Rootlessness

For a long while I have believed that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that in sum, the phenomenon may be as "natural" a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anit-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers' seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveler, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

- Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet -

Sensitivity

The lady wakes up dishevelled and alone. This is the most difficult part of her day, the getting up, the decision to wake up and deal with it all.

What is 'it all?' you ask and I tell you to be patient! You'll see, you'll pity and admire this darling dame by the end of it all.

She staggers upright and pulls on a nearby sweater. A presence senses her movement and begins to warm its fluids in anticipation of her needs.

The tap water is cold. The very apartment is cold, so white it gleams even in the pale morning. It was supposed to uplift her, enlighten her, this white on white on white. She feels hospitalized.

She presses a white button on the bedroom wall and immediately a steaming cup of coffee materializes from within a compartment of the wall. She wakes up with the rush of caffeine, like the right wave hitting a kayaker stranded on the rocks. She sits down on her comfy swivel chair and looks out the window at a view of misted mountains and placid waters. It's a breathtaking view, but to her it's a painting occasionally disrupted by a tugboat or storm. She faces her computer.

"Hello," she says in a mechanical, half-dead voice.

The machine sparkles into being.

"Good morning, Susan!" it cries cheerily. The damn computer technician set the personality, perhaps it's one he thought she'd enjoy, but she's beginning to wonder if it was actually a cruel joke. "Ready for your check-up, beautiful?"

She takes the electrode from its holder, moistens it with a handy baby wipe, and suctions it on the base of her skull.

"Ready," she moans.

"Let's see..." the computer answers thoughtfully, "you're feeling quite tired!"

"No shit."

"Oh, look at that! Your grumpiness levels just spiked. Uh-oh, gotta watch those! However, your blood pressure is normal--for you, that is."

"Uh-huh."

"Your spleen is having a rough time, though, along with your liver. And I sense anxiety, Susan. What's wrong?"

"Nuthin."

"How'd you sleep?"

"Okay."

"Did you dream?"

"Uh... yeah."

"What of, dear?"

She groans, tempted to tell the thing to shut the fuck off and mind its own business. Unfortunately, though, its business is her.

"The purple scarf."

"Ah, of course, all those nasty thought residues I'm picking up all make sense now.... Your anger levels just rose, Susan! Is it me? Did I offend you? Feel free to change my programming!"

"Just get on with it."

"I'll log and print out the full report of your thoughts, feelings, moods, and health levels."

"Fine. Goodbye."

She turns back to the painting full of drifting mist with the odd feeling that something--something massive and subtle--is ridiculously wrong.

Posted with Blogsy

Why, Silly Gypsyman? Why?

I pack up, seeking freshness from the weird wired chaos of Starbucks. A quick search of the parking lot reveals the dull grey strut-ground devoid of real space, splattered with dented, dusted colour like a sleepwalking child flicking stale paint at a recycled paper canvas. But! there is hope, along to my right it surges like the parting of the Red Sea--or the Dead Sea, or whichever body of water you want it to be--cornered between the mighty chain grocery store (market is no word for this spread of food so viciously raped by preservatives it dies like a sickly beached whale clinging doggedly to life for months, poisonous to any hungry carnivore-cum-scavenger desperate enough to gorge) and the somehow-surviving video store, renting out movies for less than the "small" cup of coffee I guzzled habitually just a minute ago.

Ah, Space to roam! I pace, circle, prance, and behold a wonder indeed, for there is even a strip of grass watered daily by the opulence of some River of the North. I plop down against a tree and share stories with my brain-buddy Mitch.

A curly-haired young man, with the slow beating of the Mindless Devotion showing in his listless expression, towing a Santa's sack of discarded delicacies, wonders for a moment at the bright-eyed sun demon with a Rohan ponytail, Desert Island Member-Member sweater vest over bare chest, chomping wasabi pebbles amid a quietude he covets oddly but no long understands. What is this lost hippy thinking? Why is he not releasing his anger by shooting virtual Russians, dry-humping his shameful lust away to raunchy young-looking women whose ass acne has been carefully brushed over by the editor? Why would a young man with all the delights of this flailing, dazzling culture before him turn away from such a curious cascading collection of witty trivialities?

