Self-reflexive part 0

Self-reflexive part 1

self-reflexive
tripped up in anagrams
with iron fists and wirecutters
seeming to pass through my bowels
and lost long forgotten blonde
hello smiles at my door
really a chance to disassemble
ask for no more forgiveness
leave the light and dissect fear to
see what normal bones and organs
that charlatan is made of

because I'm still alive
we walked the mean streets in glowing rags
but safety was only in our heads
like stuffed trashcans played dead
and gave in to the great sky
surgically butterflied
embalmed with ideas and then
spiked our pleasure thinking the first truth
was within our grasp, shattered crucially
took the first taste and lost the moment
travelled backwards in time

so I'm lost in the here and now
face down in friendship
there will be no one to rescue me
when I wake up from reality trembling
just take a blue-green sip of this
tea dear, it'll dull your mentality
let you slip and slide into
that little comfortable place called crazy
just one more bite of this carrot, oops,
guess you missed it, wait,
there it is again.

Accuracy

I have a problem with people who don't answer questions correctly. If you're going to answer at all, at least answer the question that's being asked and not the one you want to answer or the one you thought was going to be asked halfway in. Yes, this means you will have to listen to the whole thing and not complete the phrase in your mind. And yes, you can share additional information after you provide a relevant answer, but not in place of it. And finally, if two questions are asked, answering the very last one only and saying nothing to recognize the first is also not acceptable. Jeesh. If I had a nickel for every time someone answered "blue" when I asked how big their dog was, the world would be flat.

Untitled

In America, life has no meaning.
We dabble in one thing after another
Join a cult or become drug addicts
Piss our years away.
It doesn't have to be like this,
But it is.

We sit caged in our comforts
Read with wide eyes about
The lives of real people in the world
Watch fictional ones on TV
Anything to give meaning and feeling to
What feels like a dream.

Alter

So bigger and brighter
The lights here wink and wander over
Glassed hallowed domains

We worked and wondered
We had aches we fretted after
Steel lives

That we could heal with smiles
But you were always scarred
And you still fester

Nothing about you is in harmony
Nothing is holy
Instead only a great grey sheen masks

What is living from what is no more
And you are grandiloquent
In your praise for me and mine

But you still mark time with gnashing teeth
You bastion of hoary dreamscapes
Rot in your style of hell.

Bodensee

Expectant swirling
Like going into a cave
Surrounded by something darker
Than mere blackness
It's like the absence of all time
Like nothing ever existed
And life is just an idle dream

Lost all touch with those times
Those powerful feelings that raced
Around my body, threatened to
Explode my heart,
Lay bare my flimsy logic
Push me through all this living
Into something higher.

Expo '86

The 1986 World's Fair was my introduction to the world. At 13 I was a kid who was interested in sharks, dinosaurs, and space, but thought little about other cultures in the world. I was raised mostly in small towns and mostly in the country, so I didn't know a whole lot about what existed beyond the horizons. Certainly my biggest asset was and continues to be an open mind.

When my stepdad decided to take me to Expo '86 in Vancouver, I was overjoyed. What a mystery! I'd never even heard of the World's Fair before, but I was immediately enthralled. We flew to Vancouver and stayed in a hotel room; it was my first time out of the United States. I remember ordering a Big Mac off a menu written in English and French. I recall wandering from pavilion to pavilion, amazed at the diversity of my own planet. The highlight of the weekend for me was the USSR's pavilion. Here was the dire enemy of the USA, barely even human right? Well here I learned about Yuri Gagarin and Sputnik, and about the Siberian transcontinental railway, plans for fusion power, and Glasnost (which had just begun). It was an immense shock and an intellectual delight.

Later than night, we ate dinner at a Peruvian restaurant and had fried plantains for dessert. Some of the pavilions I'd wanted to visit were closed or overcrowded, but nothing would spoil my enjoyment of the two days spent sampling the wonders of the world. This is where I first truly became aware of South America, Egypt, Indonesia, and Portugal. Here was where countries ceased to be fables in golden-bound storybooks and became real places with different-colored people representing them. My stepdad and I waited in lines to sample the bleeding edge of technology and stand awed at the sublime arts of antiquity.

