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i was something to say, made of my own language.

i just don't know what it was. i cannot remember.

ever discover inconsistencies in your own story? key facts in a major event memory, cleverly falsified, for no reason whatsoever?

i won the schoolwide spelling bee when i was ten. it took place in the office, over the intercom. i remember, i remember so clearly, the ending. it was down to me and a seventh grader. they gave him complexion. he blew it. i spelled it. i had to spell one more word. it was easy. it was chicken.

as i tell you this, i see it, i hear it, i feel it. painfully shy child speaking into a microphone broadcasting live into every classroom in the entire school, you don't forget that special kind of terror, like slipping gears into this unknown overdrive and the world turns into a blur around a single point of focus. this is my memory, an audio-visual recording of whole awareness at the time: the word, the microphone, my own voice. i remember being asked to spell chicken, and spelling chicken. i remember.

the word was poultry. i came across the newspaper article decades later, while sorting through one of my packratty boxes. i *remembered* spelling chicken. clearly. i told that story many times. from memory. from a vivid, multimedia production of a memory.

which my mind had edited. seamlessly, inserting a plausible but incorrect substitute, overwriting the original. and even now, even knowing that this editing took place, i cannot for the life of me play back the memory with the correct word.

i remember chicken.

if the article had been incorrect, i would have spotted that at the time, when the memory was fresh and unadulterated. trust me, *that* i would have remembered. there's nothing a nerdy know-it-all kid loves better than correcting grownup's mistakes.

i was something to say, made of my own mythology, and whatever it was, i should not call it forgotten.

it is all revisionist history. all of it.

so last night i sat up for hours entertaining some pain. this is the second tooth to go like this, the nerve in a wanna be root canal giving up waiting for the dentist & committing suicide. in my life, this feels liks sparks. this *sounds* like sparks. i have tooth pain i can hear, & clearly. i have a lot of electricity in this body, & believe me, when it's good it's very good, & when it's bad, it's a fucking mini-taser going off in my gums like SNAP it goes just like that SNAP

laying there in the quiet dark not moving a muscle because of this fear that anything, anything, any impulse traveling down any neurons anywhere, might somehow provoke or prolong the enemy action in my face, i searched for ways to deal with it. i could see the red-orange gleam of the gameboy charging unit on the dresser, so i used that as a focal point & tried to breathe through it or whatever it is those annoying nurses tell you to do when you're having a contraction & fuck breathing it's time to scream & kick anyone that tries to put my foot in that fucking stirrup got it? so what do i know about breathing techniques? nothing.

so then i tried to visualize the little gleaming led was the pain, so i closed my eyes & changed it to a soothing blue white color. kinda aqua actually. however this is not the sort of pain that is impressed by that touchy feely new agey stuff, this is rude crude socially unacceptable pain politically incorrect pain that doesn't give a fuck pain that stands scowling its best badass scowl & growls, so do ya feel lucky punk?

and then i thought, what the fuck?

why does this electricity have such power over me? i fucking own the shit! i manufactured it out of raw materials in my spare fucking time! these are my sparks, this is my pain. and so i stopped reacting to it with the same response that i imagine some distant ancestor of mine would have, when he would have been almost inventing fire but having a few technical difficulties & "ow! ow! fire hurt og! fire bad!" & so mankind went without heat & cooked food for another buncha years before someone finally figured out fire safety & ... where was i? right, i was saying yeah, we're wired for stupid, we homo sapiens. we have this elaborate security system in place to warn us about shit that's bad for us, even if we already know. yes, i am aware how important it is to get to the dentist, & i will when i can, but right now i cannot. & no there is no cheap easy answer sitting right around here overlooked, i really can't go just yet. so this pain is of no use to me. you could say it keeps the urgency first & forefront, but you'd be wrong, because it won't -- i suppose it could, but it just doesn't -- this neuron seppuku that teeth do, it's wild painful for a good three days or a week, then it subsides & everything's bearable.

