tomorrow looks cloudy

the cost of doing business

Dead civilizations are just the cost of doing business.
There was a time in this country
There once was a store in the mall
There once was a plan in the works
That made sense of it all
Today I looked around
And saw the result of
The great forgetting
Dead civilizations are
The cost of doing business.

a gaze like an attack ad

I'm all stevie nickerly and wide-eyed
I am shaken, not stirred
Cocktails on the roof.

Oh I just want to get fucking buzzed
Oh I just want to get stoned
And listen to bill hicks.

Hey now
I've got a foggy notion
Called an immersive world view.

order is fun

A mountain
A resource
That resource is beavers!
We belong here
The foes who vote
Resisting the life of
a political polyp
One man,
One fling of the civic
Throwing star.

get my marauding pets amnesty now

I took two readings
And decided I was cooked.
I followed every rule
And they threw at me the book.
I am the bas relief
I am the frieze
I am the farmer in the dell
I am the fucking cheese.

widen the net

Bad star strikes without any warning
Mom killed my will to live for minimal suborning
I want to rip up everything
Or even kill myself cuz
I am tired I am really tired
Mom.

when criminal elements have less of an incentive to vote

The public perception is mine alone
Ignorant of facts
In hand to the flacks
Many uses laughingstock
You will believe gridlock is like vapor lock
Was it the blues, child?
Was it the gotteramerdung-ade?

two americas

Two Americas:
Thus as ever
Wish I was a Western European
So much bullshit
We will never be free of the vultures.
So do it for the trees
I hate all the would-be
Caesars
I am not a speculator
I am just a spectator.

spiderland

Out past spiderland
Next to the section eight housing
When you stop second guessing
And climb out of that well
Not buying what
Fuckwits and failures and dickheads and braindeads
say
It's not going to be pretty
for anyone
I think we've been conned
For thirty years
There's been a shooting
There's been a killing
There's been a thinking
So sad:
That our lives are so short.

prescription

Leuplolide pushed aside

Set to blaze in all its glory

Dead set against maturity

Unfolding a peculiar story

Growing outward

from the heart

The real prescription is

simply love.

D

forget it you're NOT accredited

I accept a gentle guidance;

Accepting an assertion of authority.

arrest

Arrest the heart/has no color
Nothing more nothing less
We just wanted an A
Bragging about homeopathic ingredients
Like they've never heard of the internet
Breathing fire/seizure of property
Paralyzed by fear.

henry wallace

Oh my I love dem bones
I wanna be ossified right after I'm cloned
Oh my so one day I learned
That my bones were jointed then
One day I learned my bones were
Gone or going
Lost in clastic plastic splinters.

Henry Wallace called a
Fascist a fascist
FDR said he welcome the
Hate of the economic royalists
I wish I could rescue
Loved ones from the grip of
Political madness.

what will happen at the state level

Come independence day
Don't forget the year of macro-insanity
If only I were raised by me
Raw material
The wind in my heart is a hurricane
Experience
Bicycles, gardens, and rock and roll
Here's the bottom
I never believed in bandaging the world
I never believed in triaging the planet
Ready for recreation
I wanna go to Alice Springs
I wanna spend a week in Adelaide
I wanna be free like the Monkees
I wanna be happy and not afraid of life.

I hate my anger

Yesterday was one of those days at work where nothing seemed to go right, at least for for first several hours. First off, I got floated to the third floor, where good things don't happen (at least to me), my ID badge decided not to work (which I need to get into security areas) and it took an hour to get it fixed, and I said a dumb thing to a doctor. I felt put upon and the feeling just grew from there. My tone of voice became monotone, and my replies to questions terse. I know that feeling well-- I spent several years in that state of mind in the mid-00's in response to the dismal state of my job and relationships. I learned from that that it doesn't make you feel better, gets you nowhere with coworkers and especially the public, and ends up just making you hate yourself and life. In fact, I quickly fell back into that old familiar bleakness, wishing I would die, hating myself, wanting to curl into a ball, cry. I successfully fought it off, and the rest of the day was okay. But it was frightening, it is always frightening, how quickly and easily it is for me to fall back into that pit of negativity. It is never far from the surface, and it is the source of nearly all of my bad decisions, failures, and lack of achievement. And by extension, the ultimate source of my never ending well of anxiety.

I have to get mentally healthy, I have to fight back against these old demons, if I want to have a gentle old age and not one of internal turmoil anding in suicide. I love life and too many people for that.

the falling man

To me the iconic image/thought/meme of 9/11 is the photo of the "falling man." A photographer caught a series of images of a man falling from one of the upper floors of the north tower of the World Trade Center. He has never been definitively identified but he is widely believed to be Jonathan Briley, a worker at an upper floor restaurant in the North Tower. There is even a documentary based on the image of the falling man. It is estimated that about 200 people were blown out or fell out or jumped from the WTC that day.

It is iconic to me in that none of these people, when they went to work or had business in or were sightseeing at the WTC that day, had any idea that they would be shortly plummeting to their deaths. Though with such a long fall they surely has time to contemplate the unlikelihood, in addition to the sheer terror, of their predicament. I could imagine myself simply crying "WHAT THE FUCK?!" about a dozen times in my brain were I in that situation.

