Dogs May Be Off Leash

Yesterday's post was written after having been tossed and tussled on the seas of insanity. I was a human tea-bag steeped in a pot of boiling madness.

It all started when I returned from yoga and looked at my phone. I hadn't brought my phone with me to the yoga-studio because I was afraid some radical feminist might steal it while I lay contorted on the floor in pigeon pose - soaked in sweat, trembling, crying out "shanti shanti." I think it means mercy.

When I arrived home I discovered I had 10 new text-messages, all of them from the Profuser. Apparently I had not responded to his initial messages fast enough, and he sent numerous followups to ensure a more expedited reply. His terms were stated in his initial message: we were to go to the park and do drugs. As to what park and what drugs, I was unsure. He seemed to be having the conversation with himself, figuring out all the details in the message-thread. Unsure if I wanted to embark on such a trip, I decided I would bide time by telling him I had to shower. Which wasn't a lie. I had achieved a pungent and acrid odor on my path toward transcendence during yoga. A mix of sweet smelling berries of dingle, and sharp frumunda emanated from the chakra nearest to my anus.

Not long after the shower, I heard my doorbell ring. I went downstairs to greet the Profuser and his lady, and I noticed he had a peculiar look in his eye. Which was impressive really, given he was wearing sunglasses. Without saying hello, he asked me if I had brought the drugs. Confused, I told him that I had not, because I didn't want to eat any psychedelics today. He stood staring in silence, his hair swirling in the breeze like snakes. He stepped towards me, seemingly without moving, and slid his glasses slowly down the bridge of his nose. "Get the drugs," he said. I looked down at his hands, which were in his jacket pocket, and saw he was clutching something. It was pointed toward me and was about the size of a taser. I thought it best to comply, and told him I'd get the drugs, but I wouldn't be taking them. I had to work Sunday.

When I walked back outside, I found the size of our party had multiplied, and another friend had joined us. A well muscled black male with impressive dreadlocks. The more the merrier, I told myself. The Profuser walked with a caricature-esque gait, and would compulsively stop, quickly turning his head from side to side to take in his surroundings, like Linda Blair reincarnated as a pigeon. I just googled Linda Blair and realized she isn't dead; poetic license. We arrived at Golden Gate park, and sat down. The Prof had taken the backpack off of his one good shoulder, and began emptying the contents. He had unearthed a quantity of food that could feed a morbidly obese man on Thanksgiving. Three gargantuan slices of pizza - some topped with pepperoni and others mushrooms - countless bars of chocolate, rolls of sushi the size of loaves of bread, and some beer. He then riffled through has jacket pocket - which he had removed - and extracted a pocket vaporizer. Relieved that I had been mistaken earlier, I began to relax a bit.

He handed me the vape and said "smoke up." I told him that I was fine, and lifted my arm to pass it to our friend with the dreads. Prof snatched my wrist with his right hand, and depressed the button to ignite the vaporizer with his left. Realizing he meant business, and that he might have snorted enough bath-salts to have stalagmites forming in his nasal cavity, I decided I would oblige. The device went around a few times and, before I knew it, I was lost in a foggy haze beneath the shining sun. My eyes were like an important page in a chemistry textbook, completely highlighted in pink. As he prepared to dine, now sufficiently stoned, he removed two portable speakers from the bottomless pit that was his backpack. He turned the volume all the way up, and began playing the soundtrack to The Man of Steel, composed by Hans Zimmer. It was a deafening cacophony amplified by his madness. Concerned parents began to stare. Infants started to cry, and young boys began to press their palms into their ears screaming "make it stop!"

Unaware of the discord, lost in his dark world, the Profuser gluttonously gorged himself. Seeing I needed to take matters into my own hands, I said "hey, I think maybe we should turn the volume down a bit." He said he would if I helped him finish the pizza. I turned down the music and ate a slice. After lounging in the sun a bit, we agreed it was time to relocate and avoid sunburn. I burned my scalp last weekend while in Dolores Park, during Mud-Butt Mayhem, and now it's badly peeling. My head looks like it was liberally sprinkled with flakes of grated parmesan cheese. We set the course for my place, for the interim. On the way, my friend James texted and asked about our whereabouts. I told him we were en route to my apartment. He met us there, and we all entered together.

I put on music and poured some wine. James ate the rest of the pizza. We began playing Cards Against Humanity, and discussing Burning Man. Somehow things struck me as funnier than usual. I felt silly, like I had been gassed at the dentist. I noticed the Profuser had been laughing a bit too, and I chalked it up to the wine and weed.

Then I remembered the drugs. I asked the Profuser what his plan was regarding the psychedelics. I didn't know if or when he wanted to take them, and had already expressed my disinterest due to work the next morning. "What do you mean," he said, "I already took them." Glad that he wasn't opposed to taking them alone, I smiled and said "I should've known." Then he looked up with that gleam in his blue eye and said, "it was on the pizza."

James and I began to panic, and as calmly as we could we said "what the fuck do you mean it was on the pizza? How much did we eat?" The Profuser explained that it wasn't much; it was just a micro-dose. He explained that the effects should be almost imperceptible. He cited scholarly journals and quoted studies that supported the notion that micro-doses are healthy and good for the psyche. He said the word psyche, but I heard sighhh keeyyyy, and as I turned my head to look at James, my field of vision smeared his face like paint. I saw geometric shapes dance across the white wall, billowing out from the top of James' skull like an Alex Grey painting.

Somehow I won the game. How is still a mystery to me. After the game ended things continued to get weird as walls began breathing and waves of euphoria rendered me autistic. I sat in a chair, convinced that I had pooped my pants and everyone was going to smell it. I was angry that the yoga practice earlier hadn't properly cleaned out my anus-chakra. I worried that my aura was radiating too powerfully. It was about to make communion with the nasal-chakras of my guests. All of this was going on in my head; a sad internal monologue. But when James replied to me, and told me it was all in my head, I realized it was in fact, a soliloquy.

