April 2003 Archives

it wasn't the want it might seem to be, although want was certainly involved. wanting does not make the necessary less so, but it does leave motives open to doubt.

so i did what anyone would have done, under the circumstances. i went into the bathroom, locked the door, slathered on the shaving gel, & for the first time in my life, i ...

i shaved my arms.

& i've resolved to stop buying domains. after these four. really. for a little while anyway. unless there are extenuating circumstances or something.

... so there was this microsoft seminar i had to go to at one point, & in the back of the booklet there was a microsoft trivia quiz. one of the questions was about microsoft's slogan, one of the answers was 'have you tried rebooting?'. self-deprecating humor out of redmond? anything can happen, yes?

but even the loveliest of non-microsofted boxes must fail from time to time, & there is nothing like the feeling of getting all those plaintive text messages from the server, 'httpd failed, a restart was attempted automagically'. *shudder*. even more thrilling is a manual restart attempt that fails & says, contact the sysadmin. i am the sysadmin you idiot i mean, oh, sweetie, whassamatter with the puter? aww, not feeling well? *patpat* here, let's reboot your sorry ass bad self.

so i kissed up & made it all better, but i haven't lost that squirrely feeling just yet.

unrelated but somehow connected: working on that whole not despising what i look like thing today, i decided to take some pictures of ... of me. now the camera does not love me, & i rather dislike it right back. but a person who calls themselves a hottie must at some point be able to handle deluding themselves even in the face of evidence to the contrary, right? i mean, did i say deluding? i meant ... what i said.

so, i took some pictures. i don't like them damn i'm hot. stalling in this context is useless, isn't it? on with it then.

i had to take my son to a birthday party this afternoon. this is what i decided not to wear. a more confident person would not have done so much cropping. i am not that person (yet). i wore this instead. i keep telling myself that it could be worse, it could be forty-something pounds ago, that was pretty horrifying. not that it's that much less horrif-- anyway. so we got in the car (it's taking all the willpower i can muster to post that one, don't ask me why).

it was a very upscale party, at least from my rather ... financially challenged perspective. but i still had the coolest license plates there, even if the tags are expired. & while i may not be able to throw a kidparty with a spongebob jolly jumper & mad science entertainment & look at that haul -- well, i can comfort myself that there's some ... thing to refusing to get sucked into the party one-upmanship thing that plagues this affluent community in which i don't quite fit. right?

rebooting the self-image is far more stressful than restarting apache 3 times while people all around the world are thinking what the f? more server shit? & here i am, doing both things, nearly simultaneously. i get points for that?

i sense a crying need in the world. yea, verily, this idea was briefly & jokingly discussed at work last week, & it was good. & lo, upon me this night, it comes to this: people need leading. especially those who eschew the traditional 'normal' socio-political paradigms of leadership. shit. did i just say paradigm? i did. & i hereby forgive the word paradigm for all that whoring around the corporate world a few years back & declare it now officially appealingly nouveau-retro.

i mean, why not? why not declare ourselves enlightened leaders of ... people who would believe that sort of thing?

so far it's me, Scott, & Jett.**

so what ... would we be doing, you ask? well, we're gonna form a movement. to paraphrase the inimitable arlo, if three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people, they may think it's an organization. and can you, can you imagine fifty people, i said fifty people? and friends they may thinks it's a movement.

not a cult. a movement.

**coincedentally these are two (maybe even the only two) people who recognized me as the alterego of whoever it was that i was, in advance of having it whispered to them in their comment boxes.

in non-whining-about-love related news, i've achieved some sort of navigational nirvana with the individual entry templates, added an expandable ten most recent lyrical submissions section to the sidebar list, & changed the comment form labels to bizarre examples of badly mangled phrasebook french (an activity which had me doubled over in hysterics, yes, i crack myself up sometimes). also i reminded myself that (a) i have a job i love -- yes love, it is possible to love work. can't complain. and also, (b) after years of despising myself physically in the present tense while longing for the physique i despised in the past, i have finally bested the beastly learning curve of my issues & decided to appreciate my self in the present tense & therefore from this day forward i shall consider myself to be a hottie. at this moment i'm having to forcibly resist throwing myself down on the couch & having my way with myself. these are good things, even though my realization of them is a bit belated. it always is.

