"It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvelous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realize all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all." (p. 153)
From Dr. Seward's Diary in Bram Stoker's Dracula
Friday, November 30, 2018
Saturday, November 3, 2018
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Saturday, October 27, 2018
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Subtle algorithmic tuning
"I fear the subtle algorithmic tuning of feeds more than I fear blatant dark ads. It used to be impossible to send customized messages to millions of people instantly. It used to be impossible to test and design multitudes of customized messages, based on detailed observation and feedback from unknowing people who are kept under constant surveillance.
"It might turn out that a certain font around someone's portrait on a certain day makes a small percentage of people trust that person just a little less. Maybe the same font showed up in a popular video about an unpleasant topic that same day. No one will ever know why the font has the effect it does, though. It's all statistical." (p. 78)
From Jaron Lanier's "Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now"
"It might turn out that a certain font around someone's portrait on a certain day makes a small percentage of people trust that person just a little less. Maybe the same font showed up in a popular video about an unpleasant topic that same day. No one will ever know why the font has the effect it does, though. It's all statistical." (p. 78)
From Jaron Lanier's "Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now"
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Stars are abscesses upon the skin of our universe.
By invoking a brane metaphor for our universe we can see stars as an abcesses upon that 'skin' or brane. Through it light leaks, which in our universe has the property of energy. But it is a filtered 'bleed through' of a pure idea from another dimension intent upon ordering our universe. In that other dimension all is purely crystalline but its structure is merely a resonance pattern because in this dimension, where idea and substance are coextensive, being and idea are all times and everywhere, always.
The pornographic object
The pornographic object is the pupil.
Recording media turn culture and history into a trash heap. Because it subjects us to peering through a hole in the fence.
Recording media turn culture and history into a trash heap. Because it subjects us to peering through a hole in the fence.
Friday, June 22, 2018
Friday, June 15, 2018
pathological electricity
The source of mental illness is pathological electricity. Metaphors born in geometry such as 'symmetry' and 'balance' populate medical literature. Pathological electricity places emphasis on the role that the stimulus, as it lives on, plays in the set up of a mental pathology. Some forms, patterns, and sequences of neuron-specific activity, within the brain's connectome, form sinister geometries. These give rise to what medical literature calls abnormal behavior.
Saturday, June 9, 2018
women are arsonists
Women are arsonists. They start fires and simply walk away.
But sometimes that fire grows and grows and transforms into something that could consume them. That something is me, watching you, your every move, listening to your steps, peeking into your life every chance I can, watching, waiting, listening, an unceasing fire, unceasing desire.
You. You started this fire. Maybe it was with a look or maybe it was something you said. Did you say 'love?' Why do you use these words so carelessly? I've never known a love such as this. I burn. I desire.
I am this fire you started. I am consumed by this fire. It grows. I'm gone now. The charred remains of what I once was are all that remain, a memory, the trust that you once had, it's gone. You fear me. You should fear fire. It's an awesome and destructive force, but it's something that could be controlled. Instead you lit a match and simply walked away. You played with fire. Now that game is over, yet the fire grows and grows, burning and burning, smoke billows out. You ignore the destruction that you've caused. You pretend that you've done nothing wrong, but if the tables were turned it would be my fault. I'd be held accountable for my actions. Not you, no, you can go hide behind that other guy, the one fire that you let keep you warm at night, while this one burns, unattended.
A million scary stories have been told around fires. Nothing is heard around this one but the crackling of a burning desire that burns and burns seemingly endless. You turn away, in hopes that it will simply go out, forever. Instead, this fire is a monument to all that is desired, and so it burns and burns simply to memorialize a moment, simply a moment, when you decided it would be okay to say those things and to look this way in such a way that sparked these embers into a roaring flame of desire. But you walked away, and when confronted, you fear that fire that burns in me. You hide behind another fire, one that burns differently, controlled, just as you want it. This fire is dangerous, you hide behind a traffic cone tossed into a space, interrupted, you talk about your nipple piercing. You place a million other petty desires between us. The fire burns with hate, spurned desire, jealousy.
A fire burns out when it consumes all of its fuel. This fire will not cease until it burns you.
But sometimes that fire grows and grows and transforms into something that could consume them. That something is me, watching you, your every move, listening to your steps, peeking into your life every chance I can, watching, waiting, listening, an unceasing fire, unceasing desire.
You. You started this fire. Maybe it was with a look or maybe it was something you said. Did you say 'love?' Why do you use these words so carelessly? I've never known a love such as this. I burn. I desire.
I am this fire you started. I am consumed by this fire. It grows. I'm gone now. The charred remains of what I once was are all that remain, a memory, the trust that you once had, it's gone. You fear me. You should fear fire. It's an awesome and destructive force, but it's something that could be controlled. Instead you lit a match and simply walked away. You played with fire. Now that game is over, yet the fire grows and grows, burning and burning, smoke billows out. You ignore the destruction that you've caused. You pretend that you've done nothing wrong, but if the tables were turned it would be my fault. I'd be held accountable for my actions. Not you, no, you can go hide behind that other guy, the one fire that you let keep you warm at night, while this one burns, unattended.