Or was his reply a trick by my mind, designed to make me believe I had said those things aloud. Maybe his voice was actually my voice spoken through his, and it was all in my head. My mind had become wild and untamed, almost feral, like a dog off a leash.

I felt as though I were in a dream; my grip on reality was fading fast.

I imagined everyone in the room naked, to test my hypothesis. Horrified, I saw them all disrobe, and then felt uncomfortable that I was the only one that wasn't naked, like a man with an incredibly small penis wearing shorts at a hot-springs. I was slave to my insecurities and needed to break free from the confines of the white walls. Immediately upon exiting, the breeze rubbed itself against my sunburned skin. It felt incredible, ineffably pleasurable. I was afraid it had overloaded my penis-chakra, causing an explosion of concentrated energy all over my pantaloons. Thankfully, this too was in my head.

We galavanted in the fading sunlight, as everything glowed gold. It was like walking in the wake of King Midas. Everything glimmering, breathing and pregnant with magic. We saw a homeless man in a wheelchair on Haight Street. He seemed to have eaten some of the pizza too. I handed him a dollar, he thanked me, blinked, and had forgotten me. He asked me again if I had any change. Thinking he was joking, I laughed and told him I had just given him the dollar in his hand. He looked down at the dollar and then back up at me and was gripped by hysterical laughter. He began pushing himself, with his legs, backwards into oncoming traffic, cackling and speaking in tongues. James screamed "it's a miracle; his legs, they're healed!" I could've sworn I smelt his aura as he blew away in the breeze.

Much Rooms

On my way home, the sun setting behind me, possibilities flickered like fireflies. I felt lightning sparking from my heels. The air was electric. I was shocked how quickly the coming storm had dissipated once I had shut the door to my apartment. The night took on a more contemplative and subdued atmosphere as I began setting with the sun.

The power of psychedelics is something to be marveled at. Accompanying it always, the feeling of a return, a nostalgia familiar and foreign. They restore a sense of wonderment and wanderlust. Each moment stretches out and becomes saturated. Life becomes more alive, tactile and variegated, surfaces begin to breathe.

They encourage thought and anything fantastical. They compel you to see things in new and unfamiliar ways. It is as though you are not under the influence, but instead become the influence. Your thoughts are somehow not your own, and instead shared. Reflection holds more interest, especially in the mirror, and especially when the person staring back at you seems a stranger. Where you once fumbled through deep shadows armed only with half-dark eyes, you are now transformed, deft - an assassin's blade.

Earlier I had walked into my bathroom, and saw a star through the open window. I watched it glimmer in the distance, its pulse causing the light to flicker and bend while it travelled through time and space to arrive at my eye. As I stared I began to see more stars appearing, little perforations in nights black blanket. I couldn't help but consider the possibility that some of them might be hallucinations, astral projections of astral projections. While I deliberated, an enormous glowing plane cut through the darkness, three lights blazing, in the shape of a pyramid or a great bird. I watched it shrink in size as it moved further and faster away, a constellation in motion.

I stood struck by the beauty of watching something leave me; hemorrhaging time. Life and love are loss; candles, sunsets, falling rain, goodbyes, sirens.

The Doppler Shift never sounded so sweet.

Eye

I had spoken to a close friend - a reader of this blog - who wishes to have a cool sobriquet; like Cato.  Let it be known that I do not find Cato to be a cool nickname. The OJ Simpson trial forever sullied this epithet. My friend, let's call him X for now, has no clue about the difficulty of creating a cool a nickname. It needs to be apt, catchy and descriptive - the description predicated upon a relevant and easily observable character trait of X. Indeed, it is a variable that X should be equal to, but how to solve this challenging equation? Perhaps recruiting a professor would be helpful. Too bad Professor X is taken. He shall remain X until we solve for the variable.

X and I were talking earlier, and he revealed to me that he has a problem of sorts. He is tormented day and night by the need to masturbate, profusely. Holy shit Batman! Profuser X! This is perfect.  The definition of profusely: (esp of something offered or discharged) exuberantly plentiful; abundant.  This is beyond fitting for him; like a glove. His opinions, abundant, he relays always with plentiful exuberance to anyone he can detain for more than a moment. And with his recent rise in ejaculations, which he discharges probably with the same exuberance, a more fitting moniker is hard to conceive.  I know what you're thinking: not another masturbation post. I promise, it isn't.

So the ole Profuser and I were talking, and he was professing that I would be the last of my brood if I don't repent and start rapaciously rapping with my skin-serpent. He suggested that it's a signifier of a sickness, a kind of cellular apathy ushering my DNA into obscurity. I claimed that my cells are simply focusing resources on more pressing matters, and that there is no need for alarm, but he insisted I see a urologist and confess my sickness to him, the urologist. I imagined, comically, beseeching the urologist in a dark wooden booth, through a mesh metal screen, to save my libido from lassitude and sterility, reciting The Act of Contrition and a few Hail Marys to restore the carnal lust to my somber scepter.

The notion that there is an expected level of arousal is a fascinating one, and how readily some would declare another abnormal is proof an expectation has been created. But who would do such a thing, why? A few reasons, I'd venture. First, money. It would seem that to pathologize sex-drive is to open another avenue for the pharmaceutical industry to profit. Convince someone something is wrong with their mind or body, and make them see how they should fear it and seek salvation at any cost, any cost, then provide them the cure - one that requires a continued vigilance and continued purchase against this evil. Come to think of it, it's the same tactic used by religion. And you wouldn't just want to take Viagra or Cialis, no, because that's only targeting the physical aspect of the disease; you'll also want to take some some anti-depressants to help you with your feelings of unhappiness due to your perceived inadequacy, and probably some Valium or Xanx to ease your mind, because worry and stress are harmful to sexual health. Create unease, and then sell salvation; step three, profit. Simple.

