215 A simple hallway of a home. A son We never had. A son we did have. A Place to call our own. A place to Make heavenly or hellish. A simple Tunnel of a home. Two rooms blooming To the left. A kitchen full of great Smells. A place where we could forever Dwell in our heart and mind. A place To burn down. A place to be flooded. A place to cry in pleasure and pain. It was real what we had, no tile left Unturned in that hallway of a home. It was not big enough for us. We were Too big for us. The gods could not stop Watching our basic days; they experimented On us, just jealous, I guess. You made A hallway into a home. A heart was its Mouth. That door whose keyhole I would Stare through waiting for you to finally Come home. Why don’t we just go back home?
Obviously, our protagonist has come to an existential crossroads where apathy is threating to create a situation of ennui or stagnation—a paralysis, much like the tale of Buridan’s Ass, the donkey who starved to death because he could not choose between two identical bales of hay to eat from. Being sick of everything (where you could just put anything in the blank) is a symptom of Modern living—at least Munch’s “Scream” painting expressed terror at this thought. However, our singer here, despite the driving and illuminative guitar licks and upbeat percussion (thus creating an internal irony in this anthemic song’s progression), is caught between a duality which is in conflict enough for its dominant half, should it choose, to violently attack its other half…and the debate between what can actually, or actually should be, accomplished is in its own slacker cultural ideology, which is problematic. If all progress led us to this world, is progress really that great? Still, the problem here, mainly, is that the singer knows he is possibly about to be split in two, which acknowledges the lack of unity in being, or that self-actualization has revealed the binary, and the singer was not prepared for the revelation…
You have no right to be depressed,
You haven't tried hard enough to like it
Haven't seen enough of this world yet
But it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts
Although the singer is still in this chorus (he is singing it), it is seemingly sung to the speaker of the lyrics above. Basically, the chorus says “stop your whining, bitch”. If there is more in this world to see, which there most likely always is as long as you can’t breathe underwater and survive the pressures and immense depths, then you can’t make an educated decision about when to “stop trying”. If your one self does punch the other one, as in Stanza 1 above, hopefully, it wakes the comatose other side with its violence so that forward, lateral, or any kind of motion can then once again occur. The declarative “You have no right” is interesting—this suggests an existential responsibility, on a level of Sartre, to the human condition, so to speak.
Well, stop your whining, try again
No one wants to cause you pain
They're just trying to let some air in
But you hold your breath, you hold your breath
“Linger On”, by The Velvet Underground is playing while I write this. It’s 5:02am. I am wearing an old-man sweater and drinking Mexican hot chocolate. In the above stanza, the lyrics address someone who is drowning in isolation, and the possible pain-bringers are really angels and not demons. The healing or transformation is painful, but it must be undertaken. One must “Try again”, or the metaphysical deaths will occur.
You hold it, hold my breath
I hold my breath
I hold it
The protagonist here, the singer, and the one being “sung to” become one in the same so that the meta-content of the composition is sanctimonious in that the singer does not place himself above the “sung to”. Then, the mirror of shared human experience becomes complete in front of the fuzzing and feedbacking amp as the common garage pumps out its indie rock for the troubled masses (as it should, amen). Also, the implication of “holding one’s breath” is also a metaphor for “holding out for hope”, but waiting in a state of hope too long without action can also drown and kill you. On another note, I could not find the damn marshmallows here for the hot chocolate at my friend's house, and I know I saw some last night—
I've known for a long time I'm not getting what I want out of people
It took me a long time
To figure out I don't know what I want
That's why will be no answer
Then you'll ask for how long? And there will be no answer
Then you'll ask what can I do? And there will be no answer
And eventually you will shut up
And so Sarte said, “Hell is other people”. The protagonist/singer is now realizing the ultimate loneliness of “being with others”, so to speak--the gap which can’t be breached even with the best communication in symbols and language. The irony, as well, of taking a long time to figure out that one does not know because this in itself is a type of knowing. Then, the acts of asking “why” or “how long” or “what to do” become daunting to the singer in the midst of this crisis. Then, silence ensues as a possible answer to the crisis, but this is limp and impotent, and also ironic because the silence being spoken of is being sung to us in the anthem. Also, consider WHO the singer must be expecting an answer from? That could be his problem right there—the answer is most likely intrinsic and not external, if there be an answer at all.
You have no right to be depressed,
You haven't tried hard enough to like it
Haven't seen enough of this world yet
But it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts
Well, stop your whining, try again
No one wants to cause you pain
They're just trying to let some air in
But you hold your breath, you hold your breath
You hold it, hold my breath I hold my breath I hold it
Repeated reminder—see comments above—nothing seems to have changed just yet…
I get signs from the cops
Saying "Stand the fuck down"
I get signs from the audience
Saying "Stay the fuck out"
I get signs from all
Saying "Stand the fuck down"
Now our speaker is being more specific as to why he feels a lack of access to the answers. In this Kafka-esque stanza, we find the singer expressing isolation as a societal imposition—this is more problematic because the weight of the struggle is from sources beyond the singer’s perceived power to overcome. He also refers to the communication method of those paralyzing him as “signs”—he is almost meme-ed into complacency, but at least, in this stanza, there is angst and anger, and where we find that, there could be hope because possibly it is arguable, in the case of this singer, that misplaced energy or negative energy is better than none at all. Still, the child-like tone of his voice and the sunshiney guitars could be asserting a resurrection of sorts—as if the music of the song itself does not want to die with the ones playing it in their descent into malaise.
I've got a right to be depressed,
I've given up all I had to fight it
I have seen too much of this world, yes
And it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts
And I will start see the light
That I've seen shining in your eyes
You just want to see me naked
Now, this is interesting—the singer OWNS the experience. This is the responsibility of self-actualization which I mentioned earlier. The sacrifice is alluded to of the fight against depression, and it was ultimate (“I’ve given up all I had”), and the whole world has not been seen but “too much” of it has. Now we are getting more specific; now, we are getting somewhere. The last three lines of this stanza are particularly interesting. The “other” becomes a bit more specific—the “you” is the song’s audience of all of us, but it is also (most likely) addressed to a particular individual—the specific mirror. To say to this “mirror’ being that “You just want to see me naked” could indicate a number of things. 1) It could just be paranoia caused from the psychic break. 2) It could be the singer acknowledging that his confession was elicited from the other. 3) Or, it could be that the other desires to see the singer’s true self, and thus is authentic, and the singer understands that shedding artifice is ultimate trust in the other and maybe a means of salvation (or, in my experience, marshmallows or not, it can also be ultimate destruction).
