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The Sunday Sermon:
May. 17th, 2015 02:22 pm
The Continuing Crisis:
May. 13th, 2015 09:19 pm"Here is your dead farm-animal and deep fried carbohydrates, Flesh-Sack. Now please consume your final meal and proceed with leaping to your death before I switch to Dalek mode."
Where you at, Jack?
May. 13th, 2015 01:05 amThe last few days have been long. Mom's finally starting to come out of her depression thanks to her friends. Saturday was RPGs until damn near midnight. My Virtue Victoria, came into town on Sunday to look into taking some courses locally. Took off Monday to hang out with her. Went in super early today to help my boss do some work out in the field and OTP. She had a meeting with a supervisor at GSU. Unfortunately it didn't go well and the hope we had of ours being a close-distance relationship has been postponed by three years.
Which really sucks, when you get down to it, but we're determined to make it work.
Tonight, rather than brood I knocked out 9 pages over the course of the last four hours - breaking only to stomp around in the dark to Pigface's 'Notes from thee Underground'.
It's funny, but in the course of listening to it I realize that if that album was a person, s/he would be old enough to drink now. Which is when I remembered it also came out the year I moved here to Terminus.
Trivial as it may sound, it's funny how when I moved down here and would blast FUCK IT UP or ASPHOLE before hitting a club, or bake out solo to EMPATHY, or make out to CHICKASAW and I'd think that one day I would be in something as cool as Pigface - a diverse super-group that evolved out of what was basically what drummer Martin Atkins called - "a Ministry cover band".
I would be in a diverse group of similarly minded but differently talented individuals and we'd create something that only we could have made.
And it took me to the Secret Room, and it took me to Collective Works, and now it takes me back to Vampire Country (damn near where it all began for me when I moved here) for the Satanic Burlesque.
Three years is a long time until my love and I can be where we need to be. A few weeks is a short time to peel vision off of brain and paste on page for stage. Between them though, is another shot at making that 21 year old dream come true once again.
Wish me luck, I suspect there's a whole lot of lonely coming my way.
Which really sucks, when you get down to it, but we're determined to make it work.
Tonight, rather than brood I knocked out 9 pages over the course of the last four hours - breaking only to stomp around in the dark to Pigface's 'Notes from thee Underground'.
It's funny, but in the course of listening to it I realize that if that album was a person, s/he would be old enough to drink now. Which is when I remembered it also came out the year I moved here to Terminus.
Trivial as it may sound, it's funny how when I moved down here and would blast FUCK IT UP or ASPHOLE before hitting a club, or bake out solo to EMPATHY, or make out to CHICKASAW and I'd think that one day I would be in something as cool as Pigface - a diverse super-group that evolved out of what was basically what drummer Martin Atkins called - "a Ministry cover band".
I would be in a diverse group of similarly minded but differently talented individuals and we'd create something that only we could have made.
And it took me to the Secret Room, and it took me to Collective Works, and now it takes me back to Vampire Country (damn near where it all began for me when I moved here) for the Satanic Burlesque.
Three years is a long time until my love and I can be where we need to be. A few weeks is a short time to peel vision off of brain and paste on page for stage. Between them though, is another shot at making that 21 year old dream come true once again.
Wish me luck, I suspect there's a whole lot of lonely coming my way.
The Grave Digger of Lost Pets
May. 5th, 2015 02:14 amUnderwater, curled in a ball, at the bottom of the pool at the East Lake Y I screamed for as long as I could while around me children splashed each other and old folks doggy paddled the lanes. I ran out of breath long before I ran out of scream though and had to come back to this world for air. If instead of a sword, the Lady in the Lake bore a sledgehammer, that would be how I rose from the waters now contaminated with my unheard rage. Tonight all those who swam in that pool after me will find their dreams possessed by howling tempests and whirlwinds of flame. Muscles sore, nicotine lungs panting, the bright sunlight through the wall sized window on my skin, the shrieks of kids horsing around in defiance to shout of parent or whistle of life guard. I was out of what little time I had both for and from myself.
Once home, clothes damp from insufficiently drying myself off, I get to work.
