Nu World Story

I Dreamed of Alabama and Winona Ryder

2010-08-03T14:55:00.006-04:00

How would I begin to explain my dream last night?

I went to college in Alabama, in some town that was on the coast--- not a coast that actually exists, but a coast nonetheless. I was going for my Master's in acting and was very excited, but upon arriving at said (non-existent) school, I found out that my living arrangements were, well, ridiculously decayed. The building(s) where I would be staying were arranged into little dorm rooms with a living space, small kitchen area, and a bathroom. They looked like they hadn't been remodeled in over 30 years because the floors were nasty old yellow carpet and the walls had been plastered over and over again.

I met a boy. He was blond and had blue eyes, and he was a little bit taller than me, but pretty effeminate. We had a short, as in, a day, love affair, meaning that we hooked up in his dorm room. I wasn't feeling it--- perhaps it was his front tooth, or perhaps it was the fact that he just wasn't manly enough. I do remember walking around the dorm grounds with him (well, they weren't SUPPOSED to be dorms--- they were off campus, but within walking distance) and we came to this section of the building that wasn't necessarily closed off from the other sections, but was in a state of disrepair. There were clothes everywhere, and major structural problems such as bashed out walls and windows, holes in the ceilings, slashes in the floor and junk everywhere. I took it that the kids in the dorms would come here and hook up and get drunk or something. The weirdest part was the giant cat I saw skulking around the ruined building. It had the body of a small wiener dog and the snout of a pit bull, but it also had whiskers. It was gray and scared the shit out of me, especially when it tried to come up the stairs into the--- better part of the dormitory. It couldn't make the trudge over the junk because it was incredibly obese, so it just kind of walked back and forth, back and forth, not being able to climb the stairs, but desperately wanting to do so.

I made it back into the finished part of the building and decided to explore. I also, at this point, received a call or something from the boy I had hooked up with. He said that I should meet him at the local theatre where he was practicing, but I never made it.

I never made it because I explored the other dormitories and found everyone to be happily eating ramen noodles, partying, or just generally hanging out and talking like there was nothing the matter with the place. I asked a girl about the destroyed section of the building and she said that it wasn't that bad and that all they had to do was tear the section off. I started feeling very strange.

Then we all went outside to this bay-like area, where I could see what appeared to be a shrimp boat in the distance, parked beside one of those buildings on the water--- a marina, but more like a shack you would find in the bayou or something.

This fat man started calling off names. Apparently he was telling us that we all had to be accounted for and our fees had to be paid. I realized I hadn't even thought of paying my living fees, so I became nervous. I turned to a girl and asked her if the dorms had roaches. She said they did but they weren't that bad. What was the matter with this place?

The man called off a name and this guy said his name and the man said that he owed so-and-so monies to which the guy replied that he couldn't pay. The man then called him over to his platform (I should add that the fat guy was on a platform in the bay and we were all lined up around him on a dock). The guy went over and the fat man tied him up to a big piece of Styrofoam and plopped him down in the water. The guy was just floating there, doing nothing really. Then the fat man called out another name.

It was Winona Ryder. Winona went over to the man and he asked her if she had money... She said no, but that she was auditioning for a part. She started acting--- and not good acting, but really bad and pathetic acting which made me feel sorry for her. She had on a blond wig and heavy eye makeup, and I took it that she was trying to dress for the part she wanted. It wasn't good enough. Into the water she went.

This went on for a while, and people would be put into the water where they would float there... The fat man told the people not to squirm because there were shells in the water that could cut you. I became even more nervous.

Then my name was called. I knew I didn't have any money, so into the water I went. I stayed in there for about 10 seconds before I said, "This is fucking ridiculous. I mean, this is the weirdest shit I have ever seen. You people are acting like you're Redneck Stepford People and this school is a backwoods piece of crap..."

Winona Ryder started laughing. "Come on, Winona, we're getting out of here."

I grabbed Winona out of the water and we made our ways back into the dorms, where she proceeded to straddle me. She was absolutely gorgeous, Winona Ryder from "Heathers" or something, when she was young and supple. And we started making out... But then, the weirdest thing happened. These men started coming into the room and rubbing my face, rubbing their beards against my cheeks... I was closing my eyes trying to get them to go away, and Winona was attempting to soothe me. She felt so good but I couldn't get the men to leave me alone. They were like vampires, with beady, secretive eyes that were full of mischief and chaos. They were everywhere in the room, shadows waiting their turns. And Winona was just smiling down at me, an angel amongst the drama.

Then I woke up. To two text messages, from two different guys--- both of which made me want to yark.

"You Gotta a Hit?? I'm Jonesin BAADD"

2009-06-13T04:42:00.002-04:00

I used to write a blog. Every day. I used to get wound up in the anticipation of finding something... er... anything, to write about. I posted pictures, posted stories, posted poems, posted love, posted life. I put it all in a package I called "New World, Same Story", then "New World Story", then finally "Nu World Story". I felt so poetic, intelligent even. I looked up other blog users, commented on their pages, not really caring what I left them, only hoping that they would recomment me. I put on my myspace: "New BLOG!!!" every 30 seconds and squealed to my computer like I was a 15-year old girl who might, just maybe (oh pleaaaasseee let it be HIMMM) be getting a phone call... er... IM from the star quarterback of some nondescript, winning-season football team. Most times there would be nothing, so I would slink back to my bed, dejected, feeling more morose than actually depressed, and conceive my next "trick" to lure in an audience. Skulking around the Blogosphere eventually led me to install a Statcounter device that I would diligently, feverishly, paranoiaclly check to see who had been visiting my site. I was, as many people say, hopelessly devoted... to you.

Sigh. How the times have changed. A year ago I made most of my 300 posts private, only leaving up certain "gems" that, upon further inspection, revealed themselves as mishapen pieces of gravel spun up in my psychologically malnourished psyche that trudged along its ill-possessed way through the back-country roads of perversion and boredom.

Sentences fuming with isolation became transposed with prose foaming at the proverbial mouth of, "Really, it's that important? Really?? And how did these conclusions find you? Under a tree... picking your navel?"

The photographs began to drive me a little insane. I couldn't ever get "The Look", only slight deceptions of the Golden Prize I was so desperately trying to emulate.

For a while I worked with a word processor, fornicating with the keys, but only producing retarded offspring that couldn't quite articulate anything good enough to send to a publisher.

My poor babies were simply not intelligent enough to understand the complexities of modern life, so I erased them, forever banishing them to Hell where they were willingly cradled in the bosoms of unwed mothers.

This post means nothing. It's a little bit of a release, but honestly, you're still more likely to find me at that old word processor, banging the keys so hard that my fingers finally lock up in arthritic protestation.

If I were to return, what road would this insidious BlogMonster try to lead me down... Where would it take me, where would my mind find itself in a week or two--- shuffling around in the back alleys of Blog City, looking for another hit? A Bloghead, I would have retaken the pipe and smile through my grimy, rotten mouth for all to see: "Look people, I have something to say too, dammit!"

Questions, questions, questions... And still, it all seems like pixels penetrating my frontal lobe.

East Atlanta Prison Pictures

2008-12-07T18:45:00.006-05:00

2008-10-15T10:02:00.002-04:00

The detachment. A lack of knowledge. The downfall. Humanity and all of its crossroads; myriad failures and successes gauging their marks. Brains becoming minds becoming souls. The human footprint, in each and every size, unabashedly barreling forward.

Barbary fused with science. Bubbling, festering, spewing its filth forth from cauldrons contaminated with evil sorcery. Decrying blasphemy from mountaintops and soiling the gold, corrupting the youth, drenching the illiterate in sweat. Not meant for pagan rituals.

