gregori

He'd only been gone for one semester. But something in him had changed. It was barely perceptible and Gary doubted anyone noticed it but himself. But there was something in the way he talked now--in the words he used and the way he spoke. He seemed more confident; self-assured. No longer was he the awkward older brother Gary knew before. That sullen kid for whom the simplest questions always elicited one- or two-word responses. "No, thanks." "Yeah, sure." "Maybe." He now reeled off delightful anecdote after delightful anecdote with a detached sort of coolness, mixing a newly acquired college-level vocabulary with a newly-acquired campus slang.

KITTY KITTY

He made a small gash into the apple with his two prominent golden-yellow teeth--prominent because they were the only teeth in his head not blackened with rot and therefore the only ones that were immediately visible. With his first and middle fingers, he swathed the bite and held them out, calling: HERE, KITTY KITTY! HERE, KITTY KITTY.

Behind a dilapidated box crate, a small black cat emerged. It stuck its head out and looked up at the man and then at his fingers, trying to gauge the relative safety of leaving its post. It took a few delicate steps towards the man and immediately hopped back a little ways so that it could still see the man and his fingers.

COME ON NOW, KITTEN. I'M A GOOD FELLOW, the man pleaded.

The cat cocked its head and stared the man in his eyes to which he stared back with the irregular pulpy grin of a jack-o-lantern decomposing on someone's front stoop weeks after Halloween. The cat eventually conceded defeat and walked back toward the man, keeping its head down the whole time as if this were its punishment for losing this little staring contest.

THAT'S A GOOD KITTEN, he said. A REAL GOOD KITTEN.

The cat sniffed his fingers tentatively. It made a little pigeon-noise once it detected the apple juices and began licking wildly.

KITTY LIKES APPLES, SHE DOES, he said. His smile had transformed from that of a rotting jack-o-lantern's to the self-satisfied kingly smile of a lunatic pleased by something inconsequential and esoteric--like the ability to bait a displaced cat in some remote dirt-covered alleyway.

workinprog

He lived in an obscure part of the city, in a little shotgun shack with his mother--a good Christian woman who openly complained of being burdened with the responsibility of having to take care of a child who could never leave home. "Lord," she said, straining to find God beyond her low-level shotgun shack ceiling, "I know not your reasons and I am day to day afflicted but I know it's for the best. I trust in your will. But I cannot pretend to understand it. You gave me this boy for a reason and you made him the way you did because that's the way you wanted it. I may never understand why you gave him to me but I will try to find the strength to accept it as the blessing that it is."

She never sent her son to school because she couldn't bear the thought of him being teased by other children for the way he was and the way he could not change. Whether it was for his benefit or hers is unclear because it seemed that even if she'd sent him to school--placed him in an environment where he may or may not be teased--he lacked the ability to comprehend that people were making fun of him. It was debatable whether or not she'd spared him any great pain. She instead took it upon herself to teach him little things when she thought he'd understand. Things like basic colors and basic shapes and simple math. But he had difficulty with these. What he really liked were animals.

In the alley behind their little house, stray cats and kittens often showed up. The son would wait all day in this alley for an opportunity to snatch one up. On a good day, he snatched up two, maybe more. He brought them home and fed them and gave them names--often biblical names like Jonah or Ezekiel, which he pronounced "Kiel." Because he was unable to differentiate between sex, girl cats were often given male names. And boy cats were called Jezebel (the only girl name he ever used). Sometimes: he got it right--matching name to sex. But more often than not a Jezebel was called a Jonah or a Kiel was called a Jezzy.

stray knives to the imagination

I came up with a super-sad guitar riff last night. I sang over it for a while. But when I tried actual words: they just seemed cheesy.

I encounter this problem quite frequently: this inability to translate my sadness into actual words. Not that I'm sad all the time. I don't consider myself the "tortured" type. But I occasionally do feel an overwhelming sadness and it's frustrating because I can't pinpoint exactly why I feel sad. I just know that I'm sad.

I want to be able to make others feel the full force of this feeling. Not because I want to make people feel sad. I just feel it so profoundly and I feel like: if you feel something that profoundly, it should be expressed.

It's not enough for me to simply say: OK. I'm sad. And this is why. I feel like there's an underlying or a host of underlying reasons for why I feel the way I do. The trick is being able to identify these reasons and do something with them.

On a very fundamental level, I am amazed at how writers and artists and musicians are able to take such complex emotions like sadness or amusement (tragedy/comedy) and shape them into something that people not only enjoy but can feel, too. They're able to recreate these feelings by inspiring the same feelings in their audience primarily through developing relatable characters in relatable situations. But how do you make your audience buy it? Why is a film like the Room laughable when other films aren't?

I want to say it's honesty and that people can detect honesty. They know when something is false because it feels false. But I know that's not true because, even if it sucks, the Room is a very honest film. If I had to guess, I'd say Tommy Wiseau wrote it after a painful break-up--too much of it smacks of real life. Still: I am unable to truly feel for any of the characters. The only thing truly tragic about the Room (and I don't mean this to be snarky) is that you can tell Wiseau invested a lot of time and so much of himself into it. In that sense: it's the epitome of honesty. His heart is in it, in every scene. In every line of dialogue. He cast himself as the lead, I'm guessing, because he felt so attached to the character--he probably based the character on himself (in fact, this seems pretty obvious). But the execution is totally off--and that's why no one takes the movie seriously. That's why there are midnight showings now across the country where people gather in droves to mock the film and yell things at the screen and laugh at every tragically misguided detail. They can tell (it's part of the "joke") what Tommy Wiseau's intentions were: they can tell what emotions he was trying to convey--when a particular scene is supposed to be sad; when a particular line of dialogue is supposed to be visceral or cathartic ("You're tearing me apart, Lisa!") but there's something in the way the film reads that prevents the dramatic spell from ever being properly cast. The audience laughs because they know they're supposed to feel sad but they don't--a sort of nervous laughter. Not an enjoyable laughter, but a legitimate one because, like all good jokes, it thrives on first confusing the brain ("How do I react to this? Is this supposed to be this bad?") then providing relief once the viewer is able to determine that, "Yes--this really is this bad. I recognize what this scene is attempting to make me feel and I don't feel that way."

