a

constant
and
verifiable
miracle

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

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

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

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 green bulbs

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 virtual reality

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

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...

pluck luck

pluck up, buck up

give a fuck about a fuck up

this is as close to heroism as you'll ever get

fake it til you make it

trust you'll make it some day

today pluck is luck, the only way

you're an artist, self-indulgent with your heart on target

and your only chance for greatness is conveying the chaos

(and bonus points for making a way out of that)

i know it's so hard to express when it counts

and you're not much for hard when your energy's low

but a little effort goes a long way, you can't imagine

quasi-battery, just trust me

steel yourself to setbacks now

brace yourself, thicken skin

and get a few licks in before they kick your teeth in

bleed on the floor as you crawl through the door

control won’t 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

bloodlet expression through direct messaging

(limp writing might appeal to rehab rubberneckers)

maybe later you'll develop a philosophy

that eschews responsibility

until then, express like it's a duty

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 created the groove you sang to

that became a song about a revolution

the soundtrack to the daily death-march

down carbon monoxide road, to the youthea camp kosang

there's more horizons than you see, in waking life

so keep the dream journal

if you could only shake off the morning malaise

and rise to the call of the faintest hint of energy

you could put the fakery away, some day

down to a sentence

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

they couldn't be 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 mid-air above the sidewalk

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

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 of artificial 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 playing the blame game

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

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

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

style, when i can savor the filth and decay, the kinetic energy of

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

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

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 turn to jelly

the neurotransmitters will run out of them, leaving weak soup

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 much as a half-sleep

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

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

down to a science

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.

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 – it’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.

one of us

over caffeinated, under motivated
lying in bed doing nothing

if i just wait
and wait and wait
one of us will do something great
one node in my network
a person i’m allowed to call my peer
will reflect well on me
as a minor participant
in a scene that created greatness

it hasn’t happened yet, but eventually i’ll have known someone
who went on to do great things
and this will fill me with the feeling
that i could do great things too, a statistical certainty

not really, won’t happen to my people
the ones i’m allowed to know
because anyone who’s anyone
is in high society, not 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 of someone i sort of knew, on the news
who did something noteworthy
and this person will be, at most, an aloof acquaintance

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 carry your guilt in return

exhortations

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

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

still, i feel abused, like i used myself, which i did, in a lot of ways, and the world used me, and i grabbed ahold of the world’s giving hand while the other took from me, pride for pleasure, as i collected, collated pleasure, categorized beauty, aesthetized in a 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 as a 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 some dealer fifteen floors up flushed a kilo of blow down the drain and into the sewers where i swim and that’s why that thing is whatever it is

there's fucking knobbing beauty popping out of every grate, goddamn cocksucking beautiful blossoming metal hoops and body piercings, nose-rings and clitoral chandeliers, cheeseball beauty 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 product line i wasn’t even consciously looking for it, i was just looking looking looking, in every direction for the next thing which i didn’t think existed and it was called SPH, it was a thing - a full body orgasm, localized, but it wasn'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 vice of some kind, i demand to have one, and if i can't get down and dirty and disgusting and sleazy and bad and bent in the conventional way, i'll do it in some mediocre and pathetic way that doesn't fry my brain in the blatant upfrontal lobe way, and buzz on that for a while, and then take melatonin to steady the mind a bit, and facilitate dream therapy which is truly nature's medicine - and that’s almost enough for me, but i’ve been known to add synthetic sprinkles for inscrutable exhortational flavour

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

if i was really that tied up with the CHUDs, i wouldn’t be writing this – even though i used them to get my cheap thrill – and they used me to make money – and we’re mutually low, we’re in the same abysmal bracket, even if you two are in a chasm above my pit, what used to be a dishpit - i never called that pit a dishpit but “they” did, and they still do – so we’re basically low and attached to that sleazy system, consumers and abused producers, aren’t you? haha, that makes me laugh, cause i’m in a tragicomic mood and things are dark through the life frequency modulating algorithm i’m seeing in everything – but the system didn’t count on this explanation of it, did it? so, i’ll call it elevation, and actually feel elevated writing that, even as i’m hedging my bets by self-deprecating with sarcastic inflection, via the “i’ll call it” classifer

Symmetry is Redundancy

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!

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

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

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

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

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