frustrated

Indecision is nausea.
What to do and why, reason insufficient to convince.
Action as prophyaxis - no creation.

I fear the destruction that creation needs
Learning to accept stability as a virtue, I am paralyzed,
unable to find balance.

the blurring noise in my head is vertigo, clutching at a tightrope
all razorwire
lacerating my clutching hands

The static in my brain beats at the inside of my skull
immediate desire drowns necessity, swamps meaning
so little signal, so much noise

game theory

the real reason economists (of the classical mindset) hate non-competitive models is that they are inherently prone to personal choice. Its not just selfishness, not just altruistic, but rather that mixed bag of emotions that determine all of our motivations.

Good god, we can't allow individuality in real life, it'll throw off our models.

I know, lets start a war so everything is life and death, instead of that confusing life one and life two stuff.

bloodletting

A little taste of passion and choler takes you as much as love does
Time passes by, and the edge of her lancet slips in
and you are drained to meloncholic reason

not so sweet,
but still, grit for the mill

music

It's the music that does me in I think.

That raw evocation of spirit.

And once unlocked, I don't know if the emotion is digging its way into my chest or out of it. It's so hard to determine direction when I'm gathered in the meloncholic embrace of desire frustrated.

And the day to day reality, that occupies mind and body is swept aside in the rush. Not good, or bad, but simply more primal.

I understand the desire to wound the body to feel alive, but it is the delicate laceration of the soul and heart that makes me ache with the sweet pain of life. And then, when I feel that I must engage life at this primal level, I am engaged on another level.

The idea, meme, concept, image, or again, music, that makes my spirit pause and contemplate the more rarified aspects of life. The delicate esthetic. And all the fractal turmoil is shaped into a delicate arc. Architecture of the mind out of the rough ore of life.

Choice seems impossible, perhaps pointless. Even knowing that not choosing is a choice I am conqured by the status quo, that endless plain of true existence.

a nice sentence I think

Angela had only to emphasize a point with a sharp gesture and Gilbert went from bombastic to solicitous, and it took some time for him to get back to his full propensity for pretension.

and a teaser:

He had discussed his developing powers, at this point, only with his grandmother. And as informative as that conversation had been, it scarcely counted as a conversation with any degree of normalcy, considering that his grandmother had been dead for several years.

I can always leave...

pressure

There is a balloon of static in my head, trying (succeeding) in driving my thoughts from the task at hand.

What is this aversion to completing tasks?
Is it the task or its completion that I avoid?

confusion

My mind buzzes like an fallen wasp's nest
Chaos over minutae, no focus, no task to trivial to avoid

My emotions are as ordered as the confusion on the crumpled paper hive
anger, elation (in fantasies unrealized), irritation, somnolence and sadness

One thing at a time
One thing at a time

this should be my mantra
but its realization is elusive

will someone please drive a spike into my head with a good hammer
to hold these things in place?

communication

He said, "Are you trying to hit on me?"

She said, "Always"

What does this mean? is it a throwaway? inside humour? sarcasm?

After 12 odd years you'd think I'd get the subtext, but now I'm just drowning in it.

found

A taste in my mouth as bitter as sin
As bitter as persimmon, green in its skin

Acrid as smoke from yesterday’s fire
Dry as ashes from a funeral pyre

It is resignation, acceptance and good common sense
The ingredients of madness, bourgeois’ last defense

My life goes on, predictable and staid
To think that this frustration is about getting laid

When lusts slaking
Is there for the taking

discuss (excerpt II)

“But what of your responsibility to those that feel disenfranchised by, either their domestic process or by a process that seems only to focus on those who are able, by lobbying, to gain access to the negotiations.”

excerpt

So now, when Jack tried to find something to counter the wild voices speaking to him, it was this image of his grandmother, baking cookies for him on a hot summers day. Her aura flickering in and out of his perception, the empty bottle of rum the only tangible proof of what he had seen of his grandmother’s ceremony. It was this image that Jack focused on to try and counter the wild energy coming from the very air he breathed. Almost immediately sleep overwhelmed him and he found himself beside his grandmother’s grave – her in that long ago outfit, munching on a cookie.

oh look

I'm in a comfortable alcoholic haze

yay me

you know,
or not

chaos

some days I can feel the desire for it engulf me. Some days I truly feel the ability to create it. Some misplaced trust. A little desire and a drink or two. And its all there.

Intellectual, physical, political or spiritual. Pick your poison.

