Belief

At least once in my life, I've spoken without really thinking about what I was saying. Also, at least once, someone has challenged the meaning of the word "believe". A doctor suggested that I rephrase to "My understanding is..." He did me a favor. There is less for petty divertors to grab on to. To believe, as another dialogue digested, is to have a practically corporal conviction. It seems that the word would be given too much then, and worse, tangle itself up in dogma and all of the malarky that goes along with it.

So, by nature or nurture, I rest easier in the abstract, the rational, and the logical. I can dissect, and do, words as well as the next man. Only recently I've had to spar with a girl who has a great confidence in her mastery of English. The problem is that there is a point when the words become trees and the sentences and paragraphs become nests of trees and then forests. If I were trying to explain in many words how dark the forest is, and what that could mean, I don't need to be corrected that a "tree" is actually an "oak". The funny thing is that we can all attack each string of bits as much as the next.

When I listen to speakers diverge, cross lines, and present faulty truths, my natural reaction is to restate it correctly. I do this not for their benefit, but for my own so that I don't adopt an error or incomplete truth. This is great, but having a vague sense of how a string will be interpreted gives the option of presenting facts as truths and allowing the audience to misinterpret them.

There is humor in a later illuminating statement which changes the thread of thought back, with timing that I don't naturally possess, but unfortunately this isn't how I usually employ this. Usually, I'm trying to fob off something to get someone to leave me alone. People aren't stupid, so when they see what I've done, they get upset.

Then they're upset and they have all sorts of words for me. I again have to challenge and try to run around their statements to see if they are true. A wiser man than myself once told me, "If it doesn't apply, let it fly." That rhymed. Better still, a man asked me, "Who is worse off -- the fool or the one arguing with a fool?" That is one of my favorite questions I've ever encountered.

The same man who issued the lovely question said, "Stand for something or you'll fall for anything." I don't hold with that statement, but we're all wrong sometimes. Even Einstein could only see what he could from his magical vantage. A great man told me to listen to my heart because my head will lie. He's very right.

My head does lie. Given rationale, logic, and imagination, I can make nearly anything fit; so long as I have the hamster wheel of higher thought, that is. I don't necessarily believe what I see. I don't have to see something to believe it. Believe and suspect are tied closely for me. There is a very stubborn and immature scientist in me or something; maybe I'm just very stubborn and immature, among other things.

The Turn of the Knife

I knew I shouldn't spend the money. When I think of the money, or think of spending it, I think of the scene in the movie where Hannibal Lecter prepares the man's brain and feeds it to him. If I buy a cup of coffee, I'm actually drinking my grey matter. A bizarre notion, and surely I'm demented, but these are the thoughts that plague me. Still, I was standing in this humdrum town, waiting for soggy cold tumbleweeds to bounce along the wind, which was naturally blowing against me, and my body did not want to walk anymore.

I'm far from physically lazy when it comes to walking. I've walked distances and never really owned a working car. I have two legs, two feet and it's not a problem. It was a psychic wall, perhaps. As I walked by the shrine to american football, I saw a yellow taxi minivan, one of my favorite types of taxi. The van slowed and pulled into a spot in front of me. The driver got out and opened the side door for the passenger. I called out and asked him if he were free. It was providence for both of us.

When I got in, he turned up the radio for, as he noted, my benefit. Some football game crashed and cheered in the taxi. I told him I'm going to Colfax & Eddy. He said, "If you know how to get there, let's go!" He was a little too cheerful. He didn't drop the flag, and the meter stared at me blank and dead. I began to consider the distance, under 1.5 miles, and decided that he would get 5+2 tip. 7 is a good number, and the whole arrangement rang of synchronicity.

There wasn't much to talk about. I asked him if he was from this town, and he said he was. I made up a place that I'm not from, then clarified that "it's not the one in Ohio." to make it more believable, as if he bothered to assess the verity of my claim. God knows what accent I was using anyway. My street came up and I told him in good time. He swung around the corner and I was home. Then, he decided to make a claim of his own. "Ten dollars." I had already considered this eventuality. I have been playing a half-dozen chess games with players better than myself. My endgame for the taxi would be, "Take it up with god or the police if it hurts that bad, but you're getting 5 from me."

I replied to his fare, "That was a really short ride and off the meter. You can have 5." The problem with these numbers is that they're exactly half. People get their knickers all twisted when they think they're getting exactly half of what they deserve. The value of a dollar isn't such that I could have said, "I have 5.50," and my number was already out of my mouth and on the table. He looked up at the ceiling of the cab and threw his hands up. "Oh man. You don't wanna pay me?!"

