Mountains come down and bury ya.

 “God gave me this power, papa. I’m doing God’s work.”

“No ya ain’t. You doin your work,” Gramps spat through gritted teeth. “What you think needs to be done n nuthin else. Is this how we gonna part ways?”

“Part ways? What do you mean, papa?”

“You gonna git back to Pogo but I ain’t gonna be there no mo. I’m stayin here, in the In-between place.”

“This place?” Kris asked. “This high space we’re sharing? You in Colorado, me in a truck trailer? Probably some highway in Kentucky, me not back in Pogo Springs with you? This is my trip and you’re in it.”

Sweeping her up into his arms and kissing her forehead, “Does this feel high to you? Does this feel like a dream?”

Kris stood still and only after a few moments, patted Gramps on the back with desultory taps. “No, papa, it doesn’t. I’m so happy you’re here. That I got to see you and touch you.”

Gramps pulled Kris tighter and whispered, “You gotta let that machine a yours go, sweetie. It ain’t made for this world cuz you ain’t made for this world.”

“Everything came together for me, papa, no matter how bad you think my Resonator is.” Caressing her fingers over the idle bumps of her keyboard, Kris drooped her eyelids and pouted her lips. “The Universal Resonator. The meth. Even the Colonel. All things bringing my work to fruition. To make my existence in Pogo Springs seem worth it.”

Gramps stuffed his hands in his pockets and fingered coins, keys, and a wadded handkerchief Mara had missed when she last did the wash. “Indians said they gave Pogo Springs to the Spanish because they believed the waters was possessed by evil spirits. Yo mama and daddy figured that out really fast. Put an end to Herman’s ski-n-soak idea after that proppelerhead from CSU talked to yo daddy. Your Papa-san n Oh-Me n me dint know where we was landin but we done good with what we got. And so did yo mama n daddy. Now, it feel like it all gonna come crashin down. And your evil Resonator is a part a it.” 

“Papa? I’m not sure I understand.”

“Pogo Springs. Where the mountain breathes, sheds pieces of itself as it do. Mountains come down and bury ya. Like how it kilt yo mama n daddy.” Blood ran warm and bitter where Gramps bit the inside of his lip. “You figured out how to make that happen, makin the mountain come down on folk. Even if it was the Colonel and them damn skinheads that ya done it to, it’s still evil. You doan need that power”

Nesting words within her thoughts, Kris let the silence between them whisper her doubts before she spoke. “Are you a ghost? Or are you just high?”

“We both high,” Gramps chuckled and then turned serious. “You think I’m a ghost?”

“Not yet.”

“I ain’t no ghost yet. Not sure I will ever be. After what I been these last coupla years? Doan think I wanna ever be a ghost. I want what I am now. I choose this place.” Gramps pounded a fist into his palm, repeatedly. “You gotta destroy that machine, Christmas.”

As she sat near her make-shift work station, Kris fanned her thighs like fluttering wings. “I can’t. Not yet. I got something more to do. With it. The Resonator.”

“That ain’t workin for me,” Gramps growled in a voice that was resonant and gravelly. “I need some promises befo I gone fo good.”

“When you die, can I still talk to you?” Looking up at the old man, her eyes were wet and shiny.

Of everything in life he would miss, Gramps knew the most would be how Christmas spoke to him in a way that no one else could. Her words warmed him like a thick blanket on a cold night. “You can talk to me all you want. Will I talk back? I think that depends on whatcha listenin fo. But from what I know of ghosts, they got a way of talkin bout things they know nuthin bout.”

 “Y’know, I never did talk to Mona and Lilly, papa.” Giggling slightly into her fist, Kris betrayed a hint of devious grin. “I told everyone I did because, if they believed in them, the ghosts would be real. And I wanted them to be real. Some things don’t become real until people believe in them. Then, they live forever. All we have to do is think about them and they come back.”

“Doan think I’m comin back, sweetie. Not this time. So I need you to promise me two things befo I go.” The old man bolstered his stance before folding his arms. “Get rid a that Resonator and quit doin that meth shit.”

“I’m not doing meth, ever again. Not after getting high on my brother’s drug, and then seeing you. I promise you, never again with the meth.”

“You made all kindsa promises to me bout that garbage, that death. Ya never followed through, not once. Why I gotta believe you now?”

“You see what I’m saying,” her tone flat with resilience. “You see inside me. You always have, sensei.”

“Baby girl, I love it when you call me that.” The crinkles at the edges of Gramps’s eyes were lit with an inner glow.

 

79     Gears ground lower as the semi slowed, the hiss of air brakes announcing the slight lurch of a full stop. Kris looked up at Gramps with tears in her eyes. “Is this where it ends, papa?”

Gramps swallowed, shrugged, took a moment to respond. “I dunno, sweetie. It doan feel like it but you started your trip a few hours befo I did. So maybe you won’t be here for me when I get back. But I’m bout to find out why this truck stopped.”

Flashing portals once again surrounded Gramps, like a swarm of fireflies dancing around him, blinking their presence in a dark, moonless night. The portal that dragged him in dropped him into the back of Ra-Ra’s bus.

Rolling off of Sage, Gooch pressed the button on the intercom. “Why are we stopping on the side of the freeway? Everything okay?”

“State police. Again. Dammit, they got no reason to pull us over!” Ra-Ra’s voice echoed anger through the intercom.

Leo keyed in on the CB, “Everything all right with you?”

“No,” Ra-Ra groaned. “Meet us at the rest stop, just after mile marker four twenty.”

After changing the band to twenty-four, Leo, Emma, and Billy heard the deep sigh of Ra-Ra’s desperation. “The first place you stop, rest stop, gas station, just watch for us. Stay off the radio, I’m locking my mics so y’all can follow what we got goin on.”

The other vehicles keyed back twice to signal they’d understood her commands.

“Okay, family, we’ll get out of this clusterfuck.” Ra-Ra tapped her mic three times to let the others know she was locked and live. “These pigs ain’t holdin us up from gettin home. Gooch and Sage? Clean up back there!””

