Vicissitude: Blessing, Curse, or Both?

Dear reader,
A Burroughs-esque, "Well, well..."

if we get our full threescore and ten, we won't pass this way again. so kiss me with your mouth open. turn the tires toward the street and stay sweet. - the Mountain Goats' "Dilaudid"

He's talking about getting a full life. In Psalms 90:10 it describes a full life as 70 years (threescore + 10) and maybe eighty but if you manage to get that extra time it's a toil in vanity as ultimately life is bound by its transience and fleetingness. This idea is a fundamental element of my understanding and one which I've carried close to me throughout my life.

Now & Never are eternal. I've asked for the latter, but have only been given the former. Resentment would be vanity, and counter-divine.

Just remember, the sun is not forever. If NASA is our only hope (& the other space projects around the world) then, well, I mean...-really-... ?

So if I am here or there or anywhere in between...

"Well, well..."

Expense Report (or l'Additione)

Joseph was sorting his papers and notebooks on Lucia's bed. He had returned from Miami with all of his files and notebooks and was refiling and organizing in a therapeutic attempt to alleviate his malaise from drinking the night before. He was trying to 'get his house in order'. At 29 & 1/2 he felt he had finally had enough of the sinister bacchanalia that had been his only known life. Dr. Jielu had written a prescription for clonazepam which he had mis-managed, shared, and run out of 3 weeks early. The pharmacist gave him only 5 tablets after calling the doctor, which contributed to Joseph's anxiety. He had been a wreck the night before, and along with fear and guilt he had a calm, a hope, even a faith that he never had to contend with that sort of thing again if he just chose to do the next right thing. As he went through his papers and notebooks, he stumbled upon a beautiful song he had written that felt magical and medicinal to his dark and heavy heart. It was as unfamiliar to him as if he had never seen it or read it before -- Jamais Vu. It read as follows:

Expense Report (or L'additione)

7 poppies' heads
3 men dead
Ghosts in their bellies
Men in their bones

10 dollars
15 euros
10 pounds
The life of a man

The love behind a red curtain
What's in the bag is certain
She spilled tears but I didn't believe
I spilled blood all over my sleeve

He also had notes on the reverse of the sheet that suggested he name his band "The Hats on the Bed" and above that starred item another that indicated he should use the chorus of a casino slot machine room, that magical tumbling rain of sound on the heart. It makes sense as a musical symbol, because that rain forest of electronic sirens, ethereal and sweet, rings the false hope and empty dreams of the machinery of Las Vegas as it eats the hearts of men who crash on its desert shores. G-d, it's beautiful, but only from the other side.

Joseph was blessed. He wanted to know about so many things, and in spite of his ration of tragedy, he still had an appetite for beauty & redemption. In fact, as a waiter he thought to himself that it's time for the entree. Lucia was a phenomenal muse, an ancient and loving soul with intelligent, warm eyes that could communicate more than Joseph would ever be able to say. As they walked to the pharmacy to get his prescription, for which she would pay, they passed vibrant and healthy pansies defying the Philadelphian December. She noted, "those are some resilient-ass pansies." Joseph smiled and told her that that was a beautiful and ironic statement. She smiled, gave a quick eye to his and said, "Good point." He replied, "Tough-ass pansies, Rough-ass pansies." He asked her which was better. They agreed that "Rough-ass pansies" was more perfect.

Tell me how to get the hell out of Sesame Street

Joseph often had one of three recurring dreams as a child. One was a small him bring thrown out a car window over a bridge crossing an autumn valley, where he would fall with his heart flipped in his chest until he woke up landing on the soft padding of his mattress. Another was the visitation of two characters from Sesame Street that brought compound words together. They were aliens, and would take turns, "Tele," ... "Phone," until they completed the single compound word. Those two fuckers would be bouncing against the door window in the living room where he slept at the Waddells' house like a moth on a light bulb, singing, "Jos," .. "Eph." That frightened the fuck out of him. He did not want any late night messages from aliens, puppets or not. Their mouths circulated in a perverse oscillating ovulation, and they chorused, "yip yip yip, uuuuhhuuuh uuuuuhhuuh." The third dream was that he was able to breathe underwater, like Jacques Cousteau but without any mortal breathing apparatus. He loved Jacques Cousteau and the whole underwater world. He would want the ability to breathe underwater at that point in his life if he could be given any superpower. He would pray for it.

Mania?