Oh well.

on my way to my car
a black man in neo-nazi apparel
stops me:
"you have to listen to this," he says.
he adjusts the volume knob on
his late-eighties boombox and turns it
so that it is facing me.
soft fuzz mixes with the soft voice
of a
national public radio newscaster
and it occurs to me that
ten years ago
i might have questioned why someone
would still be carrying around a boombox
vs. now where it is expected
even though it's meant to be ironic
and by definition
i shouldn't expect it
the newscaster runs through the same
stories i've heard a million times before:
an inspiring tale of survival against all odds;
the heroism of an American soldier, reunited at last
with his young wife and young son after
three years in a foreign country;
class warfare in a developing country
"so what?" i say.
"this is the pulse right here. this is the times we live in," he says.
at this point i consider either walking away
or making it known to the unironic man with the boombox
that i really don't care and that he's deluded if he thinks
any of this is new or exciting
but he beats me to the punch: he turns around and walks off
with his boombox as if my refusal to participate in his
excitement made the whole thing never happen.

She comes home late into a Sunday afternoon and is met by the static hum of the AC. Except for the AC, the house is deathly quiet. From room to room, nothing moves; nothing stirs. The late summer sun lurks outside but it must first pass--if it is to pass at all--through the beige filter of the 1970's style curtains, denying summer in every room. Still: soft light invades--just enough to illuminate the general outline of things.

"K, come down here and help with the groceries," she calls from the bottom of the stairs. She throws her keys down on the front stoop and goes back outside. She brings in a double-bagged gallon of milk and sets it by the keys. She returns next with a baby boy. Setting him down by the milk and keys, she calls once more to K.

"I mean it. Get down here and help me. I need help carrying in these groceries." There is no reply. No sudden movement in the house to indicate that he's heard her. By the time she carries in the last bags, she is ready to fight. She stamps upstairs and searches every room for K. "Did you really not hear me, K? You better not be pretending to sleep." She marches from room to room--first checking the usual spots where K can routinely be found passed out or reading a book or watching TV--finding anything to occupy his time but her. So lazy, she mutters to herself. I have never met anyone so lazy in my entire life.

Downstairs, nestled in a field of hulking plastic grocery bags, the baby boy begins to wail. "Oh, shoot," she says. She races downstairs. Sshh, it's ok. She holds the baby to her chest and they bounce in tandem.

"K, get down here and carry these groceries up. I carried them in. The least you can do is get down here and carry them up."

Upstairs, she looks over the mail that has been sitting on the kitchen table for the past week. Nothing new. But she already knows this. She flips through each envelope, re-familiarizing herself with the general look of each one. Mostly junk mail, but it helps her keep track and make sense of her world when she is able to review its ephemera.

She lays the baby down on the sofa and once again resumes her circuit of rooms she can reasonably expect to find K. Finding him in none of these rooms, she becomes agitated. She can feel herself begin to sweat. An angry sweat.

She goes downstairs and checks the garage. Maybe he went somewhere and she just didn't notice, in her singular mission to get the groceries out of her car as quickly as possible, that his car was missing. His mid-range compact car is still there. A breeze moves past her as she stands in the doorway. She becomes concerned.

i think it's entirely possible that schizophrenics are geniuses who lack the ability to articulate their complex genius thoughts. in fact: i think this is the main difference between a schizophrenic and an intellectual. schizophrenics are able to see the world differently than most people. they have a unique worldview that would baffle most people. but they don't know how to express what they see and how they interpret the world. they are bombarded by their own interpretations of the sensory world--the messages they receive from the external world which are then converted into messy internal sensations.

i know that saying crazy people are brilliant and that there's a fine line between genius and insanity is nothing new but i think the proverbial thin line separating the two might be language: the ability to express one's self.

does that mean intelligence can be measured by how well we're able to articulate ourselves?

maybe--it seems to be the main thing separating us from animals. not that animals can't express themselves--they can. but they don't have a coded language like we do. i think it may be our ability to manipulate this coded language to get what we want or relate to others that marks our intelligence.

i'm sure this has been well-researched and documented. there ar probably too many scholarly articles written on the subject. but i thought i'd jot it down for my own self-important reasons.

m

the quiet intermission of a sunday afternoon was interrupted by the sudden jolt of the front door opening. opening, in more ways than one, on the next scene in what had become a predictably suburban play. the action resumed when a short woman with excess fat compacted to her hips came in, yelling upstairs: "k, come help me with these groceries." the woman tossed her keys down on the stoop by the front door and went back out. she returned with a double-bagged gallon of milk. she always double-bagged the milk--to prevent it from sweating inside the trunk of her four year-old car which still smelled new. in her mind, she rehearsed this and other defenses to explain her actions to an aggregate ever-cynical and ever-questioning entity who was equal parts her father and past boyfriends. she'd been criticized so much in her character-building years, that she was naturally defensive. it'd become second-nature to her, with everything she did, to formulate and outline responses which she could then recall later should someone ask her to explain her actions. she eventually decided that this came with the territory of being a severely introverted personality.
there was an ongoing narrative inside her head which she found impossible to articulate to anyone, including herself. she'd tried myriad forms of self-expression to get it down--to get it out--but to no avail. it was too weird. too idiosyncratic and hard to put into universal logic. she tried keeping a journal: but reviewing some of the entries, she was horrified by how much it resembled the sort of neurotic tangents characteristic of paranoid schizophrenics. so: she thought up defenses: terse little excuses that she could rattle off easily. like a newscaster breaking news on a perpetual disaster, she tried to maintain an on-air face while her brain sent her constant updates.

notes

heavy hangs the head
that helen walks behind


helen it was you
it was you all along
helen it was you
always

to not to have
to not to not
to have to be

heavy hangs the head

i read an article today on the death of postmodernism
or:
the long-harbored wish to kill postmodernism

i read each word
every letter of every word
i made a conscious effort to do so
because i like to read things in their entirety
and it bothers me if i don't

i read the article without actually
reading it at all
true: i read every word
but i only glossed over the meaning of each word in my mind
so that
all i can say
with any degree of
certainty
or truth
without willfully deceiving myself
is that:
i read the article

i rejected terms like postmodernism
for being too vague and hard to define
for having been never properly defined by anyone

i rejected the author's theory that postmodernism
was a multi-faceted term and many-headed monster
he wasn't very clear in his definition and he didn't seem
very certain that he knew what he was talking about so
that
what i saw in my mind was a many-headed monster (true enough) flailing
its arms around too violently and too fast
to get a good look at it
a definition so chaotic that if you pointed a high-speed camera at it
you'd still end up with something resembling a
blurry polaroid

i rejected the author's laundered list of postmodernist trademarks:
metafiction, pop-culture self-reflexivity, the abolition of the traditonal narrative, the willful forgetting of modernism and everything preceding it
because all these things combined are too much for one person to remember
simultaneously

