|
| |
grab_bag
|
|
|
werewolf
|
a couple of thoughts…
he didn’t really like to learn new things…it was to him no different than doing drugs…it seemed all you had in life was what you were this moment, and that new knowledge could threaten your constitution as surely as drugs or even blunt head trauma.
he broke his favorite cd on accident…in the past it would’ve seemed to him an omen of god’s displeasure with him…but his mind now still retained in the act some mysterious and symbolic status, since he now had new gods…for example…it could be his subconscious…maybe he broke the cd on purpose…maybe something in him deeper than he recognizes in his day to day examinations knows this is wrong and drove him to break his cd as a wakeup call. he could have fallen out of favor either way.
he pretty much was expected to graduate from high school and get a job at a postal office or a supermarket…he thought himself smart enough to get into college and maybe even be a doctor or lawyer or railroad baron or whatever people did these days…all of those options seemed not drastic enough though…he didn’t have qualms simply with his life as a poor person, but with life in general. he didn’t really think any higher of professionals or rich people just because they were born into a script more beneficial in terms of what they could take from this world…if you weren’t questioning the script…whatever yours was…it didn’t seem you were being all that wise…just perhaps more lucky…
and besides…if life was an experiment…why did so many people just go ahead and do the exact same thing that had been done right before them? it just seemed unscientific to needlessly duplicate well documented ideas…everyone knew that a certain path was likely to lead to moderate comfort, no bursts of happiness or sadness, people in your life you don’t necessarily feel less alone around, but also don’t feel constantly harassed and sick around.
how did my dad do it? how did he both recognize the absurdity in life and yet also cling dearly to it and those around him, to the point where he overworked himself for their benefit? how? how did he read the obituaries everyday with the interest of someone reading the sports page and still find the game worthwhile?
a note on socialism…it is conceivable that merely removing the liberty to be greedy wouldn’t by necessity remove all other liberties. people who are either too communistic or too capitalist both have problems. a good analogy is kids playing a game…communists want to change the rules so that even the slow kids can score touchdowns…capitalists are like the annoying kid who brings the ball and so keeps reminding you that he might take the ball home…and then calls being all time quarterback, and then makes a rule where you can’t tackle the quarterback. I think socialism is where everyone gets to play and even have every position available to them so that they can get better if possible…but at the same time are not forced into unrealistic equality. equality in access, nothing more nothing less (education, medicine…i.e the ball). so that the only inequities left are those the great creator saw fit to imbue in us.
the only elements of this universe I feel the human faculties can truly grasp in a sufficient way are sorrow and joy. they are the reality we are most capable of expertise in.
in horror films…a good technique is the sudden subtle change. it serves as foreshadowing to the catastrophic change. I’ve always preferred the building tension of the swinging open door to the raw shock of the monster standing suddenly before the hero/heroine. think about it…you’re going to the bathroom and suddenly all of the lights shut off…it’s quiet for a moment…then the door you’ve locked starts rattling…someone is trying violently to open it. it goes still…you hear screams elsewhere in the house. you rush to unlock the door and open it…and everything is normal…what took place…sudden changes…disorientation…good horror stuff….another example…your neighbor always leaves their door open during the day while they are at home doing errands in the front yard or in the house….but you come home one night and the door is still open and all of the lights in the house are off. I’d find that creepy. you’re going to sleep and you’re facing the closet…the doors are closed…you turn to the other side. later in the night you wake up…you turn sides again…one closet door is open. a lot of the most frightening changes are those of scope…suddenly the world is bigger or smaller than we had planned on, had found comfort in. suddenly the comfort of knowing is removed. the fear is in being stabbed the first time…the 7th time it no longer is fear but pain.
life is depressing enough as it is, but life in America is ultimately depressing…because America tries to pretend it isn’t…it tells you everything is going to be okay…there’s plenty of billboards and gas station marquees saying come here, buy me and you’ll have the answer…and then it turns out they’re all cardboard cutouts…the celebrities…the notions of beauty…all cardboard cutouts…and the basic questions remain…because our culture, or mainstream culture at least, has not found methods to address these questions (methods which traditionally in other cultures were religious, but also secular in the arts and humanities)…but rather more effective ways of putting them off. of course this is a load of horseshit coming from someone who will be looking at internet porn in a second. which I guess underscores the point that I really do think that’s what most people want…questions they can answer, and quickly and easily. things they know they have for sure…full stomachs, orgasms, etc. evolution may have may have left us with minds useful in propagating ourselves, but with unforeseen secondary results. it’s good to doubt when walking into a dark cave or a forest or to be eager upon sight of other humans or food…but is it good to doubt life itself, to ask whether free will exists? or to be eager for heaven? in our ability to observe and appraise, it was only a matter of time before we tried to map our own mind, only to be filled with the requisite eagerness and doubt we’re used to labeling things with…never quite sure which was appropriate without the concrete correcting us. speculation with no means of redress. uncertainty can be both our greatest strength and greatest liability…
I won a stuffed animal at dave and buster’s in the claw machine again…even though I know it’s pretty dumb and I really don’t need another useless stuffed animal (although i'm sure whoever makes these stuffed animals doesn't feel them useless). I don’t think anyone would even believe I went there if I didn’t come back without like ten stuffed animals…it made me imagine a scenario where a guy or girl was cheating on their significant other (weird euphemism)…and to convince them they were regularly going to some place they could bring back stuffed animals from a claw machine (bowling alley)…but really they were just giving them stuffed animals from a huge collection they bought or already had…which made me imagine a counter scenario where the other found the collection and started putting the animals back in it to see if they even noticed…
a lot of the clichés about high school coaches seem very true. just about their perspective terminating at high school and high school sports…and therefore being pathetically overzealous in the eyes of some. at seeding meetings in tournaments when they would decide where in the brackets everyone should be placed…they often had little objective data and would resort to who could come up with better metaphors to describe their kids….”well my kid is as tough as nails…” “well then my kid would be a hammer”….well my kid is like a wolverine….well my kid is wooooweee he’s tougher than a papa bear with a toothache…well my kid is so tough they need a new word for him because tough isn’t a tough enough word….