Perhaps more insidious than the greed, or the exploitation of the insecurities of others, is the power of the idea of impotence to inspire ignorance. The unhealthy preoccupation with the failings and inadequacies of ones body; libido, muscularity, weight, general attractiveness and desirability, happiness, all tend to divert attention and distract. It is a form of control; a civil war waged in your mind. As technology inspires an increasingly more personalized but still interconnected lifestyle, where our Facebook pages serve as a glimpse into our personalized space for all to see and admire, with our personalized adds and personalized friend recommendations, personalized search suggestions and app recommendations, it's easy to turn that conflict inward instead of outward. Why do we need a common enemy if each of us can be our own hero and villain?

That's not to say this preoccupation with body image and potency doesn't still serve those old means, and that the morbidly obese, pimple faced, balding 20-something year old with a little dick doesn't have a deep rooted sense of anger and resentment for the well muscled, clean shaven, blue-eyed football player that gets all the girls; that outlet for an enemy still sleeps, waiting to wake, roused by gun-fire. That perceived enemy inside ourselves or in another, keeps us distrustful - of ourselves and others - and keeps us obsessed with things that take tremendous time and energy to change, even more to maintain.

Then, while we're all staring at reflections in our mirrors and in our phones, wondering whether we look fat - with eyes like palindromes - we cannot see. Multiplied infinitely are the illusions to which we subscribe.

"Then Bioy-Casares recalled that one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man.
-- "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"

Golem

Silhouettes, into ghostly chasms peer, seeking absolution. It is from the shadow, which they are fraught, that they hide. Their souls they would condemn for the slightest sunburn. Chasing light, with eyes upturned and legs leaping, the smoky shades multiply and dissolve like fractals.

From a wooden chair, writing, words cast out like stones skipping from a shore. The water, undulating, rippling as the pebbles slide across it, seems a mirror whose surface cannot shatter or scratch. The waters of our youth, receptive to the rocks, slosh and splash with great gulps, creating a cacophony of concentric circles that trace the patterns of our forming minds.

By the time two and one half decades have elapsed, the waters have birthed channels and canals, varied and irregular in their depth. Stones thrown in some places steadily sink - swallowed and drowned - while others, more buoyant, drift with ease across the surface. Time, ignominious and anxious, twitching like a second-hand on a watch, turns our waters to ice. Intolerable is the iceberg that old age has wrought.

No longer are you the water into which a rock was cast; you are the stone.

Ice Queen

Rains have finally lifted; warm and effulgent, our star smiled all day. It's amazing the difference a sunny day can make. A primal reminder of its importance for life on this planet; without it, our solar system could not exist - life is solar-powered. It's place is announced in the very term: solar system.

I'd wager large sums that the first god to have been born was a sun god. In Greek mythology, it is a title so coveted that there are two: Apollo, ostensibly, is god of the sun, though really, Helios is rightful heir. If I remember correctly, it's a difference in distinction; Titans versus Olympians - the young usurping the old. Speaking of the young, how about that Phaëton? When that fucking dumb-ass got hold of the chariot, we were quite literally almost toast. And thank god we put the kibosh on that Socrates guy. Can you imagine where the youth would be these days?

Kibosh. Did I have that in a restaurant yesterday? That can be spread on toast, right?

A breeze from an open window breathes dance unto all it touches. Outside, trees with Parkinson's revel in the movement. Inside, errant pages flutter like feathers, hanged tassels dangle from open blinds dancing to unheard rhythms. They possess a beautiful grace; beauty is to be moved, not moving. Torpor, eschewed and abhorred, is too often reproached. When idle, we are preyed upon by guilt and our ineluctable fretting, buzzing like the mechanical sound of a stuck insect, or the incessant marching of a child's wind-up toy. We are taught we should always make the most of our time, to always approach the day epileptically. But just try to sit still. Do nothing for 20 minutes - try and think of only one thing - just sit and still your mind. I'll tell you what'll happen: you won't be able to.

If I've learned one thing so far, it's that doing the thing more difficult often yields a more desirable result. So instinct suggests we should be still, bend with the breeze; be moved, not moving. To be still, defined here as focusing one's mind for a period of time, in silence, serves as a way to recharge - a kind of REM sleep for the soul. The effect of not indulging often enough can be seen in people who have abnegated this practice for a period of years. These people undergo a transformation where fear and dissatisfaction replace trust and love, and they become hateful and afraid; they become Republicans.

Yesterday I took a photo of an unattended old-school sports-car, and as I captured the shot I wanted, I heard a woman call out "can I help you?" When I looked up, I saw a middle-aged woman standing half on the sidewalk and half in the street on the opposing side of the road, as if ready to step toward me. Before I could reply, she said "that's my car." Realizing she was for some reason angry that I had admired her car, I calmly said "nope, it's just a nice car." Confused by my lack of escalation, caught up in the compliment, she had been disarmed and could only muster a paltry "I know, it is," paired with a half-hearted smile. I'd like to think that in that last moment she realized I wasn't some ruffian to be feared - despite the ominous beard - and perhaps she felt silly for how she reacted initially. I'd like to hope that she recognized her needless anger and fear, sharp like needles, and felt embarrassed for assuming I was photographing with nefarious intent. I think she achieved clarity though, by briefly slipping into a micro-sleep, where she paused and reflected, allowing trust restitution over fear.