So I'll hold my breath I hold my breath,
I hold it
Hold my breath I hold my breath,
I hold my breath,
I hold my breath,
I hold my breath,
I hold my breath
Although this holding of the breath would physically or literally result in death for our singer, it is repetitive in such a way that it suggests this particular being can hold its breath for a very long long time—this is a type of anti-heroism and determination, although in the nether or noir sense, like a character in a film who has been poisoned and only has so long to live in the plot but keeps going, but the singer ends the song still alive, albeit not yet functional in terms of completing or participating in the metamorphosis required to leave the state of complacent orbit and enter the realm of explorative propulsion. No more whining, just turn up the amps. There’s a show to be played, always, somewhere.
Traveller's diagram For where I am, for what I am Check the provisional codes It overloads, it all explodes Interp: So, here we are—trying to decipher a Guided By Voices Song. I will do my best. Please comment, lol. Our singer here has a dilemma—he is being forced to look at diagrams and provisional codes in order to define himself or the situation he is in—I do not think that this is working because it all ends up exploding, and this leads our hero into a self-destructive party-mode… And hey, let's throw the great party Today for the rest of our lives The fun is just about to get started So throw the switch, it's rock and roll time Interp: Rock and Roll time kicks in because the burden of self-actualization in the midst of the simulacra of the codes and diagrams force our hero into “epic mode”, and he has to go Dionysian in order to escape the sterile loop of corporate evil… Special elixirs flow And then the onion lady blows Kisses to the crying cooks With baited hooks and lady looks Interp: The elixirs come from the endorphins and carcinogens and pathogens and hallucinogens which the hero imbibes to escape the status quo. The “onion lady” is the ever-unfolding Sophia who lures us in as we cry towards truth which burns our eyes, and the truth is a root—the earth chakra which we have indulged in in our hedonism… And hey, let's throw the great party Today for the rest of our lives The fun is just about to get started So throw the switch, it's rock and roll time Interp: And now, the party is a bit more cloudy…it’s not the same or as fun as the first party…the irony is seeping in and the mortality and so is the “rock and roll time” a bit more sardonic? Yet still, we must throw the switch, Odysseus—what else is there left to do? You must be willing just to ride along with me You must be happy just to do the job for free Yours for the taking if you follow simple rules Such acts of subservience were never taught in schools Interp: Now, the hero has met his companions—us, who are complicit in the journey through the song, the tale, the campfire dirge. We must be willing, whether we are henchmen or lovers or both, to give ourselves to the vision of the hedonistic purger and splurger who might actually be gaining a sacred shamanic wisdom which we could be privy to…. Spit me out from your cosmos Draft me into your troops Set me up for the knockdown You can watch, come watch And I'll be back when it's over Interp: Then, suddenly, he meets his Poseidon and tells him to fuck off! He will be back, because the cycle, god and man, needs this energy to make its Ezekiel wheels spiral at the country fairs of the Annunaki! I'm much greater than you think I'm a swimmer in the drink I'm much greater than you think I'm a swimmer in the drink Interp: Then this—the poem—the manifesto—the declaration—the gods fucked up this time! They made “a swimmer in the drink”—the Great Flood can’t drown us! We are formidable! We breathe underwater! Under your catastrophe! And oh, mesh gear fox Put out another bag of tricks from scientific box Time's wasting and you're not gonna live forever Interp: A mesh gear fox, if you ask me, is an inhuman smart-machine hellbent on technocracy. However, our analog intrepid HUMANIST hero knows he can outlast this A.I. singularity with the olden ways. And if you do I'll come back and marry you No use changing now, you couldn't anyhow and ever Interp: However, our hero is open to the singularity, in the lyric sense, at least. If the way of the machine works, maybe he is open to the singularity? The gods need him? The machines? Is there a difference? It's not the way that I feel, that I feel It's the way you act It's the way you look when you're near me Interp: Then, as the hero arrives home, and drops his keys to oblivion in the bowl on the shelf by the door he just closed, he remembers human love, and nostalgia kicks in hard. Machines hum in the background. It's not so hard to conceal, to conceal It's the things you say It's the things you do, go right through me Interp: Then, as we end our odyssey, the hero, who is YOU, sinks back into the loveseat sofa cryogenic pod luxury smartbed and closes the glass dome with a telepathic command because it has all gone right through All of Us. Then death or star travel in the fading feedback.
I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I was
OBSESSED with Greek and Norse mythology. Of course, this would eventually fuel
my addiction to comic books, then to literature, then to teaching and writing
literature (if you will please forgive my hubris in calling what I write “literature”,
or even “literate”…). My grandfather, Papa Joe, would take me to the local
library and turn me loose for hours. I was obsessed with books about ghosts,
dinosaurs, the Loch Ness Monster, mythology, space travel, fantasy, Arthurian legends,
samurai, Celtic runes, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Genghis Khan, Tolkien, C.S.
Lewis, Magritte (I found the images by accident but never understood his art
until later…hell, still don’t understand it…), and I remember a particular
obsession with Jacques Cousteau for quite a long time. In any case, I had no
idea, until college really, how amazing and deep myths were, and until I had to
teach the Iliad and the Odyssey, on a collegiate level, I did
not really understand the depth that I had been barely delving into for thirty
years of my life. Myths, especially the Greek ones, were not just entertaining “cool”
stories—they were the fabric of what it meant to be human. Now, before you
think I am going to go all Joseph Campbell and Jung on you, and then you click
off of this page, don’t worry—I know all of that ground has been covered. I am,
however, going to flick randomly through the Who’s Who In Classical Mythology and see what strange things I find
which I have never heard of. This text is organized alphabetically…here we go…come
with me…
For example, the name “Agenor” means “very masculine”,
from the Greek “agan” (very) and “ager” (man). Poseidon had a son bearing this
name. If you meet a manly-man, he is an “Agenor”. Or most likely, a bore.
