Hand-walk your sweet ass right over here.

Today I woke up and felt okay. I didn't have pain. I didn't feel negatively about my life's story. I didn't have poor expectations of how the day would unfold. I didn't even try to map out how I would react and what I would do if the day started to suck. I woke up without the weight of an apocalyptic nightmare and I actually wanted coffee in the morning instead of at 9 pm.

The outlook was good. So good, that I thought it would be funny if I told everyone that Tom Cruise was dead. It would have been perfect if lies had to leak and bleed heavily across a prairie or a mountain range or a desert so as to make the joke more entertaining.

My Good Morning America lie would have been exposed as a sick joke long before a shift in public opinion could have even shuddered itself into responsible and fact checking play. My prank was conceived today. So.Today sees no news from the isolated communities that connect the dots from town to town over actual Terra Firma. Today's reaction happened immediately and my energy slowly gave it up. Itself.

We were hungry. We weren't "hand-walkers" so I was capable of driving us to a local chain buffet.

I slid a 60's style lunch tray for the Tyranasaurus 2 year old and a flat hunter green tray for myself across the Aluminum bars that run the length of the buffet's "On Ice" offerings. And then I chose food to give the monster who was charming strangers, and food to stuff my face with as I found myself slowly getting charged. Charging doesn't always happen when I am greeting the day. I hadn't even picked out a dressing yet and it was over for any stranger who wanted to invest in me or any loved one who already had stakes in me for the rest of the day. I was now a visitor. I was prepared to be a guest. Don't talk to me unless you are really good...

The place filled up quickly and I saw truckloads of people file by my family. 200 people pretty much descended down onto us and into our world in a matter of minutes. I watched people stand in the center of the dining room,as they would try to look strong without hope of a place to sit. I also watched the people who never had to fight for a seat. Maybe I had my own seat for once. My politics and my art would be totally different because of it. Make no mistake though. I have been in the center of a room without a place at the table more times than should be true. I have taken no sides here yet.

Kidney beans, sunflower seeds, red onion, radish. olive, cauliflower, broccoli and spinach- with a cucumber vinaigrette. Corn chowder.... iced water. Camouflage pants, knotted hair and hiking boots... and tattoos on my face and my hands if I failed to communicate the fact that not only am I NOT like you, I have already gone farther than you would ever be willing to go- in a sense... and you, me.

I have been at this gate 10,000 times.

Is there lunch?

Was there dinner?

There would be chaos and beauty and doubt.

And shame.. Big deal.

The Waking

A poem by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Of those close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs the winding stair;

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Rising

My introduction to neurosis came at Houston’s now defunct club, Emo’s. I had heard about the band, and was aware of the involvement Houston’s own Scott Ayers had with some of the recordings for the Neurosis offshoot, Tribes of Neurot. I had heard about their live intensity but it’s ultimately one of those things you simply have to see for yourself. Live, Neurosis performs as if possessed, with every member seemingly lost in the machinations of the music. The only band I ever saw that was more intense than Neurosis had to be Today is the Day. That band’s front man, Steve Austin, easily gave the most intense performance I’ve ever seen from any musician. The guy was so into his stuff that he was spitting visibly with each line; and each line was also delivered in the most guttural and soul searing howl I’ve ever heard. I wasn’t even sure if I liked the music per se. I felt that it wasn’t even important that anyone actually liked the music. The point was to bear witness to the exorcism of the internal ugliness. The way they delivered it was something I could appreciate. It’s not a novel concept, it was simply executed so well I have to give them their due even today. 

The Neurosis show was one of those revelatory nights that ends up shaping your musical future more than you might have ever imagined at the time. 

For some reason it ended up being many years before I reconnected with Neurosis. it was just one of those things. I loved what I heard from them but I never made the leap. 

Eventually I joined a website sometime in the late 90s that was a sort of MP3 laden storage facility for independent bands of all stripes. All the bands that participated in the project added at least one MP3 to the site. These songs were always free for members to download and use as they wished. I learned about a ton of bands through that site. 

I downloaded a trio of Neurosis songs off of there as well: To Crawl Under One’s Skin, and Souls at Zero, from the album Souls at Zero, and A Sun That Never Sets, from the album A Sun That Never Sets. 