Though I struggle to be a writer, though I am employed as an office manager, my true occupation as revealed by experience is that of burier of dead pets.
Maybe it's my Tor Johnson good looks, maybe it's my grave-digger physique, maybe it's my epitaph diplomacy amongst the bereaved or maybe it's because I'm the only one who'll do it. At least the only one the people I know who will do it.
Back when I lived with Violet Larue, over there on Saint Chuck between Midtown Posh and Little Five Funk. It was late at night. We had just come back from Outta Control at Spring 4th. Our friend and neighbor, Sparrow sat on the steps of our front porch weeping deep from her shadow. In her lap was a five month old kitten that had been mauled by a different neighbor's dog, a big black nasty one, who escaped while their owner was out and somehow found its way into Sparrow's pad. We got this story from Sparrow's then boyfriend, an ex-pimp from LA hiding out on the East Coast from charges unspoken. Sparrow really knew how to pick them.
After hugs and bummed cigarettes, Sparrow point-blank asked me to dig a grave for her kitten, right there in the front yard of the house quartered into apartments we would soon no longer be able to afford. I asked her boyfriend why he couldn't do it, but he just shuddered and said something about it dredging up rough memories. Where am I going to find a shovel?, I asked and hey, what you know, said boyfriend just happened to have one in the trunk of his car despite making his living from selling shitty stepped on X.
So there I am, all Goth-ed up in my polished jackboots and black vinyl coat with my lady looking like the sweetest, saddest vampire in all Terminus and what can I do but get to work. Rusted steel hits the soil while somewhere a few blocks away the neighbor's dog barks with bloodied jowls and around me the other three watch silently smoking cigarettes.
From there I've been called on periodically to step in when a pet is lost. Guys who'd cold boast about smoking fools, dropping suckers, and curb-stomping snitches would call me up out of the blue. Dealers, low-level muscle, amateur criminals, hardcore pain junkies and bad drama addicts who each had Hamlet numbers for dead bodies witnessed. Yet upon losing the only measure of true loyalty some of them had known in their lives, they sobbed and begged me to come over and do the work only one of us could do.
So I come by.
They always have a ride for me to get there and a shovel ready when I do. They always have a patch of earth cleared away and if not then at least a dumpster. The hole never comes easy, as you can only dig so much of another's grave without unburying thoughts of your own. Around me they cry, they pray, they read poems, or as with that first job, smoke silently. Finally in shoe-boxes, in old blankets, in bloodied towels, in sentimental t-shirts, in garbage bags with a single paw sticking out of a rip I give back to the earth those from which it came.
They always pay me in bus fare, in a sprinkling of buds, in a few bills peeled from the wallet or just a shot from the last of the bottle.
Tonight was a different sort of job. One for my mom this time. A little Pekingese, just under three years old and adopted by my mother to help her with the passing of her last dog, who went one week before my father. The little guy was fearless, growled with aristocratic disdain at me even while demanding I scratch his belly. I used to worry that when I was gone and mom was left alone here in this neighborhood where nightly gunshots ring out, that he would be unable to protect her. But that was because I misunderstood what he was really protecting her from, the full brunt of the grief and loneliness my mother was exposed to.
The job itself was simpler than others in that there was no body to dig a hole for, but hard in that the task at hand was to find and remove all his belongings before burying them up in the attic.
This I did quickly, while mom smoked a cigarette outside on the porch, tear drained and shell shocked.
Now I sit here and this house seems far too quiet, far too big for my thoughts to fill. The last of the scream pebble grinded into words and vomited up here. Very bad thoughts fill my head. I want to get fuck-you drunk. I want to find the nearest woman who will let me do what I should not. I want to pick a fight and know I broke something in someone permanent, even if only their tin pride.
But those are the thoughts of a man who has buried a scared and angry child in the shallow waters of his character. That's not my job. My job is to bury that which loved without words or conditions during a life so short it renders the difference between a god above or a devil below indistinguishable. My job is to bury what others cannot and try to ensure I don't get lost down there in the hole with them.
Once home, clothes damp from insufficiently drying myself off, I get to work.
