This is the entire released recording of the Jonestown suicides. There is an historical importance to what you hear going on in the recording. There is also a sociological weight that is impossible to ignore. It is this exact sort of thing that leaves me eternally wary of the mythology that is perpetuated in religion and this cult of belief that so easily springs up around people and their attempts to grapple with the unknown.
I am particularly interested with the one open attempt to talk sense into Jones from the congregational member Christine Miller. In the face of so much calculated madness it is the singular voice of sanity that she provides that gives me the strength to face things like this.
The anger I feel when I hear this is bottomless.
The way that this one man was able to break these people down over the years until they were hopelessly beyond their own humanity is so alien and so chilling that I can't really comprehend it.
No matter how hard this is to hear, I think it's imperative that it is available to us as a people because the only way out of this idiocy is to face it with honesty and clarity.
Unfortunately, my faith in humanity is so weak that I know this sort of thing is simply part of our makeup and a part of our future regardless of how aware we are to its presence in all of us.
What a fucking nightmare.
I remember the Time magazine there on my grandmother's coffee table. The vat was there as were some of the dead. I was ten.
I was crying, trying to get my head around what I was reading, and finally I asked her, "Why, grandma? Why would this happen?"
And her answer, brutally honest (an honesty for which I will always be grateful), through her own tears, was, "I don't know, baby, I don't know."
That spoke volumes.
Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
Fair enough.
But the same goes for those who remember history.
We are condemned to repeat history, period. And there's nothing much we can do about it.
Here are some links if you care to go further into this stuff:
Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. A site from the San Diego State University Department of Religious Studies. Lots of fairly objective information including tons of FBI gathered tapes from the Peoples Temple.
The Wiki page on Jonestown.
Jonestown, from the Rick A Ross Institute. The Ross Institute is a clearing house of sorts on the subject of cults.
I think you can take it form there.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
This House is for the Birds
As I mentioned in my last post, I don’t often go to shows. I go so rarely that I can write about them as my one-a-month quota on this site. I’d write more, but typically, I am either uninspired, without adequate time, or feeling not quite up to par with some of the other people who write on here. Hell, there are some entries on here that I can’t understand at all. They’re written in English, but my uneducated brain can’t wrap itself around what might just be an entry that was written for no one aside from the one who wrote it.
So, after paying an outrageous ten dollars to park, my friends and I wandered into the House of Blues…..restaurant. After standing around like a bunch of retards for a few minutes, we decided to ask someone where to go. After being directed, I remembered that John wrote about how the stage was upstairs. As far as I could see, there were no signs saying exactly where to go, so we sort of wandered around upstairs until we found the place. My first impression of the place was good; I especially liked that the stage was higher than usual. That’s about it as far as good qualities. I stood by myself for a short while, when all of a sudden there was a bright blue light in my face. The waitresses there carry trays that have lights very annoyingly similar to those on police cars. No, I don’t want a drink, so kindly remove your police tray from my line of sight. I also didn’t like that the music was not loud at all. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to lose my hearing at a show, but I certainly want the music to drown out the crowd. At no point during the show could I not hear people talking. I didn’t eat or drink anything while I was there, but I have a feeling that any and everything there would have been overpriced.
The opening band was called The Heartless Bastards, which, to me, sounded like a mix between Concrete Blonde and Aimee Mann, which is a good combination in my book. Ultimately though, the band was forgettable; nothing really grabbed me about their sound. Perhaps last.fm can change my mind.
Andrew Bird was kind of a let down. The set seemed to lack enthusiasm and variety. I’ve listened to all of the albums, and the songs don’t all sound the same, as they did that night. My friends said that his shows are much better when he doesn’t have an accompanying band. In his case, I guess less is more.
-
-The Life and Times (a band I like) – 4/10
-International Festival – 4/18-4/19 and 4/25-4/26
-Japanese Festival (I go every year) 4/25-4/26
http://www.japan-fest.com/
-Mogwai – 4/20
Enjoy
Recline and get yours.