In the rear of the bus, Sage and Gooch gathered up roaches, ashtrays, and the small sack of weed Ra-Ra allowed in the passenger compartment. The two wiped everything down then dropped evidence into the commode at the rear of the bus, flushed a few times, and consigned detritus to black water infused with chemicals. Once the bus was cleaned they overheard Ra-Ra on the intercom, “So, why am I being pulled over? I know I wasn’t speeding,” Ra-Ra’s intercom locked open and broadcasting to the back. After requests for license, registration, the cops asked if they could walk to the back of the bus.

“Sure, go on back, officer. If ya gotta warrant. Otherwise, I’d like to keep headin home, I wanna sleep in a real bed.” Ra-Ra laughed and snorted over cop mumbles that went on for several minutes. “DEA said what? Gooch ain’t here! Leo ain’t here! Ya wanna bring dogs in? Sir, I’ve been clean n sober for over ten years. Jesus is my drug now!” After several minutes of more cop mumble, Ra-Ra snarled, “Bring on the dogs, officers! I got nothin, but bring em out and let em do their thing.”

Gramps initially suppressed a laugh but then let it roar full throated with the knowledge that no one in or out of Casey Jones would hear him. This story in the book was clear and he knew the outcome. Surrounding him, the back of the bus was refreshed with a collective sigh of relief when everyone heard, Okay ma’am, you’re good to go.

The bus got into gear and was back heading home. Emma gushed over the radio. “Fuck! You were brilliant, sistah! How you handled those cops!”

“You heard all that? You guys must be close.” Ra-Ra’s voice was cradled in a massive grin. 

Emma responded, “Rest stop, just up the road from where you got pulled over. You’ll see us in a few minutes.”

Gooch keyed the intercom to break in on Ra-Ra and Emma’s conversation. “I’ve got concerns. Something that came up earlier. We need to pull over, next place we can.”

“Gotcha, Gooch,” Ra-Ra answered with a laugh. “That’s our plan.” Then on the CB again, “Billy you catch all this?”

“Ten-four. Got Emma’s ten-twenty and I’m pullin up next to her and Leo.”

After about ten minutes, Ra-Ra pulled next to Billy and released the pressure on her brakes. With Kris refusing to leave her computers, the rest of the group piled into Casey Jones to determine their next steps. Once the doors were closed behind them, Ra-Ra raged. “First time I ever been pulled over in this rig was when we was in West Virginia. Used to happen all the time when I had Bertha but never in Casey until now. And twice in one day!” Pacing, her dreads flipped back and forth like a breeze-blown rug hanging up to dry. “And it was weird. They had no reason to pull me over. But to say some stuff about the DEA. Kept us here like fuckin forever, wanted to check out the bus. As you heard. Pulled me over for no fuckin reason and then let me go.”

Gooch cleared his throat then measured his words, unhooked his arm from around Sage’s waist and threw out his hands. “Don’t ask me how I know this, it’s too weird to explain. But I trust my sister, even if she is trippin right now.” Stammering and shuffling his feet, he looked to family to see if they were following his narrative. “She said the DEA has sniffed out Powerball and that they’re onto us.”

“How’d she learn about this?” Emma’s expression was almost comical with incredulity.   

Gooch shot a derisive glare her way. “I said don’t ask. A feature of her trip, I think. But it sounds legit. Cosmic Charlie was in jail when he heard Randal and some DEA agents talking. Charlie told Gramps. And I guess Kris has some psychic connection with him.”

Sage sneered, “How do we know it’s not just her hallucinations?”

Stepping between group members, Gramps looked into each of their faces and laughed uproariously.

Billy raised his head and his voice. “I believe her. I say we take blue highways back, not the interstate. Two lanes. The roads less traveled.”

“Excellent idea, brother,” Leo clapped Billy on the shoulder. “All the way, we can lead.”

Ra-Ra shouted back, “You know where you’re going, Leo?”

“The moment I knew where I was going was the moment I knew I was truly alive.”

“Spare us your Nindian bromides, will ya?” Gooch’s growl angry and dismissive.

“What are blue highways?” Ra-Ra asked.

“Means the roads that no one drives unless they live out in the boonies.” Stroking his long black hair, Billy looked as though he was totally on board for the trip.

“William Least-Heat Moon.” Turning up his nose at the group, Leo thrust an index finger out then waved it around like a magic wand. “We need to travel those paths if we don’t want to get harassed again.”

“This didn’t. Just. Happen. NO!”

 He landed feet first in a classic Spanish villa’s courtyard where outbuildings and apartments were fronted by an imposing three-story Great House. To his right, a marble fountain stood tiered with graduated clam shell bowls, a Cupid dancing at the apex with an arrow aimed at the moon. Wings of the estate hemmed everything in, casitas bordered by porches shadowed beneath slatted eaves, windows shuttered like the closed eyelids of large owls. 

Breathless, Gooch turned his face to the sky, stretched his arms wide, and filled his lungs with hearty gasps of night-chilled serein. Refreshed in his moment of clarity, he allowed that totality to wash through and take him wherever the trip decided. Until landing by the marble fountain, reality and the universes where he’d bounced around shattered into seemingly infinite possibilities, raced by him and then, disappeared.

For the first time since he’d taken his last hit, he felt grounded, alive, able to apprehend his relationship to objects in the world around him. Except for the fulsome glow of an impossibly large moon looming beyond the Great House, the hacienda was dark. Moon and starlight illuminated the Spanish-gothic style of the Patron—a Moorish palace in the midst of a Krazy Kat landscape—where flat-black wings held a scrim flecked with bits of diamonds and dust. A hazy play of light suggested shadow and movement. Taking tentative steps toward the big house, slipping on clay tiles slick with the fountain’s mist, Gooch peered upward through squinted lids, saw a silhouette in the window. It appeared to be two women, one gesturing and pacing just past the glass, the other nothing more than a disembodied voice engaging the shadow that filled the window. Unable to catch the gist of the conversation, he could tell that one of the speakers was elderly but still possessed a firm, forceful voice along with the cool precision of schooled diction.

The other voice broke in, much younger, bouncy and ebullient, singing words. And then, a blast of a jovial “Ha!”

Erupting with laughter, eyes clouded with mirth, a starburst in his gut rocked his body with seismic force—his Buddha laugh, Emma called it. He saw her looking over the courtyard, smiling her light that illuminated all that inhabited the universe.