We saw a bullet train in HO scale blistering a route in the shadow of great Fuji. We saw Venusian capsule replicas hatch open meters in front of us. We spoke to Brazilians, French, and Nigerians. I learned about the biggest volcanic eruptions in history, the future of robotics, and the Silk Road between the Middle East and China. It was like nothing I'd seen before, and because of my wide-eyed innocence, like nothing since.

The World's Fair of 1986 was the latest of a long line of similar prestigious events, I would learn. It was an affair whose pedigree was deep. The Eiffel Tower, the Crystal Palace, and San Francisco's de Young Museum were remnants of this heritage. It was an event that would bring nations together for a touch of solidarity, however tokenized. In the 50s and 60s it stood in contrast to global politics; in the 90s and 2000s it would mirror world struggles in microcosm. It never lost its relevance, not to me at least.

I am forever grateful to my stepdad Bill for choosing me for that trip. I don't know what made him do it or why, but I do know that I am a better and broader person because of that decision. That fair will stand as one of my best memories. From in-the-moment thrills such as the Looping Starship ride to the more expansive international perspectives those few days would instill in me moving forward in my life, I will always remember the Exposition and its many charms. If I am a citizen of the world, it started in Vancouver. Thank you, Bill.

Taxonomy of heaven

My feet push together like scullers
Against the soft soil under the junipers
In the prints they leave amongst the leaves and pebbles
Something twitches in the rubble
Birds cry all around me
I think they are lost
Cannot find one another in the sun-torn sky
And the whitecaps destroy their voices
And here I sit with the illusion of choice
But neon green moss still watches me
With a cautious curiosity
The decomposing mess under the canopy
Will never reveal whether it is hungry
Or merely warm
The souls of these trees screen
Harbor from uncouth sea
Keep my inner violence within a circle
Of ancient, nearly forgotten
Sanctuaries of green
Still back away and can't tell you why
Deeper into the thicket
I am all wistful gazes and explosions
Of night and day
People shouting something about whales
Gives me a headache
I can hear their baritone, sea-green, three miles away
Other instants turn my thoughts to a girl
Headed for the havens in New Zealand
Or a daughter in braids and acrid waves of
Colored foam by the docks
Full of smiling strangers
To be raised on tragedy
Now guided toward some sheer wall of majesty
That I could never climb
With crampons and rope or by dreamed levitation
I believe that paradise is the worst thing
That can seduce a human being
Without the contrast of cold there is no
Appreciation of warmth
And you, my love, perched in the sun
You are on your own for awhile
And it makes me feel refreshed and just a little less tired
When you sketch your branches, your stones
When we are apart but not alone
But there are not enough drugs or doctors in the world
To show me the way home.

Diluene

Now things come to a head
Falling behind
Leaves drop from bland white oaks
Sunshine fills in the details
There are little trails of tree fluff on the hood of my car
And little trails of ants in my bathroom
We always like to root for the underdog
A jumble of words without feeling can
Never have real meaning
I am on my cushions on my rock in my best thinking attire
Naked to new ideas
There are 101 small pleasures I could indulge in
But I bend my will to the most unpleasant,
The most demanding of focus
The most unforgiving for those wishing to find greatness
Inside their balled-up hiking socks
Now a little fall of rain never hurt anyone
A few snowflakes on the road seem fun and free
But the car handles like a dune buggy
And the driver inside the driver is panicking
Maybe it's time for lunch and a glass of
Something stronger than tea
You are the same person I met so many episodes ago
But you've changed
And not for the better.