This problem really wasn't mine. I thought I was doing him a favor by keeping it off the meter and out of his dispatch. These smalltown folk don't understand how it works when there are carniverous fish in the pond. "I'll pay you 5 dollars. I would have paid 2 more as a tip, but I would feel that I was robbing not only myself but you as well if I did pay 7 at this point." "What?! What the hell are you talking about?!" I handed him the 5, looking at him in his rear-view mirror, "Take it up with god or the police if it hurts that bad, but you're getting 5 from me." I opened the door and got out. He no longer existed.

When I opened my door, I thought to call a Jewish friend and share my burden. It was then that I heard his engine muscle off down the street and turn the corner. My phone was still in the taxi. !@#$#@%

Why are they afraid

When I was small, my grandmother steeped me in certain affairs so that I would be aware of the liabilities. Look both ways when you cross the street and don't cross unless you're with an adult. Don't talk to strangers. Don't take gifts from strangers. Tie your shoes. Wash your hands. It's a dirty world, I know now, and as much as I avoid strangers -- there are streets I have to cross. Sometimes I'm not with an adult. I'm 31, and I got hit by a car when I was zipping across a main street, so she was certainly on to something but there is a point when I have to stop and realize that there is more fear than respect.

She would tell us that we had to have all of our halloween candy examined because people put LSD in it. Who the hell puts LSD in candy for kids? It makes sense maybe to dose oneself, perhaps, but just to put it in a candy? I don't get it. For a long time, I've had to rest on the notion that god protects the innocent and the stupid. For as long, I've been in the stupid category. Never have I noticed any acidlike effects, but I don't like candy that much.

The world -is- a dirty place. There are tics, mosquitos, candiru, and herpes out here. I don't like them, but I avoid them. I don't live in fear that something unexpected and bad is going to come down on me, because it would be unexpected. I'm also superstitious and many days are rife with synchronicity in symbol and event, but I'm not going to conjure up all sorts of baddies with a fearful preoccupation. I'd swear that the universe can smell fear, like blood in the water, and it's just not the way.

Once you're on the way you're on the way. When I've had to bluff my way through preposterously dangerous encounters with the law, or engage with the most desperate and predatory in the worst neighborhoods, I succeed when I relieve myself of fear and handle what is. I'm not spending my heart and mind on fear. That would suck.

Besides, it's a thrill to swim in the ocean at night. I just wear a swimsuit, I don't want my dick chomped off.

nice

A grifter; a grafter
A shifter; a shafter
I walk around
With a Deathstar
Inside me
With a love
Inside me
Half-finished;
But I'm full
Of shit & love;
and that's just it.

What was I thinking?

The great beautiful sky pressed her breast against the horizon, her nipple sat in the space between mountains, the empty highway an invitation, a ribbon of spiritual milk for the traveller on his way across the desert, through providence, her unparalleled celestial femininity giving his heart to tide up with love & ease. His ride on his two wheeled ship was suddenly making experientially time bend, each second growing longer, slower. The sun was so bright and clear that in spite of the discomfort to his naked eye, the colors of the sky, and the horizon's razorlike glimmer across her chest made his psyche sing.

I have to pee.

A laugh -- in meter

I want to ride my bicycle south
I want to ride my bicycle south
Down to Argentina way

I want to ride my bicycle south
I want to ride my bicycle south
Where the well dressed penguins play

I want to ride my bicycle south
I want to ride my bicycle south
Where the birds of winter stay

I want to ride my bicycle south
I want to ride my bicycle south
Where butterflies fly away

CRUZ DEL DIVINO

Il tenger carinosia pura
Vida saluta & duro
El amo des pluros y onos
Este no es un hombre
Regular cono fluvia
Soleil y etheria
Los braces teners senteros
Completo & mignon dolce

[this is not a language and it does not make sense but to me-- author's note]

Judge Not

There are always haunted memories. As long as I've come up short, I've had to bear them. Grant was harder on himself than I was. He smoked a lot of ganja, though, so depending on his state and fill, he seemed to be alleviated. I chose smack and swimming. Nothing better than injecting a spoonful of heroin and swimming 100 laps or a mile in the ocean. Blood in the water, I would lose gravity in bouyance and make the domain my own. Sure, it's a bad idea, because if you overdose you'll likely drown, but "bad" is a relative term. Bad compared to going to the local beach resort and eating all manner of grease and sugar? Bad compared to making women your god? Bad compared to what?