and then there are the coaches who completely berate their kids for losing or worse for winning in a less dominant fashion than is required….”you either pin that kid or your parents will hate you” and sure maybe you think that coach is exaggerating…but what if I told you the coach was the kid’s dad…so it’s not like he’s making stuff up.
every culture has been through its hardships and its wrong, and the irish are no exception…so I think god made a pact with them…god said…you’ve been through a lot irish…but not as much as some cultures…so here’s the deal…I’ll give you enough talent and drive to at least support your dependency on alcohol…and the irish were grateful. I don’t suppose I should really be commenting on the irish much just because I’ve seen the quiet man once or twice and eaten soda bread…but it’s not like I really feel like playing up my identity as American these days…
spiders fascinate me. as do dolphins. as do dinosaurs. as does the ocean floor.
san Pellegrino limonata might be the most delicious drink ever created. if I had to drown in any soft drink…that’d be my choice.
|
041115
|
| |
... |
|
|
stork daddy
|
this is my first attempt at a novel. it’s pretty much about myself. I wish it was about the rest of the world or all of the things a novel is supposed to be about. ideally it’d be about you. but it’s fucking difficult not to write about yourself. trust me, try it.
she was one of those people who would say things he could not help but be incredulous about. one of those people you think must be putting you on, or you doubt really even exist. and yet the more he couldn’t relate to her, the more he wanted to.
sobriety used to be my drug, but no longer. my brother he explained himself as a sociopath with a conscience if that makes any sense. he knew he didn’t think much of others, would use them if he had the chance, and so out of some intellectual obligation he wanted to distance himself from them, minimize the damage. but eventually after running off, he came back. he said he imagined some scenario where people would be like…you just became a hermit for attention. and he’d reply…boy I wish I had came up with a better way to get attention. and they’d reply…well it depends on what crowd you wanted attention from. and his only reply would be, good argument. so he figured he’d come back. it’s a double edged sword he said. the more you know people, the more you know they deserve to be betrayed, on the other hand…the more you know they deserve so much better.
our mother’s accomplishments were perhaps normal, but extraordinary when you knew that she contemplated suicide at least once a day. most people were asking what they should do with their lives, while she was asking should I be living? it tended to make those other questions distractions, or perhaps it was a distraction from those other questions.
smoking a cigarette and you can feel the nicotine doing Mississippi eddy swirls into your toes…it makes me feel sick, all of America does. my bones ache I feel too bloated or else too hungry. and you look at those billboards for smoking, and the people have these tans skins and white smiles. in reality the more you smoke, the more tan your teeth become and pale your skin. if you could meet one of those people in reality, and go inside their body, it’d be this cavernous warehouse…totally empty, except for a faint techno beat. and there’d be one small room hidden in darkness, full of blood and crickets and screaming. that was what he felt like inside more and more.
he felt for addicts of any kind after he started smoking. because he smoked because it was readily available, felt good, a lot of people did it. well depending on how crappy your neighborhood was, that could very well describe crack.
welcome to Montana, start self-medicating now…
he drove by this factory everyday, or maybe it was a refinery. he really didn’t know. but it was this complex set of pipes and smoke and tanks. it seemed invented, as if someone had been told to create something intricate… “this smokestack needs wires spiraling around it perfectly imperfect”
there was too much information now. you couldn’t tell the joke from the punchline or the real story from the opinion. it was either bitterly cynical or unflinchingly sincere depending on your feelings on objectivity. it used to be that a hundred years of history was broken down into a certain amount of information. now because information was so easily available, you were bombarded with that much information everyday. everyday held what once was a hundred years worth of information. and consequently it seemed the past was so much more easily erased, buried underneath the new, often the new burying the context necessary to understand it.