& so what if i never have another gutrending heartwrenching transposition of head & heels, what if i never fall in again? what if it's just me, my ownself, & my frequent passionate unrequited crushes (which do keep me tingly, even if it is a wistful tingle at best)? what if all there is to this life, what's left of it, consists of only the career i adore & the creativity i pursue otherwise & this newfound affection i have for myself? shouldn't that be enough?

well, it's not. not even fucking close. mostly it's the wistful element alluded to above, that haunts whatever pleasure i derive from unrelated activities, that saps the colors from the best days, that fades my smile even when the expression is joyously justified. it is this wistful shit that must stop. some pathos in the background of me just whispered that the wanting is best stopped by getting, & some weakness in the rest of me accepted that suggestion as Truth & went off on another tangential fantasy against all of my better judgement. as these conflicts went about their usual business of unsettling me, my eyes reminded me how unfocusing exhaustion can be & offered a tantalizing memory of last night's dreams, which were blissful, sensual, loving, & ultimately more fulfilling than anything reality has ever given me & then taken away eventually.

will regretting what i'm lacking now, in spite of all that i do have be like the lesson of physical acceptance, another of the many things i'll end up sorry for the vast stretches of time i spend with it still unlearned, in spite of constant hindisght to the contrary? how much more must i waste before i learn?

this morning i resolve to believe that love (you know what kind i mean, don't get on me with friends & kids, that's not what i'm talking about & you know it) exists &/or that i haven't already had both my first & last. we'll see if this goes as badly as the wanting to believe in the ghosts of tiredness. because if i have had my first & last already it may as well not exist & therefore i can on with ... whatever it is one gets on with.

i might be just a tad fussy this morning.

your ghost / ghost of a chance

more?

either i am more exhausted right now than i've ever been in my whole life, or i have ghosts.

it was nevermind what a.m. when i curled up on the couch. i was cold, on the verge of shivering cold, so i burrowed under the blanket & began to drift off. & then there was something pillow-like, batting me on the head? this was tactile & vividly audible, & upclose & personal, tangible. i thought it might be the cat, & i thought this for a good long moment, because i couldn't move or make a sound; finally i managed a nice loud 'what the fuck?!' ... & it stopped. & the cat was nowhere near, which was rather a moot point, since it would have had to be at least four feet tall & capable of wielding a pillow, & my cat is short & lacks opposable thumbs.

i curled up even curlier under the blankets, by this time shivering hard. it's never below 65° & generally closer to 70° in that house at night, but i felt cold like i'd never be warm again. just as i began to relax a little (i have intense goosebumps just writing this) it started again, this time, poking at my ribcage -- considering the way i curl, this would not be possible for anything with any substance. it was damned annoying. i told it to quit it, & it did. & then i looked over at the computer & i would swear there was someone sitting in the chair, leaning forward intently gazing into the darkened monitor screen. so i threw a pillow at it.

& then without further interruptions, i fell asleep.

what do they call those hardy foolish types who climb stuff 'cause it's there? not pioneers, but something like that. well, who needs mountains when there are cranky buicks in the middle of the night & also for all intents & purposes, nowhere.

so i'm sitting in this cold dead car annoying everyone within a hundred miles who has the misfortune of being in my phone memory & finally find one willing to rescue my sorry ass. & so, midnightish, just as the car is revived the phone rings with a tipsy daughter on the other end wanting beer money to spend some time with her mommy & what better antidote to feeling helpless & annoying, than to be beer money for someone you love? it is also most amusing to be the only undrunk one in a group of decidedly non-undrunk individuals.