i rejected the author's unimpressive list of obscure postmodernist writers
because i only knew one name on the list and i felt like that was his fault

most of all: i felt like the article tried too hard to impress me
to convince me that the person writing the article was really super smart
which is why i reject postmodernism
and why i will never be able to understand why someone creatively-inclined
is more concerned with name-dropping and cramming their heads so full of critical trivia
that they have to drag it behind themselves everywhere they go
like an invalid brother or pet goldfish that you take for walks
not by walking it but loading it into a radio flyer and pulling it behind you
you say you're walking it but you're not
you just like the idea
you want so bad to be walking it
but you're not
and you're attracting attention to yourself
because you want that too

there's a point at which you no longer appear learned
or smart
a point at which i am no longer able to see you as an intellectual
or an academic
but a stuffy old man or woman in predictable attire
dragging a goldfish behind yourself because you want so bad
for it to look like something else

wip

he walked into the store wet with rain. going to the store was a chore enough--but the rain seemed to make his steps that much more sluggish. today, however, whether or not it was true, he felt unburdened by the rain--as if he'd passed through a light mist when the reality outside was more torrential.

he made his way to the greeting card section, behind which, he had a vague notion the flowers might be. he seemed to remember seeing them there--peripherally, in his memory--preserved in a line of freezers like tv dinners. even if they weren't there--if they were somewhere else--he knew he'd find them eventually. he was determined--uncharacteristically excited, like a kid trying to conceal a secret and at the same time wishing to tell someone--anyone who could read in his face the giddiness: that wonderful feeling of knowing something that others don't. he'd even ask someone, if it came to it. he knew what he wanted: a bouquet of roses. that's what she'd said, cynically (though it was lost on him) between heavy drags on her light cigarette: "sometimes, i just wish i could find a sappy romantic guy who will surprise me with (searching)--i don't know, a random bouquet of roses." he knew, when she said this, what he had to do. the trouble was remembering what each color stood for.

red, he thought--that was reserved for more serious expressions of love. that's the one husbands bought for wives on twentieth anniversaries. that's the one boyfriends bought for girlfriends along with expensive chocolates and expensive bottles of wine or champagne when they wanted to take things to "the next level" after one year together. he couldn't decide if red was an appropriate color for his situation.

mysteries of the easily-duped organism

did some research on reich. found out about:
orgone accumulators
and a host of other batshit insanse ideas which people who should know better (william s. burroughs, jd salinger) have championed and convinced themselves are legit.
basically: it works like this:
orgone is the sexual life-force that moves through every human and an accumulator, as you can imagine, is responsible for "accumulating" or cultivating that energy. if you collect enough of it: you ward off certain deadly diseases. and you can even predict the weather, apparently!
there are socio-political implications and associations, too--which i understand are attractive, but...
really?
the whole thing is a little too scientology-esque for my sake.

animal magnetism i can buy. an intangible sexual life-force: sure. i'll take that too. but an actual device that collects this energy?

yeah...

it's amazing what otherwise intelligent people will make themselves believe. same goes for scientology. i mean: beck is a scientologist. he made sea change. he can't be that dumb, right?

i'm just fascinated with this phenomenon where academics, intellectuals and people with a background in research--people with credentials--can basically come up with the same bullshit that your crazy uncle might come up with but as long as they've got the big words and big names to back up their theory, people lap it up.

i should write a song about this.

prime

they are seated next to each other--as far away as possible while still sharing the same couch. they are both on their laptops. he's looking at joke pages--inventories of memes, demotivational posters, internet in-jokes, etc. she is reading about mental illness--forums authored by transparently affected individuals lacking professional authority. they say things like: "well, in my experience" or they type long tangents which seem legitimate enough except for one or two common spelling or grammar errors--things like the proper form of "there/their/they're" or how "definitely" is spelled with an "a." the text stands, unedited, which makes her think it's more than just a simple oversight--if they wanted to go back and correct themselves they could. it's right there, for all the internet community to see. it's more likely however that they're unaware that they've made a mistake or they didn't care enough to go back and re-read what they posted. but, if this is the case, then why post at all? doesn't it take a fair amount of self-importance, of believing that what you have to say is either brilliant or profound, to feel compelled to post anything in the first place? these are all questions she asks herself without really asking herself directly--a crumpled piece of paper tied to a mental brick that moves quickly and freely through her brain, shattering nothing--no windows, no glass doors--it floats on eternally without interference. there are a million (probably more) such mental bricks floating through her head. at times they collide, like asteroids, when certain neural passageways intersect, when connections are made, analogies orchestrated--the result is explosive; electric--the proverbial spark--the shotgun-wedding of two previously estranged thoughts, concepts, ideas. she thinks for a minute, stares at him blankly--not really staring at him at all. he has no idea that she is doing this, which makes him appear even more aloof and stupid in her mind than previously, when it was just a fuzzy concept, a vague image inspiring uncontrollable anger--traces of her dad--the already low standard she measures every man against. they don't know it: but they are all doomed from the beginning--starting the semester with an F but, provided her repressed frustrations, the things which anger her but she does not voice (at least initially), believing themselves at a C-level--sometimes, when she is especially covert, an A.
"i'm concerned," she says. he looks up--looks at her, anticipating it: the ridiculous and random criticism. he wonders why when she says she's concerned it's always about him. he wonders if she's really concerned about anything else. "it's your use of the verb 'to be,'" she says. "yeah, what about it?" "don't." she turns away, proud of herself--in a way he can't stand. "what are you talking about?" he asks.
looking up first at the wall, as if glossing over some bulleted talking-points projected there, she then turns to him: "well, i've read about this thing--this new language, almost. this 'sub-language.' basically: by eliminating your use of the verb 'to be,' you're forced to examine your own perceptions. it eliminates a whole host of english-language fallacies. chief among them: asserting something as fact when it may just be your subjective impression."
his head sinks into the v-shaped awning of his hand. "ok--so you're saying i--."
"you have a tendency," she says, "to speak dogmatically, as if every feeling you get were the absolute and unbudging truth. frankly: i can't stand it."
"you realize," he says,"that this little new-age sub-language of yours is pretty much the same things as newspeak? and you realize, too, that that's not a good thing?"
"i don't appreciate your sarcasm. this is a very real and very serious issue and there's nothing orwellian about it. i'm trying to help you become a better person."
"oh, is it a very real issue? is it serious? are you really trying to make me become a better person?" here he sighs and imagines himself like his dad who is his male-standard, though he probably grades him at about a 'b.' "do you not realize how absurd this is? you're using the verb 'to be' right now? and what does it matter if i use the verb 'to be'? how is my use of the verb 'to be' preventing me from becoming a better person?"
"it just is," she says.
here, he laughs incredulously. "is it?"
tbcont

thoughts

finally got around to reading ecclesiastes today--the first chapter, anyhow. i've been meaning to read it for some time. thomas wolfe says it's the best thing ever written in human history. i like it because: it's philosophical--concerning man's ultimate existential crisis: what does anything really mean and what's the point of living?