& so i focused my thoughts, my mind my body my whole attention on this pain. i followed it around & watched it work. i observed it, i tracked it, i measured it. i did not try to separate my self from the pain, good or bad right or wrong it is part of me, it belongs to me, it is mine, & mine alone. & gathered all my stubborn bitch™ brand logic (i've had this since adolescence, you can ask my parents, it's relentless) & decided that i was not going to let a bunch of electro-chemical reflexes be the boss of me. logically, this sensation i have in my mouth my cheekbones my eye sockets etc is no different from any other sensation i have, well, no different than say, the sound of the crooked cricket i call my conscience is from a humvee car alarm that goes off all night long at 175 decibels outside your bedroom window while its owner sleeps off the twenty year old scotch. you know? they're both sounds, one's just a wee bit more annoying.

so i still laid around much if not all of today wrapping my belief system around this, & practicing meeting the pain when it comes without that whining & cringing, trying to be matter of fact about it, calm & unfearful, unruffled like an accountant telling that stoner from purchasing that i simply will not approve any more orders for office supplies that have a first ingredient of sugar. & i did it without disassociating myself from my pain, people disassociate out of fear, i am not afraid. the pain is here, it is inside me, an integral part of my existence. "life is pain, highness. anyone who tells you something different is selling something"

pain is interesting when you're not sitting around frantically trying to make it go away. i'll never like it like it, that's not my thang, but i don't have to react to it like dear old great×75324 uncle og did when he was failing to manage to make fire work for him.

i still haven't quite got the hang of pain + sleep. it's like having a lonely tweaker friend show up & decide to spend the night, in 100000 words or more if they can manage. which is fine, it's not like i fear sleep deprivation, i'm pretty damn good company, even when i'm having problems with this fucked up wiring system of mine.

i gotta watch it a lot i'm better at this than you
i gotta swallow the part that wasn't easy to chew
i got my knife in the back when i was young and unmade
i built a doorstep for you don't leave the things you're afraid of on mine

i am better at this than you, you know. well you do now. oh not you! personally. this is some figurative shit, i assure you. & not even derivative. no it's out & out plagiarism with attribution as if that excuses it, which in this case it does, more or less. it's all 1's & 0's man. & i am better at that than you, that's for goddamn sure. a rule proven by its exceptions, if such a thing exists. if.

i built my house in the mud because i want to stay clean
my windows are all broken i can't afford gasoline
i dance around in a twist thinking what luck it will bring
i watch pedestrians stalk hoping they'll get their little fingers
on time on time on time

time is the most malleable dimension, all fluidity in motion & all & always different from each & every perspective for ever & ever amen. i love & am in love with time, head & heels transposed in a tumbling rush yes this is love, this is my love

i'm thinking this will be better when this is over
sitting on my bed getting un-sober
sleeping in the park hey man scoot over
vagrant as it seems it's alright

amen i say oh yeah amen baby

don't let it go to your head without a place it can stay
you can't give back what you stole by looking the other way
i'm gonna spit it out now you've gotta swear not to peek
because i've already been to where no one cares a thing about time
about time about time about time

it disappoints me in myself that i rely completely on someone else's words to say exactly what i mean but the way words connect things to me i have been forced to get used to it. these are john lombardo's, 'chrome jehovah'.

of all the hung up mistakes with names that i never knew
and you should listen to me because there've been quite a few
there's no way they can connect with what it is you and me do
before the laugh starts to happen after the screaming is through
about time about time about time

unless of course i'm wrong. i'm better at this than you but that doesn't make me right it only makes me sit & grin sardonic & feel the way this feels when it cracks my rough dry lips i lick them again against my better judgement i blame winter for this but it's my fault inadvertent & i do wish this was an unusal sort of thing for me, don't you?

thinking i'll be better when this is over.

the smell of the sugar cookie candle spreads through my psyche sweet & pure, warm & real. impulses trigger a flurry of atavistic activity in the brainstem far before any higher process begins; i am comforted far beyond my ability to explain my appreciation of scents & sensuality. no matter what manner of intellectual sophistry i throw at this, the overriding underlying truth behind my response is as primitive as can be.

i am above all under the influence of the the things i know by the way they come in contact with &/or enter my body: smell, taste, touch. sight & hearing transmit to me things happening outside and unconnected to me and subject to interference as they travel the distance to me, the static of my own learned interpretations, the distortion caused by my issues and baggage and damage. i suppose you could call my eyes & ears jaded, even cynical. i do not believe everything i hear or see, but i do tend to believe what i touch taste and smell.