Burning houses to the ground. Some were straw. Some were brick. Some were brick and wood. Some were just wood. POOF! the products of succession: thorns and scrub brush paint the landscapes into brown-stroked lazy passes. Nature didn't intend for this. Maybe it was divine.

2008-08-23T09:11:00.005-04:00

Atlanta feels weird. The sky is gray, its unseasonably cooler, and the wind is blowing. It's misting. People are walking in windbreakers. It feels like February here.

I keep having dreams of fields and pastures and all of the people I have ever known in my past are becoming characters who operate within my southern gothic fantasies.

Last night various friends and acquaintances showed up in a hunting chase? after we heard gunshots and then barking dogs and looked to our rights and saw in the distance a pack of brown and black blurs approaching.

I climbed a tree and started shouting, "STOP! STOP!" and one of the dogs, a brown one, raised its head in my direction and snarled. But I perceived a more human sense of emotion. The smile was calculated and sinister; I was the subordinate.

Or I'll have dreams of wetlands that are covered in lilies and watercress. Huge granite stones form channels and bridges. The marshes go on forever. In one dream I was being chased so I jumped into the water to try and hide amongst the plants. I held my breath and put my hand between two of the stones, where one stopped and the new one began, because the current was very strong and I was being pulled into a channel that became a waterfall. I remember thinking that the marsh looked swollen like the Amazon in the rainy season.

Maybe I need to move to South America.

"The Science of Breath"

2008-05-28T00:17:00.004-04:00

I was discussing "The Science of Breath" and then tonite I realized that I could probably find the book online... Sure enough, there it was... A PDF file, but nonetheless there. There is a part at the end that discusses other works of Yogi Ramacharaka. This section was not in the original copy that I own.

"Science of Breath"

don't take with alcohol.

2008-05-01T23:50:00.005-04:00

I think I may have finally crossed that threshold between stability and google-eyed crazy, the one where flowers talk to you AT ALL TIMES and cars and people seem mere abstractions or delusions.

I have a great idea for a book! It involves a grandfather, a boy, "an accident", mental retardation, the South, more mental retardation, and some variant of "A Confederacy of Dunces". I'm working out the logistics, so, you know, in atypical fashion, you'll never hear about it again!

HA! I know you, SPAIN! I know you've been reading this blog. Although your comments are subtle, as in, non-existent, your presence is still felt via my stat counter. Don't hide, LA! You've been here, too, you bastard, and I don't know who you are, but quite using me for your market research!

I'm moving to Florida after I graduate. I know, I know, it's seedy, it's gross. But it's not Florida's fault that a bunch of Nascar fans and hillbicky rednecks chose to make it their home.

Have you ever been to central Florida and hung out in the suburbs?

Man. It's CRUEL. I hung out with this dude one time when my family was, for some reason, down there... and he was sooooo weird and I got this sense of what suburban Florida must feel like... And that wasn't cool. Think of the show "Weeds" without hot people, cool drama, black people, or weed.

I want to live in Key West! It's so nice and sunny and balmy and "local" without the "local"...

"Don't take with alcohol..." Where's my goblet of wine, goddamn this!

Pills are made for poppin, and pipes are made for smokin.

But lungs are made for breathing... So how do you do both at the same time?

It's simple:

Award-winning, triple patented BREATHE-ALL-RIGHT comes from the makers Guthy Renker, whose products have tripled the carbon footprint by ten billion tons of plastic each second!! And now, in this exclusive television offer, you can own BREATHE-ALL-RIGHT for only 14.99!

Ever been to China? Ever been to Beijing? YUCK! That air's not made for people! We tested BREATHE-ALL-RIGHT on eight Chinese coal miners and within minutes, we noticed a BIG change... and so did they! Gone were the wheezes, goodbye were the sneezes, and HELLO were the, say it with me! BREATHE-ALL-RIGHTS!!!

And if you act now, you can get BREATHE-ALL-NIGHT, our sister product, for free! That's a savings of 20 dollars!!

Act now. Time's running out! And so is our air!!

*Limited supply only. Shipping and handling extra. Your BREATHE-ALL-RIGHT WILL come in a huge, bulky box that will be difficult to manage, extra expensive to ship.

I think I'm on to something here... I, like so many other jaded writers, have stumbled upon the hard shitball of truth at the heart of America:

Underneath it all, it's ALWAYS gonna be extra. NOTHING'S for free. NO ONE truly cares about your dumbass problems, and people generally just want it all rush-delivered right into their genitals.

I'm gonna work for some corporate BLOWTARD who'll suck the life and vitality out of my soul, and so are the other thousands of jaded assholes just like me who drink goblets of wine while thinking they're so precise, concise, cute, curt, ridiculous, or WHATEVER...

It's so funny seeing VOCATIONAL kids I went to highschool with graduating and posing in pictures with their fuggin alien babies, all using their loins as a testament to their human strength and power position.

God I miss my friends. I wish they were all here right now and we were laughing about all this. They'd think I was funny. I know it.

Alien babies. I feel like Marilyn Manson. All I need now is a prosthetic suit and a dollop of eyeliner and I think I'd be good to go. Where are my boots, Drew? I left them at the apartment when I moved out and I want them BACK!!!!!!

Mirna Tufekcic

2008-04-24T01:57:00.001-04:00

I Missed You, ANTHROPOLOGY

2008-04-22T22:09:00.005-04:00

Wow. My blog took this crazy photographic turn where everything became stories. That's awesome. I really want to bring other people/perspectives into this whole "Nu World Story" idea I have. I really want this to be an ezine, and get a .com URL, but that's not to be just yet... So.

I haven't HONESTLY written about myself in SOOO long, but I am really feeling the need to express my thoughts on everything that's been happening in this brain of mine... I don't feel like an artistic expression can capture the idea, so I instead must rely on a firsthand nonfiction narrative to preserve the emotions.

It's so hard for me to truly connect with others... especially new people. Well, it isn't hard for me to connect, but I seem to put a certain distance between myself and others once I have gotten to know them for a few weeks, or months...

It happens very suddenly, where one day I have been hanging out exclusively with someone and then I just stop talking them. And I've figured out why.

I haven't always been this way. I was very outgoing in grade school, mostly well received, if not annoying to others for my uncontrollable (possibly ADHD) behavior. But as I got older, I started to become a loner. Then I started to study Anthropology and I realized that, at least for me, I require a certain space to truly reflect on others. In order to truly know someone else, I have to think about them and what their experiences (our shared experiences and their firsthand narratives) have taught me about life.

When I hung out with the drag queens I TRULY hung out with them and loved them. But then I had an awakening where I realized that my life was heading way off course from where I had imagined it would be, and I backed off. I wrote about them. I used them for my study. And that was that.

Or so I thought.

Over time, I began to remember the little things... Their positivity in the face of so much shame... Their impact on the gay community in general in terms of making the so many jaded gays happy, if even for a brief, sometimes drug- (alcohol) induced moment. I even remembered the hard facts that the drag queens were (and still are) involved in many benefit shows to help fight AIDS, and many were just social rebels in general... and instead of this "ghost person", painted in the delusion of adulthood-meets-loss, a new perspective was received--- and now, I see them as spiritual liasons because they feel something that others cannot feel, and they interpret that feeling through performance.

If I had stayed with them, I know that I would have lost myself. But I didn't, and the perspective attained was enlightening.

Without distance, there can be no discovery.

So I do this with everyone now. I purposely shut myself off from society because I cannot learn from others when I am saturated in their environment.

Many people think that a cultural Anthropologist can go to another country for a year or so, do an ethnography with data, interviews, descriptions, anecdotes, etc... and a certain knowledge will have been gained.