Lost Lovebird

Yesterday, while riding the bus on my way to work, I had seen a sign for a lost lovebird stapled to a tree. Thinking it would make for an interesting photo, and perhaps an interesting post, I returned to the scene in search of the sign. When I arrived at the tree, the sign for the missing lovebird was missing, nowhere to be found.

Thinking I was mistaken, and had wandered to the wrong block, I continued walking around the area inspecting all the posts. I looked at so many logs I became an honorary proctologist. But after having exhausted the perimeter, I realized the sign must've either been taken down or had blown away. How often love manages to escape on the wind; with wings or in great wet gusts.

Having lost the bird, I was able to shift my focus to the trees. The trees become veritable magnets for pain; mangled masses of metal adorn their bodies like piercings teeming with tetanus. Rusted old nails and tacks crawl and swarm across the bark like colonies of ossified insects. Staples like tombstones mark the resting place of long forgotten garage sales, lost cats & dogs, missing children, and apartments no longer for rent. Every piece of metal is a memory left on the bark. In the forests of my mind, the trees too are covered thusly. A nail for each great love and every best friend, all the things yearned for but never had; a staple for every petty fight, every baseless fear, all the failures; thick tacks for insecurities, the death of loved ones, time poorly spent.

The experiences of our past shape the topography of the trees - in our minds and on our corners - they're persistent advertisements, even when the signs are taken down. Especially, when blown away.

Smile

The day is dreary; faces of buildings disconsolate and darkened by tears. Sidewalks sullen, streetlights soaked in cold-sweat; tall trees like willows weeping -  all stained in somber shades from the persistent precipitation.

Behind the low-hanging clouds, everyone walking along hurriedly, slightly hunched, to keep their heads from hitting them, the sun still shines, but no one cares. Happiness is hard to hold onto when it rains. For the rain, happiness is suede shoes, or a woman's hair; a love note left on the windshield of a car.

Up ahead, on the walk home, a young woman with dark hair walks out of a coffee-shop toward her car. A homeless man sits beneath the awning taking shelter, trying to stay dry. As she passes, he speaks to her, artfully walking the line between harassment and flattery, sincerity and lies.

"Smile," he says, "when you do, it makes the world brighter."

0.5 x Mass x Velocity^2

I'm not sure what it is about speeding, but racing down the highway grants a unique type of satisfaction that is almost criminal. The dense fog enveloping the vehicle, the hum of the engine slowly crescendoing, light from the headlights scattered and diffused as the mist acts as a kind of lamp-shade.

Certainly on some level, the element of danger is an influential factor here, as I recognize feeling most alive when nearest to ruin. On another level though, there is a profound sort of focus that can be attained when weaving through traffic at 90+ miles an hour, where a sense of oneness and ego-dissolution can be achieved; the driver, seemingly, is speed. For proof, just force the car to a sudden halt at such a speed, and you'll see the driver ejected from the vehicle, speeding through the air. An object in motion remains in motion.

Still, to summarize the sensation as one of danger and self-transcendence is inadequate. For the driver it is meditative, wiping the mind clear of any unnecessary thought - like a windshield-wiper to the glass - while simultaneously forcing the brain to sustain heightened sensory analysis as it processes all of the visual stimulation, forcing the mind to work in ways more demanding. The vehicle also, I think yearns to travel faster. Look at a Ferrari and tell me it isn't begging for someone to climb inside it and arouse its kinetic energy a few orders of magnitude.

There is something almost sexual in speeding. The slow moan of the engine, the bucking and bounding of the car as it shifts gears, fingers wrapped tight around the skinny wheel, the subtle rising and falling as it bounces on the natural contours of the road, the intimacy between the driver and the vehicle, the fear of getting caught. Dominant and submissive roles are assumed by the driver and automobile, while the necessary level of command and control exercised by the driver creates a kind of bondage between the two.

Perhaps even more important than any of the things yet mentioned, the act of speeding, is above all, a symbolic act. Speeding exists only as an idea - artificial limits are established by authorities and are then imposed on us with the expectation that we abide. Then, speeding is to rebel, to renounce arbitrary truths and fashion your own - literally to lead instead of follow. It is enough for there to exist an idea of something that stands in the way of our autonomy for us to become covetously disobedient. There is a famous experiment, one which every student of sociology or psychology should be familiar - conducted by Stanley Milgram - in which participants were instructed by 'doctors' to administer electric shocks to a recipient in increasing intensity pending a correct or incorrect answer from the recipient. One interpretation of the experiment is to illustrate how willing a subject is to inflict harm on another person if instructed to do so by an authority figure. What is often not mentioned about the experiment, is how the refusal rate to administer the shock ballooned once a participant was told that they had no choice but to deliver the shock. Once autonomy was threatened, the leaders of the experiment were met with a stark refusal to comply.

But it's not only a rejection of authority, or rebellion once agency is in jeopardy, it is also a rejection of time. Driving quickly is accompanied by the feeling of being capable of accomplishing more, potentialities abound when careening by those driving slowly, as they seem to stand still. If Tom Cochrane is right, and life is a highway, then it would seem speed is a delusion invented to provide us a glimpse of immortality, the idea that we can somehow move faster than death and all of our troubles; foiling fate and escaping heroically over the horizon into the sun set.

Though, really, the true delusion is standing still; always we are racing toward the grave.

Mud-Butt Mayhem

The revelry of last night had taken its toll. A day spent nursing old wounds while inflicting new ones.

Morning started off with much promise: the prospect of food, sunshine and company seemed a proper panacea. A friend and I went to a local restaurant called Zazie, where I began the assault on my hangover. Some hair-of-the-dog proved a powerful ally in the war against my adversary, and by the time reinforcements had arrived - in the shape of poached eggs, potatoes and french toast - my foe seemed to be face-to-face with utter defeat.