& it is almost amazing that i spent two thirds of three hours voluntarily away from my computer while this luscious domain was busily propagating itself over the internet knowing i was not prepared & yet there i was, not only not home not on the computer, but 'out'. with people. i don't know whether to be proud or worried about that, not to mention not knowing if i should be worried or proud about not knowing whether to be proud or worried over such a thing. & what if, say, a half dozen years ago someone had said to me that a half dozen years hence i'd be sitting in an outdoor bar patio with a half dozen interesting people, drinking a glass of bass ale & laughing & smoking vanilla cigarettes & having separation anxiety fom a computer? what would then-me think of me now?

out & about: one

the logo needs work. what do you expect from someone who didn't get home till two in the morning (three full hours after finally leaving work)?

there might even be pictures. there are pictures! they might not be webbable, but i do have them.

we'll see, won't we?

well, we knew it wouldn't last, right? full-on domain junkie with a debit card & a premium membership to the online thesaurus, what were the chances she'd stick with just this ... this dot net here? honestly.

so there is a new domain, & the very thought of it is at this moment causing the future ex-feck's goosebumps to tingle.

will she keep it a surprise? can she? it's making her bounce in her chair here, this not-telling. dammit. what to do? babble.

the site will be the same, more or less, same code, same everything, though it will need a complete makeover in the very near future, of course it will. the only difference between being here today & gone tomorrow is that where we're headed there is an URL so cool, it's causing its new owner to shiver. either that or maybe it's time to turn off the psychotic hotcold airblower thingy here.

there is already a copy of MT installed & running off of these databases -- there is nothing to move. ready to go. ready. to. go. oh. very. very. ready.

are we there yet?
are we there yet?
are we there yet?

within a minute of waking, monday announced itself to me in angry stressful terms & went downhill from there, feeling like the sound brakes make when they're worn down to the rotors & being applied against inertia in desperation, the kind of sound you hear with your teeth.

there was more to the metaphor at first -- it went on to mention the addition of 'in flames' to downhill due to an explosion of a stockpile repressed ammunition too unstable to be used for communication purposes or somesuch. & then it got hopelessly entangled in itself & began to whine piteously, so it was sent off to spend the day in draft status & reflect on its erroneous ways.

whether it escaped or was eaten by the voracious depression i stuffed in there with it, we'll never know. both are currently missing, & while they are certainly not missed, their absence is a little alarming, considering the circumstances & all.

feckless: hopeless, incautious, ineffectual, irresponsible, meaningless, reckless, shiftless, weak, wild, worthless. purposeless. some days the URL is used ironically, on others it fits like skin. & irony does abound these days, just not where the URL is concerned.

this started out with every intention of becoming yet another fetching, feckless rant of the self-deprecating variety, but what's the use? it's safe to say that feck is quite capable of obfuscating the issues as she spins words around her dire circumstances du jour, conveying either an impression of irrepressible whimsy or edgy fragility, whichever seems the more appealing approach at the time. & we know that she often engages in relentless self-revelation as a form of misdirection, hoping that her outrageous candor will garner at least as much attention as whatever it is she's just revealed. & she will do all this at a breathless pace in overlong & overly complicated sentences filled with recursive references & obscure imagery, formatted for euphony first & clarity second, so that her meaning cannot be easily deciphered merely by reading; these statements are meant to be solved for x. in the preceeding example, we didn't even get the euphony, did we? she's in a hurry.

and this business of referring to herself in the third person? it's another technique, as is remarking on the usage of the third person in a tone that rolls its eyes at such silliness. & she'll finish it off with some adorable anecdote about the arguments she has with her cat when the dang thing bangs on the door at four something in the morning & stirs up her insomnia. & then she'll go back to bed & most likely regret this (later in) the morning.

the most boring hair disaster in history. it's barely even noticable. however it is to me (in the sunlight at least). which makes it bad enough to merit emergency intervention. it is if i say so, ok?

which brings me to my question: so do i do the removing the color thing so i can do the blonde thing? haven't been blonde since the 80's. ahh. the 80's.

which would be more expensive & probably more stressful to my hair.

or do i just go get a really strong deep red color that would be cheaper, less stressful, & also the same thing i've been doing for years upon years upon years.