One day, I will be standing at a major intersection with a sign.
What will my sign say?
What will my sign say?
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
A Long Walk on a Short Pier
There's a curious sound, a slight something that goes on, incessant, unyielding, a sound that on the surface seems so tame, so harmless, so meaningless; but you have not been within its spell. No, you have not suffered the misfortune of being held in its thrall, beyond your desire to do so, for countless agonizing hours. This madness, this harbinger of blunt and open emptiness that is forever laughing at you, these slight fragments of utter lunacy, these are yours and you have inherited their embrace.
It's not within your options to explore and out, there are no doors leading anywhere at all. The entry has been sealed, taped, nailed, painted over, welded, magically made to disappear, and now there is only you.
Okay, I'm not making any sense. I shouldn't have to, these are nonsensical times. Know only that in this secret temple of opaque horror I sit at the center of a storm, forever tightening in on itself, and that it is only a matter of time before the center collapses and there is simply nothing left.
Yeah. Why not?
Times have changed, there is a new tender, the townsfolk speak a new language, and you have received no invitation. This means that without a place at the table, without a solid reason to be here things are destined to decay into something unappealing. It can't be helped. There is a map, just give it a glance. You don't have to be a fucking cartographer any more. This map reads itself.
You've seen enough films to know what it means when the birds begin to circle. You've seen the spools of heavy wire, partially unwound, leading into the earth to do unspeakable things to our dignity. You've adopted the disciplines of the masters, learned the ancient tongues, shouldered the ways of those trusted with the keys to the castle. Unfortunately, this castle is in ruins. It's in ruins, covered with cheap graffiti and reeking of stale piss. That's a pretty picture.
You have taken your turn to stand watch over the aged relic, observed the translucent parchment-like skin, regarded the shallow breaths with recoil. You have made the mistake of peeling away the dried husk thereby exposing the pulpy truth that seethes below. You have sensed the infinitesimal changes in the breeze that signaled the sea change across continents. It is not a skill, it is a curse, and it is a cross.
You have the tiny, tiny umbrella, and the button-hole carnation.
You dance on sawdust, get drunk on cheap booze around a pathetic fire, and redesign yourself as a patron to a tradition of deception.
These very nights see snug little faces, tucked away and fully captivated by your sinister allure. It is so very wet and so very cold. You can smell the ocean in the air. Your fingertips go numb. The monkey's head put away for the night.
People leave offerings at your feet. Cakes. Wines. Beautiful pictures. Words. Your gift to them is the gift of tomorrow. The gift of dishonesty. None greater, people. None greater.
This dismay, it comes across without hesitation, as if it could not be possible for you to enjoy a smile, to sample the sublime, stop the clock, silence the noise, if only for a fraction of a moment.
Well, okay, maybe there is a shred of truth in it.
Tap, tap, tap...
Here's where we are in no order, without exposition, as a litany of indulgences and inadequacies that in total are nowhere close to covering anything of value:
P.S. - I won't tell you anything.
…
On second thought.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Depot
Night. No cars anywhere. Street lights changing without any cars to wait their turn. A little boy, all dressed up in his little suit. Pressed nicely. Shorts. Dress shoes with mud visible on the sides. This kid, he stands there, under a street lamp, and he looks out into the road. There's a chill in the air. A dog is barking somewhere. A woman's voice screaming bloody murder. This little kid is just standing there.
This is the scene the man sees from his motel window. He smokes crap, drinks cheap, can't sleep, and just sits at the window and watches this kid.
The bus depot is around the corner. Perhaps the kid just stepped off of one. Either way, there he is now, at the curb. Briefcase in hand. Looking pathetic.
Wait.
Is he smiling? Is the little boy, can't be more than six, smiling?
Trick of the light.
But now, drunk, tired, not feeling quite so safe inside his shithole of a room, the man is getting uneasy. The boy is smiling.
