2016

It’s 2016 January 1, 2016 I remember when you were born. I saw you when you came out. I held you first. It’s weird how the act can be selfish and selfless. At that moment it wasn’t me anymore. Int my worst moments it was us. Usually it was you. I used to break the speed limit to come home and watch you sleep. and I almost put a hole in the wall the first time you smiled on purpose. Love is such a weird thing. It’s invisible like air, but palpable and more than steel. My girl, my girl. I’m pretty sure you don’t think of yourself as a girl. I didn’t think of myself as a boy when I was your age. I was never a boy. You are a bright shining light and the new year is a metaphor in your wake. You are proof that goodness sometimes comes from badness and my only wish for you is that you shake the me from you. I love you.

Comfort January 1, 2016 The things that begin my comfort may have seemed ridiculous not many years ago. People make fun of me because I wear sweatshirts in the tropics. I like the way my arms feel when they’re warm, even when the rest of me is hot. You get spoiled in temperate climates. I try to explain to people that 83 degree isn’t hot. The last year I was in Austin it was more than one hundred for sixty days in a row. For the last ten it was more then one hundred the. The last two days it was one hundred fifteen. Texas isn’t a Vegas hot. It’s not Phoenix. It’s not dy. The Gulf of Mexico always wants to butter you. And in August your only response is to be a wet candle. On fire smoldering. There is not “The Year Without a Summer” there. There is a summer every year. And sometimes it punches a hole in the paper in January. It can always be 100 degrees. My favorite headline ever in the Fort Worth paper online was, and it was 86 degree at the time. The National Weather Service, or what ever it was, issued a winter storm warning. And they were correct. By six it was eighteen degrees. Texas weather is a perfect metaphor. South Dakota changes even more. But when you’re in Texas, you rarely think about South Dakota.

Mauna January 1, 2016 The mountains here are green and long. They slope. The are a product of magma running to the sea. There were explosions and there was violence, but it wasn’t the norm. The liquid earth wanted to settle. So different from us. So different from me. Explosions come naturally. Explosions feel right until you look around.

A lot of things feel natural. A lot of things feel pretty. More things are ugly. I rub my jeans and grunt and that doesn’t change anything. I don’t like what I’ve done but I like who I am.

Blood is red because it’s rusted. It smells like iron and when it coagulates it bunches. There should be other things that happen to your body when it’s hurt. Tears maybe would feel more correct.

All this blood, I’m starting to drown.

What I was January 1, 2016 I was a punk. And not in a good way. Punk when used correctly is a compliment, maybe the only one, that means less that nothing. If I say you’re punk, you are perfect in that moment. I have eleven tattoos. They are all under my shirt. If I could have one bigger, there are maybe two. One says, Byrd, because I loved here before her last name was something else. And I catch shit and I don’t care. I loved her and dying with her name on me is not a shame.

The other one says punk, scribbled across my neck. I was never punk like you’re supposed to look. You would have thought I was Republican. I invited Reagan to my graduation. I liked the idea of power and I was wrong. Everything I try is an attempt to make things smaller. I am big. I explode like a mother fucker in the face of the word no. There are realities. I know to punch you in the solar plexus and to ignore your face. I’m very stupid, but I’m a lot smarter than I look.

What I was January 1, 2016 I was a punk. And not in a good way. Punk when used correctly is a compliment, maybe the only one, that means less that nothing. If I say you’re punk, you are perfect in that moment. I have eleven tattoos. They are all under my shirt. If I could have one bigger, there are maybe two. One says Byrd because I loved here before her last name was something else. And I catch shit and I don’t care. I loved Meredith Byrd and dying with her name on me is not a shame.

The other one says punk, scribbled across my neck. I was never punk like you’re supposed to look. You would have thought I was Republican. I invited Reagan to my graduation. I liked the idea of power and I was wrong. Everything I try is an attempt to make things smaller. I am big. I explode like a mother fucker in the face of the word no. There are realities. I know to punch you in the solar plexus and to ignore your face. I’m very stupid, but I’m a lot smarter than I look.

Ha January 1, 2016 Things that people laugh at make me laugh. I think guffaw is a better word. I don’t mean to be disgusted. I don’t mean to be guttural. I like to laugh. These angry ones hurt me too. I was on the bus the other day and I smile at a woman. I meant it. I’m so often laughing ironically. I so often repeat words so I might choke on them.

I like music. I like painted pictures of smiles, even when they’re not quite correct. I like it when a two-year old doesn’t say the word correctly. I think it’s cute.

I am everything precious and I am a monster simultaneous. I am so loving and I am so hurtful.

I hurt the people I love. Don’t get too close. Don’t blink. I won’t steal from you or you hurt physically. But I will cut your fucking throat if I see a way out. It’s what it is. And it is. My miserability and I invented that word so fuck you; it is.

Am, are, was is. When you learn a language, the first is to be. It’s weird at first for someone discerning. You know before too many sentences. Everything has to be. See or star in the only language I sorta know other than the one that was put on me. I got to know this one pretty well.

Dresses January 2, 2016 Sunlight. It fills my room. But it can never be the moon of you.

I’m pretty sure that other people feel this feelings. I’m pretty sure I feel them differently.

When I look at you I vibrate. Your yellow hair and pink lips don’t seem normal to me. They shine and shine and shine.

I’m silly and barely a monkey. The way you make me feel draws me by the short hairs into knowing.

Sometimes I don’t want to know.

Numbs sometimes feels good in your reflection. Sometimes it hurts to look.

Age January 3, 2016 I’m older. Hair grows faster on my face. I think about my daughter as she’ll be woman and not a girl. She’s always going to be a girl. She can barely stand without holding my hands, right?.

I love her like I don’t understand love. I understand wanting to fuck you. That’s pretty easy. I never want to stop wanting that. But it changes. I notice your tone of voice. I like the way you down to the left. I suppose you’re the same thing I wanted my dick inside, now. It’s not the same. The words you say. The expression on your face. Believe it or not I notice when your lip curls down. So stupid Im such a fool. You have to live what is.

Telling January 3, 2016 I had to tell a friend. Is it me? Of course he fucked her. That’s what adults do. They like each other and then they fuck. Their fucking wasn’t in your interest, but it happened. You know it happened. I know it happened. Things like this are almost too easy to predict.

The rest is a loss January 3, 2016 It’s a number in the loss column. I lose a lot. I topped keeping score because I lost a lot. Facts are just words, and if you repeat them enough times lose their meaning. Lunch is just a meal and I’ll be hungry tomorrow. The thing about lunch is you can miss it. It hurts for a second, but it goes away. Pain is a brief reminder.

Beard January 3, 2016 gladI have hair on my face. When I look it’s not me. The curve of my jaw I know. It’s a different person that one in the mirror. I ate a pastrami sandwich today. Until a few years ago I hated pastrami. So I glad I’m not me anymore. I’m not the me I was and question always whether I’m the me I am. Questions are a difficult game. Your default answer should be, “No.” I say yes to so many things. That dress, that smile. Of course, I’ll say yes. How could I say no to that?.

Titles January 3, 2016 It’s easy to write. Writing is easy. Playing the guitar well is hard. Singing can be hard. I learned when I was eight how to hit the right note. I remember the song. The Rainbow Connection. Not the Muppet version.

The corners are insistent. They remove themselves the bed. I suppose you’re supposed to care. I care when all four infuriate me. Otherwise, I ignore them. I wouldn’t care if I didn’t think disturbing things. How are they going to find the body? It’s why I shower and brush my teeth. The corpse has to be presentable.

Breath January 3, 2016 Take a breath. Breathe. Do it slowly. Holy shit. This life is work. I don’t want to do the things I do. I certainly don’t want to do the things I’ve done. If I could put my head down. If I could make my mind stop. Spinning and spinning and turning and turning and laughing and crying. I don’t care anymore. You can do what you want. Pain hurts for such a moment, I’m not scared of feeling it. Like everything else it goes away. I used to love myself, then I hated myself. It took too much energy to do either. I’m indifferent now. I could take me or leave me.

Why January 3, 2016 His name was Franz.

Why would I know that? What’s the purpose of knowing that? He shares his name with a cool band, but I knew it before that.

I love the song Jacqueline. I wish there was a her. Someone strong and smart and shaking off shrugs. There was a girl and she was close. I guess I was further from the idea of good.

Life is that way. It scares me. I look at people that are not much older than me and there is a degeneration. Then I think about stupid questions, like “Am I happy?”

Is anyone happy? Does anyone get to be happy? I’m certainly not.

