One more Christmas thought for the night

I'd like to see Dicken's A Christmas Carol played by Dick Cheney as Scrooge. When he is finally visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future, he finds himself in a holding facility being waterboarded by masked Blackwater employees. The play will end there without going to the last act, and we never find out that Tiny Tim overcomes his terrible case of rickets with a few good meals and exercise... and then much later in life, after completing school becomes an venture capitalist, travels to America and invests in Standard Oil where he becomes a millionaire. That would just be too much, clearly.

"God Bless Us, Every One."

Zadig, or Fate - Chapter 8

"Zadig steer’d his Course by the Stars that shone over his Head. The Constellation of Orion, and the radiant Dog-star directed him towards the Pole of Canope. He reflected with Admiration on those immense Globes of Light, which appear’d to the naked Eye no more than little twinkling Lights; whereas the Earth he was then traversing, which, in Reality, is no more than an imperceptible Point in Nature, seem’d, according to the selfish Idea we generally entertain of it, something very immense, and very magnificent. He then reflected on the whole Race of Mankind, and look’d upon them, as they are in Fact, a Parcel of Insects, or Reptiles, devouring one another on a small Atom of Clay. This just Idea of them greatly alleviated his Misfortunes, recollecting the Nothingness, if we may be allow’d the Expression, of his own Being, and even of Babylon itself. His capacious Soul now soar’d into Infinity, and he contemplated, with the same Freedom, as if she was disencumber’d from her earthly Partner, on the immutable Order of the Universe. But as soon as she cower’d her Wings, and resumed her native Seat, he began to consider that Astarte might possibly have lost her Life for his Sake; upon which, his Thoughts of the Universe vanish’d all at once, and no other Objects appear’d before his distemper’d Eyes, but his Astarte giving up the Ghost, and himself overwhelm’d with a Sea of Troubles: As he gave himself up to this Flux and Reflux of sublime Philosophy and Anxiety of Mind, he was insensibly arriv’d on the Frontiers of Egypt[...]" - Voltaire, from Zadig, or Fate, ch. 8

This is a excerpt from one of my favorite paragraphs I've ever read. More than anything else I've read, this perfectly explains how I experience the world. Living from event to event with that great emotional attachment and the immense gravity of each situation, I often lose that sense of meaning and importance when I step back and see myself in the gaze of the Universe. Infinitesimally small and insignificant in the scheme of everything, and then back into the absorption of these events of my life the seem of such momumental importance. This "Flux and Reflux" as Voltaire puts it, is the perfect description.

On this Christmas Eve, alone in my too large house with a sleeping dog. I'd love to gaze at the stars sprinkled overhead and lose myself in their quiet, non-prescient meaning. But the sky is covered in clouds dumping a wet snow that quietly spatters against the ground. I will have to settle for that meek sound stirring outside to guide me into that transcendent reverie.

I'd like to start the biggest advertising campaign blitz in the history of the world for austerity.

I am starting to become of the opinion that wistfulness is the most despiteful emotive state. Nostalgia, on the other, is an entirely different story. Beware nostalgia becoming wistful...

Slowly, I am beginning to feel myself ossify. The exoskeletal husk containing me feels disconnected, as though I am loose inside of it. When I shamble outside and shift through the snow drifts, I feel myself clunking around awkwardly inside.

Last night, I thought I saw Jesus fall out of a tree. Children ran to him and pelted him with snowballs. It was so dreamlike, that I didn't even venture in that direction. I fell back into my house and dunked my feet into scalding hot water. The sudden submergence caused a splash across the bathroom floor that melted the chunks of snow that had fallen from my nearby boots.

In the past two days I've taken long naps in the afternoon. Vivid dreams took hold of me as I had wrapped myself in heavy blankets and blotted all light from the room. Even in my dreams I am an observer, and I awoke feeling old. There is no connection left to parry the discordant feelings pulsing through me as I shamble into the evening with an aimless ennui.

Come nightfall, I feel that the world is mine. I live in the night, and the day keeps me in a holding pattern until I get there. At this point I am completely unaware of my shell and delve into the crumbling edges of my consciousness. The ecstasy of finding everything you hate about yourself and turning it into a sort of lullaby or new addendums to the Canterbury Tales. In this case I travel alone, and leave Southwark in the opposite direction of Canterbury. I assume, at some point, that one of these tales will include the accidental trip inside of a space shuttle that somehow takes off with me inside of it.

Thinking to myself, "You are never quite sure how you get back, nor really what 'getting back' actually means." Home is a consolatory word that leaves an empty feeling in your chest, similar to how it must feel when someone says "docking yard". I feel like a stationary hobo, with all of the fineries in life such as a refrigerator, microwave, washer and dryer, television, and dish washer. Of course, being a hobo, these items are strange to me and don't quite fit my world. They are there accidentally, as though Zeus dropped them in my lap just to see how I'd react to them. Perhaps I am the newest actor in the next great epic adventure, a sort of anti-Odyssey.

