There It Goes Again

The tequila feels good burning in my stomach.

Tonight was supposed to be productive. It started out that way. I was catching up on all my reading. Tonight I was going to be a good student with good stress management skills. But...

Well, my new pair of glasses broke in my hands for no reason. The little fuckers, they just fell apart as I was rubbing the lens so I could read better. And I thought back to all the times a pair of glasses broke by my hands. This wretched curse.

So I thought, fuck it, tonight is no longer catch-up night. I was tired of reading these Bush Memo papers anyway. Yeah, instead of questioning whether this whole Guantanamo Bay thing is really that humane, or consistent with those progressive ideals of the United States, they have to send memos back and forth discussing whether there is a possibility for an incarcerated alien to file a habeas corpus against them for inhumane acts. Like eh, torture. Oh it's just fine, there's this idea that the base is outside of the country's jurisdiction and these people don't fall under certain international war treaties and there are all sorts of legal sidesteps and loophole finding that is going to save their asses. But this happens all the time. At the height of power, one may experience a sort of moral blind, and it all becomes a focus on how to keep that power, or how to lose as little of it as possible as slowly as possible.

So I went to the tequila, good tequila. But of course I spilled it all over my bed. Funny how the little things catch all that momentum and you can feel it all winding down as you stand there stupefied. I felt like a baby who had just experienced a minor injustice and I was not that embarrassed that I wanted to cry.

But now the tequila is starting to take hold. It is a familiar warmth that starts in the stomach and radiates out and soon you are thinking, "Let the bed smell like tequila", and "Let those papers be, it is bedtime soon", and "Let the glasses break. I will get them fixed."

Yes. There are other means of stress management. Maybe not as effective. But I'll take it.

The Truth Hurts, And Floats Out In The Open Like Dust Particles

Yeah, this internet is a beautiful thing, a beautiful thing. All these interconnected nodes...it is as if the patterns of connection are growing more crystalline and dense and gorgeous.

But lives now are broadcasted into this electric air and they float around in front of your face like dust particles dancing in the light rays and you see what you don't really want to see.

Or I see what I don't want to see. Being an antisocial creature I guess it is more of a personal problem.

I could always look away, but the instinct contains certain fascinations. Just as a fascination of the extraordinary and of the macabre draws our eyes to car crashes, a thirst for social knowledge draws our eyes and ears to gossip, whether electronic or not.

With evolution came the social animal, and with the combination of experience and a genetic filter I myself become an antisocial one, and the two doctrines met head-on to clash: conscious versus the unconscious; it is one of several pairs of conflicting forces that have been so troublesome in these recent years.

Aw hell. I need my guitar fixed. I need my guitar fixed so that bullshit like this doesn't fill up my head all the time.

Writing And The Drug Analogy

Writing and music and drugs have this common thread, a common effect on mental ailment: a sort of balancing effort that either adds to something that is missing or takes away from that which is too much. The difference is the origin of cause; you have physical causes that eventually manifest mental change, and you have activities that go right to the mental and cause the change first-hand (the usually healthier ones, but it depends).

You have your narcotics that dull the throbbing, and the head trips that suspend you from reality and the accompanying anxiety, and then there are the emetics that basically purge that vile buildup that can't be knocked loose. And like the physical drugs, the mental activities have different effects on different people.

For me, writing (cathartic writing anyway) is an emetic. It is as if putting down the words is removing something that actually has weight from the mind itself.

At the time it feels very good to be rid of the poison, but unfortunately when one looks over the expenditure the next day it looks exactly like its nature: a waste dump. One flushes their vomit because it generally invokes revulsion, and sometimes these words appear just like that material.

But these words I can't seem to flush. I can't get rid of it because unlike vomit there remains these semantics in the words that are somehow sticking together and building up and sometimes when I feel I am losing my mind I look over it again and it fills in those missing pieces and puts me level again and re-coalesces this patchwork belief system that I am starting to acquire. I lose it sometimes, as if it is sliding back into the murk, but upon refreshing it, the system re-suspends, however fragile, and that is something I cannot do without.

It Takes Time

We all have these protrusions that are sharp and disagreeable and they rub against others' protrusions and this generates friction and conflict and all the conflict and friction eventually sand down the protrusions through reflection until we are smooth stones that are deposited off to the side to live in peace like those on a riverbank.

Here We Go Again

The wind makes for beautiful mornings. The light from the rising sun changes into a softer, warmer, orange hue from the debris in the air and the streets get swept clean and the trees all sway to the side, but goddammit, these goddamn fires.

California needs that high speed train, that train that might even change the traffic patterns, it doesn't need all these goddamn expensive fires being spread around by the hands of the wind.

It's like that big awesome sound system you were saving up for keeps getting put on hold because your goddamn car keeps breaking down. I haven't even mentioned the people who are basically losing everything they have. I imagine it is getting a little bit tiresome around here.

Bummer, man.