Numbers January 4, 2016 You can figure it out for yourself. Numbers add up. 1 and 1 is usually 2. I thought something and so it was.

I dreamed my grandmother had pancreatic cancer. And then I had it. She’s been dead for 29 years. What year will it be when I’ve been dead for 29 years? Will my daughter be sad? Have I done the right thing so she might be.

I’m listening to Foreigner. I used to think they were good. Totally overrated.

Jukebox hero has a nice story line. I remember wishing I was that boy. Every boy wants to be bigger than they are. It’s why I also like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. I do like them un-ironically.

Here’s the thing. I just put on a sweater. My face is numb and it shouldn’t be. I just ate way more peppermint bark than a person should, and I’m lucky that someone loves me enough to send me peppermint bark.

I have money to give a friend because she needed it.

I used to worry about the idea of being dead. Nothingness seems like a problem. Until you want it.

Questions January 4, 2016 It’s a difficult proposition to be smart and scared. I think the two come together. I’m not even interested in knowing the answer.

I wish I was wrong. Do you know how rare it is for me to be wrong? It doesn’t happen much.

I want to be wrong. I want to hate myself.

Things happen. Then things end. The sun is going to come up for more than a billion years. You won’t.

Anger January 4, 2016 When I say I love you I know it makes you mad. You reap what you sow. I hurt you and I’m a cow.

There was a time when everything I said was lie.

I lie less now.

I listen to Rage Against the Machine and bristle. They were smarter than me. Anger mattered. It’s weird when you notice, I’m pretty small in every way that matters.

Believe it? January 7, 2016 There is almost nothing that surprises me. My right foot is swollen and scaled a like homeless person with edema. My body breeches the idea of calm. I had to talk myself home for the last three nights. I had to talk myself into leaving where I live. And then it was sleep on the sidewalk or find a way. I did. You know this because I’m typing. My head made pressure that I don’t think was normal. And ideas rolled like I was high and I was sober. I’m really too young to die. Three nights ago I said in my mind, ” I’m going to smash my kidneys tonight.”

They’re not immediate. But you don’t smash almost anything without repercussions.

This one is true January 8, 2016 It has to be you. And makes a small part of me happy. You can’t love somebody like we did and stop. You can tell your mind to stop remembering first cases or places that first things happen. You can tell all your mind to stop what it feels like being under you. You will be always better. And I will always know that is me that broke everything. That sucks. I wish I was different. I’m ruled by a kind of passion that can’t be said no to sometimes. You’re not like that. I should have been better with your heart.

For the final time January 11, 2016 None of this is really real. Most of this did not happen. When I use the word “you?” I’m talking to an invented, smushed together person that doesn’t really exist. Please understand that before emailing me.

What has to happen for life to go back? January 11, 2016 I love you I love you I love you I love and I miss you more than I love you and that’s a lot.

Listen again January 11, 2016 I’ll be dead soon. Not by my hand but my life choices since we’ve been apart. Know that I love. Tell the kids over and over how daddy loved them, how much he missed them. Know that I was wrong. And then move on it. You’re not a hateful person. You are kind and gentle. And your hate for me defines the way I can talk to you or them. I’m not the same person. I would cut that person’s throat that made you cry that day. I’m not him anymore. He got broken into a million pieces. I’m a piece of him.

First grade January 11, 2016 People look at me differently. Speak to me differently. Like I’m a time bomb. I exploded in first grade. This life is collateral damage.

Reflections January 11, 2016 I’m a flawed human being. I’ve paid. I look in the mirror and sometimes I don’t like what I see. I get to make mistakes I am human. Not happy. Lost most of what he had, for now. But human. Who can close his eyes and celebrate the divine. I wouldn’t have the kids I have if something wasn’t bigger. Something. I’m scared that my faults have damaged them. They are both wicked smart so they already know. Hopefully, with age they’ll know that damage doesn’t mean bad or hate. Damaged means human.

This life? I give you one chance. No erasers, no whiteout. There’s going to be typos. Forgive me because I haven’t forgiven myself. It’s a lot harder than saying, “That’s okay.”

It’s hard to hear. But it’s harder to get.

Dreams January 16, 2016 How are you living? I live. It doesn’t seem the correct answer. What is? Against pretty good odds against? I’m still here. There are no plans of being anywhere else. Icon after icon falls. Most to decay. And one hates to blame the victim; But they seem to me, at least, To be complicit in ravage. I have these dreams, then hypnic jerks, Then staccato screams of, “Heh.” Afraid for a microsecond, I have to talk myself into knowing. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.

Lose January 17, 2016 I have these dreams. Nothing’s happened to me. Sometimes I wake up with a half-second scream. Jerking violently enough to hurt my neck the next day. For no reason. I don’t sleep.

The best pictures of people are the ones when you can’t see their whole faces. And the best stories are told where you can only hear half of what happened. The best part about anything is filling it in with you.

You’ve never been where I’ve been; you’ve probably never seen what I’ve seen, not exactly anyway.

I have this weird thing. Perhaps it’s not weird. It’s like defense lawyers; I know he’s guilty, but I have to fight as hard as I can to get him free. It’s an adverse system. Such as life. Such is life.

Like dolphins, sometimes smart people get caught up in the nets meant for fish.

I used to react with indignation and righteous determination. I can tell you now, both mean shit. Most people are either stupid, definitely pedestrian, and most likely provincial. You can be strong, but unless it’s the movie being made about you after you’ve died? You’re going to lose.

Larynx January 17, 2016 I was born to be here, in this space and time. When either are threatened, I more than bristle. I didn’t have a choice. Sentience is as much a curse as joy. There is no existential panic in a gazelle’s eyes as a lioness carries her in it’s mouth, crushing her larynx. I believe my reaction would be somewhat more heightened than panic.

In our sterile, yet temporal, world. Probably only you could crush my larynx while I slept, and I’d have no chance to lie barely conscious, nor panic. We sleep inches away from our most likely end.

There are different kinds of ends. I can tell you, almost to the minute, the moment I ended. Obviously, we have a tautological disagreement here. But I think you know what I mean.

Blackish January 17, 2016 Sharp-nosed and tight. I didn’t know I had a type. I might describe what I meant if I weren’t sober. I like angles. I resist arcs. This is almost a self-hatred thing. I hate myself, but not like that.

My dreams are consumed with sex and death. And I prefer the former.

Gone January 18, 2016 I sat behind you at this concert. You were a dancer. You did ballet. It seemed far too refined for me. You bought me a hula dancer for my car. You thought about me outside of our interaction. I suppose that was good.

The hula dancer was horribly inappropriate, but I wanted to fuck you, so I didn’t say anything. I was able to swallow my swollen pride.

Imagine flashbulbs going off. Life is that. What do you remember? A flash? Love at a moment? Love ends. And then what?.

The way we deal with the way love folds our clothes. It puts things in their places.

Lost. It’s hard to find the bathroom.

Love works separately from how you’d prefer it to work. It’s a worm that squeezes to fit the empty spaces. Lost is lost. Love is not different. Love only hurts a little less because there was something. It’s gone. There wouldn’t be a question, if there was one. It’s gone.

Almost January 18, 2016 I’m slipping into the past. I’m almost starting to forget you. I forget what you feel like, and I barely remember what I felt. It takes songs and smells to evoke what was once given. You were supposed to be. And now you are less than a memory. I knew every inch of you. Perhaps someone else does now. There’s no way he’s looking as close. I was wrong sometimes. You always made me right. There was no second guess or question. The answer with you was always, “Yes.” It was always right.

French, but Swiss January 19, 2016 Ask. I can almost guarantee you will disagree or maybe hate me. I don’t really mind. Life is a pole slathered in Vaseline. I slip toward the floor. I belong on the ground. Bleeding and oozing is what I know. You are a problem. So pretty and so French. The words come out of you. I have to make the words. I have to make them mean something. You slink. I trouble to be hidden when I try.

You have a boy’s name in French but you’re Swiss. Where I’m from I just have my name. You are vowels and I am consonants. Hard at every guttural stop.

I know you love me but you can’t love me. That’s a hard love. I’ve lived it before and you haven’t. That is what life is. I’d expect nothing else.

Eight January 19, 2016 I have to fight every urge to stay silent. You and I were words. All we did was talk. Silence is a different problem. Do I speak to the universe? Where do I go now that going is gone? Look down. Your name, though, is still your name. And my memory which remembers everything. It remembers everything. It remembers your phone number. It knows all eight of your email addresses. It knows every lie you ever shared. And now it has to stay quiet.