A lot of the stuff that I found on that site I enjoyed a great deal, but those three songs had a pretty profound effect on me. Every once and a while I hear some song or some album that has the effect of making me feel as though it has filled a sort of musical gap in my mind. It’s a “Where have you been all my life?” sort of scenario, and for those of you who are unfamiliar with this sensation, let me just say that it is an incredibly pleasurably feeling. Little did I know that those three songs were both off of what is widely considered to be Neurosis’ two best albums, all I knew was that these songs were like musical crack to me and the point at which I was in my life. Many years later and I pretty much feel that way for almost their entire catalog. 

If you know anything about me, then you must know at least a little about the changes I have gone through in the last couple of years. I am a father of two, recently divorced, and I am currently living with the love of my life, also a parent and also recently divorced. These weren’t random unrelated acts, either. The whole thing was undertaken together in a whirlwind clusterfuck of guilt, intensity and magic. 

Neurosis became my soundtrack. 

Assign whatever epithet you need to my name in order to get yourself through the day. Assuage your own fears in life and implant your sense of blame directly on my shoulders. I’ve heard it all, felt it all and lived it all - over and over and over. 

I’ve lost my place at the bar, and I’ve lost my power of sight. In the process I’ve learned to steer in a monsoon so familiar I am now with every last contour of the road. 

Something happened back there, back in the haze of the fading past. Something motivated me to plug in a guitar, to use my hands to create images, to use these hands to put words down, and in the end to let these acts speak on my behalf. On balance they have served me well. And I need serving. I need to know that there are minions, underlings, servants of the burning word spread throughout the landscape. I need to know that there is nothing that lives in the wake of these searing signs of life. 

I need to open that care package and be slapped in the face with you, with your scent, with your love. I need to know that I am not just spinning my wheel in total darkness just to create a shawl to cover the shoulders of all my pain.

I need to stand on the edge of something that is so white hot and explosive that to merely imagine it will cause me agonizing pain. 

I need to withstand the shockwave with my feet in the ground, unwavering, my hair singed away, my skin baked to my bones, my clothes erased. 

I need to swim in a pool of toxic murk from which nothing could ever hope to survive.

To sink to the bottom of an ocean where the light never comes, where the cold is a hammer and the tide is a thing of undeniable beauty. 

Souls at Zero. Yeah, I get that. Souls at Zero.

And this too ... 

Our pain cannot forgive the silent machine of the fatal flaw in man ... that brings us to the end.

Yeah, I get that too.

Come to me.

Waiting for the Punchline

My mother’s mother was dying. It was official. She had contracted lung cancer. Funny that diagnosis considering her never having taken so much as a drag from a single cigarette. In the end it didn’t matter because her husband was a cigarette and pipe smoker for decades. it caught up to her. Ultimately it caught up to him as well, but that’s another story. 

Taking on the mantle of the oldest daughter, my mother opted to leave her advertising job and make the exodus to the Midwest to tend to the moody matriarch. Mom knew well enough that if she didn’t do it nobody else would. We tend to be a bit of an insular bunch, my family. 

Grandma declined rapidly, and it came as somewhat as a shock to us what with our being utterly unprepared to deal with the emotional weight of something so direct and final. 

But before her undeniable end we all came together while she was in relative good health and good spirits and did our best to enjoy what we all knew would be the beginning of the end of an era.

It took place over the Thanksgiving holiday, a holiday which happened to coincide not only with one of the earliest blizzards on record, but also during the exact time that my father would arrive in Ohio as well to celebrate Thanksgiving with his sister. 

What this meant was that my brother and I would have to be carted from family to family in order to oblige both halves of our broken family. 

This trip marked the first time I would have flown since contracting a serious case of full-blown panic disorder. To make matters worse, we were flying two months after the events of September 11th, a fact that was not lost on my paranoid self. 

The plan was to fly into Cleveland’s Hopkins Airport, meet up with my father, his wife and their six-year-old son, rent a car, and then head south to East Canton to my Aunt’s house. 

Naturally this all took place during the first blizzard of the season. 

I live in Houston, Texas. It pretty much never snows down here, and if it happens that it does, it virtually never sticks. Having said that, we have endured the occasional ice storm, and it is almost impossible to describe the near-total paralysis that overtakes Houston drivers whenever there is ice on the road. 