Boreas was the god of the North Wind—son of the dawn
and the stars—“boros” (meaning devour) plus “oros” (meaning mountain).
Cinyras had an incestuous relationship with his
daughter Myrrha, and she subsequently gave birth to none other than Adonis.
Because of this “crime” of hers (really?), she was turned into a myrrh tree.
Deino, whose name means “terrible”, was a sister of
the Gorgons, of Medusa fame…
Empusa was a shapeshifting beautiful female monster
who devoured her sexual partners (her name is said to be derivative of “insert”, or insertion…you fill in the gaps…).
Faustulus was the shepherd who found Romulus and Remus
in the she-wolf’s lair. His name means “lucky little fellow”—yet, those who
would then experience the ROMAN EMPIRE may have not been so lucky…
Glaucia was the daughter of a river, Scamander.
Hemera was the daughter of Erebus and Nyx (Darkness
and Night)—the word “ephemeral” derives from her name—a combination of darkness
and light which only lasts a short period of time…
Ialysa means “wailing woman”—perhaps a Greco-banshee?
I mean, this name even seems Gaelic to me…
Jocasta was the mother of Oedipus (more incest…ugghhhh).
There is only one “K” word in the Greek that we
apparently have—“Ker”. This word means “destroyer”, and it is linked to the
ValKERies, or “choosers of the dead”, apparently. Ker was born of Nyx—the abyss,
without a father actually, and she was a female spirit much like one of the
Furies. Scary shit.
I must say here, though, before I proceed to the “L’s”,
that there are a LOT of pissed-off and monstrous female entities in the Greek
pantheon, but rightfully so. The male was not kind to anything female very
often in Greek culture, it would seem…
Laverna was the Greek goddess of thieves. So, if you
name your daughter Laverne, she might be prone to getting into a bit of trouble…
Marsyras was a satyr who challenged Apollo to a musical
contest—flute versus lyre. He lost, and so Apollo flayed him alive and hung him
from a pine tree.
Nephele’s name means cloud. She is a daughter of the
ocean, Oceanus.
Ophion was a Titan, and his name derives from “ophis”,
or snake. He was known to be covered in scales and to reside in Arcadia.
Arcadia, like, I don’t know, Eden? And this scaly thing…? Sound familiar?
Phemeus was the minstrel at Ithaca in the house of
Odysseus (just a shout out here to minstrels and poets, etc.).
There is only ONE “Q” word in the text in question
here: Quirinus. This is the name Romulus was worshipped under, by the Romans,
after he became a God. His name is a derivative of “quiris”, or spear, which
was a Sabine word. We all know how it went for the Sabines, of course…
Rhexenor means “breaking through the ranks of warriors”.
Apparently, this guy was a battering ram.
Sciron was a notorious thief and charmer—he would lure
passing travelers up to a cliff and make them wash his feet—once satisfied, he
would just kick them right off the cliff. Then, a giant turtle would devour
them. Eventually, the Greek hero Theseus showed up and kicked Sciron’s ass into
the sea. This is the moment in the movie when the pervasive asshole finally
gets what is coming to him.
I just love the word “Terpsichore”. She loved to dance,
this one. She was also the Muse of lyric poetry, which, to me, epitomizes the
link between physical and intellectual expression in the act of poetry, which I
associate with a type of meditative breathing. “Terpo” means “to delight”, and “choros”
means to dance. Then, as “choros” becomes “chorus”, through history, we see the
link between sound and what the body does with it—poetry!
Udaeus means “of the earth”. If a man is salt of the
soil, tried and true to the land, he is an “Udaeus”.
Voluptas was the daughter of Cupid and Psyche. Need
one say more? I recently broke up with her. Actually, she dumped me.
Volumptuous.
Xanthus is associated with the color of a Palomino horse,
especially the mane.
There is no “Y” entry here to speak of. The Greeks
never said “you”, apparently, lol. They avoided the second person—it was only “I”
and “We”. Interesting…
Zeuxippe was a river nymph, or Naiad. Her name means “yoker
of horses”—she had twin sons who tended to misbehave.
So, this book in front of me has myriad things to
present, but I just wanted to revisit with you all my obsession, and maybe your
current or revitalized interest in myths. I remember what the library smelled
like. I tend to stick my nose in books, into everything really. My ex,
Voluptas, always made fun of me because whenever I encounter something new, I
sniff it—I actually hold it up to my face and smell it. The word “smell” is an
Old English one derived from the word “stenc”. Stench. I know that the sense of
smell is tied into our memories more powerfully than any other sensory
experience. We are all searching for the birth and death stench of our
timelines, I think.
Maybe my whole life has been a chorus of sniffing out
the ancient inside of me?
Maybe I am trying, through writing and my senses, to
smell some origin inside of me closer to the people born of gods, rivers,
gorgons, trees, winds, oceans, journeys, tragedies, quests, and horses than I
feel as a man born of my own biological parents?
Of course, this is grandiose—I was born of man and
woman, all flawed, all tragic and comic. I study the Asclepius, but I am mainly
just an olive tree who hopes to give.