What most don’t understand January 19, 2016 My hands are soft. But it takes everything to write like this. This isn’t a hobby. You have to give everything. More than you thought you knew you had. Then you have to give again. I’m dying no less than you are. I spend my days looking at the dying. Looking at the dead. There’s nothing wrong with me. I chose this a long time ago.

The difference January 19, 2016 The difference in what we accomplished? You put on your stockings and feel like you’re doing right by the world. Your company is evil. I remembered everything because I remember everything, and Gerry liked that. But I hated that world. I did it after I knew I hated it for you and the kids. I never didn’t hate it. And when you left it was a fucking nightmare. Everything went away. A lot remains away. I was never that person. I played that person because you’re supposed to. I was never him.

Compel January 19, 2016 The moment is so small that it makes bigger things happen. The moment has to happen now so it has an advantage. It insists on being like a second on a clock. Whatever the fuck you want, I’m going to make this next minute.

I love pace. I see why it matters. I love compulsion. I see why it matters.

I love the parts that are compelled to work. I love the parts that wait.

Pay January 20, 2016 Reasons are limited by their definition. Reasons make you have a reason. Don’t choke on what you swallow. That is the only rule. Live. It’s harder than you think.

Make enemies and see more. Love life and see how life repays you.

Without a home January 20, 2016 Reasons are limited by their definition. Reasons make you have a reason. Don’t choke on what you swallow. That is the only rule. Live. It’s harder than you think. Make enemies and see more. Love life and see how life repays you. How do I show that I’m interested in you? Reasons are so big. You are a Reasons are limited by their definition. Reasons make you have a reason. Don’t choke on what you swallow. That is the only rule. Live. It’s harder than you think. Make enemies and see more. Love life and see how life repays you. How do I show that I’m interested in you? Reasons are so big. You are smell but as big as the universe in your mind. How do I show that I’m interested in you? I worry about climate change, but in the now I don’t give a fuck. I worry about you. Where do you sleep? What are you going to eat tomorrow?smell but as big as the universe in your mind. How do I show that I’m interested in you? I worry about climate change, but in the now I don’t give a fuck. I worry about you. Where do you sleep? What are you going to eat tomorrow?.

My job January 21, 2016 What I do is throw away snippets. My brain functions at a moments grasp. I think thoughts. Most of these thoughts are lost. I think I had a stroke the other day, so I assume my days are numbered. I love my daughter. I love my son. Let there be a record. I loved.

All January 21, 2016 the world is small. take a ride. it’s small. i have to sit. i don’t want to sit. you lose it where you find it.

More January 22, 2016 I have a sip to take. It’ll be quicker than a breath. It takes too much to say you’re dying. I can finish with a cough. The moon looks pretty. La luna es magnifica. La lune est magnifique. La mahina no nina. The moon is beautiful. However you say it. The moon is beautiful.

Look for Hell, look inside January 22, 2016 Never ever end. You make some decisions because you know one day you’ll be dead. I make those decisions anyway. Twice in the past two weeks, I’ve opened my eyes and looked at the roof. Once it was kind of my fault. I guess they were both my fault. One I didn’t choose. And here comes the right time.

If there’s no music in heaven, what is it for?.

I’m listening to this band for the first time. It’s the only reason I get to be alive.

Rage January 23, 2016 It’s weird. My body heals. Smash it against something. And the wound fixes. Do it again. Then do it again. Life is bigger than you. Your questions are not necessarily answered. You know how to speak. You know how to spell. Go lie down. Your rage belongs to all of us.

See January 24, 2016 Do you see? Keep the car running. I have nothing left to lose. You do. The noise you make when you sleep. I enjoy because I’m the only person that knows it. Things stop moving when they die.

Haha January 25, 2016 A fine man’s curse. Abandon hearse. There won’t be anyone to say goodbye.

Silence January 25, 2016 I feel like hating something I hate you? I have to go back home and do my homework. I have to watch T.V. I need to eat peanut butter and learn to stand There are life lessons in silence.

All January 28, 2016 Another day, doubting God. I go home. I walk a lot. I can’t say I’m feeling all that much. Girls make me rush. I like when they leave. That pain is legal. I like that slow burn. I don’t like it fast. I don’t like being hit. I hurt people. I think we all do.

TIA February 1, 2016 I didn’t know I head a stroke until I saw it happen on CNN. The reporter started to slur and then she fell out of her chair. Five minutes later she was back on TV explaining away what happened with the heat of the lights. I did with hypoglycemia. We both had TIAs.

I was out for 15 seconds and have been fine since. Strokes must suck. I handed over the money. And the next thing I knew I was looking at the roof. The clerk still had my twenty in her hand but I was scared as shit. I thought it was because I hadn’t eaten. But now that I’ve seen one, I know what happened. It was the exact same thing. My speech started to slur, and I knew something was wrong. Then I was on the ground. 30 seconds maybe. Water and some food made it seem alright. But it can’t be alright if that can happen without warning. They’re called transient ischemic attacks, because it’s not a permanent block. But they look the same from the outside, at least for the 30 seconds I was gone. Gone. Terror. Then blackness.

Burn it down February 18, 2016 Fear is the heart of love. I have seen everything. I have seen it all go away. I have seen you whisper, “Goodbye.”

Burn it down. You have my permission. Burn it down.

I’ve stopped running. And all I can see is the word, “No.”

Burn it down.

Slipping February 18, 2016 I’m slipping into the past. I’m almost starting to forget you. I forget what you feel like, and I barely remember what I felt. It takes songs and smells to evoke what was once given. You were supposed to be. And now you are less than a memory. I knew every inch of you. Perhaps someone else does now. There’s no way he’s looking as close. I was wrong sometimes. You always made me right. There was no second guess or question. The answer with you was always, “Yes.” It was always right.

This big February 18, 2016 She wasn’t the last to see him She may have been the first to cry People die He was dying when she met him That’s not right Everyone is dying You’re born dying It comes quicker for some That’s sad Things that go away are missed There’s you And I know when I go away probably nothing will be this big But it’s here I’m going to go surfing and feel the waves pound me I don’t get spanked anymore When I can’t breathe, I think of you So pathetic, but it happens.

The problem with life is that it‚Äôs broken February 18, 2016 Can you say that? I love life. I love you. Death doesn’t scare me. I hate that it happens. Look up in the church. Or wherever you are.

Blow out the candles February 18, 2016 Age is something that happens. I’m old now. No one wants to here hear about your seventh love affair. Still you were in love. It’s not as clean. And the scars, fuck. The candles have been blown. The cake is gone. And so is the love.

The mirror February 18, 2016 You were not me. You were beautiful. I fell from hell. I’m weak and lonely you are yourself. I hate what I was.

Am I evil? Everyone is broken down next to me. Do you have the cash? Everything is going away, take this broken away. Say goodbye.

This can’t go on. Something has to end. I looked in the mirror and watched the blood spill.

My journal, last week of January, 2016, minus some entries that are already here February 18, 2016 Reasons are limited by their definition. Reasons make you have a reason. Don’t choke on what you swallow. That is the only rule. Live. It’s harder than you think. Make enemies and see more. Love life and see how life repays you. How do I show that I’m interested in you? Reasons are so big. You are smell but as big as the universe in your mind. How do I show that I’m interested in you? I worry about climate change, but in the now I don’t give a fuck. I worry about you. Where do you sleep? What are you going to eat tomorrow?.

Come or blood. It will prove your identity or that you weren’t there. And so what if I’m right? Okay you weren’t there. I never said you were. You were. But you didn’t do what left the bodies on the ground. I didn’t. So we are on the same side. And I hate you.

She walked to work like she always walks to work. Love was the rain that fell. She hated the way it fell on her. Smile at me. I hate the gesture. I stumble home and if I make it to bed, I hate everything that didn’t stop me. But she was on the bus. And she was pretty and innocent. I choke on that word as I say it. Nothing is pure. I dare you to find the opposite. Don’t look too closely if you care.

The way the blanket feels soft. My jeans. Your eyes used to feel that way. Now every part of you is iron. I don’t know. I probably deserve it. I kind of hate myself. You’re doing a rather piss poor job. Maybe you don’t hate me as much as I do. Hate is hard to continue. It takes a lot of energy. I can’t do it. And I’m here all the time. I don’t hate you. I know where the bodies are buried. And I love you.

I write these words for you. You won’t understand them. Everything I do is for you. The actual words aren’t important. The gesture. I made a move toward you. My love. You may not feel it. But it was a burning rod. You were loved. You are loved. I would move a mountain to show you. I will crack the sky to prove you are loved. That is important but it’s not tomorrow. Get good grades. Don’t fuck over your best friend.

