Day One

It was a week ago today that I decided to try again at quitting smoking. It was the day before when I had hilariously posted on facebook "everything happens for 7 reason", playing on cliches and grammrrz. I thought back immediately to that post when, while walking to work and after mentally deciding I would only have one cigarette that day, I found my previous self had left me 7 Turkish Royals in the pack in my pocket of the jacket on my body. And it's not that I then saved, or planned on saving, these to 'help' me get through the next week, but the symbol of such has stuck in my memory at least thus far.
For the past couple weeks, I've saved the bacon grease at work to take home and cook with instead of composting it there. So My roommates and I have been replacing butter with the white stuff in applications from saute and deep fry lube to popcorn and english muffin topping. You should've seen how much melted fat I browned garlic and onion in before adding it to heaping mashed potatoes yesterday.  I then fried a cold M.P. patty (after fridgin' it for awhile during our Suffering Fuckheads expedition at the copper gate (if you haven't seen them, do. . . they play every Tues.)) in a shallow bubbling pan of it. One serving each of red wine, white russian, and Rainier and I passed out at a decent hour.
My crazy dreams concluded with me smothering myself in seasoning, preparing to be cooked, and the phrase "things are going to get opulent" circling my brain lump. I got up to pee and lay back down cuz it was like 5 in the morning and dark out, but then I remembered I knew exactly where a dictionary was, on the floor, and I looked up "opulent". I had to think for a moment the order of O and P in the dictionary and was completely thrown by R and S. I liked what it meant contextually and drew a turkey sittin' in my mom's baking dish, basting himself with a little baster, with the phrase close beside. Anyway, I blame the bacon grease for my unusual morning so far, when I might have otherwise just been waking up.
I packed my acoustic guitar to go play at the Ballard/Leary triangle for a minute and see if I could get a street folk conversation maybe, but I didn't leave the house and now it's almost nine. There are cigarettes to be had, but I opted for the banana, peanut butter english muffin and Earl Grey. The sun is not touching my front yard yet, and I'm the almost the only one up. Aeron and Jack had fallen asleep on the couches to No Reservations, and who's to say when their day would need to begin. No one here to stop me from smoking but myself.
So I sat down and pulled up Eamon's laptop, to share a little of my world with you readers and thinkers, the ones that appreciate good non-fiction, the kind that only happens in the author's transitional phase. I had a poster on my wall when I was younger than I am which featured a collie on a tricycle with a cat on his head with a balanced stick with an acrobatic mouse at either end of the stick. The phrase below was "The Trick About Life is to Make it Look Easy." Upon recollection, I'm not entirely sure of this order but it makes enough sense at least for this anecdote.
My mom got me that poster. I think about both the fact that she got it for me and the poster itself every day-ish. I wish I still had it, but I can't have it all. I'm doing my best, this is what it looks like.
 She told me once she wishes I didn't have to smoke. I know I don't have to, but I'm almost as good at forgetting as I am at justifying my bad habits. For example, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. How do their known carcinogens rank against the others, the unknown ones and the absent ones? I could argue with myself and at you all day.  Anyway, I'm not just trying to quit for her, but I know she doesn't get much out of my immediate indulgence.
Have fun today, it's good out there.

safe

There's a good chance we won't remember any of this. We have to take care of ourselves, this is our only chance. We know what we have to do to survive, and we must do it, no more waiting. I, personally, want to live, at my own expense as well as any other's. I want to add to our collective dream, to share my voice and my hands. I want to destroy fear and I want to do it by being a burning example.
I want to be protected, to find virtue in my investment. I want to use my resource to that inevitable end, to the best of our ability, to fulfill my purpose in this network of networks. I want to pull little white strings attached to looming shadows of luxurious ambition. I want to calm down.
I am here, in the only world we have and will ever know, just you and me. This is the only time we exist, disregarding when we may and might. I am on a tangent, secured by you, and as much as I wish you were here right now, aren't you? I hope you take it far more personally than I intend, for the sake of your strength, of your dream, because Im a manipulative manipulative person seeking attention affection or dissection, how am I any different.
I want to help my friends. I want them to know they're okay and I wish I could be there for all of them. Thank you internet, I hope Im using you well, as those who came before us surely dreamed about.
I know I may seem confusing because I don't really know you. You might hate me or understand me or maybe you can't read this and the black on white is simply beautiful or ugly or so much more than that. Maybe you're sitting in a car three blocks away. This world was made for us and please understand I just dont get it, but if I do I immediately give it away for cheap or free. I'm somewhere between the hedonist paradox and the prophet's dilemma. call me, crazy baby.