The Worst One Yet

It happened after a strange series of vaguely connected events and scene changes in the dream world. There was a woman being kept somewhere by some natives due to some strange beliefs and we could not free her from them and so we walked out to a ridge that was overlooking the ocean. I had wanted her, but there was a man I was with who had rights to her and wanted her as well, but now we both weren't getting her and she was trapped. Then the scene changed. I was staying at some old woman's house (I think it was Father's Day, we were with my Dad and we were wishing it to him). We were walking out of this house, down the steps outside and the woman was talking about these victims, seemingly warning us about them. She was talking about a woman who had had her legs over a man's neck at the bottom of a room with five rows of benches, and she was saying that was the last thing the woman was doing, whatever that means. And then she said, "You know after finding 5 victims what you are in for, you must act right away."

There began this emergence of an ominous story of how to stop a psychopathic killer after you have found a certain number of victims. And then she stops for a minute and then says, "But you have to start making your judgments after 4 victims."

There was something sinister in the delayed information she gave about the 4 victims after the 5, something delayed in the structure itself of her own expenditure of information, and then it all snapped into place and the warning was complete.

I awoke in bed gasping and she had my wrists. She was hard to see, a sort of ghastly apparition. I fought for a bit (she was inhumanely strong), and through yellowed teeth, she asked me, "What do you care?" She had a lighter in her hand (Oh god she burns people alive).

She set fire to my sheets.

I awoke for real paralyzed on my back in terror. My mouth felt burnt to cinders and I had wild racing thoughts. "Get the gun, it is not over yet" kept racing through my head. Eventually the paralysis wore off and my heart slowed down and I rolled over in bed to try to go back to sleep. But I was spooked.

"Goddamn you", I said to myself in the dark, the tears burning in their ducts, "That was the worst one yet."

Cooling

I like the cold. I like the feel of it, the way noise is carried on it. And the way it smells. I like the bright blue cold sky, and the silver blue cold sky as the season grows colder. I like what happens to the trees, and the night seems more profound in the cold. I like cold weather clothes. I like being bundled up. It is for these reasons I like the Fall and Winter seasons.

I also grow more melancholy in the cold. More sullen. Eventually worse than just sullen, as it cools. I also write more, as if the thoughts themselves are choosing the indoors of the mind and sticking together in a smaller space so that I can retrieve them link by link, in cohesion.

Just yesterday there were several thoughts that were connected to actions and all these actions pointed in all different directions and they all mobilized at once and I became stuck.

And I just didn't know what to do with myself. Still don't.

Here's someone who I want to apologize to, but I shouldn't because I did nothing wrong. Here's someone who I should have visited in the hills near LA but I didn't. Here's something I should go do and here's another thing I should go do but I don't want to. Here's something that I should be doing right now and I'm not.

I put the phone down for a second thinking, "Oh it won't come", and then it came and I missed it.

And ah, it's all a load of crap.

I Just Voted 2008

I was actually excited this time when the absentee ballot came in.

I voted.

My sense of political efficacy has gone up several notches from nothing to 2.

Now is the waiting, the waiting to see whether this country will collapse or not. Or rather waiting to see the glimmer of the beginning of a series of events that eventually determines whether the country collapses or not.

Well, collapse...maybe that is a bit harsh.

But hell, it is too hard to tell these things. Some people are worrying.

So I figure I'll do some worrying as well.

And if the country collapses? Well, I do have a gun, and I do have an axe. I figure I'll shoot some trees and chop some people down. Nothing a little of that can't fix.

Temporary Madness at 3 PM

It must have been a combination of fatigue, hunger, and Acid Mothers Temple, or maybe it was all Acid Mothers Temple, as it can have extreme effects by itself, but I was sitting on a bench at school at 3 (I had waited 3 hours, and I had less than an hour for the discussion class to start) and my mind was a complete...I don't even know, a tilt fuck. It was like an actual bad trip. There were the birds above dashing from tree to tree, and the bees buzzing under them, and the spider webs glinting in the sun, and random bugs and flower buds falling on me, and there were all these groups of people gathering for something on the other benches and they had name tags and big smiles and clipboards and along with the oscillating noise music it was complete madness. So I spontaneously got up from the bench and started walking for class. Class was far from starting, but I had to move. No matter what. I was halfway to the building, and there was the open parking lot, and I thought, jesus I should just leave, this is bullshit. I can't sit through that class for an hour in this state, much less wait another hour to get to it. I won't hear a word the guy says, and then there's rush hour and hell it's not worth it. So I just kept walking out and out and out.

I got to the car park and I thought, holy shit what am I doing? I had waited 3 hours and now I was leaving. I didn't even remember walking there. And I'm only in Week 2 of school, I can't be doing this...this early. And then I drop to my knees and shout to the heavens, "I can't do this anymore!" and begin weeping and beg a higher power to give me strength and however else that goes. But I did get to my car and it was quiet inside and the madness shut off like a light.

And I just realized that if those guys never urged people not to take God's and Jesus' name in vain then nobody would have ever thought to do it. Why even use it as a curse word? It's not even practical for communicative purposes. Someone must have started it precisely because of its taboo.

Who the hell yells "Buddha!" or, ah "Muhammed!" Maybe its a sort of culture curtain and they really do somewhere. But I don't know. I don't see any rules those guys have that take using a name in vain into account. Maybe there are these rules. Where did that even come from? Who thought to do that? Maybe I'm wrong and making a fool of myself. But it did occur to me based on an absence of evidence.