Why wasn't I bothered to see the kid in the first place, alone out there, clearly needing help, thought the guy, and worse, why am feeling unhinged to watch the little fucker smile?
And there, in the periphery, a slight... what is it? Wavering?
Yeah, a slight, uh, wavering of the light. I swear I saw that, he tells himself, as if somehow saying it out loud will shake off the reek of fear he is feeling up the back of his neck.
Fuck this, he thinks, it's a kid, a fucking kid. Suit or not, it's a kid.
And then, again, the ever-so-subtle shift in the light, almost imperceptible, a trick, it has to be, a trick played out in the hands of too much cheap liquor and late-night exhaustion.
No, no, no, something is happening there, the guy notices, now sweating, now shaking, now being watched from the boy on the curb.
The air around the kid, it is rippling, shimmering in a way that can't actually be happening but is happening anyway. They guy is glued to the window. And there now the kid is looking at the man and, fuck it all, the kid is laughing.
The man is paralyzed, gripped in horror, unable to move, unable to literally move a single muscle, and there now, a scratching at the door, and he is utterly unable to turn and look in that direction. The boy is laughing crazily, pointing now at the man's window, laughing and pointing.
The scratching is building up, the man is stuck at the window looking down, and then in a moment a rush of air, the stench of death, and the realization that something is directly behind him. He is unable to turn and look at whatever is breathing on the back of his neck.
In the street, the boy is hysterical, tears on his cheeks, laughing like something inhuman, like a beast, and pointing with a finger that is impossibly long...
Funny, thinks the man, how queer it is, that long finger, hair on the knuckles, funny, and there it is, a hand around his neck, impossibly strong, and in a moment the boy stops laughing...
And the man's head, now on the floor, looks up to see its previous home, still upright in the chair, and that thing, so familiar and still so alien...
And as the light fades, as his life fades into death and madness, the man catches, in his last seconds, the voice of a woman, not far off, screaming bloody murder.
This is the scene the man sees from his motel window. He smokes crap, drinks cheap, can't sleep, and just sits at the window and watches this kid.
The bus depot is around the corner. Perhaps the kid just stepped off of one. Either way, there he is now, at the curb. Briefcase in hand. Looking pathetic.
Wait.
Is he smiling? Is the little boy, can't be more than six, smiling?
Trick of the light.
But now, drunk, tired, not feeling quite so safe inside his shithole of a room, the man is getting uneasy. The boy is smiling.
Why wasn't I bothered to see the kid in the first place, alone out there, clearly needing help, thought the guy, and worse, why am feeling unhinged to watch the little fucker smile?
And there, in the periphery, a slight... what is it? Wavering?
Yeah, a slight, uh, wavering of the light. I swear I saw that, he tells himself, as if somehow saying it out loud will shake off the reek of fear he is feeling up the back of his neck.
Fuck this, he thinks, it's a kid, a fucking kid. Suit or not, it's a kid.
And then, again, the ever-so-subtle shift in the light, almost imperceptible, a trick, it has to be, a trick played out in the hands of too much cheap liquor and late-night exhaustion.
No, no, no, something is happening there, the guy notices, now sweating, now shaking, now being watched from the boy on the curb.
The air around the kid, it is rippling, shimmering in a way that can't actually be happening but is happening anyway. They guy is glued to the window. And there now the kid is looking at the man and, fuck it all, the kid is laughing.
The man is paralyzed, gripped in horror, unable to move, unable to literally move a single muscle, and there now, a scratching at the door, and he is utterly unable to turn and look in that direction. The boy is laughing crazily, pointing now at the man's window, laughing and pointing.
The scratching is building up, the man is stuck at the window looking down, and then in a moment a rush of air, the stench of death, and the realization that something is directly behind him. He is unable to turn and look at whatever is breathing on the back of his neck.
In the street, the boy is hysterical, tears on his cheeks, laughing like something inhuman, like a beast, and pointing with a finger that is impossibly long...