I just woke up a few minutes ago from a pretty strange dream. I recently accepted a new teaching job in North Atlanta, and I think that my dream is a combination of being anxious about that and also worrying about the dependability of my crappy car which I just purchased a few months ago, for cheap, from an old friend. Hell, the car is paid for, so I should not complain, right? In any case, I was walking into my classroom, which is what I will be doing tomorrow morning for the first meeting of this one particular class which I am facilitating--a simple ENG Comp I (ENG 106). I've taught this class dozens of times over the years, but I have never taught it at the new place, and it is a private college which does things a lot differently than what I am accustomed to, but hey (gabba gabba hey), I am happy to be back in the classroom after teaching primarily online for the past few years. Well, in the dream, I can not get the students to do a damn thing I ask. I am writing on a chalkboard, and there is a big screen TV above and behind me in front of the class whose content I can not control. It is playing the World Series of Poker live from Vegas, and many of the students are enthralled. There is a strange host of students in the room, and the demographic is pretty well-represented, but odd. The lead guitarist of the band Chavez is there. There is an African-American female ballerina who insists on dancing during the whole class. There is this guy Lou who my ex in Savannah left me for, and he is getting frustrated about the dancing girl. There is this seven foot tall jock who reminds me of a guy who wanted to kick my ass in high school--a quintessential redneck. There is this tiny little white girl who looks like a pixie and is constantly applying her glittery lipstick. From "dream memory", which is like sand in the wind, I do remember that there was a random host of other students, all of whom would not pay attention to a damn thing I was asking them to do or not to do. The general din of the class keeps getting worse, and when I try to raise my voice in the dream to reprimand them, it will not work. It's like sleep paralysis of the vocal kind. Then, I feel a draft across my crotch. I look down in the dream, and I am a centaur. I immediately think, now while typing this anyway, that the famous teacher of Hercules, Chiron, was also a centaur. I am wondering if I made this association in my dream or not because I have not thought about this mythical figure in ages. I mean, according to the Greeks, Chiron taught Patroclus, Actaeon, Theseus, Achilles, Ajaz, Jason, etc., just to name a few. If you are abreast of your Greek myths, you know what a big deal this aforementioned list here is. However, why would my sub-conscious conjure up me as a centaur? According to one dream site I visited, the centaur could actually represent a need for me to find union between the male and female aspects of my psyche. In any case, I think that the centaur motif in my dream, which the students did not even seem to notice (the fact that I was a centaur all of a sudden, that is) might be more about me worrying about transportation to work (as a centaur, I would be my own vehicle) than Classically training a group of students to prepare them for epic and heroic deeds or the Trojan War. Also, I am a Gemini, so I LIVE constantly with my dueling female and male aspects. I am used to it (whereas many around me are not, lol). So centaur dream leaves me awake at 2:23am, and there is no way I am falling back asleep. I get up, check my classes, do some freelancing, and start writing this. The room is cold, and I am acutely aware that winter has ensued. Am I still just recovering from daylight savings time? I am still up and that was 8 hours ago? So I guess that counts as insomnia. I am listening to a podcast about Skinwalker Ranch and the crazy shit that goes on there. I think about the nature of the skinwalker, which is a type of shapeshifter, if you did not know, and the nature of the centaur. When the class got out of control, my animal nature kicked in in the dream, but my voice and power were still suppressed. The skinwalker, on the other hand, is a terrifying creature which can rip you apart with psychotic fury and powerful and proficient ease. These two creatures of primal energy, the skinwalker and the centaur, represent, to me, the transformation some part of me is trying to achieve. Of course the skinwalker could epitomize the dark side of this and the centaur more of the Appolonic or positive aspect. However, at 45, I am not so sure how much more change is in store for me. I can just try to be a better person, but my metamorphosis days are over. Still, in dreamtime, and accidentally by podcast, I am being reminded that some part of me really desires change. I don't really think I want to be young again, but I damn sure don't want to get any older. Being middle-aged in the winter and having paralysis centaur dreams. I know, First World problems, right? Chiron lived somewhat vicariously through his epic hero students. He was even killed eventually by a poison arrow shot by one and then placed into the night sky by Zeus as a constellation, but I will let you look that up yourself. I wonder if centaurs sleep standing up? Rambling at this point. All in all, I will have to transform into the good professor by 8:00am tomorrow for 29 students. May the insomnia and the winter bite just abate tonight, because I have to brave Atlanta rush hour all the way to Dunwoody. The third piston is mis-firing in the old wreck, and that needs to be fixed, but I think I should be able to make it up there, Zeus willing. I am hoping to exhaust my mind sufficiently today through writing and class prepping to the extent that I can properly pass out tonight. Let's hope none of the students bring any poison arrows. Hell, unless they can find an app on their cell phones for that, I should be just fine...
counting every window of the high rise ornate sky
lancer at 75 miles an hour as a gifted savant hellbent of knowing who is behind
every glass
when the ex lover’s breast is more like the sun than
the one above your head and the moon is more like you looking at yourself
cliff jumper into the over the next to last new
adrenaline top this or that until your mortal coil is what chokes the engine so
that it cuts down jungles efficiently
all the crayolas melted into the clock gears so that
before they congeal you at least get a glimpse of how your memory is a child
finger-painting
you were a child finger-painting things that became
autumns for others and they were finger-painting winters for you so that you
had to stay inside and out of the cold in order to finger-paint or else there would
never be futures for any of us again but that is the history the swirls
celebrated
did you know that I could only walk on water when I tried
to carry your heavy ass?
from every window of the high rises, thousands
looked down upon me in a little car with my friend driving me home and they
wondered about the glass in my eyes
all the world’s a cage…we are just re-enactors
in order to get to heaven or hell, we all had to
walk up to a grand piano and play the chord, with the choice of left or right
hand, only one hand, and play the chord which matched our best frequency—if out
of key, well, you didn’t even get heaven or hell. imagine the alternative…
in the faculty breakroom she stirs her coffee and
seethes about the Venetian blinds and leaves her coffee stir on the brown paper
towel on the tile counter so that some evidence of her has passed through this
room
I’ve only known true love once. I ‘ve known the
lying loves many times. the lye love (it melts you as well). the lie love (it
puts you down). the liar love (you lie in its lair). there are four chambers of
the heart: spring, summer, fall, Her.
did you know that, when you walked on water, I was
just your wings, so you felt no drowning?
If I did that I must have been drunk but come to
Jersey for the malarkey in the country clubbing of the Navy Seals as soon as
the covert leaves the content steined with wine so that celebrity becomes the lipstick
flavor called Victim and Koreans are great caddies?