Survival

The only problem with liberals crying foul is that they're right. Conservatives are in bed with corporations, in cahoots with dictators. Of course they are. Human beings are animals. The only mistake is in believing that we're not, that somehow, we've advanced beyond dog-eat-dog into some kind of benevolent concern for the greater good. There are individuals who live by those principals, but the human species as a whole does not. It is a greedy, relentlessly selfish machine that only cares about survival. Not survival of all its constituent members, nor their well-being, just survival of the species as a whole. That is nartural selection, which is rooted ultimately in the physical laws of the universe. It is a local buck of the trend of entropy that tries to wear everything down, that makes sure all resources remain scarce and that fighting for survival never becomes too easy. So that is why there are brutal regimes, and lying politicians, and biased media, and greedy corporations that will tell you to your face that they care about you, then try in every possible way to part you from your money. That is why most friendships and marriages revolve around each party feeling like they're receiving more benefit that harm from the association. There is altruism in the universe, but it is rare and it is the exception. Self-interest, what liberals and humanitarians point to as if they've turned the rock over on some surprising, insidious revelation, is truly the rule of nature. As disheartening as that may be to us emotionally, if we're to behave in a rational matter we must accept that fact and view the world around us as it really is, not as we wish it would be. The world is a dangerous, competitive place that cares nothing for you personally. If you want to survive, you're going to have to go to war with it. If you don't care about surviving, then you have that luxury as well, and in fact it is my belief that much great art comes from this stance. Musicians, poets, and painters tend to die young and peniless, and are made martyrs, and somehow seem better beings than the rest of us because they've voluntarily given up their own self-interest in the interest of truth, even though that truth be hostile to them. That appeals to the masses and ensures their place in popular lore, but it does not change the way the masses operate, much less their very nature. We view true art with longing but still viciously attack our neighbor for his food, if only in a metaphorical sense.

Untitled

Another gray day
Feels sad and old
Easter Sunday one day
Rains with cold
And I
I'm just worn out
My heart feels torn out
I fold

Come and get me black ranger
I'm not going anywhere
Everything that fell out of my pen
Were things I couldn't keep in
Everything that burned inside
I couldn't hide
Closed eyes
I tried.

The meaning of words

Maybe others cannot see so plainly
The meaning of the words, nor hear as loudly
The sounds they shape when proclaimed so proudly
Nor smell the decay they rise from vainly

Maybe others exist in nonliterate terms
And feel their apathy or angst more innately
From pinpoints of pain they can share it but vaguely
And never reveal what fire there burns.

Open sores

Do I want a totally honest blog out in public view? Won't people be scared off from ever hiring me, ever having a romantic relationship with me, even from ever being friends with me, if they see everything in my head? But I do believe we all have sorta the same stuff floating around in our heads... lots of insecurity and pain and jealousy and other unpleasantness mixed in with the niceties we prefer to show to the world. So by me being totally open and honest, am I doing a good thing for myself in getting it all out and just hoping that there are some people in the world who will see things for what they are? Or should I get it out in more private writings, like I've been doing for years, and continue to play the game most of the world plays: Check me out, I'm a normal, cool guy. Hang out with me! Or maybe something in between these two extremes, like a lot of bloggers seem to do. Show some warts and the occasional outburst of unpleasantness but couch it amidst a greater mixture of happy thoughts and group hugs. In other words, just play a new game that's emerging with new rules. Look at me, I'm slightly fucked up but I'm brave enough to tell you about it. Hang out with me! How far down into the onion should we go?

It's Art, baby

I'm so tired of Art. Art makes a mockery out of the idea that we should just be insectlike workers slaving away to further our species and enable the further complexification of the material universe.

Garden of Eden

The world God put so much effort into making has turned out to be a complete disaster. Life isn't any fun; it's shallow. What can anyone do that really matters? The end product of billions of years of evolution and thousands of years of technological advance so far is to create a world where everyone looks at little screens and clicks on things and hits keys. Once in awhile we get up to shit, eat, or have sex. Most planets are completely lifeless. What are they for? Maybe tonight I'll see a movie. Things go around in spirals and make tiny copies of themselves but nothing ever really changes. Humanity, that noble beast of Creation, is a joke. We take our displeasures one day at a time because it hurts the most that way and lets us feel something more than endless, unendurable emptiness. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this; something in the way the clouds are blowing across the sky right now tells me that whatever it was He was trying to accomplish here, He failed. Maybe this is just a trial run.

Web of communication

The Internet "community" presents its own series of emotional and logistical challenges. Let's say you set up a blog and people trickle in and pretty soon you've got a group of blog friends, any of whom may or may not know any of the others. They post on yours, you post on theirs, and so forth. It's the same model really as any social network, slowly expanding as you are introduced to friends-of-friends, and contracting here and there where you lose interest or there's a row of some sort.

