Filed under: What Is Actually Happening?
Cookie and I clopped through the dark street, turning the corner past the Schaedler Yesco. A mist and an overcast sky: in Pittsburgh it’s as welcome as a sunny day. I’ve already had a chance to smoke indoors at a bar, my only demand of my hostess.
Not This Place, The One On The Corner. Two pieces of bread and butter shoved into my face in a row. The coffee, black with a refill. I’m like Caligula. Now a plastic mug filled with lemon-buttered kale. I lose all reason; bits of kale spill off the bread across the particleboard table.
The coffeeshop windows are tall and wide. Thin weatherboarded houses clamber slowly above us, windows clenched shut like eyes. A loner in a hoodie kicks the wet pavement. What’s with these hills piled up on top of each other like an ugly san francisco, I wonder as I pull my backpack off the glowing lamplit chair. This town is magic, and that kale was a three dollar surprise that fate threw our way. Down the street, I buy four pairs of pants at a thrift store for $8.
Cookie’s cat is named Cookie. The cat got its name from her nickname, which was given to her by a boyfriend. Why am I fantasizing about living in a city without a subway? The wind blows cold on a borrowed bicycle. I take the wine bottles out of the backpack and sit on the couch, studiously training Cookie the cat to fetch and retrieve a single, tea-green earplug.
I miss the first bus back to New York, pay money I don’t have for a second bus, and float through the Alleghenies full of angst. The demons of my adolescence and early adulthood seize my lungs, my brain, my heart — I am pumping the blood of a broken teenaged boy.
After a cigarette at a gas station off Route 80, I jot down the words Fear Is A Shock. Fear Is A Gift. Fear Is The Awareness-Maker. The storm breaks inside of me.
Truly I, scatterbrained and uncomprehending, have been bullied and hijacked and conned and manipulated beyond all decency, and when I fight back, my reality bursts into flames. Failure is everywhere, every day, and yet I live as though I’m safe from it. Where can a man walk whose sanity depends on crushing and repressing the wild fullness of his soul? There is a chronic, low-grade panic attack that I have confused with my own identity. From the ages of thirteen to twenty it established its suffocating rhythm. Behind it there is nothing. Sometimes it’s so hard to let go.
Truth: from August to November of 2010 I felt my false self reasserting its power. Fighting it, changing the rhythm, took conscious effort. From August to November of 2011, my strength began to fail and I simply let go and fell through reality. Birds became my friends; I listened to them and they saw me. I felt the presence of spirits sending chills rippling through my body. The laws of the galaxy were hinted at.
Note to self: the stuff that assaulted you like a bewildering barrage from the ages of thirteen to twenty was JUST SOME STUFF THAT HAPPENED. The mixups and tug-of-wars and horrible days and weeks of the last two years were JUST SOME STUFF THAT HAPPENED.
If you can relax your fear of suffering enough to direct yourself directly at the emotional horror of an experience, a natural dissolving into wisdom will flower. Thank you, life, for the soft quiet light that cooled the low heads in the Pittsburgh coach as the glazed sun flew behind distant trees. The snow on the side of the highway is pale and my paperback is perfectly lit. The hills are flattened hulking shadows and a young mother scratches her nose in acknowledgement as her daughter shows her an open notebook. My eyes dart into the mute valley of brittle firs dashed with snow and the sky runs with burnt orange.
The dark ocean of dead leaves and the soft tinge of halitosis from the man sitting behind me set off a spark, a microflash; a dark blue cloud behind my field of vision. This whole thing has been a thread, I have held on to the thin thread of my deepest self. I am a good and true person who kept his warm and caring side alive, like a trembling flame through all of it.
The storm hasn’t broken; it hovers overhead ominously. It remains ominous. Twenty twelve is here, and I’m behind schedule like everyone else. Oh well. Maybe it’ll just be another screwed-up even-numbered year.
Then Valentine’s Day passes, and I prove myself a fractured mess again. No, I’m afraid the storm may be breaking for me very soon. March 20th or March 10th. Or the New Moon on Ash Wednesday, February 21st. Or this Sunday. These are all dates that have marched into my mind. Or now, as little tears fill up my eyes and my throat twinges and…
Filed under: Chartreuse Bird
Do not carry with you your mistakes.
Do not carry your cares.
Travel on alone
Like an elephant in the forest.
-The Dhammapada
There are several ways of looking at life. One way of looking at life is to see coincidences as significant, and to dive into the nebulous world of the collective unsconscious the way Jung did after his breakdown during World War I. (I just saw Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” and I recommend it to anyone who wants to have their illusions about western romantic relationships vigorously dispelled.)
Another way is to dream up a race of pig men who are battling us for this dimension; they are evolved pigs from our own timeline in the future. Their race was fed increasingly potent chemicals by their human masters and their ability to forage in the rubbage left by the collapse of most of middle-class society gave them an evolutionary edge. It was they who discovered hyperdimensional shifting and time travel, and now they silently battle us in interstellar court for the right to co-occupy our dimension. Which means they would rule over us with giant triangular cloaked starships. (Don’t worry, they only have one so far.)
What complicates their ascension is the fact that there are multiple timelines; in order to enter this one they have to contend with their very distant evolutionary successors, the hyperintelligent octopi and squid. And the squid are bossy. Down at the end of most of the sentient life timelines on earth, a million years away, the insect robots reign. All we have in our narrow gap is the ability to contact our ancestors and occasionally schmooze with the ghosts of dinosaurs and Venusians. Venusians are slippery though, occupying the dimension just behind ours at tremendous expense.
