It Is and It Isn't

I feel irrationally confused, entirely separated, and desperately searching.

Blank slates are the most terrifying of them all. Find a something from the nothing? I shudder and retreat to comfort in things known and overdone. Humming in the invisible distance is the rock of my lowest depth, but until I bear it raw and tangible witness I may as well not hear a thing. Do you ever reminisce of your life, and suddenly experience a montage of the entire course of choices you've made, fearful and blissful, genuine and plastic? Sometimes I do, although it usually coincides with a healing dose of psychedelic substances.

My present in-the-moment selfhood is like eating a birthday cake. I yearn for a wholesome bite of contiguous lovely, yet the spongy, airy interior pales against the sickly and favored icing. Clearly, the meat, the core, the foundational necessity of my lifecake exceeds my fickle drizzling of circumstantial thirst. But I rarely peel away the icing and thank the cake itself -- the cakey bit that truly makes it cake.

Woe is me, I wail from an oasis of luxury, ease, and apparently cake.

I peer at that inner "-ness" to my existence once in a blue moon, twice if I'm distracted (most of this admittedly brief, pretentious, and uninformed journey I've spent in a trance of consuming desire and distinction). In these times I wish to roll carelessly down grassy hills and frolic and dissolve and weave. I speak with my friends as though this is my overriding state of mind and action.

Look, I'm a faker, and a pathological liar to friend and foe and self alike. Don't pity me for that, though this may feel like a desperate fishing pole in such murky water. Connect with me because you feel it too. "It", the awareness of your imperfect and haphazard performance against your brilliant essence -- not against the dance of dull influences and self-righteous pressures -- and the contrast represents your current location.

Sometimes I fret about how other people see me. Sometimes I stare at my reflection in the mirror for longer than I imagine I should. The greatest narcissistic devilry of my life has been the unctuous hawking of a persona I could never really embody. But I have seen glimmers of what happens when I shut the store down and quit selling this bullshit, and I want to get more off-hours, so to speak.

Jeez, do I tire of whining and self-doubt.

Maybe that's why I so readily turn to vice and pretense as a pass of time. Maybe I oughta pick up knitting, or talk to my mom more often. I absentmindedly hunt in the dark with a blunt knife, hoping to subdue a demonic ego that constantly wanders a step behind and in front of me. Aware that I'm surrounded and not confidant, I can only stay the course.

Blank slates are terrifying because the thought of erasure and renewal means a thorough assessment of what I have and haven't done. So I'm afraid of heights but I want to jump off the only cliff worth jumping.

Teach me and hug me and explore love with me. You who would do so are the brightest stars in the sky; the others are helplessly distant in a seemingly infinite space. I wonder how far I shine...there goes that dang demon again! I'd better hop off this loathsome soapbox so I can binge it away. It's never worked before, but hell, I'm shooting for the long con.

I'm lonely and bitter
unless there's a listener

Whelp,
Fuck

Wod a Day

Well, well, and yes, also well, what have we here? A wet sandwich? Two pieces of soggy leavened bread embracing a limp and veiny cake of meat? Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself...when I say "what have we here," I of course refer to a "here" of which the likes of you noble nibblers know hardly the least. So let's have at it, shall we. Shouldn't we? Won't we?

It all began -- well, I suppose most of it began -- really, honestly now, only a small portion of it began -- thinking cosmically now -- the grand It -- you must understand, no? -- this Tuesday past. Riots were practically shitting out of the Earth's crust, and I hadn't even had my morning self-asphyxiating masturbatory eulogy. But enough of my home life. Tuesday brought with it riots: people, human beings, and fucking assholes were up in arms (although I could have sworn the assholes didn't have any) regarding some event. And if it weren't for Shabbeus Duntwod, I would have been nun the wiser.

Yes, good Shabbeus "the wodster" Duntwod, made sure to proclaim my inferior wisdom of nunnery that day, that fateful and vaguely-reminiscent-of-toast day. Y'see, it seems that all these protestations were shaking the faith of the faithful, what with their paradigm-shifting vigor and ethos-shattering stench. I was delousing my third cat for the fourth time (if you know what I mean (knowing wink)) when The Wodster broke me the news.

