Pizza used to solve all my problems, too.
Why is a foot clan waving that psionic dildo at me?
It was agreed that I was the smartest and therefore always Donatello.
Kids really had to choose wisely when it came to spending their quarters. I mean, play shit vs. replay the best? Easy choice.
I’m dying more times than I remember. Do I suck this bad?
Playing with Dani: “Those aren’t spikes, they’re sais,” “They wore different colored bandanas because… they’re the world’s most fearsome fighting team,” “No, Master Splinter was human, but he got turned into a rat, and the turtles were just turtles who were anthropomorphized by sewer ooze,” etc.
The soundtrack kills.
KT: You are in the TMNT television show. You have the freedom to choose one of four protagonists. Give up all your quarters to complete this game while your mother finishes her shopping. Tell her you want all the toys now.
Images
The more I think about the lies and manipulation (which does take two to tango), the more I want to manipulate and contort her to my will.
She’s too independent and frightened for that, however. She needs to be steadied with a firm hand and gentle offerings before she submits. She always wanted to be treated like a kitten, nice and safe in a big warm bed.
I’m tired.
“Thank you!” she told me, for all my hard work. For coming in today. I’ve only heard her voice, but I imagine her to be in her thirties. On the other side of wanting to settle, establishing a career. I’ve worked with many like her over the years. All were on the cusp of marriage, even if they were single. I barely understood them in my early twenties. Now, on the cusp of a new decade myself, I can identify the patterns. The responses are not unusual. She sounds nice. I sometimes get the impulse to tell my boss I don’t want a promotion. I know I’m great, yes, but no thanks. The pressure will do me in one day. It’s all personal regardless of how deeply I bury it.
As kids, we weren’t encouraged to read. Just to do well. Sometimes doing well required books. If it didn’t, then we didn’t bother. It required a focus that could not be taught. I loved television, though, and all the peripherals. Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation. My stories were more simple, and shorter. They were told in spurts. Most had a high score.
I lost the ability to play fighting games years ago. My thumbs, you understand. The abductors and flexors have gone bad.
The reason I’m tired is I don’t know why. I think I’m unhappy, but unsatisfied sounds more apt. I tell friends to shut the fuck up when they start to fight. The women I see are women I can treat badly without remorse. It is all undoubtedly caused by an emotional instability. The same one.
Frankly, I’m not in a mood to move on.
My jaw pops and locks. Sometimes, I can’t chew properly.
I find new places to sleep. In my apartment I have the living room couch, the guest room couch, my bed, the floor beside the balcony door. The last provides me with a cool resting place in the summer. I have the new girl’s bed, her couch, and her floor. She is fond of dark, velvet reds. Her curtains remain drawn in her bedroom and I enjoy it. Her skin is pasty, like mine is becoming. She does as she’s told. I won’t say a name yet. I’ll keep it to myself until after. Imagine all the names one gathers to carry into heaven. Imagine the amount of data.
The forces of wisdom cannot be quantified in our terms. They simply are. To say any one individual is not wise is a foolish assumption and bullshit. Certain individuals experience things more intensely, however, and they are more introspective due to circumstance. Glean more from the data and all. An interpretation of an event that yields more interpretation of the event that yields more interpretation. Eventually, an immovable object that meets an unstoppable force, and thus a different interpretation.
I woke up this afternoon and showered. I was preparing to spend my evening fucking. When I received the call to come in I had no qualms cancelling my plans and I walked out. I turned toward the first floor apartment to the east as I locked my door and noticed a black mass on the concrete. It was a partially obstructed black cat. I squinted at the cat to get its attention and thought I must look very strange—unkempt beard and matted hair, 12 year-old Bosstones t-shirt. I felt like I was getting older. I felt so tired.
It’s strange the ways memories and experiences pile up over each other, sometimes grouped into similar experiences or so overbearing that they repress the old stuff down into the depths. Some can monopolize the waking and dreaming hours with equal severity. The dreaming memories can extend to terrifying depths. I’ve dreamt of eyes and hair that tear me apart, as well as other, stranger things. The ones that bother me are usually old and dying guilts. The ones I like I keep.
