Pinched

To be creative and write a good story I have to be “pinched”—in between uncomfortable enough to be inspired and motivated and comfortable enough to be physically able to write.

Believe

If there are two stories and I can’t prove either one I might as well believe the better story.

Pronouns

Don’t be distant from my “I.” It is only the slice of god closest to my own eyes and ears.

I, you and the other pronouns are just parts of a whole that exist in a place where the word “part” doesn’t make any sense.

Bored

I know we have all these natural mechanisms for motivation and I tried to order them and reward myself but once I see it all out in front of me I just get bored; the only good stuff is brand new but of course that’s ephemeral so I go on creating.

Do other animals dream?

Everything is so serious and vital in my dreams from the war stories I read at night, and then I wake up to my safe slow 9-5 sales job. Someone once told me that of all animals, humans are the best at adapting to a wide range of circumstances.

A dream about escaping

And then all of a sudden it became an urgent situation and my brother and I climbed the stairs to higher and higher floors to get away from a man who was trying to kill us until this man fell into a classroom of glass and when I went down to finish him off I saw his spine was severed at the neck and this is how I knew it was a recurring dream because there was a perfume vial capping the top of his exposed spine and I remembered and that’s when my brother and I crept and tiptoed down the building with so many floors where everyone was looking for us but the young kids were on our side so when they saw us creeping down they just shook their heads and smiled and acted like they hadn’t seen us so that the adults wouldn’t find out until we got to the basement and my brother had to pack his stuff to leave and that’s when she found us and really started to yell and we were in trouble and my brother handed me the shotgun and I ran ahead and now here I was sitting in the car with the gun’s neck resting on the open window and the two golden-butted shells behind two silver hammers and my heart beating like a tribal drum wondering what the hell was taking my brother so long.

Double barrel shotgun

When you hold a gun for the first time with the intention to shoot it at someone, and your heart really starts to beat like a big tribal drum in your chest and your ears only work on the inside to reverberate the drum bangs echoing off the insides of your giant hot hollow torso, and I could simultaneously imagine what it would be like to be shot in the stomach and have that giant hot mess spill out; I was holding a double long barrel shotgun cracked in half at its waist looking at the gold pristine butts of two shells peeking out of the inside ends of each barrel. I snapped the gun straight hiding the golden butt shells in front of both silver hammers. I pulled back the hammers and put my finger on the double action trigger and waited for my brother to get out of there.

Go-between

I live this weird go-between life in the middle of sane and insane, artistic and scientific, alive and dead, in between all these things.

Walk

Sometimes I just walk; it’s easier to pick a direction than a word.

Eyelid notes

I write things down on little pieces of paper behind my eyelids and then fold them back to store in my brain but I can never find them again most of the time.

Monday

There is a little bit of turbulence as I land from a high flying artistic weekend, sometimes on a Monday morning I crash land into the office. There is the animal that needs to eat, there is the modern American working class man that does his job and behaves himself unless he is drinking, and then there is this young creative god who stretches his arms on the weekends.

Jackhammer

The world is wide and bright to me now, a giant industrial jackhammer machine guns down a highway bridge that no longer fits in the city’s plans, and I want to jump or run up some stairs; I’d really like to find a jungle gym.

Surviving

I like it when I ask someone how they’re doing and they say they’re surviving. Sometimes I’d like to respond, “You’re such an animal, man.” I think they’d like that.

Secrets

There are things that persons in power could say that would greatly upset everyone else in society.

Like if a critic said that he only writes good reviews for the books and movies that are already popular and he writes bad reviews for the ones he’s already found out that nobody likes anyhow, or if a politician said that the elections are really decided by the people already in power and all the vote tallying is for show, or if a drug company finally released the cure for cancer because it was no longer profitable to keep it a secret, or if a banker said that he really truly believes the financial system is not fair and unequally favors the rich over the poor but he keeps on with his job because he has a wife and family and four homes and two boats and he’s got to keep making just as much money each year to pay all his bills so he pushes out of his mind that he plays a role in the unfair system.