Not wanting to go down without a fight, the guerrilla militia leading the insurrection inside my stomach set off a dirty-bomb, which I was thankfully able to disarm inside the bathroom without any casualties - though the blast was heard for miles.

Not knowing the war was far from over, we left the restaurant and headed to Dolores Park, stuffed with a false sense of security, and potatoes. We arrived at the park and set up an outpost. The sun smiled on us as it sat perched in a sky of the clearest blue, and we indulged in some much needed relaxation. It wasn't long before I received communication along the vagus nerve that riots had broken out deep in the labyrinthian coils of my intestines, where refugees were living in shanty-towns in the most abject squalor. When I felt an explosion and the resultant tremor menacingly spreading across my abdomen, I knew shit had hit the fan. "Wait here," I yelled out to my comrade, "they're launching a surprise biological attack!"

Quickly, I ran toward the porta-potties, with hot darkly colored smoke billowing from my anus. I felt the urgency of the refugees as they scrambled to evacuate, pressing hard against the walls of the exit tunnel. The noxious gases ushering death to my insides continued to expand, bloating my stomach to obscene proportions as I ran seeking shelter inside the blue plastic sanctuary of the porta-potty. As I ran through what felt like a field of land-mines, my ears ringing from the incessant explosions, I saw lines of people waiting for entry into the potties.

I ran through the masses, careful to avoid pushing and trampling countless women and small children in my mad dash for safety. "Everyone, get down, it's gonna blow!" I yelled out. I saw scared faces, wide-eyed and slack-jawed as they tried feebly to place the gas-masks over their heads. High pitched squeals of missile fire and the low guttural groan of escape-sirens emanated from my anus causing alarm and pandemonium.

When I arrived at the front of the line - with people scrambling to get out of my way - I found all doors closed and occupied. I threw myself against the doors, howling and pounding with an implacable exigency, and I tried to force entry into the stall. The screams and horror of the current occupant were nothing compared to my fear of public detontation of a biological weapon; fears of a blast-crater a mile wide; methane gas, putrid and toxic, swirling around the nostrils of innocent and defenseless infants and their elderly caretakers; shards of fecal shrapnel propelled into the air at ludicrous speed; pandemics of pink-eye: total mud-butt mayhem.

And then, in an instant, the walls gave. The explosion forced a deluge of debris through the breached and weakened sphincter. The smell of death and decay burned my eyes, and the escaping matter, hot like magma, fused my pants to my leg as the corrosive stuff laid waste to my skin. Aghast, I watched as an entire piece of chocolately french toast fell out of my pant-leg. A creature more pathetic and more foul had never before been seen by the eyes of man. More dejected even than an eyeless Oedipus, more soiled than Al Roker at the Whitehouse.

Miraculously, after the explosion, the area around me cleared out significantly - it was as though I had entered a ghost town - and it was then that I was able to enter the porta-potty where I earned the rank of commando.

Who Would do this? Why?

I woke at somewhere between 6 and 7am, feeling like a character in a noir murder mystery - a participant in an elaborate game of Clue. I hadn't yet pieced together who done it and where, but the evidence was all around me in a fully illuminated room; a mostly-eaten bowl of cereal on the floor beside the bed, the heat roaring in the eerie stillness, my clothes stuck tight to my skin soaking up the toxins slowly seeping from my pores, a dull throbbing in my head and an all-over acheyness that could only be explained by an attempt on my life. Someone had attempted to poison me. I felt like a modern day Rasputin, condemned for my influence over the Czar and the fears of my involvement in black magic. Surely a band of assassins had conspired to end my meddling once and for all. I knew I shouldn't have grown this beard. I quickly spotted a computer - still open but sleeping - beside me in the bed and understood there might be some clues as to what unfortunate circumstances had rendered me thus. But suspecting that the killers might still be at large, I decided to shut my eyes and allow them to believe their plot had been successfully carried out.

Hours later, when the sun, like an affectionate cat, nudged me awake as it purred and rubbed itself against my skin, I discovered more evidence. I explored the adjacent room and found the kitchen ransacked, as though by raccoons; a family of three cereal-boxes, one face-down, had been wholly cannibalized, and two others had been badly dented and half-consumed - clearly ripped apart by some sort of creature with claws and ravenous desire to devour and lay waste to anything in its path. Such voracity could only mean one thing; the pieces were starting to come together. Beside them, a bottle of almond-milk that had been bled dry. It lay completely motionless - a hemorrhaged soldier on hunger's battlefield. The thieves had even gotten to the chocolate! Who would do this? Why?

With ghostly memories swirling through my head like a thick fog, beguiling and befuddling, I remembered a man with a perm. I remembered a contraption I had been placed in - one which seemed to me like a kind of medieval torture device - in which I had been inverted; the blood rushing into my head, dark and toxified, numbed my mind. I remember strobe lights and the thick billowing smoke from a joint. I remember furiously shaking percussive eggs filled with sand to an incessant beat. I remember speaking to a soul singer and flirting with a girl in a bodega who was buying cigarettes. Then there was the Russian cab driver who, now that I think of it, was a little too inquisitive. As he drove me home he spoke, with great alacrity, about drunkenness and the effects it has on affect. He poured me a shot of what I had thought had been vodka, but now that I think of it, it must have been then that I was poisoned. That damned villain had taken advantage of my gentility and my trusting nature. He introduced a virulent poison to my bloodstream. As I exited the cab, the liquid beginning to run its course, he smiled wryly and said "it's on me," and then hurriedly motioned me to shut the door and allow for his immediate departure. By the time I had climbed my steps, my remembrance is no more.

The computer!