The world is small. Take a ride. It’s small. I have to sit. I don’t want to sit. You lose it where you find it.

How do we start this? Does it rock or does it roll? Does it shine or does it hide? Is it drunk or is it sober? Living in the storm is hard. How do you get by. We’ve forgotten everyone’s name. I remember yours.

Love is art Love is wrong Love is a rectangle There are more than four corners The ocean gets deep What do you want? Love won’t give it to you.

Nothing I care about Will die in my lifetime The air will kill you before I can Breathe Just breathe The saddest thing I ever saw Was a woman moments before death She kept repeating, “I’m not ready” That frightens me I’m not ready.

I’m secretly in love with everyone I grew up with February 21, 2016 My last two serious relationships were re-boots. One has been ongoing since 1992 when it was convenient. One from 1999 which geography and Southern circumstance doomed then turned ugly for the second time. And one was never really a thing, but loomed as a specter and manifested as physical a few times. That one reaches all the way back to 1987.

It’s hard to make new love. And I have competing aspects of my personality. My eccentricities require someone to know me before they can love me. But my I’m impatient and to my detriment often rush this process with someone I don’t know. It’s been easier to hope time has healed the inevitable wounds of separation, and fall into something known.

I’m standing on my own two knees February 21, 2016 Forty-five years of this is no longer a phase; it’s what I am. I don’t ever see myself acquiring true humility, and my ego sometimes has a literal, physical presence in my awareness. But I know now that this doesn’t preclude me from losing, or taking the metaphoric beating. Repeatedly.

Genuflection has its place, even if that place is just for appearances.

I need to know February 21, 2016 Only you and I would get the reference. It’s not even sexual, but it’s one that only we share. So I knew immediately it was you that commented on the journal. Where the fuck are you? Google Analytics show you haven’t moved, or if you have, it wasn’t far. Your phones have been dead since Thanksgiving and your Facebook footprints have been washed away. I need to know how to hear your voice. When I see Mahina, I sometimes hear your hippie-Hawaii-aloha-yoga-ashiatsu voice and I miss it. Find me. I need to know.

I did a lot of things February 24, 2016 Many of the things that I regret doing happened in the moment. It would not be unfair to describe me as lacking impulse control. Thankfully my impulses do not include violence toward another. I’ve beat the shit out of a thousand walls (and my rheumatic knuckles are a testament), but I’ve never hit another person in anger.

The extended drift-this chosen exile-has, among its unintended consequences, given me perspective. And though, at times, it has been horrible, at other times it has brought clarity and peace. I’ve done a lot of things wrong. But my mistakes do not preclude me from recognizing mistakes in others. In a strange way they actually make mistakes easier to recognize. You are making a mistake.

I believe the extremes have metaphorically blinded you. I believe you think you’re doing the right thing. But I also know that the damage you are doing is not just real and, for all intents and purposes, irreversible, but unnecessary. If you would just choose 2016, and stop running the 2008 movie through your skull, you might see this world is profoundly different than the one that left you empty, broke, and clean, and left me empty and broken.

I don’t think it’s too late. The damage is done. We can choose to absolutely tear it all down, or we can cut our losses. We can choose.

Happy Birthday, C February 25, 2016.

My lament February 28, 2016 We had a future until you destroyed it. I guess I may have started the destruction game. Can you imagine your life if your mother made it impossible for you to know your dad? Is that what you want for your daughter? For your son? Get remarried and they’ll have a de facto father figure. Do you think it’s even in the remote realm of possibility that anyone could love them more than me? Other than you. Those two are the reason I didn’t spin down the drain into oblivion. I may be losing, but I don’t quit. I will never quit. I will never give up.

Thresh February 29, 2016 Now I’ve reached the threshold. I’ve had too much salt and too little patience. I’m probably not my best friend if we can look ahead and see what eventually kills me. My motto for so long has been “I don’t give a fuck.” I remember caring. It seemed worth it. Nihilism is binding in the same way that it liberates. I don’t expect you to understand.

I’m constantly surprised by the reaction people have to what comes naturally to me. I’m used to incredulous looks. I’m not thrown off when a person asks, “What?”, in that tone, because it is inevitable.

I am not you. I may not want to be me, but I know I don’t want to be you. I’m going to die and I hate that. I’ve hit my head so hard that everything went away until I could open my eyes again. Is that what dying is?.

The realization was profoundly more difficult than being unaware. I hate being out of the game.

I cut my wrist March 1, 2016 I cut my mind. I never hated you. You were my wife. You were everything. When it went away everything went away. The way I handle losing is probably not healthy. When I see it going? It’s all gone.

Smell March 7, 2016 If I can smell me, then everyone around me smelled me first. Proximity aggravates smell. This is a metaphor. You don’t think they notice. Your kids are the worst because you love them. And they try to protect Mommy and Daddy and won’t need therapy until their late teens. But they see everything. The same way you taught them language without a chalkboard or books, you teach them life. At least your version of it.

We are all good and we’re all fucked up. It’s too easy to call a person good or bad. We’ve all transcended and we have all transfucked. I think the important thing is the fight. Not quitting.

I don’t know who invented life, but it’s a malign creator, or something that just didn’t care. I’m prone to accept the latter. Set a bunch of chemicals in motion, and let’s see what happens. Sometimes it’s Gandhi (and even he did some pretty shitty things including let his wife die). And sometimes it’s me.

My proclivities and weaknesses do their best to break me. I wouldn’t even call them choices anymore. Obviously, I’m complicit, but it’s just as obvious to me that something bigger than me has some say it might smart or stupid.

My choices. Calling some of them them mind-glowingly, selfish or dumb or short-sighted or stubborn or hurtful diminishes those phrases. Some choices have turned out really pretty. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I think it’s life. There have been more than 100 billion since people became people. And my suspicion is we’re all a lot more alike than ego, or willful disbelief would have us believe.

Juxtapose March 7, 2016 My vertigo gets so bad that I stumble and people think I’m drunk. My roommates looked at me with pity when I fell down the stairs. Judgment not pity. I was sober. So I walked to the corner to get away from them and slept in the park until my mind was clear. My daughter turns thirteen on Friday and i haven’t seen her since June 26, 2013 when she told me how happy she was our flight was delayed because she had another day with me. My ex-wife is a good mother, but I can’t understand how she can’t see that keeping me away from my kids is going to do damage that outlives us both, maybe even trickles down a few generations. Girls that grow up without Daddys all-no exception, all the ones I know-have Daddy issues. It’s already too late; the damage is already done. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if it’s in my power to do anything except wait for equilibrium to bring things, maybe not to good, but higher than very, very shitty.

I was sleeping on the side of the road yesterday. The word juxtapose was invented for my week. I’m trapped by the consequences of things that I certainly and willfully chose to do. The punishment, of course to me, seems egregious. I’m going to steal this line. “This is the strangest life I’ve ever known.” You said to be transparent. See through this.

Swiper, no swiping March 8, 2016 .

Daniel Day Lewis March 8, 2016 .

I hate when my door knocks March 8, 2016 I hate it more when they’re hard confident knocks. I hate it when they don’t stop. They sometimes go away. They sometimes end with your door being kicked in and their guns behind shields are pointed at you. I’ve seen American History X enough times to know this when you fall to your knees with your hand on your head and smile.

Even perceived resistance just makes things worse in the short run.

“There’s a naked girl passed out in my bed.” “Shut the fuck up.” “Please hand her my phone and wallet and tell her to call her mom.” “I said shut the fuck up.”

The irony is I’m always where I say I’m going to be. I was never a fugitive mostly because I never thought I did anything wrong. Laws, it turns out, are subject to interpretation. Family court prosecutors must actually be miserable. They see the worst of us, then have no choice but to treat everyone that way.

Don’t resist. The next day or two will not be pleasant. But every inch you move in the opposite way just adds a mile to how far you are dragged. The game is fixed.

There are people trying to win a game I didn’t even know existed.

“I don’t like playing games.”

“That’s how you lose the game.”

Rain March 17, 2016 Everyone loves to look at rain. It’s romantic. Everyone likes to fuck in it, or be in it for a second or two. Then the problems start. The worst thing about life is that it’s cold and unpredictable, even when it’s hot.

People tell you to do what you love. Which is, of course impossible. Love is a broken and divided concept, and it never means the same thing twice. You don’t do what you love; you do what you do, .

Rain is like love. It’s pretty to look at. It’s pretty to think about. And when it falls it has that moment of pleasant. Then it causes problems you didn’t even know existed.