don't you dare suggest i grow it out. life is for living, hair is for dyeing.

or shall i do like i used to do back in the 80's & go to that salon next to the pub & toss back a couple of emboldening brewskis while i wait, & then go in there & say something like, 'there's no such thing as too short. hair grows. remember annie lennox? like that.' because in those days changing haircolor was something i did every couple weeks, & that is only really practical with veryvery short hair. i think the pale silvery lavender accident was the best. or maybe the 'lush cherry' that ended up looking black indoors & the most vibrant deep purple in the sunlight. sigh. the 80's.

so blonde (most likely some sort of light apricotty blondie thingy) or red (again)? or -- 'so short in the back you can almost grab it with your fingers, & fluffy up on top, with bangs'? and then it would be all about the manic panic, baby. or not.

dammit this midlife crisis business is complicated.

so, i had some things to say about the damsel, instead i spent much of my afternoon about two pixels from an insect's armpit. damsel flies. of course.

sitting here thinking the shade of the hairdye drip on my arm is a good sign, much darker than the box. because i picked an entirely inadvisable color to go over the faded outgrown red i had. & honestly, i know better. the choice i made could be construed as a deliberate attempt to have a hair disaster, thereby necessitating extreme corrective measures.

sometimes the only way i can manage to change is to fuckup in some spectacular fashion so that the choice is taken out of my hands. it's like some reverse failsafe switch in my head -- when my indecision keeps my wavering on the side of whiny overcaution for too long, there will come a time when the reckless hedonist within gets fed up. picture tooling along at 20 in a 25 zone & suddenly jumping out of the car. go ahead, run the scene though your mind, professional stuntperson & all -- it's more exciting than picturing me sitting here with cheap medium blonde hair dye doing god knows what to the entirely wrong hair i just put it on. the larger metaphor for the way i escape suffocating stagnation in my life? we'll pretend it's just hair.

it reads well, the list:

for you / bittersweet me / jumper / right now / i love my computer / lawyers guns & money / all you zombies / time stand still / southern cross / home by the sea / layla / woman from tokyo / if i had a rocket launcher / badge / standing outside a broken phone booth with money in my pocket / at the hundredth meridian

it would almost be helping me focus, if i weren't such an unfocused individual in general & particularly restless & i'm in this pair of old favorite shorts & the cutest little tshirt as a result of a recent expedition to the garage for clothes that have been out there some two years & damn. (& yes, i did shave my legs. for me.) basically, being that i'm the only one i ever, um, ... & what with me looking so cute & all & ... what i mean to say is i need to quit copping feels from my ownself & get to work. not as easy as it sounds.

* * *
& last night i installed a PHP dealythingy that goes to the department of homeland security every four hours & checks the alert level in the sidebar. if that sucker goes red you can bet i'm going to stop dillydallying & get me some real live end-of-the-world sex. & there will be someone else involved. oh you betcha.

it's nicole's fault. i couldn't help it. i had to add my own alert to what they want you to think. go ahead, go click the department of homeland paranoia over there.

stay tuned, this is setup to be completely interactive, all it needs at the moment is a little teeny form thingy to write to the text file. i should have it get the name of the person picking the alert status too, right? of course.

* * *
and that's just what it will do. go there, click, select a level, & tell it your name. it needs to know your name. & then close the wee window & reload & woo!

you see, you *can* control your own terror.

* * *
and, credit where credit's due, the original script to gather the information from the DHS site came from ofhills.com.

in the dissonant stillness
entirely unwell, depressed
perhaps or more accurately
avidly lost, her distressed damsel
eyes wide & carefully shadowed
hiding the edge of rage & still
waiting & waiting,
the aging ing

saturday
late in may
5:48am (dawn)
  :my life
   in ruins in
silence surrounding
the sibilant stroke
of the pen speaking
   in tunnel tones
inside my bones
   echoing &
measuring my
hollows while
the conversion
continues
  :marrow into
   oblivion at the
speed of the sound of
someone scrawling across
the abyss in the wind all the while
waiting for the images
to resolve into
one
  :vivid & visceral &
   ultimately irrefutable, it is
the absence of love & it sends the pen
skidding into a storytelling
about a morning
i am calling
"the end"

(me)
27MAY95

not literally of course.

i have a twix & a newcastle. i have a cigarette & decisions to make. i have spent time being my own stranger, & oh the candy. oh & yes, yes i did this instead of what i should have. can i deduct the temporal expense as necessary therapy? do you really want to know the alternative? thought not.

