November 2003 Archives

& now what pleasant paralysis colors these afternoons a blur ablaze in lassitude bathed in lightspeed wasted? & then when it ends blended across the edge, that last almost but not quite infinite retrospectacular technicolor flash when the eyes go final wide with perspective for once & once only perfect, what then? what now will be seen as having been regrettable then? what if it is more or less the opposite of the purposeful pull of this guilt what if every dutiful rational act that felt right like sacrifice is what should have been done different when all's said & over? what if none of this matters because i am only approximately the seventeen billionth soul to wonder something suspiciously like this only minus most of this fancy bullshit? what if my numbers are way the fuck off & only a handful of us punkass flakes ever bother with this wondering? what if there is no way to know now what will have been wasted then, what if these afternoons spent blissful indolent spinning words across keys with hands that dance vivid with wistful grace were spent precisely how they were meant to be, making these vague misgivings misguided at least & at worst an obscene waste of some thing i cannot tell you what it is however i do know i don't know what it is & also i must admit it is not even afternoon anymore in fact it is now months & miles from where i spilled the first words of this & still.

still.

it feels like woodshavings innocent woodshavings when you step in it but it's really termite poop. & the ocean is all fishpiss if you think about it, & if fish indeed piss. in any case every thing (& everyone) is made up of molecules that were at one point part of something that was once digested by some organism & subsequently passed out the assend of it. & i'm not even going to mention the monkey poop coffee.

everything, in other words, is shit.

she takes to her bed fully dressed with offline content downloaded to the laptop & faces the day this way, wearing the size four uncommonly roomy abercrombie & fitch jeans as a reminder they no longer truly fit her they cannot for instance be washed & still worn at this weight they hurt just a bit she will not eat in these pants this is necessary she thinks. it is going to be a long day.

gravity it would seem pulls her down to the car she hasn't quite unpacked at all she digs through sizes, sixes mostly, some eights. she says to her self honest brutal things fat drunk & stupid is no way to go through life sense of resignation retrieving the size eight express flares she also retrieves the eight pound hand weights hopefully reviewing the calorie intake of her recent foray into drunken numbness figures it at approximately two pounds a week she's been here (wherever that is) a month now you do the math she resolves it ends here no matter how much it hurts reality that is.

she trudges up the stairs with a load of clothes mostly too small folds the silent rebuke of the size sixes & stacks it neatly in the closet changes into something she thought was a button down cardigan discovers it has only one button admires the way the regained pounds fill out her skin hates the way they spill over the waistband of the uncommonly roomy a&f size fours. she sighs as she peels off the fours & slips into the baggy comfy size eight did i say eight? that was a lie ... the size nine express flares & subsequently into the skintight charcoal tshirt she'd rejected earlier for revealing the truth about the uncommonly roomy size four abercrombie & fitch jeans, that is, that they do not fit.

she hates the thoughts she feels studying her (physical) self in the mirror, somewhere between an objective fondness & a desire to hate what she sees in spite of this (where did this come from?) this desire to be punishingly thin.

disclaimer for those unfamilliar with womens' pantsizes: numbers can't be used for comparison of actual differences between actual sizes of different brands, but if i'd explained the actual meaning attached to all my different pants & their sizing (& yes, my pants all have meanings) this would have been even more boring, hard to imagine i know, but there it is

what if there was a thing like a novel but not, that somewhere in something like a chapter that might be number twenty eight (with two of the intervening numbers taken up by the thing of things like poems because they feed off the same database & use a very similar codebase) had something like this in it:

progress. the music still seizes me clenches me into a ball of wire through which the unpleasant current of the present passes.

aside from that i am beginning to see beyond this, a glimmer of a future like a barren landscape stretching to the end of the continent and fading into waves of green and grey, lit with the hectic light of a gathering storm; in other words, a future i can picture myself living in, an acceptable outcome of all of this, not the future i would have preferred but not one i will ... reject.