Culture March 17, 2016 In this culture we have been trained to trust control. To crave order. You can change your body and mantra your mind, but there is always a consequence of confluence which will betray any method. The methods you are constrained by in your element. Even suicide is a method. It seems like control, or a planned escape. But death itself was always going to happen. Suicide is just hammering in the closest nail. I have no sympathy for suicide; I still believe it is the ultimate selfish act. And yet it’s so predictable, that the explanation for it always exists for those that are left to survive. Most just don’t like to look that closely.

Awareness March 17, 2016 I know my lies are not unique. I have dreams of pancreatic cancer. I passed a sign in the airport and it said “The #1 hospital in liver transplants.” And I laughed. Of course New Orleans is number one in liver transplants.

Then I rubbed my liver to see if it hurt.

But everything breaks down. Your body. The Delta. The Earth. You want to get metaphysical? Belief dies. All transplants are temporary fixes to a permanent reality. It all dies.

Deep March 17, 2016 I’m not avoiding you. I’m tired of deep conversations. All I do is think about everything. I’m sick of it. Don’t take this the wrong way. I love talking to you, but talking to you makes me want to be drunk or dead, and I don’t really want either of those. It’s the only way to shut off the white noise machine. I know you don’t do it on purpose.

I want to lie in bed. I want no knocks at the door. I want to live in quadrant four. Your quiet, best wishes are not just suspicious, but like megaphones in all directions. All I know to say is, “Shut the fuck up.” And that’s rarely taken well.

Is this a fight? March 17, 2016 I barely have to eat. I barely have to sleep. I wait until 3am to do either. I want to pull a black blanket over my face and keep out the light and noise. I want to prove I never quit. I still think, even though I don’t want to. I didn’t quit. I don’t want anything anymore. I didn’t quit.

I’m speaking as if I know what death is, what solitude is. I’m not Mandela, so on a spectrum this can’t be as bad. But never wanted to be Mandela. I was just me. He transcended and I wallow.

When I close my eyes and walk through any five minutes of the last five years, it’s like stepping into a fire that doesn’t burn my skin, but still burns. There’s no physical pain, so I don’t get to moan and wail. And no one outside of the fire cares. I owe. I got off light. I’m to blame. I don’t deserve to be sad. I deserve silence. I deserve shame.

Stories we tell about ourselves March 31, 2016 Memoirs are an interesting interpretation of the phrase, “non-fiction.” As if not being fiction, what being written is the truth. Recollection may fill in the details of the myth of a life, but for most, at best, it’s an imperfect Xerox, an amalgam of memory, ego, denial, and self-preservation.

This is my version of the story. I have the kind of memory that lets me close me eyes and see things exactly as they happened, especially in moments of absolute lucidity. The haze that might occur otherwise happens far less often than is imagined by those, especially those that think they know me. I barely know myself. I live almost absolutely alone, so I think I have the clearest vantage point.

In fact, I’ve lived alone, with a few months here or there, for the last seven years. This has been a self-imposed exile of consequence if not choice, less resembling a life than a theater of the absurd.

No need to thank me, it’s what I do March 31, 2016 I wasn’t being self-indulgent. I haven’t had more than $20 cash on my person in months. I don’t pay for anything, because I don’t have anything to pay for it with. A friend didn’t want to go alone and needed someone to attend meetings that were for him, sometimes, not attend able.

The things I’ve done recently have all been in the pursuit of a change in how I choose to live, since I can’t seem to change my life.

Don’t misinterpret the pictures. They’re mostly empty of soul, and the reason my selfies rarely include my face is because it’s far more likely that I might catch a tear than a smile. I don’t need to represent myself to the universe that way. She already knows how I feel.

None of this is really real March 31, 2016 Of course there are elements that I’ve drawn from. Look at the name of the URL. Unless I’m taking about Spotify, or Google, or actual events in politics this site is a complex product of my imagination and experiences. Whenever I see readership spike in a certain city in central Texas, it makes me feel like I have to explain myself. I’m pretty sure what I say at this point doesn’t matter in that regard. This isn’t a newspaper. It’s not meant to capture actual events or people. That’s one of the reasons I never use names, because even when I’m drawing on my feelings about an individual, I’m usually not talking about a single person.

I can keep writing my stories. I can keep using this blog as a laboratory of ideas. Word by word. Page by page.

If you’re looking for me here, though, you’re at least five years behind where I am. Memories can only happen after the fact.

This place, I can honestly say, has nothing to do with you. No matter who “you” might happen to be.

Truth salad April 1, 2016 I always second guess myself and feel like I have to explain what a metaphor is, just in case some idiot reads any of this as absolutely literal. The only part of this site that is meant to be completely, transparently, eidetically true is Consolations of the Worst-Case Scenario and I can’t even get around to finishing it because it hurts too much to relive so vividly and perfectly.

These next sentences though, unlike most here, are absolutely real: I have written an entry called I cut my wrist, but never actually cut my wrists (at least not on purpose). I have never contemplated hurting myself or anyone else physically, and have only thrown one (half-assed) punch in anger when i was 17. I love my children more than anything even though I haven’t seen them in a long time. I still love my ex-wife (not like that) and think she’s a good mother; I respect her way more than I did and should have when I had the daily chance to do so. I like and trust most people. I have stupidly bad insomnia. I can’t walk and the doctor’s haven’t been able to figure out why, so I’ve been in the hospital for a lot longer than I thought I’d be (the MRI-on my brain, not my leg- was negative so I guess that’s good, i.e., I didn’t have a cerebral event). There is nothing physically wrong with me, so I lie in the hospital bed and wait, thinking, writing and surviving, trying on what happiness might feel like, mixed with a neverending melancholy most of the time. And contemplating how that’s going to work until I shuffle off this mortal coil, while watching heroes of mine keep dying at ages, less than thirty years away for me. I remember 1986.

Don’t expect another truth salad like that for a long time.

Gratitude April 5, 2016 This isn’t coming from a place of “A lot of people have it worse,” even though that’s true. Spend 15 days in a hospital with a relatively benign ailment, that really only affects your locomotion, while being surrounded by people with failing hearts, kidneys, and lungs, and this becomes apparent without a word spoken. There are no HIPPA regulations in a semi-private room; I know the complete medical histories of three people now, and someone down the hall is clearly in pain most of the night.

So many things in pop culture, and so many things that surround me currently, have exacerbated my normal obsession with mortality. Which, counterintuitively, has made me thankful for the life I have left. There are so many things I’ve been mad about for so long now, and so much damage I’ve done to my life by honoring that anger. Until relatively recently I believed it to be righteous, when, in fact, it was self-righteous. It’s like that scene in a movie, that I know I’ve watched but I can’t remember the title, where the protagonist is choking an attacker, but when he looks over his shoulder into a mirror he’s actually choking himself.

I’m grateful though for the things I have and have had, even if some of them, at least for now, are lost. I’m grateful for the times that life could have punished me but instead let me off with a warning. I’m even grateful for the times I wasn’t guilty, but was treated as if I was. I’ve learned the hard way how to deal with these situations should they arise in the future, and they will.

My son-shared birthday is on Saturday so as a present to myself I’ve been watching videos of him and his sister, from the impossibly cute and precious ages between three and five when I was lucky enough to be a daily part of their lives.

I am grateful.

Written on a plane three weeks ago (part 1) April 5, 2016 The problem is not necessarily the words I’ve written, but the words you’ve read. I’ve written ten million words and said fifty million more.

When speaking, I’m misunderstood as often as I’m not. Even with the ostensible advantage of “being there” to explain what I mean. If I leave it up to you, with absolutely no explication, you’ll probably get it wrong.

Little earthquakes April 15, 2016 Logarithmic ideas are hard to grasp. I’ll give you an example. I used to live in Los Angeles. And a 4.2 earthquake on the Richter scale would make you wake up. And the news would interrupt I Love Lucy or whatever was on at 2am with breaking news of “Did you feel that?” A 5.2 earthquake is ten times stronger. 5.8 and the ground is seriously moving. An 8.7 earthquake is 23,000 times stronger than a 5.8 “mild” one.

Earthquakes are logarithmic, but comparisons exist using the formula: Shape M_{L}=Log_{10}[A/A_{0}(\delta)]. Two earthquakes. They both do damage. The amplitude of one is magnificently more. Give me a second. The metaphor will become clearer in a moment.

There are different ways to feel. My emotions now have become afraid of how big they can be. If you love someone, you’re lying if you say it can’t be compared to other love. We all have a favorite child, and if your mother said, “I love you all equally?” You weren’t it.

