The world is frozen solid under the soupy, 3-am smog. Everything is diffused and grey, silhouetted against mercury-vapor orange of the horizon, this is my world. I can’t help but just stroll around a take it all in. It’s a beauty that comes more from security than from any primal connection to the environment. The half-mile surrounding me probably contains ten trees, fifteen people, and a million tons of concrete.
This is a new life for me, and I'm not speaking of the surroundings, but of experience. It's one of waking up in the world, looking around with eyes that are new but memories that are familiar. Everything stripped away, all connections, associations, and meaning shaken out like cobwebs, and each piece picked up, examined and lovingly set back in place. Blood connections, emotional connections, treasured concepts and sacred cows... Some came unbidden and settled into their familiar spots, my daughter for example, others had to be revisited.
An eye to the sky, an ear to the ground - breathe deep the sumptuous energy and I see that my corner in the metaphorical dark begins to feel less like home. I want to step out into the light and stake a claim amid the tumult of the datasphere. Participate in the vortex of stories and ideas, and maybe yank on some nerve bundles in the proto-brain of the superorganism, the real ruler of this planet.
I have my brains, my will, and the support of a few good friends, and no real talent to expend energy on my own behalf... That I'll have to learn along the way.
I have habits to develop, energy to mine, and a huge amorphous, half-baked blob in my brain that I want to drag into the light.
Wish me luck.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
CaffSleepDep
It's gone to my legs, the coffee's jitter
But my eyes still want to close.
Turn me over and shake me like a
Cartoon thug. The change
Falls from my pockets, but maybe
The caffeine will finally go to my brain.
Drop me on my head if you like (please do)
So then you can kiss it better.
* * *
Caffeine and sleep deprivation... my two favorite drugs.
But my eyes still want to close.
Turn me over and shake me like a
Cartoon thug. The change
Falls from my pockets, but maybe
The caffeine will finally go to my brain.
Drop me on my head if you like (please do)
So then you can kiss it better.
* * *
Caffeine and sleep deprivation... my two favorite drugs.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Jettisoned the boyfriend...
I told Ms. DeMille to be careful, that girls fall in love with me. She didn't believe me. She told me, "It's all good." I believed her. We were both wrong.
Bouncing Betty told me it was all in fun... that I shouldn't get emotionally involved. She dumped me a week later to 'go steady' with her erstwhile boyfriend. Ms. DeMille's feigned sympathy was endearing.
A day or three later I'm showing Ms. DeMille the door after a disagreement about sex. Not twelve hours after that Bouncing Betty is again on my doorstep, having jettisoned the boyfriend, wanting to run away with me. This is the one that wanted me to make a sandwich out of her with the pool boy. Fifteen orgasms later, she's ready to bear my children.
I don't blame either of these two for anything. They were as open and honest with me as they knew how to be... and I have my own blindness to consider.
Is this why some guys kick women out of bed the moment they're done with them? How about the complaints I've heard from women about how men can be so distant and mean... how much of that has this as it's behavioral antecedent? Is this how a guy learns how to be so amoral in seducing some young, tender, vulnerable girl... because no matter what, it's going to end up a big, gory mess anyway? Is this the real reason nice guys finish last?
Sounds good to me. Universe, I stand reproved.
Bouncing Betty told me it was all in fun... that I shouldn't get emotionally involved. She dumped me a week later to 'go steady' with her erstwhile boyfriend. Ms. DeMille's feigned sympathy was endearing.
A day or three later I'm showing Ms. DeMille the door after a disagreement about sex. Not twelve hours after that Bouncing Betty is again on my doorstep, having jettisoned the boyfriend, wanting to run away with me. This is the one that wanted me to make a sandwich out of her with the pool boy. Fifteen orgasms later, she's ready to bear my children.
I don't blame either of these two for anything. They were as open and honest with me as they knew how to be... and I have my own blindness to consider.
Is this why some guys kick women out of bed the moment they're done with them? How about the complaints I've heard from women about how men can be so distant and mean... how much of that has this as it's behavioral antecedent? Is this how a guy learns how to be so amoral in seducing some young, tender, vulnerable girl... because no matter what, it's going to end up a big, gory mess anyway? Is this the real reason nice guys finish last?
Sounds good to me. Universe, I stand reproved.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Your Zeit is in my Geist
I am nothing, I have nothing… sometimes I type.