But there are some differences: You can present whatever face you want to the Net community, whereas in person this is harder to do (especially for me, since I am terrible at hiding my true emotions). You begin to have specific types of interactions with certain people, like, with one blogger you share a love of photography, with another, you talk about dark music, and with a third, funny movies. In my need to feel like I'm being "real" and not just adopting the outwardness that I believe is expected of me in each situation, it can be a real challenge to go from post to post, person to person, blog to blog. It can be an emotional rollercoaster and it all happens much quicker than in other social circles, where you're not likely to traverse the entire spectrum in such a short period of time. I suppose "phone nets" are a similar phenomenon, although since I'm particularly averse to the phone I can't usefully comment there.

Next is the logistical aspect. How do you maintain all these online friendships and also have time for any kind of life off the computer? It's tricky. I hate feeling like I'm a computer addict, or just plugged into a machine where even friendships are virtual. Obviously the people I'm talking to are just as real as I am (they are, right?) but it still seems somewhat unhealthy to only connect to them through words and pictures. It's like being trapped on an island and only being able to have penpals by bottle. It's cool that you can say whatever you want, whenever you want, and if you're in your underwear nobody knows about it, but the reality is no one is gonna keep in touch with you unless you're punctual and your behavior is somewhat consistent. In that it's like any other type of friendship. Reading takes time though, and typing even more time, and things like uploading and commenting on pictures even more time still. Time, time, time.

And how do you make the transition from your online friends to your offline friends? It's like being part of several social circles at once, and having to tailor your communications to each group not out of fakeness, but simply out of necessity since members of one likely do not know members of another. These considerations are not at all new of course, with work and school and dating and drinking and hobby groups all having existed for eons. Having an online group of friends is just ONE MORE group added to the mix - one more time commitment.

And then there is IM. This really deserves a long post all its own, but I don't feel like doing that right now so I'll just say a few things about it. At first you think it's really cool because you can talk to people in real time, for free. Then you find yourself getting annoyed when someone you want to talk to is not logged on, but you yourself stay invisible because you don't want everyone contacting you all at once or, more precisely, at their convenience rather than yours. It's the phone problem again, magnified. And because you have different types of relationships with each of your contacts, it's hard or near-impossible at times to switch ad hoc from one to another and stay true to yourself. It's tempting to act more cheerful than you feel with a friend or love interest than you might be with a relative, who you may allow to see more of your true concerns, insecurities, irritations. So the temptation is to stay invisible (lurk) and make contact with the people who fit most closely how you're feeling at the time, or to whom you have something specific you want to say. Once everyone starts to do this, though, it becomes not much different from email, and loses much of its immediateness, indeed its purpose.

So where is the balance point between face to face, telephone, email, blog, and IM communications? Hell, I don't know. I just live here. I suppose the whole thing will ebb and flow and eventually find a balance that is the most convenient for everyone, as a whole and on average. Every technology that changes our lives - especially our social lives - goes through this kind of evolution. I think one thing that's clear is that the idea of communicating instantly with anyone at anytime is never going to be fully enabled, simply for the fact that we ourselves don't seem to want it. People like to take themselves out of the loop from time to time, or not speak to a certain person for whatever reason, and so I don't think it will ever be possible to just tap your lapel or think of someone's name and *bam* you'll have an instant open channel with them. Both parties have to want it, something that has probably been true since our species' beginnings and will probably be true for a long, long time to come.