Love is stardust. Love is a palette of paint thrown against the wall. Love is a sigh. Love is a scream.

I’m not sure how to love you. Every choice feels forced. Every thought comes because I was thinking about you. The thing is, I’m not sure that disparity is wrong. Love is so complex that it has to be more than Thursday morning. It has to taste better than coffee. It has to make you scared.

I don’t like being scared. I put love on the shelf. Sex and holding hands are one thing. Everyone likes to be touched. But, I put that fear away.

Betrayal April 15, 2016 You are the only person I haven’t betrayed online. I never shared our secrets. Everyone else, everything else, was landfill. I was empty, and there was space. I filled it with pretty-smelling garbage. I know things are different. I certainly know the dynamic has changed. You are calm and funny, a presence without shock. I’ve come to realize things that I wish I could have said better years ago, before I let you slip away, then did something stupid. Stupid is like the Richter scale in that it’s logarithmic. Seven is not 1 more than six. It’s ten more. At the baseline of five, things fall off the shelf and people die and tsunamis kill more. Ten thousand times that energy is almost unimaginable. But there are pictures of the after effects.

You have your own landfill. I understand. No one likes to spend Thanksgiving alone, or worse yet, explaining why. You say otherwise. It’s why you went to one of the most conservative schools in America and marched in pro-choice rallies when you were there. In so many ways we are different. I’m sorry I hate Shania Twain. I tried to like Taylor Swift, but I only like her attitude. I’m a punk. You knew that when you met me. Ne me quitte pas. If you’ve forgotten your high school French it means, “Don’t leave me.” Even if you’re already physically gone, stay a minute in your mind.

I’m not going to say your name.

Lerna April 16, 2016 I am the modern LernÊan Hydra. I am the wet, multi-headed monster with no remorse. I use all the tongues in all of my heads to speak in a cacophony of opinion and poisonous breath. Even my smell kills. I prefer words. Cut off one of my speaking tongues and others will grow in its place. My speech is proof of your futility. And short of Heracles, will never cease.

Welcome to Amymone, my chthonic evermore. One step forward, and always two back, this dance, always slouching toward Hades.

Between the bars April 16, 2016 The word “harrowing” was invented for this song.

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The blanket April 22, 2016 I’m going to keep that diamond in my mind. I know you. Our time was double time. Inseparable. Alone together. Now I’m the devil’s child? It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Look close. Closer. Closer still. Deeper. For thirty seconds, don’t think. Feel. Remember what it’s like to be new. Brand new. And still. For all this, love is never spent. The search for meaning is often encapsulated in the idea that the individual must recognize something larger than itself. Itself. Yourself. Myself. Self. Bigger than you. Bigger than me. Bigger. Biggest. Separate. My love for you, despite, is. Was. Is. Will be. Always..

Believe it or not everything is venom and everything is love. In an artificial vacuum this is what passes for reflection, pining, and trying to understand the purpose or meaning—if any—of an unprecedented sense of loss..

Twenty, maybe thirty, commandments, each crazier than the last April 24, 2016 A large majority of people that describe themselves as religious literally do not know what they believe in. Let that sink in. It sounds oxymoronic, but it’s true. I have a theory on this. Religious training is rarely a moment of epiphany. It is a patient, years-long inculcation. It is not a moment of conversion, but a life-long assimilation. For a person to self-identify as “religious,” therefore, means that his indoctrination was for the most part already successful. At this point what a person believes is nowhere near as important as who. Any successful brainwashing program does not measure success by the comprehension of ideology, but by submission to its authority. Obedience, and willful self-ignorance are far more reliable than accurate recall. If a person never truly understands a concept, but has been taught to accept its veracity, not only are others less likely to change his view with fact-based arguments, but he is also less likely to question his own beliefs.

Let me give you a real-world example. Most people that have gone to church their whole lives cannot name all ten commandments in order. In fact, if a person can name more than seven correctly, in any order, they are the rare exception. Rarer still is the person who knows that on three separate occasions Moses presents different versions of the Decalogue to the Israelites. The first set, and the one most people would recognize from the movie and Sunday school, are Moses’ impromptu recollection of god’s words after returning from Mt. Sinai. Humorously the version that relies on Moses’ memory is not even close to the ones that eventually appear on stone. The contents of the second set are, technically, never shared in the Bible because Moses gets pissed at the Israelites for creating idols and smashes the tablets on which they are written (Moses can’t take a piss without some asshole forging an idol and worshiping it). The third set, the only one specifically referred to as The Ten Commandments, would be unrecognizable to most. #10 in this version (Exodus 34:13-28)? “Thou shalt not seeth a kid in his mother’s milk.” (And, yes, they’re talking about a baby goat.) Timeless advice, isn’t it? Yet this is the supposed basis for the entire system of morality and ethics on which our society is built.

The depressing truth is that this is essentially the system that provides a large part of this country (and world) with some of its ugliest talking points. Given the deity’s description in the Bible it is a reasonable conclusion to believe that god actually does hate fags (thanks for bringing that to my attention, Westboro Baptist idiots.) Why he’s been silent on more prevalent transgressions like shrimp, divorce, and multi-cloth garments, which are all unequivocally verboten, is anyone’s guess.

With all this, believers are still not the only ones with culpability. Non-believers have been complacent. I am. It’s a common platitude for polite agnostics to say when referring to the Bible that, “It’s a beautiful book with bad interpretations.” Wrong. The problem is not the interpretation of the material, but the source material itself. Yeah, I said it. I have a suggestion for those of you that disagree. Read it. Cover to cover. No skipping to Christmas and Easter. The book suffers from far more than lapses in logic, difficult syntax, and enormous continuity issues. Like its main character, it is usually self-serving and often morally repugnant. Taken as fact by too many people, the outdated tome is systematic superstition, obfuscated by numbing ritual, and received with blind acceptance. It is the primary source of ideology for countless hate crimes and atrocities. It has and continues to inspire apocalyptic fanaticism, nonexistent next-world dystopias, and repressive theocracies, that thrive on fear, intolerance, and the truncheon.

Legacy May 3, 2016 What do you think your legacy will be? When it’s time to be judged will you be on the right side of history? My anger led me to outburst and consequence, then to being numb. My nerves are beginning to regenerate. Your anger seems to have had a wholly different, yet just as transformative, outcome. My speculations about anything are just that. I’m sure you have invented and justified extrapolations of the truths you experienced. For all intents and purposes, you really can’t do anything but guess. And judging by the outcome of your guesses, they’re clearly wrong. You never knew what really motivated me when we were together. How could you possibly know what motivates me now? You could just as fairly say the same thing about my speculations of you.

So what is our legacy? You have essentially killed a parent. For whatever reason, I won’t even hazard to guess, you have implemented my metaphoric death in the lives of two people that mean everything to me. I can feel you scoffing after reading that. I can hear the bile rise in your throat from almost 4000 miles away. And as much as it troubles me, I can understand exactly why you’ve done what you’ve done. Even denied, vindictiveness can be gratifying when it punishes a perceived villain.

I’m not sure if you considered the long-term ramifications of continuing. Even dead, I’ll never be gone. You can’t erase a memory. When it comes time to blame someone, no one’s hands will be clean. Not yours. Certainly not mine. No one’s.

Truth May 12, 2016 In the moment your pain is beautiful. It’s like rain at sunset. I caused it. I did it on purpose. And when your eyes crinkled I was sad, but I was happy. All the years. I didn’t have that power. You were beautiful. And I was this beautiful monster. That happened almost a decade ago. And I regret it. You were innocent. I spent my life always fast. Faster more, everything at once. Drugs? Ok. Two girls at once? If that’s what happens. I would wake up in a motel room that I didn’t rent and look at the clock. I saw three. Is it daytime or is it night time. My friend Bill told me, I am proof God does not exist. I’ve woken up on beaches, on the road, in the hospital, so something gives a shit. My mom loves me and I pay her back by terrifying her.

The next woman that loves me. I already know her name. It feels like I played a trick on her. She’s smart and age appropriate so she should know better.

I’m an old man now. And I blast Black Sabbath like I did was 12 and didn’t understand what was happening. I don’t think we’re meant to understand. I still love Ozzy.

The universe gave words. Gave me abuse. Gave me many things that I’m glad my ex-wife is doing so well at sheltering my kids from.

Things hurt. But differently. A punch to the face hurts, but not really. The second one lands numb. Words hurt longer. Ideas never die. I wish I could make a plastic bubble and wrap my kids in it. It’s too late. The world is bigger than me.

