Blue Ink # 2 – a dissociative soundtrack

Conversations on the bus are limited by a quiet decency to get along – to make no one any less comfortable than already and the tactic includes going deeply internal, into the glowing screen and headphones – put off an I get along alright vibe, thank you & thankfully not cold enough to blast the defrosters and make us sweaty, make us more uncomfortable than already.

This feels familiar and uncomfortable – anonymous, surrounded by people who care for each other, love like a credit card kept open, “enjoy your promotion.” What is doing the feeling is a sense of suspenseful unwelcome. I know I can expand within Seattle and become an interactive body among the other connected bodies…. (?) …. clearly not enough. Do you know who is hiring around here?

For this to work best it requires cleaner edges, and consistency in font size. Style must be constant enough – it is the same night confined and tessellated here after-all. Consider this a timely prototype and later patterning colors and statements and font size variable based on the importance of what is said.

We are deep within the season of edges, a thin channel walled in by socked-in coasts, like I’m in a rowboat with you and you are unaware of the dangers. Fins multiply, wind picks up – so drink up, have fresh hop while it lasts, love your freedom, assert your empathy, we will be alright, this boat is endless. I did not mean to frighten you with what you avoid.

The choice between noise-punk and indie goddess is decided with a vegan blt. It is ten past 8. Both shows start at 8. The noise punk National play last, giving me time, plenty, while they chop and slice and pile fries, toss dirty knives into a bowl of soapy water, change the radio station, shoot the shit for a minute… it will be a longer show in this manner. It will take me deeper.

(something weird happens here supposedly)

Jesus, I’m not going back there. Instead heading up to see noise at Chop Suey while this prose snowflake unfolds. If you are reading this, understand it as meta, and know this electric navy blue as the beginning of an idea. To fill little spaces, folded, of a full piece of paper, lined, torn out of a notebook, once straightened out and framed, what a nightly kaleidoscope it will make.

Disconnected to the mechanical metaphor of interlocking parts of the city with fiery clarity, this is something I know too well, this disconnection. It will take great effort to enact redemption – moxie, art. The visuals are all there, the substance is out or not quite in – the beauty of a dissociative soundtrack – a glitchy silent film – an anxious pull toward meaning, toward fulfilling work (no one is hiring, the (…?…) is violently competitive.) “Keep up your spirit,” says a whiskey label.

The House of $2 PBR

I refuse to conceal how sadly present I am in this writing, not freakish, but – the reactions here keep a tone of total indifference. Swing hard, Merrell. It is the bottom of the 9th. Even still, not engrossed by that or what’s happening on stage. In the fog a striped shirted man hollering and strutting, like a Mick Jagger on lean. Classic punk style but vacuous of meaning now that ‘punk’ has illuminated itself elsewhere. 

Standard human hearing. Comfortable socially. There is hardly a method you know, getting neglected in the chain of shots. I wasted it on myself for transient holy feelings when the rest were made uncomfortable with their tasks for closing… you moved nowhere closer to your goal. 

Does that place exist? No, and it was in San Diego. Might be a rush of waitstaff from other places coming in. That’s my temporary. I am sorry for keeping you up – move into an uncrowded bar –  but with too much gain on the cymbals – punk with a miscue in. Painful production (with that high gain) – we capture emotion with intent to make it reach the frequencies of Standard human hearing. 

Let’s talk about dad and mountains. Practice environmental consciousness and think with the M.S. Merwin poem about the names of trees they grew up with and never knew, I don’t know, and I don’t know (cut off the serrated edges next time). I am clearly engrossed and alone, but alone in a place like this, the house of $2 PBRs, looks like waiting, waiting for a beloved friend to show up out of the fog. 

The weather for last call might prevent and influx… “Play like a champion, leave no doubt.” Can you close my card whenever? I’m sorry but who are you. Little cues, rags thrown aside while harmless patrons sip slow last calls or play pool without adding to their stamped cards. You moved nowhere closer to your goal. 

The jealousy can’t be mutual. For me it is a weight I think I can ignore, no matter how many knots form in my shoulders. No longer in the house of $2 PBRs, and cars zoom by the Florida ceiling windows, enjoy yourself angel… enjoy your baseball – share your mouthwash, forget the aux cable, etc. Forget the rest of the World. 