This is the sort of thing that gives people in places like Ohio no shortage of joy. Whenever they find out you are from Houston, this is invariably one of the first stories they will whip out at your expense. 

So you can imagine my amusement to find out that people in Ohio are just as hobbled by the presence of snow and ice on the roads as the people here in Houston. What makes them bigger pussies, however, is the fact that this happens to them every year and yet they somehow are still unable to remember how to drive on the stuff. 

After much handwringing, battling with my electric window happy half-brother, and near suicidal confrontation with an ice covered hill mere yards from my aunt’s house, we miraculously made it alive. 

After two days of turkey, hiking and Olympian battles of ping-pong in my aunt’s basement, it was off to the other family. 

The mood at grandma’s was decidedly more cautious. Everything we did revolved around a sense of finality. Worse, the main goal was to keep grandpa happy and upbeat knowing full well how hard the coming months would be to him. 

Adding to the Shakespearean drama of the weekend was the visit my mother had planned to one of her best friends, across town from my grandparents’ place. We were going there to eat dinner with J, a very kind and gentle woman my mother had known since high school. J lived in a beautiful victorian house listed on the national historical register. J also was in the throes of an advanced form of cancer. 

It might help to note that I was utterly incapable of handling the gravity of all this impending loss at that point in my life. No one I had ever been close to had died yet, and considering the inability I was having dealing with even the most basic of life challenges, I knew this trip was going to extol a heavy psychic price on me.

So the dinner plan was to arrive at J’s place, chat it up a bit, and then have my brother and me run around the corner to the pizza place and grab some pies. Before then, however, J gave us a tour of her house. With the weather and the general mood the place came off as a sort of Bates mansion. Every corner seemed to hide secrets better left unknown, histories that rolled out lives half lived and dreams left unfulfilled. It seriously was that heavy. 

Thing is, no matter how intense the situation during that trip, there was always something painfully funny to even things out. For instance, the place around the corner was called “Vittle Village,” and better still, the place was not so much a pizza place as it was a gas station. We trudged through the near white-out snowfall in the twenty-degree air, trying almost desperately not to let the pizzas get caught in a cross wind, just to feed our family. You had to laugh, the alternative was too much to even think about.

We sat down to eat; we were all happy to focus on our food and forget, for maybe a few minutes, everything else. The pizza was hot, and quite honestly, delicious. Tension seemed to melt, if ever so slightly, and discussion turned lighter. 

After dinner the talking continued for quite some time, and eventually my uncle brought out a bowl of peanuts for people to snack on. 

You have to picture now the seating arrangement. I sat directly across from my brother. Right next to him, to my right, sat my uncle. To my brother’s left, two seat over, sat my grandmother. When my uncle brought out the peanuts, the bowl made its way to my grandmother who looked right at me and infamously remarked, “Peanuts? Oh, I love peanuts, John!”

Thing is, it didn’t sound like “peanuts” at all. The lady was from pittsburgh, and in Pittsburgh the word “peanuts” sounds frighteningly close to the word “penis.” 

Therefore, as my brother handed her the bowl and she followed by sharing with me that she loved “penis,” my brother immediately looked directly at me. This was a bad decision. Our agonizing attempts to bury laughter were totally unsuccessful. Eventually my uncle elbowed my brother, leered at me and gave me one of these: he closed his eyes, and quickly shook his head back and forth in that “I totally disapprove” sort of way, which could only mean one thing - he heard it too. 

When I was a kid, I thought of my uncle as a hilarious guy. Over the years, it seemed as though the weight of dealing with the impending loss of his parents, and the impending arrival of his having to carry his emotional self on his own shoulders, simply wore him down and ended up robbing him of his humor. Worse, it seemed to rend him an insufferable asshole. 

During the pizza “penis” incident though, the guy was still able to see the ugliness of the world in that indelible Cramer/Deluca way: he saw it as being totally gut-bustingly funny. That’s why I know he had to be hurting inside trying to be the “man” at this trying time, desperate to place himself at the top of the familial totem and ultimately into a role that would propel him towards a hopeful future of sanity and stability. 

It had to take a herculean effort not to lose his shit. At the time that fact in and of itself was funny to my brother and me, but in retrospect I see things another way.