Colourful Anorexic Models and Imagined Idealisms of Classiness

The infuriating tediousness of minimum wage jobs has, over the course of 12 and a half months, driven me to a pathetically helpless lunacy. My only sane reaction to the constant drudgery of waltzing the constant brink of poverty is to flee my tottering predicament for either extreme before the narrow daily focus of surviving accruing stress overwhelms me completely and leaves me a sloppy, broken mess. So many Americans--let's say 98% for the sake of prudence and swiftness--are on the brink of embarrassing financial extinction. There are those who own (massively! beyond their needs or even wants) and those who owe. Fuck if I want a 15,000$ car! I'll be behind for years, and pay over twice as much for the damn thing. And before you know it--a house! Mortgage, you know. And then it's the long wait, the dull grind of hours spent doing something you may, at best, give two or three damns for in order to pay off things that provide the illusion of societal flotation--maybe sometimes security as well, I suppose, but a tainted and double-edged security.

The old ladies, heeled up, towing perfumed accessory poodles and terrified chihuahuas, skulking the sunshine streets in shades and hats, humping the poor clothing salespeople into a constant depressive vengefulness, scared out of their wits at the prospect that what they've chased after and admired for so damn long they're slowly losing, desperate for any measure of meaning but too stoned on anti-depressives and estrogen replacement pills to pay attention for long enough to actually search beyond the colourful anorexic models and imagined idealisms of classiness.

The whole damn charade makes no sense to me! I understand why people go along with it, sure, but the basis is mind-bogglingly empty. How many times does it take till people learn one goddamn lesson? Gorging on flashy, succulent, temporary trifles like blind swine does not bring fucking happiness! (That is what people want, right?) The lesson is learned too late, it seems, and by the time one realises it (if one is so lucky), one is too old, too weary, too fucked-over to do anything about it but bitch and of course none of those young and enthusiastic for and confident of some grand Meaning of Life listen to an old bitcher admitting that said bitcher knows nothing.

The Letting Go

Reflection of crumpled wino face distracts
Escape artist who hid wrong key
Beat eyes bleed unseen purple tears
Dead streambeds revealed amid recycled rainforest
Source: red lips of temptress
Tonguing Molotov kindling
Tender tinder Marshalls receipt
Beg for lust
Full feral kiss of flames satisfied
Failed comedian's last simper lost
The letting go forgotten

can't faze Black Stacey

Black Stacey
They called me Black Stacey
I never got to be myself
'cause to myself I always was
Black Stacey
They didn't think it'd faze me
but it did
'cause I was just a kid.

- Saul Williams -

Cafe la Roux

On Thanksgiving, neither of us had anywhere to go. I presume Mitch the Cat could’ve gone home to his family, the Karmichaels (oh how little I knew then!), but he didn’t, and he didn’t say anything about it, either.

I of course never have anywhere to go to escape the loneliness of life, holiday or not. Mitch is my only salvation, and a bitter and unpredictable one at that.

“Everybody just wants to be liked!” he hisses vehemently, at me, tears already in his eyes.

Now perhaps you find me over-dramatic in the frequency to which I describe Mitch the Cat weeping. Firstly, I remember it true: he was such a beautiful, delicate snowflake of a flower, coupled with his personal courage and determination to absolutely be himself and express his emotion and thought, that he cried openly to myself and others on multiple occasions: dozens and even hundreds. In those days, he would cry only to me; but to my lasting jealousy and melancholy, he expanded his circle of helpless victims, those poor broken souls he ensnared like an anglerfish. I call it like a disease, and, as you shall see, there is no doubting that it was toxic.

We had slept in, tea for breakfast and boxed black bean soup for lunch and finally coffee for dinner. In the afternoon, Mitch the Cat became quite excited with the prediction that the streets will be dead quiet around dinner time.