This post had deteriorated.

Morning Run 1

His was a dense cloud of cologne that fit him like an aura. I disturbed it running past and it swirled after me and lingered under my nose for a block. My "good morning" was not returned. I don't expect it to be. It is always nice but I don't expect it.

The sky was very blue and the sun was bright on the trees and when one stepped out of the shade one felt it. It feels good to get to the top of the hill.

That's all I know about these runs. That's all there is to know. When I get back to my door step it all comes back with a sinking feeling and a dull roar that gets continually louder that drifts up from the street.

Libras And The Ant Kingdom

I crushed an ant a minute ago. It makes me feel very sorry. A minute thing like that. I just felt an itch and I itched and there he was on my finger, and I said to myself, "Sorry, friend."

I try not to kill anything. It is very difficult sometimes. I turn on the shower and they all scurry out from under the sponge and into the pouring water and I think, god, sorry friends. Really.

I sometimes wonder why I even have these tendencies towards extreme compassion in the midst of those who readily dispense bug spray and wash them down the drain and step on them and whatever else. I wonder if the compassion is ill-conceived, if it is really just foolish, that the ants and the other bugs don't experience like we do and don't feel the kind of pain we do. But then I see them squirm and I see them scurry from dangers, which would seem to indicate some sort of aversion to death. And all living things share it.

And this is how I am in the social sphere. This sort of delicate forest of interconnected life that I try so hard not to trample, but to move through you must trample, and it happens, and it is all so painful, I don't understand why I wasn't better equipped to do what everyone else seems OK with doing.

These Libras...I read that they can be over-compassionate and lose themselves and find themselves torn asunder among the others' interests and conflicts. They desire harmony with their surroundings most in life, and perhaps for them the greatest sorrow is to see the failure of this harmony, which is constantly occurring due to the vast number of contradicting interests that cross one's path in life. I am of these Libras. A slice of this cyclical structure they envision as the Zodiac. It is not a literal metaphysical reality, but a beautiful metaphor that may just work in its abstract form.

Perhaps we are born in time and our places in this great machine are defined at birth according to spacial and temporal circumstances and we interlock with the others in specific ways in this unfolding grind and all these sentiments are just the experience of being a part of it.

And what of those who say, "I do not want to be a part of it"? And they die by suicide or broken hearts or they simply leave to live in solitude? What of them? Broken pieces? Further complications of this strange life? I wonder if I could join them (by way of solitude of course), but then I would be useless to a lot of others, and there is so much more to do before that.

Maybe later.

There is always lying drunk on a roof, watching the multi-layered clouds (the highest layer cracked like a dehydrated desert floor), at moments thinking much and then spontaneously thinking of nothing, and then later watching the cars go by. And few, if none of those people ever looked up.

Alcohol: The Brain's Light Fuzz Pedal

I say light fuzz because there are substances out there that offer more distortion and alteration and I have to allow for that.

But it seems like 80% or more of my posts in the last two years have been written when I was drunk or relatively buzzed, and I don't know if good can come of that or not. Maybe that is why there has been so much nonsense lately.

And it is always when I'm drunk. It is like something you are inclined to do at the moment. If you are horny, you think, goddammit, some bumpin' sounds pretty good right now (strange euphemism yes, but it just came to mind). Some people, when they are hungry, think, goddammit, some eatin' sounds pretty good right now. Well when I am drunk, I think, goddammit, some writin' sounds pretty good right now. This is not the most optimal correlation, as posts like this tend to get written.

I don't do a lot of writing when I am high, because I am past that point where a sort of minimal attention span suffices for a complete sentence. And I just don't feel like it either. I feel like making music. And that is another topic altogether.

But speaking of being high, a short note on the drug question. It seems these drugs are analogous to simply turning up that fuzz, and a lot of people in the world ascribe these sort of evil, monstrous qualities to drugs in general, and fear them and persecute those who use them, when in fact they are unaware that they are simply a part of a group that fears that further ascension (or descent) into realms of consciousness that aren't quite understood yet. Yes, a fear of the unknown, it always comes up. How many people have I had a conversation with that say pretty confidently: "Oh marijuana, I don't touch that stuff", all the while holding a beer or coctail in their hand. And I think, yes, you have the stuff right in your hand, its just a different composition of chemicals that doesn't take you as far. And that attitude itself is waning in California at least. Sort of.

It was hot and heavy today. September and early October are strange months for weather. You think, oh lord finally the coolness, and then the next day you find yourself in a broiler. All this expanding and contracting is mushing up my already alcohol-fuzzed brain.

I told my Moral Philosophy class today that I was interested in many things but I was lost. I said it lightly, with a sort of chuckle, but I don't know how it was received.

To hell with it. Most of those philosophy majors miss the point of philosophy. They find a line of thought that they like and then they adhere to it and use it to argue and sound crafty but in the end it is word sorcery and not really questioning. But I suppose they do have something to be envied if they aren't lost. Even if they have wayward convictions. It still seems to bring a sort of power, whether earned or not, and I guess that counts for something.