While I think this is true, I also believe that a certain reflection is required in order to understand the impact that the other culture, or people--- has had on you.

If I go to China for five years, I may have tons of information on Chinese social customs, and I may have even adopted the language. But I honestly believe that I would not be worthy to write about my Chinese experience if I did not, say, thereafter go to Brazil for three more years and reflect on everything that was so non-Brazillian in China-- even comparing the two-- and then and only then assimilating this clarity into a firsthand account of my Chinese cultural experience.

It's really hard to see your career starting to leech into your waking life, and it's even more strange to be hanging out with people in everyday social situations and think, "Yes, this is completely different from the way they do it..." Or, "Yes, people do do this the same here..."

It's like everything, EVERYTHING, is a study. From your parents, to your friends, to your teachers, to your bosses, to EVERYTHING. It's all this finely interwoven fabric of social existence where the different niches overlap, or never touch, or always touch, or simply break apart.

Each experience can propel you towards the next ultimate truth that will enable you to understand just how LARGE human existence truly is, and from there, you will involve yourself in the same process of normation followed by cessation, followed by reattachment through a different lense of non-study.

But it's a process that requires a diligent self-induced isolation.

What exactly am I trying to capture? What voice, or person, group or nation am I trying to understand? I do not think that these questions are relevant. What I am about is understanding the dynamic that is human experience to begin with.

Why does the custom remain intact? Who are the leaders? How is the power being monitored? Where is the folklore? Stuff like that, only more broken down and scientific, of course, with myriad other paths dissecting the same conclusion.

This conclusion is elusive, but nonetheless exists, and someday, maybe, I'll be able to catch a glimpse, and then, I'll write a book. And it will be awesome.

Prints by Ashley Rogerson

2008-04-04T17:41:00.005-04:00

These prints are a little distorted because I scanned them. I love them, though. They're so... Ashley.

it always seem to happen here

2008-03-31T17:06:00.004-04:00

right before african diaspora... i'm sitting in the hall and everyone seems to be this busy busy blur of noise coming from different directions, penetrating straight through my ears into my brain... and landing there, festering there, and laying eggs that'll hatch and breed swarming sounds of chaos.

i'm so fucked up. i went to the doctor and he gave me more pills... this time for sleep. 3 mg lunestas... and they're as strong as they make. i'm taking 3 at a time and still can't sleep, but during the day i'm like a zombie and all i want to do is find a bed.

i lost 4 pounds and the nurse said she was worried. she said, "why are you losing weight?" and i said, "i'm only eating like a pop tart a day..."

the doctor asked me how much i was sleeping. he said, "how much sleep are you getting?" and i said, "like, i guess i go to bed around 5 am and get up around 7 am..."

face dropping, he said, "how long has this been going on...?"

i said, "...for years."

i thought of making an art piece with all the pills i've been prescribed throughout the years, coupled with all the drugs i've done, and in the middle was gonna be my face with my hand over my eyes, and a very large WHYYYYY scribbled in sharpie across it all.

then i thought about capitalizing on all my insanity and writing some tell-all about the spiral, battle, and all that, like that girl in "Girl, Interrupted", but then I realized it's already been done--- although i really am living it ... it's not just fiction... somehow i feel like extorting my own mental illness would be somewhat absurd, if not tiresome, if not even more crazy, but for myself, and without merit, if not at least a bit annoying.

i wrote emails to ex's of all sorts and felt like i was gonna get a response... the only response: you spelled sensitively incorrectly, or something like that. i found this hilarious, but i haven't responded... i just think, you know, HE GOT IT. but whatever.

don't know about moving back... running out of money and sanity at the same time. trying to do some art but feeling drained by the whole process. the world seems to be echoing footsteps and marginally fulfilling drunken hysterics.

this seroquiel or whatever it's spelled ISN'T making it better, dr... it's making it worse. again. i told you when i was on this i started talking to god... you were like, "what's so wrong with that?" and upped the dosage.

well i'm not talking to god, but people definitely seem to me a bit detached from the real world... it's like no one truly exists but is somehow occupying their own little bubbles away from me... we sometimes bump into each other, but there's no real connection nor transcendence... just the dull, mechanical murmur of cling-clang silence that has become more pervasively present throughout my 20's.

i can literally feel my brain on fire, or tingling, and my hands are tingling... i'm so nervous and unsure all the time, and all i can think about is the future. the future. the future.

i start picturing a pounding chest after an emotional rendition of "Over the Rainbow", and i just wanna be the boy-dorothy, and just appreciate it all for once and be appreciated... i dunno. i have to go in to class now.

this.should.be.interesting.

707

2008-03-19T22:50:00.020-04:00

Crushes

2008-02-20T22:08:00.013-05:00

No clothes. Just water. Poured over their heads. Drenched in filth and happiness, these are my crushes.

First, it's Geo Boy. I see him every few weeks. So hot. He likes rocks. Eyebrow ring, check. Manibrow, check. Sports shorts, always... Well, it's winter, but he's NATURALLY sporty. Gay? Eh... No. He likes girls. I can tell. But he always manages to purposely not look me in the eye.

Day passes. I see The Kids sitting in their usual place. Hot Hat Boy. He's so intense. He just sits there with his legs crossed like a girl and I soak it up. He fucks girls and they think he's too sensitive. He probably is. But only on the outside.

Then there's Lancelot. Been crushing on him for years. Saw him in Mary's one night and had the nerve to say, "Why are you in a gay bar?" He's supposed to be straight. But he's not straight. He's the kinda guy you jacked off with in middle school. The kinda guy who liked dick until he was able to get pussy. Then he was normal. He'll come back. But probably not to me.

In the hallway, I see Bleach Blond (see: between classes). It's just me and her, and she sits RIGHT ACROSS FROM ME. I start hyperventilating. I'm trying to study French, but all I can think about is how perfectly her shoes match mine. You're gay, Hart. Remember, you're gay. Just let it blow through you. She gets up to go to the bathroom and this other girl comes up and tells me class is canceled. Damn. I won't be able to see Beard Scruff today (again: between classes).

I wonder what Beard Scruff's doing when I see Beard Scruff 2 (no less Scruffier). Keep seeing each other, but he's straight, too, so I'm keeping a guarded distance. He's wearing tight jeans, the kind my skinny-ass chicken legs can never pull off. The jeans are sagging in his ass and every time he walks, they ride his crack. I walk behind him all the way down the hall. He never turns back, but I know he knows I'm there.

Sitting outside class, waiting for Professeur Francais to arrive, I see Beard Scruff 2 again. He's talking to some girl. Slightly jealous. My friend tells me she knows the girl... I make a statement about how cute he is...

Moments later, he's approaching me.

"Don't I know you?" he asks.

I'm playing I've-Never-Seen-You-Before. I say, "Yeah, the courtyard."

He says, "Ahh, right, man. That's right. I thought I knew you. What's your name?" He extends his hand.

I shake his hand and it's so soft. Not like mine. Big. Not like mine. Manicured? Whatever.

I say, "Hartwell."

He says, "Oh, cool, my name's *INSERT NAME*."

We exchange nervous I'll See You Around's before he heads down the hall. I turn to my friend and ask, "What the fuck was that all about?" and bury my head in French notes.

Seconds later, I look across the hall. Burly Man is staring me in the face. I always see him catching glimpses, but he's too obviously straight to ever like me. He doesn't look gay AT ALL. And he's just sooo masculine. I wonder if he wants to trick me. No, not play jokes. Fuck me. Like a whore. If he thinks about me in the shower. If he understands I'm only in to monogamy.

Test time.

I'm trying to remember how to conjugate passé compose when I look up to see Burly Man exiting the room. He scans the entire class before zeroing in on my seat. His eyes burn a hole straight through my brain, into my crotch. He knows I know he knows. We're totally using telepathy.