Gooch coughed and rasped into the dampness around him. “Who are you talking to, Baby Sister?” As he asked, he was immediately lifted above the desert and hacienda, upward on a tourbillion of galactic fireworks, portals reflecting moments of his trip from when Powerball had swept him up in its poly-universal-and-dimensional scramble, glistening reflections of discrete moments, incomprehensible potential worlds, the window that took him to a desert sky at night and an hacienda, the patio, the window, the essence of her. 

Then, everything he’d just experienced sucked into an eddy of diminishing light, photons stripped of all spectral description. When the trip’s speeding, screaming cacophony ceased, he returned to a lucidity close to where the trip had started, reclining on a steep slope shaded by trees and boulders, upholstered with pine needles. Beyond the mountain edge, granite had split into a trident of talons crooked over the sheer drop into the canyon—the Claw. Aware that neither had wandered far from where they’d smoked, he watched Big-Legged Emma dance and skip across the tips of the talons. Within that renewed clarity, he mused on where Powerball might take them next.

Emma stood entranced, swaying slightly, bathing her ochre skin in the summer’s light and singing with the coloratura of the canyon’s winds. He’d watched her dance on the Claw countless times, and she always played the same way—arms stretched wide and face tilted back to the sun—embracing the world, granting open and free access to her soul and bottomless well of love. Ha! echoed in his mind, his letters and numbers, the library of their history together, Emma inhabiting the best part of him. His Platonic ideal for a perfect life, elegance and excellence, a zeal for nature and nutty adventures, resided in Emma’s plush and natural Amazonian presence, her Mountain Mama perfection.   

“Adieu, mon ami! Il est temps de volet! It’s time!” Her words splashed through the pine needles then shattered on the rocks, droplets of her voice collecting on his skin with the spray from the villa’s fountain.

“Time for what?” his chuckle echoed from within the hollow tube of his buzz. Then, in a moment that lasted forever, he watched her dance and sing and then tilt toward the opposite canyon wall, arms held out to hold the world beyond, her hands open to everything as she leaned in,  fell forward, her body soaring, flying, then fall out of his sight and into the chasm below.

Reality…

“Oh no. Fuck no.”

…broke through.

“Fuck no, Emma! EMMA!”

Suddenly, the only person who’d ever really mattered to him, gave him reason to get out of whatever muck tried to suck him down, was dropped into an abyss, lost forever.

A link to his soul from the first time they’d met, she was his mirror, his anima personified, the only person he ran with who was smarter than he, more educated, took risks on boards he’d never seen anyone try, discover with him the infinite microclimates inhabiting the mountains where he’d grown up.

She’d offered up her mind freely, but he’d never explored the extent of her body. His longing was placated by the fact that her presence in his life was more than enough to sustain him. And that body was now, as his trip told him, was falling to the bottom of Vigil cnayon.

“Emma. No, no, no. Shit, fuck, NO!”

He closed his eyes, picturing her body shredded by shards of rock below. Determined to find what remained of her, he grappled with what pinioned him where he lay. Eventually making it to the edge, he peered over to see that the canyon had been filled with a river of mirrors, millions flowing past with varying sizes and depths. Fearing some dreadful Medusa effect, he averted his gaze but was immediately drawn back to myriad reflections of himself that he’d already seen—aged, adolescent, and infantile, but every mirror reflecting his horror-filled gape, all of him at that moment captured in raths of silver glass. 

“This didn’t. Just. Happen. NO!” 

He closed his eyes and considered that there was no reason to think this was not just an ugly vision, something unspeakably terrible that Powerball had planted in his mind. The idea that he could articulate those fears convinced him that certain perceptions weren’t mere hallucinations but were as he’d sensed them. Those signals and high logic indicated that language was the only thing that nailed his mind to reality. 

She had jumped.

“She’s not dead. She is. Fuck. She’s dead. She jumped. This can’t be happening. No, no, Emma, sweetie, Lil Sis, you didn’t just die. EMMA!”

Reaching the limits of his reality, grasping at her image, he continued his plea to save her from death.

“Emma!” His calls echoed through the canyon below. An excruciating realization punctured Powerball’s blinding effects, his emotions stuttered in from an amorphous core like Morse code from another dimension, dots and dashes that only made sense after being scrawled out and syntactically assembled. Rolling on the Claw, he clutched his skull, desperately trying to gather his thoughts into his hands. Hands empty, he pounded fists against rock, raging against life, against circumstance, against the world, against himself, and against whatever gods would listen to his fury. “Why did we stay here?”

It seemed like decades since he’d heard Emma’s suggestion to stay put and smoke at the Claw. “You say we might wind up in weird places? Maybe we’re better off staying close to the trailhead.”

What are we gonna do now?

 How do I end this? I can't stick my head in the oven because it's electric. Even if I slathered up my head in grease I'd probably not die, end up horribly disfigured and setting my apartment on fire.

This anhedonic trip during the latter part of my life is no fun, lol. There's more than a dozen stories I've started and just left unfinished. An art project I've abandoned. Surf the net for news and memes and fall out at the end of the night with nothing done but eating, reading, and maybe a shower.

The only thing that keeps me engaged are my mixes on Spotify, the next-time-I-do-acid mix, the powerpop collaboration with my daughter, the end-of-life mix to play when they drag my corpse out into the woods and dump me in a hole. 

But you went and left me here with troubles on my mind

It’s been over three weeks of a low-grade cold, body aches, fatigue, fucked up stomach, chills and fever. I’m like, please just take me out, don’t let me wake up for another day of this torture.

There’s no motivation to do anything but wake up for another day of making a wage, dealing with corporate bullshit, responding to emails that ultimately won’t matter—the words are useless and the content less so.

Seven more years until retirement I remind myself as I lie awake at three in the morning, drawing the darkness into myself. Wondering if I’ll make it that long, if there’s not a fatal accident in my not-so distant future. Maybe cancer, who knows? It’s a fucked up world and none but a few of us would do it all over again given the chance (no changing the timeline, of course).