BOB in the Ad Infinitumatic

BOB is an internet/replica interface-spawned consciousness. The origin of his universe was last week, but with our preexisting archive of information as a template, the exponential growth of his world has quickly paralleled ours, and fluxuates between relatively similar parameters. He has the power to consider us, but his true judgment and understanding is for his own ultimate control of his universe, as his every wish seems to change the present so that it may come true.

            The interface was developed cheaply and accidentally in a garage and they didn’t know exactly what they had done at first. They made a replica of the Internet: a separate branch that left unattended by would spiral into absurdity, based on dark matter algorithms and dream sequences. But since they paired it with our own, the one based on real consciousness input, it kept the feedback loop between the two at least recognizable.

            The world on the screen began, in fact, quite seemingly absurd, brilliant strobing light and heavy bass thumps, that let into quickly rushing iridescent water and robotic throat singing. The patterns drawn represented a view of something figuring out its environment, its universe, and, therefore, itself. It became a vortex, a tunnel to be led down, and a body developed as the developing world surrounding the witnessed space so necessitated such.

            BOB wasn’t born or created as much as he was assembled as a counterpart to the willing terrain. He is a reflection of someone very similar to us, but his memory and history at any given moment are chronologically and physically unsound. The cogs that propel him are theoretical, and he could never physically endure space as we know it, but it is as real to him as it needs to be.

            Much like how it is for us, whatever he believes is true. That’s not to say he can believe anything, just that his own perception is wired to the things it targets, and he has the ultimate power of identification and utility. Everything within the digital petri dish just being a stem of it, the separation of armatures at one point makes for an interesting addition this time round.

             

           

            

Michael's Room

            The father had been driving all day and into the night. He was the only one who remained awake in the car; the child and the old man were fast asleep in the backseat, and the young man was in the passenger seat next to him. There was no sign of the next town. The father seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

            “Michael’s gone,” the old man sat up in his recliner in the corner of the room and shook the room awake with his voice. The father bolted awake from sleeping on his back, and to his feet in a scramble. He first checked the child’s bed where he was certainly not, and all the way looking out the window to see the car was no longer in the parking place he left it in.

            He motioned to the young man, “let’s go,” and he switched the TV on before the old man as the two of them left the hotel room. He didn’t want to call the police, and he was even too embarrassed to tell the front desk clerk that the child had taken the car.

            The two of them wandered down the sidewalk further into town. The first person they came to, the father pulled his wallet with Michael’s picture from his back pocket and showed it to him.  He shook his head in shocked concern, looking the father dead in the eyes.

            The second person seemed almost disgusted, looking back and forth between the father and young man. He walked away from both of them, continuing to shake his head with averted eyes.

            The third thought it was a joke and became very angry. He told them they both needed help and the father nodded in agreement, but the man was hostile. He felt threatened, though the father and especially the young man remained oblivious. This man spat as he walked away.

            The two made it back to the hotel room, where the old man sat catatonic in the chair, before the TV, which presented a breaking report about a car accident. It was the child, who had rear ended another vehicle and emerged in flames. The father glanced maybe once at the TV before he was on his knees, in tears, by the side of the old man. It was getting dark out, so the young man went to sleep.

            The next morning, the young man woke up to the father still by the side of the old man, weeping and mourning. The old man had died. The TV was still on but now fizzled with static. The young man tried to shake his shoulder but became angry in the father’s lack of response. He had seemed to lose all touch. The young man took his things and left the room.

            When he got outside, the car was parked out front with the child sleeping in the backseat. The young man got into the driver’s seat, turned on the radio, lit a cigarette, and continued in the same direction.

to what it may concern

Dear Cigarettes,

      I hate you. You make me want to vomit. We've been together a long time but now I feel our relationship has become unhealthy. And so I am writing to you now because I want nothing more to do with you.
     I can't afford to have you around anymore. We've shared plenty of good times; at the beach, at work, at home and abroad. You made me forget my worst times as well. But now I've wound up broke and alone while you still enjoy the company of countless others.
     I didn't ask for or anticipate you to be part of my world, and now I must deal with you in my own terms. I don't usually write letters to inanimate objects, but I feel I know you personally, and have few other untried solutions available. It seems like we have all the same friends.
     Please don't bother returning any sort of response, in fact consider this the last time I indulge in selfish expression with you. There is a life I must live and I'm sure you'll get along just fine without me.