This photo could remind me of much, but mostly it reminds me of a name: Danielle. It’s important that I write it because I recently discovered that the second girl I slept with—after Jackie, who I still can’t write about—is nearly lost to me. I forgot her name, her eyes, or the things she said. I do remember that I told her anything more than what we’d done was not in our best interest. Except, you know, more in line with something a clueless 18-year old might say. Or was I 19?
That’s the trick to aging, I reckon. Remembering enough of the past to put a name to a memory.
(Source: june1972)
One of the best things I heard during my time in Alaska was, “No one ever comes here looking for something. They’re running away.” This was from a woman who moved from Nebraska—I believe—in order to be with her husband, who just a few months before our meeting had been flown to Anchorage via helicopter after an accident that left him in a comatose state. I met her along with her two companions during their annual retreat onto the Denali tundra.
It was just a hell of a thing to discuss with a stranger. She wasn’t upset or worried. Well, I’m sure she was, but she described the ordeal in such a rational, matter-of-fact fashion that it seemed like everyday trouble. This was the same tone with which she delivered that line about running away.
Sure, husband’s in a coma and everyone’s running away from something. It’s just what people do.
I hadn’t thought about Alaska or that conversation for a while, to be honest, but my ma went and asked me if I was planning on going again this year. I’d talked about dog sledding in the winter, but hadn’t found time to plan it out. It’s not much to it. This couple that run a lodge near Denali also offer dog sled escapades for anyone willing to spend a couple of weeks mushing across frozen tundra. The amount of space out there is refreshing.
Places to which I can run away. I suppose that’s what I seek. Large expanses that offer space to breathe in every conceivable direction and the full frontal view of the universe.
Once, after e-stalking and confessing about it to a girl, we joked that I’d be a good private detective. Since then I’ve considered that perhaps I do have a knack for digging up information I’m not supposed to have because, well, why the fuck not? Hell, it’s my job to pay attention and find defects in everything I see. If something’s amiss I’m going to research it and call it out until it’s resolved.
If you want to see me passionate, deny me the facts.
(This is how governments come to spy on their citizens, by the way. So I reiterate: never place me in a position of power. Simply hire me on contract when you need something dug up.)
Now obviously this is an image from Google Maps and I’ll posit that using Google Maps to zoom in on North Korea and check out their cities isn’t detective work. But it isn’t seeing the obvious that makes a good snoop. It’s about looking at the obvious and seeing what isn’t. To that end, I think using some of my sick time to look at satellite images of cities all over the world is time well spent. I see it as an outlet for a curious mind.
And the reason why, in the current conflict of relating to other people, I’d rather not get interested enough to want to look down on them as if they are a map on a table or a crime scene to examine. It’d be much easier—not to mention healthier—to just lay it all out there and let the mystery dissolve.
I calm myself in this manner. Staring out the window. I tune out the noise and watch the rain or snow fall onto the cars and pavement. If I’m in a mood for holding someone down I’ll grip my left wrist behind my back and squeeze. Feel my bone, the pulse. I usually enjoy the view.
Life is cyclical. Do you believe it? I’ve seen it myself. My last December 30th was spent on a plane to Seattle. I’d missed my train from San Francisco due to my problem with the morning hours. I suspect I was in the air around this time, after which I’d be in a cab and then in a hotel room in downtown, nearest to the water. I asked someone where I could get a steak. There was a lot of walking, from the docks to the Pike Place market to a restaurant that served a fantastic stout. I ate a steak.
Today, I’m in Canada. It’s not much different but for the cold.
You know, I said I’d do things. I didn’t read fifty books and get some of my work out there in print. The few stories I consider to be good enough to shop around still lack details and cohesive style. I sure as hell didn’t return to school. I’ve lost interest in returning to low level classes, especially if I move again. Instead I’m hoarding money like a squirrel and its nuts. Except for travel, I’m all money bags.
Then I did things I hadn’t thought about. I started swimming and walking regularly. I made big plans for the following years. I’ve mapped out my time until age 32. None of my plans include other people because, well, I’m short on trust. Them’s the breaks.
People will enter the picture anyway. It’s kind of what I love about life.
