Author: admin

truck stop

I was at a truck stop in the middle of the night waiting for something to explode. A thin woman of ill repute eyeballed me. Her eye was wretched, like the hairless ass of an old street bitch who’d seen too many litters pass through her. While waiting in witless contemplation, I was compelled to approach a handsome gentleman seated at a booth and accompanied by several comely young ladies. I proceeded to strangle him. All he did was turn his handsome face into a bulldog face and bark. His last few hoarse croaks were sickly. I’d say they bubbled. I was then inside a glorious mansion adorned in wild flowers without and arches everywhere within. I sat down on the nearest upturned arch and waited witlessly again until a door opened and someone descended the stairs. She sat beside me on the arch. We proceeded to talk about memes we could create and the miracle of salvia. It would be our religion. A question was asked and when I took too long to respond she said “agaeve absent, screw this” and disappeared.

I read somewhere (alright so it was an episode of Batman because I did not read books until I was in my twenties, and even then) that people can’t read in dreams because dreaming and reading are functions from different hemispheres of the brain. There are limitations even in dreams; you’re a real bastard, universe.

Are you able to quiet your mind?

torbellino asked: Seriously love your writing. Any advice for young aspiring writers?

Read a metric fuckton of books. Read the news. Read the good stuff and the bad stuff so you can ID the bad stuff and throw it out on its ass. Better yet, lock it up and chain it in the attic because the bad stuff might just be useful someday. Grow balls and show your writing to people. Preferably, people who care to read your writing, and have balls. If you get nothing but sugar and no one gives you the business then there’s some shenanigans of the ball-lacking variety. If it doesn’t seem constructive then throw that out on its ass, too.

Then go out. If you’re a social type go be in a crowd and listen to them and tell them stories. Go do rowdy things and mellow things, in the order you see fit. Or both at the same time if you get my meaning. Keep your peepers peeled at all times, ALL TIMES. Watch everyone and everything and talk to every goddamn person. Especially the mean looking ones. Don’t ignore the nice looking ones, either. And if you’re creepy you should probably avoid kids. Unless you have kids, then that might be alright. If this isn’t you, this whole people business, then still go out, and still WATCH EVERYTHING. Use every sense at all times because you’re not a photographer and you’ve got to cover bases. Farms are pretty but they smell like a cow’s tookus, sound like a Merry Melodies performance, feel like no one thing, and taste sort of like stale water, sometimes.

And finally, when you make it and revel in the glorious fruits of your labor, when all the world’s adoration is upon you and you are content with that which you have created, don’t forget old Vic. I’ll be kicking cans in alleys and WATCHING EVERYTHING, dealing with the barrage of stories that must all be written. When you see me sitting there, come on over and give me some advice. Tell me, tell us all in fact, what you have learned about yourself, your writing, and the world.

fingers

I want that rather than
hold me
or rub me
or stroke me
or caress me
you would curl them around my elbow
and squeeze
and hold my arm as we walk by the shops
seeing things that would be nice to have
but are unnecessary
unextraordinary
unable to grip me
or dig into me.

So much
from such dainty things.