And when these currents rest, and I am able to finally sleep at night, I let the sounds of rivers crest from deep within my memories and carry me to the ocean toward windy and stormy fraught-filled reminiscences.

feigning interest sways
hips like lips dancing
across words softly spoken

I met devilish dancers
eviscerating beats gleefully
replacing sound with fashion

the dust-up settles empty
as open eyes focus intently
on the vacancy of touch

when the orgasmic vibrations recede
against the stranger's body
blankly staring at you -

you reach your hand over

and quietly caress

your suddenly naked elbow


the morning comes too quickly
underneath the harrowing sky
cratered in wintered stillness

expanding on the memories
in cataclysmic dismay
until photosynthesis nourishes
the submerged brain stem
and suddenly flowers shoot
from my previously bloodshot eyes

the systematic creation extends
through my skin in a melismatic shiver
each melodic turn sprouting green

the sharpest crack of the whistle
blasts off the tracks in the distance

I hear myself scraping along
following the squealing echoes
leaving a path of torn ivy leaves
through the industrial ruins
of another broken city

the path is neither winding
nor pastoral

as darkness comes
the leaves molt gingerly
and drift along the chipped concrete

tumbling brown debris
scatters into the crevices
leaving no trace of anything
as I continue on 'til daybreak

Albert Camus writes a lot about honor in his notebooks, and recently that word is getting much more important to me. I realize that he lived in a time when honor was important across society, but now I only ever seem to hear honor associated with military service, usually in relationship to soldiers that have died. And I know that death has got me thinking about this a lot more, but honor goes much beyond the dead...

It is an important concept, like dignity.

the morning rests in shadows
like I've never seen before

as she wakes
the viscious repentent stabbing light
scours the scuttling darkness

standing in the middle of all this
I find myself staring across
gazing at the nude woman
bathing herself in the warmth

her hair is wild
catching all of the sun's beams
and casting them outward

she's glowing
I can't see her face
but I know her eyes are intense

I realize suddenly
the glow surrounding me
and my clothes disintegrate

in that instant I understand
there is nothing to hide
it cannot be hidden

They often say the dead become angels or ghosts. This is because the dead to live on, but they are mistaken if they do not understand that they live on simply within us. We carry everything, for better and worse. Tonight, I feel that it is for the better...

Funerals revisted

I didn't used to understand funerals. My parents would take me to a quiet room, with wooden benches, and everyone would seem so serious. I was a well-behaved child, but I really was anxious to leave. When I was a little kid, I never knew anyone who had died in the funeral, so it was just an unusual break in the routine. And days later I'd forget about what happened and get back to my kid life.

My grandmother and great grandmother died when I was in high school. Neither of the funerals did much for me. My grandmother was an infuriating woman to be around - always complaining about her childhood. She was a smoker, but pretended that she wasn't. Her walls and drapes were brownish-yellow and the thick film of cigarettes covered you as you walked into her house. She got cancer and when we last visited her in the hospital, she hadn't had a bowel movement for many days and looked to be in excrutiating pain. She was laying on a doctor's table with IVs, her stomach was enormous, and her hair was wild. When we talked to her, she rambled on about how little she cared for the treatment she was receiving that was keeping her alive. Finally, before she was sedated, she said, "Oh god, just shoot me now." She said it with anger, like this was someone's fault and they should be held accountable for it. It struck me and I immediately felt mad at her for that - I resented her for it. I still do. Her funeral was a close-casket affair and I remember that I couldn't feel anything, I just heard those words echoing in my head. Days later, back at school, I could still hear those words - that was it. When I think of my grandmother, to this day, that's the first thing that comes to mind - I assume it will haunt me forever.

My great grandmother's situation was entirely different. She was always enjoyable to be around. She had some of the greatest stories, including Depression-era stuff. She had perfect pitch and could sit down at her piano and play old songs she remembered from the 40s. She was frail and skinny - a tiny woman really. She had a shakey voice, but it was kind of cute and refreshing. It was difficult to go to her house because it never smelled that good - it had that "old person" smell that came from not being able to clean well and an indifference to those smells that surrounded her. She had adopted the neighborhood cats that ran freely throughout the city. Outside, she'd leave catfood and milk and dozens and dozens of cats stayed out in her yard. It was kind of creepy, but it was one of the few things that interested her and that she really cared about.

Near the end, she fell and broke her hip. She began to get Alzheimer's. We realized that all of the able-bodied people that physically could take care of her were too busy working to do so. We shopped around and found a decent assisted living senior home for her. We visted regularly, and I watched her mind slowly decay. She would go in-and-out of lucidity from moment to moment. She sometimes felt that she was a prisoner and would try to escape. Her confusion made her scared. She always seemed to brighten up when we'd visit, but sometimes she'd focus on the negative a lot - even if it wasn't true, but what she felt from her incoherent state. The last time I visited her with my father, she couldn't remember me. My dad tried hard to jog her memory, and she made an effort, but it just didn't happen. She actually asked several times about who I was before we left. I felt sick - didn't talk about it at all in the car. What are you when your whole life slips away?