Another way is to teach a producer Avid next week in an awkward attempt to schmooze, wait for Hiccup Media to call me in instead of just putting me on hold, apply for two jobs on idealist.org and finish editing a taster for home improvement show by Antonia and Ganso’s Wife, The Lawyer. I’m not sure what I’m doing here. Do I really just look at ads on craigslist and mandy.com? Confused, Scrambler Twizzler
Filed under: I am here
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
-T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets
The fear is a vestigial brain system that attacks irrationally. It is dysphoria based on panic: over the top and illusory.
What if everything, by definition, was meant to be, leading up to now– including the shocking removal of the things I thought I wanted.
An ocean of dead leaves and the soft tinge of halitosis from the man sitting behind me. I am on the bus again. It is time for cheese-filled combos.
Jealousy is just curiosity, taunted and suffocated. I want to confess everything but I have nothing interesting left to confess.
I dream of myself and all my friends in a kon-tiki boat riding up the sheer edge of a narrow Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom-type waterfall.
Three giant elephant heads sent from an alien techology crest and topple over the top of the waterfall after surveying our slowly advancing wood ship.
The first one grazes the top of the boat and severs the wooly mammoth tusks that we have jury-rigged over the prow.
The second one bursts apart, rattling our ship to its core.
The third one glitters with dark fields of light, and a low hungry honk blasts from behind the picture show as the massive grey head topples and rushes down the side of the waterfall headlong like a vertical tram.
I awake, having overslept, without knowing how to save our boat.
Filed under: What Is Actually Happening?
The three aspects of The Corpus Hermit Lem Is Um, there is something my rich acquaintances know but really it’s more interesting the way I see it:
1) Force of Personality: Some people just know themselves and have lived a life where they have had opportunities to zealously protect their boundaries. Not me! I tend to avoid confrontation until it’s way, way too late.
2) Career Track: Some people have worked out what they want to do at the age of 16. I haven’t. I got too choosy with my editing career, then I started to dream about higher and lower realms, and this is what you get — really smart guy who waited too long to really narrow down his options.
3) Fooling Around With Magic: This is about as much as I’ve accomplished. Mirror work, softening my energy, syncronicity of the sloppiest kind. Congratulations, flying monkey — you’re looking for a job.
Fooling around with negative thinking is probably old hat; I’ve literally already been to Hell and back. (Hell looks a lot like here, but the only thing that’s open is Italian restaurants and everyone is missing their irises.) Um, Invisible Protectors, Mic Check! Mic Check!
Oh, wait — I’M JUST HUNKERING DOWN FOR THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON.
Filed under: I am here
I have a raison d’être that blows right through the suicidal streak that I inherited from the self-destructing German side of my family. It is merely to freak the squares.
Freak the squares, baby. If you’re an artist (or even a poseeeeur) you’ve already dug me and you’ll continue to hang on to every word I say. I’ve only met less than a handful of people less weird and self-aware than I, and none of them are complaining.
My ability to pinpoint that in myself is also, repulsively, an analytically German trait. Oh, the Jerries. I get to hang out with that blood in Tucson over Christmas. Delightful.
My ability to write this down is English. Fuck that country. Their experiment in democracy is over. They took the bullet that Thatcher loaded in the late eighties: the “Liberal Democrats.” I’m sure third-party shenanigans will be the switchblade that threatens to take the nation out of President Obama’s hands next year. So be it.
My rhythm, when I’m functioning my best, is French. La France est morte en 7 Mai 1995. Another sad example of a country that has drifted into pre-totalitarianism.
This braggadocio is the kind of thing that precedes a man’s total downfall. There’s the gypsy polack talking.
To hell with it, the American declares — freak ‘em.
(The dash of Algonquin blood whispers, Uh, Yeah.)
Filed under: What The World Is Like
The three aspects of The Corpus Hermeticum, which is something Imperium uses but really it’s the M.O. for most secret societies:
1) Alchemy: Individual mind control. Yippee! You’re so special!
2) Astrology: Societal mind control. This is definitely the most creepy and gnarly aspect; just look at google.
3) Theurgy: Mind control within the organization. Congratulations, flying monkey — you’re working for the wicked aristocracy of the west!
Fooling around with lemures is probably trouble, thanks to my snitching in the underworld; stick to lares, if any of them are still even listening to you.
Oh, wait — I’m just crazy.
Filed under: What Is Actually Happening?
I’ve seen and experienced a lot of things, just walking around. For me, it was The Year of the Turtle. (Poking his head out of the water, checking out the temple on the other end of the lake.)
I’ve arranged my computer against a wall with a piece of an old dresser tacked up above the screen and under my corduroy jackets. It’s raining in Bed-Stuy. I’m home.
2012 will consist of me hanging on in New York or finding a cheaper place in Pittsburgh while still drawing unemployment. All right, there’s probably more to it than that. If you’re re-reading this, yeah, I could use silent blessings all year.
Whoops, I’m in trouble for my devious hypotheticals. Put a fork in me. So to speak.
My father and I agree that I’ve been having psychedelic experiences, like, the, I Am Pretending Not To Know That There Are Gods, Which Are Aliens, routine.
Anyway, my sources tell me the aliens have blabbed — a four million year kalpa is ending in scandal. Pookas are real! And bored.
Oh, right, and for those in the know, I’m an interstellar citizen: name of “Bardoz,” status “On Welfare.” Whatever that means. Probably just Vega lingo.
Did I mention I can say anything the fuck I want about secret societies now?
Nazis are real. (Actually, I shouldn’t have written that if Nazis are actually real. They don’t give a shit about interstellar law.)
Update: I think this A.M. my status was downgraded to “Professor Worm,” “Out.”
Filed under: Chartreuse Bird
I just wanted to put it out there that I’m available by request for one on one training in LA-Z-CRUCIAN self-defense techniques.
Waves,
“SHUT THE HELL UP”