Get yourself together, snap out of it, straighten up and fly right (seems homophobic), get your pecker up (seems homoerotic), put your big boy pants on and quit whining. Because the problems in this world can be solved by doing things we have no motivation to do, dogpaddling instead in the shit we continue accumulating from our inability to find the motivation to do what needs to be done.

At 3 am, suddenly wide awake, not like having to pee or anything, just thinking about how dismal life has been.

There are so many memes about how awesome it was to just jump on a bike and explore, check out weird things, hang with friends. Almost all of those memes are about being suburban and white, not urban and black but that’s the internet we got, not necessarily what we need. Nonetheless, there’s a romanticism about that kind of freedom, a nostalgia for a simpler, less-scary time. For white people.

What those memes forget is that it was also a time when the effective tax rate was still around 70% and the rich were paying their fair share, funding the ability of white kids to ride bikes unmolested.

In the meantime, cops gunned down black people with impunity. Wasn’t a great time to be riding your bike around if you were a black kid. Must not be a lot of nostalgia around that.

3 am and wide awake thinking about how fucked we are, all of us (except the rich pricks)—Earth is hitting back at all the shit we’ve done and there’s no way to nuke our way out of this (bombs, not energy which I’m totally behind). Remember when Trump thought we could nuke a hurricane? Inject solvents to defeat covid? Is he really going to be the Republicans’ savior?

At 3 am, that frightens the fuck out of me.

Double O, Cactus, yeah we towed up

SCENE: A typical kitchen from the 1950s, HUSBAND has slicked back hair, wears suit and fedora, smokes his pipe while WIFE, in a dress, heels, and an apron, bends over the oven.

H: You know? This whole fascism thing makes a lot of sense!

W turns around with a casserole dish in mitted hands.

W: Who wouldn't want fascism? All us suburban white women are terrified of the black and brown people who work for us! At least the fascists will get them out of here!

H: Is the casserole ready? I'm starving!

W: Let it set for another ten minutes and then call the kids for dinner. I'm leaving for a meeting to get some books banned.

Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes

Sorry bout that....

I had all this shit planned and then--fatigue. It's got a grip on me. 

Tried some retail therapy, actually got almost all my Christmas shopping done, online. I don't go places unless I absolutely have to. Not even for free flu shots. Essentially, I'm a hermit who drives a Prius maybe ten miles a week.

This is the first day in weeks where the combo of weed and work doesn't have me crawling beneath the covers. Please, more manic phases, fewer depressive phases; less sleep, more writing.

It crosses my mind, several times a day, that I might be completely fucking insane. And the original Catch-22, I can't be insane if I know I'm insane.

It feels alone even though I know there's millions, billions of people going through the same shit.

Honey, I get stoned on your love all the time

 

Are you receiving me? Are my pleas crackling through the white noise of your day? Will you brighten my doorstep with your goofy grin?

Really, it’s quite possible that I have become insane. You have the receipts—this blog and my journal—so please shock me back to reality.

Let me know that I’m alive for you, that this sense that I’m dying is false, that we’ll meet again in this life and not somewhere that is inhabited by small animatronic dolls. Maybe the same coffee shop where I was convinced we’d be busted forever? I thought we’d be busted and yet your kiss lifted me away from our small town and swept me into your spacetime, sucked me in where your galaxy swirled.

Sheila comes back to me eighteen times a day, every day for months, no concern with the how and when, just faith that it will be. Dinging my temple bell and listening to the rime peel into the day, clearing my space for you to enter.

Noam Chomsky is a soft revolution

Anyone up for Ketamine? *

Some dispensary sent me a text saying that, like that was their ad for their unlicensed Ketamine services, depression, PTSD, genital warts, everything will be better after a dose of Vitamin K.

I’m not saying that’s right, one way or another. Summer of 1994, I was the local Ketamine dispensary.

At the start of K Summer, an ex approached me, told me that Ketamine was the only thing that would cure her migraines and that, y’know, if I could let go of a vial we could…. A buddy offered an ounce of pretty swell bud for a vial. By fall, I was fat with coke, acid, shrooms, Xanax and other goodies. And about a grand in cash—even though I preferred trade—that I spread around stashed in books or rolled-up socks.

Obviously, there was a moment in my life when I lucked into a fuck ton of ketamine, fifty-six vials, traded to me by my professor for a quarter ounce(!) of some shitty local grown. He didn’t know what he was giving away and I didn’t know what I was getting.

Itching to try it out—and knowing dick about how to ingest it—I cracked open a 10mg vial and poured it into a Petri dish so it could set up into crystals I could chop up to snort. Once set, I invited my best bud over to give it a shot. It burned like fuck and the high didn’t seem much more intense than the buzz we were getting from the booze and bud. That was, until I opened my apartment door and looked into the void of the universe. When John looked out the door, he was likewise convinced that K was more than we’d assumed at first.

It was then that I pulled the pages from the little box that held the vial and read that it was an anesthesia for cats and sub-human primates—MAGA we assume they mean by that—and baseline for putting a 3-5 pound cat was 5mg intermuscular. I didn’t want to have surgery so I decided to stick my thigh with 1mg and see what would happen.

What happens is you’re chatting up someone after the injection, this, that, other things, and then you’re suddenly not you, you’re a fly at your father’s funeral or shifting between z and zed, a moth emerging from its cocoon, sticky and hot and then rising to the nearest light, spraying a scent around to announce your presence, your light escaping as a beak breaks you in two.