A million scary stories have been told around fires. Nothing is heard around this one but the crackling of a burning desire that burns and burns seemingly endless. You turn away, in hopes that it will simply go out, forever. Instead, this fire is a monument to all that is desired, and so it burns and burns simply to memorialize a moment, simply a moment, when you decided it would be okay to say those things and to look this way in such a way that sparked these embers into a roaring flame of desire. But you walked away, and when confronted, you fear that fire that burns in me. You hide behind another fire, one that burns differently, controlled, just as you want it. This fire is dangerous, you hide behind a traffic cone tossed into a space, interrupted, you talk about your nipple piercing. You place a million other petty desires between us. The fire burns with hate, spurned desire, jealousy.
A fire burns out when it consumes all of its fuel. This fire will not cease until it burns you.
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
death by a million data points
Every so often the world conspires against me in subtle and pervasive ways to push me back into the shadows, to remain behind closed doors, to tuck myself under the sheets and sulk, sleep, and perseverate on things unfulfilled.
It's in her gesture, which is only skin deep and ultimately meaningless to her. It's in a door that gets slammed in your face, albeit out of ignorance that you had come up behind the person preceding you. It's in the countless quiet nights you return home, alone, and yet relieved to be so because you're so damn terrified of the possibility you'd have to 'perform' for a stranger you had just met. It's in knowing that you're getting her service face, her vast and growing script for pleasant interaction, which is, again, only skin deep. It's in the numerous mocking repetitions that a friend delivers to you after you've attempted interaction with others. It's in the nagging feeling that you're so damn uncomfortable away from home, so damn uncomfortable in this world, among others, and that you'll remain bottled up, fraught, and frightened until you're back behind your door, in your kennel, slammed shut imprisoned by self-security. It's in the two-day fatigue that sets in after you've spent more than 6 hours in close quarters with a couple of strangers. It's in knowing that she's too young, you're too old, she probably won't remember the little thing she did to raise your suspicion that maybe she's into you, but yeah, once you made her confront that notion she'd back off or worse yet, launch an insulting and defensive gesture at you. It's in that complete and utter indifference she shows you when she arrives late into the evening and you're too destroyed by the drink before you to carry on anything resembling respectable conversation, let alone behavior. It's in knowing that for all that you know you don't know how to speak to others in a way that invites them to respond or even to stick around. It's in all the ways that your body gestures and your para-language, in general, communicate a sense of unease.
It's in that tear in the fitted sheet on your bed that, with anxiety in the middle of the night, you rip open more with a kicking foot, angry at a feeling that invaded your dream shocking you back into the black solitude of night. It's in the sagging chair that has become utterly uncomfortable, leading you to sit in atrophied postures to maintain your seated composure. It's in a bed mattress, too long for wear, with sagging depressions where, once, responsive springs stood. It's in the numerous stained and dusty blinds that you grasp at when you open and close windows to look out onto a dusty and poorly maintained window frame, cracked glass, dead bugs, ripped screen. It's in that growing coffer of unspent money and the fear and complete lack of desire you show in putting it to a future-placed goal: a home of your own, a place inviting both you and others to be inside it. No, instead, you sit in your iron maiden of a thousand small abuses if only because you have no energy, no drive, no desire at all to move or confront the fact that it's all an attitude adjustment and sometimes a small bit of work away from being addressed.
It's in those ravines opening up on your face, the signs of age, those tiny flecks of gray in what remains of your hair, and all that goddamned time, so much time, spent staring at yourself, your walls, walled off, wailing, wondering, pacing, coaching yourself or denigrating it into a puddle of self-loathing, a fetal ball of self-comfort, a million tiny deaths in every breath, you're alone, you've been alone, you cannot envision another world with together in the title. You recall Friday mass at your Catholic grade school, and the words 'TOGETHER' get broken into three words: To Get Her. You repeat this over and over as the mass drags on and you go through the scripted, rituals of group worship, and you count the minutes until it fucking ends--this godless creation that you've become.
Why? Because of all the times, places, and people you'd like to be around the ones you long to be with the most are the ones that generate the most anxiety for you, leaving you essentially walled off from any real attempts at impressing them. You're a million data points from an ever retreating goal: desire's asymptote.
It's in her gesture, which is only skin deep and ultimately meaningless to her. It's in a door that gets slammed in your face, albeit out of ignorance that you had come up behind the person preceding you. It's in the countless quiet nights you return home, alone, and yet relieved to be so because you're so damn terrified of the possibility you'd have to 'perform' for a stranger you had just met. It's in knowing that you're getting her service face, her vast and growing script for pleasant interaction, which is, again, only skin deep. It's in the numerous mocking repetitions that a friend delivers to you after you've attempted interaction with others. It's in the nagging feeling that you're so damn uncomfortable away from home, so damn uncomfortable in this world, among others, and that you'll remain bottled up, fraught, and frightened until you're back behind your door, in your kennel, slammed shut imprisoned by self-security. It's in the two-day fatigue that sets in after you've spent more than 6 hours in close quarters with a couple of strangers. It's in knowing that she's too young, you're too old, she probably won't remember the little thing she did to raise your suspicion that maybe she's into you, but yeah, once you made her confront that notion she'd back off or worse yet, launch an insulting and defensive gesture at you. It's in that complete and utter indifference she shows you when she arrives late into the evening and you're too destroyed by the drink before you to carry on anything resembling respectable conversation, let alone behavior. It's in knowing that for all that you know you don't know how to speak to others in a way that invites them to respond or even to stick around. It's in all the ways that your body gestures and your para-language, in general, communicate a sense of unease.