Within a few short months my grandmother would die, my grandfather’s heart would break as easily as would his oceanic will, he would die, my mother would virtually retire, move to Florida, acquire a series of illnesses and ultimately die herself, my uncle would pretty much fall apart, he would alienate himself from his sisters by taking on a tragic attitude as the greed-filled executor of their parents’ estate, and in the wake of all of this I would be sent on a trajectory of confusion and awkward stasis, admittedly happy just to be lost in a world of my own making for many years to come. 

Yeah, so maybe it’s all reading like a pulpy melodrama with little payoff, but it’s still a story that helps define my narrative; and I have always wanted to tell it; and I don’t really give a fuck if you like it or not, whomever you might happen to be. 

It’s too long, too depressing, too poorly written, and that’s my work in a nutshell. 

This is the marrow of the Blind Butcher for me. I will do my best to leave the door open, but be sure that you will always have to stay in the next room. 

These are roads that wear into the fabric of the future, and we might feel a level of control over the direction, but that’s a joke that delivers its punchline directly into your pocket and doesn’t wait for you get it. 

It never waits for you at all ...

Sedentary Travels

Thanks to Anonymous for submitting this post. Enjoy. -- BB

I try to be open minded to most things that life has to offer. If I find myself getting into too much of a habit of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (I think Einstein equated that to insanity), or if I find the every-day to be somewhat tedious, I will do something completely out of character to help myself feel alive and to keep things interesting.

I took mushrooms last week.

At first, I was very reluctant to do them, but I did research and talked to people I know who have done them, so I had some idea as to what I was getting into. One of my friends who had taken them before said that it would be a good idea to have someone sober around, a babysitter, so to speak. That person’s role would be to help steer the person back to something positive if they start to have a bad trip. Plus, I wouldn’t want to come out of it not knowing where I am, in jail, or worse.

So I mentally prepared myself, gathered a couple of DVDs, my Mp3 player, some food, and headed over to my friend’s place to get out of my mind. Once in a while, I wish I could see the world through a different set of eyes, so this, in theory, was just what I was looking for.

I was pretty hungry when I took them, which is the right thing to do. Food blocks the absorption. The “reality” of tripping was different than I had imagined.

For the first forty minutes or so, my friend and I sat and shot the breeze, every once in a while sort of testing me to see if it had hit me yet. He left the room shortly thereafter, and that’s about the time that it started to hit me. The walls appeared to be breathing, but my logical mind assumed that the walls were mirroring my breathing. The visual part was only minimal; no streamers like I thought there would be.

It’s somewhat difficult to describe how it was on them, though I remember everything clearly. The best way to describe it would be to say that I was emotionally tripping. There was a body high, but the way everything made me feel was the most noticeable effect. I was able to start breaking life itself down into terms that made everything more clear and bearable (vague, I know). Imagine looking at the intricate gears of a complex machine and understanding how and why the parts work. “Meaning of life” types of thoughts.

After a while, they started to have more of an effect. Astronomy and the universe are interests of mine, and my mind started going down that path. My mind’s eye started seeing some really interesting things pertaining to space travel, phenomena, black holes, and the like. At that point, I was having a blast. My friend then came in and asked how I was doing. Since my reaction was a good one, he asked if I wanted to take it to the next level. Of course I did. Mistake.

I took the second dose, and my friend went to bed shortly thereafter. At that point, I wanted to keep going with the thoughts of the universe, so I put on a DVD about the cosmos. I know now that we take for granted our ability to work certain things. The thought process changes so much when you’re tripping that you can space out what things are and how they work. The TV and DVD player became a puzzle, and it took a little bit for logic, trial, and error to finally yield the results I wanted. Play.

The DVD I watched was called Cosmic Voyage, which was originally an Imax movie totaling about 36 minutes. In a sense, time travel was possible. The DVD seemed to last for hours, though I know it is exactly 36 minutes. Morgan Freeman narrates, and I must say that his voice is quite comforting in that state. Sort of like an empathetic sage. It starts off in Venice, Italy, and slowly expands in meters by powers of ten, then in light-years by powers of ten. First you see people, then the city, then the country, then the Earth, and it keep panning out until it reaches the perimeter of the known/visible universe. I felt like I was going to these places, which has sort of always been a fantasy of mine. It then goes from the insanely large scale down to a molecular one. It starts with a drop of water and magnifies by negative powers of ten through a micro-universe until it gets down to the smallest known level, quarks. I was disappointed when the DVD ended and I was back on Earth.