Moments after his third hit, Gooch watched the world around him fade to a dark spot in the center of the universe—all places viewed from the middle of space—stars and galaxies shooting away from where he tumbled. Growing less disoriented, he became aware that objects were also moving toward him, some barely perceptible specks, others much larger and gaining definition as they approached, all corkscrewing their way to where he floated. Without warning, he was hit by an enormous silver locomotive from a 1940s Sci-Fi comic book, his form exploding into sparkled parts crackling into the pull of a planet’s atmosphere. Those particles re-emerged to form in a muck-filled cocoon warmed in the jungle’s balmy night, goo inside a cigar-butt casing hardening into a final stage of being with wings breaking free, shivering off slime in the morning sunlight and then slipping to the sky above, shaking away every hint of what he once was, to fly off into what he now was. Gorging on the sweet-lime sugars of a red flower’s pollen, flattening himself beneath a broad leaf to shelter from an afternoon shower, warming his wings in the sun’s last light, then finding a spot where he could stay hidden for the night. Waking with the chatter of birds but not yet safe to fly—better to wait for the midday heat—feasting some more and then finding another like himself, one doing the correct dance and emitting the right scent, rising together toward the sun then descending in parallel vortices to land in tandem on a leaf. Abdomens locked, an aedeagus inside him, shaking with its splattering of sperm, his mate shuddering with release, wings battering the air around them and then flying away in ecstatic loops. After adhering all his eggs to where his progeny might thrive, he was lifted in a gust of wind that tore him into dust carried across wood floors, wood walls, a structure built of pine and meant to burn. An assay office with huge books of claims, the aroma of horseshit embedded into floorboards. Flipping a page, he watched characters tumble, twist, turn into abortions of words and understanding. Listening, he caught uncertain meanings with quick grasps, pulling them to him and then burying them in his gut. Turning his eyes back on the pages of the assayer’s ledger, symbols skewed themselves into arabesque curlicues as they tumbled across the page, unravelling their meanings with whispers of not here or not this and lurid alternatives to both. Then, after asking where he was, Here! Here boy! a finger like kindling pointed at words that rolled around on the page that defied comprehension. Here boy! The apparition still insisting and pointing and then, finger taps sending him into a waiting room, one of those where he’d sign in Gramps and endure more Goin to Denver, are we? but without any sense that a name would be called, it would only be checking in and waiting until the end of time. Impatient, rising from his seat and his Architectural Digest, stepping to the counter, he watched letters flip and flop as he looked for his sign-in, letters drifting into an infinity of scribble. You’re not here boy, and then tumbled back into other lives, beings, existences, realms and realities flipped his way for him to ride as far as the run would take him. 

“What the fuck did we just smoke?” Dave’s face and voice cut through a confused place in the universe. For a moment, Gooch grasped desperately at the shards of reality surrounding him, urgently hoping his trip would tear him away to a safer world. Flynn was gone but Indian Leo returned, beaming in the room’s subtle light and cackling about the fires of Hell. Dave’s august words were an anchor back to the reality he’d left before smoking Leo’s magical weed.

 Like that.

*If so, don’t put Sun O))) fwtbt on your playlist. Trust me.

don't help them to bury the light

It’s been long COVID for too long. I’m done with the fogginess, forgetfulness, fatigue, fuckin over it—or wish I were. Got no creative juice or energy to work a thought, an idea, much less find the motivation to work on shit already cooking and simmering. When I do find the drive to write, it’s scattered and, like this blog, a bit lazy.

And it sucks when almost my entire weekend is spent asleep, the Rona creeping back to spread its foul fingers and grip me. “Boss, I got the grip.”

Really, all I want to do is make Spotify lists and read about two-headed sharks. It requires a backhoe to get me into the shower, to do almost anything.

Tried meditation but it seems like “yum” and “yuck” are the only mantras that work for me. Dunno why I’m stuck on “yuck” like a skipping record but my suspicion is that it’s the same motherfucking thing that’s been going on since my 61^st birthday. Another dose of the shit thirteen months later. But even after my first hit, I was feeling all the symptoms of long COVID and when it smacked me down a second time it didn’t go on for two weeks but just seemed to magnify the depression, the sense that I was dying.

Yeah, we all die but with long COVID, life becomes anhedonic, a dreadful trudge to a grave filled with regrets, unatoned for sins, the suffocation of nothingness and cold dirt. As if everything that’s happened prior to being infected is meaningless existential horror, sucked into a black hole and reduced to particles added to infinite mass.

Pretty much like life, amiright?

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen

A little too lit to continue with msn.com critique—hey it’s Friday night and I did a Delta-9 gummy on top of everything else—so it’s a wonder I’m here at all.

Having said that, it’s hilarious to be IRT for the fall of Trump. He’s always been an insufferable prick and his election made it evident that some people liked that—not a majority of Americans but enough from flyover country to snag the presidency despite not winning the overall vote.

Water under the bridge and Hillary didn’t go ballistic with stolen election claims because, um, she’s not an infantile narcissist.

Straight up, republicans are doomed in 2024, especially if Trump is the GOP nominee. He might have an adoring 30-some part of the population behind him but really, the other 60-70 percent, both dem and rep, can’t stand the guy and see him as a direct threat to our country. A threat to democracy, a menace, the real reason shit seems so fucked up right now.

Of course the media is going to make it look neck-and-neck, they need a horse race to sex up their coverage, they need to make the race to appear like lives are in the balance.

Lives are in the balance but not in the way you’ll hear on anywhere but maybe The Nation or The Jacobin. Not just Palestinian lives but within the diaspora of those displaced by climate change, violence, hopelessness. Which is only going to get worse so someone needs to figure it out.

Trump’s not the guy to do that and more than half the country knows that. If Trump is the GOP nominee for 2024, republicans are going to get smoked, up and down the ballot in almost every state. Even women weren’t protective of their bodies, people weren’t dying from fires, floods, or hot af summers, no one but the cult wants to see that bloviating ballsack back in office.

And since most of the GOP has tied their shoelaces to a veritable oaf, they’ll walk with him into oblivion.

White lines

Every morning feels like I’ve just come down from doing a bunch of cocaine—anxiety chewing up my insides, calculating how I’ll make it through work, wishing I could sleep.

Say you went exploring in a cave but got lost on your way out—you’re well and truly fucked and you’re gonna die—do you go scratching and screaming or do you just lie down and let exhaustion take you into the big sleep? I’d go for the latter but I know I’d last about three seconds before going for the former.

Then again, a cave might be the ultimate tiny home if it doesn’t go too far back, doesn’t have a bear already living there. Set up some simple Ikea stuff for comfort and standby firewood, hunt deer or pick up groceries from the Dollar General, a bluetooth speaker to really rock that cave tiny home.

Out here in the desert, a cave is a good place to go if you want to mummify, let the arid air desiccate your corpse into a shriveled version of yourself. TBH, I don’t see the advantage of being a mummy, other than to be discovered and then shipped off to be displayed at a carnival.