A kite that don’t get off the ground

It’s around nine something when I’m sitting on a bench on the deck next to Paula who is Joe’s wife Nadine’s friend and is wearing a skirt that stretches across the top of her knees while Mark and his girlfriend Linda are sitting on the bench across from us when Paula passes me the blunt and I inhale once deep then again and hold it a bit as I stretch and pass it off to Mark who’s in the middle of telling his story about the time he got so drunk that he went to his car and sat in it throwing up all night onto the ground with his door wide open while some bum watched him do it and never said a thing and by the time Mark’s driving his car away I start wondering why Nadine’s laughing so loud because she never does since she’s a calm person which is part of the reason I think she’s hot but now that she’s laughing like that I want to tell her to shut up because it just gets louder and louder and why’s she laughing anyway that story wasn’t funny though as I’m about to do it Paula says she’s going to get a beer and I panic thinking why does she need a beer? do I smell? is there something peculiar on my face that put her off? and since we’re the two single people we’re supposed to be getting along and then maybe fuck but she gets up and leaves and I start examining the scene of the crime that is the bench we’re on looking for clues about what the hell is happening but no one seems to mind and Nadine is still laughing which drives me nuts so I finally get up and announce I’m going to get a beer and walk past the sliding glass doors through the bedroom and into the hallway where I think I’m supposed to stumble into Paula and have sex with her in the bathroom or closet or something but I can’t find her anywhere so I start to consider that perhaps she left and left me with laughing Nadine which I can’t do anything about anyway and now I place my hands against the walls where I can feel the craters in the flat paint and brace myself since the investigation is now at an end and any cop can tell you that when there is no resolution it is devastating so I stand there for a minute looking at the little porcelain elephants that Linda keeps on the little table in the hallway where they just stand perfectly still facing the direction that I am facing which is the living room and I think perhaps she is in there but when I walk in there’s no one but I do hear clinking and I follow the clinking into the kitchen where Paula is taking more than one beer out of the refrigerator where Mark has bills posted on there held by a magnet of a elephant with a rainbow across his face being held up by his trunk and Paula asks what’s up? and I tell her I wanted a beer so she hands me one and says she was going to bring out a bucket of them and I help her load them into the bucket and tell her I’ll carry the bucket so we walk back out onto the deck where Nadine is no longer laughing but just sitting with her head on Joe’s shoulder and no one’s talking until we walk up and Paula says beer! and I hand them out one by one into each hand so soft and warm like melted butter on a block of ice.

Ultimate Picasso Experience

1. Drink stout.
2. One more.
3. Enjoy amazing meal.
4. Drink IPA.
5. Eat beer desert.
6. Get to the museum.
7. Stand before the paintings in fucking awe of the splendor of man’s imagination.
8. Promptly conclude with the setting of the sun behind snow-capped mountains.

why do you like it?

I never discuss music because I am bad at names. I cannot tell you about Artist A whose album from 19xx had such a profound impact on my life. I suppose that if I cared enough, I’d do a little research, find out who played that song I liked so much. And I do, from time to time. In the end, though, I just like what I like.

I can hear my music teacher echo in the distance—”why do you like it?what about it do you like?”

There’s no genre or artist which has transcended the years of my maturation as a constant companion. An endless stream of notes, melodies, tonalities, forms. Hip hop, house, rap, punk, hardcore, grunge, metal, classic (lumped together, how sad), indie (even more sad), blues, jazz, swing, big band, gospel, bluegrass, baroque, classical, romantic… it just goes on and on. It gets tiresome. When I move on from one to the next, it’s like losing a bit of myself. A little of my passion for music gets left behind. This is why I love people who can keep it all straight in their heads because then, I can ask questions, hear the passion in their voices about Artist A in the 90s, see how much they truly love the music, and maybe feel the same. Hope to feel the same.

You know, I do remember the music that matters to the people I care about. If only there was a genre for that.

robbing from the world

the “robbing from the world” part is what gets me… the world gives a lot to us already, why not try to make something you believe is great of it? Is it so wrong to take from something so incredible like the world and do something with it?

The world is pretty goddamn incredible, isn’t it? And terrible. Incredible and terrible and most of what happens in our lives is in between those two.

I don’t believe it is wrong. If a person is going to consider writing and make a go of it then she or he must accept that the inspiration and source for much of the work will come from the universe in which we live, where everything has happened. Natural occurences, the despair and hope of it, universal coincidences and the passage of time, nonsensical words, vagueries and statements, conversations about the weather, fleeting glances, the stares into souls, sex crimes and sex punishments, shattered molecule bonds, glorious atoms, warm little organs so safe in their cages until they face the outside world, the love of the word “love”, towers built by old men who did not expect us, the rain sheen reflecting a tragedy in dark asphalt, hidden memories, emotionless sociopathic lovers, our parents’ regrets and not their triumphs, the inevitable loss that all will face and have no idea how to process, and the billions of other things that aren’t romantic in any sense of the word and yet deserve to be recorded because someone will read about them and appreciate what has been written and said.

wellspring

Creativity is always key. The artist’s wellspring, or something.

I remembered a quote about this because I live on quotes. Rudolfo A. Anaya wrote:

“… a writer’s job is to find and follow people like Justino. They’re the source of life…  They may be illiterate, but they understand our descent into the pozo of hell, and they understand us because they’re willing to share the adventure with us. You seek fame and notoriety and you’re dead as a writer.”

People willing to share the adventure—do we rob them of something? Do we carry away a small part of what they told us? Or are we the ones to lose a part of ourselves?