Professeur Francais says something. My old crush for him returns. Burly Man leaves, and I wonder if Professur Francais has ever sucked one. Probably has. He IS French.

Driving home, I think about Facebook. It's been about two weeks and we're emailing back and forth, back and forth. But whatever. He's Midtown, you know, he's OUT THERE in the City and here I sit in Bumblefuck writing about it all.

But they are hot. And so mysterious. All these strangers interest me.

It's so erotic and DH Lawrence. I think about making love to them at the same time. In my huge, imaginary bed. With down everything and massive amounts of pillows. There's incense, poetry, wine, and art. We're talking up a storm.

Just one of them would satisfy me, but, together, in my head, they can all make me happy. I sigh. It's so wonderful here.

LOOK AT THIS PERSON!!

2008-02-19T19:02:00.006-05:00

Between Classes (Monday)

2008-02-18T17:10:00.009-05:00

I'm sitting outside room 525. My African Diaspora class starts at 5:30. I have on mismatched socks. I just didn't care. My hood's pulled over my head. My laptop's hurting my legs.

Here it is: the same Monday/Wednesday people. We're lining the long hall like obedient dogs.

Loud Girl never shuts up.

Bleach-Blond Emo Hipster Girl is displaying her Mac. We keep exchanging glances--- nonverbal signals. We're cool enough to be cool.

Beard Scruff arrives. He sits next to Bleach-Blond Girl. I've never seen them talking before. Slightly jealous. They've bonded over common interests.

Beard Scruff is so cute it's sickening. He'd make a sensitive lover. He wears black-rimmed glasses with an old baseball cap and reeks of late-night benders and R. Thomas. Wait. He's wearing a designer ball cap that's made to look worn. It only makes me want him more. Maybe it's all image. It's still hot.

Across from me, Studious Girl is buried in her science book. She looks up as Luggage Woman tries to wheel her books through the locked classroom door.

Stupid. Why would we be sitting in the hall if we could get into the classroom?

I answer myself. Loud Girl laughs gleefully, a Leprechaun whose gold is the Freshman Devotees she so easily amuses.

I uncross my legs. Beard Scruff twitches and I wonder if it's for me.

Annoying Cellphone is right beside me.

AC: We'll get together sometime this week... (POPS HIS KNEES)... Maybe Thursday, Friday, I don't know...

You're not cool, Annoying Cellphone. We all know you're making plans in front of us for a reason.

I catch a bit of Bleach-Blonde's dialogue with Beard Scruff

BB: Yeah, New York's really expensive... It just seems so expensive. It's so expensive.

I want to punch her. Or tickle her. I can't decide.

Other people are showing up. My hall's becoming noisy.

Blue Collar is talking about a ballgame. Now it's something about a conspiracy theory.

Indian-Girl-Who-Has-Never-Been-to-India is talking about how she'd never live in India but might visit it some time.

It's all becoming very tedious.

Just in time, Professor arrives. She's wearing a hot pink shawl and looks regal as hell. She unlocks the door.

Time to learn.

Poems of Darkness

2008-02-15T23:34:00.006-05:00

You're sitting in your sitting chair. You're just sitting there. The smoke is up in lucidness like making you seem Golden.

In the bar, in the eyes, in the 2 weeks after. In the only smelly spot you found yourself in laughter. There's no laughter here. There's only cigarettes. The liqour blinds the masses who pass their times in passes.

Childhood. Mom long gone. Father left, you're burned. And who could not look back on then and become truly damned?

Vampires and crosses, and crucifixes piercing chests and explosions of innocence too varying to smile.

In your black-eye bedroom heart you're wheedling and plotting next. In your seldom-thinking-of your wisdom is becoming dust. Sunken jaws and rotted teeth, these are how we pass the times. However is this that we pray, our answers never come.

See the harbinger appear, a ring around His head. His crows come to the call of chimes that slow the spinning down.

Once the Golden, now the gone, a corpse thrown to the dirt. And peddlers toss stones in graves and go on with their business.

....................

Once:
Warm and spirited, and
eyes that reveal depth.

Then jaws that clench in
rage.
Hands that clench in
longing.

How it is now, where
it's gone,
and been formed to
shape this charcoal.

A burn upon your hand,
An ash inside your throat.
You cannot speak, nor
can you breath,
but forever
you'll gag.

You, the spirit
when they stripped,
mired you in guilt.
You will claw
and tear and smear
the flesh until
your death.

Boiled water on
soft skin. Vengeance
and your perfect lies.
Crying for the
Other Side,
the only
place of
peace.

mash

2008-02-14T00:13:00.024-05:00

Mash. My birthday is on Valentine's Day (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), (10), (11), another one of life's cruel takes on pleasure. Here it is: My name's Hart. I adopted "Hartwell" (full) when I became 18. But in my heart (cheese), I'm still that little boy whose birthday unceremoniously fell on the day of love... associated with hearts (stupid redundancy).

.........................

Ah... Ego aside, worst day of the year for me.

Even the cake. It's like this red velvet cake. Even the cake is fake. Red velvet with creamed cheese icing. That's my birthday cake. How synthesized is that? What grocery store in America isn't hawking out its red velvet cake in some plastic container with a markdown sticker stamped atop its head? And here I am making warm fuzzies to it?!?!

I do have ONE good cake story. This was HILARIOUS!! To me. And my mom.

Well, one year my mom was making the cake and the oven broke or something so we went to my grandmother's house to bake the cake. I can remember going up there, Grandmother helping Mom make the cake... then something seemed amiss. As it turned out, they had completely bumbled the ingredients. What developed in the oven tasted like this:

I have always described the taste as play doh.. covered in so much frosting, sprinkles, and decorations that the outside almost made one forget about the inside (which, of course, tasted like sand and salt).

So the bite of this beautiful cake that was just for show (cake) made me think about the whole Valentine's Day thing in general. I remember being 9 or something and feeling like hmm... this is all fake... this is all bullshit... hmm...

It was a bitter experience, but still one of the funniest memories I have because it was so ironic. It's not that I can't laugh about it... But it's still so fucking ironic!

The name. Check. And the day of love and cake and confetti. Yes.

But more so, it's growing older. It's darker. It's all tied in to one thing.

No companion. Nothing. Family. Am I going to be one of those people in one of those homes who takes pills and pisses the bed? The only person who will ever visit me will be some relative I can't remember. He wants my menial pension.

There in the home I will hold my heart cup and talk in my crazy speak about how my name is Hart and I was born on Valentine's Day, and no one will understand me but they'll nod encouragingly and then we'll all have Jello and watch "Days of Our Lives".

I think so many single people feel this on Valentine's Day. To be alone, or worse, to not have ANY loving family or friends to say something nice to you on a day when signs of affection are bouncing throughout everywhere.

How lonely it must be to truly be dependent on no one but yourself to the extent that you have no one but yourself... either through your own making, or through the making of others.

But then, sometimes things just happen. Circumstances can't be avoided, or best laid plans fail to achieve a higher status. People disappoint, or act like people. People die. Times change. Buildings crumble. Christ comes back and takes all the Christians away, leaving everyone else to PARRRTAAAYYYY.

I trust too much. I mash too easily. It's all there. It even reeks on the day of my birth like liquor-breath on the boy you just wished you hadn't fucked.

It's being the youngest in a family of 4. It's being an Aquarius (1), (2). Damn you, cosmos!! You haven't deceived me... but what's my dharma?

And better yet, what's with the love karma? From uptights to fags to liars to emotional cripples, I've run the gamut on people who just weren't... there. In a very metaphysical sense-- not connected... isolated... the flesh being too apparently separating.