Modus vivendi

My love, my friend, bear with me:
Just carrying on living is meaningless without memory
And memories can be unbearably sad
When I think back on all the days that have sighed away
I'm not even sure who I am anymore
I used to think I was a quiet kid with a blue bike
And an active imagination and cammouflage jeans
Then I saw the folly of children's play and took up
Consumption of literature, a peek at what the sharpest,
Heartiest souls and minds have glimpsed on their adventures
And I tried to hone my body to higher levels of excellence
Until I found my ceiling, hoping it never came,
But then I moved away and lost my place in the
Great scheme of things and I was just another boy
In another schoolyard still afraid of the ball
And I hid back inside my imagination, which was
This time around not nearly so kind; I felt my mind reeling
From constantly bigger thoughts and connections
Saw the game that everyone played and
The excellence crusade as a sham
And so I spent long years in search of a philosophy
On which to base any further days
And though I dug and dug, and found friends
And good people along the way, I also found bog-rot
And black holes under the sand and other things
You shouldn't think about for too long
But I was locked on like a missile and couldn't dodge
That bad, black dog
The injuries I sustained were deeper than
Any insult by teeth cuts or talon, I fled
From the safety of imagination into some kind of timeless
Reshuffling of moments and days with no linearity
And the yellowed walls I walked and the hall
Where the Jamaican woman handed out our little paper cups
Was dropped into place right next to tulee reeds
In the rain on the other side of the Lake
Those trees that scared me foolishly now loomed and
Laughed at me fearlessly, all around me
And the guy in the white mask who smelled like a cigar,
He was too too close to me and I knew what revulsion was
Stayed broken in spades three-colored on recycleable
So I brought home a small cat and held him
Hoped he would trust me and love me, and he
Ran off as soon as he got the chance on the 5th night
That we ever had; Now my kitten is gone and I sit here
And cry because it seems like the Nile that my
Days once floated upon smoothly has swollen up, flooded
My head with blood and bodies and then gone dry,
And all I can honestly ask for now is to return in
Some miracuous fashion to make the small circles
Around me smile and welcome me home with ancient love,
Or to never put two thoughts together again
For the rest of my life, for to shuttle between two worlds,
A stranger to both and running scared is no way to live
I tell you, it is nothing but death, and even such
A breathless and dull fading of vitality
Is no courageous way to die.

I wonder if the grass is greener in Bora Bora?

Tonight I am a sea of sickness
Like a smashed open tennis ball
You can’t fill a hole with another hole
Just hold me.

The woman to my left is painting her lips
As the traffic light is changing
Strange how we whirl around possessed
Until there is nothing left.

Untitled

And I suppose
And I suppose
I am terribly naive.
Even in saying this,
I am showing my naivete;
I begin sentences with things like "Life is"
And I am just one insignificant person.
I try to draw grand conclusions from
A sample size of one, or maybe a dozen;
I feel overwhelmed and seek shelter
Inside my apartment, inside my mind,
When there are
When there are
A billions stars called people forming
Constellations all over the world,
Exchanging views, evolving.
And when I poke my head out and look just
For a moment I can see them,
I can truly see them,
Indifferent to me and my profound wisdom.

mental illness

I am covered with hands
This is a dance done hundreds of times before
A jaw-clenching, back-arching spectacle
I wear a plastic crown and people
Dressed like ghosts slip needles beneath my skin
I can't breathe, can't see anything now
Time has gone away
In the darkness I hear things
I never want to think about again
And then a crack of blurred light
Pushes my eyes open and the world
Is upside down and mirror-imaged
A searing neuroleptic nausea like the
Dizzy lysergic soak-sense washing over everything
I am covered with wires
And gagging on bile
Intubed and succinylcholinated, unable
To put moments back to back
To make any sense of noise or color
Was it paralytic or praecox?
Was it submission or stupefaction?
Am I really who they say I am?
Was I such a failed creature
The legacy of burnt bodies
Cracked teeth and sternums
Surgical sterilization
Meduna's camphor-in-oil
Bleeding lips and tongues
Insulin comas
Ablations of the frontal lobe
Sleep deprivation
Acetylcholine, histamine, nitrous, ether
Atropine and scopolamine
Miltown tinctured lancets
Scared, suspicious glances from
Faces that leer all around in a yellow haze
The mazes of the mind impossible to escape
Floating in space without a frame of reference
Pointillist dreams and nightmarish realities
Endless regression of fractal infinities
Despair and elation
But no middle ground of safe action
Nothing to latch on to
No underlying foundation
No pleasant belief in divinity
Now people are speaking all around me
A few of them are smiling as I
Shuffle into clothing and out of a building
And there is someone I'm sure I know
And she is kind and caring
And I must be such a mess of creation
To be led as I am childlike and wondering
Step inside a vehicle and gaze
Silently at the city's random sights
And struggle for the words or the gestures
That will make me human again
The eye of a tornado with my
Hands crossed in my lap
A blank expression on my face
And profound inner confusion.