Though I struggle to be a writer, though I am employed as an office manager, my true occupation as revealed by experience is that of burier of dead pets.
Maybe it's my Tor Johnson good looks, maybe it's my grave-digger physique, maybe it's my epitaph diplomacy amongst the bereaved or maybe it's because I'm the only one who'll do it. At least the only one the people I know who will do it.
Back when I lived with Violet Larue, over there on Saint Chuck between Midtown Posh and Little Five Funk. It was late at night. We had just come back from Outta Control at Spring 4th. Our friend and neighbor, Sparrow sat on the steps of our front porch weeping deep from her shadow. In her lap was a five month old kitten that had been mauled by a different neighbor's dog, a big black nasty one, who escaped while their owner was out and somehow found its way into Sparrow's pad. We got this story from Sparrow's then boyfriend, an ex-pimp from LA hiding out on the East Coast from charges unspoken. Sparrow really knew how to pick them.
After hugs and bummed cigarettes, Sparrow point-blank asked me to dig a grave for her kitten, right there in the front yard of the house quartered into apartments we would soon no longer be able to afford. I asked her boyfriend why he couldn't do it, but he just shuddered and said something about it dredging up rough memories. Where am I going to find a shovel?, I asked and hey, what you know, said boyfriend just happened to have one in the trunk of his car despite making his living from selling shitty stepped on X.
So there I am, all Goth-ed up in my polished jackboots and black vinyl coat with my lady looking like the sweetest, saddest vampire in all Terminus and what can I do but get to work. Rusted steel hits the soil while somewhere a few blocks away the neighbor's dog barks with bloodied jowls and around me the other three watch silently smoking cigarettes.
From there I've been called on periodically to step in when a pet is lost. Guys who'd cold boast about smoking fools, dropping suckers, and curb-stomping snitches would call me up out of the blue. Dealers, low-level muscle, amateur criminals, hardcore pain junkies and bad drama addicts who each had Hamlet numbers for dead bodies witnessed. Yet upon losing the only measure of true loyalty some of them had known in their lives, they sobbed and begged me to come over and do the work only one of us could do.
So I come by.
They always have a ride for me to get there and a shovel ready when I do. They always have a patch of earth cleared away and if not then at least a dumpster. The hole never comes easy, as you can only dig so much of another's grave without unburying thoughts of your own. Around me they cry, they pray, they read poems, or as with that first job, smoke silently. Finally in shoe-boxes, in old blankets, in bloodied towels, in sentimental t-shirts, in garbage bags with a single paw sticking out of a rip I give back to the earth those from which it came.
They always pay me in bus fare, in a sprinkling of buds, in a few bills peeled from the wallet or just a shot from the last of the bottle.
Tonight was a different sort of job. One for my mom this time. A little Pekingese, just under three years old and adopted by my mother to help her with the passing of her last dog, who went one week before my father. The little guy was fearless, growled with aristocratic disdain at me even while demanding I scratch his belly. I used to worry that when I was gone and mom was left alone here in this neighborhood where nightly gunshots ring out, that he would be unable to protect her. But that was because I misunderstood what he was really protecting her from, the full brunt of the grief and loneliness my mother was exposed to.
The job itself was simpler than others in that there was no body to dig a hole for, but hard in that the task at hand was to find and remove all his belongings before burying them up in the attic.
This I did quickly, while mom smoked a cigarette outside on the porch, tear drained and shell shocked.
Now I sit here and this house seems far too quiet, far too big for my thoughts to fill. The last of the scream pebble grinded into words and vomited up here. Very bad thoughts fill my head. I want to get fuck-you drunk. I want to find the nearest woman who will let me do what I should not. I want to pick a fight and know I broke something in someone permanent, even if only their tin pride.
But those are the thoughts of a man who has buried a scared and angry child in the shallow waters of his character. That's not my job. My job is to bury that which loved without words or conditions during a life so short it renders the difference between a god above or a devil below indistinguishable. My job is to bury what others cannot and try to ensure I don't get lost down there in the hole with them.