Funny, thinks the man, how queer it is, that long finger, hair on the knuckles, funny, and there it is, a hand around his neck, impossibly strong, and in a moment the boy stops laughing...
And the man's head, now on the floor, looks up to see its previous home, still upright in the chair, and that thing, so familiar and still so alien...
And as the light fades, as his life fades into death and madness, the man catches, in his last seconds, the voice of a woman, not far off, screaming bloody murder.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Boring?
Why just yesterday I was at the Home Depot economizing my time by gathering other needed supplies whilst my homeboy mixed me up a batch of eggshell cream colored paint, when I got that feeling (that frankly I'm getting to know too well) --the one where you know you got to take a dump, stop what you're doing, and get to it OR ELSE. So's I slid my cart over by the insulation aisle and took off for lumber where I knew the bathroom to be THANK GOD because I had asked on the way in because I had to take a pee. All the while, and really when you got to take this kind of dump time does seem to move too slow and couldn't go any faster, I'm cursing myself for buying that $1.75 slice of Chubby's pizza on the way over. The one I didn't need because I'd just had turkey meatballs at home but I bought anyway because I had a sudden pang of guilt whilst staring at the lonely Chubby's guy and realizing Chubby's didn't sell what I was really after which was a chocolate malt. I didn't need to eat it, I know, and I didn't need that sugar sludge Burger King calls a chocolate shake that I got after that and all of this was quite apparent as I made my way towards the Home Depot commode now by way of a timid jog (can't go too fast lest you're taking out by a rolling conduit and end up crapping yourself on the Depot floor surrounded by giggling day laborers). So's I'm praying I'm gonna make it and I'm praying the Home Depot bathroom is miraculously clean and I'm turtling when I open the door and see that somebody has wrapped the place in toilet paper. My experience tells me that this is not good, not only because the place is a mess but because all that tp on the ground is squandered wealth. I start kicking in stall doors, list, compile, choose. I really don't have time to put the toilet liner down but I do anyway at the risk of losing my underpants. Somehow that doesn't happen and I credit my expertise. By this point I know this will not be a reenactment of the Lawrence Fisheries Blow Out nor will it match (could it?) the Great Browning of our downstairs bathroom, last year's most memorable bathroom moment. The only thing getting the royal poop treatment tonight will be the inside of this poor Kohler. And let me tell you better it than me. Now. I was so relieved so empty so light as to be in a place none better that I almost told the cashier that I took a poop as if this would make her jealous or something. She probably wouldn't have guessed what painted my cheeks but I'm pretty sure she could tell that I was in heaven. Boring. I tell you.
Monday, March 9, 2009
I'm Sorry, Were You Talking?
Here it is, the beloved 70th post, the post you've all been waiting for. All four of you.
Or not.
I haven't been worth a shit in here lately, haven't arguably been worth shit at all, but of late - totally useless. I won't deny it. I've had too much reality going on to focus on this.
Almost everything I've written has been either for money or, well, okay it's all been for money.
And in case you haven't gotten the memo, money is something that is in short supply these days.
Fortunately, stress has covered the gap for the missing money.
It's hard to be us, isn't it? It's hard to get out of bed and care. Or at least it is for me anyway. Who cares about you?
I created this blog to be an outpost of some undefined sort. I foresaw this blog as a place where people could come and say whatever they didn't feel comfortable saying elsewhere. I did this knowing full well that what I would probably get was a lot of nothing, and in that I have succeeded wildly.
We have had a few cursory posts from some, one person in particular, and I am thoroughly grateful for every word spilled in here.
So, thanks for that.
But back to the stressing.
I'm a dad. I broke a family apart to pursue the man I wanted to be, to fulfill what I imagined of myself. As a caring human, that's not an easy thing to achieve. Not without guilt anyway.
Fucking guilt. Plenty of that to go around.