I was told that even little events, noticing a pebble on the ground for example, could make one have mood swings, and I was in store for a big one in the following hours. There was other people in my friends house that I did not care to see (they were real people, not imagined). Well, once the documentary was over, I realized that I really had to piss. Lemon juice serves as somewhat of a diuretic, but it also helps the effects of the mushrooms. Here’s where it starts going downhill. So, as I headed toward the restroom (by this point, walking was not at all something that came automatically to me; motor functions became another puzzle), I noticed that the restroom was occupied. My friend’s roommate was fucking her boyfriend in the shower. Great. After waiting for a very long, uncomfortable time, they finally cleared the bathroom. During my trip, I started realizing certain things about my friend’s roommate that I won’t go into, but suffice it to say that certain issues I had with her that I could not quite explain to myself became crystal clear. As I mentioned, little things can hinder one’s emotions big time in that state. Well, when I went into the restroom, it was filthy and the floors were soaking wet. The discomfort of my socks getting soaking wet, paired with situational mnemonic devices from my past sent my mood into a southern downward spiral. After getting back to the couch, I noticed that it was very cold in the room, yet I was sweating. For some reason, I didn’t think to get any water, even though I knew I was thirsty and hungry (remember, I was hungry when I took them). At that point, I knew I wanted to go home, but there was no way that that was going to happen, so I tried to make the best of my situation. The worst is what I got.

Because it was dark, I could only see silhouettes of things. I then noticed that my hand looked like that of a corpse, which started me down the path of thinking about death. At this point, I started to understand insanity, which is very strange. Ever come across someone on the street or wherever and think that they’re totally fucking insane? Well, I knew them, and they made perfect sense. At this point, I lost the concept of self. My mind wandered, things happened to me (I was, in reality, simply lying on the couch), and I could do nothing about any of them. I found myself at a Day of the Dead festival, and I was somehow able to understand Spanish. English, on the other hand, was a foreign sound to me. Religion then entered the mix. I was surrounded by religiously fanatical, frightened people who were chanting something at me. Think of the people who see Jesus in a piece of toast and think that they’ve either been saved or that the world is about to end. I concluded that the chanters were all cowards who were looking to sources outside of themselves to save them, when all they really needed was a sense of self fulfillment. At that point, I knew I was going to die, but unlike the chanting fools, I was not afraid. They were weaklings who sought the good favor of a jealous and petty god with whom I wanted no relation. The subject of existence versus non-existence, pertaining to everything, not just things religious in nature, began to swim through my consciousness. Though I am not religious, the experience left me somewhat more spiritual (and less religious, if that’s possible) than I was beforehand.

For a brief period, my logical mind kicked in and let me know that I was not, in fact, about to die. I remembered being told that I was on a rollercoaster that could not be exited, so I had to just sit back and try to enjoy the ride. I thought to wake my friend up so that he could help me get back to a positive mindset, but I didn’t want to bother him. Part of me wishes that I had, but another part is glad that I faced those things head on. Plus, I’m pretty sure that I would have had trouble speaking. The whole thing lasted for about 6.5 hours.

The next morning was awful though. I ended up getting very dehydrated, which lead to unbearable nausea and a migraine headache. Needless to say, the following day was not too enjoyable.

In the end, the experience gave me a little more perspective on life and was a positive mental experience. Physically, it was awful. If I choose to do it again, it will be in the comfort of my own home, minus the presence of people I don’t wish to see, and I will certainly eat and drink plenty of liquid. It’s impossible to adequately convey the experience in words, but this should give those who might be curious a small idea as to what could be expected if they ever take them. The good was worth the bad.

Sucked

The Dial a Verbal Beat Down idea sucked. Mr. C made that apparent very quickly, as did the fact that he was literally the only person on earth to even acknowledge the idea at all. Moving on.

Dial a Verbal Beat Down

The Butcher would like to introduce a new special here in the shop. For a limited time, we are offering what we call Dial a Verbal Beat Down. It works like this.