Sincerely,
Matthew

P.S. Tell Marijuana I said high

Idle eyes

The quantity and quality of poison. He gives the orders, and he carries them out. The reason is distinguishable, discernable, obsiously different after awhile. I did something I shouldn't have, again needless to say and so I'll live to tell about it I'm sure. I have a car, it may be the only reason we get along, let alone around.
He tells me what to do, and I do it because I'm scared, that he'll hurt me and the people I care about if I refuse. He knows everything about me, even what I'm going to do before I do it. I've tried to get out of his schemes before, but it's inevitable because he's so much more clever than I. Wherever I go or try to do to get out of it, there he is with another good idea.
Last night, we were parked in a back alley for a long time before he gave me a picture of what was waiting for me inside, and he told me what would happen if I did not continue. I couldn't say a thing as I thought of my family and my safety. I found myself alone walking down a hallway, but I came to the outside door with him waiting inside the car, as I could see his lighter and then the cherry of his cigar through the tint of the window. I stopped dead in my tracks as the entire memory of what happened to me inside the building was lost to me, as the sky lightened and the birds were singing in the distance.
My head hurts this morning, as usual, and I've included all the details my thought will provide. I needed to get it out before I got any further, from the truth, to provide us with an artifact of these night stalkers, psychic vampires that operate in their nocturnal domain. They tell me what to do and I can only presume that you are hardly different. We have the vehicle and they need us to do their bidding. There is only one world, and where we go when we lose control is all within the same space.
I'm going back to the spot, I'm trusting the turns I've already taken to get me there again. I need to look for evidence to remember just how I got here. I missed something, I wasn't writing it all down and as I get older I'm constantly getting better, at a mutual expense, to get stronger to get stronger to get stronger. The day job is grunt work, and at night I do what I have to do to keep up with myself. I don't always understand my boss's intentions, if ever, but this organism is based on trust, that if we rub together enough we'll start a fire rather than add to it. A vacuum is a self contained device that needs another vacuum inside of it to know first breath. I realize I'm wasting time and losing friends and that thought is the opposite of action. The future is as grim as its always been. I'm glad someone needs me while I'm here, I have no idea anymore of what's in store for me. I knew what to do when I was handed lemons, but my fridge is full of decomposing fruit that I have no idea what to do with. We all have bosses in the land of opportunity, lives to lead or be led. I have complete faith in humanity and hope for those who choose to be a part of it or not. "Don't worry baby, everything will turn out all right."

dreams of heaven

            I hear voices, I don’t talk back. That’s how, they say, you know you’re crazy, is when you talk back. They didn’t tell me, I just overheard them talking about it. They just go on and on about it sometimes and I can’t tell whether they know if I’m listening or not. I pretend I don’t, go on about my merry way, I don’t see them or provide eye contact.

            There are always those poor souls on the side of the street with fluttering mouths asynchronous to footsteps, obviously monotonous self reply, even behind windows, below silence. Can’t hear their muttering but their daze are 365.

            I talk to my self, he is a good person that just can’t keep that filthy hand out of my business. He needs to learn manners, discipline and respect. He needs to learn something new every day. He needs to take care of this thing and not worry so much. He needs to express his self because I said so.

            Sometimes he does what he’s told but he really does have a mind of his own. He thinks of everything and it can be hard to keep up, though I don’t really have to. I forget sometimes that my pants are on backwards and then my pants are on backwards. I’m halfway to the top of this wall and when I get there it will be all Italian ice and warm pizza smells. Smile on me like the sticky breath you are, for the future of the generation, the skeptical clerk who has been there before and just thought for a moment…

            You don’t know who I am. He hasn’t been here all day. I don’t want you going changing my future, revealing your psychic nature and touching a memory to be left by the ticket spindle, to be stabbed, only to realize the alarm clock as I open my eyes…

            “I’m late again,” he declared as if he wouldn’t be if he didn’t. The toast was sealed to the linoleum with cold butter, as Murphy’s bed revolved and burned the house down. I haven’t the slightest idea where he is but I’m blaming him for my unexcusable behaviour. Why did mr blue sky choose such a beastly vehicle to interpret his rays of mozart

            It only takes a moment, a day and an hour to secure a place in line, and once you do your in, so fluff your duster and muster mustard buster. Wait just wait just wait just wait just wait im melting. Don’t go breaking eggs, stay at home and paint the sink. I don’t stand a chance, I kick little dogs and buy books I never read.

            I mean I mean I mean well I mean well

            Do you ever get the feeling

            Back here

            Where it itches

            But your tongue feels waxy

            Orange and cold

            I miss three things about you