It’s a Saturday morning, the world is cold and crusty outside, I’m picking he sleepy grains out of my eyes and sipping down a positively manly cup of coffee. All's well, I s'pose... except for that one thing. Did I tell you that the Mafia is forcing me to pay for a Lexus that I'll never get to drive?
I make about $13.00 an hour, I’m a single parent, I have no property, no savings and at this moment I have $150.00 in my pocket to feed, clothe, heat, and entertain myself (and also insulate my drafty dwelling) for the next two weeks. I’ve have to completely turn my daughter’s safe-keeping and support over to her mother and step-dad… I work 50 hours a week - last month I had to borrow money to eat. I'm behind in my doctor bills and sometimes I have to let my phone get disconnected because I can't keep up. I drive a car that might get me $500.00 if I sold it, and I live in a converted storage shed.
I wouldn't have any of these problems if it weren't for the damn mob and their pitiless greed.
What did I do to piss off the Mafia, you ask? It was a case of mistaken identity... being in the wrong place a the wrong time, but that's neither here nor there... especially with them. Every time I've talked with them there has been no interest on their part in why I 'owe' this money... just that I spend my every waking moment trying to pay it off. The consequences are never elaborated as much as simply hinted at.
If this were a movie, there would be a point where the character would have to take matters into his own hands... and the audience would be sympathetic. What would he do? You can't scare mobsters away, you can't fight them legally, and there's nowhere you can go to run. He might have a Matrix style "guns, lots of guns" moment - but then that's when the movie abruptly ends and I realize it's just me here in the world we all have to agree is 'real'... The one where shooting people and blowing up buildings is obviously not the answer.
Now replace 'Mafia' with 'IRS' and the whole thing becomes clearer.
I could heat my flat all winter with the pile of cash they've taken from me, so would the carcasses of all the lawyers who have fucked me over this. All my legal avenues have been blocked with a 'Fuck-you, pay up' sign, and all attempts to 'compromise' have been shown to be just as fake as the actual debt in the first place.
(By the way... do not EVER hire J.K.Harris & Co. to handle your tax problems unless by 'handle' you mean 'set up a payment plan and ignore you.' More on that later.)
I have a new lawyer and a new strategy... if this doesn't work, then... well... I've never seriously considered illegally changing my identity and making this star-crossed 'me' vanish like that third of my take-home pay does every month...
I've read recently of the IRS and it's quiet policy of targeting the weak. Here's a particularly egregious example.
Populations of the poor, weak or powerless have historically been leveraged against their misery to boost the powerful. Republic or dictatorship, this pattern repeats itself and finds new niches to hide in. Whatever ideology holds the loyalties of the masses, no matter how protected they think they are by their politics or their religion, they will be exploited by the cynical, the powerful and the greedy. Today it continues with little change. Then, we were sharecropping under the thumb of some feudal lord as we feared hunger and death, now we're forced to pay through the nose for health care by those who wish they were feudal lords.
What revolution has ever been undertaken by humans where this was not the issue at its heart? All my avenues of escape... all of them... have destitution or prison at their end. With every passing month conventional morality looks more and more cartoonish against the play of all this.
And now that I've written myself into a corner... I'm gonna go smoke a joint on a street corner at one in the afternoon in Salt Lake City. My rebellion will no doubt bring a new shift in the paradigm, a new zeit in the geist...
I'll write later if I'm not in jail.
It’s a Saturday morning, the world is cold and crusty outside, I’m picking he sleepy grains out of my eyes and sipping down a positively manly cup of coffee. All's well, I s'pose... except for that one thing. Did I tell you that the Mafia is forcing me to pay for a Lexus that I'll never get to drive?
I make about $13.00 an hour, I’m a single parent, I have no property, no savings and at this moment I have $150.00 in my pocket to feed, clothe, heat, and entertain myself (and also insulate my drafty dwelling) for the next two weeks. I’ve have to completely turn my daughter’s safe-keeping and support over to her mother and step-dad… I work 50 hours a week - last month I had to borrow money to eat. I'm behind in my doctor bills and sometimes I have to let my phone get disconnected because I can't keep up. I drive a car that might get me $500.00 if I sold it, and I live in a converted storage shed.
I wouldn't have any of these problems if it weren't for the damn mob and their pitiless greed.