& soon i'll have only the one job, & this is good. much more of this two of them & it would be all about my brother's with them, did i tell you? / his wife is russian and he / keeps asking me to fill out forms / i have it in my diary / listen, which would bring to mind the time i went home with the waitress / the way i always do / how was i to know / she was with the russians, too & incidentally last night i watched the news from washington, the capitol / the russians escaped while we weren't watching them, like russians will ... (aside: two songs about lawyers mentioning russians. conspiracy? you tell me.)

i've put some poems in the lyriclist, & in doing so said, in essence, 'same difference', which was a nonsense thing my mommy used to say about this & that.

& i want to write up that search function for my lyrics. & can't. have work before sleep & sleep before work & an unknown but now finite amount of completely crazed days stretched out before me & then it will be different. better? sure, sure. not that it's bad now, you certainly won't catch me saying if i had a rocket launcher, some son of a bitch would die. no, that is not a thing i'd be caught saying, and if i ever had they couldn't tell, if we were they didn't know / she might but if he did they can't, you must, I won't.

you know.

things change. sit down sit down / as we relive out lives in what we tell you. once long ago i listened to that in an entirely different state of being & thought how life is relived in the telling, reinvented &/or redefined more like it. & that the past is rewritten in every word, all of them, even these, & therefore there is no such thing as history, at least none that can be known. we don't exist, we eat our time.

did you know, that if you delete an entry from MT, that it leaves the file on the server? so what i do, when i want to really delete something, is clear the text boxes, & save it empty before i delete it.

as to this one? i can do better.

i'm calm. in fact i'm much calmer than i ought to be, considering the circumtances. what do you suppose the chances are of me completing an entire bankruptcy filing in, say, 4 hours?

it can be done in pen. i have a nice pen! i like my pen, it's pretty.

a spider almost landed on my head today. it was just a wee tiny thing, but still. i could have a spider in my hair. but i don't! that i know of. anyway. things are going well, yes, certainly very well.

i, um, didn't go home last night. matter of fact i was just wandering downstairs at the car wash when youknowwho was getting out of the car to come to work. he took it fairly well, even the part about the sleeping with a guy my daughter's age, whose name escapes me. sleeping i said, get your mind out of the gutter. hmmph.

hobbes: you

if a godless heathen wrote a prayer for critical mass, it would be me doing the writing in blind faith hope here. would that i knew what i meant when i typed that, o believe you me. i believe it was about surrender as in let go good god, who could do that? it would not be me surrendering, this much you may accept as fact although you will only have faith to go by - and trust me i could be making this shit up, i often find myself doing that. & by find i mean, discover as in there is an element of surprise involved.

realize that i am an entity possessed by stress & yet uniquely immune by virtue of these forays into semi-conscious surrealist imagery, do you see what i mean? look: various landscapes replete with nonsense & ants. clarity? i could analyze this shit in a spreadsheet & give you ratios, baby. it is this precise, this madness.

again i must mention i've no idea what it is i'm saying or more accurately channeling, as in four beers & half enough sleep for a week or is it more? it might be, there were days i simply did not know where in time i was.

what is this working? with the beer & the vanilla cigarettes & the dsl & the boss & his minions out there melting metal things without goggles? fun is what it is, avoidance of home is another. & yes blogging at work, offuckingcourse i am. there are justifications: again, faith is what you'd have to have in me to believe that this is not wrong. & besides i have the security cam to tell me if they're coming. & i've been otherwise quite busy. just not right this very minute, this minute is a moment & beyond, because i am not home & i have this sweet buzz & these things to reconcile & the sound on this puter doth rock muchly.