Breakups and breakdowns and makeups and breakups. Times of constraint and times of neglect.

All the childhood has faded away now. It's like you wake up one day and you have to accept-- EVERYTHING because you realize that every action has an opposite and equal reaction.

It's gets scarier. The angst becomes not angst... but a real life being lived by a real adult.

Still, I can't help but feel a little amazed. 25 is cool. At least I'm alive... And I feel a LITTLE wiser.

Sweat Lodge

2008-01-21T19:52:00.000-05:00

Over the last few years the idea of building a sweat lodge has been creeping in and out of my mind. It started with wanting a detox room... a sauna, and progressed into a sort of experimental archaeology. Although I used a shovel, granite, and river cane, and have no idea if the indigenous peoples that occupied the land around the Coosawattee river were making these ceremonial saunas, I have nevertheless found it fun to fashion my lodge from the cane that still grows along the banks of this river.

I need to do more research, but for right now it's all a work in progress.

Let me give you a little information about sweat lodges.

They were typically used by Native Americans for ceremonial detoxification purposes of cleansing the body, mind, and spirit. They are usually six feet in diameter and five feet high. Granite is heated in an exterior fire and brought into the lodge to be placed into a pit. Water is then poured on the rocks to create steam. Depending on the person, one can stay in the lodge for hours. The door faces east, the direction of the rising sun. There are many more ceremonial practices involved in the creation and implementation of the sweat lodge. You really should look this stuff up... but for now:

I'm simply here to show you my process. I think this is going to be awesome considering I have stopped smoking cigarettes... this will be a great way to detoxify my mind and body. But I will not have a lodge leader, etc. And I will not be chanting or performing any other Native American religious rituals.

So, first things first, I chose a spot located next to a larger fire pit. It was important to position the lodge close to this fire pit as I will be carrying the hot granite rocks from the original fire, into the lodge.

I also chose a flat spot so that others who sat in the lodge would not be rolling down hills, etc.

I dug a pit that was big enough to support the granite rocks, but not so large that it would consume the entire lodge. The digging process was kind of hard because I had to dig through roots.

Then I buried the cane at angles so that they will not come out of the ground once they have been tied together. I also went ahead and bent the canes into each other so that when the fresh canes dry they will have been bent into position. This is the back of the lodge.

This is the interior fire. I lined the pit in granite for insulation, but this could be a design decision. I do not know how other fire pits are dug. I do know that granite is the rock of choice for HEATING in the EXTERIOR fire.

And this is the front. The canes have not been tied together so they do not look as "perfect" as they will once they are together and covered.

This is my hand after all that work!! I don't wear gloves.

So. All I have to do now is cover the thing, put down some mats, and heat some granite. In no time I will have created my own sweat lodge from rudimentary materials. Spas? Bullshit!!!!

my racist classmates

2008-01-14T17:30:00.002-05:00

i'm not a racist, but i'm just saying... i'm like the only white boy in my african diaspora class and no one will sit next to me, talk to me, or even think about looking in my immediate direction... um, is it just me, or am i being prejudiced against because of sexual orientation, skin color, or some other reason? these people make me feel like i'm some diseased leper or something.

like, seriously. i sat down and this girl totally got up and moved to the other side of the room like she would catch my whitie disease or suddenly get AIDS from sitting next to a gay person... perhaps this is all in my head, but this isn't the first class period where i have felt a certian amount of tension from those in this room with whom i am trying to engage...

look. i'm an anthropology major. i took this class because i am interested in african culture. i cannot help it that no other white male student, out of the thousands who attend GA STATE, chose to sign up for the course... if anything, the fact that i'm taking the class should be indicative of my non-racism...

but i refraim...

perhaps it's that this is the first day i've quit smoking, but it really just seems like everyone in this room, besides the professor, is treating me like an outsider.

and i'm not.

of course, the other day the topic of evolution was brought up and pretty much everyone in here believed that evolution was, in fact, a myth, and that Creationism or some other non-scientific form of life was the real reason for why we are here...

and i was like, oh my god, i cannot believe what i am hearing...

the professor was my saving grace... she basically made it clear that if you are not an evolutionist you are, in fact, an idiot.

so i guess that's why i am taking this class... and that's what i can focus on... it's like i have to prove myself and i shouldn't feel that way, but that's just the truth...

WHATEVER....

video 3: The Buzzard

2007-10-09T20:16:00.000-04:00

god, the quality of these videos is really fucked in the conversion to the web. i don't know why that's happening, but i'm sure i'll learn it in the next few weeks.

these are best watched small. making them bigger fucks the quality even more.

things i've said, want to say, will never say--- as they appear

2007-09-26T02:22:00.003-04:00

"you, you've really missed out, you've really outdone yourself, you've really missed out, you really have..."

"i don't want another pop tart, i want some orange juice or a biscuit or some oreos..."

"here it is: i found it!! my lost compass... and it's still pointing north!!"

"my back just hurts. all the time. i can't help it. guess that's what being hit by a car does to you... can still remember the bike going way up in the air... the chiropractor says i have a permanent spinal injury..."

"i found jesus!! and he was just sitting there staring at me..."

"god only knows how much i want to touch you..."

"the beach sounds really nice... and the moon always looks beautiful over the water..."

"have you ever been to the shores of new brunswick? feels like africa or something... not that i've ever been to africa..."

"she never calls..."

"i don't fear death, i just fear dying before my time..."

"time is a state of illusion, coupled with the neuroses of disillusionment, beget by the promises of illusion, forged in the modes of disillusion..."

"i went to salem... it was dirty and "witchy"..."

"these herbs smell really nice... now let's get skyclad so i can seduce you..."

"never seen a crack ho until you've been to ponce or 10th and penn..."

"trannies, trannies everywhere..."

"gay - me = the atlanta's gay bar scene..."

"didn't you test me at AID Atlanta... oh, you're going to red chair... ouchhhh..."

"running in the park is like walking your dog in the vet's office..."

"they told me the redwoods talked to them... i hope they still remember that when they're rich..."

"they don't care... about anything but the flash..."

"everyone gets old, but not everyone gets old..."

"never seen a cougar, but i heard a mountain lion once..."

"j'ai..."

"nothing..."

"and everything..."

"what's that called..."

"oh yeah, life, and your twenties..."

...and there she sat. she was so pretty then. so young, and pale. and her heart was young, too. she picked the wildflowers best she could and took them home to mama. always the tiger, always the lioness. here you sit where you belong, in this place that you have made. she holds a crown in her hands, and you're too scared to take it.

...they bulldozed the old homeplace and put in a new road for dollywood. she never goes there anymore, but sometimes hears the buses coming up the drive when they get lost on their way... a shotgun in one hand, a beer in the other... mama's urn on the mantle place, and ralph's hammer hanging on the door.

...in this grave there lies a girl whose heart was fierce and red. she wore a thistle in her hair, and danced when she was sad. in this grave she goes back home, the worms eat what they will. she'd like to thank the stars, this time, the stars are simply still.

...picked him apart, yes, picked him clean like a piece of fish. picked and picked like he was a zit, and now he's all infected, yes. you better look like you have courage, and you better make some promises, son. you're gonna get it best they can, they're gonna hang you soon.

...old, old, old. that's how you were then. but we took your brain and froze it, and now you're young and new. so stand up, yes, just stand up, yes, yes, can you feel the power now?

...in the future we didn't go outside like you did. we wore suits we sprayed on. each morning we woke up, showered, and then sprayed on our suits. we wore these masks and didn't dare expose ourselves to the elements. you all live so dirty. you live like animals.

...in the future there is no america. it ended when we learned to share... oh, it's still there, i guess. it's where all the tourists go.