he watched a lot of porn when he was sad. he liked it all now. there were times in his past that certain sorts of porn made him feel very uncomfortable. where anyone was too abused or used it used to disturb him. or anything interracial in a fetishist sort of way. especially a black man and a white woman, or a white man and an asian woman. these were the dominant forms. the historical reasons behind their allure were there to be discussed, but really it was the idea that the distinctions mattered at all that bothered him. but eventually he surrendered to it all. and soon he was watching midgets blow goats and eunuchs shitting on the elderly. and when he did just give into it all, it was apparent how much an oversimplification it was to have black on black, white on white, man on woman. and after he surrendered to that, he realized how much an oversimplification even the idea that he was surrendering to this discrete black on white or white on yellow, or purple on green was. all that eventually mattered was that there were two people fucking (or three or four, or more). seeing the objectification of the actors (woman most often, not that the men looked like anything more than rutting machines) was still slightly disturbing. but he got over the idea that it was misogynistic by reminding himself that he wouldn’t mind being a woman, and that woman or man it was nice to have something easy and receptive and endlessly available as porn provided in concept. it was sad that this was somehow deemed only a woman’s job because it tainted what in some way seemed pure for both men and women. just skin available for whatever meaning anyone else wanted to provide. and yet maybe all those who touted morals and such were right. maybe this permissiveness was truly antithetic to life…it certainly felt in someway like a fading away to nothingness to give into the pure lust porn provided.
fuck life, and if there’s a god, fuck that god.
life did often seem a video game. a trippy thought to him was this: what if our lives were interfaces attached to some other universe or other existence somewhere, and those decisions we thought were meaningless or mundane actually had entire lives hanging in the balance in this more real world? what if by choosing coke over pepsi, I was really deciding whether some poor child in some other universe should live or die?
driving he needed some music. he couldn’t imagine freeways being invented before car radios. on those empty expanses you needed music to provide a human touch lest one start to realize how empty and soulless our country had become. he could see how people needed god before they had car radios. on those long journeys by horse or train or boat, over fields or ocean or sky etc. you needed something human, you needed to find some human design so to not feel lonely. billboards were often the only companion you had on the modern long drive.
everything was so well designed these days, even the carwash looked like this tunnel of promise, as if life would suddenly be more meaningful when you came out the other side, as if on the other side was the horizon you were always driving towards and never reaching.
|
041130
|
| |
... |
|
|
stork daddy
|
driving, I saw a fire engine, and a an ambulance…and the ambulance’s back window was lit up against the darkness like a tv show, with bare feet sticking humorously up in the air while two men worked feverishly to return the feet to standing and shoes I suppose.
I thought, when I saw the firetrucks go by…they’re on their way to help 40 year old me who just had a heart attack. but perhaps I’m being optimistic. I should really quit smoking and drinking and self-medicating. but I suppose prayer is just another form of self-medicating. and sometimes you should just let yourself go with dignity right? besides, what good is it too hold out and be whole when society is going full-speed in the opposite direction. how sick would you feel having perspective when society goes the way of dirty mattresses on the side of the road and drive-through pharmacies on every corner? it’d really be quite pointless. you’d have no one to share your victory with, and you’d just be prolonging the inevitable anyways.
I don’t know. an ambulance drove the other way lights down only moments after the first procession faded from sight. “that was quick” I thought.
driving through traffic so slowly, everyone waiting to get home. there’s a football stadium to the right off the offramp, with highschool kids being the center of attention for two hours or so. it’s nice because it gives them a chance to escape their usual position of being made to feel as small and unimportant as ants by their high school teachers. maybe their high school teachers were really just preparing them for the real world though, because you’d learn when you got out of high school that there were plenty of adults who made high school teachers feel as small and unimportant as ants, and so on and so forth.
passing a mall I wasn’t paying much attention, and for a split second it seemed like the sky had lit up. I thought, explosion? second coming? the video billboard had just changed screens. but for a second my mind had been tricked into thinking polaris had exploded.
I am a poor wayfaring stranger played in my cd player.
I’m going there, to see my father….what would my father say to me?
I’m going there to see my mother…and when I picture this, I’m more happy than the shame I feel when I imagine my father thinking I gained no perspective or soul wisdom from his death,
of course I picture my mom when I was so young she could pick me up and seemed an infinite source of strength. before I realized she was just as tired and dreaming as all of us. I can see how people believe in heaven. it’s something we’ve all felt.
|
041130
|
| |
... |
|
|
unhinged
|
i used to get them at birthday parties when i was young; special little plastic bags filled with plastic junk and some good candy if you were lucky that ocuppied a child's attention for ten minutes until the clown got there.
sometimes i wish i never met him. sometimes i know that the only reason i'm alive right now is because of him.
i miss my kids. arielle and owen. cute as little buttons. much like me and my brother. arielle all book smart and musically inclined playing pretend with her imginary friend while owen crawls kamikaze and causes mischief. cute as little buttons that i want to eat up with kisses. they make me forget that i am miserable for awhile.
i need to go home. where my family and my dwindling supply of friends are. i need that in the aching uncomplete without it way. being lonely AND alone sucks. i need to go home.
|
041201
|