Last night __'s car broke down. At my ex-wife's house.
That, folks, is poetry.
Guess who was kind enough to give us a ride home?
How's that?
As __ took my car to work today I wondered what would go wrong with it. Well, I'll tell you. The check engine light came on.
Dandy.
Cars break. Only a fool thinks otherwise. And yet still, it would have been nice if say they didn't both shit on us in one 24 hour period. Yeah, would have been nice.
There's more, but you can't have any because the train is leaving the station and that's that.
Caught the Watchmen because what the fuck eh? Cars won't fix themselves and what's a little of the old ultraviolence to calm one's soul?
Yeah, exactly.
The movie? I'll preface this short review with a bit of info, perhaps you could see it as a caveat: I am a huge geek for the graphic novel.
So, overall I loved it.
Was it problematic? Fuck yeah it was, and in spades.
Malin Akerman fucking sucks as an actress. Her Silk Specter was played with almost no depth. I hated watching her on screen. And then once she hooks up with Patrick Wilson's interpretation of the Night Owl and fucks the guy in Archie the flying owl the whole thing comes unglued. Fire button ejection in lieu of cumshot, anyone? Pathetic. I don't need to see these people's naked bodies to get that this is unlike your average comic book adaptation. The sex was there to calm down the retards from walking out and demanding their money back (in fact, the tards walked out anyway with about five minutes left because they were either done with the movie or too stupid to realize that it wasn't over yet).
I thought Jackie Earl Haley has continued to make his comeback something fun to follow with his spot-on version of Rorschach. Aside from the heavily overdone husky narrative track, Haley was the best part of any scene he was in. As was the guy who played the Comedian (look him up yourself, I don't want to). That much moral ambiguity teetering into straight-up psychosis could easily become tedious, but this guy hit it right on the head, providing key thematic elements to the story and its underlying message of nihilistic glory.
His happy-face button is the key. This life? A joke. A fucking joke, and the joke's on you. Haha!
Are you laughing? No?
You ought to be, because that shit is funny.
Who doesn't hit that wall in their lives?
Juvenile?
You're juvenile.
I haven't written much in here because of many reasons. I've been busy. I've been lazy. I've been tired.
But most of all, I've been so utterly disappointed in humanity that all I would have been good for was a post that went something like this:
Fuck you all.
Seriously. There is nothing about any of your shallow pathetic attempts of lives that makes you worth remembering after you are gone. And to be sure, you will be gone. As in erased. As in forever.
And that, dear friends, is hilarious.
----
Who wants that crap?
I want you to listen to more metal. I want you to tell someone you love them. I want you to smile at every single child you see, unless that child you see is the little snivelling cocksucker who just threw your kid to the ground. You can go ahead and tell that kid to watch his back or he'll end up on it. I want you to submit posts in here. I want you to stop being so compromising with that total asshole whose shit you've taken for years now. Just one time. Just once. Just once tell him that he is not clever, that he is a walking tumor, that his death will make the world a better place, that you will piss on his grave daily, and that you will forever curse his name until the day that you die.
And don't wear your plumage all splayed out, half-erect penis in hand, dripping bile from your maw, because it's not a pretty picture.
I am a courteous guy. I have manners. I can be very accommodating. But at the end of the day, you have got to know that I will never forget who you really are, and that it will take brain injury or death to stop me from making sure you pay for your disgusting strides through the alleyways on your way to the abattoir.
Make no mistake. You are fucking boring.
Boring.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
READERS CHOICE.. hahaha or This post will be long and have no meaning.
So, earlier in the week, I offered up my willingness to post a story either sober or wasted. The majority response was that I not only be tipsy, or buzzed, but that I be on my face-under arrest- with my pants around my ankles in the process of divulging some great vulnerable or outrageous gem of a tale from my life as I was essentially sticking my tongue out at the Universe in general (under threat of personal persecution), while I wagged my bloodied middle finger at you all.
