He was doing 'okonos'. The saxophone to close out 'dondante' was slowing his pulse. His extremities were cold. His hair was graying, which he was also growing a bit longer than professional to hid some mild recessions.
Something about these guys - mmj. He had read of this surgery where the cardio-thoracic surgeon had just lost a patient - a patient he loved. The chest cavity wide open and the surgeon exhausted with head in hands, it dark and silent in the OR and cool but brisk and sunny outside...a capital day to save a life (sic - Dost.). With nothing left to do, he attaches electrodes to the lifeless heart. The electrodes streaming sinusoidal waves equaling 'one big holiday' directly into the still organ. Less than a minute later, no lie (according to the story), presumably (and hopefully, for mysticism's sake) just when the waves transmit james screaming 'waking up, feeling good and limber'...the heart beats to life. The CT surgeon kisses his intern and thrusts his pelvis about the OR.
28 August 2010
23 August 2010
milk
Laughing hysterically...more a maniacal, rabid cackle than just a hearty belly laugh. Laughter worthy of ridicule, deafening fucking laughter. An absurd and misplaced, non sequitur laughter that no one else is sharing.
Thinking then what to say next as everyone in the room stared at him. Eyes bulging from the heads of the audience - Black Hole Sun type bulging. Eyeballs out beyond the lids meant to contain them. Out of their sockets and showing curvature never meant to be seen outside of Biology class or an autopsy. One lady crying, another speechless with hand on the topside of her breast saying "jesus mary and joseph", and still another citing a quick 'our father' through a searing apoplexy. "Why the fuck would anyone let that disaster in here? Guy is a fucking disaster still."
"Where the fuck am I?", to himself. And sitting down then next to the podium in his seat on the panel. An uncomfortable smile to the folks in the front row who cannot or will not make eye contact with him. Scratches the back of his head and smoothing his hair down, squinting a little bit pinching the top of his nose and rubbing his brow feeling for pimples that need popping and can be popped with a scratch of the fingernail. The sides and back of his hair are long - basically needing trimming around the ears and squaring and shaving of the neck.
"you've seen that sweaty jetrag feeling come on over him...and I have seen that boy nod...into a dream a time or two"
He drank down his milk. Always with a glass of milk this guy. A clear glass too so that everyone has to see the thick milk slowly recede down the sides of the glass. At home, in public, at restaurants asking the waitresses if they serve milk - and restaurants have those big bags of milk - most often expired - in the metallic square industrial fridges in their kitchens, after working out - a glass of milk, phlegming up his throat no doubt. And then sucking the sputum and mucus up through the back of his throat right through his GD sinus and into his brain presumably because where the fuck else does it go? Sucking it up there with huge snorting noises through the nose but more with the throat and leaving it to sit atop his nasal cavity in his sinus or trying to swallow it down through the other milk-phlegm. touching his brain probably, the portion of the milk-sputum that cannot be swallowed back down and fogging his thoughts, the loogie...and thinking something stupid like "from whence did this loogie come?" all because his throat cannot process it, the milk.
And when he gets annoyed? Oh god. The sucking and snorting get violent - like he, his brain, has to win the fight against his throat or the phlegm or whatever other enemy he has created just then. Just a transference, you know, obviously of some other more massive life problem that he suffers...the violent sucking = a weak-willed thinly-veiled bodily manifestation of a larger issue.
Thinking then what to say next as everyone in the room stared at him. Eyes bulging from the heads of the audience - Black Hole Sun type bulging. Eyeballs out beyond the lids meant to contain them. Out of their sockets and showing curvature never meant to be seen outside of Biology class or an autopsy. One lady crying, another speechless with hand on the topside of her breast saying "jesus mary and joseph", and still another citing a quick 'our father' through a searing apoplexy. "Why the fuck would anyone let that disaster in here? Guy is a fucking disaster still."
"Where the fuck am I?", to himself. And sitting down then next to the podium in his seat on the panel. An uncomfortable smile to the folks in the front row who cannot or will not make eye contact with him. Scratches the back of his head and smoothing his hair down, squinting a little bit pinching the top of his nose and rubbing his brow feeling for pimples that need popping and can be popped with a scratch of the fingernail. The sides and back of his hair are long - basically needing trimming around the ears and squaring and shaving of the neck.