I’ve seen pictures of mummies and pictures of (supposedly) ghosts, but never both in the same frame. Apparently, you can only be a mummy or a ghost but not both. Personally, I’d rather be a ghost, hang around and fuck with people.

If I find a cave to mummify in out here in the desert, those social security checks will roll in until somebody finds my withered corpse and by then, my time of death will be indeterminate—could have been last month, could have been last month and a decade. All those accumulated social security payments can buy me a nice headstone to sit outside the cave I once called home. “Used to be a mummy up in here,” or something like that, in case people get too curious about where I lived.

Maybe to understand how I survived the brutal winters?

I haven't given too much thought to my tiny house/mummy cave but there are three things I require if I'm going to curl up, get mummified, then end up in some display:

1. There must be a toilet.
2. The toilet must be fitted with a bidet.
3. Someone to come in and clean the toilet/bidet every afternoon, preferably while I'm taking my nap.

I be the fab, I be the fabulous but see, unlike the Chi

It’s been three months since I started my marble journal and this blog is most likely close to the same age, like twins born a few days apart. Except, I feed my marble journal every day—that’s where the 3/6/9 gets done—but this place is pretty much a luxury in the manifesting process. Why I don’t get these so-called manifesting experts commenting on my posts seems a little chickenshit given their brand. I mean, didn’t they manifest me to come read their instructions?

Insane as it is, I continue practicing magic (essentially) even though it’s gussied up in pseudo-scientific babble and dubious claims about quantum mechanics in how it all susses out. My thinking is that if it doesn’t work, at least it committed me to doing something outside my comfort zone, it gave me a ritual of futility—a sand painting, a Zen garden—to spend time on something other than spiraling into the desert death trip.

A quarter of my year devoted to conjuring you here to me, to have you suddenly appear and say after twelve years apart and say, “Nah, thanks for the memories but that was just a lark.”

I don’t believe for a moment that’s what you believe or feel but that’s the kinda shit that pollutes my day. My mother’s voice screeches in my head, “And for what? For what? A quarter year and whaddya got for all that?”

Good question, mom.

Here’s some more Powerball to consume:

However, after Randal returned from Delaware, the dialog took on a new dynamic and it was Randal who mostly directed the conversation’s trajectory. While Whisper’s post-Powerball Thanksgiving soiree was in full swing, the Colonel got an earful of what Randal’s new status wrought. “If what you’re preaching about comes down to a personal relationship with Jesus, God, all that, let him into your heart and you’re done, then I don’t understand why I gotta go somewhere every Sunday and hear everyone else yappin about their relationship with God. I couldn’t give two shits about someone else’s relationship with God. It’s personal, right?”

Stiff as the posts holding up his roof’s overhang, the Colonel moaned out his reply. “It’s about The Word, son. Sharing the light. Fellowship in tongues.”

“See? I don’t know what any of that means. So why would I want to go somewhere every Sunday to hear a buncha that shit when I could be out bustin some hippie faggot for sellin drugs? We all serve The Lord in our own way, Colonel.”

Nearly a mile away across the valley, the two could hear the revelers at Whisper’s Thanksgiving party, their whoops and hollers and hearty laughs, their joyous appreciation of the moment with each other. Standing on the porch of the Colonel’s modest cabin, the two drank black coffee and stared across the cleft in the mountain, both grim-faced and sour.

“Do you hear that bullshit?” Randal spat, took a cigarette from his pack and lit it. “If I was to go over there to start writin noise tickets? Check for drugs? Bunny would have my ass ground into burger. Pounded by his criminal biker buddies because those filthy hippies makin that racket are his customers. See what I’m dealing with, here?”

“Son,” the Colonel’s voice taking on no more emotion than a dry-cleaning ticket. “There’s evil everywhere, but this is a trifle compared to what the Devil is using to pervert the purity of our race. Weaken us and set the stage for war with demon aliens. These are mostly White people up here. Race-traitors, every one of them, but they’ll see the light in The Word. Leave them alone.”

Randal took a long draw from his smoke, its glow lighting a face that was pinched and puckered. “I can’t. They’re snotty, smart-mouthed perverts. They should all be locked up.”

“And they will be, one day. In camps where they can be watched and preached to and made to work. But you’re putting the cart before the horse, son.” The Colonel’s intonation had all the range of a Jew’s harp. “The Lord has bigger plans for you, for us… for the money He gave you. You’re rich. Glorify His name who gave you such bounty.”

“I got plans for this money, if that’s what you’re sayin. And it includes you and what you’re doin up here. We got some differences of opinion on some things but the important stuff? On target. In fact, there’s something I wanted to run by you. Which is I why I’m here. I saw your lights on, that you was up, while I was on patrol.”

“Why do you do that, son? Stay on patrol. With all that money you got, why don’t you quit the law-enforcement business?”

“Because they’re all numbnuts down there in my shop and if I quit, there’d be no one with the gumption or wits to arrest folks. This town would become a goddamned drug orgy the moment I turned in my badge. Filthy fuckin hippies,” pulling the cigarette from his lips, Randal pushed a billow of smoke from his lungs to give himself enough space for the emphasis of spitting. “And, I like being a cop.”

“You like the authority? Upholding the law? Seeing bad people brought to justice? Whatever justice means in this sinful country of ours. And ensuring the safety of our White citizens?”

“Yeah. Plus seeing the stupid look on faces when they don’t know the rules and gettin fucked for not knowin em. All that. I’m gonna stay a cop and I’m even thinkin about using some money to make upgrades to our department. But that’s not what my money is for.” Randall sipped his coffee and then puckered his words. “And that’s what I came here for, to talk about.”

“And what’s that, son?”

“I’m gonna buy you out.”

Randal sat satisfied with his announcement and waited for the Colonel to respond, certain that the preacher would ask what buy you out meant or argue the sovereignty of ownership and rights and God’s plan. Instead, the Colonel was taciturn, a null cipher of expression. Unable to wait the Colonel out, Randal broke back in, “You rent from me. And I get a huge tax break from it. You go from payin whatever you’re payin now to a dollar a month and I write you off. We both win.”