life. feels.

fine.

of myth & women (of me, i mean)

the goddess of mistaken identity
invented the mirror
claimed it gave her
clarity
focus
perspective

now you wouldn't know it to look at it, but i was up half the night screwing with code. never content with the mere addition of a plugin, no matter how beastly complicated the thing is, i must make it do something special, something it does only for me. mine. mmm. mine. & oddly enough the one i worked hardest on, is so obscure if i don't tell anyone, no one might ever notice.

now, i would notice such a thing - i notice shit. i'm one of those people that goes poking around in your cupboards to see if you've customized your comment error screens. yeah, you think your mother in law doing the white glove thing on the doorsills is bad, but the MIL can't view source on your dusting practices. mmhmm. eww. defaults. *sniff*

ok look i'm a freak.

it's been a month since monday, but it zoomed past at mindbending speed. the things set aside in favor of more urgent matters are fast becoming emergencies in their own right, & the more intense this gets, the more tangential my response. faced with twice as much to do as i have time in which to do it, i will invariably obsess on something else entirely, & afterall it's only fair. if i were to address the things that need doing knowing i could not do them all, it would mean choosing some over some others, & what does that say about those poor urgent others? sorry i failed you, i had important things to attend to. but if i avoid everything in general, i can offer comfort in the form of don't feel bad, you're not alone in being undone, see? no things whatsoever were accomplished in any way.

it's all too important not to fail to accomplish in equal measure.

at some point, of course, even the most whimsical interpretation falls away & leaves me feeling this chilling disappoinment with my ownself, unhappy to be the sort of person i'm not unhappy enough about to change.

& so i have reached a level of exhaustion i myself can hardly imagine, & i have nothing substantial at all to show for it. & as empty as this is & as justifiable as it isn't, there is a sense of trueness to self; this is who i am, it is what i do. at some point i will find whatever necessary & manage minimally, to the extent i can weave a little spin between what was done & what should have been, & have it hold. as empty as this is, as justifiable as it isn't.

things. bizarre. things, inexplicable & bizarre. & those which might be explicable tend to escape, er, explication by virtue of the fact they are so terribly, terribly ... bizarre.

not terrible, you mind you - - bizarre.

weird.

just not unusual, is all.

weirdness abounds.

self: be less surprised by this in the future. that is all, carry on.

the phone guy is gone now, thank goodness, & i'm starting to recover from the incident. i was just sitting here, working, innocently even, when he comes over and starts poking at my phone, beepity beepity boop on the little buttons. hey, i'm a reasonable girl, i let this pass. then, all sudden-like, he tells me i have to record a message. yes! he tells me this some three keybeeps from the actual time i'll have to actually leave the actual message. the bastard.

it's a sordid tale ...

off work @ four-forty five was it? dreams swimming through a war zone: hiding under the edge, under the tarp draped over the framework: tubing, aluminum? holding on as the thing moves over water, pulling me along, away. back on land i'd been wandering through overwhelming devastation & offering advice on letting go. i think it might have been carol burnett swinging a huge plank at the crumbling columns. until they fell. many things, many many crumbling things, some of them still smoldering. is smoldering the word? glowing embers everywhere & so forth. it seems thousands of years were destroyed here just yesterday, the atmosphere is still thick with history, or the ashes of it at least.

there is no memory of abandoning land, just the afterimage of the decision. there are conflicts here too, it's why i'm hiding. i string a makeshift hammock underneath the tarp draped over the framework of the tubular structure of whatever it is i've chosen here, completely at peace in this terribly precarious place. as the water glides by below, i drift off to sleep.

& up at nine. failed to refrain from dawdling over these keys while this fell out, losing a little of the insane virtue of the whole nineteen hour workday in the process. which was actually only sixteen what with the nap & all.