& what if it started out like ...

i'm not particularly fond of waking up finding i've partially swallowed one of my favorite shiny things, but it is comforting knowing the circle k at the corner carries a full line of body jewelry.

shiny things make me happy.

it started yesterday i was thinking of the 80's as i so often do wondering things like when can i wear that cute peplum-waisted jacket again & this morning they played der kommissar & i thought hmm i think falco's actually dead but the song lives on & on & then i was sitting working & there was this commentspammer bob & in the course of blacklisting bob i visited the comment spam clearing house attacking the spammer business model (yay!) which in turn led me to slashdot & so i was reading the comments & you know that self-parodying shit gets me every time which reminded me fondly of old 9622, the Thread that Launched its Own Website & somehow ended up reading the comments in a thread about having a personal theme song & they mentioned DER KOMMISSAR & then i personally subsequently ended up at the gas station getting a caramel drumstick & a litre of pepsi blue berry cola fusion instead of two bottles of diet vanilla coke & it's hot out & i was eating the drumstick on the way back across the street & ice cold frozen chopped nuts were dropping into my cleavage.

... have i mentioned i am not sure if i am getting enough attention? it is entirely possible i am not. when i used to be kd i was all about the attention, i lived for it blogged for it i played to those cheapseats yes i did. & i discovered disquiet in my self & i knew it/shit had to change & change big i knew i had to stop stopping my self from expressing itself, had to learn to say shit like 'sell my ass for cigarettes' without worrying that somebody was gonna get shocky on my ass & stop reading me & godforbid delink me i mean i was in the topten of blogrolling back then, & i treasured whatever that meant to me in some major way & then almost abruptly i gave that shit up.

walked away. tried to be someone anonymously notme but that didn't work out it takes time too much time to build a new you & get that new you to be someone somebody will read. so i resorted to revealing my old identity in a slick & secretive fashion involving utilizing the email field to say (it's me kd) in comment boxes &/or confessing my identity shift to anyone who thought to take the time to email to ask wtf? because i make people ask wtf? it's what i do.

dunno wtf i am trying to say here really or well yes i do but no it doesn't matter & also i do not have a point particularly.

oh whatthefucking well. waitaminute wherewas/were ... i/we? ohright. attention. i don't have the time the bandwidth the attentionspan to deal with the bandwidth issue & therefore i cannot make the comment rounds for that attention & i know i know this is all about reciprocity & i can't right now it's not just this but then again it is & what about the attention? what am i supposed to do? about the attention?

for a little while i was not myself this morning. i was not who or what i am or have been i was simply the occupant of approximately one carlength worth of openroad & very very little else, i was energy singing innocuous popsongs including but not limited to very early madonna (pre-personal tranier era) which made me feel either very old or very young. i didn't like those songs back then. i do now. i did however go through a 'dress like madonna phase'. well, onstage anyway. and today there is this manic energy, this euphoric rage, alive somewhere in between laughter & homicide. on the surface it gives an appearance like focus, while inside it's dancing to la isla bonita.

sometimes the world is small & a perfect photograph meaningless & pure. sometimes the world tries to kill you eyes first & you know you know you can never translate the image this is not technology this is not science this is art & perspective tells you things it tells no one else, this is your secret yours & yours alone alone all

all by your own self.

& you take the picture(s) anyway & know meaninglessness yes & also you know some other things, things you will never convey ever to any one else mostly because they are also meaningless.

& it doesn't make any difference.

so you have taken these things, these pictures, this life. you have taken this life & you have run it through photoshop seven enhanced contrast saturation sharpness because life is best lived contrasted saturated sharpened. you upload the bloody things knowing it makes no difference & yet life changes in spite of this, it is an improvement small & a perfect photograph.

you wish they were better pictures because you like this text you've prepared for them. isn't the frame part of the art? doesn't matter, this isn't. it's just life.

i want to want something bad enough for it to matter. i want to sell my ass for cigarettes but it's too easy to quit. i want to will my will to science but it's too easy to sell my ass for cigarettes. i want to take two & call you in time but the distances always close in by then. do *not* attempt to ask me what i mean i have had a little too much too late & cannot complete

the scale in the women's bathroom is set to four pounds under zero. it tells me i weigh one hundred fifty pounds (fully dressed heavy shoes included) (the fact i felt i needed to tell you that last bit should tell you something). the scale in the men's bathroom is set to zero tells me i weigh one hundred forty pounds. i suspect this might (at least metaphorically) explain almost everything not covered in the manual.