I put in my headphones and think about Delia. I try to smile. The strange part is if you look at the history of people? I’ve had it incredibly easy.

I can hear my grandfather. Brah, you like something for cry about? I don’t need punches to cry.

All May 13, 2016 We’re too connected. The soft parts of you come back. I didn’t know something that small could make ferocity seem real. You put me in jail for a lie you told. I remember putting on Facebook, “Crying won’t help you. Praying won’t do you no good.” And you wrote “When the Levee Breaks.” I wish you know how few people would know to say that. The soft part of you. The part of you not raging against everything that hurt. This is how I do it.

This is how I do it.

There is no revenge anymore. Too many broken lives for that. All I can do is tell the truth. Some of it sucks. A lot of it is embarrassing because I did it. But my only way out is to say it all. Dirty, pretty, funny, sad, alone. Everything is on the table. Everything matters. Everyone is ashamed. And everyone pretty much is the same.

My new lover was ashamed because she liked to think about things she never thought about. I didn’t invent anything. I just pulled where she wanted to go.

Life is this crazy mayonnaise of egg whites and vinegar. Would you drink pure vinegar? It’s not pleasant. I’ve done it on a dare. I promise. Everything. And i might make you leave. I don’t care. Everything.

Judges are sometimes right May 16, 2016 943034 10200832494722149 1194605906 n.

She’s barefoot May 19, 2016 She’s barefoot down the street in short, dirty-black chiffon; the dress a metaphor for the city, the city her only version of a meadow. The sidewalk sweats with ancient heat and recent rain. And the rough wetness cools the blisters of the patches of the balls of her feet, worn rough having so often similarly trod. The word reminds her of a line from a poem, “nor can foot feel being shod,” and she smiles. Feet are supposed to touch the ground just like they’re supposed to hurt.

Fake trees loom above and block the long-set sun. Fluorescent blinks and intermittent shadows alternate light and dark. Her light-aired, measured steps are deliberately taken, then not so, and betray a civil war between ennui and melancholy. Both sides win.

I don’t believe in god, so I can’t be saved June 24, 2016 I have had some interesting theories about the afterlife. I grew up Catholic, so I pretty much had Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso in my mind until I began to self-actualize around the age of nine, fully rejecting the supernatural by 14. I’ve come to believe there is a place for ritual, and there is definitely good cause to placate the majority, and free them from the freedom of free thinking. Most can’t handle the nuances. One of the signs of intelligence is being able to hold two opposing ideas in one’s mind and contemplate them both objectively. Most people are stupid.

The abyss of forever is a terrible reminder if you sit at its edge for long. Nihilism is an easy path from there. Meaning is just a few years from meaningless, after all. I try not stare directly into the emptiness. And I distract myself with stand-up comedians (who fearlessly, constantly stare) and loud music.

This whole time I’ve been wrestling with nothing June 24, 2016 For eight years now I’ve been a clichÈ. I put the straight jacket on, and somehow managed to bind the ties that bind. Struggling, fighting the universe as if I had a chance. As if I was anything more than a limp gazelle in the crushing jaws of the mother lion.

I hated you. Sometimes I still hate you. There’s a calming presence now that fills my days, and takes away my hatred of all things bad. It’s hard to believe, but I wound up with someone so pure that all you can see when she lights up is good. The worst she gives you is a furrowed brow. Even these last for seconds before I laugh and smile.

I forgot what it was like.

I was alone too long and I was never meant to be alone. Alone is where bad things happen. Alone is where tears manifest. I ceded control. I recall that cessation.

The universe doesn’t bend to your will. It just is. And everything about it is perfect and was always part of the plan.

How time works July 18, 2016 I was a normal baby. Normal. It would take a few years to actualize. What I was. I suppose that is better articulated by saying, “What I am.” What I am changes in micro-iterations of left-right slide. That’s not quite accurate. The slide happens through all dimensions. Like mountains, I appear to be static. In one 365-day span, I might move three centimeters. Find me in a billion years.

I only feel bad when the sun goes down July 20, 2016 I can see the next eight, silent hours. Silence from the outside. The inside is never quite less than a muffled growl. I see myself in some parallel universe, or even this one. Explaining to my pragmatic, European girlfriend what I mean by muffled growl.

“Why you growl? You mad?” “No.” “You mad at me? “No. The opposite.” “Then why you growl?” The short answer is, “I don’t know.” The longer answer that might take a few jumps over our language barrier requires a certain nuance with English, i.e., “Why aren’t you growling?”

Growling is guttural and seems monstrous. There are examples across every culture when a noise means more than an articulated cry.

I don’t want the next eight hours to be silent in any way.

Cricket July 23, 2016 a cricket careful.

hard-shelled and green.

her legs rub a violin.

her chirp invites.

and warns.

cacophony is cacophonous.

is mellifluous.

a backward look to what has happened.

a foot in the mud and a foot on the road.

dragging and pushing.

drag spin wash drag mud push.

it’s all kind of the same right now.

It’s so weird, I like what I hate July 28, 2016 I’m not even sure if I hate you. I feel like writing, and so often that means I’m mad. I just ate cheese, so usually that means I’m happy. I look at your left eye and it radiates in a way that I’m pretty sure you can’t explain. It looks that way when you’re happy. It looks that way when you come. I’ve seen both. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the opposite. I prefer the former.

Stop and go August 4, 2016 “You’re difficult.” “Wow, what an insight.” “You’re dangerous.” “Two for two.” “Always a joke, right?” “You knew that 30 seconds after you met me. The insect always flies to the flame. I won’t apologize for being on fire.” “That’s not what I mean.” “I have two speeds. Stop and go. I realize that go is much more fun especially if you’re not behind the wheel. To be honest? I’m not pushing the pedals.”

Three months, five days November 9, 2016 This represents the longest period of time I have refrained from posting here since 2008. Normally I would write when I was angry or drunk and I haven’t been either in just over three months. Sporadic anger perhaps, but nothing that would rise to the level required for one of my usual rants. Love has a way of mitigating bad or self-destructive behavior.

Those who know me know how disappointed I am to have an orange baboon for a President-elect. But even looking down the barrel of four years (at least), I woke up with a smile this morning. Love has a way of mitigating bad news.

For the better part of seven years, I had let anger and acrimony poison my outlook. For all intents and purposes, I had put myself at arms length from the world, and drowned my self-righteous rage. Whether or not I was right or wrong, the truth is it didn’t matter. What was was and what is is. Love has a way of mitigating self-caused downward spirals.

I’ve loved people before. Never when I needed it, and not like this. In the past if you had asked me, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” The answer would have resoundingly been the former. It still is with most. Now the only question is, “Do you want her to be happy?” Yes.

If you want to know who to blame, you need only look in the mirror November 9, 2016 Democrats. You need to be kicking your own asses. Wait. You already did.

You gave America the only Democrat capable of losing to Donald Trump besides maybe Anthony Weiner. Unbelievable. You picked the wrong candidate at the convention even amidst credible evidence that the process was being rigged, or at the very least purchased.

You ignored the base, believing in a non-existent firewall. Then got shocked when you saw your house of cards fall. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania would never go red, right?.

Then to make sure your loss was sealed, you didn’t show up to vote. This wasn’t a Republican surge as much as it was a Democratic retreat. Upwards of ten million less Democrats voted in 2016, than in 2012 for President Obama. No need to vote, all the polls told you how it was in the bag.

I voted for Hillary. She isn’t a bad person, but she is a terrible candidate and worse politician. I ostensibly supported her to the point of ridicule, and now embarrassment, on social media. But you really need to question why your strongest reason to vote for someone is that they aren’t Donald Trump.

I’m not going to lie, I was shocked at about 5 pm when the numbers starting turning. I never would have guessed that every poll would be historically wrong and all in the same direction. But I woke up this morning and I wasn’t all that disappointed. I’m not in any group that is threatened by the new agenda, except perhaps climate change denial. Even this will probably only affect my children, or when I have them, grandchildren. And living in Hawaii, I’m shielded from the ugly brunt of conservatism and the bigotry it often spawns.

But for all my disappointed Democrat, or progressive-leaning friends looking to the sky crying, “Why, oh, why?” The answer is actually obvious. You.

Hobbies November 29, 2016 “I don’t have any hobbies.” “You write.” “Everybody writes.” “But what you write isn’t normal.” “Thank you.” “Nothing about you is normal.”

You’re not the enemy, you just don’t understand how parallel lines move November 29, 2016 There is so much clutter feeding the cataracts of my inner vision. What I don’t like seeing in myself, I hate seeing in you.