& now nearly noon, & still here at these keys & still in what passes for pajamas.

this is not me cracking under the pressure. blue footprints on the front porch. bunny hug. an entire argument carried out on a post-it note. will it resolve without the FQDN? where is 4-1? basic tummyache. kid climbing refrigerator. three-fifty short, an even five over, followed by one under. extensive modifications due by tuesday was it? i lost an hour. unexpected t_echo on line 40. the knife is in the freezer because the cake is in the freezer. so if you need a kinfe... five fifty five. no, six. but that's fast. seven. ma-huang. 4614 messages 2443 unread. do we have chocolate? eight, nine. fine. everything is just. fine.

as directed i am pimping a friend who needs your vote. what's at stake here is his new URL, a very critical decision. it would be better to just go there and ignore the fact i've gone mad in the more area. quite mad, in fact, but it's for theraputic purposes only. look, i keep insect corpses as pets, what did you expect? sheesh.

which stands as evidence of the week that was. & then there were a few hours of work & then a few minutes of yelling & being yelled at & being told not to use the word fuck in the house & well just don't be a fucking asshole, & i won't have to will i? what else is there to say with that heat traveling up the back of the scalp? it burns. which happens when the yelling is pent-up days-weeks-months-years, there's no discussing these things, for that some validity would have to be assigned where no amount of discussion has ever resulted in its assignment. there are hopeless cases, this is one.

& there are things i need to throw. & can't. & things that could do with some breaking. can't. if comfort exists anywhere in this helpless rage it's that this won't last forever. things will break, & not the dishes. as satisfying as that would be.

there will be demolition soon enough. something like it anyway. more like i'll chew my leg off. whatever. so, decision: for the amount of times i said i don't care (& meant it) do i obey anyway? there will be venomous remarks if i don't, i don't care. but do i want to hear it? i hate it. how can i not care and hate? well, i can.

[this is where a listing of the bitterest sort of grievances was before i selected it with the mouse & typed this instead.]

because it truly does not matter. nothing does, right? however there is scant comfort in nihilistic rhetoric when there are forty five mintues maybe left, & things go straight back to shit.

fourteen hours of sleep & i'm still exhausted.

as we join the internal debate team, they're squaring off on the issue of morning beering. team no stepped up to the podium and delivered a stirring oratory on the virtues of ... i'm not quite sure, my attention went wandering off to find its happy place, where it then proceeded to get laid in quite a spectacular fashion.

the rebuttal from one of the softest spoken members of the yes team was brilliant. it began with several concise examples of frantic stress levels in the overworking department, made a number of valid points in favor of a little self-indulgence from a mental health standpoint, and concluded that it sure would be nice to get laid, but failing that, there's beer.

the captain of the no team, who apparently couldn't get laid in a whorehouse with a suitcase full of unmarked bills, stepped up and started in with the self-righteous whining. as the nasally voice droned on, the judging committee conferred briefly and came to a unanimous decision to sneak out for a cold one, and tiptoed out the side door, giggling. you can bet this reporter wasn't far behind, but unfortunately the rest of the story is strictly off the record. the only thing i can tell you is that no one got laid.

for my next story, i think i'll do an investigative piece - 'is anybody really getting laid?'

in a winsome whisper
i invite you inside
my story
& offer you forever

the wry curl of my
slow smile illustrates this
prehensile tale as i
twirl it tellingly
around your perceptions
& give you
visions
& love.

& this is limitless love
i give you,
untouched by any
temporal or physical
boundary,
& yet it can be
expressed to perfection
in the flesh, yes.

& yes
of course we are
incapacitated by
the intensity!

primitive rhythms
relentless within us
&
yes, these are
impossible promises
we are making

but they are made
with words & motions
which describe the
gentle curve of infinity

perfectly

as far as i can see.

-(me)
25 AUG 95

when i was young, i called inspiration "muse" & pictured a feminine presence, gliding across the consciousness in a gown that flowed like quicksliver around her, as she brought me words, a line or two like seeds. i believed her benevelence long after she had shown herself to be a fickle bitch; i blamed myself & lavished upon her all i could give, the pretty notebooks & pens i'd buy or steal if i had to, which would be consumed during sleepless night after night, endless revisions in search of her purpose for me. and by & by there came a time i looked back at what had stretched into decades & saw myself foolish through most if not all of it & i let it go. fractionally i wondered what might have been, but on the whole, i was scattered & left in charge of my own purpose.