the first chapter asserts that "there is nothing new under the sun"--everything that can be done has been done before. this is where hemingway got the phrase "the sun also rises." i, myself, have utilized this philosophy quite frequently in heavy-handed conversations about "the meaning of it all" with friends. it seems to always reach that point: what's the point, in the grand scheme of things? if i can't create something wholly original, or even semi-original, then what's the point? what new territory am i aiming to explore--to stake as my own? i put myself through a lot, mentally, but for what? i'm always trying to expand my perspective--or at least synthesize all the information i'm taking in into one simple yet reductive worldview--one that enables me to easily explain daily phenomena and observable human proclivities. so: maybe the answer is to stop seeking additional answers. to take what i know, the knowledge i have, and make the most of it--finally organize it into something characteristically me: an indelible (as much as that's possible) set of rules and mental routines, modes of reasoning, etc. that help me make sense of the world. the time for reading new books, discovering new thinkers and ideas, exposing myself, in short, to new "content" in general may be over--i've already exposed myself to so much. now i need to begin the process of organizing my findings--consciously vs. before where it was unconscious or subconscious committing certain principles to memory--shaping my own code of values and putting these ideas into practice. not that i haven't already done this. i've just, like i said, never gone about it intentionally. i'm defined by who i've read, what i've read, the content i like, the ideas and people i've encountered--but what is this if i can't organize it into one singular scheme--if i can't tell someone (say they ask) what i believe without citing a bunch of names. "er...um...i've read the works of hesse and...er...um."

i feel pegged as a person and maybe, to some extent, my identity has been shaped by the books, movies and music i like--it's so predictably me. i can listen to something, read something, watch something and within five seconds i already know if i'll like it--if it's something i should dismiss or keep. i've made a conscious effort to avoid this recently--trying to incorporate a wider more varied diet of everything, resisting the initial impulse to skip to the next track or station or book when i'm not immediately smitten (hoping to submerge myself in new experiences and ideas)--but i always come back to the things which scream my name--the things that are so predictably me. i wonder if i like these things because on some visceral level they represent who i am internally or if i've been conditioned to gravitate towards a certain sound, aesthetic, etc. this is how social groups, cliques are formed--but are they "formed" or is it written in their blood from birth: these people will become deviants, these people will get married, have children and a good job, these people will struggle to express themselves. i know which category i belong to (and there are more, obviously, than the three i listed) but i also recognize and feel like i intuitively "know" the other categories, as well. i can hear their voices, if i choose to hear their voices (not unlike picking up foreign stations across the world or the next state over), but i can never, no much how much training, become them--i can never take on their set of beliefs, their characteristics truly, without forcing myself to act against my "nature."

essentially: it's acting and i've always been able to do this: try on different personalities, different personas. but the odd thing is, no matter how well i am able to impersonate someone, i can't seem to locate that thing, that intangible quirk, that makes them them and me myself. it's like hearing a song in your head. hearing it so clearly--the singer's voice, the instrumentation, the rises and falls--but not being able to decipher any of the words. how is it possible to hear something and not hear an essential part of it at the same time?

anyway.

m

with his hands dangling grotesquely beyond his bony knees he scanned the tiny bathroom hoping to find a distraction: nothing that would occupy his mind longer than the time it took him to shit. first he settled on a pair of underwear (not his own--his girlfriend's) with blood-turned-brown stains along the crotch. seeing these, he realized how comfortable he'd become in this relationship--how intimacy was defined by seeing another person not at their worst, necessarily, but their most human. intimacy was a level you reached when you no longer pretended not to menstruate or shit--when biological functions no longer embarrassed you or, if they did, you no longer cared to hide it. that he'd reached this point with another person, made him happy. he was thankful that she'd grown so comfortable with him that she could admit: i am human, too.

to the left, in a little cabinet, he saw a four-roll package of toilet paper with a baby angel on the front. he wondered why and when it became acceptable for the makers of toilet paper to utilize blasphemy as a marketing strategy and why anyone would want to defile something allegedly "angelic" (and by extension: holy) with their feces.

id

over here and set to squares
the left side proves the right is there
i am up and who knows where
the night is wrong but no one cares

all returns to shades of gray
when you come back and i'm away
all returns to perfect form
see it now the picture's torn

eventual eventual
no one knows with certainty
eventual eventual
no one says with certainty

and will i get to you?
no
will i get to you?

see it mirrored and see it torn
the infinite in perfect form
set the lines that don't make sense
eventual eventual

i think my body is finally starting to adjust to not smoking anymore. and not just my body: but my head, too. periodically: i'll feel these warm waves of blood coursing through my neck up to the side and top areas of my brain (i guess it's my brain). i don't feel as edgy anymore, either. i feel clear-headed--able to think more creatively. it's somewhat overwhelming--experiencing all this at once. the past few days, i've been in bed most of the time, waking up only to go to work or hang out with kristen.

i don't know how this will affect my writing--or my creative output in general. hopefully: i'm able to tame my current thought process--which is just a whirlwind of scattered images and ideas.

i feel like i'm sort of picking up where i left off before i started smoking: in high school. i don't know if this is a good thing or not. i had an episode my junior year (right before i started smoking regularly--that is to say: before it had any noticeable affect on my thought process). i remember feeling really freaked out by my own thinking. i couldn't sleep because i couldn't feel what time of day it was. i knew what time of day it was, but i couldn't feel it. the world stopped making sense to me. it was something like whatever the mental equivalent to infinite regression would be: like seeing your thoughts mirrored eternally. reaching for the parameters within which to set this impossible image of infinite thought: i became temporarily insane--no longer able to function. i could respond to bullshit questions like HOW ARE YOU? and the like but a full sentence seemed too daunting. i eventually recovered by inventing a sort of script which i repeated to myself internally, wherein i consistently reminded myself that it was either morning or night and that my left was over here and my right over there. the whole thing reminds me of accounts i've read of bad acid trips. either way: i hope to never experience this again.