I heard the news last night... oh boy
Apr. 28th, 2015 07:01 pmBeen watching/reading the news out of Baltimore about the protests, the looting and the unanswered inquiries into the death of Freddy Gray while in police custody. I hear a lot of folks from a wide spectrum of society saying that violence is not the answer. That the riots are counterproductive to the goal of justice. That the inequities of the United States have never been solved through destructive behavior but rather through peaceful resistance to the status qua,
And I'm sorry, I just don't believe that to be true. Our country was born of revolution. It's in our national DNA, as we didn't hunger-strike or stage sit-ins to win our independence from England.
In a way it reminds me of how I used to feel living at the Witch House a block shy of L5P and seeing all these signs in my neighbors' lawns with a dove on it and the message - "WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER".
Sure, I know these were a response to then President Cheney's disastrous Iraq invasion, but nevertheless I couldn't help but finding myself disagreeing. Because sometimes, unfortunately, war is the answer. Not all the time, not even most of the time, as far as American foreign policy goes - but in cases like, Hitler and Nazi Germany I would have to say that war was the only answer after awhile.
Which is not to say the Baltimore police department are the equivalent to the Nazis or even closely analogous, but the amount of coverage I witnessed about Mr.Gray's death before the riots and afterward tells me that only when citizens have reached a boiling point does the issue get any significant media attention.
So while I don't think destroying the city one lives in is a viable solution to the woes of any given community, I do understand that there is a point when said community can no longer be preyed upon by the authorities while also being ignored until blind anger and something dangerous ignites.
And sometimes when it does, with the eyes of the world focused on the cause of the riots, something does get done.
To be honest it's a little weird for me. Again I don't hear any of the 2nd amendment enthusiasts on Fox News saying better access to firearms would help act as a check against racially motivated police oppression. I also don't hear liberals admitting that at times once peace has been given a chance to no avail, then it's opposite needs to have its say or else tyranny will mute the issue.
The Haymarket riots that led to the 8 hour work day come to mind, the Stonewall riots that launched the beginning of the Gay Rights movement as well.
I don't know, maybe this is all the result of my own experiences, and the discovery in my early teens as a nascent punk rocker that my getting my ass kicked every day didn't seem to stop until I started kicking some ass back.
And I'm sorry, I just don't believe that to be true. Our country was born of revolution. It's in our national DNA, as we didn't hunger-strike or stage sit-ins to win our independence from England.
In a way it reminds me of how I used to feel living at the Witch House a block shy of L5P and seeing all these signs in my neighbors' lawns with a dove on it and the message - "WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER".
Sure, I know these were a response to then President Cheney's disastrous Iraq invasion, but nevertheless I couldn't help but finding myself disagreeing. Because sometimes, unfortunately, war is the answer. Not all the time, not even most of the time, as far as American foreign policy goes - but in cases like, Hitler and Nazi Germany I would have to say that war was the only answer after awhile.
Which is not to say the Baltimore police department are the equivalent to the Nazis or even closely analogous, but the amount of coverage I witnessed about Mr.Gray's death before the riots and afterward tells me that only when citizens have reached a boiling point does the issue get any significant media attention.
So while I don't think destroying the city one lives in is a viable solution to the woes of any given community, I do understand that there is a point when said community can no longer be preyed upon by the authorities while also being ignored until blind anger and something dangerous ignites.
And sometimes when it does, with the eyes of the world focused on the cause of the riots, something does get done.
To be honest it's a little weird for me. Again I don't hear any of the 2nd amendment enthusiasts on Fox News saying better access to firearms would help act as a check against racially motivated police oppression. I also don't hear liberals admitting that at times once peace has been given a chance to no avail, then it's opposite needs to have its say or else tyranny will mute the issue.
The Haymarket riots that led to the 8 hour work day come to mind, the Stonewall riots that launched the beginning of the Gay Rights movement as well.
I don't know, maybe this is all the result of my own experiences, and the discovery in my early teens as a nascent punk rocker that my getting my ass kicked every day didn't seem to stop until I started kicking some ass back.
The Sunday Sermon: Where's Waldo?