And, there’s this. Lots of talk about “I” and “me”. Where’s all the fiction and whimsical shit? It just don’t flow like it used to.
The first thing I’ll be doing next year is learning to shoot a gun. My pop had rifles and things that he sold before he ever showed us how to use them. He’s got some pistols now that he hides in a coat in his closet, but I don’t think he likes the thought of them.
That’s about it. I hope you’re happy, or will be soon if you’re not. I still just think that most of everyone are trying their best not to be terrible people.
I’d lost the book. The goddamn book. It wasn’t in the first bookcase, on my desk, in the TV room, on or under either of the nightstands, in the second bookcase, or under the bed. It wasn’t on the microwave, either. It wasn’t in plain sight. I scanned the ground in case it might’ve somehow fallen but there was nothing. I searched the travel bag full of other books, the backpack I keep packed with rations and a med kit for emergencies, the giant hiking pack already bursting at the seams with gear. It might’ve been in the Jeep, but all I found was laundry detergent, a milk crate full of fluids and tools, and water bottles. No, it wasn’t on top of the fridge.
When had I become so careless that I’d lose the book?
I was prepared to audit my entire apartment when I saw it sitting on the window sill in the bedroom, beside a boxed lava lamp, an empty seltzer bottle, and a dead smoke detector. It must have remained there after I set up the bookcases. It was safe.
It is the reason I read, write, and support creative diversity. It’s the reason I’m here and not someplace else. It is unforgiveable that such a token should be forgotten on the wayside amongst piles of other stuff that are nothing more than that. I don’t know what path I might have forged without this.
Jesus.
Take care of your books, will you? Especially the ones that have changed your life.
Happy Sunday.
Went on a photo adventure with Deleonia.
In case you didn’t already know, The San Francisco National Cemetery is, I think, the only site left in San Francisco for internment of human remains (currently closed to new burials). There is also the famous Presidio Pet Cemetery, of course. Both are for military personel/pets only.
356/365
My pop’s been bitter lately. Disillusioned by his seemingly uncaring (and also bitter) wife, kids who go off and spend their days with their girlfriends, sons who live thousands of miles away and never call. To hear him talk is to realize that whatever lightness was in him is giving way to a stone heart and religion, especially now that my grandfather has passed. He’s confused and doesn’t understand why people aren’t like him, even as he so rationally states “we’re all our own mind.” Part of me thinks he should understand that people behave differently under various circumstances, and part of me wants his family—myself included—to be more compassionate. He lost his father and is emotionally distraught. The rest of us are handling the loss with as little emotion as possible. What the fuck is wrong with us?
There’s a cemetery near our house in Inglewood that we used to drive by regularly on our way back from Burbank or Long Beach via the 101 freeway. It’s massive and probably one of the oldest cemeteries in the area, though not nearly as ancient as anything in films. There are few overly elaborate headstones and the mausoleums are few in number. Later, when I lived in Brisbane (a stone’s throw from San Francisco), I visited Colma often. It was a bastion of peace amid an urbanized landscape. It was even amusing to think of a cemetery designed exclusively for pets. Sometimes I drove through on a whim and sometimes I pulled over somewhere and walked into one of the various cemeteries. The city of the dead is quite beautiful.
Now, pondering death and all, I walk up to the cemetery near my apartment. There are no fences or security to ward off hooligans, as was the case with the previously mentioned sites. It has the vibe of a public park. I read the names and I consider that of all the possible ways to meet death, I’m most interested in head-on. It means youth and old age, the naked body in all its phases, and the certainty that someone’s passed and it isn’t the worst thing in the world.
For now.
My gym closed this week and I went on about the business of canceling that membership and searching for what they call a home club. One place was small and a ten minute walk away, but they closed at 6pm when I sometimes require 10pm exhaustion. The gym recommended by the company was both too far and too much like a human sweat factory. The third—and winner—was more comfortable in its layout and close enough to walk to. When I exited with my card in hand it was about 31 degrees Fahrenheit, which was an exciting prospect for walks home.
Anyway, I sat at a red light to think about this and encountered an amusing Wi-Fi signal name. It was locked, which you’ll agree is an awful tease.