jkjk

in her small hatchback, with the stereo playing at a reasonable level, she is equally stricken with feelings of apprehension, nervousness and excitement. the sun filters through the car's windows as cigarette smoke fights to drive it away--whisper-thin strands straining to form clouds. she is smoking too much, too fast. but she can't relax. in her head: she sees herself taking long slow drags, then settling back into her seat--eyes closed as the smoke washes over her in spectral waves.

she's early. she knew she'd be early--that it would be a possibility, a very likely one at that--when she left her apartment an hour before the interview. it's a twenty minute drive downtown. twenty minutes: even on a bad day. when traffic stops moving and the busy city streets become five minute parking lots--each vehicle creeping up inch by inch in synchronicity--a robotic vehicular dance soundtracked to the day-to-day reality of motor vehicle congestion.

her father's voice won't stop repeating itself in her head. the image she associates with this voice: his white fibrous moustache, the smokey pall of a saturday or sunday when she was still a child, the murkiness of this mental photograph. "always show up early. no matter the occasion." his advice always seemed trite. still seemed trite. but it was never wrong. at times when she ignored this voice, times when she could hear her father's voice in her head, imparting situation-specific cliches but still chose to disregard them--those were the times she really kicked herself. when her father's face seemed to take on a new sort of told-you-so prudishness in her mind--she felt like a tragic figure in a moral fable, her dad: the all-knowing narrator smugly recapitulating the story's simple lesson.

this is my inheritance:
a worldview shaped by
the fantastical plotlines
of nineteen-nineties kids'
television programming

the misguided belief
that any and everything
is obtainable
is doable

that one day i can become
anything other than what i am
fated from birth to become

a doctor
the president of the united states
a lawyer
an actor
a famous musician
a writer

and none of these things are plausible
not for a middle class kid from a tiny suburb of
indianapolis

there is i believe a new york elite
there is i believe
but i know it's wrong to think this
an impregnable network of
old-money and jewish and destined
personalities
who become the things
that people like me
can never become

they're not confined to new york
they live on either coast
read the bio of any celebrity:
they are from one of two places
new york or california
there are exceptions but these are people
with connections

i don't want to be famous
it's the principle of the matter
i just want to be taken seriously
i don't like being lied to
i want to feel like
yes
any and everything really is within
my reach
that all the things my teachers told me
all the things the television told
that rock and roll magazines
and printed interviews
are true and that i can
i really can
become whatever i aspire to be
but i know
i know because i figured it out for myself
the hard way
that this simply is not true

i am who i am with the connections i have
the connections i was born with
the connections i inherited from my parents
and there is nothing that will change this
especially considering how
painfully shy and awkward and in-my-own-head
i am

i will never swim in social circles beyond the ones i know
i will never test alien waters
i will never see the black sea for myself
the dead sea
i only know it by what i see in pictures
what i read in books or online
i know that it's real because i've seen the photographic evidence
i've heard people talking about it
how it's so dense with salt that you can lie down prostrate and float on the surface
as you would any
hard surface
i can almost feel it: my body fighting against the tar-like sludge
but i will never see it
i will never know it in real life
just like i will never know the things truly that i
see on tv
that i've seen on tv
that i continue to see on tv
the things i read about in books
in fluffy prose: the life romantic
things i read about in rock and roll interviews and
rock and roll journalistic pieces about rock and roll
i will never see firsthand a hotel room destroyed
a promising guitarist who people call an artist
destroyed by drugs and sex
but i can feel it
like the black sea
and i'm already floating on top of its dense surface
so hard
it feels like the ground

revise

outside one of three area starbucks: two men with glaringly biblical first names (luke and john) have just sat down with their post-workout sugary coffee drinks. the drinks are loaded with not just sugar but an ungodly amount of calories--enough to reverse any good their workout may have done. the two men are cleanly spotted with sweat stains resembling crude land masses drawn by ancient cartographers--land masses that never existed except in the minds of the ancient cartographers who drew them and believed in their existence. both men have preternaturally perfect haircuts. as if eternally protected by a helmeted forcefield: their hair is unfazed by any sort of movement--any of the normal day-to-day stuff responsible for messing up the hair of so many others. though they are sweaty: they wear their sweat like an accessory, so matter-of-factly as to seem natural--totally innocuous and not at all offensive.

luke (the one with the dark hair) reaches into his gym bag and pulls out a store-bought plastic crown lined with plastic jewels. the crown is a gift for their friend tom who has recently taken to calling himself "the lord of lords and the king of kings."

"wait'll he sees this!" he says.

"yeah," john replies, "and check this out." here: john reaches into his gym bag and pulls out a sash with the words "lord of lords" printed on it.

a few weeks ago at a neighborhood cocktail party tom created a big to-to when through the mess of conservatively-behaved and conservatively-dressed party guests he found his way to the kitchen table in the middle of the throng and climbed up and announced that he was "the lord of lords and the kng of kings" and that, from now on, he'd like to be addressed as such. his wife (poor sharon) stood petrified by the dessert table in the corner as a few men, thinking quickly, dragged tom down from the table. "let's get some air, tom. what do you say?" they said, directing him to the front door. "there is nothing wrong with me," tom said, following the men outside as they clutched tom's arms. "you've had too much to drink, tom." they said. "come on. some air will you do you good." tom protested: "but i haven't had anything to drink. nothing at all. i don't understand why you're doing this. there's really no need. i said i'm the 'king of kings, the lord of lords' and i meant it. i am."

the next day, john phoned sharon, hoping to learn from her what had caused tom to act out the night before--thinking maybe tom had just had a bad day (something job-related, family-related, who knew?) and foreseeing the endpoint in their conversation--that moment of relief when sharon told him that tom was fine now and would he like to talk to him? no, that's ok. i'm just glad he's not crazy or something--that it's nothing serious. and he could hang up and then it would be something they could laugh about for the next three months--maybe make allusions to in christmas cards or gag e-mails but this moment never came. sharon said that tom was still claiming to be the king of kings, et. al. and that he'd stopped going to work, stopped doing anything, thinking it not fit for the king of kings to have to do anything but simply be. "that's terrible," john said. "i'll see if i can't talk some sense into him." sharon was crying. "it's just--so absurd. for a forty year-old man to be acting like this. i wonder if he hasn't had a stroke or something. they say you can have them and not even know it. i don't know if i should call a doctor or--i'd hate to call his mother. it would be so embarrassing for him once he finally snapped out of this. i'd hate for his family to think he was crazy." "don't worry. i'll take care of it," john said.