I woke the computer and found a note I had written myself while steeped in severe delirium, which I have attached to the bottom of this entry. As to who done it and where, it was me, with a candle-stick, in the bathroom.
----------------------


"The fact that this post exists is proof of failure. There should be a built-in failsafe on this machine that prevents this. It is well past 3am and I am allowed to write - at this time - unimpeded. I may be irrevocably irreverent; un-provokedly unabashed.

Cereal tastes good. Like nutritious flakes made from anti-puke pellets. Ugh, I am getting so much potassium right now!

I've smoked and I've drank steadily, the last 8 of the previous 24 hours. Some friends and I hung at Viracoccia for half of the evening and listened to a singer perform. He was magnificent and truly enjoyable to see. He had an intrinsic and sincere sense of confidence - a natural, for the type of music he plays. I nearly convinced him to come out to our after-party, but I don't think my breasts looked plump enough to lure him away from his party. There was a gay-man with two beautiful models on his arm; and a lucky straight man who happened to fall in their favor. After the performance, infused with the blood of Christ in a way only baby-bottles of Bulleit Bourbon can provide, they took to the stage and conducted a scandalous photo-shoot full of cock-grabbing, up-skirts and myriad other expressions of homo & bi-sexuality."

Often Sought, Seldom Had

A long day. The 5th of a 6 day workweek. 

I woke up while it was still dark. While it was light I was secluded in shadows cast by cut glass and corners, and with the last light fading, made my way home. The sun seeming to mock me as it set, like a flirtatious smile from a beautiful woman leaving a party with another man - each granting an ephemeral glimpse at that which was sought and not had. That which could have been, and wasn't.  

During pursuit between the sun and the moon, surrender is often sought though seldom had.

. 

Like Fog Creeping

A discarded couch, cast out upon a sidewalk - that once night had fallen -

became a bed to a man 
without a home. 

A woman 

Stopped 

by a stoplight

Crying in her car. 

Petulant dark and light keys,

painfully pressed,

by somber saccharine fingers. 

The damp breath of a finely aged fear hangs around my neck 
like a musty scarf -

Like fog creeping,
seeking shelter amongst trees -

a struggle toward sleep.

Women with lips drawn like bows -

Enchantresses beguiling like sirens -

Inside their mouths hidden 

Tempestuous tongues dancing, 

Damning.

Maladies and manias fill our days,

Love and loss - 

our weeks -

Change and remembrance: years

Our lives; searching for solace from fear. 

seeking shelter amongst the trees.

Don't Hate the Player

I just got off the phone with my brother after indulging in a lengthy conversation including such highbrow topics as cavernous anuses, YouTube videos involving an infantile imbecile spewing vomit in his room like a stone cherub into a fountain after chugging a bottle of 20 year old crystal pepsi.

Eventually we moved on to talking about the finer things - video games. We reminisced about the classics, like Metal Gear Solid and Knights of the Old Republic, Morrowind and Mass Effect. We observed the trend lately in video games to move toward hyper-realism and immersion in intricately detailed worlds with myriad potentialities and outcomes based on a given character action. Lost are the days of jumping mercilessly onto the head of a goomba, stomping their brown little mushroom-like head-bodies into mush against the asphalt, while screaming, "bite the curb!"

Thinking an original thought had been bestowed upon me, I suggested that in the future games would be so immersive that it will be difficult to draw the line between where reality begins and the game ends - that as technology enables games to approach an accurate simulacrum of our world, the game will become the world. Once a game exists where infinite realities and limitless potentialities are possible, the ultimate game has been created. Game-developers will no longer need to create new games. Entire economies can be generated from within the game via in-game purchases and new-and-exclusive downloadable content. The world can continuously be expanded upon without ever having to create a new game.

Though, this type of entertainment would certainly pose a threat to big businesses that require young adult males to leave their homes and consume. Corporations like Anheuser-Busch need those men drinking beer god-damn-it! Anything else would be un-American and almost treasonous. So why not have the ability to take a break from your game and go earn points by grabbing a beer at the bar, where you can scan a code on the bottle with your smartphone and unlock new achievements and gain more points. While we're at it, support a whole new gamut of possibilities as the player crosses that geo-fence set around the bar. And if they're wearing their Google-glass type ocular technology (that of course syncs with their gaming console at home), that allows for other unlockables via augmented reality; the possibilities begin to increase exponentially. And what about encountering another player while in the bar - a player that can easily be spotted by the HUD afforded by the ocular-tech that wirelessly communicates with the other ocular-tech in the room - they can challenge one another to a Bud-Light-Lime Time-Chug-Challenge, or a good old fashioned arm-wrestle. Maybe incite a bar-room-brawl?

For all you non-drinkers out there, how about a trip to Starbucks for a quick pick me up; make it a grande and get double the Reward-Bucks! While you're there, pick up the new CD from Metallica and you'll be able to adorn your character with a leather jacket sporting a new Metallica patch! And it will also automatically enter you in a contest to gain access to the exclusive-live-in-game-only Metallica concert playing tomorrow night at 8pm Eastern!

This level of rampant advertising and consumption fueled by the completely perfected - perfectly immersive and addictive - video game, offers a more thorough form of escapism than even alcoholism. You wouldn't know if you were really going to Starbucks because you actually wanted a coffee, or because you needed those 10 extra points - which are automatically added to your account with the purchase of any venti caramel frappuccino - to buy that new upgraded machine-gun to kill the relentless hordes of zombies.