You send us your name (pseudonym if you are a pussy), some basic information about yourself (i.e. where you live, what you enjoy, your love life, whatever), and we finely craft a ferocious, completely unfair and totally humiliating verbal beat down of the highest order.

In case anybody gets the wrong idea and decides that we are so good at this that they want to contact their lawyer, we will issue a disclaimer with each beat down explaining that this is all in good fun and that we in no way actually mean anything we are saying in the beat down.

It will merely be coincidence, naturally, were we to, say, hit the proverbial nail on the head in the course of bitch slapping your good name all over the Tron-o-sphere. Don't kill the messenger.

If you would like to throw your name into the hat, please contact us via the submissions @ blindbutcher . com email address, and we will install your new asshole post haste.

You know what to do, motherfuckers!

Epic, Childish Ego

To begin with,this was not written for you. I am forgoing you, my target demographic for a loftier more refined audience, that being the dozen or so miscreants that subscribe to a blog called "the blind butcher". Im more used to this format and will cut and paste it there later. I have the distinction of being the dumbest person to post on that blog and have often wondered why I am still allowed access as an author there. I strongly recommend all of you in "Rebstock" (170 + strong now, represent yo!) taking the time to find it and no matter how painful it is , read as many of the butchers posts as you are able. My blogs are usually a festival of drug addled stories about deviant sex, This might stray. There will be no mescaline trips ( though I took an awesome one recently ), prostate exams by strippers named candy, or high speed pursuits. No skidmarks will be measured, no dental records consulted. I find myself unable to sleep this evening because i have a stabbing pain in the lower left quadrant of my back. This ,I know from experience is a kidney stone. No big deal, its not my first. I actually pass them pretty easily. Wide urethra. To assist the process im drinking huge Cape Cods and have brought my old friend Vicoden out of retirement. Piece of cake, just a little ouchie.
Some random thoughts..........
When did I lose my youthful idealism ?
Does anyone else love Craisins?
Mary Ann or Ginger?
Is Billy Squier really gay?

Just to catch everyone up on my life, (like you fuckin asked) Ive been back in Austin two weeks and life is perfect. Im seeing the boy (Rhett 8) several times a week and have the most wonderful girlfriend ever. The stone in my Kidney is actually welcome. I dont know where I heard it but a certain number of fleas are good for a dog, it keeps em from brooding over the fact that.....theyre dogs. Ouch! too much vodka not enough cranberry. Im adjusting to the idea that This amazing mystery woman has no scheduled crises for me. No surreal drama. No pending neurosis, psychosis or plans to hit me with this vodka bottle. Shes sane. Shes smart (except for seeing me). and im fuckin crazy about her.I haven't looked at or thought about another woman since we met. My plans to move to south western Australia and sell weed on the Roller Derby circuit are postponed and possibly canceled (sorry Funk). The one thing that has been neglected is my music. I haven't written a song or even played my guitar much since I moved. The few times I have been happy or content have been the least creative times in my life. I write in pain, when im alone, I write in prison. Fuck I guess ill take the trade. I have well over a hundred songs I aint doing dick with anyway. I do miss playing for people though , i liked the attention. But I am bartending again and that satisfies the urge a bit, it also pays, which is nice. The stabbing sensation in my back seems to be getting worse, hopefully this is an indication that the stone is loose and on its way out.
More random thoughts...........
Who are the tiny expensive 8 oz cokes for?
At what age will my son care about his zipper being down?
Why do I FUCKING HATE french toast?
Am I the only one that wanted to see Blair and Joe from "The Facts Of Life" 69 ?
Why do people drink Merlot and pretend its not sucking their face into some fucked up , bark flavored vortex ?
Why wont John answer his phone?