It's in that tear in the fitted sheet on your bed that, with anxiety in the middle of the night, you rip open more with a kicking foot, angry at a feeling that invaded your dream shocking you back into the black solitude of night. It's in the sagging chair that has become utterly uncomfortable, leading you to sit in atrophied postures to maintain your seated composure. It's in a bed mattress, too long for wear, with sagging depressions where, once, responsive springs stood. It's in the numerous stained and dusty blinds that you grasp at when you open and close windows to look out onto a dusty and poorly maintained window frame, cracked glass, dead bugs, ripped screen. It's in that growing coffer of unspent money and the fear and complete lack of desire you show in putting it to a future-placed goal: a home of your own, a place inviting both you and others to be inside it. No, instead, you sit in your iron maiden of a thousand small abuses if only because you have no energy, no drive, no desire at all to move or confront the fact that it's all an attitude adjustment and sometimes a small bit of work away from being addressed.
It's in those ravines opening up on your face, the signs of age, those tiny flecks of gray in what remains of your hair, and all that goddamned time, so much time, spent staring at yourself, your walls, walled off, wailing, wondering, pacing, coaching yourself or denigrating it into a puddle of self-loathing, a fetal ball of self-comfort, a million tiny deaths in every breath, you're alone, you've been alone, you cannot envision another world with together in the title. You recall Friday mass at your Catholic grade school, and the words 'TOGETHER' get broken into three words: To Get Her. You repeat this over and over as the mass drags on and you go through the scripted, rituals of group worship, and you count the minutes until it fucking ends--this godless creation that you've become.
Why? Because of all the times, places, and people you'd like to be around the ones you long to be with the most are the ones that generate the most anxiety for you, leaving you essentially walled off from any real attempts at impressing them. You're a million data points from an ever retreating goal: desire's asymptote.
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Why do I do these things?
Hi Wen,
This is Jason Lesko. We first met at UC, Boulder in Fall 2002 during a new graduate student introduction seminar. You were a guest. You had a white t-shirt on, and I couldn't help but notice your breasts, your smile, your intelligence. I was smitten.
I failed to express my feelings then and subsequent times afterward, but they hung there.
They were there during our several conversations in our basement graduate student office at the Communication Department. They were there when I recall you telling me that you were from Yangtzee province, and I was happy to know something about the river that ran through there. They were there when you gave me a Chinese New Year Gift, which was a reversed symbol of addressing good luck on the owner to suggest 'good luck to you.' After you offered the explanation, I remember Ma Jing laughing in a way that to me then suggested that there was more to the gift, and I hung upon that moment.
And I hung that symbol up in my house. I confessed to my roommate, Mike, that I had such a huge crush on you. But what I didn't do is do anything about it substantively, let alone, tell you in a meaningful way.
I am sorry. I address that to you and to me. I was a silly monastic nerd. I had so many reasons not to follow my desires and pick you but instead let those who clubbed me over the head with their desires to pick me. I recall a funny hat night at Sarah Dempsey's house where you were there. I had a chance to talk, but I balked then.
What a dumb mistake.
I am shy. I identify with my sadness so much that I court it. I court sadness by continually detouring from direct contact with those I desire. I did this with you. It is a continual behavior that I do to continue my sadness. And for that I pay a serious price. I live alone. I've never lived with a lover, ever.
That's dumb. And for reasons like this I am so sorry. I address that to you and to me.
I don't intend my confession to be too maudlin or a way to force my desires into your face. I simply wanted to tell you how I felt then and as a result of me never doing a damn thing about them then, they still are with me now.
You are one of few people that I've met who I've fell for in an instant. And countless times since first seeing you, seeing you again caused me to fall into the same kind of overwhelming sensation of desire. But I did something I learned in my family, which was to shut it all up.
And I shut it up to my detriment.
I doubt you still use this address. I cannot believe that, of all things, I committed this e-mail to memory. But here I am, 16 years after first seeing you, still thinking, every so often, about you.
Hi Wen.
Bye Wen
love.
Jason
This is Jason Lesko. We first met at UC, Boulder in Fall 2002 during a new graduate student introduction seminar. You were a guest. You had a white t-shirt on, and I couldn't help but notice your breasts, your smile, your intelligence. I was smitten.
I failed to express my feelings then and subsequent times afterward, but they hung there.
They were there during our several conversations in our basement graduate student office at the Communication Department. They were there when I recall you telling me that you were from Yangtzee province, and I was happy to know something about the river that ran through there. They were there when you gave me a Chinese New Year Gift, which was a reversed symbol of addressing good luck on the owner to suggest 'good luck to you.' After you offered the explanation, I remember Ma Jing laughing in a way that to me then suggested that there was more to the gift, and I hung upon that moment.
And I hung that symbol up in my house. I confessed to my roommate, Mike, that I had such a huge crush on you. But what I didn't do is do anything about it substantively, let alone, tell you in a meaningful way.