After allowing me to pontificate for far too long, my brother mentioned ARG's:

Alternate Reality Gaming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game)

I had never heard of this type of gaming before, and it is fucking fascinating. It makes Dungeons and Dragons look like a perforated blow-up-doll bandaged up with worn pieces of duct-tape. He told me he knew a guy who got involved in an ARG called Slenderman, a game that became so invasive he had to stop playing for fear of losing his mind. The game revolves around trying to discover the identity of, or stop, the Slenderman; while trying to perhaps save or prevent the harming or kidnapping of his victims. My brother's friend relayed stories of receiving strange phone calls and text messages late at night from strangers who were also alleged to be players of the game, requesting he meet them at odd locations at even more inopportune times. They would tell him that they had found Slender, that they needed his help to finally stop him. He even began receiving strange packages in the mail, containing ransom notes and pleas for help from Slender's victims, and perhaps most disturbing, receiving photos of himself in public places with images of Slender photoshopped into the background, just watching him; truly creepy stuff.

Are you playing the game or is the game playing you?

But then I realized that this has all been alluded to by Philip K Dick, and popularized in Total Recall.

So as far as my originality goes, it is as poor as the totality of my recall.

Cronies

On my way home from work I spoke with a close friend who had criticized me for a terse reply I had given a mutual friend over the weekend. The mutual friend had publicly propositioned me for information regarding one of my superiors, with whom he had an interview scheduled for later in the week. Our friend had asked nonchalantly enough, and I had provided an answer of equal or greater nonchalance. I told him not to bullshit him: that he was a very no-bullshit kind of guy, one who's eyes would easily see through even the thickest of wool.

For this, my friend admonished me. He accused me of being hyper-ethical, and said I was strangely unwilling to provide my friend with any insight or aid for his upcoming interview. I then questioned why an expectation exists wherein I need to divulge any and all data I have on my co-worker: his pant-size, what kind of underwear he wears (if any), what his hobbies are, the kind of car he drives, his thoughts on premarital sex, his favorite color, whether or not he believes man coexisted with the dinosaurs, has he given any thought to the plausibility of time travel? I asked him if he thought it was fair for me to give him - our mutual friend - an advantage over other candidates by providing him with information he would otherwise not have access to. My friend saw no issue with this and continued to berate me for being 'weird' and 'unrealistic.' He claimed that the system is built on connections, and that often, getting a job is as much a result of who you know, as it is what you know, and that for me to think otherwise is foolish.

I do not deny this, nor had I at any point during our conversation. I know this to be true. However, it is because I know it to be true that I acted the way I did. Knowing something to be true does not somehow preclude me from disagreeing with it. For example, I know racism exists, yet I disagree with it. I know those that possess great power often abuse it, and this is an affront to justice and decency. I know many people consider Lady Gaga to be an artist; again, I do not condone this. To extend this further, I would argue that knowing an evil exists, serves as a kind of encouragement to act in a fashion that is contrary to it - to actively behave in such a way that reduces the quantity of any extant evil - which is why I responded to our mutual friend the way I did; to promote meritocracy instead of cronyism.

And while I don't doubt our friend's ability to perform exceptionally within the role, for me to just give him a leg up on the competition simply because luck has afforded him the opportunity - which really just boils down to proximity - to become friendly with someone who happens to be on that team (me), seems unfair. Imagine interviewing for a position you were highly qualified for, and having gone through the rigors of a grueling multi-segmented interview process (where the feedback was largely positive) - the deal was pretty much sealed - only to receive a call from the recruiter at the last minute informing you they've decided to go ahead and pursue another candidate, whom you find out was buddies with some key members on the team that had put in a good word for him. Would you not feel slighted? Had I asked my friend this question, he may have reconsidered his stance, but I didn't feel like rubbing enough salt to turn the wound to jerky.

I should've conducted a background check on my friend to see if he was ever a member of the 'old boys club,' or perhaps a patron of the 'golden circle.' Though, knowing him, the only types of 'old boys' he has any association with are the ones pictured at lemon party. And the kind golden circles he cares about aren't ones you'd find floating above the heads of angels. Speaking of angels, do you think the only reason some of them got into heaven was because they knew Jesus? If you need proof, just read Luke 23:39-43. I mean if Jesus supported cronyism, who am I to oppose it? I guess hell is a bit more of a meritocracy than heaven is; you really have to earn your place. Organized religion kind of grants you a universal amnesty as long as you believe in the deity they market to you and denounce all others, right? I'll take some of that holy water infused with Oxy-Clean - it washes out even the most stuck-on sins. For a limited time only, buy one and get the second-coming free!

The Deflowering

Welcome.

You are witness to my foray into floundering in my stream of consciousness; I'm ensnared in the world-wide-web.

I've been talking about it for some time, writing, sometimes sincerely, but often as an empty promise - or an idle threat depending on when and with whom I'm speaking. My intention here is to hone and sharpen an atrophied skill, to become absorbed in deliberate thought, to set time aside for emptying my mind - a kind of emotional-intellectual purging - like a colon to ex-lax: blogging as an artistic diarrhetic. As I typed that I realized I have a cut, the thickness of a paper-cut, but a few dermal levels deeper - as deep as one could get cut without drawing blood - spanning my middle and pointer fingers of my right hand.  Not sure where the wound came from but the slight bending in my fingers as I press the tips to the keys is unpleasant; blood sweat and tears.

Back to my intention, which has no intention of maintaining focus apparently. I want to write. I want to have some type of documentation of my passage through time - whether it be as meaningless as random scribblings on a wall, or as organized and compelling as a complex labyrinth drawn in the sand, situated in dangerous proximity to the gains of the encroaching shore.

Back to the stream of consciousness thing, my mind isn't used to floating on that current, and it continues to pull and try to break away and think of other things. Not even fun things.  Not even dirty things. What kind of shit is that? Where the fuck is my libido? Speaking of...

I was on the phone with a friend from New York earlier in the day, catching up and comparing our gregarious grievances and warring troubles, when I told her that I was in need of something that served as a distraction but also afforded a kind of continued and sustained focus; something engaging. Having just gotten out of a serious relationship, I find my mind constantly crumbling and succumbing to the gravity of thoughts of her. She looms behind my skull, floating like an invisible magnet, pulling my iron thoughts toward the back of my mind where I hid her; crafty, she is.