Me no feel well

Everyone please breathe a sigh of sadness for me. No, no, not yet....NOW. Ok, thanks. I have come down with something horrid and monstrous and have just spent about 24 hours in bed with the prospect of more staring me in my ugly face.

I'm not only fishing for sympathy, I'm mostly letting people know if I don't promptly respond to IMs, emails, phone calls, blog posts, voices in my head, dictates from god, or even the wafting smell of something delicious being cooked, you will know why.

I hope to beat this thing and be up on my feet working hard for the good of mankind before too long. If not, once again, you'll know why.

Crunch

I'm going to break tradition and include a picture in my otherwise sternly textual blog. I designed this T-Shirt on one of those sites that let you upload photos, choose fonts, colors, and all the rest, then did some minor additional work in Photoshop. I will likely never own it because the minimum order is more than I care to spend, and I only want ONE (mine) in existence and don't want to sell any to people who might not feel the way I do about it.

Without further ado...

Thank God for wholesome girls

Unlike bimbos who only care about 'bling' and exposure and blatant, hedonistic materialism, I've come to realize that those nice girls, the pretty girls from next door without the caked on makeup or the rock hard abs, the ones who make you smile more than sweat and who you'd love to actually settle down and have childen with, actually value things in life like status, tons of money, bling, and getting their shot at a celebrity makeover. All my dreams of finding that one person who is pretty as a flower, unassuming and yet charming in their own quiet way, and possessed of a simple wisdom transcending this staged commercial abyss we find ourselves trapped in, have been eroded over the "boom" years of technology, to the point that I now despair of ever finding a woman I am not only attracted to but actually respect as a human being. I hope to God I am wrong. But then, God created all these women, so why the hell am I praying to him? He's the last creature I should probably trust.

Just one thing

Just do one thing.
When the world seems out of hand
And there are seven people breathing down your neck
With their deadlines and their demands
And when the pressure of failures and disappointments
Of jilting lovers and rejected applications
Crashes into you like a freak wave sent directly from God
Just do one thing.

Leave all the other shit to crumble to pieces
Don't run and find a corner to cry in
Or drink yourself into incohesivenes
Breaking apart the good bits that remain can never help
Don't promise the world to everyone in the world
And then juggle excuses and pretend to have misunderstood
Hope people believe that in your heart you are truly good
Just do one thing, and do it well
Fuck all else.

The throngs of people that surround you may hurl their hate
But at least one will respect your resolve
In the face of almost unresolvable plight, a cloudbreak
An even more important person will see this inimpeachable light
That when everything seems too much and you stand
At the easy path that winds through lands of plenty to the golden edge of Hell
You yourself will have done one thing well, and the sky will seem to stretch forever
And you can have it all without a single step in any earthly direction.

This is the essence of self-respect.

Aliena

It's more fun to interact than to pass out
And wake up no different than before, the same
Regimen in place dispel waste shower work food and dull denouement
It's better to be surprised, even disageee
With people who could change your whole static routine

There are people out there who can shake away your stupid, stupid
Arrogance, unearned complacency, make you feel things again:
As a competitor with a beating heart, with a thriving brain
Who cannot wait until the sun dawns once again so you can
Pour your intentions with words, looks, or flowers

Into another person's soul
And make them feel loved, worth another breath, once again whole
Unfolded, tall - remade from the oldest ashes.

Untitled in April

Loneliness is enough
To make me throw up the white flag
I will surrender gladly for a single companion
I don't need an army of adulation
The right person is enough, quite enough
Is plenty and then some
But loneliness is like the weight of a gun
In my pocket with its constant reminder
Temptation to don blinders
And I'm holding my eyes closed
With all my might
So I can't see the million things I'm missing
Without you.

I've a superficial question

How do people like the actual look of the blog? Is it laid out well, aesthetically sound, and all that good stuff?

I'm tired of being a Punk

I'm tired of being a Punk
Tired of being aggressive
And trying to change the world
And obsessed with originality

I don't want to view my life as Art
Anymore, because it never was
Someone slipped me that line when I was
Only eight years old, and I fell for it

Art may be an imitation of life,
But it is not true, authentic being
Only god or nature can bestow that upon us
And only those in service to something
Outside of their own minds
Can ever comprehend.