I am this sad, lost animal. She is a robot of optimistic smile. On paper, it doesn’t make that much sense. And then there’s teeth and skin and tongue. There are high-pitched squeals and 2am furtive grasps at the divine. Reaching for what you can feel when you can’t feel, but especially when you can. When you don’t know exactly what you’re feeling.

I could write like this forever, a run-on sentence forever. Or I could be silent. Right now I can’t see the difference. There is everything. And there is nothing. This dichotomy in which both realities seem as equally real as they are false. They both feel real. They’re like opinions in that they seem to matter. But the only thing that matters is what happens after you feel them. The truth is your feelings are, by definition, a reaction. An illusion. Your feelings would not exist without what made you feel.

This is transience. Does inevitable transience make an idea sad? Is it the loss of the idea or the loss of self that we lament? I assume the latter. Then again, I am egocentric. In my defense, I’ve been told as long as I’ve been alive—as long as I can remember—that I wasn’t the same as everyone else. But I suppose this is true of any person. The human genome blesses and curses us to almost perfect individuality. Some of us find nihilism in this fact, “What does it matter?” Others find monotheistic comfort, “He wanted it to happen.”

Last November December 1, 2016 That day, I needed to get some groceries, and some things done at customer service. I woke up early. It’d been cool at night, for Hawaii. I han’t had anything to drink or eat since about ten o’clock the night before. I figured I’d just get something at the deli when I got there. I figured I’d walk the two miles to the grocery. What’s the worst that could happen?.

I got there. See? Even in slippers I can still walk through a desert with no water.

I started doing transactions. Waiting. And things took a very quick turn. I asked where the water fountain was and she told me. As she did, I got this feeling at the back of my eyes, and my head felt like it was vibrating from the inside. Trouble was coming, but I didn’t recognize the feeling. I woke up splayed out among Duracell batteries. .

I don’t know how much later it was, but she still hadn’t completed my transaction. It took a second to remember where I was and what I was doing there. All I could think was, “What the fuck just happened?” after I figured out I was lying on the ground at Foodland.

Then the manager was standing over me with a bottle of water. “I think you have heatstroke,” he said. He brought out a chair and told me I could have all the bottled water I needed, and to sit in the air conditioning (in the middle of the store) as long as I needed to. Then he brought me a SpamÆ musubi.

How’s that? Most of the stuff I write is bullshit, or at least partially bullshit. But that actually happened. Last November.

We think of other people as acting in their own interests, and to protect ourselves at all times. But there does exist the kindness of absolute strangers.

Why I have grown to hate the South, more specifically, Texas December 1, 2016 Were it not for the islands of rational secularism (hello, South Austin), Voodoo fun (all my best, N’awlins), or the urban decay of the modern cities (Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, etc.), this last decade would have been wasted. I’m not running away. I’ve had my eyes opened these last three weeks, by love of people, love of a person, and the overwhelming love of place (aloha ‘ƒÅina), and I’ve been saved. Now before some new, cataclysmic disaster (thank you, Katrina) comes and washes the garbage into the Gulf of Mexico, I can only advise you to save yourself.

I’m going home. It may take a few months. Maybe longer. But for 17 days now I’ve been back where I belong. Out from under the thumb of the suffocating, conservative, nationalist, racist, anti-intellectual, religio-fascist, homophobic, conformist, hypocritical, elite worshipping, boot kissing multitude that pervades the territory below the Mason-Dixon. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met wonderful individuals, like-minded and not, but the non-silent majority of ignorance is winning by a landslide.

First-world problems December 5, 2016 I’m lucky. I live in probably the best time ever to be human in the winning class. The worst of us are incomprehensibly better off than the best of generations past. We’re the spoiled rich kid of human experience. “Which car do I take?” rises several notches above or below, “How am I going to eat?” depending on your perspective. First-world problems are still real; it’s just the scale is skewed. The truncheon puts things in a certain perspective that I will most likely never feel. Read. Think. Then read again. It’s easy in a way that seems too easy. You and I make it hard. And most likely will continue to do so.

Meta December 6, 2016 I wouldn’t believe this if you told me. I am the physical embodiment of moral relativism and post-modern fictional awareness. My middle name would be meta if I were named correctly.

It seems counter-intuitive, but the only thing that matters is nothing. No thing.

Crazy glue December 12, 2016 I have dreams sometimes that are so lucid that when I wake, it takes me a few moments to discern the difference between where I just was and where I am. Sometimes it’s horrific. Sleep paralysis. It’s explained medically as the inability of the body to move through the stages of sleep. And it’s not indicative of any underlying psychological pathology. I may have a slight disagreement with that. It has been explained historically as a demon sitting on your chest whispering promises of terror. I can see both sides.

I know I’ve been aware of the phenomenon. I’ve spoken to myself while in its grip. “You’re sleeping. Wake up.” And I’ve also made the attempt to throw myself back in because the life of dreams was preferable to the empty bed and ennui of being awake.

I have another thought that may seem off-subject, but I think tangentially fits.

Almost all of what we feel is a choice. But choices made repeatedly become hard to not make. I have friends that meditate, eat organic, and with a smile tell me that happiness is a choice. I’ve learned to mute my response. They should be motivating me with a fear of death, not a want of more smiles. I’ve smiled a lot already. A lot of good shit has happened to me. And most of the bad shit, I made happen to me, so there.

How do you fix it? Crazy glue doesn’t work on plastic, it corrodes. You can be patient and hold those two pieces together for as long as you want. The first time you put any pressure on the crevasse, it’s coming apart. The same is true for you and me. For me and me. For the world and me. For my understanding and me. There are breaks I can’t fix, I don’t know how to fix, I don’t think will ever be fixed.

I still wake up every morning and stupidly, passionately, hope for the best.

Everything-ness December 12, 2016 Small things ruin your credibility. It’s not much effort to avoid that. Five minutes late in a first meeting makes you a flake. One word spoken when inappropriate defines you. But it works the other way. Just not as as fast or as obvious. Do what you say you’re going to do. Always. Someone will notice the fifth time. But then that’s you. Stop lying. We all do. So stop saying I don’t. Be aware about everything that might be some kind of subterfuge. Then stop it. It will make you shine like a diamond with a spotlight, because most cannot help themselves. It’s hard not to lie. But five years ago I made it an important part of my identity. Like a defining characteristic. And I still fail.

All you have is you. Whatever you want, need, or hope for? The lowest common denominator, unfortunately, is you. You have the power to cure cancer, and you have the weakness to be a junkie. All wrapped up inside the eternal everything-ness of the human spirit.

Every second. Every nanosecond. Each is a chance to make a decision. We’re all binary. Yes? No? 1? 0? It all means the same thing.

Choose wisely every time. Make the right small one-million-in-a-row decisions. And when you look back, I promise you, it’s going to feel like one decision. You can be infallible in your understanding. You have to break everything down. Smaller and smaller, is the only intelligent way to larger and bigger and most. Trust me. I’ve thought about this for a while now.

You can say things December 22, 2016 When things start splitting where they were connected. What is the answer? There are really easy ways to answer that question. People don’t usually like that answer in the long run. The places I’ve woken up in the last five days? I’m pretty sure that’s not the right answer. What happens when it all seems wrong? Your choices made it all wrong. And you still have that voice. “You don’t need to think before you jump.” This was the last time. And now there are 762 days of the last time. They seem. They have a comfort. Waking up in ER is not that scary. That beep beep beep. I’ve woken up to it obviously. I can’t get these thoughts outside of me. So is that how things end? Beep beep beep.

Compulsion December 27, 2016 She keeps secrets. I wish I had a few. I watch her walk with a lilt of flair and admire her confidence. It’s hard to believe how many times I’ve broken her. Looking at her now it’s hard to believe she can be broken. She let me in I guess. It’s easier to break things from the inside. Now I can’t even get a word inside of her, much less any other part of me. I suppose I deserve her defense. Today is beyond both of us, like it or not, she has to speak to me. Courts compel things that love has long abandoned. “Did you sign?” “Yes. Did you? “Yes.” “So, then.” “So what?” “I guess. So what?” “What are you trying to say?” “I still love you?” “That’s not even close to funny.” But I’m not joking. And, of course, I don’t say it. Every syllable with her must be calculable. I have no calculus for this feeling. “You know you had everything?” “I know.” “You know you fucked it all away?” “I know.” “You know I still love you?” “I know.” (Full disclosure: I didn’t.) “So, what now?” “This I don’t know.” “So smart and so stupid.”