I took part in helping to clean out both of their houses. I felt so awkward in each instance. We discovered my grandmother's collection of books that she had written on the typewriter that she had never made mention of to anyone - ever. About 50-60 books in all. Thousands and thousands of pages. Her secret passion. Most of the stories weren't very good at all - some mix of a female protagonist that was wronged in someway and she'd rise up somehow and get the best of everyone, but the protagonist wasn't really a sympathetic character, and the plots were generally weak. My great grandmother's house wasn't as bad, but some of those drawers obviously hadn't been opened forever. Found a 60+ year old enima bag - I thought that was cool for some reason. Our job in both houses was to find anything of value that we really wanted to keep, throw out everything we knew was basically worthless, and to find family treasures to pass on through the generations. I wasn't very good at this, I didn't know what was what - but it was like a strange walk through history, and through my childhood memories of all of the family gatherings we had in those places.

I've had plenty of dreams since then that have taken place in my grandmother's house. I particularly have dreamt a lot about her basement. They are strange dreams that have little action, like treading water. Often times the house has secret passageways that connect from one area to the next, or, in a way, you have to find these passageways to get around at all. The living room takes on different dimensions and sometimes a sort of sinister fireplace dominates the surroundings. But always you see grandma's green chair in the middle of it all.

I really don't know what these events mean in my life, other than how nebulous they are. My relationship with death is nebulous. What the hell is death, really?

I have one other story from high school - a classmate died in a car wreck that involved drunk driving. We had a class together, but I didn't talk to her much. She was one of the only students in the whole school that would get really mean and angry toward me - I didn't understand it, and I could never process why she was like that toward me. And, once again, her death left me clueless. We had an all-school assembly that ended with everyone leaving the stands in the gym when "I'll be missing you" by Puff Daddy was played over the loud speakers. I was reluctant to leave my seat. I was uncomfortable. I walked down there with everyone else, and then it was over.

Now, it is all a new experience for me. These events all haunt me. I know why people believe in ghosts, the dead never leave us. I have a lot of fresh memories that aren't settling well with me since this former student died. This time it isn't because there was something I didn't like about her - no, this time it was because there was just no reason for such a good person to die. We had just talked a few days before she died, and she was chipper and happy. Everything was going perfectly...

I'm going to her funeral, I hope that this experience does something for me - jolts something awake and helps me heal from all of these memories that have been haunting me on the margins of my life, just around the edges.

This morning the streets were steaming after the night's rain froze. An empty cathedral, cold. Dies Irae, the Summerset fountains flow into sunken gardens. Awaiting for me at the gates, a man wearing a nondescript coat with an indescript face leads me to a dark hall lit by lanterns. We shook hands as we parted ways and his cold fingers jolted me like an electric shock. The adjoining room opens full and the light simmers under the cresting sun. The stained glass windows depict Nativity and I notice the figures frozen under a sheath of ice. The room is left with a heavy sadness. Dies Illa, extending down into the open room, the silence is crushing and welcome.

Christmas, just around the corner, like a thief in the night. Soon we'll see the snow build along the road. Soon we'll see ourselves under the Northern Lights, when the night is exceptionally clear. And we will know our limitations in the incandescent dream.

Last Friday, I learned that someone close to me has died. She was a student I had that I had a great relationship with and it meant a lot to me. She and her boyfriend ran a red light and we hit head on by a semi truck. They both died.

She was of my "top friends" on MySpace. When I sign in, and see her face there with my other friends, I am hit with this emotion that really makes it completely impossible to do anything to change my list. As if I can't delete her from my friends, or take her out of my top friends in some sort of token act of defiance, or respect for her life. Just because she has died, does that not mean she's a top friend any more?

This strange simulated world, and the simulacra in which we play it out in makes it hard to comprehend death, and to emotionally deal with it. But I've got my memories, and I am still quite sure that they are real. I am quite sure this is a real tragedy and I will carry on these memories with as much dignity and honor as I possibly can.

-with love and respect

???

"If I ate meat,
bacon is what I would eat."

Magical, accidental poetry

yummmm



OR. . .

I think the significance of tears lies in their alkalinity. One cannot assume that the acrid PH of those tears is coincidental. This is why I extracted them and placed them in a stoppered beaker. I kept the beaker in the cellar by the well pump. Spiders took to the spot and absorbed the beaker's presence with eager webs. Whilst I stumbled through life above, the beaker's contents aged gracefully and garnished prismatic hues that leaked through the spaces in the cobwebs. A gentle glow pulsed through the beaker, as the contents continued breaking down in alchemical synergy - to be seen again once I trek down below, helping me to find my way as I fumble around the well pump in the musky silence.

Bell towers ring out at noon
and the sound captures me.

I realize that these little vibrations
amplified by the extention of time
will eventually topple the planet
with each budding ring expanding
on the last. Lord help us,
we didn't even see it coming.