i have what has to be done
& isn't yet
& that's all i have
what i want doesn't matter

kfc: can i help you?
me: yes, i'd like a six piece chicken strips meal with mashed potatoes and ... one of those twister thingys.
kfc: will there be anything else?
me: yes the bitch in the blue truck in front of me? i waited in line fifteen minutes & the suv in front of me bailed & while he was bailing that bitch cut in front of me, not more than a minute after she pulled into your side driveway. could you hork a big ole loogie in her food please?
kfc: my pleasure ma'am
me: thanks, there's a big tip in it for ya. but don't call me ma'am.

i am not panicking.

i am breathing. in, out. in, out.

i am breathing when i ought to be driving really fucking fast while finishing my coffee & smoking too many cigarettes & singing really loud & passing that slow fucker there & ... so forth.

ok, yeah, panicking. anything else would mean i wasn't paying attention.

wander past the computer into the kitchen and only then does it hit me, [never you mind what it was that hit me]. stand at the window eyeing the heavy sky realizing i can breathe as well as almost anyone for once without serious expensive prescription medical intervention and really there's no reason. decide it will not last but will appreciate the respite while it does.

& so. since i have all the inspiration of an ... uninspired thing, and the highest google ranking since the last time i had a high google ranking, i've decided to do what my friends in medicine & academia advised me to do about this discovery, that is, put some keywords in the page title & blog it.

prior to the day quoted above, which was several days after i'd begun taking prescription strength aleve for a toothache, i was debilitated by my asthma. would wake up gasping for breath & needed many blasts off the inhaler just to get getting air, & i would need the inhaler more or less constantly all day & still barely be able to negotiate a 'normal' life. the only thing that had helped was serevent, but loss of medical insurance made that $140/month inhaler out of budget, & i went back to being sick as hell all the time.

so the toothache faded & i stopped taking the naproxen & the breathing got worse. being analytical by nature i looked back & realized the only thing i'd done different those breathing days was to take naproxen.

i started taking the naproxen again. one in the morning one at night 1,000mg per day. i started being able to breathe again.

i ran out of prescription strength & started taking over the counter generic aleve, and i googled to see if this was known anywhere, all i found was warnings about naproxen being bad for asthmatics with sensitivity to aspirin & other ... n-saids? but i have no such sensitivities.

now let me tell you the weirdest part. even on expensive serevent, i was still subject to my worst symptom trigger -- that is, getting somewhere & finding i was without my inhaler. instant acute attack, severe symptoms, panic. on aleve, i go days not even knowing where my inhaler is. discovering i've forgotten it happens more often than discovering i've remembered it, & it just doesn't matter anymore. i mean, i have as close to zero symptoms as i have ever had in my entire life right now, however it should be noted i also have (sort of inadvertently it just happened) cut down smoking to approx. 1 pack a week, before the cutting down i did still have the occasional symptom. occasional.

disclaimer: i may be a medical freak. this isn't a scientific study. i do know for sure it's the aleve i've experimented again & again. one doctor said it makes sense there is a smooth muscle relaxant in naproxen sodium, that's the most medically scientific i can get for you. try at own risk i'm not a doctor i'm a web designer.

i currently take 440mg morning, and 440mg before bed, that's double the recommended overthecounter dosage. i take it with food in my stomach & with a full glass of water & have no gastric side effects however i have one of those castiron type stomachs, ymmv.

today? i have no idea where i left my inhaler. and i don't use prescription inhalers anymore, a basic primatene will do & it lasts forever, months & months. i live like a person with mild almost nonexistent asthma. this is utterly fucking miraculous in case i haven't mentioned that.

i was almost gonna write something. didn't work out. took some pictures instead.

it was utterly lucid in the sense that i had control, however utterly symbolic as far as the choices i made.

i had the chance to change my life retroactive. reviewed everything real careful. decided i would move to the pacific northwest circa 1990 & like nirvana before they became popular.

... a life which naturally involves vacationing alternatively from reality where the gas stations have waterfalls that are limpid pools that are also birdbaths:

... not a tire. an art project. an experiment. a fucking with the laws of physics type of a deal. i have other excuses most of them procrastinatory.