& so i settled, as did the dust here in this cavernous drafty warehouse here, cluttered with only the most worthless bullshit, anything worth anything had long been sold, stolen, or otherwise wasted. oh, and here's a huge pile of potential (hardly used, no reasonable offer refused).

& so i went about the business of hanging on. i managed. there were more failures than anything, more accidental successes than successful efforts, but somehow things got to humming along, tunelessly of course. numb, more or less, more was better. & then? out of nowhere? inspiraton. returned. unbidden. & my numbness subsided into tingling & i sat anticipating the words that would be given to me, ready to follow, ready to surrender & be led.

the air crackled as he walked in, flashing a greasy smile & smoothing his combover. any doubts were obliterated by the energy, the same familiar force, only intensified by an order of magnitude; my mind reeled with the possibilities. the smell of his pungent sweat punctuated the silence as he measured me with his eyes, shrugged, & offered one word, a question: "ready?"

i released a breath i had no idea i'd been holding & nodded solemnly, hoping i looked the part. he held his hands out, palms up, opened his eyes to mine & waited wordlessly until he saw the understanding dawn on me, & by dawn i mean it spun my world hard around me & then tossed me on my ass on the cold floor. the truth? the truth?

he was gone before i had the chance to thank him.

it's about fears, really. would it help if i told you my skin crawls looking at pictures of insects? but last night i spent hours in fireworks mx carefully cutting out & changing & arranging & getting layout ideas from these objects of my own irrational fear, both the pretty moth and my main man mr. chrispy over here, i mean i was upclose & personal with bugparts in great detail. and here they are. & i'm fine, really. sure it was touch and go for a bit there, but isn't it always?

i don't forget the bee body's there, but i am ... forgetful in general & (i have to find him a jar) & last night i tipped the piece of paper & flung him (not far but enough)... didn't land on me, or else i'd probably be in restraints in the psych ward pumped full of thorazine & still screaming and that is only slightly an exaggeration. only. slightly. and ... i had to use a piece of paper to pick him up and put him back on his piece of paper, where i can keep an eye on him (you would need a fairly severe phobia for to understand the degree of panic involved here) - & the whole time i was squeaking & hyperventilating & it does not help that that much adrenaline makes the hair tingle, i'll tell you that right now. & ... the weight of him. goodgod. the sound he made when i scooped him up, heavy dead bee body. heavy. i mean, the damn thing weighs ... something. ok? weight & bee, not things you generally put in the same sentence, unless the sentence is in an entomology exam.

bee body's still here. i'm still sane here. it's a symbol, a sign, & several reasons, all wrapped up in one crispy little former critter.

but he needs a little jar. with a nice, little, snug-fitting lid. oh my yes.

not just any bugs. alien ghost bugs.

this is absofuckinglutely nowhere near what i had in mind when Jessica gave me the lovely moth picture. this was more or less ... insane. you should have seen it before i toned down all the psychedelic bee ghosts. and, i mean, it's pink.

one bee.
two bee.
bee be very dead.
two days in dishwater.
still creepy.
bigtime creepy.

i'm keeping him. chrispy the dead bee body, my mascot.

some days shake me. literally i mean vibrating, approximately 65 maybe 70 khz, not quite entirely steady to the eye, though most of them are averted before they know it, it's misdirection, i do it, & i'm good; well, i manage i ... [this is the part where i nearly really screamed - if i had actually screamed, you'd have heard, oh yes & you'd be shaken too] why?

actual teenage poetry. enter at risk of angst.

but you can turn back now, matter of fact i strongly recommend it. see, i needed to theraputically obsess on something pointless last night, and -- the chronology archives? over there on the side? yeah. & then as if that wasn't bad enough, i now am compelled to tell you how it works. i'm sorry.