil Kneival is about to surf, but it's through the camera lens of a FOX special. Anyway, it's all part of the International Airport Arrival Concourse that envelops the earth in a spherical shell. It's less than meets the eye, and it treats them as equals, and there's room for a sequel.

Economy is for shoemakers.
Meditation is for the drowsy.
Making axioms rhyme, making rhymes axioms passes the time, channels duress stress, the long-lasting fume run.

Remember when? Of course I remember. And I feel nothing for it, of course. The money will roll right in, so no matter, no problems but solutions, soul-selling solutions, like paper money for gold bullion, if you like that sort of thing. I'll just sit and grinnnn, as the money rolls in.

Tell yourself:
I wish I could be brainwashed. My thoughts are so unclean.
I wish I wish I wish...

Ring of empty, tint of empathy, clueful stupidity. That's me. Full of clues, a whole rolodex full, a tautological cycle, like a Wagner opera.

Then there's the soft voice with the hard edge, plus it comes in fifty thousand flavours and RGBO quadroptic display - offer expires when cockblocked by a peacock photographer, it'll happen, trust me.

Remember when, how many times we gotta white knuckle it? How many times we gotta define it? Pressure point, self reinforcement, life-line in a diamond mine, leitcontour following:

(easy = sunday morning) > broken clock righteousness

Hoping for nothing
that I know of, surprise me Nemoy,
black pools of KGB deadness.
Cuticl, the 120 proof placebo.
No faith except in fate.

Clyde Kennedy, who is he, a "Big League Hypocrite"? Not sure, better look back... and proceed to stagnate, make a date with stagnation, blind naturally and still born.

I'll be your mirror
                          OR
God has no mirror
                          OR
Jewelry is gay
                          OR
The mind creates context
where none exists.

it's punch up time!

2010-09-11T02:18:00.000-02:30

when you're wearing a cedric bixler t-shirt

we're all the same, more or less

i'm strong when i'm in the other end of the cycle
give me anaesthetics and i'll go to the moon - with some fishing line and iron will
it's not nice to burn the table, even though it feels nice to burn both ends of the candle
but it's not nice, especially when the table supports you

3D vision and the california blues
time-clock warrior

nobody knows, anyway
it's all up for grabs, the truth
even after all this time, i'm not sure
waiting for the counter evidence
if you think you're sure, you're deluding yourself
or eluding yourself, or, something i haven't thought of yet

anyway, typing in a rhythm

i'm sharpening my teeth, not with intent to devour another
just to get by
i guess i won't annihilate the check and balance
i guess i won't strangulate the check and balance
but i would like to forsake the check and balance
it's a lot of wasted time, and it fucks up the rhyme
cause it's punch up time!

bobbing mah head

2010-09-11T01:42:00.001-02:30

sweating
the small stuff
that is everything

wish i could shrug it off
but i would need to be in
a very different place
of my own making
then i could fully detach
from the consequences

"looking healthy"
they say, today
because i'm not on the verge
of a death stumble
a pseudo-suicide tumble
no more get out of jail free cards for me

so tired of solemnity, such crushing seriousness
i played so hard i forgot how to play
i want to own my own irresponsibility

the grass is greener on either side
here is black crossroads, scorched earth

haven't i cried and confessed enough?
it hasn't impressed on anyone
least of all, myself

ok, there's been too much negativity

2010-09-07T02:17:00.001-02:30

enough with that, there might even really be this thing called peace and serenity - and i have things to be thankful for - i've got to calm down - i will

glance

2010-09-01T03:30:00.000-02:30

oh, it hurts so much
to see you again
and i'm sure it's so awkward for you, poor girl
oh, so awkward, but it's fucking painful for me

so just pretend you don't see me
i'll pretend i don't know you
as i run a rack of glasses to the bar
enjoy your meal
just keep on pretending
you're so practiced at pretending
it's not a lie if you believe it to be true

oh, i'd love to come by and say hi
but it's so much easier to lie

and it's my right to live in the past
you can't take that from me
but it won't impinge on your healthy new life, i guarantee
so savor your recent tragedies
they're not for me to share

cause i'm in the ancient guild of dishwashers, still
old school shenanigans

the easier softer way

2010-08-28T05:55:00.000-02:30

playing old school starcraft with luc from 11 till well past midnight, then walking home...

it's not exactly "high on life" but it's a start - it's not stumbling about the wrecked/remorse hamster wheel - it's the easier softer way - neils suggested, if you don't know how to pray, just pray in gratitude, for whatever gold you can dig out of the day-to-day mundanity - i'm grateful i didn't poison my body yet again, and trash my soul, and muddy my mind, and trample my dignity, yet again, so soon after - oh, now i'm sounding so solemn and spiritual, which makes me a little sick, but it's true, i guess

and i'm grateful i got to play starcraft, and forget about wanting a drink, and go on a bit of a nostalgia trip - and we nearly died after the zergs rushed our base, we were down to two burning buildings - whereupon, i would have quit, but luc, god bless him, wouldn't give up, he's into tactics, and he likes that the terran buildings can fly, so he flew our last two buildings onto what turned out to be an island! luckily... so we built up a base, and found some minerals, and immediately set up air defense turrets with our mineral wealth, and held out against the air attacks and attempted invasions, and even expanded to a new island! and decided it was time to go on the offensive, so we did a little recon, and scouted out a landing place, because our resources were running out, and we needed more cash