"Thhhhglhuuub," he exclaimed.

I nearly started. Certainly came. And forcibly farted.

"Sez who? I know my rights as a nun of the Catholic Cornhole and I say that other people's bullshit doesn't matter. If they want to grumble, let 'em. It's a free goddamned country," I thought to myself. Then I addressed Shabbeus:

"Who let you in?"

Something had to be afoot, for if we had nothing to be a foot, how would we walk? On our hands? You fool! Moreover, I hadn't expected to grace mine rheumy eyes with The Wodster until Thursday, and yet here the devil was on Tuesday. Boy, was I in for a treat. Or a trick. Dun-dun-dun...it was Halloween night the whole time! Betcha didn't see that coming. Anyways, turns out Shabbeus turned out to turn out real good turned slowly over a fire -- that reminds me, Shabbeus is (was) a pig. Now he's on the list of my many bowel movements, sewers away, fertilizing babes or poisoning minds, whatever those whelps call it nowadays.

Right. The whole riot/protest/people outside my head bit was still biting at me, as I'm sure it nips at you now, hmphyesindeed. I hadn't the slightest clue where to begin my search, so I instead opted to make some toast and toss it at the elderly -- something I do when struck with deep ennui or fright-induced erections -- but I picked the wrong fuckin' day to do that, believe you me. You believe me, right? Because if any of this yarn be true, Tuesday past was no time to be lobbing crispy bread bits at the less fortunate (let's be honest, the elderly really drew the shit straw). Yea, it was mostly terrible to watch: gangly sacks of meat were just lumbering around out there in the street, some kinda hominid-badger hybrid was barking out orders on a sousaphone (kinda like a megaphone but for Italians), Greg was shitting bricks onto Joe who was crapping ass into Ma who hadn't shat in years, and there I was, grinning like a madman and sharing my toast with them all. You can imagine what happened next!

Whaddya know,
Heh

Get Reel, Norway!

And who can say what our true callings are? An eternal search, I think. The balance between accepting where you are and yearning for a place you've never even imagined.

There are some days when my connections to other humans are ineffably the only things that matter, as if the very persistence of my existence were predicated on those to whom I've dedicated portions of life-love. Only one of myriad tensions which yank me this way or that. Too many directions point north... I wish that we fulfill such desires (the core desires, the ones that beat gravely quiet rhythms in our hearts, not the boisterous and fleeting ones that can wreck psyches, homes, and species, but the ones that always whisper truths) before our planetary performances pitter to their penultimate pulses. Until then, I can think of no wiser route than to Kung-fu-death-grip onto the directions that offer mindful peace, a sort of joyful unrest.

The Salty Scum

There is a sham, a charlatan among us! This, my friends, I will not stand for, and so I sit  now while I enumerate the various and costly taxes which such a presence imposes upon us good, hardworking folk and up-standers (or up-sitters in some cases).

You fecal fraud, sitting in your ivory tower of filth and dismembered copies of Orwell's "1984" - smiling down with all the charm of a fairly bad-tempered swine that had recently taken to eating old boiled eggs! You have given nothing but grief to those around you - the good-natured, hygienic swine of my flock. Sneering, you spit upon their pristine asses and comment on the utter depravity they live in! Such talk is best left to the cows.

Your mighty declarations and incantations insight revulsion, yet an odd, awful amazement we cannot help but have given the sheer audacity of your position! Surely, we might think, one who acts so brutishly with no good cause or justification has just, in the very act, justified oneself as worthy of the self-bequeathed position! The position on the tower.

Aye, stay there, we say! Look down with scorn and contempt; contenting yourself with the drivel of your mind and the dribbles from your nose. All the easier, I say, for us to topple your fat, floppy rolls to the ground with an earth-shattering thud. And you, defying the very laws of nature, or perhaps simply filled with only your own inflated sense of self-worth, will bound into the sky - a rocket! We now find our awe had been placed rightly, for only you, you gluttonous, gaudy Gregorian, could so beautifully and so perfectly burn into dust and gas as you smashed ass-first into the atmosphere.

So here's to you - salty scum of the earth. For your inevitable destruction has made life just that much more worth living.