CIA which is acronym for Cretaceous Insurgent
Atheists who claw about the catacombs of underground media and you must bring
out the brass balls when distributing the leads & aren’t you all victims
when A.I. units deploy the nanobots or your acid-reflux?
Archonic ooze puddling about the ankles of those
lingering in the pews and blood for the red stripes to paint the flag with must
tech nine or AR Ruger 556 or psychic raygun or golf club of President nuclear
bomb of corporate or victim patriotic narcotic template
Where we go to kill each other at the altar of CEO
trophy licking isotopes radiating from our indignant buying and selling but the
podium is the skeleton of the last spokesperson who was only victim to apple
pie and pornographic happiness smuggling
Since my recent
break-up after a six year relationship, insomnia has been a pretty bad problem.
My mind is restless, for a variety of reasons (starting a new job, car
troubles, being in my mid-forties, writing projects, missing my daughter, etc.),
and I have a hard time quieting the rocket factory that is my brain no matter
how tired I am. I am not pining over my ex—that’s not the issue—it’s just that
I like to cuddle, and it soothes me to sleep, so I miss that.
Now that I have
given you a paragraph break to clean up the vomit you projected from the last
emo sentence in the above paragraph, I will continue. I was thinking last
night, while I was having insomnia, about my insomnia in general (I know; I am
so meta.). It occurred to me that I actually have had this issue ever since I was
a kid. I remembered a trick, which I will get to in a moment, that I once used
to fall asleep as a boy. Maybe it will help you as well. I tried it last night,
and it still works for me.
I was listening
to a podcast last night about Faustian characters throughout history. These
characters would generally employ alchemical, magical, or ritual practices to
communicate with an entity and to ask for favors or services from this entity.
These entities could be nagas, crones, djinn, demons, elementals, etc. depending
upon the culture you are studying. Generally, dealing with these beings, as a
mortal, came with a heavy price—usually, one’s soul or the loss of something
precious or beautiful. I remember jokingly thinking to myself that I would “sell
my soul” for a variety of things, not just sleep, at that moment. I guess I would
have to cut a deal with Morpheus for that one, and in exchange, he would have
some sort of control over my waking life…
The podcaster
then said the old adage that, “It is always darkest before the dawn”—he was
basically saying that Faustian characters cut deals with demons when they are
desperate, and if they could just ride the storm out, through personal faith or
their own guardian angels, then they would not employ the deals with the devil.
I will come back to this as well…
I am doing a
poetry reading in my old alma mater college town tomorrow night, and I was
thinking about that a bit too much and really getting myself all torqued up.
What am I going to say? What am I going to wear? Who is going to show up? Is
anyone going to show up? Which poems will I read? The cacophony continues, but
I won’t bore you with further documentation of it here. Then, I remembered something
I did, all the way up through high school, in order to fall asleep. I think I
started doing it around six or seven years old.
I grew up on
hand-me-downs and cheap-ass clothes in a pretty low income family. I was the
oldest, and firstborn before my sister and brother, so when I say
hand-me-downs, they came from all over. Male and female clothing from across
the board of peripheral family members. Clothes of ALL sizes that I was
supposed to “grow into”. New articles of clothing would be bought here and
there each year, but, for the most part, I always remember being poorly swathed
and embarrassed about how I looked all the way up until college. I remember
this being a cause of anxiety for me—what I was going to wear to school in the morning?
Then, I started to fantasize, as I lied in bed, my outfit from shoes to hair on
my head. I would fantasize about the cool clothes I would wear if I could have
access to them (now, bear in mind that a lot of these fantasies happened during
the 80’s, so I was probably, in reality, better dressed than most of my cohorts
at school). I would always fall asleep before I finished “getting dressed” in
my mind. I even started to use this trick to fall asleep, like counting sheep,
over the years. I am not sure why I forgot this until my forties, but it just
came back to me last night while I was trying to figure out my poetry reading
issues.
So, in my mind, I
started to dress myself. The nicest pair of shoes I have (remember to polish
them up). My Sasquatch socks from Port Angeles, which symbolically put someone
under my feet, but that’s another issue. My favorite slacks…my….ummmmmmmmmmmmmm…………ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
Then it was
morning, and I am writing this blog. I am going to try to use this technique
again the next time I have insomnia (tonight, most likely). It is a type of
induction, and I even remember thinking, while I was doing it, that it was not
going to work, but it still did. I think it was a type of self-hypnosis that I
accidentally learned when I was a boy and going through a lot of family and
heavy psychological “stuff”. What is interesting to me about this whole thing
is that the neural pathway to my subconscious is still tethered to this old
juvenile technique about not having a Member’s Only jacket. Or parachute pants.
Of course, if you were not born in the 70’s, you have absolutely no idea what I
am talking about. Think Michael Jackson in “Thriller” to get yourself started.
Faust was in
search of the ultimate knowledge. Or experience. Gretchen was lost in the
process, but, in the end, he was admitted into heaven. I am not sure this is
such a happy ending for him considering Part One of Goethe’s epic. Gretchen’s
mother DIES from a sleeping potion given to her so that Faust and Gretchen can
have sex. Gretchen drowns the child from this copulation. In this way, there
are many passages towards terrible kinds of “sleep”. However, creating our own
ways into our subconscious, without the deals of the devil or the pleasures of
the flesh, well, I think that’s the best way to go.
Dear readers,
take the time to dress yourself well, but as you prefer, with your own style,
before entering the dream world. You might fall asleep before fastening the
last button, but that’s ok—someone on the other side might be waiting to fasten
it for you. Don’t sell your souls for any type of dream, but horde that soul
and use it as your own rocket factory. A lot of us just have to learn to deal
with our lack of somnus through a use of hypnos—the Latin and Greek terms here
ARE closely related. When we all finally do die, they tend to dress us very
well for our “dirt-sleep”, as it is crudely called. Then again, that adornment
is for the living’s waking dream because the sleeper has long last left any
idea of sleeplessness. Faust Presentation
Let me set the stage—I have a car now—it works—I have a valid
license—I have wheels. Otherwise, I can take an Uber, a Lyft, a taxi. I have
multiple friends and a roommate who will drive me wherever I please (I have no
idea why). I can teleport and astral project. On a full moon, I turn into a
centaur and gallop across the southern suburbs of Atlanta. I can shapeshift
into other animals and crawl, fly, slither, or saunter to my destination and
then re-assume my human form. I can even, during the Spring of the year, turn
into a spore of a dandelion or similar flower and then float upon the wind to
the closest convenience store, restaurant, or entertainment venue. However,
when I CHOOSE to walk in my neighborhood, in Douglasville, Georgia, I am
verbally and otherwise sonically abused by passing drivers. If this were just a
one time or ten times thing, I would not bring it up; however, I decided to try
to analyze this in front of you today after a minor incident just occurred.