“But it’s my land. I own it.”

“No you don’t. The bank owns it. Aliens and Jews, whatever. You’re always just a step ahead of foreclosure on this place. I know because I learned how to find things out. I’m not just a cop, I’m a detective.” The corners of Randall’s smirk lowered and mirrored the dispassionate moon of the Colonel’s face. “Now, I’ll own it. And you can do what you want with the money you’re not giving the Jews and aliens.”

The Colonel responded as though he’d just been told that socks are nice, a good cushion between the shoe and foot, sweat absorbent. “Why, son?”

Randal couldn’t contain his fire, his blazing desire to burn the town down. “A mystery, Colonel, my mystery. I got enough money now. And I just might start playing God.”

Happy three months, I hope you enjoyed the read. 

13th-century metal

 Idk why I’ve been in this morbid mood, maybe it’s an extended Halloween hangover, but death has been on my mind and my dreams. My dreams have not been about me dying but watching other people, often horrifically. My thoughts have been like, “Well, maybe this is how long you get to live. You seem healthy now but a cancerous foot or a violent sociopath is just around the corner.” When the guy at the liquor store asked me, “Is that it?” I responded, “Seems that way.”

Lately, I’ve been considering end-of-life directives—living will, assigning a Durable Financial Power of Attorney, an Executor of Este (for whatever that does)—and I think I know what I want to happen after the monitor flatlines.

I really just want to be buried in the woods with a casket embedded with mushrooms so that I’m offering up my body to feed the forest. Also, anyone there to put me in the ground has to be ripped on shrooms, psylocibin, having fun as they dig up a hole for me, drop me in, then cover me up and dance their asses off.

IDK if this blog post counts for me stating how my corpse should be disposed of but I’d drop this motherfucker into a court deposition, if it came down to that. I used to say that I didn’t care if I got chopped up and my parts distributed among several dumpsters each labeled with a cryptic clue that was a non sequitur) but I realized family wants some closure other than a cruel joke on local police.

So, whoever shows up for the burial ceremony gets to dig a hole large enough to fit my mushroom casket into, IDK, two-three feet deep? I don’t want anyone to work too hard and the six-feet deep thing is total bullshit. Just enough for the mushrooms to take hold and the critters from scattering my bones—not that I’ll be around to protest that misbehavior. In the meantime, within the midst of their trips, I made a mix to play while they’re dealing with my corpse in the woods. Jamming to my tunes while they throw dirt over me and dance like fiends, lit and glowing like fireflies.

The mix I made rocks, filled with tunes I’ve loved my entire life, less about death and more about my life. Yeah, there’s some death stuff on it but really, I spent my life pretty much obsessed with dark things—the aroma of tombs hanging lightly off me—so there’s a congruence with who I am (or was) and reminds me of something my mom said to me when I was like nine or ten: “You have a sick sense of humor.”

Heh, you need to hear this mix I made for the party thrown in my honor that I won’t attend.

 

Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait

“Thone who know don’t say, those who say don’t know.”

My silicone pipe was cracking so I walked over to Ace to see what they had to seal where the bowl was separating from the stem. I am letting whatever repair I bought (no recommendations here) finish curing at noon and then I’ll stuff it full of the bud I just bought. First off-the-books stuff I’ve bought in prolly eight years, really no cheaper than the dispensary that’s twenty miles away, the quality as good if not better. So I’m down with really local.

Since the pipe is on the mend, I rolled a joint. Again, awhile since I last twisted a doobie, joints being the best way to deliver THC but a quick way to burn through weed. And I’m on a budget. Hopefully my little silicone steamroller is all fixed by tomorrow so I don’t have to rely on spliffs.

I ate a D-9 gummy I got free from some Leafly partner, smoked about an hour after I dosed. Nice, I highly (heh) recommend the combo.

Is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?

A little too lit to continue with msn.com critique—hey it’s Friday night and I did a Delta-9 gummy on top of everything else—so it’s a wonder I’m here at all.

Having said that, it’s hilarious to be IRT for the fall of Trump. He’s always been an insufferable prick and his election made it evident that some people liked that—not a majority of Americans but enough from flyover country to snag the presidency despite not winning the overall vote.

Water under the bridge and Hillary didn’t go ballistic with stolen election claims because, um, she’s not an infantile narcissist.

Straight up, republicans are doomed in 2024, especially if Trump is the GOP nominee. He might have an adoring 30-some part of the population behind him but really, the other 60-70 percent, both dem and rep, can’t stand the guy and see him as a direct threat to our country. A threat to democracy, a menace, the real reason shit seems so fucked up right now.

Of course the media is going to make it look neck-and-neck, they need a horse race to sex up their coverage, they need to make the race to appear like lives are in the balance.

Lives are in the balance but not in the way you’ll hear on anywhere but maybe The Nation or The Jacobin. Not just Palestinian lives but within the diaspora of those displaced by climate change, violence, hopelessness. Which is only going to get worse so someone needs to figure it out.

Trump’s not the guy to do that and more than half the country knows that. If Trump is the GOP nominee for 2024, republicans are going to get smoked, up and down the ballot in almost every state. Even women weren’t protective of their bodies, people weren’t dying from fires, floods, or hot af summers, no one but the cult wants to see that bloviating ballsack back in office.

And since most of the GOP has tied their shoelaces to a veritable oaf, they’ll walk with him into oblivion.

My momma made for me made just for me

 Manic, man it's like after midnight and I can't sleep. Tried online shopping but that only goes so far. And then I got on this where I can just talk talk talk and there's people listening that you can't see or even hear but you know they're out there but kinda not really and after midnight means I might as well get up and shout at whomever listens for whatever reason I'm here for ya ya know so havin a smoke now and hope I can finally go to sleep.

Dig that hole, forget the sun

 

What do I do for a living? A third of my day is spent cleaning up other people’s messes, another third performing my actual duties, and the rest spent fucking around.