... ooh. how clever.

It's got a cop motor, a four hundred and forty cubic inch plant. It's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks; it's a model made before catalytic converters, so it'll run good on regular gas...

and yes. mission from god.

because it would be impractical, at this distance, to do it with my teeth.

• important note to self: battery life. that is all.
• this is i think the second time i've remembered the HTML tags for making a list. before this i always had to fire up some lameass wysiwyg editor.
• go fast. turn right.
• um. oopsie.
• it's always on. and on sundays it goes round & round & round. hours on end.
• there are waaaaaay too many versions of law & fucking order
• it is just always on. i mean i personally do not own one & yet i am surrounded by the damn things it seems & they are just always on.
• saving jessica lynch. it's never not on.
• can you hear me now? good. can you hear me now?
• battery life. battery life. battery life. there's no warning. there might be one it might be turned off or someshit i have no idea this is my first time with battery life.
• it's always on. it's just always on.
• it's eaten my brain. i'm even boring myself.

my teeth dance like chatter like the edge you know the edge this is this is the edge & you do know. you know. you do.

& also you have no fucking idea. there's that.

...but what hand is she driving with?

ok so it's this cool compaq notebook laptop whatever dealymathinger here & i've never actually touched a working laptop before so i'm a little bit in a new different whole wide wonderful world of whatthefuck as far as the way my fingers are configured to work keys & mice & things & sure i have regular old meeces & keyboards in my car but that would be cheating i'm having i'm feeling this need to get good at doing it this newdifferent way it seems the way of my future what with the portability & so forth. have i mentioned it's on the internet? because it is. on the internet. my internet. mine.

(aside: my sincerest apologies to those of you on dialups i had no idea.)

but the fact that i have a cool working computer at my unskilled thus far fingertips & furthermore said cool computer is on the internet even slowly has me about way too happy like bursting into tears of flame happy. now i am well on my way to drunk for unrelated reasons having to do with my daughter & bloody mary mix & vodka & red plastic cups & kinko's parking lot so this figuring out how to use this extrafancy mousepad (it is a scrollmousepad!) & the different keyboard entirely thingy what an adventure what a perfect perfect friday night.

yesterday, i wanted to ram my car violently into this truck to see if that flamey sign was a buncha b.s. or what:

yesterday, i wanted to ram my car violently into this car, just because:

yesterday, i thought i missed this shot but i totally nailed it, even though i was going pretty fast right behind a truck with a flamey sign on it. is there anything more amurrican than a tattered flag atop an oil rig? i ask you:

today, i drank a can of hello boss. as you can see, hello boss has over 200 ppm of coffeine and an expiry date of two years:
 

today, the fortune cookie that came with my free lunch told me "today will be lucky and memorable for you"

okay.

biscuits and gravy. real, hole-in-the-wall diner biscuits and gravy. it's a little bit like having sex for breakfast.

on the outskirts of town (one helluva lot closer than i thought):

standing outside where i'm standing right now, looking at the hills:

randomness:

non-fire related: the long road home, through the windshield filter:

that i have completely lost my mind. oh shut up, i did too, it was right ... here. it was. i swear.

ok fine then.

i flow smooth from sober to warm i am radiant with the feeling burning with it alight aglow & achingly lovely as a result i assure you though you will have to take my words for it there are no witnesses i am alone all alone is all we are.

indirect contradiction exists in the matter of this inadvertently bitten lip but what's a little broken skin between a girl & oblivion? aglow alight aflutter aflame & failing to fall out of love aside from that & this slight taste of blood fine fine awake aware alive oh fuck yeah.

the words which exist because of this are pleasure pure suggesting this exists for the words would a girl fall in impossible love just because the words it leaves her she will treasure forever? what if her only forever is in her own words what if this is enough what if it isn't?

do i write my life or live my words? what if the answer is yes & yes? what if writing them causes in me this trembling sense of something approaching significance which might as a matter of fact exist only within my self all alone is all we are goes hand in hand in this solipsistic existence in which i am to my self beautiful true made of my own language what if this is enough what if it isn't?