that i allow this is perhaps the last expression of my innocence.

what remained smelled strong like fresh lumber, newess released from ruin in demolition like any metaphor meant to ease the violence of loss. also it would be a fine foundation for a potentially very trendy self-help movement, i can see it now: we'll start out by uncovering your blatantly obvious self-deconstructive tendencies by empowering your inner whiner to break out break free & most importantly break stuff yeah yeah fuck stuff up i mean it now. fuckupping: it's the new renewal it's the key to your path toward eventual self-platitudinization. ultimately, you will find yourself out a few grand for seminars books & clever t-shirts. my qualifications as your new guru include a lifetime of experience applying this technique, seriously: you see, i tend to condemn my self whenever i seem to think the damages are irreparable (again). & this exposes of course all the the basic structural weaknesses (again) in the admittedly haphazard archtechture (flawed by my own design, again) but what doesn't kill me (or make me wish it had) generally ignites me inspires me & i try try (again)(!!) (snide note:the implications involved in building the inference that led to the aformentioned condemnation(s) shall go unsaid but not without saying some thing like this sentence, for example. (see:: deliberate semantic nullness, as covered in lesson three, diversionary tactics. additionally, i offer extraneous exclamation points: !!!!!)

of course i digress. of course.

as a direct result of this nonsense & very little else, a number of my selves have been razed in ways you don't even wanna know how the obliterated smithereens of the fragments of the pieces were reduced to their essential elements like this: writing blocking out every thing leaving you &/or me bleak eyed vapor locking over medicating self serving (your choice: immolation or evisceration) & losing everything again & hopefully like this: critical found mass religion revelation given in some febrile hallucinogen taken exactly like this: envision if you will the specifications for the anticipated breathlessly overhyped promised enhanced advanced latest best version of yours truly, & yourself too i mean yeah i said oh fuck yeah. (interjection: a chorus of reverent voices saying oooooh!)

sadly, there was no trace of irony in me anywhere during the lapse i spent imagining how i'd find this improved self/life, risen whole out of particles like the phoenix, shiny with that new car smell. pontiac, right? roger that. yes we had to destroy the vehicle in order to prove we needed a new, something i've been known to do (excuse: i am required to live like a metaphor whenever i can get away with it. additional excuses available, may be highly illegal in most states. if you have to ask you can't afford it. content may settle while you are waiting your turn for the compulsory cavity search.) i am hereby invoking my second & fifth amendment rights, pointedly. speaking of which, i did have one at some point i just misplaced it temporally & when i went after it there was a moment when it was different & a perfect union & then & then it was now again.

anyway i have a point: these types of things (drastic absolute no refunds no exchanges no fucking around & this means you, buckaroo) are bad things about which to discover oneself mistaken. unless of course the unchosen alternative would have been worse.
(snitty little side note:: it annoys me endlessly knowing i will never know whether i was really wrong or merely indulging in a litle good old self-flagellation which i have been known to do, due to the dubious nature of whatever.)
(tangential additional side note: i have been known to move to a strange city in another state based solely on the mythology of the place's name.)
( additional tangential notation of the utmost irrelevance: the story's been told of an unfortunate soul fell asleep one summer day in plain sight in broad daylight blistering all the way to the third degree before he died of his burns <gratuitous digression> i myself took up sunworship during my year there & tanned so brown i could tube the snake river sans sunscreen, drunk, without burning</gratuitous digression> i rose from the ashes of phoenix december seventh nineteen eighty five thanks to a drunken phonecall to my longsuffering parental units, who drove to the burbank airport & prepaid our tickets & waited ten or seven hours & in that time i of course changed my mind but the tickets were paid for anyway they waited while we missed the first flight & caught the second & life began again the moment the wheels left the earth. defy gravity, is my advice. to my self, mostly.

decisions, delusions, revisions, allusions, forgiveness & more than you will ever imagine, my friend. yes.

it was called cartwright's, though i for some reason always thought of it as the falafel hut. they sold hot dogs. & maybe falafel i don't recall but lately i have found my own eager mind sprawled about all seduced & ravaged & in fact frustrated in a most satisfactory manner, far more frequently than i am yet willing to admit.