I am sorry. I address that to you and to me. I was a silly monastic nerd. I had so many reasons not to follow my desires and pick you but instead let those who clubbed me over the head with their desires to pick me. I recall a funny hat night at Sarah Dempsey's house where you were there. I had a chance to talk, but I balked then.
What a dumb mistake.
I am shy. I identify with my sadness so much that I court it. I court sadness by continually detouring from direct contact with those I desire. I did this with you. It is a continual behavior that I do to continue my sadness. And for that I pay a serious price. I live alone. I've never lived with a lover, ever.
That's dumb. And for reasons like this I am so sorry. I address that to you and to me.
I don't intend my confession to be too maudlin or a way to force my desires into your face. I simply wanted to tell you how I felt then and as a result of me never doing a damn thing about them then, they still are with me now.
You are one of few people that I've met who I've fell for in an instant. And countless times since first seeing you, seeing you again caused me to fall into the same kind of overwhelming sensation of desire. But I did something I learned in my family, which was to shut it all up.
And I shut it up to my detriment.
I doubt you still use this address. I cannot believe that, of all things, I committed this e-mail to memory. But here I am, 16 years after first seeing you, still thinking, every so often, about you.
Hi Wen.
Bye Wen
love.
Jason
Friday, April 27, 2018
Thursday, April 19, 2018
I am evil forest...
"... Kill a man on the day that his life seems sweetest to him."
- John Darnielle "Mountain Goats"
"The work on the house moved slowly, both because of cash-flow problems and because they wanted to ensure that every decision was adequately discussed and agreed on. This very slowness, however, put a strain on both of them, as Gregor saw his building weekends stretch out into the future and as Judi worried about how long she would wait for her space to be finished. Ironically, however, the process of planning and building together was seemingly allowing Gregor and Judi to come to terms with each other's needs and differences. The fact that they now shared, and planned to share, more spaces together than they originally deemed possible, seemed like a good omen. How could they relate--I wondered--when all this work was finished? Was the building such an intrinsic part of both of their lives that there would be some kind of letdown when it was all over? For some people, living in space together is the main challenge--creating that space just an irritant along the way; for others, the creation of space together is the relationship."
This story ends in tragedy. On Sunday, October 20, 1991, the combination of hot weather, tinder-dry vegetation, strong winds, and a small grass fire that apparently had not been totally put out led to a conflagration in the Oakland-Berkeley hills of devastating proportions. The urban forest of eucalyptus and Monterey pine trees that atrracted so many to these steep hillside lots was a major component in the rapid spread of the fire. The attractive narrow, winding roads, including the one that led to Gregor and Judi's still-unfurnished house, were a significant impediment to the rapid response of the fire department. Gregor's body was found in the backyard; he died trying to save the house. Judi, on a business trip, was out of town. The depth of her grief at losing her lover, her home, and all her possessions is impossible to imagine."
pp. 172- 173
From: "House as a Mirror of Self" by Clare Cooper Marcus
- John Darnielle "Mountain Goats"
"The work on the house moved slowly, both because of cash-flow problems and because they wanted to ensure that every decision was adequately discussed and agreed on. This very slowness, however, put a strain on both of them, as Gregor saw his building weekends stretch out into the future and as Judi worried about how long she would wait for her space to be finished. Ironically, however, the process of planning and building together was seemingly allowing Gregor and Judi to come to terms with each other's needs and differences. The fact that they now shared, and planned to share, more spaces together than they originally deemed possible, seemed like a good omen. How could they relate--I wondered--when all this work was finished? Was the building such an intrinsic part of both of their lives that there would be some kind of letdown when it was all over? For some people, living in space together is the main challenge--creating that space just an irritant along the way; for others, the creation of space together is the relationship."
This story ends in tragedy. On Sunday, October 20, 1991, the combination of hot weather, tinder-dry vegetation, strong winds, and a small grass fire that apparently had not been totally put out led to a conflagration in the Oakland-Berkeley hills of devastating proportions. The urban forest of eucalyptus and Monterey pine trees that atrracted so many to these steep hillside lots was a major component in the rapid spread of the fire. The attractive narrow, winding roads, including the one that led to Gregor and Judi's still-unfurnished house, were a significant impediment to the rapid response of the fire department. Gregor's body was found in the backyard; he died trying to save the house. Judi, on a business trip, was out of town. The depth of her grief at losing her lover, her home, and all her possessions is impossible to imagine."
pp. 172- 173
From: "House as a Mirror of Self" by Clare Cooper Marcus
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Intergenerational rant
Enter the generation that experienced this music for the first time beating subsequent generations over the head about authenticity, real love, real relationships, real jobs, jobs that lasted a lifetime, jobs that didn't require a motherfucking 50-thousand dollar cocksucker-ascendant college degree to acquire, that could be gotten right out of a high school that actually taught you something useful, jobs whose pay allowed Joe and Mary America to start a family right out of high school and kept Mary at home comfortably to raise a couple of cute little kids, and they could do all that adult shit right at a time when love was something palpable, before you turned 30, still had no job, started losing your hair, your idealism, and your erection.
So stop wagging your fucking finger at me.