The stability of society depends on persons in power not saying these things. For the most part these seem unlikely to be true, but sometimes I wonder whether it is that they are not true or if the persons in power are just very good at keeping secrets—and even from each other, for surely a banker’s mother has died of cancer and a movie critic has voted in an election.

Cog

I met this guy named Tommy. He said, “Let me guess, you’re from the midwest.” And later in the conversation he said, “Also, are you in sales?” This made me quite smug. It lets me know I’m playing my role well.

Body mind spirit

The mind is half spirit and half body; the spirit was invented when the mind began to grasp things other than the physical.

Don’t worry

Don’t worry about it if you don’t need to; don’t worry about anything if you don’t need anything.

Bird

I looked at a bird and her two eyes and thought we are not so different.

Writing

I tried to write a novel and it didn’t work out so I let flow more naturally the style you’re reading now. I started writing on my phone in the streets. Something tells me this requires less talent, but maybe talent was only a selfish aim.

Fashion

I wear what I think I should. Fashion is skewed largely towards form in a world of environments so regulated as to have less need for clothes for their original purpose.

Title

I thought I’d remove the titles of each poem before I published this, but when I did the poems weren’t the same, especially the ones that are only one sentence. Which made me think there is something important about a title, like when you decide to read a book you make a judgment about its content based in large part on its title, along with some other content on the front and back covers. You have an expectation about what the book will contain like a sign above a doorway that says “welcome home” or “please take off your shoes.” And so I decided to leave the titles because it makes for a dynamic micro-experience of each poem, splitting the reader into two of herself, one who reads the title and sets an expectation in her mind and the other who reads the poem and wrestles with her former self if it is not what she expected or feels smug consonance with her former self. And so i decided to leave the titles.

Nike commercial

It’s one of those things where you know you know it but you can’t quite remember; and it’s a funny thing because thoughts like this are those on which we seem to base our decisions more often than the conscious and thought-out thoughts. I suppose that’s why I still curse and throw things sometimes, as I can’t quite remember the time that I decided this was not a thing I should be doing. Something else takes over and I just do it.

Fashion

I wear what I think I should. Fashion is skewed largely towards form in a world of environments so regulated as to have less need for clothes for their original purpose.

Poem titles

I thought I’d remove the titles of each poem before I published this, but when I did the poems weren’t the same, especially the ones that are only one sentence. Which made me think there is something important about a title, like when you decide to read a book you make a judgment about its contents based in large part on its title, along with some other content on the front and back covers. You have an expectation about what the book will contain like a sign above a doorway that says “welcome home” or “please take off your shoes.” And so I decided to leave the titles because it makes for a dynamic micro-experience of each poem, splitting the reader into two of herself, one who reads the title and sets an expectation in her mind and the other who reads the poem and wrestles with her former self if it is not what she expected or feels smug consonance with her former self. And so I decided to leave the titles.

Thoughts like this

It’s one of those things where you know you know it but you can’t quite remember; and it’s a funny thing because thoughts like this are those on which we seem to base our decisions more often than the conscious and thought-out thoughts.

I suppose that’s why I still curse and throw things sometimes, as I can’t quite remember the time that I decided this was not a thing I should be doing. Something else takes over and I just do it before I can even think.

Pampered artist

I am consistently and thoroughly cared for, how was I supposed to create art when my only dissatisfaction was a lack thereof. The challenge of a pampered artist is to find suffering.

A little game

Sometimes I play a game where I try to live everyone else’s life at once; I try to simultaneously be all persons from all times and places and feel all their joys at the same time as all their sorrows, sometimes I cry and smile at the same time.

Dreams

Dreams are this weirdly objective part of our minds, where we just be without fear of judgment, I think a lot of art happens in our dreams, this is a daydream journal.

Higher

I feel just caught in the cycle of life, unless I’m creating or loving—these two things are higher.