addition by subtraction

i'll take away and
you carry stones
the seventh remains
intact to the bone

while men with eyes that
burn through my chest
tell me they've put this
life to the test

sway me with fire that
cannot be forced
burn all the liars that
feel no remorse

i'm acting out i guess
you're taking cues
lines that i've rehearsed
and needing proof

i tell myself
love comes ordinary
love comes around
you're better off
without

improve

they're sitting at an outside patio table at the neighborhood starbucks. by their feet are two, almost identical, gym bags. both bags are black. though bunched, you can see through the creases that one bag bears the nike insignia while the other bears the reebok insignia.

mark is the cleaner looking of the two. there is no visible sweat-ring around the neckline of his shirt nor anywhere else. rob is marked by tiny land masses of sweat in three places: under each armpit and along his neckline, which are made even more apparent against the light blue of his shirt.

they are waiting on a third party: their friend, tom, who has recently taken to calling himself "lord of lord and king of kings."

in each of their gym bags is a gag gift for their friend. in mark's is a sash. in rob's: a crown. not a crown of thorns. but a plastic crown with plastic jewels made to look like a monarch's. the crown is a toy marketed specifically to children, so they can play pretend to be queens and kings: which is why rob is so delighted to give the gift to tom. because, in one way or another, this is exactly what tom is doing: play-pretending like a child.

tom is apparently pretty serious about this king of king business. when he first requested that mark and rob address him by this title (it was at a block party hosted by gary, who was impossibly friendly but intolerable as anything but a neighbor and therefore never got invited to either play racquetball or drink sugary drinks at starbucks), they assumed he was joking--how some men call themselves "gods" when referring to their make-believe sex-skills because they don't really mean it and it's funny to be so immodest, but what they didn't immediately understand was that tom was being completely serious. he really wanted to be called the lord of lords, etc.

rob, the cynic, of course, believes this to be some sort of attention-seeking stunt. he thinks his gift is just what tom needs to realize: hey, the joke's old. it's no longer funny. he hopes that the crown will bring tom back to their former reality--sort of a passive-aggresive attempt at communicating to tom that, ok, we get the joke but this crown reflects how ridiculous this is. but he's not sure it will work. and mark doesn't care what the motivation is--he just thinks it's funny.

ken

nork looked up, shifting his attention away from the screen. he saw a spectral beam of projected light pulled taut over his head--the same ghostly line of light he'd seen a thousand times before. it seemed miraculous to him: that a bundle of airy cords like muted rays of sunshine filtered through a primitive black and white camera lens could carry so much information--that this light was responsible for the images he saw moving in rapid succession on the screen. actors mimicking emotions, talking like people, acting like people--the semblance of real-life pieced together frame-by-frame. the process seemed godly to nork, as if god himself had parted the darkness in the small auditorium like parting clouds in cartoons depicting god parting clouds and made all this manifest--divine darts of light updated to moving image projections--a ballet of dust particles and chiaroscuro spaces--light and dark, black and white, twirling in synchronicity--orchestrated to the rhythm of celluloid feeding into a projector.

ranty rantsicles

I did some research on the health benefits of e-cigarettes this evening. While I didn't learn anything I didn't already know (that e-cigs are a safer alternative to tobacco cigarettes--that using them cuts tobacco-related cancer risks almost entirely), I was distressed to find out that the FDA and certain anti-smoking crusaders are currently working on getting them banned. Already, in New Jersey, they've passed legislation that prohibits their use in public because "they look like the real thing." Not because they are the real thing. Not because they carry the same risks as the real thing. But because...well, they just look like the real thing. And if it walks like a duck....

I don't understand why so many people are passionate about trying to ban e-cigarettes. Even the FDA. The way I see it (the way any sensible person should see it): e-cigarettes offer an alternative to smoking that can't be matched. The WHO has determined that they are safer than pre-existing smokeless tobacco and smoking cessation devices. So: what happens when a smoker who's switched to e-cigarettes can no longer purchase e-cigarette products under this prospective ban? Is it better that he pick up the habit again--expose himself to the same risks as before, the same risks that he curbed by switching to e-cigs?

It boggles my mind. Groups like the FDA are supposed to be looking out for the health interests of the American Public. And using e-cigs in lieu of tobacco products is something I'd expect the FDA to endorse rather than try to do away with altogether.

There's no reason why e-cigs should be banned. They contain nicotine, which by itself is harmless, or just as harmless as caffeine, and propelyne glycol--the same base they use in nebulizers and inhalers. Nicotine is also found in some vegetables. I understand the argument that it may appeal to minors but there's no reason why an adult can't enjoy them. It's not my fault that kids are impressionable. And I doubt that a kid roped in by the "novelty" of smoking an e-cig is going to transition to real cigarettes: especially not if they're smoking e-cigs because they're (omg!) chocolate flavored.

Bottom line: e-cigs have the potential to save lives. I've been a smoker since I was sixteen. I recently switched to e-cigs and I'll probably live longer because of it.

E-cigs should be promoted--their benefits championed. Not discouraged.

just to get it down

the protesters are assembled outside the courthouse. they are assembled peacefully. at least this is how they look in photographs and video footage which misrepresent them for those unable or unwilling to protest. this is how they will be misrepresented forever--except in verbal accounts and retellings of the protest, which many will disregard for not being as reliable a document as a photograph. the truth is: they are a disorganized inventory of stock personalities, all united, at least bodily, by their presence at the courthouse on this particular day at this particular moment. irate dads with acceptable facial hair sport signs touting polically conservative slogans and catchphrases. they are dressed in golf polos which sport the isignia of their favorite football team (which just so happens to uniformly be the local football team). occupying the same general space are sexless moms with bad haircuts shouting things aggressively. the things they are shouting get drowned out easily by the things the dads and other men are not shouting aggressively but shouting all the same. young hippies and old new-agers pass through the scattered clusters of protesters lazily. some decide to sit. they sit on blankets. they sit on quilts, beach towels. some are shirtless--male and female both. though the women wear bikini tops and the men exhibit pefect medical textbook illustration bodies and nipples which are too youthfully round and too youthfully red-plum colored to suggest that they are true hippies--that they don't spend hours in the gym instead of reading Ginsburg's lesser known works or Hesse's Siddhartha. in this carnival of archetypes--the grotesque amusement park line of stereotypes--Martha Goodnight is trying to convince herself to hold up the shoddy sign that she's brought with her from home. the sign says something unoriginal--a borrowed phrase from television: the 24 hour news network she watches exclusively. the one with the conservative slant. she didn't start watching it until she met her husband--and even then, it took years before she realized that he'd been a habitual viewer--or a loyal one. she just assumed that he was watching "the news." after the divorce: she continued watching it, though now paying more attention. she no longer passively listened to the day to day stories and tuned out anything political which she could not understand or chose not to understand because it was too hard to understand, not being properly versed in the language. like some women watch daytime soaps or some men watch their favorite sports teams, she watched this particular news network fanatically. some of the terms were lost on her--mostly financial terms but some political. her understanding of the government was crude at best. but she liked that the talking heads at this network were so passionate about what they said--it was like church. or church as she rememberd: the fiery baptist preacher condemning lazy sinners to eternity in the fires of hell.