But the falling man could not have guessed the truly maddening chain of events that led to his unlikely predicament, one chain link receding back in time to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. That led to the CIA arming and allowing to come to prominence of Osama Bin Laden. That led to his hatred of the imperialist west. That led to his embrace of radical Islam. That led to his forming Al Quaeda. And so forth up until that fateful day. Intersecting with Gulf War, and Saddam Hussein being in power, and ending up with the neocons in the Bush administration in 2001 ignoring the warnings about Al Quaeda'a imminent attack because they were focused on ginning up a reason to invade Iraq. and on and on, one unlikely circumstance leading to another, all finally culminating in the instant of existential absurdity of one man, a few minutes before focused on serving food to customers at a restaurant, suddenly finding himself in midair. Absurd. Insane. Like much of this century so far.

hiking with nice folk

I went on a weekend camping trip with my friend Cesar and his son (8 years old if I recall). We left Saturday morning and drove to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument and set off up the middle fork of the Gila River. The weather was great, the stream was cool, and the company was fun and amiable. Boy do I love spending time with  sane people! We set up camp maybe three miles up the river (Cesar's son was getting tired and a bit cranky by then) and we figured that the wonderful sandy riverbank we happened upon was as good a campsite as we were likely to find. Across from our campsite was a towering rock wall, giving us a feeling of security and lending soft echos to our voices. After dinner we built a fire and made s'mores. I slept great for a change. The only fly in the ointment was my failing to bring my Tevas-- I did most of the several river crossings in my bare feet, because I didn't want to get my shoes and socks wet. My feet are still sore from all the small river rocks I had to step on to get across.

The part that made my day-- Cesar's son said that his favorite part of the trip was when I was acting silly and clowning around!

All-in-all a great, albeit short, backpacking trip.

hurdles of the macro depression

So the Republican National Convention is finally over, and for me there is a kind of relief akin to having the killer revealed in a murder mystery. The id of that portion of the electorate that wants chaos and oppression has bubbled to the surface and revealed itself as stronger, harder, sharper than ever before. I watch them and I feel deep pessimism for the future. And I feel a personal hopelessness as a result. I want to head for the hills and hide away from humanity; my old reliable bugaboos. Hopefully the Democratic convention next week will infuse me with a little hope and let me back away from the edge, and sleep a little better.

climbing with a friend

I went climbing yesterday for the first time in about a year. I went with a friend who i used to climb with from the adventure group. She also hadn't gone rock climbing in about a year, but it was her suggestion that we do it, remarking that she didn't want to lose all her rope skills. I agreed and overcame my general anxiety about doing anything and my specific anxiety involving rock climbing, reclaiming my climbing gear from another person in the adventure group who I had lent it too. It felt nice going through the slings and carabiners, I just love the feel and sound of climbing gear. It's the same way I feel about bikes and bike parts.

At any rate, we met up and drove to the tiny crag we decided to climb at, about ten miles north of town. My friend brought her two young boys, who though don't climb, enjoy exploring and kicking around in the desert. I set up a top rope, rappelled to the ground, and we each went up a fairly easy route. It felt good touching rock again, tying the rope to my climbing harness, making goofy and encouraging comments as I belayed a friend who I trusted with my life and she with mine. All the deep subliminal things that make me love rock climbing and always will, even when I'm too full of fear and anxiety to do it. I so wish I had discovered climbing back when I was a young adult.

after we stopped climbing and packed all our gear away, my friend, her kids, and I hiked north of the crag to a water-filled hueco we had spotted from the top of the cliff. There were hundreds of tiny black tadpoles in the puddle, and many more in a nearby hueco that was nearly empty of water, Luckily we found an abandoned bucket nearby and transfused several bucketfuls of life-sustaining water from the large hueco to the nearly dried out one. The kids where so happy that we had, in their minds, saved the little colony of tadpoles that were in a race for time and were at the whims of the reliability of this summer's monsoons. As if to reward our actions a thunderstorm developed and it started to rain, softly at first, and then in a torrent just as we arrived back at our cars. My friend remarked that she was afraid that her kids wouldn't remember such small moments and tiny adventures when they grew up, and I assured her that they would.

It was a good afternoon, and we agreed we would return again next week to climb again.

make it all go away

I am troubled about everything. I am troubled about the small-- how I may be potentially screwing up my own life, damaging my health by what I eat and exercise I do or neglect to do, how I may be hurting other's feelings inadvertently, even the fate of the trash I generate. And I am troubled by the large-- global warming, the increasing polarization of the politics in this country, peak oil, economic stagnation, the increasing chasm between the rich and poor. I am whipsawed between the micro and the macro, things that depress me that loom large and those that loom, human scale, in my own back yard. I am basically a hippie who envisions a world of harmony, a place where there is near endless consideration for individuals getting enough food, shelter, education, respect, joy; and even greater consideration for the environment's health, where the "brotherhood of man" is a very real and every-day ideal that everyone strives for-- moreover, a "brotherhood of the biosphere." That we are so far away from this makes me fret daily, as does my inability to develop a rich and satisfying social life/career/home. I feel powerless and afraid. I endure a background dread that interferes with everything. hemmed in by the micro and the macro depression.

 Turn on the blogs. 
Let the macro eclipse the micro depression for a while. 
Learn how hopeful consideration has a zero payoff 
When it smack-dabs thoughtless cocksuredness.