You motherfuckers' experience of authenticity was strict observance of segregation, all white organizations and workplaces. Mothers' place was not only in the home but it required her to slap daughter into silence when she confessed that dad, uncle, grandpa, neighbor touched her wrongly. Dad got drunk, drove with impunity, beat mom also with impunity, cheated on her with impunity, and at best, mom got to take a non-price-gouged Valium after dad went away to work. And what do we have? The tattered remnants of your suburban dream and the hollowed out cities that you left to pursue them. Now we don't have seasons. Hell even the kids don't have sex, nor do they have sexual characteristics. All that motherfucking chemistry that you dickheads touted and turned into megabillion dollar industries are embedded in our every cell. So don't tell me about what is real and what isn't. It's me and my generation that is trying to shepherd you motherfuckers to comfortable retirement homes, while the 1% of you put all our money in exotic tax shelters, and we get to listen to an orange asshole with no sense of reality telling us what matters. Well I matter, and so does every dickhead in my generation that fights the desire to curl up into a fetal ball and play video games high as a kite in a basement, driving around in dead grandpa's Mercury Grand Marquis with a 'Tool' sticker on it. That's the lost wealth of a generation, and all you fucks that decided to sit in front of that motherfucking TV ignoring the world, your kids, thinking the only thing that mattered was bringing home some hard-earned bread. Well, wake up if you aren't dead yet. You were duped. We were duped. Everyone was duped. There is no money, no future, no environment, no beauty, nothing left but skeletons of coral reefs, charred hulks of the once-beautiful night life of cities, and we inherit a shattered money hungry and selfish consumer culture marooned from our roots with last names that were watered down either at Ellis Island or by some faux-entrepreneurial spirit to be something other than Jewish, Polish, German, whatever. That's my America, a vast simulacrum receding from some Plymouth moment of reality that gets repackaged over and over, generation to generation, as some Shibboleth of Americanism. There, I said it. And the reason I'll listen to your music is because my generation's music is so damn emotionally overwrought due to being sodomized by this American Dream-turned-Nightmare.
So stop wagging your fucking finger at me.
You motherfuckers' experience of authenticity was strict observance of segregation, all white organizations and workplaces. Mothers' place was not only in the home but it required her to slap daughter into silence when she confessed that dad, uncle, grandpa, neighbor touched her wrongly. Dad got drunk, drove with impunity, beat mom also with impunity, cheated on her with impunity, and at best, mom got to take a non-price-gouged Valium after dad went away to work. And what do we have? The tattered remnants of your suburban dream and the hollowed out cities that you left to pursue them. Now we don't have seasons. Hell even the kids don't have sex, nor do they have sexual characteristics. All that motherfucking chemistry that you dickheads touted and turned into megabillion dollar industries are embedded in our every cell. So don't tell me about what is real and what isn't. It's me and my generation that is trying to shepherd you motherfuckers to comfortable retirement homes, while the 1% of you put all our money in exotic tax shelters, and we get to listen to an orange asshole with no sense of reality telling us what matters. Well I matter, and so does every dickhead in my generation that fights the desire to curl up into a fetal ball and play video games high as a kite in a basement, driving around in dead grandpa's Mercury Grand Marquis with a 'Tool' sticker on it. That's the lost wealth of a generation, and all you fucks that decided to sit in front of that motherfucking TV ignoring the world, your kids, thinking the only thing that mattered was bringing home some hard-earned bread. Well, wake up if you aren't dead yet. You were duped. We were duped. Everyone was duped. There is no money, no future, no environment, no beauty, nothing left but skeletons of coral reefs, charred hulks of the once-beautiful night life of cities, and we inherit a shattered money hungry and selfish consumer culture marooned from our roots with last names that were watered down either at Ellis Island or by some faux-entrepreneurial spirit to be something other than Jewish, Polish, German, whatever. That's my America, a vast simulacrum receding from some Plymouth moment of reality that gets repackaged over and over, generation to generation, as some Shibboleth of Americanism. There, I said it. And the reason I'll listen to your music is because my generation's music is so damn emotionally overwrought due to being sodomized by this American Dream-turned-Nightmare.
I blame parents
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Monday, April 9, 2018
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Love is affliction
I frequent places in the city, and there I find women. Women are everywhere, but every once in a while you find one that smacks into you like a truck. Cailey is her name. The long red hair. That shapely ass. Those dark eyes. Her thin, petite frame. That pale skin. Smitten.
Smitten and it feels like I'm bitten. Smitten like a kitten in yarn. Smitten like a man named Fritz in a biergarten.
I work up my courage. Some of it comes from a weed brownie. I approach her and ask why a certain generic floss was discontinued. She just explains what I already know. She looks at the floss display, perplexed. I'm looking at her. I see that her hair band is Underarmor brand. I bet she works out. She looks good, not flashy, no, naturally beautiful. So natural. Beautifully so.