I am at present, barely buzzed. I have electricity. Children sleep safely in my home. I afforded gas for my car today. I smiled at a stranger. I allowed a total cocksucker to cut in front of me when the freeway ended suddenly. I considered others even when I was full of poison to criticize them while careening through the endless populated and divided veil of civilization's highway.
I am not drunk though, and this post has got fuck all to do with history. Dick Cavett will not pop up in the middle of your first impressions of the Holocaust in an Auschwitz/Hollywood high school- scholastic low budget death ride of a VHS tape to tell you that "YOU WERE THERE".
You are here, motherfuckers. You always were. The arrow that you look for on the interstate rest area maps to show you the exact place that you left your final and everlasting shit is exactly where you thought it would be, because you travel the road that everyone travels and there is no getting lost. There is only running out of gas or breaking down and finding yourself in a visualized horror film as you fumble your way through socializing with strangers as a dumbass asshole in need.
You think you have a tire iron. You think you have a tire. Thank god you don't have to shit anymore, and your stomach is full of beef jerky and rockstar.
I have a friend who spends hours out of his mind in darkness by the river in Austin.
I lived in Austin for a few years, and spent some time crossing the Guadalupe- whether on Lamar or on South Congress. Sometimes I dodged bats, who would scream out by the hundreds of thousands at dusk. From a distance they looked like a giant locust swarm trailing away from town, but I always pictured them as one creature.. kind of like the flying dog in the Neverending story.. organic. peaceable. beautiful. Until you realize that you are knee deep in guana, crossing the bridge that they call home and every 50 feet there will be a strange man or woman declaring weakness or a down and out stranger showing a true vulnerability like some toll ogre and you just want to get home to listen to your music.
Your journey starts out as a walk where you enjoy the thick summer nights of a city with great history.. and inevitably ends up with you fearful and depressed because life is all around you and it beats you to pieces for your soul. You are on your way home from work. On your way to your next job 30 minutes after you get home. Your housemates are painfully self destructive and equally self involved and you have no idea who you are- but who has time for that? You only know that tomorrow will not unnerve you, or you are as fucked as the rest. You are fucked anyway, but you're making friends.
I am on my fifth beer.
My brother was accepted by MHMRA as a necessary recipient of services on Friday. One of 30,000 accepted in a city of 5 million. I travel back to the look on my face and my body language with their offices as kid gloves stood next to me, out of it. Trip after trip to their offices to present the correct paperwork and there was another problem. I slapped the window that separated us from them.
"What do I need to do to make this happen today? THIS GUY NEEDS HELP." My voice cracks as I gesture toward my little brother who is not expressionless, but just the same useless in seeking his assistance.
Hours pass. I take breaks while tossing salads for rich oil barons to make calls to the Mental health and Mental retardation association so that my brother doesn't blaze AGAIN, before seeing an intake.
Hours more pass. I track him down several times by CRUISING houston for his specific walk.
I am the last person to snoop or read your emails or follow you or investigate you but I have to ask my brother for a key to his apartment.
Why? Because sometimes, the family thinks he is dead.. and you need a key to figure that shit out before an apartment manager would give a fuck to. Sometimes you have to drop off a cell phone you bought them or $14 in groceries from the dollar store- or pay a utility bill in your already fucked up credit of a name even though you resent spending your last dollars on someone who is such a jerk that they would BLOW their own money on luxuries like butter, eggs and milk. You get angry that you spend two hours of your day tracking down someone who thinks the NSA has a plan for them because they are so brilliant and you are never able to tell them that they are out of their mind when you find them because they will see you as a traitor who has extraordinary resources instead of being just a sister sick with ..... hope.
I have a large family, but I grew up with a small nuclear family of four.
I saw my father (my "real" father last when I was 5.) Through my efforts, I managed a letter from him while I was working 80 hour weeks in the Aleutians because I had accidentally contacted my grandfather. My father wrote that he wanted to be in touch.
