yesterday, my daughter called me to ask if her (and my) friend from (her) childhood could come crash at my house for a couple days. well, i forgot all about this, but today she called, and began to talk about a long conversation we apparently had yesterday. now, this was a specific conversation, in which the friend talked to someone who said that she’d have to ask her boyfriend, and that the dog couldn’t come, and mentioned something about picking up kurtwood and meeting chris for dinner — although we cannot be entirely sure exact names were mentioned, we are relatively sure that toads were. also some sort of ‘grandma’ person was mentioned in the context of a place to stay, and we know for sure that wouldn’t have been me, my grandparents are long, long gone.

so she was wondering why i never called her back.

it’s because i never talked to her. seriously. her sister was sitting right next to her while she had this conversation, so the conversation happened. i was fairly certain that i hadn’t completely lost my mind between then & now, i very clearly remember leaving work, having a conversation about the toads with chris on the way home, and coming home and spending the next hour doing nothing but setting up the new TMobile @home phone. these are nice, crisp, sharp memories.

but everyone involved was exceedingly curious. so we pulled up my call logs online, which are not subject to being lost by my phone crashing, or erased, i mean these are the phone records that homeland security would use to track my communication, if i ever turned out to be a terrorist. and the call, the call most definitely did not involve me, not with my phone, not with any phone on our family plan.

but the conversation happened.

she even called the other number she had for me, which had never been mine but it was in her phone book as mine, and the nice boy on the other end (who must have been having one of the weirder phone conversations of his life) was quite patient, listened to our weird-ass story, and assured us that phone was in a locker at the time of the mystery conversation, while he was at practice.

we still haven’t figured this out. but we’re mighty weirded out, believe you me.

a little more than ten years ago, i had my first cell phone, when digital phones finally came out & prices allowed ordinary folk like myself to possess these mythical devices that previously only rich doctors and coke dealers carried. the coolest thing i did with it was to put my home phone on call forwarding and take calls at the beach. man, that was teh awesomeness.

a little more than ten years ago, i’d heard of the internet, but it wasn’t until 1999 that i got my actual hands on an internet-connected 486 with a screamin’ 33.6 modem & right after that i rented my very own shiny 486 from Rent-A-Center because this internet thing was the best thing i’d ever had my actual hands on, & within 6 months i had a job with the title of webmaster but that’s another story entirely, actually.

anyway. if, back then, some future dude had come up to me & said, “hey i’m a future dude, & i’ve totally been sent here to tell you that ten years from now, you’ll be sitting in a funky beachside cantina eating a juicy ahi burger with one hand and playing on a thing called plurk on teh mobile internets on your qwerty-keyboarded telephone with the other, while you uploaded a very decent sized photograph you took with said telephone to a place called brightkite while you were listening to your music collection from a memory card the size of your pinky fingernail that held two … get this … two gigabytes yes giga, not mega, bytes of said music on a pair of stereo headphones that weren’t even plugged into anything but the little controller thingy that you used to you know, control things like that” … well i’d have thrown my fancy-ass CD walkman at future-dude’s head and told him he was batshit insane, even though the term batshit hadn’t even been invented yet. and then i’d probably have slapped him. in the face. with an ahi, had i had one handy.

seriously.

anyway. on the way home from the funky beachside cantina, walking up the stairs to my tiny beachy apartment, a particularly amazing song came on the bluetooth headphones. i set my beer down on the stairs, unclipped the receiver and attached it to my son (who was newly born when all that future dude stuff would have happened, if it had), and slipped the headphones in his ears.

hilarity ensued.

10 years of genius-hours invested in tech R&D: $gazillions
BlackBerry Curve with Bluetooth headset & huge/tiny microSD card: $200-ish
watching an 11 year old boy experience ‘Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict’ for the first time: priceless

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 was hiding in a six by eight foot hole in a mud hut doing the hokey pokey with three quarters of a million in hundred dollar bills stuffed in my sequined thong panties when i realized i was actually sitting in a buggy room drunk on strawberry wine salivating over sushi as i remembered it listening to the tickle of chilled rain outside the barred window overlooking the bushy alley & also live birds of pray like a tongue in my ear hard a gentle seduction perfect a secret between me & before strawberry there was some news (drowned out now of course) & before that there was peach. of course. millions of peaches, peaches for free. blend this reckless into this life (mine) lived incongruous garnished with grilled onions like a philly cheesesteak (great with hairy dog hangovers) i hesitate clicking post worried you might miss the pictures (note: before this there are pictures please look thank you) there. when you hit my age you have birthweekends not days baby you party like i ain’t dead yet motherhugger. not by a longshot or a flask fulla tequila not empty yet no. may god bless the separation of church & state (hallelujah) glory be to rock the fuck on &/or me on high & that’s what it’s all about. even if you drink from the chalice of cheap escape & fade away. especially if.

spinning. we are all of us living in spin you know perched on this place rotating @ 17,000 mph / revolving @ 1,000 mph & we measure the times of our lives in revolutions & we express stability in terms relative to the surface of an object hurtling through the vast cold void along this crazyfast corkcsrew path & life is not linear ever.

& 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.

what if there was a thing like a novel but not, that somewhere in something like a chapter that might be number twenty eight (with two of the intervening numbers taken up by the thing of things like poems because they feed off the same database & use a very similar codebase) had something like this in it:

progress. the music still seizes me clenches me into a ball of wire through which the unpleasant current of the present passes.

aside from that i am beginning to see beyond this, a glimmer of a future like a barren landscape stretching to the end of the continent and fading into waves of green and grey, lit with the hectic light of a gathering storm; in other words, a future i can picture myself living in, an acceptable outcome of all of this, not the future i would have preferred but not one i will … reject.