...babry fatt didn't like that he was being compared to the clones. and she? what did she know? her moon palace was no more bigger than his, and her dogs weren't pink, they were bubblegum. what a cheap color. couldn't she have seen a better geneticist?

the neo native: an introduction

2007-09-13T02:35:00.003-04:00

the neo native tries to make the home into a ritual. the home is made of wood and plaster. the floors, linoleum. the neo native brings in dirt and all that's found in nature. but the ground cannot be found inside, nor can any clean air. where can the neo native go to truly catch a breath?

in this house the air is stale. a buzzard sleeps in the upstairs and flies out screaming when provoked. man has left. odd sounds, and paint chips flaking. slowly, slowly turning back.

the kitchen has become a home for insects and other flying things. the colors melt into each other... they fuse and fall where they had joined. a certain sadness persists here. the neo native feels this now, but does not wish to change a thing. nature teems in this old space, made new again through time.

and then, the cycle is refreshed, the purpose is displayed. the sunlight washes over man. the neo native is reborn. renewed. reawakened. the air is pure and clean.

i am probably breaking tons of laws... oops.... they put it out there....

2007-09-11T21:04:00.003-04:00

Is this the sign of the Apocalypse?

Or is this??:

Is this a more appropriate example of the Apocalypse?

Or is this??:

Is this high culture??:

Or maybe this raises the bar:

These kids look like they're enjoying themselves. After all, they're only going with their culture, right? Perhaps one day they'll aspire to this:

So classy.

Or maybe, this:

God, I can't wait for that album to drop!!

Is there any chance that this could happen??:

to all this chaos everywhere? Hey!!! I've got an idea... Let's just buy this:

AND SEE WHERE IT WILL TAKE US!!!!

i was robbed three times/kill whitey??

2007-09-05T02:22:00.002-04:00

So. I was robbed back in May. They took off with my computer, tv, dvddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd........ It was a bad day... They got the WII, too. I never felt the same in that house--- you know, after being violated in such a way--- the way: strangers come in and finger your material possessions...

YAWN.

I moved. To Edgewood. And I've heard some rounds of gunfire. But I feel a little safer because I'm on the second story. Of course, there's like three doors to this place, so if a true hardened criminal were to get their wits about them I doubt it would take some strong act of might to break the shitty doors down and pilfer through my stuff... again.

They'd steal my computer, my bike... you know. The last remaining items I actually enjoy possessing.

I went over to my "old" house the other day--- little does my roommate know this (new one) but I had been spending some time over there sleeping during the day. I was squatting on the futon at the new place (please don't stop reading this) for like ten days until the first, and I just needed a bed every once in a while. The reason for squatting when I had an old HOUSE?? see: above (...finger your material possessions).

I was at the old place last Friday, then went to mes parents, you know-- to swim and breathe. And then I went back to the old place on Labor Day to get my futon. To my surprise, well, not surprise-- more like, "Buggers... got me again..." the dead bolts were missing from my doors. I opened the front door and the living room was completely empty. I was like, "They took the coffee table... are you fucking serious? I mean, they took the rug and like a towel and stuff... who are these people???"

I walked into my bedroom and the thief(ves) had stacked all my personal belongings into nice, compartmentalized piles. The broom and the rake propped up against the wall, next to the door--- my toiletries in baskets, waiting to go--- the coffee table disassembled and sitting lopsided in the closet. They hadn't actually taken anything, but had leisurely gone about organizing their new merchandise. Can you believe it?

Well, they did take something. They took my bong and they stole all my dry foods/can foods. So at least they were hungry.

But it was weird.... I mean, very, very odd.

I got all my stuff out of there that night and called the police today...

I waited for the APD for about four hours, then cop finally showed. He said this:

"You can't trust the blacks around here. They'll steal anything. They're all on drugs."

I didn't agree with that, so I kept my mouth shut. He said, "Was anything else taken?"

I was like, no--- but I did say that the thief(ves) had done weird things like put my brass lamp in a closet. I opened the closet AND WOULD YOU KNOW IT??? the fucking crooks had come back the night before (after I had moved my shit out) and taken the lamp!!!

How f'n ballsy is that, y'all? I mean, damn.

So I was robbed three times in one place. And I was robbed twice in two days. That's spectacular if you ask me. A feat not achieved by just anyway.

The cop got me thinking...

About human relations in this area.

Just the other day, as I was moving stuff into the new place, these five or so little black kids came walking by me, screaming:

"FAGGOT!! FAGGOT!!"

How they knew, only I can guess. Was it my art supplies? My clothes? Perhaps it was my assortment of rugs.

But I turned to them and looked the leader right in the eye. I said, "Would your mother like you talking to people like that?"

The kid didn't flinch. He said, "We're gonna get you, whitey."

I was like, WHAT THE FUCK???????

Here I am trying to move from one ghetto to another, and I'm already making nice with the gangs of 8 year-olds.

I just couldn't believe it.

I wasn't raised to shoutdown strangers on the street. I was raised to run barefoot in cow pastures. Talk about a culture shock.

On one hand I was thinking how far we'd come here in the South, that black children could mock white adults... And I was like, it's for the common good.

On the other hand, I was saddened by the irony of the situation: A group so discriminated against perpetuating a form of discrimination themselves.

So I don't know what to do about it all. I feel like I try and try, and there's just all this... smoke in the city that chokes the life right out of me. Like, seriously... when I leave Atlanta I can breathe!!

And not a metaphorical, spiritual, my-soul-returns type of breath. No. I can breathe. Cause the air quality is so terrible here that I literally wheez.

And the people?

Last night this white dude was riding his bike at like 10pm down Hosea Williams. I had come to a stop at a red light, and had accidentally gone like a millimeter over the line into the bike lane.

He yelled at me, "Learn to drive, asshole..."

I yelled back, "You're the one on the bike, douche!!"

He then proceeded to turn around. He had tats. I was scared. Again.

Is this the South? The rude, terrible, soul-crushing, heated, nasty South?

What happened to cordiality?

Are we now entering a new era? It's like: Hey, let's be rude as hell... at least we're venting!!!

Vent, vent, vent... and trample trample trample. Lord, when's this gonna end?

britney

2007-08-13T02:32:00.000-04:00

does this make me look real sexy,
could i finally be in movies.
see me photoshopped jaws boobies
to the dick and all that bullshit.

look at your ferari,
you could really be
on
tv.
look at you
so cutie
as you cut
through those lines.

mirrors in the bathroom,
stalls not made for shitting,
snorting all that innocence
until you make your nose bleed.

yeah.
yeah.

does it?

does this make me look real sexy,
could i finally be in movies.
it's always been a dream of mine
to talk to barbara walters.

look at my tattoo, boo...
it's so in all the magazines,
and all i had to do was
pay a paparrazo off.

blah. blah. blah.

babies babies babies.

look at your hiked skirt,
i can swear i see your pussy.

wah. wah. wah.

babies babies babies.

look at you all pregnant,
see you cuttin those lines.

btw: this is my 100th post.

2007-07-10T19:19:00.002-04:00

Cliché. Cliché. It’s all cliché. As I type, a thousand other jaded assholes are probably typing cliché. Cliché. Cliché . They’re chain-smoking and reading art magazines. They’re taking bong riffs on thrift store couches they bought with their rent money. Or found on the side of the road.

Going to bars. Wearing their tight jeans and Picasso t shirts. Their hair is layered. They have on too much mascara. And their just like me:

Cliché. Type. Cliché. Text. Cliché. Fashion. Cliché.

Wasn’t I supposed to be famous by now? Instantaneously, with no effort, I was going to announce! myself. And who just was me?