"you've seen that sweaty jetrag feeling come on over him...and I have seen that boy nod...into a dream a time or two"
He drank down his milk. Always with a glass of milk this guy. A clear glass too so that everyone has to see the thick milk slowly recede down the sides of the glass. At home, in public, at restaurants asking the waitresses if they serve milk - and restaurants have those big bags of milk - most often expired - in the metallic square industrial fridges in their kitchens, after working out - a glass of milk, phlegming up his throat no doubt. And then sucking the sputum and mucus up through the back of his throat right through his GD sinus and into his brain presumably because where the fuck else does it go? Sucking it up there with huge snorting noises through the nose but more with the throat and leaving it to sit atop his nasal cavity in his sinus or trying to swallow it down through the other milk-phlegm. touching his brain probably, the portion of the milk-sputum that cannot be swallowed back down and fogging his thoughts, the loogie...and thinking something stupid like "from whence did this loogie come?" all because his throat cannot process it, the milk.
And when he gets annoyed? Oh god. The sucking and snorting get violent - like he, his brain, has to win the fight against his throat or the phlegm or whatever other enemy he has created just then. Just a transference, you know, obviously of some other more massive life problem that he suffers...the violent sucking = a weak-willed thinly-veiled bodily manifestation of a larger issue.
18 August 2010
overcoming dogs
Clutter was a stressor for him. Acne-on-the-forehead-,-night-sweats-,-shortness-of-breath-,-restless-anxiety-type stress. The sort of stress borne only out of a childhood teeming with bleached surfaces and museum quality living. As much as he was fascinated with early experiences and their ability to shape your entire adult life - he was sick from recognizing his own as he turned in bed worrying about what had to be done for the coming day, rubbing neosporin on his scarring cuticles, a feeling not unlike falling in his chest, and a sweat about his forehead (likely our acne source) - the filmy sort that an overweight man acquires on his pale breasts.
Staring at a baby sitting next to a dog. The baby, not more than 15 months, looking at the dog and awaiting reaction. He scratches the side of his cheek as he sips his milk, probably wondering when the dog will turn to him. The dog, not a puppy, looks only away and into the distance...like a cold shoulder to the babe...not allowing it or other unpleasantries into its vision, ever.
And so he walks past the clutter, staring straight ahead and not at the clutter and into the distance. Laughing about how smart and willing to confront life the baby was in comparison to the dog.
And blinking and not yet appreciating the irony as he blinks.
Considers then drilling a hole into the back of his skull and pouring in undiluted bleach to cleanse the dark corners and erase that which cannot be overcome with reason. "Bleach me." He would say as it was done. The smell would be too much, wouldn't it?, as the chlorine cooked through his olfactory nerves and his eyeballs turned to a milky white fog. Brain matter, less solid, pouring out of his ears..."get some gauze!" he would probably also say (though more slowly and hardly recognizable this time), realizing that he had made a literally fatal mistake. All before his organ seized and swelled and poured through his other orifices, shutting down his system.
And not yet appreciating the irony as his head and torso spill over the rest of his body. Hunched over.
Staring at a baby sitting next to a dog. The baby, not more than 15 months, looking at the dog and awaiting reaction. He scratches the side of his cheek as he sips his milk, probably wondering when the dog will turn to him. The dog, not a puppy, looks only away and into the distance...like a cold shoulder to the babe...not allowing it or other unpleasantries into its vision, ever.
And so he walks past the clutter, staring straight ahead and not at the clutter and into the distance. Laughing about how smart and willing to confront life the baby was in comparison to the dog.
And blinking and not yet appreciating the irony as he blinks.
Considers then drilling a hole into the back of his skull and pouring in undiluted bleach to cleanse the dark corners and erase that which cannot be overcome with reason. "Bleach me." He would say as it was done. The smell would be too much, wouldn't it?, as the chlorine cooked through his olfactory nerves and his eyeballs turned to a milky white fog. Brain matter, less solid, pouring out of his ears..."get some gauze!" he would probably also say (though more slowly and hardly recognizable this time), realizing that he had made a literally fatal mistake. All before his organ seized and swelled and poured through his other orifices, shutting down his system.
And not yet appreciating the irony as his head and torso spill over the rest of his body. Hunched over.
04 August 2010
Mirrors moving away
The controlling device of his life is the mirror. There in front of him so that he can assess the man he has become and assess his performance against the standard he has set - and perhaps (and probably more likely) that others have set and that he has adopted. But the mirror is not stationary. Moving away. And never there long enough for a true look into the eyes. So that even the assessment is impossible. What is it we are looking at? And so he chases, lifelong, sometimes sprinting and barreling through relationships and sometimes just a slow and lazy jog with others at his side. Like a fucking parade.