& what if it started out like …

like this …

on with it then. fiction? i assure you this is pure fiction, and also all true. or real, i get the two confused.

there are two, maybe three levels of thoughts and processes unfolding inside me as i type this, perfect pure things which, i assure you, are as worthy of my attention as the mess on this table or the sweat trickling down the back of my leg. in the space between me and these words, the air has weight and texture and somewhere in the intersection of all these facts i am living an entirely unrelated life and then some. the tapping keys? there’s your fiction, for in fact these fingers are right this instant curling in the thick damp hair at the base of his neck, tightening in the ecstasy of the smell and the taste of him and there has never really been anyone else, not like this.

is it real? reality is all electrochemical processes in the synapses, so yes. although most of my own reality is probably mine and mine only, i imagine. and i imagine constantly, and consider it vital to my survival. without it, none of the tangible measurable definite absolute verifiable actual shit out there would matter. i inhabit my own mind primarily and the world as necessary, and sparingly, never all of me. always part of me is wandering in the mind; i would say this keeps me sane however technically it makes me quite the opposite. delusional, anti-social, disassociative, handful of extra personalities, little nihilism thrown in for good measure… hell, i’m half the DSM4 on any given day, and i’m here to tell you, the illness is not the issue here – it’s the presentation. it’s in the way that you use it, it comes and it goes. it’s about style and proper form and a firm, solid stroke. it’s the spin and the way you use the wind. it’s in the wrist, mostly.

there is no fiction here in this malleable reality, even though at this point my life is more imaginary than anything else, serious intense fantasies involving all the regular senses and then some, and me with this sense of urgency, doing everything i can possibly, as if my life were at stake.

because my life is at stake. and this has given me metaphysical energy, absolutely, and it is my first time. this energy may contain the potential to change things tangibly; it is perhaps possible that i can write this real, physical real, if i love the words perfect and pure. it is also possible that these words are all i’ll create, in other words, this would be the answer to all these pleas, by which i mean, no. i want to say i will be fine no matter what happens, however i would be lying. there has never been anyone else, not like this. and yes i am ridiculously in love, i wish it was a reasonable feeling, however there has never … you know.

fuck. who wants undying love anyway? anyone? how about if i tell you about this guy i knew, had the undying love for his wife, who died of cancer in his arms. he kept her voice on his answering machine a good year afterwards, only erased it when he started dating her namesake, the first of several namesakes. sometimes, love should die.

anyone still wanting the undying love? i’m going to have to ask you to leave. go on now, be creepy reading someone else’s book, ok?

and with this my throat closes up and my face twists into the other side of the story, very nearly crying. trying, just failing. it comes and it goes, and when it’s gone i am alone in my skin and skin can starve you know; mine is weak. three years. and it is real. physical. right now i feel wrapped in steel wool.

and this, right here, is the self pity. the word pathetic may have been unsaid somewhere; no more.

i do have stories to tell. i whisper this promise to myself, i will tell them transcendent. hopefully this is just loud enough for you to hear it too; this voice (my voice?), it is so tentative and unsteady. new maybe.

maybe new.

what if this thing was written in an entirely bloggy style because the girl who wrote it did stuff best bloggystyle?

would it matter?

that i have completely lost my mind. oh shut up, i did too, it was right … here. it was. i swear.

ok fine then.

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, …

but seriously. i look at these things and feel uneasy like there’s no reason.

i’m fond of them personally and it was fun and yes, that would be a reason but i am not sure it would be enough of one. so i tend to toss that aside and think what the fuck and so forth.

which is neither an uncommon nor an unwarranted thought in this mind of mine, therefore, everything is fine

this is the first one:

this is the second one

this is that last one, in its original form:

which went through a dotty halftone phase before i went at it with photoshop’s version of crack that delightful liquefy toyfilter function thingdealy:

and i asked dude next door who has the internet if i might borrow it a bit and he said no. can you imagine. pfft. doesn’t he know who i am?

my daughter’s not at work today no free internet there. i’ve already bugged mechele. weirdo noid of a neighbor. what in the name of colonel lionel p. tweezerfuck is going on here? exactly?

so i’m blogging in a notebook with a bad pen. by tomorrow i’ll be blogging from the daughterhouse on some free AOL while we wait for real internet oh yeah i will be online you betcha by golly walk like a bumfuck egyptian i will be oh hell i said oh hell oh wait i mean oh fuck yeah.

i have most emphatically lost it. if you find it do not panic ok panic but don’t make any sudden moves as you run for your lives it will be fine i am fine everything is just so fucking fine i could just

… oh you wish you knew what i could just do about it being so fucking fine don’t you? oh wait. no you don’t. i had you confused with someone else. my mistake. none of this is happening. we don’t exist we eat our time something something something cayenne ok look you are gonna haveta trust me on this one k? alrighty then. assume a name any name will do flee damn you flee the state country planet whatever hurry get gone like gone was on baby now (what you’re still here? fuuuuck.) go! before it’s too …

oh you wish. you wish you wished. i see how it is.
*ahem*
as you were

*nods*

point of fact :: no capital letters were typed in the making of this entry. they are all span style text transform thingys.