Apr. 26th, 2015 04:36 pmI don't know what's going on here either... but this looks like the best episdode of Doctor Who ever.
More Writing About Writing
Apr. 26th, 2015 05:14 amFrom a little after midnight until a quarter to five in the morning, I've spent my Saturday night (technically Sunday morning) pounding away on the keyboard here. Found myself a few pages deeper into the Halloween Rock Star Burlesque, made demons cavort and mortals blush all while giving the Devil his due if not the occasional guitar solo.
Unfortunately, I've had to tap some atavistic wells in the process, flirting astral with dominions not normally my archetype. Normally I daydream up Minerva's heralds, loving emissaries with Vulcan charm (by which I mean Star Trek and not the Roman God) who balance gracefully my more emotional excesses. Tonight however it's those goddesses you can find smoking cigarettes in the Pantheon girl's room and wearing lots of black with skulls on their clothes. The Goddess of Switchblades, The Goddess of Shoplifting, The Goddess of Long Black Boots, and the Goddess of Barroom Brawls.
What their song leaves in its wake is a body trembling and restless before the coming dawn.
Disconnecting then from the words, from the night job, from this wolf anxious place where my love is not.
Until I plug back in tomorrow, push-ups and cold showers before bed.
Unfortunately, I've had to tap some atavistic wells in the process, flirting astral with dominions not normally my archetype. Normally I daydream up Minerva's heralds, loving emissaries with Vulcan charm (by which I mean Star Trek and not the Roman God) who balance gracefully my more emotional excesses. Tonight however it's those goddesses you can find smoking cigarettes in the Pantheon girl's room and wearing lots of black with skulls on their clothes. The Goddess of Switchblades, The Goddess of Shoplifting, The Goddess of Long Black Boots, and the Goddess of Barroom Brawls.
What their song leaves in its wake is a body trembling and restless before the coming dawn.
Disconnecting then from the words, from the night job, from this wolf anxious place where my love is not.
Until I plug back in tomorrow, push-ups and cold showers before bed.
My Life as a Life Sized Moon Monster
Apr. 25th, 2015 02:26 amMy Life as a Life Size Moon Monster - Pt.76: When you find yourself wearing a poisonous stingray as a cod-piece as you stand on the roof shouting to the free-range chickens and prostitutes roaming around your neighborhood that yours is a genius well beyond the limited mental capacities of the bourgeois to appreciate, it's a sure sign you're long overdue for a few drinks out with friends.
Amongst them you can forget those details that lock the days down in petty horror and epic drudgery. The drug-dealer three houses from here found impaled through the skull with the pointy end of a garden gnome. The homeless guy that breaks into your backyard at night to lick the insecticide off the grass and howl at stars only he can see. The little old lady who circles your block three times every Thursday evening at dusk muttering prayers even as ants crawl out of blind eyes in place of tears.
Small wonder I wake in the middle of the night reaching under my pillow for the gun only to find a decapitated hand there in its place giving me the finger.
Thankfully my drinking buddies are polite when I share with them these neighborhood exploits, even as they motion for the check despite just arriving or reach slowly for the pepper-spray tucked away in purses.
It's not always an easy gig being a life size moon monster, but with the right friends you can find yourself feeling almost human as they drag you back to earth with a friendly smile.
Amongst them you can forget those details that lock the days down in petty horror and epic drudgery. The drug-dealer three houses from here found impaled through the skull with the pointy end of a garden gnome. The homeless guy that breaks into your backyard at night to lick the insecticide off the grass and howl at stars only he can see. The little old lady who circles your block three times every Thursday evening at dusk muttering prayers even as ants crawl out of blind eyes in place of tears.
Small wonder I wake in the middle of the night reaching under my pillow for the gun only to find a decapitated hand there in its place giving me the finger.
Thankfully my drinking buddies are polite when I share with them these neighborhood exploits, even as they motion for the check despite just arriving or reach slowly for the pepper-spray tucked away in purses.
It's not always an easy gig being a life size moon monster, but with the right friends you can find yourself feeling almost human as they drag you back to earth with a friendly smile.