I make light of the fact that I just talked to her about floss for a minute or two and thank her for the conversation. I move on to my next situation. Then comes the opening of the Winter Olympics. The store is teeming with promotional people. Even the store employees are involved. I spy Cailey in front of a dairy end display. She has shot glasses of orange juice to sample. I circle around, thwarted by fear. I head down the liquor aisle and notice that a baby's bottle of formula has spilled on the ground. Now's my chance. I approach Cailey. I tell her that there's a spill in the liquor aisle. It looks like eggnog. She gets on her walkie-talkie and her voice spills out over the store's intercom. I smile in approval. She seems encouraged and smiles back, our little aside about the situation. I ask her if her samples have liquor in them because so many of the others do. She assures me they don't. I ask her why there are so many promotional people in the store. She offers an explanation. I'm looking at her deeply, smiling benignly. Her eyes perhaps communicate interest. They've opened wider. I've seen this look before. Goddamn it always gets me. Goddamn.
I introduce myself. "My name is Jason by the way." "Cailey," she replies. I see her name tag. Cailey McMillan. This is so perfect. I soak up the moment. I hope that it will never end. But it does, as they all must do. But she gave me that look, damn it, she gave me that look!
That look is what? It's maybe something women do, perhaps unconsciously to curry attention, sometimes to indicate interest, but the two bleed together as they've always have since these women were children and the distinction between seriousness and play were consciously undetectable. So maybe I was wrong. I ask her out, and she tells me she has a boyfriend. I almost collapse in front of the dog chew bones that she's stocking. I am weak. I am blushing. She is too. We share an autonomic response, quietly. I say goodbye, and vow to talk to her once more but lose my composure every goddamn time I see her.
Maybe it's for the better. I'm so damn shy. I wish I could see her in the middle of nowhere so that others weren't watching, so that I didn't have to turn my little script into a public speech. I see her and I'm devastated, alone, observing my own court-sanctioned restraining order. I go home, cover myself in my sheets, close my eyes, and sleep off the devastation that only I visit upon myself with the mere butterfly kiss of an encounter. I am compassion and fatigue rolled into one. I am prepared at any moment to dive on a grenade to save her. I am not there when she's amidst me. My self, that mental apparatus that assumes a cockpit between my ears, gets obliterated in her presence. I am porous. I have no boundaries. I am simply nervous responses and delayed hormonal saturation gradients bobbing up and down upon a skeleton in her midst. I am lost.
I want to hold her body close to mine, always from behind. I want to kiss her on the ear and whisper something sweet in there. I want to run my hands across her shoulders and slide my fingers onto her scalp from the back of her head. I want to breath heavy on her most sensitive places and I want to speak sensitive things into her most sacred of selves. I want to protect her, care for her, love her, listen to hear, learn from her, become everything she'd ever want me to be for her. And I'd do it all for her because, hell, for the simple reason I don't want to exist. She'd kill me if not completely at least temporarily in that I could be reborn amidst her in a moment of affection, attention, and love.
Love is affliction, to me it is. I am burdened by emotions too strong to contain. And as hard as I try to maintain my composure it becomes a clear sign of my interest in others that I am pained when they are not near me or don't desire to be. I wilt like a flower that has been uprooted because I am. I'm uprooted by the sheer joy and the shock of a desire too strong to contain, so strong indeed that this stationary flower would risk being uprooted to be near the source of its pain.
Smitten and it feels like I'm bitten. Smitten like a kitten in yarn. Smitten like a man named Fritz in a biergarten.
I work up my courage. Some of it comes from a weed brownie. I approach her and ask why a certain generic floss was discontinued. She just explains what I already know. She looks at the floss display, perplexed. I'm looking at her. I see that her hair band is Underarmor brand. I bet she works out. She looks good, not flashy, no, naturally beautiful. So natural. Beautifully so.
I make light of the fact that I just talked to her about floss for a minute or two and thank her for the conversation. I move on to my next situation. Then comes the opening of the Winter Olympics. The store is teeming with promotional people. Even the store employees are involved. I spy Cailey in front of a dairy end display. She has shot glasses of orange juice to sample. I circle around, thwarted by fear. I head down the liquor aisle and notice that a baby's bottle of formula has spilled on the ground. Now's my chance. I approach Cailey. I tell her that there's a spill in the liquor aisle. It looks like eggnog. She gets on her walkie-talkie and her voice spills out over the store's intercom. I smile in approval. She seems encouraged and smiles back, our little aside about the situation. I ask her if her samples have liquor in them because so many of the others do. She assures me they don't. I ask her why there are so many promotional people in the store. She offers an explanation. I'm looking at her deeply, smiling benignly. Her eyes perhaps communicate interest. They've opened wider. I've seen this look before. Goddamn it always gets me. Goddamn.
I introduce myself. "My name is Jason by the way." "Cailey," she replies. I see her name tag. Cailey McMillan. This is so perfect. I soak up the moment. I hope that it will never end. But it does, as they all must do. But she gave me that look, damn it, she gave me that look!
That look is what? It's maybe something women do, perhaps unconsciously to curry attention, sometimes to indicate interest, but the two bleed together as they've always have since these women were children and the distinction between seriousness and play were consciously undetectable. So maybe I was wrong. I ask her out, and she tells me she has a boyfriend. I almost collapse in front of the dog chew bones that she's stocking. I am weak. I am blushing. She is too. We share an autonomic response, quietly. I say goodbye, and vow to talk to her once more but lose my composure every goddamn time I see her.