After getting over the initial separation, which I inspired one month ago, I find myself gripped with lecherous and libidinous desire - as though my cock were in a vice, tightening ever so slowly...or perhaps an invisible hand is a better analogy; anal; Adam Smith would be proud (for the invisible hand part, not so much the anal part, but maybe) - and while I advocated a laissez faire approach, she, my friend, suggested abstaining from contact. While I agree with her advice, my tumescent testes seemed to see it differently, and suggested I seek her out and pillage and plunder her pussy with impunity - with my imperious penis - like a good imperialist; Cecil Rhodes would be proud. Knowing how unwilling to listen my stolid and ghastly gonads would be, I implored her to give me some sort of advice that would help appease and assuage this dicktator. She suggested masturbation.

Masturbation. I guess this is only a bit unlike masturbation. I detest masturbation. My dick doesn't like it, and neither does my hand. It is perhaps one of the most boring and unfulfilling forms of self-gratification. There is no surprise, no sense of mystery or impropriety, just the familiar jerking motion, meaninglessness and emptiness. I imagine I'd have more fun with the wrinkled fingers of an elderly woman with Parkinson's, frailly wrapped around my man-meat twitching erratically and spastically as she whips those huevos into a fiendish fervor - a more modern twist on the whirling dervish - than I would tugging at my own member. It's fucking boring. It's an act each man has repeated innumerable times by his late 20's. Literally innumerable. Name another act - that you can do alone - that you've done that many times that you still enjoy. Sleeping? Drinking?  Eating? Last time I checked, when I want to do any of those three things, I do them. I don't involve myself in a grand delusion where I stand cooking paper-machè mashed potatoes over the oven for half an hour and try to convince myself the paper potatoes I'm eating are real and taste delicious. I mean, maybe if I had ingested 1/8 of psychedelic mushrooms, but even then I'm sure I'd entertain myself with a more original use of my imagination.

I may have communicated this too powerfully to my friend, because she replied with silence and soon after told me she had to go. She hurriedly recommended I try to engage in a healthy activity like writing or painting. I jokingly told her I would write a blog about how I would attempt to seduce myself tonight in the hopes of tricking myself into having sex with myself. I mean, c'mon, if I don't want to fuck me, why would anyone else? So in the interest of giving credence to that age old adage 'if you can't love yourself, you can't love someone else,' here is a brief dramatization of my self-seduction in the hopes of masturbation and eminent ejaculation:

After hanging up the phone, walking along Haight Street, I catch a glimpse of him in the reflective glass of a trippy hippy headshop storefront, all bearded and beanied - I lean in for a closer look and bang my face off of the glass - rugged. I quickly strike conversation and tell him about how I can really see myself in him. We talk about how uncanny it is that we have so much in common "it's so crazy, it's like we have the same eyes!" Boldly, I suggest we grab dinner. Walking along further down the street, I realize we're near the Whole Foods, and an idea most foul fires across my synapses, "how about instead of grabbing something somewhere, I cook you dinner at my place, it's just down the block; I'm sure you'll feel right at home." Surprisingly, he agrees, I'm impressed with his spontaneity and how confident and trusting he is. We walk in perfect synchronization, we complete each other's sentences as we grab groceries, he smiles and tells says "it's almost like we're the same person." We get from Whole Foods to my place in less than 10 minutes, and upon entering I tell him to make himself comfortable; mi casa es su casa.

I light a shaved vanilla and vetiver candle and put on some Sam Cooke as I ready the stove. "I love Sam Cooke," he says. "I knew you would," I reply, as I pour some extra-virgin olive oil into the pan on the oven. I question the concept of 'extra-virgin' from a philosophical perspective to convey that I'm somewhat of an intellectual - I tell him I'm from New York; he is too! - and we have a scintillating conversation about the merits of always having an extra virgin in your harem. I open a bottle of Pinot Noir from the Sonoma Coast, and though he doesn't say it, I can tell he's impressed. We continue to drink and wax poetic on music and literature and life and love, and I can feel my eyes getting that glimmery penetrating quality that eyes get when love is in the air. We eat and he eats enough for two. As we finish eating, I get up and while walking to the counter, I say "I hope you have room for dessert, because I have this amazing artisan chocolate, locally made here in the city, and it pairs phenomenally with this wine," and interrupting me he exclaims "you just read my mind!"

I tell him I want to show him something in my room, and we go with the chocolate and wine in hand to my room. As we walk into the room, I realize that I had turned my comforter around the wrong way when I had made my bed, and the side stained by passion is showing - I haven't yet had a chance to wash the residue from my last love from the sheets - and I am mortified. I quickly try to draw his attention away toward my guitar as I tell him I am an artist, but he sees right through me and perceives uneasiness in my disposition.  His eyes go straight to the stain and trying to be funny I ashamedly say "Out....damned...spot," and he laughs whole-heartedly, and so do I. He tells me it's okay "my sheets are stained too," and momentarily I feel better, and say "yeah, I haven't had a chance to wash them since me and my girlfriend broke up, she stained my sheets and stained my heart," then he continued "I know exactly what you're going through," and looking toward my guitar asks me to play a song. I pick up the guitar and perform a brilliant rendition of Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye.

Amazed and weakened by my performance, he took my hand, and in utter bewilderment he looked down at my fingers, and extended his pointer and middle fingers, "Oh my god, I have the same cut on my fingers..."

"I don't have to tell you what happens at this point, because I think we both know." I'm not sure which one of us said that, but I don't think I need to tell you what happened next.

Let's just say by the time I was done with that cock, I knew it like the palm of my hand.