“Like a ghost,” he said. “We can be like ghosts. Imagine all the homes, all the grand houses and dinghy basement apartments, at this time yesterday empty and silent; all the stressed out people at work--in offices and bagel shops, classrooms and airplanes--sullenly and eagerly awaiting today. All those sad empty homes now filled by those needing an excuse to enjoy life. And then the streets will be empty, and we can wander them in peace.”

I had not the heart to contradict him. I cared more for his present excitement than his future happiness. “Blind love,” he says later, after I admit to it.

"Mine!"

Working at the Old Spaghetti Factory last night, I heard a young child crying out "Mine!" several times. There is an accepted "mine" and "no" phase very early in development (a couple of the first words/ideas learned, right?). Such negative energies so young... I don't want my kids to grow up that way. Do I have a choice? Yes, a very difficult one.

Honey (poem)

Honey, I swear, I'll tell you straight:

I sat down to write you a love song

but this story is what I came upon

and I thought you might relate.

Now if I had a time machine

I'd wheel back through the dream

Until I found the seam

The great Lie planted in the stream.

The truest point at which Mother Nature was alive, an'

When a humble breed of man was arisin'

Still respectful of the lion

I would stop, and I would hunt the father who told the Lie, an'...

And I would weep

For I cannot sleep

Without you here

My dear

After those fated words flew back to his head

And the fornicating gods, they were abed

Oh, hon, I would strike this man dead

Before his Lie could spread

Like cancer in the dream

And I would weep

Cause I can't sleep

Without you here

My dear

Now perhaps this Lie I should mention

While I retain your sweet attention:

For it I hear

So frightful near

And I weep

For I cannot sleep

Without you here

My dear

Son, you are the most precious snowflake in all of existence.

Honey (song)

Now honey, I'll tell you straight:
I sat down to write you a love song
But this tale I came upon
An' I thought you might relate.

If I had a time machine
I'd wheel back through the ne'erending dream
Till I happened on the seam
The great Lie planted within the stream.

A humble human was arisin'
When Mother Nature was a-thrivin'
Man still respectin' of the lion
I would hunt the father who told the Lie, an'

And I would weep
Cause I can't sleep
Without you here
My dear.

The fornicating gods were abed
As the fated words flew back into his head
Oh darling, I would strike this man dead
Before, like cancer, his Lie did spread.

And I would weep
Cause I can't sleep
Without you here
My dear.

Now this Lie I should mention
While I retain your sweet attention,

For it I hear
So frightful near
And I weep
I cannot sleep
Without you here
My dear.

He said: Son, on my oath,
You're the most precious thing on the Earth.

Locusts

Taken from the novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn:

One day the gods were considering the administration of the world in the ordinary way, and one of them said, "Here's a spot I've been thinking about for a while--a wide, pleasant savannah. Let's send a great multitude of locusts into this land. Then the fire of life will grow prodigiously in them and in the birds and lizards that will feed on them, and that will be very fine."

The other thought about this for a while, then one said, "It's certainly true that, if we send the locusts into this land, the fire of life will blaze in them and in the creatures that feed on them--but at the expense of all the other creatures that live there." The others asked him what his point was, and he went on. "Surely it would be a great crime to deprive all these other creatures of the fire of life so that the locusts and the birds and the lizards can flourish for a time. For the locusts will strip the land bare, and the deer and the gazelles and the goats and the rabbits will go hungry and die. And with the disappearance of the game, the lions and the wolves and the foxes will soon be dying too. Won't they curse us then and call us criminals for favoring the locusts and the birds and the lizards over them?"

Now the gods had to scratch their heads over this, because they'd never looked at the matters in this particular light before but finally one of them said, "I don't see that this presents any great problem. We simply won't do it. We won't raise a multitude of locusts to send into this land, then things will go on as before, and no one will have any reason to curse us."

Minstrel

There is no minstrel,

only the song,

as we stretch
our ears to hear:

the Exaltation,

the lost Passion,

the Falling

of the empire.