Anyway, Im in love and I cant write....or I wont write....whichever. I heard thats what happened to the Afghan Whigs. Dude got on meds and just quit writing. Our loss, but how could you want it the other way? Not that Id ever compare myself to Greg Dulli. Did i spell that right? Im sure I should be inspired. But my need to create comes from what isn't, not what is. Or perhaps I was just writing to get laid and now that doesn't matter anymore. I hope there's more to it than that. Knowing me I wont rule it out. I have no process. Ive never been able to sit down and write a song. Usually im doing something else and am overcome by one. I scramble for a pen and anything I can write on. A matchbook, napkin, business card, coaster, receipt ,money, etc. I once was able to positively define the difference between an artist and a songwriter when I found myself with no toilet paper, I pulled out a song and used it . An artist would have saved the song and just walked away. I am not willing to suffer on that level for art. Ok so I found my point, Id rather be happy than productive. No real revelation there. Im sure it doesn't have to be one or the other,but thats what it is for now. Perhaps in the future i can learn to write from an existence instead of an absence, maybe my work will even be better, I dont think it could be much worse. But the people who I hope will like it, always do and the people I could care fucking less about, well, who fucking cares. Ive got to go pee now.

The Butcher is in, Sort of ...

 I have tried, and tried, and tried to force myself to spit something out of value, something that I can hold up to the light and not watch as it disappears beneath its own negligible lightness. I have tried, and I have failed.

When I bolted from the increasingly claustrophobic confines of my previous weekly writing gig over at the Nonalignment Pact, I did so in part with this project in mind. I wanted to create a venue for myself, the Unspeakable, and anyone else I knew, barely knew, respected, loathed, and/or basically had something I thought could add to a blog that simply worked as a vehicle for the contributor to flex his or her creative chops. 

The framework around here is tentative at best, and at its worst, things around here get pretty goddamn sloppy around the edges. We have been lucky enough to have a reasonable number of posts from a decent number of extremely intelligent, thoughtful, hilarious, brilliant, and talented writers. 

We have received input from New Zealand, Chicago, Houston, Austin, Boise, and Minneapolis, as well as a fucking boat out in the Gulf. I have been eternally grateful for it all. 

But the Unspeakable and her very strong and consistent work notwithstanding, there has been little activity around here in the past few months, which only enlightens upon the fact that I have been a totally worthless asshole around here, and thus, I apologize. 

I have been crippled by forces that I know all to well, some of which I have mentioned in previous posts, and many with which I am more than familiar but hardly close to sharing with anyone at all.

Consider yourselves lucky. 

I have had many interesting and worthwhile experiences in my life. Learned hockey on a frozen pond in Massachusetts. Traveled the Atlantic on a massive French ocean liner. Crossed the Channel on a hovercraft. Saw the D-Day beaches at least five times (as well as watched my father fall into an allied bomb crater in order to take the perfect family photo). Cut my own hands on a rusty chain swing over another crater in a Paris park. Traveled to the Canary Islands and bought beer as an 8 year old out of vending machine. Had my picture taken with a chimpanzee, who I now know was undoubtedly forcibly extricated from its murdered mother and brought into indentured servitude by tourist preying scumbags. Moved back to my hometown where I had the distinct pleasure of walking to school in thirty-below weather. Moved with the family to Houston in an August heatwave, stepping out of the car and into an Dante-esque inferno from which I have yet to escape. Learned about trust, terror, many forms of self abuse, sexual abuse, rock-n-roll, love, hate, marriage, fatherhood, homeownership, divorce, acrimony, rebirth and salvation, the whole shooting match, all in motherfucking Texas. 

Yeah, I learned that Texas, despite all the legal and political wrangling or otherwise, is, was, and will always be its own country. And here I sit, open-hearted ...

Yeah, here I sit, and try to tell you something to make to you connect with me in one of the few ways I am comfortable throwing it out there. From a great, cold, and digital divide. 

That's why when the phone rings, and rings, and rings, and ... I never seem home. Yeah, I know, the lights are on ...

My mother once told me, in one of her brutally frank if not entirely satisfying moments of unwelcome honesty, that she suspected I might suffer from a mild form of brain damage. Oh no, don't take it the wrong way, John, I mean well. 

Perhaps she did, though I am still racking my brain as to how this helps my self esteem to know that my mother thought I had brain damage. 

She said that to her it was odd that I was never very ambitious, that I was the kind of guy happy to simply sit back and let life happen, or something like that. 

Guess I am. I mean, I am no go-getter, that's for fucking sure. I never set foot in college, never cared a whit for the backslapping advancement of corporate ladder-climbing, never had the slightest desire to keep up with the SUV driving assholes next door, the Joneses. Never, ever. 

See, I pretty much made a pact with myself. If I survived past 25 it would be a fucking big-league miracle. 