so we went on the offensive, it was a gamble but it seemed to be working, we nabbed a vespine gas mine, upgraded our technology, started churning out wraith ships and siege tanks, repelled the attacks on our landing zone - but it was an all-or-nothing point, we needed to go on the offensive, attack and take over or get squeezed out eventually - so we went on a daring raid, 12 wraiths, 12 tanks, with marines and a mix of units in reserve - wasted vast swathes of zerg territory, but then the attack on the land base came out of nowhere, blinsided by the zerg army - our reserves were wiped out - our land base destroyed - a miscalculation - we rescued as many SCVs as we could with the dropships, but we'd blown our chance - evacuated to the islands where we held out for a while - i made the metaphor of japan's final days in the pacific war - we laughed

yeah, i remember when i used to have fun playing starcraft - back then i would have thought that drugs were for lunatics and losers - and i guess i would have been right - but i can't be snap and solemn and judgement and still be honest - i know the serrated e'edge of the see-saw, there's something beautiful about it, about hacking reality, about tweaking and fuzzing out - something beautiful and many many things ugly, and i'm in the process of conditioning myself to think that i'm sick and tired of being sick and tired - am i? i'll say that i am

keeping it simple

2010-08-23T19:07:00.000-02:30

with windows default wallpaper - the nature theme

can't delve into my image archive, old patterns and poison - i like corrie, she told me it isn't too late to go back to school, she did when she was forty - well, i don't hardly have anything to say, but i said that, anyway

btw, corrie looks amazing for over forty, and i mean amazing like lithe, unconsciously sexy, short, slim, revealing - but first of all, you don't say to a woman "you look great FOR..." and second, you don't say that to a councellor

cold comfort for change

2010-08-17T10:16:00.001-02:30

leap of faith it's worth it - i won't talk about cells - they're organic, not jails - you can have my empire of dirt - i will let you down, i will make you hurt

2010-08-17T04:23:00.000-02:30

the, the
the the the
the, the finger condom broke - hope it doesn't get my hand pregnant

oooh, you're a dirty dish aren't you - you dirty dirty dish - this is my meal ticket, yet again - let c equal burnination - head full of AA, belly full of beer - mind full of sharp pizza cutting fragments - c'mon, let's make it happen - while there's still supply lines - i'm fucking serious, i haven't given up yet

matches sooth the burn

2010-08-13T03:26:00.000-02:30

i like matches, they calm me, they grant me serenity - they're friendly and helpful, they light my cigarettes, they light my life - especially those long wooden waterproof matches that strike easily on the sides of their big boxes, and tease me with a little spark, a glow, and a fizzle, make me think they're going out, then fwoom, the whole fat tip of phosphorous goes up in a plume and the warm chemical smell wafts out, such a beautiful scent - i don't like matches, i love them - they're my solace, when i've turned the world to shit - sleep isn't even doing it for me these days, my sickness follows me into dreams, but matches are my friend

too much love

2010-08-08T14:06:00.000-02:30

too few lovers - oh, maybe i didn't reach out enough

you know, despite what they say, and "they're" quite right and wise, love is worth it, it's even worth risking my recovery from drug abuse - so, i would, if i could, but i can't, so i won't - i dunno, i just figure, i've learned to get by without it, the kind of love that makes me willing to risk everything, that whole shebang, that drives me to play my A game - let's digress but stay on topic

i'm in a feelingful place at the moment, so, might as well feel, and not worry too much about the meaning - might as well sit, skin exposed, and just be, whatever this is - i'm so incomplete, and really feeling it lately - but at least i got out of that agro bar, snuck in under the 5$ cover for pay per view ultimate fighting, it's so ultimate, ugh - anyway, it's one of those things, where the frosted lucky charms won't do it, as a metaphor, but those dresses, or whatever you call them, will hit closer to the mark, those short cut, i dunno, i'm not used to talking sexy, much less writing about it, those dresses that hug the skin tight to accentuate those girl contours, they're like blouses, i guess, but they're almost like body suits, but they stop just a little after the whoohah, or just a little short, depending on how you look at it, i don't even know what to call them, but they're dressy, and this hottie was wearing one while i was playing pool, but it was so not my scene, no, not really, tho it could have been, in another life

i'm living more in my mind right now, i guess, and living through a bit of a grinder, but feeling a lot, and ill-content, fairly, i'd say - it can't come to any good, but whatever - you know, it would be cool if i could say "whatever" and be somehow alluring, but that's a feminine thing, that's a charm wielded, or even casually tossed about by the ones i covet - yeah, i'm in a coveting mood, and it don't make me special, but dayum man, or, nevermind

it's not a funky feeling, no no, it's just a word, it's just a woooooord, oh no, maybe it's a little more to me, love, i'm feeling it from afar, the absense is palpable, or it's very present, but the ability to express it, physically, the necessary counterpart to emotion, is kinda absent, yeah

a chocolate chip cookie

2010-08-01T08:09:00.000-02:30

for when technique is useless - for when dreams are stillborn

miscommunication should be forged, through lack of words

acting on hallucinatory assumptions, let god sort it out

wait, who, what? what a leaden word, break the chain, ditch the anchor

go godless, c'mon all ye faithless

tech nevermind, fuck, what a drag thoughts are, associations

2010-08-01T07:58:00.000-02:30

i'm an asshole
i fucked up a good thing
i hope you find someone more worthy of your charms than me

what else can i say, fucking philosophize? surplus words
flogging a dead horse

elsewhere, i'm a journeyman, making music
indulgently
now i'm looking from outside, as giving nothing
a nest of dead ends

there was a spark, earlier tonight
it blew out, that's life,
and that's that saying

i should become a mute
make that sacrifice
get beyond words
beyond self
but stick
@ ground 0