BEST IN SHOW.
Beer #6
I will skip the bullshit about how my father's family has reached out to me or been in touch with me over the past couple of years. Its depressing, and if I told you how I REALLY felt, you would think I was a total asshole- because I think my new family.. the one I was searching for answers from my ENTIRE life- are crazy, ignorant bastards. Smoke that.
They're so fucked up, that they would never know this even if I told them. Think of a Georgia family with a pitt bull and a cooler full of cheap beer, and that's what it would take- to set you straight with my long lost family- IF YOU TOLD THEM I WAS FULL OF MUTINY- to sell me down the river.
fucking hell.. why did I agree to do this?
beer 6 continued
So.. I have a friend in Austin....
He has been charged with organizing and digitizing the branch Davidian Waco nightmare.
Recently he was asked to make a photo montage of the burned bodies of victims from Waco.
He spoke to me from the river in Austin.
I have to be greater than this less than.
I sure as fuck cannot rely on you, because if you are like me, you act like you don't give a fuck about anything other than maintaining your comfort and projecting your status.
You and everything about you looks great.
Take this chaos and shove it down your throat and up your ass and THEN call me for coffee.
I wish you would, I have no friends anymore because I am a mother, but mostly because you are all motherfuckers.
There.
DRUNK POST.
I am at present, barely buzzed. I have electricity. Children sleep safely in my home. I afforded gas for my car today. I smiled at a stranger. I allowed a total cocksucker to cut in front of me when the freeway ended suddenly. I considered others even when I was full of poison to criticize them while careening through the endless populated and divided veil of civilization's highway.
I am not drunk though, and this post has got fuck all to do with history. Dick Cavett will not pop up in the middle of your first impressions of the Holocaust in an Auschwitz/Hollywood high school- scholastic low budget death ride of a VHS tape to tell you that "YOU WERE THERE".
You are here, motherfuckers. You always were. The arrow that you look for on the interstate rest area maps to show you the exact place that you left your final and everlasting shit is exactly where you thought it would be, because you travel the road that everyone travels and there is no getting lost. There is only running out of gas or breaking down and finding yourself in a visualized horror film as you fumble your way through socializing with strangers as a dumbass asshole in need.
You think you have a tire iron. You think you have a tire. Thank god you don't have to shit anymore, and your stomach is full of beef jerky and rockstar.
I have a friend who spends hours out of his mind in darkness by the river in Austin.
I lived in Austin for a few years, and spent some time crossing the Guadalupe- whether on Lamar or on South Congress. Sometimes I dodged bats, who would scream out by the hundreds of thousands at dusk. From a distance they looked like a giant locust swarm trailing away from town, but I always pictured them as one creature.. kind of like the flying dog in the Neverending story.. organic. peaceable. beautiful. Until you realize that you are knee deep in guana, crossing the bridge that they call home and every 50 feet there will be a strange man or woman declaring weakness or a down and out stranger showing a true vulnerability like some toll ogre and you just want to get home to listen to your music.
Your journey starts out as a walk where you enjoy the thick summer nights of a city with great history.. and inevitably ends up with you fearful and depressed because life is all around you and it beats you to pieces for your soul. You are on your way home from work. On your way to your next job 30 minutes after you get home. Your housemates are painfully self destructive and equally self involved and you have no idea who you are- but who has time for that? You only know that tomorrow will not unnerve you, or you are as fucked as the rest. You are fucked anyway, but you're making friends.
I am on my fifth beer.
My brother was accepted by MHMRA as a necessary recipient of services on Friday. One of 30,000 accepted in a city of 5 million. I travel back to the look on my face and my body language with their offices as kid gloves stood next to me, out of it. Trip after trip to their offices to present the correct paperwork and there was another problem. I slapped the window that separated us from them.
"What do I need to do to make this happen today? THIS GUY NEEDS HELP." My voice cracks as I gesture toward my little brother who is not expressionless, but just the same useless in seeking his assistance.