I have written about this catcall culture in another blog
here, so I am sorry if this is redundant, but I decided I would try to just
figure it out on a deeper level. Obviously, if I were wearing fatigues and
jogging in military boots, no one would disrespect me. If I was just in
work-out clothes, no one would mess with me. I know this sounds like I am
whining, but I am not—I just think it brings up an interesting sociological
question as it pertains to where I am currently living. If I were walking in
downtown Atlanta, no one would howl maniacally from his car.
All that happened today was someone rode by with their
windows down, in a large truck, and honked the horn multiple times while
whooping at me. Maybe I should take it as a compliment?
I was wearing Nikes, jeans, a button up shirt under a black
sweater, and a crocheted skull cap (black and silver-striped). This, as I
walked down highway 5 in front of a wooded area, elicits a hoot and holler
response. I think it is a basic form of bullying—“Hey, Ime in mah truck and you
gots da walk places look at my penis whooooooooooohhhhhhhh!”. Yet, I started to
think about it a bit further based upon the small town I am living in—it’s even
more complicated than this.
When I was recently in New York, I stayed for two weeks in
Astoria with my friend, Ang. She gave me a key to her place, and I roamed
freely for days, by foot and by subway and had an amazing time. No one seemed
to give a care about how people got around—they just cared that they got there
relatively on time and safely. Just yesterday, a terrorist rammed a truck down
a bike path in Manhattan killing several people, so this is one reason I am
writing this blog entry.
I think that the adult walker who looks like me on the
average Douglasville, Georgia road represents a type of terrorist to the
surrounding populace. It’s like an attack on the entire economy. How dare you
walk places when I am making car payments, hitting drive-thrus to slowly kill
myself, going to work, paying for gas and car maintenance, and even if I am NOT
paying for these things, how dare you have the audacity to just stroll on by
like the cock of the walk, like you are special or something? It’s as if you can
only categorically walk upon a treadmill, in a park, or in some other
designated areas, in the minds of some of these Redneckotards, and if you
overstep those boundaries, you should at least be hollered at. Stay off our
public streets you sweater-clad bastard!
Also, maybe it is just fun to scream at someone from your
vehicle while they are in quiet contemplation just to see if he or she will
jump or acknowledge you. That makes is acceptable.
What I am saying is this—there is an impetus in the person
who hollers at the stranger that comes from a possibly sociopathic place. I
also think that this place is generated by any sense of the “other” that might
permeate the space of people who have fear of “The Walkers”. The WALKING DEAD
series has popularized this term, sure, but people like me see the walkers as
mindless, soul-less consumers, and people like the hoot-and-holler-truckboy see
them as anyone who looks different from him. It gives him an opportunity to
feel superior than. The current culture itself, with white supremacist animosity,
sexual abuse scandals, intense government corruption and litigation, etc. is
enough to split us all into radical factions. Still, there should be common
decency among citizens in general, but now I sound like some kind of utopic
asshole just popping out into the world as an idealistic embryo.
Look, I am a middle-aged, heterosexual, white cis-male, so don’t get bent out
of shape that I am sounding “victimized”. I don’t feel victimized. I just don’t
get it? Why would a white guy be messing with me anyway? I probably taught his
mom or girlfriend the Odyssey online last week for all he knows. Hell. I might
end up teaching him in the future. The culture of aggression is growing while
the culture of education has long been gradualized into no child left behind
outside of a pick-up truck.
There will always be fratboys hazing nerds. I just like
walking to my store, getting my coffee, talking to Mike about weather and
business, and walking home with my Alka Seltzer, Powerade, pork rinds, a
lottery ticket, and the occasional boiled peanuts. Can you imagine if I screamed,
as a walker, at every car that rode by me with its windows down on my daily
stroll? How soon would Douglasville’s finest be questioning me with handcuffs dangling?
I do think, however, if hoot-and-holler truckboy and I ever
played pool together, drank together, or went bowling together, and if he knew I
was from Alabama and have always been country and poor, that he would calm down
a bit. He’d be hollering with his left arm around my shoulder and his right arm
lifting a beer in some sort of salute to “Dixie” that he does not even
historically or culturally really understand. I would be able to talk all day
and night to him about what it is to be white trash—I know that world—I was
forged in it. Could he talk to me all night and all day about Baudelaire?
Blake? Joy Division? Matisse? Chuck Close? Waylon Jennings? Do I crave or want
that affirmation?
Hell to the power of infinite no.
He would end up wanting it more from me. That’s why he
screams at me from his vehicle. He has absolutely no idea what he wants or who
he is, and he can tell that, by the way I walk, I know exactly who I am and
where I am going.
He can also tell, and this is why he howls, that he could
never walk my paths.
I recently
mail-ordered a forty-five dollar beginner’s acoustic guitar from a discount
music store online—one of those surplus places—I imagine there are thousands of
Mexican and foreign-made guitars hanging in, well, hangars, for miles on end,
the whole place smelling of pine, cedar, and rosewood, as they gather dust,
become birdnests or squirrel hovels, and hang there in wait like a mobile
attack vehicle from Star Wars with its droid battalions waiting to be deployed like
a sonic army of bad cover songs and the myriad complaints of the new guitar
player trying to learn major chords without the buzzing sound of poor form
before the technique and callouses are developed.