The cartoons I watched as a kid? The celebrities I learned to worship before I could fuck? Adults who have gotten fat, old, dead, or on that way. Straight boys who were six feet tall in the eighth grade. Pizza Fridays. Late night benders? Orgies because they were different? Musty, sour pits that lead to Leprechauns dancing on their gold, holding it out for me, but cackling and then!poof!disappearing before I could actually hold any of it in my hands. Maddening chain-smoking. Feeling depressed and really feeling depressed? Pastures. SUV’s. Me inside of you. You inside of me?

This was my celebrity? This is my America? This is my reality?

Here’s my close up. I’ve got on my foundation. My chickenpox scars are gone. I have veneers. No one sees where I fell on the bleachers in grade school. I have on stilts. I have on mascara. I have on a weave. It’s set and fixed.

Do you want some cocaine? We’ll put you in rehab and it will sell magazines. Do you really need that soul? I think it’d look good in denim. Everyone knows your name now. You just have to sign. When the End Times come, God will know who to save. He’ll save you. Because you’re famous. He’ll take all the musicians, athletes, models and actors up to Heaven--- And finally, all those times they thanked Him will have paid off.

Every night I pray to God to make me have bigger titties. And every night, I swear, I think they get a little bigger. If I just had bigger titties, more guys would want to stick their dicks in me, and really- isn’t that some sort of fame?

Or, like, I work out all the time to build my legs. And when she rides me and holds my knees, I can tell she feels my power. That almost makes me famous.

But the most famous of all is when I smear makeup on my mouth and lip synch Monica in my bathroom mirror. Sometimes I go to the pharmacy and buy fake eyelashes. I put them on, but they’re top secret. I wear pantyhose or fishnets. Mother screams up for me to turn down the music!!!

I say, “Goddammit Mother, I’m naked…” And I am. Except for the fishnets, of course.

When I’m at the club I’m kinda famous. In some circles. Everyone knows my name. We all buy drinks and pretend we’re happy. Faces gaunt, and eyes like razors. We cut through all the longing. We have each other, and then it stops.

I could not stop for death. Death will not stop for me. Sometimes living is too easy.
Sometimes it’s too real.

And then it stops.

The dirt fills in the pit that the coffin could not fill. Or the knob is turned a little cause the bones won’t burn as well.

Stuffed into a container… A vessel that holds nothing.

Where did the spirit go? Not up in space. That’s too relative. Down in hell? I doubt a Devil. Or does it just collapse-- become what it was before? Would that really be so bad? Thinking causes too much cause.

Leave the earth to dogs and cats and flies and worms and grasses. Bury all our dead and pretend we weren’t the assholes.
Or board some rocket ships and go away to Mars or something. And turn a dead thing living… and set the motion right.

Being Robbed is Never Fun

2007-05-23T15:40:00.002-04:00

Speculate: If I had had this picture posted on the front door... or some window...... would I still have been burglarized? Probably so..... I mean, when you live in a ghetto, I guess you shouldn't expect cordiality.

Yes, I was robbed. They took my computer, my TV, my DVD player... and my CAMERA. Am I an idiot for leaving the camera behind? Uhum. As I saw at least four wild creatures in the river, woods, and elsewhere (yesterday), thoughts of my camera's necessity for those moments were bombarding my brain, even as the skanks were invading my space and nabbing my material possessions.

You know those moments when something seems amiss but you can't quite pinpoint why it's all slightly off? Do you?

I had been having those moments for a few days now. I would be going to sleep, thinking things like, I hope I don't get raped in bed....

And then thinking so much about my camera yesterday........

ESP IS cool!! But it hardly ever works until afterwards. Then, and only then, are you assured that you were actually using some sort of mental foresight.... but, like hindsight, foresight gets you no where if you can't actually do anything to change the events.

My little house has become a terror... a harbinger of uneasiness. I mean, would you feel comfortable in a place where someone had recklessly thrown about your belongings for the purpose of making money???

I think of all the stories, letters, and pictures I had saved on my desktop... And all the porn I had watched on that DVD player (HAHAHA...... DAMN!!! I just realized they got my gangbang porn!!!!!!!).

I think of the old man who gave me my camera-- a cherished gem that had belonged to his now-dead husband.... And of all the photos I had taken, and still wanted to take.

What is someone like me, a poor college student who can barely make ends meet as is, supposed to do now that I don't have the few outlets I was using to heal the trauma of my day?

Should I start to paint, to draw--- to sketch and riddle? Oh. Oh. What to do?

At least my bike was in my car. And at least they weren't smart enough to take my recording equipment. Damn. That's where the true money was, you idiots!!!!

But something was taken: Like losing your virginity to the star quarterback who promises to love you and then rolls over after he's gotten his jollies jingled... and avoids you the next day in the hall...........

Yet again, I have been jaded... A little piece of my childhood wonderment, or my boyish naivety--- has been ROBBED.

Just when I was meeting so many people in the neighborhood... And just when I was all sunshine and rainbows... The clouds have formed, the storm has settled in... and the deluge is making my eyes blur for sight.

But. But. FUCK THEM!! I'm not giving up. What else can they take? Really. I didn't have much to begin with, and I am always bitching about materialism.

This is a blessing. God. Fuck you. But thanks.

I know it's utterly crazy to think that God actually has any control over my life. To me, it is crazy. But shit like this happens intermittently, where I am buoyantly happy, only to be knocked down again.

It's how I recover that tests my true ability to survive and adapt. And I'm pretty good at adaptation. Sure, my shit's gone--- but whatever. I was gonna have to store it when I start my travels anyway.

The Social Hallucination: Clubs, Bars, and Drag Queens

2007-04-28T16:49:00.002-04:00

No one tells you how to rebel. If you feel the need, you just feel the need. No one waves a sign in your face that says, “This is how to do it. This is how to rebel. Follow step A to plan B, and there you have it… your rebellion”. A little over a year has passed since I first started to rebel- to visit the other places sometimes known as heterotopias. I did not call them heterotopias then, and I am still somewhat fuzzy on the technicalities of this term. However, I now know that I was existing so much inside the world of the heterotopia, that to think otherwise would be misleading to my own identity.

I wanted to drink. I wanted to gamble. I wanted sex. I needed a change. The non place of the highway, the supermarket, the elevator, the internet--- the non place was driving me crazy. I needed an escape. What I found was a study.

I needed to overcome the corporation, the power system. I thought that disobeying demands would allow me to fight that system (Fleming and Spicer, 2006). Of course, I overlooked the fact that power can control you in more insidious ways. If, for example, you are fighting the corporation, but you are partying in bars that promote drink nights for certain alcohol companies, and music nights for particular musical acts that are owned by corporations, are you truly fighting the system, or are you just being corralled like a blindfolded idiot?

These questions didn’t strike me when I first started documenting my findings in the club/bar scene, but I knew I should try to formulate some idea on my experiences, albeit vague interpretations that, at first, were promoted by the consumption of alcohol. There I would sit, in the club/bar, and look and look at all the people displaying for each other. Their clothes, their attitudes, their own interpretations on dance and sociality, all gave my study a soul.

I now realize that everyone, be it drag queen or a straight man, is going out for very similar reasons. First and foremost, people seek the club/bar for escape. In heterotopias, the order of life is often replaced with a sense of disorder (Moffatt, 2006). Imagine this: You drive in your car every day to the same destination. You reach your destination, you find your parking spot, and you find your way to the elevator. You ride the elevator to your specified floor, you walk to your specified cubicle, and then you perform your specified tasks. Does this not sound boring, simplistic, and sad? Now imagine: You put on clothes that differentiate your being from that day to day drudgery. You go out at night, a complete contrast to the daytime lifestyle you find so tedious. You find clubs/bars with people needing the same: escape. In this type of environment, anarchic values are prized, monogamy is sometimes tossed aside, and performance and display are further implemented by the consumption of alcohol that escalates the ability to speak to strangers in more loosely-based speech than that of which you are assigned to use in your every day working life.