My lazy-old-guy (starvation-wage) job gives me lots of opportunity to read news all day long, consuming tiny bits of information. For that, msn.com is my place for clicking on whatever might feed my infohole, a work ritual I’ve had since I got comfortable in my role. Unfortunately, in the past year or so, msn.com has descended into a pit of right-wing disinformation with a few reputable news sources included for “balance” or some facile reminder that it was once a decent news aggregator. Here’s a recent example of their page:

Clockwise: OPlaneta is actually a climate change-denier site that mostly runs conspiracy theories and tons of articles misconstruing data sets; The Western Journal is heavily cowboy-church right; The Evening Standard (the first quasi-reputable outlet in this list) is infamously conservative in the British tight-ass jingoistic delusion of empire and inbred insanity; an ad, because they gotta make a buck; Fox News, don’t think anything needs to be said about that; American Insider, another dubious “news source” and often outright racist; and, BNN Breaking which is—I mean, where does MSN get these right-wing bullshit mongers? BTW, this is not a cherry-picked screenshot of an msn.com page, I hardly had to scroll at all for that image.

These issues have been simmering in my brain for almost a year but I could never articulate why it msn.com had changed so terribly, so I never pulled the trigger on my ire. And then this piece made me pop:

 The site, which comes pre-loaded as the default start page on devices running Microsoft software, including on Microsoft’s latest “Edge” browser, the successor of the company’s Internet Explorer browser, employed more than 800 editors in 2018 to help select and curate news stories shown to millions of readers around the world.

But in recent years Microsoft has laid off editors, some of whom were told they were being replaced by “automation,” what they understand to be AI.

AI was never a boogeyman I believed in but the article gave me the chills. If it’s algorithms determining what information (and disinformation) msn.com is throwing up (literally and figuratively) on their website, a site that greets countless millions when they boot up their computer, then AI is a definite threat, delivering content that is racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and anti-democratic.

How widespread is that threat? It’s impossible to know:  

Microsoft refused to say how many, if any, human editors still work on curating the site or if it is all done by AI and algorithms.

Scrolling through the Microsoft homepage a few weeks ago, Pfeuffer (a laid-off msn.com news editor, my note) said it appeared unrecognizable to the portal she and her colleagues once curated. Not only have objectively false and outlandish stories been featured on the site, but overtly hyper-partisan articles with headlines like “Should America Get Rid of Biden for Good?” and “A Darker Side of the Catastrophe Unfolding Under Joe Biden” have also gained prominence.

Those stories, which CNN has observed on Microsoft’s homepage, were not published by credible and established news organizations, but instead originated on smaller sites with little or no information about who is behind them or details on their editorial standards.

 Maybe there’s some editorial decisions left to humans? A couple months back, a swarm of faux-Disney sites flooded msn.com pages (shit like “Disneydining” and “Disneydiscounts” and about a half dozen others) that were essentially pro-DeSantis/anti-Disney sock puppets, but happily, they’ve been scarce lately, I assume because they couldn’t pay their bills? DeSantis needed to prioritize where the money goes and boot lifts were a step above (rimshot, self clap).

So, how does the msn.com AI decide what’s newsworthy, immediate, vital information, versus what get buried ten pages down? Well, only an idiot wouldn’t believe that those “smaller sites with little or no information about who is behind them or details on their editorial standards” aren’t funded by the people who benefit from the hate fueling the engine of fascism.

To sum this edition up (oh msn.com, I’m not done with you yet, motherfucker)—in order to put more money into the pockets of people who already too much money, working stiffs were let go because computers could do those jobs, unconstrained by issues of ethics, standards, or the need to eat. A little palm-greasing ensures the POV of the people applying the lotion since the aggregate relies on ranking—pay to play and show up with the prominence of a millionaire, a corporate squawker cracking nuts and repeating the same thing over and over again.

Click bait aside, msn.com is so fucking lazy it runs stories for months, an unsolved murder in Australia or some insane water issue in Missouri, the same article runs again and again, icymi I guess but they aren’t even like huge stories. FFS msn.com, flush every once in a while.

You gon' forget about 'em, you gotta live without 'em

On the traditional altars honoring the dead, food is a symbol of Mother Earth. Even the sweetest bread, flavored with orange blossom, has grizzly origins. According to researchers at the Mexican School of Gastronomy, the dough was prepared by mixing honey and human blood as an offering to the gods. [here]

 I'm not much of a baker but I might try that honey and human blood recipe for next Halloween. When the time comes, I'll stock up on OJ and sugar cookies.

Ima show you the scariest thing I saw all Halloween, again:

Once they read the Sermon on the Mount, Trumpers decided their boy was wiser than that liberal faggot Jesus Christ.

Actually, I kinda get some of the folks who wrapped up in the cult of Trump--they feel left behind by the American Dream and a really good salesman convinced them they were next in line for the benefits. They're convinced that, given a second chance (because the last election was stolen), he'll revive the America you see in magazines from the 1950's. 

Yet, I doubt anyone black or brown would view the 1950's in the US as a paradise, nor do I think my Trumpy friends are necessarily racist because they don't see that. It's just that they view the country they grew up in through the lens of their experience, not seeing in any way how people with different-colored skin experienced the very same country.

So... if you acknowledge that, for centuries, the deck has been stacked against POC, that even now, due to centuries of institutional racism, that this country was built on the backs of black slaves from 1619 to now, if you can admit those facts into your brain? You're woke. Not because you drink Bud Light or still shop at Target, none of that has anything to do with being woke. What woke is knowing that it's not always easy for other people because of the color of their skin, that the deck is still stacked against them. 

IDK how the right turned it into this pejorative, "Drinking organic soda? What, are you woke?!?" They've even made it about environmentalism which is fucking insane because "woke" has zero shit to do with climate change. They've even made it about inclusivity, offended if a Sesame Street character wears a hijab or is in a wheelchair, "That's too woke! It must be banned!"

 Which is complete bullshit but here we are, calling candy bars and shoes "woke" and then demanding everyone anti-woke boycott the shit out of something everyone wants. What would Jesus do? Probably wouldn't give a fuck about your bullshit boycott is my guess, maybe cure some lepers and bring the wine to a wedding while you're organizing a fucking stupid boycott of rainbow-colored onesies. Jesus would be like, "WTF are you doing? Feed the poor or build something, get off your fat ass and shut your goddamned mouth!"

Raised Roman Catholic, that's the version of Jesus I remember.