& now what pleasant paralysis colors these afternoons a blur ablaze in lassitude bathed in lightspeed wasted? & then when it ends blended across the edge, that last almost but not quite infinite retrospectacular technicolor flash when the eyes go final wide with perspective for once & once only perfect, what then? what now will be seen as having been regrettable then? what if it is more or less the opposite of the purposeful pull of this guilt what if every dutiful rational act that felt right like sacrifice is what should have been done different when all's said & over? what if none of this matters because i am only approximately the seventeen billionth soul to wonder something suspiciously like this only minus most of this fancy bullshit? what if my numbers are way the fuck off & only a handful of us punkass flakes ever bother with this wondering? what if there is no way to know now what will have been wasted then, what if these afternoons spent blissful indolent spinning words across keys with hands that dance vivid with wistful grace were spent precisely how they were meant to be, making these vague misgivings misguided at least & at worst an obscene waste of some thing i cannot tell you what it is however i do know i don't know what it is & also i must admit it is not even afternoon anymore in fact it is now months & miles from where i spilled the first words of this & still.

still.

sometimes the world is small & a perfect photograph meaningless & pure. sometimes the world tries to kill you eyes first & you know you know you can never translate the image this is not technology this is not science this is art & perspective tells you things it tells no one else, this is your secret yours & yours alone alone all

all by your own self.

& you take the picture(s) anyway & know meaninglessness yes & also you know some other things, things you will never convey ever to any one else mostly because they are also meaningless.

& it doesn't make any difference.

so you have taken these things, these pictures, this life. you have taken this life & you have run it through photoshop seven enhanced contrast saturation sharpness because life is best lived contrasted saturated sharpened. you upload the bloody things knowing it makes no difference & yet life changes in spite of this, it is an improvement small & a perfect photograph.

you wish they were better pictures because you like this text you've prepared for them. isn't the frame part of the art? doesn't matter, this isn't. it's just life.

i want to want something bad enough for it to matter. i want to sell my ass for cigarettes but it's too easy to quit. i want to will my will to science but it's too easy to sell my ass for cigarettes. i want to take two & call you in time but the distances always close in by then. do *not* attempt to ask me what i mean i have had a little too much too late & cannot complete

the scale in the women's bathroom is set to four pounds under zero. it tells me i weigh one hundred fifty pounds (fully dressed heavy shoes included) (the fact i felt i needed to tell you that last bit should tell you something). the scale in the men's bathroom is set to zero tells me i weigh one hundred forty pounds. i suspect this might (at least metaphorically) explain almost everything not covered in the manual.

i have what has to be done
& isn't yet
& that's all i have
what i want doesn't matter

i flow smooth from sober to warm i am radiant with the feeling burning with it alight aglow & achingly lovely as a result i assure you though you will have to take my words for it there are no witnesses i am alone all alone is all we are.

indirect contradiction exists in the matter of this inadvertently bitten lip but what's a little broken skin between a girl & oblivion? aglow alight aflutter aflame & failing to fall out of love aside from that & this slight taste of blood fine fine awake aware alive oh fuck yeah.

the words which exist because of this are pleasure pure suggesting this exists for the words would a girl fall in impossible love just because the words it leaves her she will treasure forever? what if her only forever is in her own words what if this is enough what if it isn't?

do i write my life or live my words? what if the answer is yes & yes? what if writing them causes in me this trembling sense of something approaching significance which might as a matter of fact exist only within my self all alone is all we are goes hand in hand in this solipsistic existence in which i am to my self beautiful true made of my own language what if this is enough what if it isn't?

i was up all night studying the interplay of various alpha states & slow waves & gamma rays & the movement of dreams through open eyes, diligently recording my observations utilizing this revolutionary new method of visual note-taking i've developed, which has neuroscientists everywhere reaching nervously for the phone to call security and have me removed immediately. no not really. but it could happen. anything can.

ever sit up all night with your computer right next to another computer and the other computer is on the internet and the person sitting at it is playing oh i don't know like bingo or something and this goes on hour after hour after hour and then on and and and ... sitting inches from the internet with nothing but a few stray utterly disorderly brainwaves, three graphics programs and a couple of unremarkable photographs and ... next thing i know this thing happened, i'm not quite sure how, ...

... and after that, things started getting reallyreallyfuckingweird and by that i mean, you might not even wanna look. no really.