I will fuck with your concepts, biases, beliefs and hopes and dreams. Raise them up on the draft of potential and dash them on the shoals of realpolitik.

just ask me

Boston Pizza

I'm in the bar of a franchise restaurant. The burning ember between my fingers sends its blue-grey fractal offering to the low-grade miasma hovering over me. I register the cool glass of my beer against my hand, consider taking a drink. But I'm stalled by the horror eloquently unfolding on the page in front of me.

I look up from the page, faux nostalgia clinging to the walls struggling to give a sense of history to a pasteboard facade. But the place doesn't feel as rootless as I do at the moment. There is sense of place here, brought in by the locals and well-practiced travellers.

A soft rustle as I turn the page, faintly audible above the 80's rock grooving my fellow drinkers. For the moment, I am at peace

now I'm

Drinking beer.
Transcribing

Bene Gesserit & Zen

Bene Gessrit say:

I will not fear
Fear is the mindkiller,
Fear is the little death
That brings total Oblivion
I will permit my fear to pass
Over me and through me
And where it has gone
I will turn the inner eye
Nothing will be there
Only I will remain.

The same could be said of desire. And its a bitch because the oblivion that it brings can be that of pleasure. How do you maintain when people want your desire, but they want your desire to mesh with theirs. If I exert discipline, then my desire is set to one side. My mind is able to focus on what should simply be done. What is in front of me.

So if I say (with more brevity):

I will not desire
Desire is the mindkiller,
I will permit my desire to pass
Over me and through me
And where it has gone
Nothing will be there
Only I will remain.

Does this work, does this make sense. How would this affect the people around me. Those I love? I'm afraid of this step. But it is the necessary step to enlightenment.

Stupid Man, a Haiku

Spring meloncholy
exhausted by my desires
I will make some tea

depleted

My emotional reservoir is drained. I can see the landmarks of my emotions, my love over here, my passion over there. Heck, even the substantial and prickly shoals of my obsessions and insecurities.

But I no longer have the energy to keep them replete with water.

I no longer have the energy to focus on that which is right in front of me, my sword, my house, my book, my job, my wife.

That's enough I think. All of the other stuff is there, but its in stasis. The drive to go beyond this banal life.

Am I maturing? or giving up?

kiss

"Really? she says, her anger tilting towards fury. "Well then, kiss me."

I hear her disbelief, she knows that I won't take her up on her challenge. I take three strides. I'm tall, but people seem to forget how much ground I can cover. How long my arms can be. A damned spider monkey sometimes.

And I'm face to face with her. Her lips painted red, still set in a hard line. Only her eyes have had time to show surprise. I can smell the gin responsible for the anger and her slow realization.

Its only when I tuck a blond lock of hair behind one ear that she realizes that I would. And her lips part, not with anticipation, but with a slowly welling objection. I see the crow's feet around by each eye. It makes her seem more knowing. And yet, her eyes are so wide and blue, and there is still a vulnrability there.

I brush my lips against hers, feeling, tasting the waxy lipstick. I lick her lips, once. A flicker of the tongue. Her arms raise to push me back and I grab her foreams and pull her to me. Cover her mouth with mine, feel the teeth beneath the cushion of her lips.

She stands on tip-toe to try and lean away from me, but that is all that she has left of her objection, and I slide one hand behind the curve of her neck.

My tongue licks her teeth and she falls into the kiss. With me. Breathless.

makeout

i wanna neck with Tanya just to see what music she'd play.

jeezus, making out is fun

Oh lord won't ya buy me a Mercedes Benz

it was late May. The sun was hot, mid-day, but there was still a bite in the air. I was sweaty, hot, tired and feeling a chill down my spine. I had around four hundred trees in the ground, and the day was not going well. She was the acting shift boss and came by to see how I was faring in my plot.

It wasn't going well. I was leaning on my shovel, by the logging road, dust in my mouth. when I blew my nose teh snot was a deep viscous gray. The bugs were just starting to come out, but mercifully were blown askew by the annoying wind.

My mood was torn between the beauty of spring in the north, and the meloncholy of letting love go. Kathleen had moved to Edmonton, and I was still in Ontario. Not that it would have worked anyway, but god, did I yearn. But the wind was blowing, the land was greening and the sky was a sunwashed blue.

I chatted with the shift boss about my problems, both planting and love, and she offered me sincere if sparse consolation.

but what I remember most is her walking away. Wearing baggy pants, flannel shirt, big rubber boots and kicking up little puffs of dust as she walked down the logging road. Singing Janice Joplin.