self

i really don't know how to deal with this. on the one hand: i feel like it's actually happening--that i've lost my ability to write. it's forced me to become incredibly self-conscious--incredibly self-critical. i can hardly muster even two words before thinking: is this how i would have phrased this before?
on the other hand: i know this is ridiculous. i haven't lost my ability to write. i'm writing now. i've written things since the incident. of course: they've come out somewhat muddled, but that's not because i've lost "it." it's because i've started to consciously examine what it was that defined me as a "writer"--and that's death in any artistic endeavor. the butterfly attempts to understand why it flies, how it flies, dissects the mechanics of what comes naturally to all butterflies: flight--it doesn't lose the ability to fly. but it's no longer natural. it flutters around awkwardly, attempting a false imitation of itself. this is essentially my dilemma. when things like this occur: i forget, i forfeit (unwillingly) all the progress i've made in defining myself--the process is no longer natural. i start to believe i was smarter, more able, more clever at whatever it is and so i aim to match this distorted self-image. and i know it's distorted. so why can't i simply tell myself this--convince myself that nothing's changed; that i'm worrying over nothing; that it's my own anxieties that are causing me to delude myself?
my worst fear is losing the ability to express myself. without this ability: i have no reason to live. my mind seems hellbent on destroying this for me. of eradicating all that is essentially me: all that i self-identify with. why? why is it that if you fear something, it inevitably happens--like being conscious of it makes it real?

k

I finally watched "Daisies"--one of the first and defining films of the Czech New Wave. While it wasn't as coherent as I would have liked, I think the overarching message was clear enough to make the film enjoyable. It seemed like the film couldn't decide what it wanted to be: a visual arthouse inventory of manic beauty or a political film with broader philosophical implications: that the hedonistic life is ultimately an empty one--even if that sort of selfish pleasure-seeking existence is the only justifiable way of living, supposing "nothing matters." Some of the shots were pretty for the sake of being pretty with no discernible meaning, which I guess sort of dovetails nicely with the nihilistic undertone. But I had trouble making heads or tails of a lot of it. Some of the symbols were obvious: the scissor-cutting of various phallus-shaped meats, the knife-gutting of the watermelon slices (a metaphorical stand-in I think for the "feminine fruit"). Others: not so much. I feel like I missed out on a lot because I'm not from Czechoslovakia and I am not familiar enough with Czech culture and symbolism. Regardless....I did really like the film.


I also watched the new Office which seems to just get worse and worse. The characters have all become dumber and the show has devolved into stock sitcom gags/slapstick goofiness. I think the show ceased to be compelling when Jim and Pam finally got together. I think the writers sort of relied on the Jim/Pam will they?/won't they? dramatic tension to propel the series along--sort of a cop-out to not have to think up any dramatic plots. Now that they're together, the series has drifted away from the mundane workaday drudgery-based humor to something more like a soap opera. Every episode: it's some big crisis. Michael's leaving. Pam is pregnant. Jan is pregnant. Etc. Etc. Which totally takes away from what made the show brilliant in the first three or four seasons: when episodes revolved around very low-key storylines where nothing much happens. The focus wasn't on the drama, then. The writers had room to make jokes because they weren't so focused on resolving ten colossal plots by the next episode.

Whatever.

new wave

manically criss-crossing the room along mappable coordinates and planes, he took apart every fixture, pulled every book down from its place along the wall or solitary bookshelf which could not contain their vast collection and in piles that defied ostensible logic, stacked them in scattered configurations around the room. the one dim light source in the room--a muted yellow bulb nakedly topping a porcelain lamps circa the nineteen-seventies--illuminated by way of omission, bringing out stark black shadows and messy outlines of stacked objects, the shapeless fruit of Nork's labor--spiraling towers and jagged-edged monuments of things, physical culture. once a month but sometimes only once every two months, if he could fight it, Nork performed this ritual: like a human garbage disposal or mad knife-wielding psychopath, taking apart his small one-room studio apartment, mutiliating its insides and then assembling it back together in a new order that made sense internally, to Nork, so that he was never finished until he could feel it in his bones--until it felt right and was comforting enough to look at. he never knew at the start of this process what he intended the apartment to look like once he was finished. he intended nothing except that it look different than before. sometimes: it took weeks--back and forth with trying to decide, finally, how to position or where to re-hang a single picture. other times: it took only one night and he didn't sleep. he went into work the next day, heavy-eyed and still fretting over the placement of a visible cord or a better location for the bed. he never knew what initiated the ritual but he knew that it had to happen--that it would happen and that nothing would be right in his world until the task had been carried out--the issue resolved.
one night: a girl was over. she was lying in his bed, Nork's semen spilling out of her vagina like an embarrassing grandparent. Nork didn't know why it embarrassed him. but it did: as if it were irrefutable evidence that he was still human despite his routines and rituals--still a creature affected by carnal impulses. the semen was evidence that Nork had lost the game he played of pretending to be anything but a sexual creature. it was evidence that something so silly as a naked body had caused him to ejaculate--and not a naked body, alone, but the physical sensation of genitals passing through genitals--his semen made him shameful of his maleness--that he'd needed an erection (which he considered embarrassing by itself) to produce this substance and that the girl wearing it, now with it running down her leg, less concentrated and looking more like benign tears, had no idea how he felt.

seventh

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a conservative. Nor do I, like so many other left-leaning individuals, hate Obama. I actually think he's done a decent job thus far, considering the opposition he's met at every turn from the latently racist/openly stubborn GOP who seem hellbent on rejecting anything the President or Democrats propose simply because it was proposed by the President or Democrats. I do, however, find the President's usage of the term "folks" a little suspect--almost too deliberate. I imagine this choice of nomenclature was a calculated political move--a conscious decision--to appeal to the everyman. Still: every time I hear the President use it, it sounds so unnatural--so false.

Whatever.