 

haunted thoughts 4 yrs ago

You feel your eyelids droop and wonder if you can read another page, another sentence, another word… Fear of death in the night keeps you awake but these ignored writing hours will come back to haunt your dreams, for you will have forgotten what is now unforgivable to forget.

Chopin & Vaporized Wine

At night, alive in the room, there’s a dark blue feeling coming over me – it is here I make myself overwhelmed. Oh, my. You still haven’t shared any of your photos of Friday Harbor with the Others. You’ve yet to share enough of yourself. You still haven’t opened. Listen to Chopin and cry your lower back out of alignment.

Aurora

There had to have been a goodbye I was waiting for to say this. To say I wanted to move away the windows willingly, to move away from the steering wheel and into a savage hold up of resources and whims – the nomadic makeup of without and the mascara runs of the internal makeup of within, though a dosage of transience would help everything out because a big burst of colors is always waiting to happen (in the northern hemisphere without light pollution and somewhere in clear skies from Portland to Alberta). It is hard to believe in the churning wheel branches of green that can overwhelm our night stars. Where is this new trip coming from? How many other sensations can I attribute to something like an acid flashback? Is it possible to flash forward and back at the same time? There are oak trees everywhere with roots extending outward beyond any property line.

 

hibernate

{originally drafted February 10th 2014)

We constantly have to make a decision between reality and oblivion. For me, this is oblivion. I exit reality in order to assuage my artistic yearnings for the production of things. Writing is oblivion because it is a rambling explanation of reality rather than the present experience of it. Reality is out there, beyond the window of my computer screen and the windows of this house. Snowflakes dangle on ribbons on that window. That is reality out there because I saw a confused young buck with enormous, growing antlers eating the brambles near the old haunted path. My life memories are out there. I could walk out there presently and put this whole writing idea in the can, exiting oblivion.

Marijuana is often a portal for people. If I am afraid or unwilling to live in reality to a full extent, I might smoke myself into the rabbit hole, from which communication with reality becomes difficult. Even now, without the guiding influence of any drugs, I am absent from reality and therefore distant from connected ties with it. I am presently absent. Gloriously vacant and ignorant of the conversations I must have with real human beings, my friends, my old beloved friends desire to hear from me in my cave, but I might hibernate awhile longer, only if my oblivion is productive, you see.

I owe many talks to many people. I owe it to myself to create. I owe it to karma to straighten this all out and balance between the absent minded daylight (however brief today, my god!) and the definitive absence while in dreams.

Broken Foot

The man with the broken foot limped to the bar to thin his blood, sew his ligaments together, keep his spirits up, warm, bright futures with paychecks written in godscript, a typewritten letter finds its way to your shore in a floating bottle, or drifts down politely like a feather windtornfree of a bird, a dazzling bird, that hopeful blue bird, remember him? He flies away when you know you’ve died.

Bodies decorated with permanent pieces of artwork. Footbroken man slurs at us, “My pain tolerance is notoriously high.”

To Compete With This Kind of Longing

To compete with this kind of longing
You need a steadier heart.
No arteries made of glass, no waiting for clots to form.
You need to leap out of bed in the morning like everything is on fire,
the posters you meticulously straightened on an edge,
standing on a crooked chair, sputtering about the house with a passion seen nowhere else.

subglacial lava-eruption

Floodwaters splash across the tarmac,
planes halt and brimming with seatbelted passengers
putting their seat backs forward
with clicks and groans, a habit of fear.
Quickly, organized land is replaced by melted glacier
a lava-eruption beneath phase-changed the ice,
the airplane is repurposed as a sailing vessel,
whose metal chassis holds enough silent
discomfort to keep it afloat.

Studying English. (bored with my own voice)

Learning about literature and the great writers of our times in a college setting does not make any of it seem accessible. I am still a lost child of my generation, inundated by the sheer weight of every word written in perfect placement by every predecessor. The fault is in my “undeserving” complex. Self-deprecation because How could I ever write a story/song like that? and my complex frames the question hypothetical and unanswerable, whereas it takes baby lion steps. Those first brittle bones arching across the safari until eventually running with the best hunters of the pride. Shaggy mane all hanging down. None of it grew overnight… but that beautiful concept… “Last night a forest grew.” Destruction is fast. Recovery slow. Becoming good at anything is a form of recovery. To rediscover the childlike curiosity and excitement about every living creature and a desire to tell relatives about the day’s discoveries. The sun! The butterfly! This song I heard! Etc.