I survived, and after I'd leave the water with red eyes, the blacks of which were points of miosis leaving the green in my eyes to contrast the red, I'd go look in the mirror. Not at my body, but in my dead eyes. Full of morphine and endorphin, there wasn't much to be afraid of. My stomach would settle and let me know it was time to feed. "Brainssss" would be great, but the nearest I could come to that would be blood pudding or kidney pie. Only then, with my reptilian appetite aroused, could I even stomach the sight of such disgustation. Then, a cigarette to tame my lungs.

Afterwards, the day usually would drag. When the sun past his acme, I would rest in cool air under blankets and my skin and body would know an unearthly peace. I would wake up soon, slowly and easily, and read or write, listening to music, stare out the window at the circus below, or the window in the ceiling at the sky sliding by. The days were eternal, even though the narcotics had worn off, and I knew that the world and her hearts had nothing more than there ever was. From here, I could daydream about physics, geometry, and energy.

Eventually, I would smoke too many cigarettes and the spell would be broken. Time had his part, but I punctuate time with cigarettes, and that was my meter. When the sun went down, I would feel lonely again, and go for dinner. I chose the most dismissable and unpretentious space, an aerodynamic diner, to eat. It was regular. It was good.

The ropes

The ropes were no longer familiar. He struggeled to coil them, and mistook the whole comedy for the ropes resisting to remember their shape. They were wet and heavy and he kept going to rearrange them as they sat, complicating them, and the whole enterprise took longer than it ever had. Omar needed sleep. He had been watching skies and stars and sleeping spells of an hour at most. The aether was dissolving into a grainy electric field; his vision was polluted.

He craved citrus. The air had been dry until last night, when it poured down and the skies flashed and rolled in a storm that passed the time very quickly. His body was basic and though the opium was helping him absorb his rations he knew he was depleted. During the night, he became obsessed with minerals so badly he sipped a cup of saltwater and crunched the fine ribs of perch in his teeth. This morning his jaw hurt and he was thirsty.

The weather had changed, and the winds were blowing from the southeast. When Argento came and saw his state, something must have been understood. Martis did not appear this morning, but Argento gave Omar a cup of doped coffee. Omar slugged it down for the water. As it sat in his belly, he could feel it settle all of him like a stiff drink without the swimming haze of dry alcohol. His mind would not let him carry on. Omar asked for water and Argento showed him down into the makeshift galley. There were two large casks of water among the rations. Omar asked for fruit. Argento rifled through the lockable cabinet and emerged with a sack, pulled the string untied, took two pieces of dried mango out and gave one to Omar. "Get sleep. We aren't far," he told Omar and Omar lumbered up the stairs backwards and tapped across the deck to the forecastle. He was very fortunate.

The mango loosened with the water and he held it in his mouth to taste the perfect acidity. He was afraid he'd fall asleep with a bit in his mouth and choke, so he finished the rest but a piece the size of his thumbnail, which he put under the blanket under his head. When he woke, he would try to wash his leg, if not his body. The puncture wounds were nearly healed, and the bone was fuzing. He was very fortunate indeed.

As he fell asleep he remembered that his life was not always this and would not always be here. It gave him some solace, the frame of time and limits. As he could see, along with Argento, they were closing in on land. The wind was even more preferential, the texture of the air had changed. The time would soon come when he could take action to free himself.

Evening

I threw the old flowers in the garden, with the idea that they would drop seeds and grow more next year. The garden is nearly dead, definitely dying. The skies are low and grey, and if the sun comes out it's a tease because the air blows cold on your face. It feels like every day is raining, but the sun does come out in between spells.

The banker didn't feel like he trusted me because I'm so fucking fidgety. He did, though, waive the need for a local ID or secondary ID. At the end of our meeting, he was asking me to come hang out with him, telling me he was lonely because he is from Ft. Wayne. His name is John. He's an American, for sure. When he made his attempt to identify with me, he started talking about tailgating. I've never been tailgating, though I've stolen kegs with a truck, and I don't mind if I spend my whole life without knowing what the parking lots at stadiums and sports events hold.

Over and over, I keep thinking about the Einstein quote and her siblings as phrases, "Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht." Life itself is pretty amazing. The bad isn't fun, and in culpability living feels less free and easy, but it feels like it works out. The latinos in Miami tried to tell me a phrase through translation that went, "He may grab you by the throat, but he won't choke you." Or, "If he closes the door, he'll leave the window open." Thank god for open windows, I say, and fresh cooling cherry pies!

