Adjustments: Undue Homework

In "preparation" for twenty twelve (whose name I'd write numerically, were its sequence of numbers not so, you know, counterintuitive, which is to say nearly nothing per the stunted force inside of me believes that unabbreviated living will somehow lead to a life of unfathomable bounty in tender of tremendous importance that is not necessarily negotiable), and amid chronic financial emergency, I have been inspired to review all sorts of "material," shocked to understand at last and at length how very little of it is actually tangible. In a year of precipitous peaks and troughs, I see their collective occurrence as having been dictated and defined by forces and systems of human construction.The weight of this reflection, and the futile hilarity of its implications, feels rather like trying to speak, yet emitting the sound of an activated whoopee cushion in lieu of a voice.

(time elapsed)

It must be stated at this point that I have yet to determine the structure and/or frequency of these posts. It's very clear, during the tumult of the season, that we have to give ourselves over to cleaning; there seems to be little choice by now. I guess that it's sensible to do this, but more significantly, it might keep people from injuring themselves on pernicious obstructions that masqueraded once as "gifts." While it's unfair to inflict attributions of motive upon inanimate things  (as if I know, for instance, that those legos on the floor want to cause pain to my bare feet), I don't think that I care any longer whose interests are at stake.

(time elapsed)

what a fizzlefest cleaning has been! hell if the rooms that i "tidied" are not substantially less navigable than the rooms to which others attended.

certain close associates think that multiple sclerosis has eroded my executive function, and they should be right, but i think that it's more my un(der)developed sense of personal boundaries that has done me in at every turn. it's how come stress acts as a toxin to my body, how come i'm challenged to request compensation for my work, and how come i'm reluctant, despite what most people think, to admit what it is that want. i smell a resolution approaching; i am replete with vague, ominous nausea.

i think that i'll go and prepare for New Year's Eve by ending New Year's Eve Eve.  

Poems (the first of several installments)

One at a time, I'm posting these. Then I'll archive them into a separate area.

this is from 2003.

if you’re looking

check yourself first if

you’re looking for sense

in the city today, always

down the wrong avenue

or via some flawful ex-

press stratagem. where

is it or has it gone?

it’s moping and bored on a

windowsill, potentially.

it’s in every properly running

fridge and faucet, rumored

and pending substantiation.

it’s somewhere spayed

and then neutered and

suited up fancy, it

might be suggested.

it’s in a yesterday

cup of residue, cold and

colder just the same,

dreaming of spring,

somebody is certain.

it may or might be where

inert emotion’s settled

with the silt and the spit in a

disuseful subway station,

scary and sustaining

the roaches and the rats.

is it in a fleeting equity

that kisses each

creature with a last

heavy blink until

each tomorrow? it’s

possible. nothing is

not. nothing suffers

only to be seen so doing.

The Future Was Then

1/4/2011, 9:47 PM


Yikes. Sorry for my protracted and unexcused absence (inferring that it was notable, which is a mite presumptuous), but all of my fingers have been, and are currently, crossed about the possibility of having work. This makes a dreadful mess of typing; I am quite sure that you understand.


Welcome to 2011! This, my first post of this year, should tell you all that we are officially now living in a time to which I'd devoted no advance thought, at all. I mean, it was fun to speculate about the future when it was still the future, but my vision of life essentially ended around 2010—not because of death or anything, but because it became hazy and/or I grew sick of thinking about it. 


As a youngster, the future bored me in ways that I could never explain, despite that I knew a lot about explanations and how to make them. As I've seen it (and I love being wrongheaded), one of the more frustrating qualities intrinsic to having been born fairly recently (I was born in 1978) is that my personal experience is, to some degree at least, inextricable from zeitgeist and cultural memory that wields roughshod authority to trump the subjective textures of my experience.  (Like, "Hey—that's not what this horrid slab of Hollywood tripe says you were doing.") 


Romanticizing in retrospect is easier than Sunday morning to do, because borne of the aforementioned trumping is a failure to recognize that the evolution of situational dynamics since that point for which you're pining has irrevocably altered the context of your saudade. When I was 16, I went to a show by the Dog Faced Hermans. They were, at the time, one of my very favorite groups, and I knew that they would be disbanding after their tour. Their show was mesmerizing, I say now, and I suppose that my feelings were largely consistent with that at the time, but I had this gigantor canker sore in my mouth that hurt like absolute heck. Subjectivity.


As I stood there, I made it a point to always remember that sore, because I suspected that the outcome of something so trivial (yet pivotal) would bear some amount of retrospective influence. (One of the openers, Helios Creed [formerly of Chrome], will probably remember that show as the one during which an audience member fell asleep on the lip of the stage. [If you ever read this blog, Mr. Creed—I'm sorry. I have Narcolepsy, but nobody would've guessed it at the time.]) 


And perhaps it's always been that way/this way with memory and its inordinate elasticity, but when people begin (as they have) to self-identify by way of the media that they consume (or the things that they acquire), we're in for some lame-arsed vicarious nonsense in which very little is decipherable between people. The interval between an event and its imprint dwindles to the point at which we shit as we swallow. 


It seems that 2011 begins and ends more or less instantly, in accordance with news cycles and natural disasters that dare the collective disunion that is humanity to live at its pace. I'm too lumpy to consider trying, but I feel really good about that. So there, future—you'll have to make your way to my present.