Hours pass. I take breaks while tossing salads for rich oil barons to make calls to the Mental health and Mental retardation association so that my brother doesn't blaze AGAIN, before seeing an intake.
Hours more pass. I track him down several times by CRUISING houston for his specific walk.
I am the last person to snoop or read your emails or follow you or investigate you but I have to ask my brother for a key to his apartment.
Why? Because sometimes, the family thinks he is dead.. and you need a key to figure that shit out before an apartment manager would give a fuck to. Sometimes you have to drop off a cell phone you bought them or $14 in groceries from the dollar store- or pay a utility bill in your already fucked up credit of a name even though you resent spending your last dollars on someone who is such a jerk that they would BLOW their own money on luxuries like butter, eggs and milk. You get angry that you spend two hours of your day tracking down someone who thinks the NSA has a plan for them because they are so brilliant and you are never able to tell them that they are out of their mind when you find them because they will see you as a traitor who has extraordinary resources instead of being just a sister sick with ..... hope.
I have a large family, but I grew up with a small nuclear family of four.
I saw my father (my "real" father last when I was 5.) Through my efforts, I managed a letter from him while I was working 80 hour weeks in the Aleutians because I had accidentally contacted my grandfather. My father wrote that he wanted to be in touch.
BEST IN SHOW.
Beer #6
I will skip the bullshit about how my father's family has reached out to me or been in touch with me over the past couple of years. Its depressing, and if I told you how I REALLY felt, you would think I was a total asshole- because I think my new family.. the one I was searching for answers from my ENTIRE life- are crazy, ignorant bastards. Smoke that.
They're so fucked up, that they would never know this even if I told them. Think of a Georgia family with a pitt bull and a cooler full of cheap beer, and that's what it would take- to set you straight with my long lost family- IF YOU TOLD THEM I WAS FULL OF MUTINY- to sell me down the river.
fucking hell.. why did I agree to do this?
beer 6 continued
So.. I have a friend in Austin....
He has been charged with organizing and digitizing the branch Davidian Waco nightmare.
Recently he was asked to make a photo montage of the burned bodies of victims from Waco.
He spoke to me from the river in Austin.
I have to be greater than this less than.
I sure as fuck cannot rely on you, because if you are like me, you act like you don't give a fuck about anything other than maintaining your comfort and projecting your status.
You and everything about you looks great.
Take this chaos and shove it down your throat and up your ass and THEN call me for coffee.
I wish you would, I have no friends anymore because I am a mother, but mostly because you are all motherfuckers.
There.
DRUNK POST.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Voter's choice
I want to tell you something. I could tell you while drunk or I could tell you while sober.
You choose.
You choose.
It's There, Just Look
In the middle of the road there is a dead dog.
After sunset we went to the pavilion.
Many years later, he thought of that night.
The effect it had on his future was irrevocable.
Only now does he see the boy he once was.
Things, in Jacksonville, may have been different.
An answering machine waits to be played once again.
Lines cross before him, he is forever's master.
Letting go, his path has been made his own.
Yellow rays of a new sun burn his eyes forever.
Lost now to the dreams of his waking life.
Over the hill, now the rains, now the horror.
Standing in a pool of runoff, of piss, of loss.
Taking the remaining pieces, pocketing them, and waking away.
F
O
R
E
V
E
R
After sunset we went to the pavilion.
Many years later, he thought of that night.
The effect it had on his future was irrevocable.
Only now does he see the boy he once was.
Things, in Jacksonville, may have been different.
An answering machine waits to be played once again.
Lines cross before him, he is forever's master.
Letting go, his path has been made his own.
Yellow rays of a new sun burn his eyes forever.
Lost now to the dreams of his waking life.
Over the hill, now the rains, now the horror.
Standing in a pool of runoff, of piss, of loss.
Taking the remaining pieces, pocketing them, and waking away.
F
O
R
E
V
E
R
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