I bought 'Pearl' as soon as I got into the city.

crack!

I am poised, leaning forward. Ready.

I drive forward my body forward, the stick clenched in both hands swings above my head.

I scream, my diaphragm clenching, adding power to my stroke. My ams snap forward at elbow and shoulder and I swing at the head in front of me. My bare foot smacks the ground as the stick makes contact.

Crack!

I continue screaming as I rush past my opponent. I only stop when I turn to face my opponent once again.

Kendo is fun!

Airport

Long view, a curving corridor. Cool, flatly obnoxious fluorescent lighting. The rush and stroll of travellers, workers, meaters and greeters. The white noise of head down, where's my papers, where's my gate, where's my kids as everyone tries to deal as little as possible with dealing with long overcrowded flights to places they hope they want to be.

Paused in an eddy of the flow, poised to spring forward and shuffle like the rest of the lemmings to my date with destiny, or at least destination.

Bored, could be drunk, but exhausted by the stink of beer, my own stale sweat and breath, the last remaining cigarettes smoked, my clandestine activity on these trips, exhausted. Am I sated? Satisfied? I must be.

Becausee I'm sipping water in a mini-veal-fattening pen. Imported from china, its comforting fabric walls refuge for the business traveller. Post a generic shot of the kids in one corner and bang, you're home.

Will I have the courage to take my reward if I complete my task?

Making coffee, transcribing.

Type

Words are more than reality.

Or so it seems. I'm in love with a woman who is more a creation of type than of flesh. I met her with words, I seduced her with words and I keep her with words. Typed or spoken.

And even the spoken words are type rendered to sound. When I speak, and she makes that sound, it is type, not conversation. Call it rhetoric, call it staged conversation, it is type.

And yet. Why is she only real to me now. When we have been together. skin on skin. lips, tongue, teeth. Such savour in the physical. When I dream I can still taste her mouth, the wet kiss, the sound of her teeth on mine, the texture of her tonge, her lips. I obsess. And these are not words, are they?

When I read the horror that Ann Marie MacDonald sketches with such intimate grace, I feel, for the first time, that I truly do - want - to be a writer.

I don't know if I will ever be string together description like a string of pearls as she does, but reading her work is immersing yourself in the place she creates. You can taste the dust, feel the sun, the texture of the furniture, the sound of forks on ceramic

So so real.

More real than this life. I feel the horror of the characters, and I sit and sip my beer, smoke my cigarette and dream of a life so rich. But am I dreaming of the writer? The character.

I still don't know.

hotel

Watching the clock. My sleep continually herded away by disappointing half-dreams. Sleep is pointless, but I refuse to surrender my rest to my psyche. 6:20, I toss aside the covers just before my automated wakeup call. Curtains drawn, the hotel room hushed, not with any expectency, its only the banal drowsiness of waking business travellers. I pull on a t-shirt - looking at my body in the mirror before I do so, hoping to see rippling abs. nope. The shoulders look ok though.

Shaving with soap, skin abraded by a dull razor. The shower is hot, and here the soap coats my fingers with a creamy white. The texture of the bar firm, but melts under the pressure of my fingers. Fodder for my starved senses. The shampoo is a citrus - surprisingly bright in this padded room of understated beige and wood.

I put on some Metric - the sounds of their disconnection playing in my head even before I even hear the music. It sounds terrible on my laptop. So its the headphones and I start to write - but its too much bleakness for the morning. I lack the anger to turn it into energy.

kd lang then, brightening my spirits in time to the dawn light coming through the open curtains.

what is rational

I ache with desire

She is always in my thoughts - vignettes of a life together that could never be. What am supposed to do. Be fearless. Create mayhem in my life.

Hell, I don't mind the mayhem in my life, I detest the accusations. Not loving, not committing, not being what my wife wants me to be. A good, solid stable man. good sense of humour - sense of the absurd, but bound together in a battle to wrest a bourgeois existance from society.

GOD, HOW DID I FUCKING DO THIS TO MYSELF

I say, trust yourself - that voice that says "I want this life". for some I know its marriage and kids, but for me its a meloncholy dissolut existance. But how do I inject discipline into that. I wanna be Bukowski, but wry, not angry.

sigh.

The Saskatchewan river in March is beautiful. the occaisional floe of ice. The blue sky. The burn of clove as the Djarum hits my lungs.

Bar

I sit in the bar, burger ready, faint smell of dill wafting over my beer.

The memory of crystalized snot on the tile wall in the bathroom

yeah saskatoon