I had another flare-up recently. This time involving my knack for writing. I'm noticing a trend, here. I mean: I've always noticed it--the cyclical nature, the glaring consistencies. Every three months or so I am no longer able to ignore these anxieties. They all involve some personal self-defining quality of mine being compromised or wiped out completely. The internal head-logic goes something like this:
"if this happens, then you will lose this valued trait," whether it's my ability to write or draw or talk or what-have-you--they are all things I use to define myself; things without which I would cease to be "me" as I believe myself to be. I live in constant fear of losing my essential defining characteristics.
I know it's completely ridiculous--some sort of magical thinking. But it's tied up so intimately with my religious convictions--my fear of God punishing me for what I know is wrong. The same twisted causal logic that drove God to flood the earth. I am unable to enjoy anything--any of my talents because I feel like they are not mine--not for long. Inevitably: I will do something, commit some great sin, and depending on the "deal" I make in my head, lose some very important quality. It's not that I lack self-esteem. I'm aware of all my greatest attributes: I just have trouble feeling proud of myself because I don't feel like they are mine for long.
It's all very heady and difficult to explain. Some days, these compulsive "deals" which stream through my brain endlessly--an ongoing conversation I have with myself and my conception of God and the Devil--are easier to shrug off. Other days, the fear is crippling until it all culminates in one unshakable incident which takes weeks to recover from--if I recover at all. I mope around, lamenting my perceived loss. I can feel that nothing has changed but I can also feel how maybe it has. I convince myself that it has--even if I know it hasn't. I think I'm just a natural pessimist. I have to consider every worst possibility--to the point that it's unhealthy. I not only consider every worst possibility--I make myself believe it. The pills help. They help tremendously. I just wish I didn't have to worry about this stuff. I want to live a normal life. I'm tired of headaches everyday--bed-confining migraines. I'm tired of feeling like a weirdo. I'm tired of it interfering with how I talk to people, how I perceive myself. But I know, ironically, that it's who I am--even if who I am is exactly what it seems determined to destroy.

How the fuck do I explain this to anyone? I get blank stares, even, when I try to tell my psychiatrist. They throw around accepted terms that sort of describe what I'm feeling but also ignore so much else--clinical generalizations. Neatly objective terms that alienate me from the professionals--terms defined through observation, subjects, case studies--and not personal experience.

Hopefully: this passes soon.

bullshit

Before anyone knew that he played guitar: Johnny Licks was the poor kid from the trailer park with the funny last name. Now that he'd become somewhat of a local virtuoso, having mastered "Eruption," they said, after one listen (though there were many child skeptics and naysayers who called bullshit on this one), his name took on a folk-hero type quality: not unlike Johnny Appleseed. Suddenly kids were claiming with the authority of television sports commentators that he was fated all along to play guitar. "I mean, just look at his last name. Licks? How did we not see it coming?" they said.
His legend was the stuff of high school mythology: when kids you knew your entire life (or at least for the time you'd been in school) underwent unusual and sudden transfigurations, instantly relegated to celebrity status and often for the most mundane reasons. Of course: the flip-side to this was that the transfiguration process worked both ways. Kids who were formerly celebrated for one thing or another, lost favor with their peers and just as easily sank into obscurity.
Clive Hamburg belonged to this unlucky group. In former grades: he was known as "the Iceburg," a generous corruption of his surname (considering the easier corruptions they could have come up with) and also because of his cold aggression on the football field. Rarely did the Iceburg talk, not even to his fellow football buddies. They tried for a time calling him "the Burger," thinking it a playfully offensive enough pet name to get the Iceburg to break his frosty silence but they eventually retired this name after too many icy stares of indifference and general non-amusement.
By the time Clive reached high school, all his football peers had outgrown him. No longer the biggest kid on the field, he was now the smallest kid in class--though still hulking with craggy muscle and a turdy personality (there really was no better way to describe it). His appearance was comical: all that people-repelling turdiness and raw muscle compacted, compressed wide as if flattened like a grease-goldened cheeseburger, which, sadly, is exactly what kids started calling him after his child football star had faded forever with no hope of ever lighting up the Nicetown School Athletics Program again. Too small to be a lineman and too short to play linebacker (his former position), Clive gave up football altogether.
He wore the face of an angry Indian stereotype but like the Sad Clown stereotype he suffered internally. And like most kids who suffered internally: Clive or "the Cheeseburger," as he was now called, decided to pick up an instrument: as a means to transpose his sadness into the tangible world. He played bass because he liked its chunkiness: that thick dumb sound which he felt like words he could not find or form in his brain--a phlegmatic sentiment eternally clogging up the back of his throat. Playing bass was a means of eliminating this throat-scratching wad of feeling--giving it back to the air or to the elements or to God, whatever cruel force had robbed him of his one true passion: youth football. Without football, Clive was useless. But the bass distracted him from this sad truth which most athletes must confront at some point in their lives: that the window of opportunity for an athlete is relatively short and that very few make a career out of it. It was fortunate for Clive that he discovered this truth earlier than his peers: the same guys who, when they were younger, called him the Iceburg, tentatively extending an invitation to Clive to be a valued member in their elite squad, though, tragically, Clive had no idea at the time that this is what they meant to express by this gesture. He was fortunate, he thought, that he never allowed himself to get too comfortable in that friend circle--to get too close to any of those guys. The pain would be that much more intense: watching them week in and week out every football season for the four years that he was in high school celebrated by teachers and principals, local parents and outsider kids wanting in and not being able to participate because of his size.
Once a week, Clive was driven by his dad to the local music shop where he was given an hour-long guitar lesson from Dave P., Senior Guitar Tech and frizzy-haired eighties scenester burnout. Clive's interest were in alternative rock bands from the nineties. Dave P. preferred face-melting bass solos and jazz fusion funk-punk (his hero was Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Every week Clive was allowed to pick one song for Dave P. to listen to (the following week) and teach him. At first, Clive suggested songs he actually liked--songs he actually cared to learn. Radio hits by Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains and Soundgarden. But he could tell Dave P. wasn't having any fun with this so he tried to pick songs he and Dave P. both liked--or: songs he assumed Dave P. liked, which translated to a lot of songs by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band Clive was only mildly interested in though he did find it enjoyable to see Dave P.'s childlike enthusiasm when telling Clive all the trivia he knew (and he knew a lot) about a particular Chili Peppers' song--the way he sometimes ran sentences together--multiple thoughts converging in a solitary voicebox output so that what came out was static nonsense--scattered ideas, half-finished sentences, like watching someone quickly flip through a book page by page and only catching stray sentences which, when put together, formed a murky theme but nothing close to coherency--it was a wonder Dave P.'s voice didn't explode.