A manic. Ups and downs. Constant considerations of performance relativity. Against others and himself. Standards. Self-loathing and elation, oft in adjacence. Bouts of exaggerated sexuality - thrusting his testosterone all about - to prove his worth coupled with those of raging irritability...again, to prove his worth. Self-control is a fleeting quality anyway, mostly exercised between the ages of 25 - 35 and then forgotten for a new kind of disregard.
And so he writes:
"When you come back I will want to tell you all about all I have done and all I have accomplished - to make you proud. And so that you will recognize success. But I will then, at that instant, also have too much pride to say a thing and will not be able to tell you for myself. Opting instead to say something ordinary about how it is nice to see you again. But I will quietly watch and listen to overhear every subsequent conversation you hold with anyone who might know of me and what I have done and hope that they say something of my accomplishments in my stead. And then - when they do say something - that is when I will have gained quiet reward. And I will grin, maliciously and rabidly, right then."
---
"I wish that I had known in that first moment we met the unpayable debt that I'd owe you." You can actually hear his voice navigating the lyric. Not just carefully-chosen word after word but also his voice actually making the change from each. You can hear the transition and the empty space. They placed the microphone or some other vibration-capturing device on his vocal folds and we thus hear both the oscillations and stillness.
A manic. Ups and downs. Constant considerations of performance relativity. Against others and himself. Standards. Self-loathing and elation, oft in adjacence. Bouts of exaggerated sexuality - thrusting his testosterone all about - to prove his worth coupled with those of raging irritability...again, to prove his worth. Self-control is a fleeting quality anyway, mostly exercised between the ages of 25 - 35 and then forgotten for a new kind of disregard.
And so he writes:
"When you come back I will want to tell you all about all I have done and all I have accomplished - to make you proud. And so that you will recognize success. But I will then, at that instant, also have too much pride to say a thing and will not be able to tell you for myself. Opting instead to say something ordinary about how it is nice to see you again. But I will quietly watch and listen to overhear every subsequent conversation you hold with anyone who might know of me and what I have done and hope that they say something of my accomplishments in my stead. And then - when they do say something - that is when I will have gained quiet reward. And I will grin, maliciously and rabidly, right then."
---
"I wish that I had known in that first moment we met the unpayable debt that I'd owe you." You can actually hear his voice navigating the lyric. Not just carefully-chosen word after word but also his voice actually making the change from each. You can hear the transition and the empty space. They placed the microphone or some other vibration-capturing device on his vocal folds and we thus hear both the oscillations and stillness.
17 July 2010
we both hugged. both we hugged.
Oh my god, this album. Listen to it only by yourself. Wear stereo headphones. Lay your body down supine and stare at the ceiling, or nothing - stare at nothing at all. Register no sense beyond audial. Breathe. Carefully select one or maybe two people to tell about this album and no more. Appreciate the silence and its careful interaction with each note.
Put it down slowly, your skull, so as to not spill its contents out of its orifices. Hug yourself. I don't know - I actually don't. Think about restructuring your unique genetic code just slightly. Wrap your undernourished arms around someone and hold them for longer than is comfortable for them to want to be held just then. Put on a fucking life preserver.
We are on The Antlers - Hospice. Beautiful and eviscerating bone and other once sturdy structures of the body. Actually.
Actually - you are off the reservation. And this will do nothing to reel you back in. Off the reservation and screaming at the disc of the sun at the top of your lungs - mouth open to fullest capacity, jaw aching, head quivering, eyes shut tight, molars showing, hands fists grabbing the ears ... we said something that meant a lot to each of us just then, but it disappeared. and we both hugged. both we hugged. like life itself existed in the other and was needing to be held there. and it did - need it.
Think about, for just a minute, what it would be like to be the one that chose to spend his/her life with you - appreciate that feeling. And use it every day.
Put it down slowly, your skull, so as to not spill its contents out of its orifices. Hug yourself. I don't know - I actually don't. Think about restructuring your unique genetic code just slightly. Wrap your undernourished arms around someone and hold them for longer than is comfortable for them to want to be held just then. Put on a fucking life preserver.
We are on The Antlers - Hospice. Beautiful and eviscerating bone and other once sturdy structures of the body. Actually.
Actually - you are off the reservation. And this will do nothing to reel you back in. Off the reservation and screaming at the disc of the sun at the top of your lungs - mouth open to fullest capacity, jaw aching, head quivering, eyes shut tight, molars showing, hands fists grabbing the ears ... we said something that meant a lot to each of us just then, but it disappeared. and we both hugged. both we hugged. like life itself existed in the other and was needing to be held there. and it did - need it.
Think about, for just a minute, what it would be like to be the one that chose to spend his/her life with you - appreciate that feeling. And use it every day.