The guitar was
brought right to my door by UPS, and it was warm from riding from Colorado in
its triangular box inside of its rectangular box. I tore it open, tuned it up
and bent the strings—the humidity of the travel in a tractor trailers and vans,
and the Southern heat, had played hell on the lite gauge strings that come with
the guitar—and after several tuning attempts and basic strumming, she decided
to hold her voice and resonate as I proceeded to play for the next two hours
solid. The strings were thinner than I prefer, so I got pretty cut up—I have
not played regularly in a while.
So, I had a guitar
a few years ago named Inez. She has come to a mysterious fate, which I will not
get into, but, that being said, I decorated her lovingly with stickers,
drawings, knife-cut engravings, a Joy Division wave motion sticker on the
inside of her body which you could see through the sound hole, and she was a
dreadnaught, so when I played her I was vibrated throughout my body like YoYo
Ma furiously shredding at the Australian Symphony Hall on the last day of his
life. I was immediately, being inspired by the lost and misplaced Inez,
compelled to decorate the body of my new guitar in any ragtag way possible.
So, I went about
the Guthrie mode in my own way of “This Machine Destroys Fascism”—at this point
in my life, I am just trying to destroy personal depression. It just so happens
that, a few hours after receiving my guitar, I was going to Fellini’s pizza in
Atlanta and to Little Five Points. I thought about going by Junkman’s Daughter
to get some stickers for the guitar, but they were closed by the time we made
it over there. I decided to go into Criminal Records, which is just plain
awesome anyway, but they didn’t sell stickers. I asked the guy at the counter
if they had any free stuff then—nicest guys there in the world, and I left with
American Football, The Cars, Criminal Record promotional stickers, etc. for my
cheap guitar’s makeover into a Machine Which Destroys Personal Depression.
I got home and
placed the stickers on the guitar rather unclimactically. I wanted to cover the
whole thing up like an old suitcase stamped from every country on the planet in
its travels. I started looking around my bedroom for options—I asked my
roommate if she had any glue or Superglue, and yes, she did, so I was in
business. It only seemed logical that I would grab a pair of scissors and start
chopping images out of my giant one hundred and fifty dollar Joseph Cornell
coffee table collector’s art tome.
If you are at all familiar with Cornell, you know that
he would approve of me cutting up his own book of cut-up and found art in order
to create something “artistic” or to transform the mundane—of course, a guitar
is never “mundane”, but, at the price of a cheap guitar, at less than fifty
bucks, you may as well personalize it and make it into a conversation piece or
an outward expression of the graffiti of your mind. So, I got out the scissors
and began tearing into Cornell’s tome, or collected by others tome, NAVIGATING
THE IMAGINATION.
He was described as an “assemblage” artist—in terms of
the boxes he made with found objects--which I think is a misnomer to a degree—he
was definitely influenced by Surrealism and Dada, but I think that he saw his “assemblages”
as manifestations of his own internalized world and not external shells of
contemporary culture or modernism as some sort of critique or political
statement. His work appealed to a childlike sensibility of the game or the
diorama, and whereas Dadaists were attacking a war machine, per se, I always
felt that Cornell was attacking the potential loss of innocence in us all.
Chopping up a very expensive art book to paste things
on your guitar might seem like a bad idea to many of you—however, it seems like
he is here with me, Mr. Cornell, and I think that, once I am done with the
ritual of this guitar’s decoration, with its indie rock and Cornell
encrustation, that I will have a machine which kills some personal depression.
I haven’t done anything with scissors and Superglue for a long time.
Interesting sidenote here—as I played with pasting things on the guitar,
Superglue crusted over my new callouses, and so I could play even more.
Thank you, Joseph Cornell, for crusting my fingers with the epoxy maybe you even used upon your instrument[s]. Sorry to be so Romantic, however...
I have only gotten so far, but here is my Cornell guitar currently--
While
doing some research for a fiction project I am currently writing, I came upon
an interesting image, which you can find below, of a pterosaur, supposedly,
photographed during the Civil War and surrounded by a small gaggle of Union
soldiers. It is an immediately symbolic image, whether credible or not in terms
of the capture of a real cryptobeast corpse, due to its nudge to the Old South
itself being a dinosaur. I’ll get back to this—meanwhile, this is me as a
pterosaur.
So,
recently, I was walking about a mile from my house. I went into a convenience
store to get a Powerade. There was a guy there, about six feet tall, scruffy, a
bit husky, dark hair. He had a shirt on that he had modified—sleeves cut off,
and the sides both slit down so that you could see the sides of his torso—to cool
himself off, I guess. He was in line behind me, and it was a slow line. He made
strange eye contact with me several times, and I could sense his unmitigated
hostility. I’d say he was twenty-something, and I assessed him as a Cro Magnon
asshole almost immediately, and, apparently, he was assessing me as some type
of asshole as well. The word “asshole” being important, as you will read in a
moment.
I
walked out of the store, and he walked out after me and got in his Jeep, which
was open, the flaps up and off. He bought a 12-pack of Bud Lite Lime, which I
have, to my shame, must admit I have drank plenty of. He had a hound dog in his
Jeep and a friend—some other dude—who I did not get a good look at. I started
walking back home on the left side of the road. I could feel his visage like
the sun on the back of my neck, so I turned around, and, sure enough, he was
staring at me for some reason…
So,
I start walking down the road, and he slows down and waves at me—I wave back.
Then,
he says, “NICE SHOES, ASSHOLE.” And tears off rending his tires.