I'm 41. 

I'm still trying to figure out who the fuck I am and why I matter. 

Kids help define that a hell of a lot. Being a dad is quite a dip in the perspective pool. 

I still pretty much hate who I am, have fairly regular bouts of almost no self-worth, and yet, being a dad means no one fucking cares about me. Which is a good thing. 

It's good because what matters is that I give these kids in my life (mine, hers), all three beautiful, brilliant, spirited, and creative children, a stab at this toilet life that comes with a pair of very sharp fangs. We all know how bumpy the ride is, it's our job to make sure these little fuckers are armed to the teeth when they have to go out there and face the very, very ugly music. 

And, boy is it ugly. 

My mother, gone forever, turned me into something worth a shit. My dad, an amazingly talented athlete and an intensely gifted artist, gave things to me as well. Good and bad. Both of them, really. It's not the time for finger pointing. Dad and I, not real close. It's complicated. We barely know one another. 

This electronic world, Tron as C calls it, is such a cruel mistress. For me it's like a glowing wonderland of brain-crack, a window into a world in which I hold almost no trust, a world in which a distance is a welcomed enterprise, and yet, a world that that is not a world at all, but more a dream that lies before me, through which I can travel at will and still come back when the road runs dry. 

I am going nowhere with this, which is par for the course. 

We need life in here, at the Butcher shop. 

We need new life, sure, but what we really need is more life from this little chunk of the Butcher netherworld. I have fallen far behind. Far behind from nowhere, which is a place I have known my whole life. 

But then again, what do I know? I have brain damage. 

Failed attempt to complete observations to goal.

I honestly was going to sit down and write a post that was a summary of brutally honest observations and feelings. I think I even got up to 7 really witty ones, and then I decided that I should just chill the fuck out and listen to some country music. I don't listen to country music, and feeling number 1. was that I should.

The second observation that I was going to bring up if I decided to actually do this thing, was that- Tonight, whenever I stepped outside on the rat-haven 70's Houston apartment patio that I can't maintain, I looked around my feet. I looked around my knees.... and with the only view of the sky worth your eyes.. I saw the search light lashing out in a Hollywood premier kind of dysfunction from the strip club called Penthouse down the street. She had just reopened her doors after the "Sex vs We Have Children 50 Feet From Your Front Door" hysterical chowder had shut them down for almost a year.

That was what I saw when I looked up to the left. Just happened to be on that side.

To the right, there was the prehistorically touching show of a lightning storm flashing erratically. Could have come from anywhere.. and did.

Too bad I wasn't standing on an expansive flat desert or prairie or Tundra watching this weak production of a man made light compete against .... nature... for My attention.

My late night-after-work attention.

The third thing I thought about was Johnny cash. I have been avoiding Johnny Cash since my grandmother died just over a year ago. She didn't live in this country, but she had been to Vegas. She is my "real father's" mother and I never met her face to face. I never can. God Bless.

This brought me to my 4th observation. She made it a point to tell me that my father liked Johnny Cash. Its really one of the only things I know about the man that couldn't be considered negative or vacant of material based on what everyone who knows him tells me. My conclusion with this train of thought is, there's something else.... about the lightning.

It was coming here. It wasn't passing by. It was here for me. Here for us. It wasn't interested or capable of wanting to hit or not hit this town. It just was.

Sadly, I felt bad for the storm. I wondered if all of our fucked up and hateful politics HAD actually changed her course, and now she was this rolling and grieving and powerful .. reality.

At this point I tried to remember the lyrics and music to "A boy named sue" by Johnny Cash and was annoyed with myself that I was so ignorant that I couldn't remember anything.

My 5th sort of came when I realized that a Monsoon was here.

About twenty minutes ago, I noticed that the Gentlemen's club was no longer hitting the sky over my home with high powered search lights. All that was lashing out then was the storm.

While outside under the 6 inch eave in front of this place, as I enjoy this total Flash Flood, I notice that the lamp post in front of our hovel is one of those Jack The Ripper era jobs.

I get soaked trying to enjoy it. Seven.

I am back at this monitor hearing the sounds of something made for me. A storm from Nature. Thunderclaps that last 20 seconds. LIght shows that thrill with their unpredictability and dangerous amounts of water.

It comforts me.