29 June 2010
... continued
his head was like a balloon when he got like this. and not a helium-filled light balloon delicately bouncing around against the ceiling in the corner of the room in the draft of the oscillating fan but more a manually blown up balloon; heavier and somehow grossly more moist than its helium counterpart and not so much bouncing but rolling around on the dirty dust-ridden floor and basically empty.
he was doing the Elliott Smith eponymous. this, an album especially written for ... and other such moods.
the hf and pompous attitude and 'all is pedestrian' were defense mechanisms, protection. oh, god knows this. he knew this too, probably more than god, but he employed them with purpose. because he was sure that no one outside of a professional freudian and surely no one that he interacted with on a daily basis could ever figure it out, that they were defense mechanisms and that he was one in need of such defense. figure it out for themselves and see through his opacity. oh, they saw. he wore it, the protection, not so well - sort of like a white particulate mask. aside from saying idiot things like 'all is ped.', he over-enunciated his words and used full sentences and paragraphs only when speaking. which generally annoyed the shit out of his family members and basically everyone else that ever listened to him, especially his dog because what dog knows what the fuck "row-ell oh-verr" or "come oh-ver herrre" is?
the stylus had entered the 'alphabet town' grooves. it was a cool and dry night, first one in over a week. something about the harmonica in this one turns his heart to fine powder. the pile of which sits then still atop the liver waiting for that deep inhale - the one that signals the onset of a cry - to blow away...to disappear, the heart. disperse itself around the chest cavity, coating the lungs and back side of the sternum and ribs, and lose function. for a minute or two. poof.
but so he gets up from the desk, sitting on an exercise ball lately to ensure the lifespan of the back is +/- 10 years the lifespan of the remainder of the body, and puffs his chest out a bit with a deep inhalation. puts his shoulders back, mom always said no child of hers employed slumped shoulders, and walks slowly towards the mirror. he lets his head sort of float above his shoulders, swaying lightly as he walks. first looking at the wall. a pain in the back, lumbar but no action to alleviate. and then at the mirror, attacks the face with shitty thoughts. and rubs the sides of his head vigorously with the palms and pads of his hands. eyes shut. tight.
and maybe it was for him - the hf and 'all is ped.' - protection against himself. they were three of him, effectively. that which protected, that which needed protection, and that which observed.
he was doing the Elliott Smith eponymous. this, an album especially written for ... and other such moods.
the hf and pompous attitude and 'all is pedestrian' were defense mechanisms, protection. oh, god knows this. he knew this too, probably more than god, but he employed them with purpose. because he was sure that no one outside of a professional freudian and surely no one that he interacted with on a daily basis could ever figure it out, that they were defense mechanisms and that he was one in need of such defense. figure it out for themselves and see through his opacity. oh, they saw. he wore it, the protection, not so well - sort of like a white particulate mask. aside from saying idiot things like 'all is ped.', he over-enunciated his words and used full sentences and paragraphs only when speaking. which generally annoyed the shit out of his family members and basically everyone else that ever listened to him, especially his dog because what dog knows what the fuck "row-ell oh-verr" or "come oh-ver herrre" is?
the stylus had entered the 'alphabet town' grooves. it was a cool and dry night, first one in over a week. something about the harmonica in this one turns his heart to fine powder. the pile of which sits then still atop the liver waiting for that deep inhale - the one that signals the onset of a cry - to blow away...to disappear, the heart. disperse itself around the chest cavity, coating the lungs and back side of the sternum and ribs, and lose function. for a minute or two. poof.
but so he gets up from the desk, sitting on an exercise ball lately to ensure the lifespan of the back is +/- 10 years the lifespan of the remainder of the body, and puffs his chest out a bit with a deep inhalation. puts his shoulders back, mom always said no child of hers employed slumped shoulders, and walks slowly towards the mirror. he lets his head sort of float above his shoulders, swaying lightly as he walks. first looking at the wall. a pain in the back, lumbar but no action to alleviate. and then at the mirror, attacks the face with shitty thoughts. and rubs the sides of his head vigorously with the palms and pads of his hands. eyes shut. tight.
and maybe it was for him - the hf and 'all is ped.' - protection against himself. they were three of him, effectively. that which protected, that which needed protection, and that which observed.
26 June 2010
furniture
"You're a piece of furniture." It was true, he was worthless until carefully placed in a functional position by someone that knew how to use him.
This type of man? Well, these men...they're purveyors of silent revolutions. Big ideas mostly playing out inside their safe heads.
This type of man? Well, these men...they're purveyors of silent revolutions. Big ideas mostly playing out inside their safe heads.
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