Maybe it's for the better. I'm so damn shy. I wish I could see her in the middle of nowhere so that others weren't watching, so that I didn't have to turn my little script into a public speech. I see her and I'm devastated, alone, observing my own court-sanctioned restraining order. I go home, cover myself in my sheets, close my eyes, and sleep off the devastation that only I visit upon myself with the mere butterfly kiss of an encounter. I am compassion and fatigue rolled into one. I am prepared at any moment to dive on a grenade to save her. I am not there when she's amidst me. My self, that mental apparatus that assumes a cockpit between my ears, gets obliterated in her presence. I am porous. I have no boundaries. I am simply nervous responses and delayed hormonal saturation gradients bobbing up and down upon a skeleton in her midst. I am lost.
I want to hold her body close to mine, always from behind. I want to kiss her on the ear and whisper something sweet in there. I want to run my hands across her shoulders and slide my fingers onto her scalp from the back of her head. I want to breath heavy on her most sensitive places and I want to speak sensitive things into her most sacred of selves. I want to protect her, care for her, love her, listen to hear, learn from her, become everything she'd ever want me to be for her. And I'd do it all for her because, hell, for the simple reason I don't want to exist. She'd kill me if not completely at least temporarily in that I could be reborn amidst her in a moment of affection, attention, and love.
Love is affliction, to me it is. I am burdened by emotions too strong to contain. And as hard as I try to maintain my composure it becomes a clear sign of my interest in others that I am pained when they are not near me or don't desire to be. I wilt like a flower that has been uprooted because I am. I'm uprooted by the sheer joy and the shock of a desire too strong to contain, so strong indeed that this stationary flower would risk being uprooted to be near the source of its pain.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
The truth is like a fart
The truth is like a fart. It isn't healthy to hold it in. And when you let it out you risk alienating those around you.
The mouth expels lies. The anus excretes truth.
The mouth expels lies. The anus excretes truth.
Saturday, March 17, 2018
Computer Psychotherapy
"This astonishing--one is very tempted to say "perceptive"--response from the computer, is of course, preprogrammed. But, then, so are the responses of human psychotherapists. In a time when more and more people in our society seem to be in need of psychiatric counseling, and when time-sharing of computers is widespread, I can even imagine the development of a network of computer psychotherapeutic terminal, something like arrays of large telephone booths, in which, for a few dollars a session, we are able to talk to an attentive, tested and largely nondirective psychotherapist. Ensuring the confidentiality of the psychiatric dialogue is one of several important steps to be worked out." (p. 285)
From "Broca's Brain" by Carl Sagan
From "Broca's Brain" by Carl Sagan
Saturday, March 10, 2018
Asking Cailey out
Friday comes around. I work the 10-hour shift at the coke plant, 7 to 5. We have a good day, nothing too hard, a brisk morning followed by a lazy afternoon. The boss is in a bad mood, so we can't leave early. I head home. The plan is to cook the ex- a meal and take her to the midnight movie-- "Night of the Creeps." Her joke is that we have 'joint custody' over this event. It's also a night I know the red-haired girl is working at the store. Things get complicated. This, I know. I research some pasta primavera recipes, resort to inventing one of my own, take my shower, take a few big gulps of the old tequila and head out the door. Her car is there. I've discerned it's the BMW with the Euro-style front plates. My heart races. I am lost in the produce aisle. My pattern is toroid as I double back for items I've forgotten. My vision has changed. I've had this before, the 6th grade, during a fist fight with another kid named Jason. The colors are saturated. The action is slow, detached. I perceive my actions as mechanical. I scan the aisles. Every time I hear cans being placed on shelves I think it's her. My heart races. I circle the store, collecting all the night's ingredients: import pasta and tomato puree, some basil, a zucchini, portabellas, wine, red pepper, a head of broccoli. It will be a good meal if I can just stay focused. I see a stock cart of boxes. I pass by it, looking down each adjacent aisle. She's not around. I circle back for a loaf of french bread and see my reflection in the mirror behind the bread shelf. I can see my heart beating in the bluish skin underneath my eyes. I look old, thin, afraid. My hair is short. The graying is obvious. I head back through the store for one more look. I see one of the other workers chatting to someone unseen in the greeting card aisle. I walk that way. She comes through fast with a box, startling me. Our eyes meet. I smile, say hi, and apologize for blocking her path as I clutch my hand basket close to my body . "No worries," she says. She's heading down the pet aisle. I'm on auto pilot. I make my move. I'm walking up behind her. She's wearing jeans. I take a brief glimpse at her ass, and it looks good. I feel both desire and shame. I walk up close to her as she pulls out dog chew bones and hangs them on their racks. My heart is racing. I'm blushing. I blurt it out. "Would you like to go out sometime?" The fear on my face is obvious. I smell of adrenaline and last decade's cologne. She smiles at me. "I have a boyfriend." I stare at the shelf. My voice is weak. "They all do." She laughs curtly. Her service training shows. She's blushing a bit. "Ok, goodbye." I make a feeble gesture of a wave, turn, and head to the check out. It's over. My 6 months of agonizing over how to approach Cailey McMillan ends the most obvious way it could. I make my motives known, and discover her unavailability to me. She's already in a relationship, one that doesn't include me. The dinner was a hit. The wine was even better. I go to the midnight movie. I drink two tall boys at the show. I'm high on two caffeine pills. I've been up since 4 am the day before. The movie is surprisingly good. Russ from European Vacation is the protagonist. His love interest reminds me of Cailey. I take Helen back to her place, drink a rum drink, and fuck the everloving shit out of her. My wounds heal. I am still a man. Fade to black.