What did I do to piss off the Mafia, you ask? It was a case of mistaken identity... being in the wrong place a the wrong time, but that's neither here nor there... especially with them. Every time I've talked with them there has been no interest on their part in why I 'owe' this money... just that I spend my every waking moment trying to pay it off. The consequences are never elaborated as much as simply hinted at.
If this were a movie, there would be a point where the character would have to take matters into his own hands... and the audience would be sympathetic. What would he do? You can't scare mobsters away, you can't fight them legally, and there's nowhere you can go to run. He might have a Matrix style "guns, lots of guns" moment - but then that's when the movie abruptly ends and I realize it's just me here in the world we all have to agree is 'real'... The one where shooting people and blowing up buildings is obviously not the answer.
Now replace 'Mafia' with 'IRS' and the whole thing becomes clearer.
I could heat my flat all winter with the pile of cash they've taken from me, so would the carcasses of all the lawyers who have fucked me over this. All my legal avenues have been blocked with a 'Fuck-you, pay up' sign, and all attempts to 'compromise' have been shown to be just as fake as the actual debt in the first place.
(By the way... do not EVER hire J.K.Harris & Co. to handle your tax problems unless by 'handle' you mean 'set up a payment plan and ignore you.' More on that later.)
I have a new lawyer and a new strategy... if this doesn't work, then... well... I've never seriously considered illegally changing my identity and making this star-crossed 'me' vanish like that third of my take-home pay does every month...
I've read recently of the IRS and it's quiet policy of targeting the weak. Here's a particularly egregious example.
Populations of the poor, weak or powerless have historically been leveraged against their misery to boost the powerful. Republic or dictatorship, this pattern repeats itself and finds new niches to hide in. Whatever ideology holds the loyalties of the masses, no matter how protected they think they are by their politics or their religion, they will be exploited by the cynical, the powerful and the greedy. Today it continues with little change. Then, we were sharecropping under the thumb of some feudal lord as we feared hunger and death, now we're forced to pay through the nose for health care by those who wish they were feudal lords.
What revolution has ever been undertaken by humans where this was not the issue at its heart? All my avenues of escape... all of them... have destitution or prison at their end. With every passing month conventional morality looks more and more cartoonish against the play of all this.
And now that I've written myself into a corner... I'm gonna go smoke a joint on a street corner at one in the afternoon in Salt Lake City. My rebellion will no doubt bring a new shift in the paradigm, a new zeit in the geist...
I'll write later if I'm not in jail.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Now.
Now.
That ephemeral moment when all there is to do is look around at the world, see all that it's become around you and say, "Here I am..."
I entered this world by way of a fair amount of privilege. All the advantages were mine, backed up with plenty of brains and loads of potential. By means of bad advice, bad luck, misdirection, missed opportunity, laziness, depression, and yes, stupidity... with a helping of monolithic, banal evil inflicted by the powers that be... here I am. No money, no useful education, no marketable skills and no earthly possessions as I slide down the back end of my prime.
I haven't hit 'rock bottom' exactly, but I can kick the pebbles around down there as I perch on the lowest rung of local civilization. Call it reaping what I've sewn, call it Collateral Karma, call it my just desserts. Whatever the assessment, I'm finding that this position, as I might also describe backhandedly as 'privileged,' has afforded me opportunities that I'm beginning to see as irreplaceable. Down here, at the ass end of society - the bottom of the social barrel, there is not only room for happiness, but growth and progress by any human definition.
Indeed, now: here I am.
That ephemeral moment when all there is to do is look around at the world, see all that it's become around you and say, "Here I am..."
I entered this world by way of a fair amount of privilege. All the advantages were mine, backed up with plenty of brains and loads of potential. By means of bad advice, bad luck, misdirection, missed opportunity, laziness, depression, and yes, stupidity... with a helping of monolithic, banal evil inflicted by the powers that be... here I am. No money, no useful education, no marketable skills and no earthly possessions as I slide down the back end of my prime.
I haven't hit 'rock bottom' exactly, but I can kick the pebbles around down there as I perch on the lowest rung of local civilization. Call it reaping what I've sewn, call it Collateral Karma, call it my just desserts. Whatever the assessment, I'm finding that this position, as I might also describe backhandedly as 'privileged,' has afforded me opportunities that I'm beginning to see as irreplaceable. Down here, at the ass end of society - the bottom of the social barrel, there is not only room for happiness, but growth and progress by any human definition.
Indeed, now: here I am.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