What bloody mess it all can be. Other times, it's like a long and beautiful nascent garden on a perfect first spring day. A waxing moon, a cool night with thin air. Sometimes the universe rings its magical bells, sounds harmonize in resonance with your heart. Your eyes are full of stars. You are mad with inspiration, but the Universe is having it that way. Your synapses fire like bullet tracers in some ancient war to establish order. Yes, you. You are custodian of your Universe, though it's not yours and you didn't hire yourself. You were appointed in an ancient and magical ceremony that has been long without reference or reverence. You're all hopped up, your eyes are clean & sharp. You can tell that something is crystallizing in the ether, like it may shatter if you breathe too hard. Like it could flex if you poked it. Like you maybe could lose a finger.

So you run a labyrinth of ideas, everything shining golden and brilliant like the sun. And in this labyrinth you are not lost, it's like you're coming home from the longest, most epic journey to a home that you've long forgotten the splendour of, running from corridor to corridor bathing in the coimfort and ease you sense in the brilliant warmth of the light and soothing cool of the air. Like you are a motherfucking fish that has been thrown back into an Ocean of brilliant and eternal depth.

"Don't steal, [but instead] drug deal." - Ted Black

Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.

- Rabelais, intro to Gargantua & Pantagruel

Joseph would walk to school in the morning. He can't remember how long it took him, but he did know that he didn't have extra time to mess about. On the walk, he would cross a nicer neigborhood and a stream on the far side of which were grapes growing on a wall. The climate never had the grapes come to ripeness that he knew of, and definitely never had them so during the winter school year. Still, they were supremely sour like a natural candy. He would usually stop to eat them on his way to school, using the cringe that the overwhelming sour provoked to propel him running up the hill. A la "Sour Power". Oh indeed.

At the top of the hill was a traffic utility box, inside of which he was certain that there were little men pressing buttons to change the lights. They did not like if you knocked impatiently on the box, so he avoided that. But he could hear them doing their work, and was always pleased when they accommodated his need to cross the street to get to school.

Once at school, for 4 of 5 days, he would sit at a desk in the back of the room and do whatever the very nice teacher who was always very nice to him asked. Spell things? Sure. Practice cursive? Sure. Read? No problem. Then one day she sent him across the hall to the grade above for reading. He felt smaller than he normally did. Still he read. That's what they asked him to do. And so he did. Then he returned to his class.

One out of 5 days, he would go to his classroom and then go back to the lobby. A big, fuckoff yellow schoolbus would pull up in front of the school and he would climb into it. Then it drove him somewhere else, where he would have other classes. Just him & the driver on the big, fuckoff bus. It was always very surreal, but as a child, everything is magical & surreal. The other students told him he was retarded. He didn't talk. There was something wrong with his shoes, they said. He didn't understand, but believed them, since they seemed to have a consensus about it.

A photo of him at this time shows him with tall white socks with colored bands around the elastic. He's wearing a shirt & tighty whities, and he has a young olive complexion with huge dark circles around his eyes. The circles around his eyes are almost blue. He looks sleepy in the photo, but you can tell it's morning. It's taken in a bedroom he lived in. His desk is very organized, with a small elevated book shelf that looks like a reappropriated dish rack.

What he did with his time he can't remember. He would buy baseball cards, not because he really cared or knew who the people on the cards were, but because they were numbered and he understood that it was good to have a complete set. And opening them to find new players that he didn't have and gum was a bonus. As much a part of that was the adventure to the store. They didn't cost more than 50 cents.

Another interest he had was experiments. You know, like attaching a paperclip or a wire to both ends of a battery and seeing how warm it all would get. Warm enough to melt crayons, not warm enough to explode as he had hoped. That was fortunate. He hadn't considered that a battery explosion would likely harm him. So he was very close to the anticipated action. He took things apart. Watches, electronics, small machines like a record player might be made of, they all held secrets. He hid things, like money. Sometimes he forgot that they existed, the hidden things, and they were totally new to him when he found them. He may very well have been retarded, and people did not make sense to him. Other children were the most confusing, but adults knew and behaved strange things & ways.

His favorite thing was falling asleep.

Waking up in the morning to realise you've created a fresh crop of enemies and don't have the certain stamina to withdraw another breath reminds you of the beauty of life. If you could speak, and remembered that you have a mother, her name might be whispered as you force that one breath out. You're glad to be alone, since you can't bear the sound of your heart beating, or if you live in the city, traffic.

When I used to end up sick, I'd hurt more from the traffic than anything else. 4th Ave. & Warren. Horrid times.

Catch me, Motherfucker.