Bad Magic

Superstition threatens me. I can't ignore it & I can't not think about it though I try. The notion that there are as many reasons why my pen or whatever falls the way it does as a certain planet or star is in a certain place or state relative to the others makes me all the more sure. When I lived in Harlem, I was obsessing about a now sort of old-fashioned telephone bill that wasn't available on the web. I could have called the phone company, I suppose, but no; I was sure that the bill was in my room. Those nights got phenomenally dark, and my window opened to a sort of three foot space that ended in the brick wall of the next building. It was a good spot.

I, for one reason or another, had a fishing rod in the room. I placed my cell phone on the hook, precariously, and allowed it to spin. It swung the line into a twist and then began to spin the other way. I waited. Eventually, the phone slowed to an average oscillation on a line that passed at the edge of the window. Behind the dark curtain, when I stood there staring at nothing on the windowsill, the edge of a white envelope appeared. The divination was a success!

Well, all these things are fine, but what can I do about dreams? I wrote a name yesterday, a name I rarely picture the face that goes with it, and in my dream she appeared. My rational mind has rules but in my dreams it feels like something is out to get me -- namely, myself. Even recently I could remember the content of dreams that weren't at all bad or stressful. Still, the vast majority of nights are haunted by one ghost or another, and if I'm thinking only in the monkeyworld I'm left to believe it's a psych thing.

So I wonder, "How much of my dreams did my own mind create?" All, none, some, whatever. I can remember things better if I'm hashing them over before I fall asleep, and there have been a couple, if not a few cases where I became lucid for a few seconds when I was dreaming, or woke without realizing the dream wasn't real. This evening I will come up with something nice before I fall asleep. I'll think of Richard Attenborough telling me all the things I didn't know about life. I'll pretend I'm on a private aircraft circling the antarctic with an amazing bed inside, where I'm given to dissolve into the hum of steady jet engines and Attenborough's voice. If I don't get greedy and make myself laugh, or feel compelled to get up and write a play or something, then maybe I'll have better dreams.

In celebration of the unfolding story of Colton Harris-Moore

I sat in the transport, listening to Led Zeppelin, watching the scenery slide by. My eyes were looking for a way out. The next ride would be 4pm, to return me. Barbed wire caught my attention, and behind it was a small airport. I studied the planes the way one studies a menu or a bowl of fruit. Which would have fuel? What fuel do they use? Jesus, that was a last-ditch resort, like pressing the hyperspace button to avoid a sure death.

I reminded myself that I should be afraid to think like this. Unfortunately, I wasn't. I considered the availability of highways or fields. The coast would be a good visual orientation. At some point, I thought, I'd have to cross water, which was a bigger barrier than the prospect of a death in the style of Icarus. Fire, crashing, breaking and bleeding are fine, but sharks would be worse. Already I was sabotaging my gestating escape. As soon as you realize what could happen, it definitely can.

The other option was to just trust that however and wherever the van and life led was fine. "Fine"... well, it's a life at least. I thought of the Wright brothers and early rocketeers. These men had a similar disregard for gravity, saw it as a challenge rather than a law. I couldn't imagine living before airplanes. There have been places and times I lived without electricity, but the air was a natural domain. In my youth, I remember saving my own and Jason's life by grabbing his steering wheel from the passenger seat to steer us out of the imminent death procession of freight trucks we had veered into. Let death be Zen.

The airport finished screening by. Over the radio, I heard, "wheel in the sky keep on turning..." Where was my spirit? Surely the world hadn't crushed it. Even when locked into a cell, my eyes looked for the unseen key. The wall was withing jumping distance. I could practice jumping until I knew I could. There wouldn't be any mistakes. Mistakes cost.

This magical way, seasoned with unlikely survival, gave perspective on the strange things afoot in the universe. I had to be on God's side. Without that, I would surely fail. The monkey and the bat are not governed by this, I thought, but I am. So long as my motivation was pure, I couldn't think of any evidence against notion. Life had given me the keys, I just misplaced them all the time.

What is lost?

All can't be lost. I have my eyes, my tongue, my ears are pretty good. My body, though some time has shown me that it does imprint age upon one, still returns to a fair balance after antagonism. The knot of pain in my back presses me through writhing postures and finally I sit up. It can't be forever, but it's very good for now.

Someone once asked me if I'd do a particularly taboo thing. I explained that yes, I would, if I never cared if I were alive or not. It wasn't a promise, I was giving the conditions under which I would. Shortly, then, after some consideration, I did realize that death didn't scare me. I've seen corpses, been to burials, and as real as death is I came to understand that I wasn't afraid of it. Pain I avoid, dismay and disgust put me off things, but death itself -- to cease the circus of my psyche wasn't a threat.