Saturday, March 3, 2018
Reality TV
Soon reality TV will consist of footage from American reels of liberated concentration camps narrated by voiceovers of gay men making smarmy comments about fashion sense as skeletal survivors lay shirtless and the dead are bulldozed into shallow trenches and lime is spread over them.
Sunday, February 4, 2018
It's brighter on the inside
Why don't you go out Jay? Why do you live alone? They say.
Because it's brighter on the inside. I say. The smiles are real. Behavior is timeless. The bodies all fit. The conversations are seamless and effective, everything ends well, and nobody smells, nothing breathes, life as a fiction.
My thoughts of me and you are brighter on the inside. The smiles are white. The light is lighter. It never burns out.There are no dependencies because there are no anxieties. All is placid, warm, and immediately satisfied. We are drunk on smiles, ideas, affirmations, loves, promises, brief caresses, and just that still silence of two bodies close together, content. I am not worried. Nothing else exists in this bright interior. It is a burden to fantasy, the slavery of significance, the proximity of love and hate. I live as a puppet that I've carved from crisis, and with it I role play. I've placed it into this diorama of my life as a setting. And there I am with one of you. Together our puppets play, and I have not touched you.
Dream description: January 24, 2018
My dream begins with a Tinder match that I had back in August of 2017. She was a strawberry blonde, a few years older than me, fiercely independent and yet still looking for a date on her terms, her exacting terms. Needless, we hit it off via text, I thought, but it was a trap. The purpose of our chatter was to provide me with enough rope, and hang myself I did. And so after I mentioned a desire to have kids and placed myself in the role of the persecuted in my last relationship (an exaggeration, big time) she quit speaking to me. She quit speaking to me on the very day I had TekSolv training for a power plant job and the same day of a police shooting verdict that acquitted the white officer on all counts in the shooting death of a black youth.
The dream begins with my Tinder match inviting me to a bar. She looks great. She's in a skirt. Wow. She's invited me along to celebrate a new job she just landed. The first person I meet is a guy I've known since high school. He shakes my hand in recognition as do I. Then his face shifts to one of concern as he's felt a bump on my finger. I notice it too. I go to the bathroom and realize it appears to be a whitehead on the side of my pointer finger. I squeeze out the pus. Wash up and return to the barroom celebration. She's flanked by many of her friends, so much that I'm instantly intimidated and remaining standing at a few feet distance. I offer to buy her a second drink, although hers isn't necessarily empty. It is a complicated drink. First I'm given the ingredients. Then I'm told it's a "Boston [forgotten]."
I head to the bar, repeating the name and the ingredients in my head only to be ignored for a bit. The bar opens up to a huge concert scene. The colors are vivid, and the sound is a bit too loud. I think that I must pull out my phone and video a panorama of the scene. I don't. When I am served by the female bartender she gives me just one drink, hers, not mine. I wait for the other and while I am someone has snagged my first drink and so I begin to complain about working ten-hour days in a vain attempt to curry respect. It isn't working. The bar back makes me a weak drink. Then there's a group of men painted in white tribal paints resembling Aboriginals. They're my Greek chorus and they chant 'pig, pig, pig' to me. They reach out with their painted feet and smear white paint on my face.
The dream ends.
Signification begins.
The dream begins with my Tinder match inviting me to a bar. She looks great. She's in a skirt. Wow. She's invited me along to celebrate a new job she just landed. The first person I meet is a guy I've known since high school. He shakes my hand in recognition as do I. Then his face shifts to one of concern as he's felt a bump on my finger. I notice it too. I go to the bathroom and realize it appears to be a whitehead on the side of my pointer finger. I squeeze out the pus. Wash up and return to the barroom celebration. She's flanked by many of her friends, so much that I'm instantly intimidated and remaining standing at a few feet distance. I offer to buy her a second drink, although hers isn't necessarily empty. It is a complicated drink. First I'm given the ingredients. Then I'm told it's a "Boston [forgotten]."
I head to the bar, repeating the name and the ingredients in my head only to be ignored for a bit. The bar opens up to a huge concert scene. The colors are vivid, and the sound is a bit too loud. I think that I must pull out my phone and video a panorama of the scene. I don't. When I am served by the female bartender she gives me just one drink, hers, not mine. I wait for the other and while I am someone has snagged my first drink and so I begin to complain about working ten-hour days in a vain attempt to curry respect. It isn't working. The bar back makes me a weak drink. Then there's a group of men painted in white tribal paints resembling Aboriginals. They're my Greek chorus and they chant 'pig, pig, pig' to me. They reach out with their painted feet and smear white paint on my face.
The dream ends.
Signification begins.
my problems
My issues are turning into volumes, and they will have a Dewey Decimal number here shortly.
Saturday, January 13, 2018
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