Energy

When I say energy I mean the things we can’t describe, I mean the parts of the physical world that we can’t explain yet but still experience, I mean the emotions that are fossils of our million year old conditioning, fossils with whose origins time has put us out of touch; when I say energy I mean the things we feel but don’t understand.

The spiritual is just what is currently beyond us but not necessarily so, maybe the spiritual is the corners of the physical world we haven’t found yet, maybe religion is just what we can’t describe; I’m not sure about religion, really, but I’m sure about what I feel for my fellow human beings, and caveman conditioning or not, I feel it.

Twisted

I try not to think about my instincts too much, otherwise I tend to pervert my conditioned frameworks.

Godlike

Those of us born into this modern generation without firsthand experience of our animal past sometimes take for granted how close we have now come to living like gods.

Amoral conundrum

I feel there is a right way to live but I think there’s not; it’s hard to live if there isn’t, so this is one of those cases where I trick myself into thinking what I feel.

The right way to live

A new friend told me that she just wants to have the highest quality of life possible, and she uses her biological remnants as her guide. Which reminded me of something my philosophy professor once said: you should be guided by appearances for practical purposes; all you’re refraining from is making truth claims about those appearances.

The common principle being a dichotomy between what actually is and that according to which we do in fact live (which may or may not be). It seems what is and what we live by are not necessarily the same, but there is also no obvious reason why that should be cause for distress.

It is hard to live without an idea of the “right” way to live, because otherwise how are we to make decisions? But need there actually be a truly right way to live? Or is just a conception of the right way enough? Especially if our realities are created by our own minds. Doesn’t our conception of the right way become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But there’s also a back-up plan: art. In the absence of meaning and morality we have art; for me in some sense, everything is art—it’s just what is.

Second derivative experience

Sometimes it seems like I’m not paying attention, but this is because in addition to experiencing I am also focused on being conscious—experiencing the experience.

Rich diagonals

People live in their verticals, without learning to move side to side, and thus closed off from the richness of the diagonals.

Gluttony

I once heard a modern American say as we passed a restaurant: I wish I were hungry.

Create

I do not create well when I am thinking too much; because it is then that I make so mental what is also physical and spiritual.

Words

Words each have their meaning all on their own, so much so that a sentence all out of order which most people would say doesn’t make sense still makes sense in some way, just maybe not in a way you’ve thought of before.

Samely, each letter has a meaning, especially its sound. And so I could create a word that does not exist in the English language, and you would say that is not a word. But already you are associating it with words that sound like it and have letters in common. And further, when I start to use it consistently in the same particular contexts then you would build up a memory of that word and you would understand the situations in which I was using it and so you could even start using that word.

It is because this is my theory of language that I have included so much nonsense in this book. because there are unusual corners and undiscovered lands of our language which represent parts of you mind that you didn’t know existed. This book seeks to guide you into those new parts of your own mind.

Justice dice

Do I think what I should, or do I think what I’m caused to? If the latter, and if in order to do, I must think, then should you jail me? Or do you just jail who you’re caused to? And so justice is a game of dice. Who am I to thank for my good roll?

Emotion or nah

Sometimes I feel emotion and feel a tear but then I think it is just my conditioning and chemicals and then my mind blankets my heart and drys my eyes—I don’t know which is better, to be awash in it or to think past it, but of course “better” is the wrong word.

Part of One

Building frameworks to understand my Divine self, to understand the part of One of my self, to understand everything.

You try to see your one self but there are many, you are a composite, and at the same time there is a larger One composite, of which you are one part.

Human art

Human art is pseudo creation. I, as a writer, did not invent language. And you, as a painter, did not invent color. The humanist will say, look, we invented these words and assigned sounds to concept; language is ours. And look, we made these paints and designed shapes; color is ours.

But no human is responsible for the material world nor for his own ability to mold and craft it. We do not create so much as we rearrange what has already been created.

And how fortunate are we in a position of capability and power in such a time and place to be able to make art. I do not mean to belittle art, I still think it is the most important thing we have. I mean only to say: let it flow through you, rather than try and grasp and wield all of it at once, all by yourself.