It wasn't depression. I read depressing books perhaps, and my idle time was meted out in held breaths and urgent sighs, but my lot was not insufferable. My interests inclined to the strange, the bizarre, the magical and musical. Ultimately this macabre rite was a gift, in a sense. In a book titled On the Beach, the characters are forced to reconcile with the obvious and impending finality of their lives. They drank, raced cars, worried about their children, took care of their lovers, and generally worked on the lists of what needs to be done before that time comes.

The particular indulgence that precipitated this core of obsessiveness did not kill me. I lived. Games of chance don't usually appeal because I understand randomness to a decent degree and can see the ratios of outcomes. Recently I was reading a friend and he wrote about how he was leaning out over the edge of a great hole. I saw in that form my own doings, except I dove into the hole. A different and wiser man also told me, "The first rule of holes is: When you're in one stop digging."

So, after a lifetime in darkness and shadows, caves and burden, I wake up and look for the sun. It sometimes takes hours for the sky to crack dark and then blue. Once that sun is up, though, the waiting is done and the day begins. The chores and obligations, social and internal, crop up and then for me is to contend with them one by one until that same sun returns to the horizon and leaves the day to sleepiness.

My dream

Somehow the old man had died in the bathtub. The water wasn't even cold yet. All was dark but his face by light through the opaque window. I shouldn't have been there just then but I was. They sent me the key, and I opened the mailbox and found the old note. The man's right arm was hanging down, and not a foot from his lifeless fingertips a flashlight.

I picked it up. If anything happened I would carry the light out with me. As I did so I felt the shadows slide across the floor. So when I saw the silhouettes outside the window I stopped breathing. Turning, I could make out at least one face shape, a long and serious face, and a young one. I barely moved. There was a small handgun in the soapdish. Suddenly the room flashed twice, and I could see that it was a signal.

My left hand made a splash in the water by his leg, and my right hand barely flashed the light once. I could make out now 2-3 persons outside the window. After the flash, they seemed to acknowledge and move on. I didn't wait for them to leave.

Electromagnetics and Danse Macabre

Bury me under a lightning rod,

in a copper casket

filled with brine

from the dead sea.

That's my only wish.

Turritopsis nutricula can stay,

if she can

handle all the salt

in my electric repose.

Place sand, not earth

on the top of me.

That I can swim out

through fulgurites and

wrest the air again

into my cured lungs.

"You can in fact,

danse if you want to." - me(4)

Don't touch my head

if I appear to be dead

because when I wake,

I may make the mistake

of collecting your hand.

You'll need those,

in theory and fact.

Just save your tears

I'm covered in salt.

For the Magpies

Little white flecks seemed to lurk in the piece of moss I picked off the tree stump. It was elevated, but this is a lawncare sort-of culture, and I don't know what chemistry it could be endowed with. Still pica or insanity compelled me to have a nibble. It got gritty and crunchy. It reminded me of being a taster for someone, to check their meals for poison. I had an internal dialogue trying to wrangle with negotiations for recompense for such a vocation. "Well, sir, if you're prepared to arrange for whatever I concoct as a dream for each day as my last, then I'm your man!"

When I considered the view of the hiring paranoiac or man with such dubious regard for his well-being, I didn't think it met the bargain. After all, who wants to be subject to a man who doesn't mind if he's alive or not's whims? Then who is hiring whom? That could be an expensive rush just to trust that your food is not going to kill you. The grit got into my molars and I realized why stumpmoss was not a more popular ruffage. There were minerals and wood humus and it really didn't taste much of anything; it was more a texture that got to me. I switched sides so that my teeth would be equally worn. My spit was green.

Maybe it's not pica. I did have a phantom sense of minerals in my mind and mouth since I cut the lawn. I don't normally go around just picking things up and eating them, just as I come upon them. Red coloring gives me alarm, that kind of thing. Pines always carried a sharp character I don't think I would want to taste them, maybe I have thin firs, but not from the street. From an inside tree perhaps, that would suit me.

Truly, though, I wanted to know what the moss would taste like. I still can taste it, and it wasn't bad, as compared to the grit it was coupled with. My first nibble before I popped the small sample in my mouth like an old and familiar morsel cropped the freshest of the moss. I appear to be alive still, hours later, and am not able to register any psychic change thus far. If this is the last you read, then you can assume that I met my end eating strange things on a fool's errand. If not, then it is also potentially safe to eat more of the same sample of moss. I still do have an aftertaste, having written it up on my tongue, that I now want to go away and so shall go drink water.

Yesterday

And now I know that the day did close in balance and complete some circuit. It was pretty amazing, if pedestrian, very much literally, and now my legs hurt and I can't sleep.

And `ow.