I
couldn’t help it; I started laughing hysterically. I wasn’t sure if I should be
insulted or baffled. My shoes were purchased for cheap at a thrift store, but I
thought they were nice—I mean, hell, I was wearing them…
I
remember seeing his tanned ribs in his fashionably torn white tee as he drove
away triumphantly in his open Jeep after having insulted a roadside stranger. I
also immediately felt better about myself as a “being” because, if this guy has
to act like this, to experience some sort of catharsis, then I must not have
such a bad life after all…
So,
I was his Pterosaur. His cryptobeast. He could not define me. He could only
insult me. Put my head on his wall. Colonize me from his Jeep. So strange. I
mean, maybe he wanted to kiss me, and I would not oblige that, but I would give
him a big in the rain Kevin Spacey American Beauty hug in the garage if that’s
what he needed…I mean, I do what I can…
This
all being said, I just watched THE DESCENT. My roommate and I are on a summer
horror-flick binge as we grind towards Halloween. Well, this movie was set in
Appalachia, if you’ve seen this film, and the female cast descends into a cave
system to be attacked by troglodytes in a gore-fest of enjoyably horrifying and claustrophobic screams and
scares. These trogs are also cryptobeasts, and they are blind, and they remind
me of the Jeep-guy. Everything is consumable. Everything is food. Humans are
expendable. We are not even human. The pterodactyls scream above the jungle. We
walk home in our thriftstore shoes.
Anyway,
these soldiers around their catch—the dinosaur, the Dead South, the
Jeep-bigots, the ideas of terror above and underground, the hollow earth as
empty as our hearts…
I
wonder who will stand around my body after I am shot down. They will strip off
my shoes. Find my wallet empty. Have their picture taken with me.
Because
I will be a great mythic beast. A curse for your visage and memory. A thing you
can’t forget, asshole.
On being asked already why I have not mentioned Trump
or politics yet in my new blog, which is only four entries deep after I
complete this one, I will say this: that man permeates way too much of our
culture already, written or otherwise, and not in a positive way, and I am not
going to use this space for a continuing discussion or analysis of his possibly
country-crashing circus. It’s not that I am not extremely concerned—I won’t
even emote here prolifically to qualify that. Suffice it to say, around
Douglasville where I live, if the Trump bumper-stickers emitted tractor beams,
we could all be towed wherever we pleased all over town without spending money
on the constantly fluctuating prices of petrol. Regardless of how the Electoral
College functions, or despite the value of the vote or vote-tampering by
foreign bodies, the general scuttlebutt and feel of where I live demonstrates
that the fellas and damsels around here wanted that man for their president. He
has overtaken the White House like a cross between The Blob and Jabba the Hut,
but my forum is no White House—it’s more like a dirty pub in the middle of an
ancient library which serves great burgers and has an underground passage to an
indie-rock club located in a planetarium/observatory, and I am sure he would be
as uninterested in coming here as he is unwelcome to in the first place.
That being said, I fell asleep yesterday afternoon for
a short nap—set an alarm and all that. I had begun listening to a Youtube
documentary about MK Ultra programs in anticipation of the second season of
STRANGER THINGS before my nap, and I lied on the couch and just let it keep
going. The video was only about an hour long, and so was my nap, so it was over
when I woke up to do some more work. About the time I fell asleep, they were
discussing deprivation tactics in combination with sodium pentothal and LSD in
order to manipulate, control, or create a Manchurian Candidate or for the
purpose of truth serum technology for primarily Cold War spy issues and
Russians…wait, now I am thinking of Trump again. Okay, so, here is the weird
part…
While I power-napped, I had a weird dream about Courtney
Love. She and I were lying on what seemed to be a hotel room bed, both naked
from the waist up and talking. We were both very young in the dream—I am 45,
and she is currently 53—and I remember thinking that we both looked pretty
good. We seemed to be in our twenties in dreamland, but I was not aroused or
attracted to her. She kept talking about going to Jack-In-The-Box, and I was
explaining to her that we don’t have those around here—she was not pleased. She
also mentioned that she needed to go makeup shopping, but that I need not
accompany her, and we had a Galaga arcade terminal in the room in the corner,
so I told her I was content to stay and play free Galaga. About that time, my
dream ended due to the alarm, and the Youtube program had already proceeded to
the next video in its endless MK Ultra loop, which, in and of itself, could
most likely also be used in a deprivation experiment for programming an
individual.
So, anyway, I had a random thought about Courtney Love
and MK Ultra—like I said, it gets weird. I simply started googling Courtney
Love and the CIA, MK Ultra, Project Monarch, etc. All sorts of stranger things
emerged from the Cloud—by the time I spent about twenty minutes on this
search, I went down some pretty dark territory which you can look into yourself.
The gist of it is that Love’s father was involved with these programs, and the
conspiranatics postulate that she was activated as a Manchurian Candidate to
kill Cobain for his agenda of encouraging creativity, personal freedoms, gender
equality and gender identity respect, and general punk rock aesthetic of free
thought. Of course, the more I looked, and I forced myself to stop looking, the
crazier it got, and I will warn you there is some dark territory to be found on
this search. Oh, right, why is this weird?
I postulated that, obviously, one of the shows had been speaking about the MK Ultra/Courtney Love connection, and so I must have incorporated it into my dreams by over-hearing. I went back and re-watched the two programs which had
played during my short nap—one in its entirety, and the other which had just
begun when I woke. Neither of them ever mentioned Courtney Love, ever, but one
of them did mention the use of psychedelic and rock music as means of mass
programming of youth culture. I know I could have somewhere or subconsciously
picked up on the supposed MK Ultra/Courtney Love connection—however, you need
to understand—I was obsessed with Nirvana when Cobain died and was in college
learning to play guitar by covering their songs. I read everything I could get
my hands on about his death and have watched several documentaries over the
decades, but it never occurred to me that he was a government hit by his wife
who was manipulated from a young age by the CIA—you know what I mean? I never heard of this conspiracy theory before, and my friends will tell you I've been into conspiracy theories for entertainment value for years.
Then it occurred to me—the surrealism of the current
White House and administration makes it possible for me to think, even on a
subconscious level and in my dreams, that any weird conspiracy may be viable. Then, the
zeitgeist which has already picked this up makes it pretty easy for me to, most
likely, google anything beside or with “MK Ultra” and get a result—to test this, I just
picked a random word from my brain—“kangaroo”. Unbelievable…see just the links below...there was a lot more...many more white rabbit holes, if you know what I mean...
Incidentally, I finish this entry just wishing that Galaga console was here--I've got my Catcher In The Rye, my tin-foil hat, and my cyanide fake tooth, but I just want my ship to get captured and rescued so I can kick ass in the bonus round.