We squat in our rags

and we stretch our ears

towards the crackling speakers--

alive by God's own odd will--

as they herald a new
dawn; an old one, now

I suppose

we listen:

My Precious

There is a sadness so great
And so deep within me
Perhaps it is there because
Somehow there is some part of me
A part so ancient that it remembers
a time before the great Lie
the Lie that doomed the world
even before it's realization
So I remember and I know that it's a lie
deep, deep within
When all others have forgotten
and believe it
to be the Truth of Life.
No, it is the Lie.
And this is how it came about:

Silence

Do you ever get that feeling...
That life is simply too big
For you to make any impression at all?
That there is so much more
Than we could ever know
Ever understand?

All I want is to understand

In the (vain?) hope that it will give me peace:

Why? Why all this trouble?

Why all this energy spent?

Creativity for its own sake?

Have you ever had one
Of those dreams where
You had everything that you don't have
When you wake up?
One where you find that hole
In your heart?

Have you ever felt so lonely
That you felt ready to crumble
And too scared to talk:
Not that no one would understand you
But that everyone would?

There is a loneliness
So bone deep
In all of us
It feels as though
If it were shared
If it were acknowledged
The consequences would be dire
The world would not be able to take it
The world would implode upon itself
And leave behind
Only silence.

And because there were no more humans
And therefore there was no more point
Time would stop
But time wouldn't stop
Because it can't stop
So instead it would run backwards
And it would look like this:

Creativity and Purpose

Our inner creativity and the purpose to which it is primarily channeled define our lives. Our society tries very hard to espouse channels which limit our creativity: by encouraging goals and ideals which are founded upon factors such as money, social standing, and appearance. Almost always these are channels consisting of factors based on ego and out of one's creative control, which therefore leads to great frustration and dissatisfaction. We need to find and utilize channels which not only do little to limit our creativity but also work to expand and nurture it. I believe this is very simple but very difficult. However, if we can find a channel which is limited by our creativity itself, then and only then can we reach our potential.

the Art of a Revolution

I wish I could find the words
To still your heart
Alas they are written upon mine own
In the lovely language of love
And the only language I speak
Is not that of love

I'm a self-ordained outcast
Past my smile, I got no class
Girl on my hip n my whip fast
Open your mouth, you'll kiss my ass

Im not the first of the pharaoh's boys
But I speak with his voice
When the Dalai walk up to me
I send you for the tea
So bend a knee to the man
Bout to wreck everyone's plan

Welcome welcome welcome
To the heart of intellectual thought
We took a revolution
Turned it into an art

This is a nonprofit organization
Delivering decrepit salvation
To each desperate mind of our nation
So I declare this a dedication
To all those on vacation:
Fear the deceiving demons
Of this diseased human dreamin'
Fear the great schemin'
Realize the masses are fiendin'
For somethin' out of their means an'
Nobody knows the reason
They can't find peace an'
They can't quit feelin'
They've lost everythin'
Without even playin'
So listen: the greatest deception
Is that out there lies an answer awaitin'
To cure the questions from within

Forgive me, Lord, my Weariness

A wise prophet once said
That in my weariness
I shall echo the words of the weary
And so I have
And so I shall

For this is a weary world
And my old soul
Fears the recklessness of youth
And the consequences
Of poor decisions

Yet the unconscious decision of the weary
Is to circumvent the making of
Decisions
And so I have
And so I shall

For I am a weary man
In this weary world

Until, that is, I wake up

And stare into the sun
And shroud the stars in my own light
In my own wisdom
In my own words

For there is greatness in each of us
We weary
We sad
We dissatisfied
We must simply find
The spark inside our soul
The channel were were meant for
The purpose of our own existence

Not an easy task
For the weary or the energetic

So, best of luck

Our Tribe is Diseased

Welcome to the tribe of intellectual funk

May you find solace beneath the great hairy balls of Jesus our saviour

O Oprah! Cure the insecurities of our nation!

The Cold Preacher

The cold preacher speaks his silence to the grave

He no longer understands the ways of the world

And worse, he knows it.

The lost youth wonder at their sadness

As they lust after things they don’t need.

The elderly stick to their guns

No matter the rhyme or the reason.

The Quiet World

In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you,
thirty two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

- Jeffrey McDaniel -