This is exactly what I found in the club/bar scene. Although I was at first shy, I soon started speculating on all of the people I saw dancing on tables and giving strangers lap dances--- flirting with each other, and drinking shots off of people’s stomachs. I wondered what these people did on a daily basis. So I started to ask them. I would say, “So, what do you do?” This could have, of course, been interpreted as flirting. Or perhaps not. But most times, people would say one of three things: They were a student, they were a professional, or they were in between jobs. Bingo! All of these people were under stress. Each sought escape, and they found it in the heterotopia. Business suits came off, and tight black t-shirts replaced the stuffiness. Skirts were hiked up just a little more. The night was always ripe.

In straight bars, the men always answered that they were there to meet girls, or were simply having drinks with their guy friends, which, in typical fashion, would elucidate a simple response of: Yes, we are checking out girls, too. Women seemed more hostile to answer my questions, but their responses typically mirrored the responses of the men. They were not there to merely socialize, but to peruse through the selection of masculine choice. This ability to knowingly seek out non-monogamous relationships was crucial to their escapism within the heterotopia. Without this ability, these people would have merely been drinking to escape… not drinking to be able to cope with their desire to perform display in order to procure a one night stand, or perhaps something longer-lasting.

The whole system is cyclical. In order to have a heterotopia, you have to have a reason for that heterotopia (Gray, 2000). This basically means that clubs/bars serve the “waking life”, just as the every day serves the club/bar. Ideally, people would not need a club/bar. Ideally, people would also not have to sit in a tiny desk and look at photocopy until their allotted time to leave work, drive home, and watch TV. In a perfect world, there would be no need for spending because everything would be set up in a non-superficial barter system where neighbor helped neighbor, and everyone was at peace. This type of place is only realized by few groups, such as the American Amish. However, they seem to lead relatively limited social lives. Perhaps the struggle for anarchic deliverance from stoic responsibility is worth it.

Worth it or not, it exists. As I continued my search, I was taken to many different places. I started to get a feel for what clubs/bars were really about, technically speaking. The clubs/bars hold different nights, and on these nights, different types of music are played to express the theme. This can mean that you might look out of place if you go to a hip hop night dressed up in punk attire. I remember walking into one of the clubs I frequented, The Mark, and everyone was dressed in hip hop apparel. I had on a dress jacket, but, yes, my dress jacket was adorned with rhinestones, and not some sort of monogrammed bird or numeral. I simply did not fit in. This was all part of the process for this study.

It is important to realize that encroaching on a heterotopia’s space can, in turn, change the dimension of that space (Rushbrook, 2002). Heterotopias can be places that interpret non-normative peoples into solid factions of socializing and display (Rushbrook, 2002). Now more than ever, there is a practice of seeking out the other, of trying to find escape through another’s escape (Rushbrook, 2002). I found this in the gay scene, and in the drag world. Why straight people find drag so interesting, even appealing, is speculatively answerable, but when I frequented the drag bars, most notably the now defunct Charlie Brown’s Cabaret in Underground Atlanta, I would assuredly see straight men and their spouses.

Originally, the act of viewing the other was proscribed to the elite. The elite would take guided tours in big cities such as New York, and spectacle on all the customs of Chinatown, the Bowery, and elsewhere (Rushbrook, 2002). Today, this spectacle has been transformed onto the gay culture of Greenwich Village (Rushbrook, 2002), although, as already stated, the act of straight people viewing gay peoples in the areas of heterotopias that homosexuals occupy, is nothing new to me.

Charlie Brown, Atlanta’s premier drag queen for many years now, would literally poke and belittle the straight men in front of their wives. S/he would use hir taloned fingers (s/he wore silver rings on the ends of hir fingers) to stroke the microphone in reference to what s/he would do to the straight man if s/he could get hir hands on him. This was all an act. Charlie would, after the night had ended, come out of hir dressing room looking tired, old, and lost. Gone was hir power, and replacing that power would be the sad reality of existing within the heterotopia: You may have the power when everyone is on display, but as the night wears on and morning fast-approaches, your camouflage will only cover your outer flaws, not your inner psyche.

It is unclear how much affect the other has on a place such as a gay bar. Charlie certainly monetarily benefited from the other. My only concern is that, by validating the other in your establishment, you are validating a stereotype. The straight people were not visiting Charlie Brown’s because they thought Charlie was a magnificent performer. They were visiting Charlie Brown’s because they wanted to see a grown man dressed in costume jewelry, lip-synching to Winona Judd. Although Charlie Brown might have received applause, the straight people were not applauding her talent, but rather: her odd, stereotyped weirdness. Is this really good for your community? But does it really matter in a heterotopia--- a place that is sometimes supposed to be deviant, or perverse?

Drag made my study. Without drag, I would not have been able to fully realize just how fascinating the club/bar scene can be. I took something as normal as going to clubs/bars, and manipulated it into a sometimes-neurotic impulse to observe every bit of my “going out” experience. The drag queens were like a living heterotopia. They were so interesting, and so willing to tell me their histories.

Indeed, all of the drag queens had some sort of story. One of the drag queens with whom I became closely attached told me stories of hir rape. S/he had been raped by a group of men. Another drag queen told me s/he had been molested. Still another told me that hir drug problem was a direct result of burying three husbands due to AIDS. I do not know how much truth these people were speaking. Their personalities intermittently matched their drag personas, bleaching over into their waking lives. From what I saw, their true identities would often become ghosts. In the every day, most of the drag queens held menial jobs, or were unemployed. Most had no cars, or were constantly trying to find a new place to live. Their faces were sunken, their clothes, loose. They wore ball caps to cover their ever-balding heads. It was as if they were going through the motions of the day in anticipation for their sparkle within the heterotopia. Their speech, their demeanors--- all of their being was in limbo when they were out of drag. Sometimes, though, the drag persona would come through to the real persona. A snide comment would be made, or a jab that only a drag queen would make, would be emitted. It was “girl” this, or “bitch” that. There was no real context for their verbalizations during these periods. Simply, they were confusing their true identities with their performance life.

The drag queens were indicative of the heterotopia: They, above all others, felt the need to escape and display in a space that was outside of their daily lives. From their childhoods, to their inabilities to cope with their sexualities--- there were myriad reasons for their needs, but I was only privy to my firsthand experiences.

If a heterotopia can be described as a place where exclusion is often incorporated, the drag queens were every bit the part. They had their own dressing rooms, and the privileged few were allowed to enter. Here, I would watch the drag queens transform themselves into their performance personas. Their dialects would change. Their attitudes would become more cruel, or hard. They would gain their power through the transformation.

They felt such a strong need to display--- more so than other people who frequented the clubs/bars. Living heterotopias, but why did the non place affect them so drastically? The gay population needed the drag queens. In essence, they served the function to further the escape, and the crowds that gathered to watch their performances were equally as intrigued and impressed by their abilities to transform. It was a cyclical process of the drag queens needing the audience to feel self-worth, but the audience needing the drag queens to feel release.

As my time with the drag queens came to an end (the climax and subsequent fall was a result of seeing a queen break up a rock of crystal methamphetamine with a high-heeled shoe), I realized that I again needed to focus my attentions on the actual places I visited. How did these clubs and bars utilize space?

I have discussed the non place, and I have discussed the heterotopia, so it seems appropriate that I would discuss how these heterotopias were being created. Yes, there were different nights for the different clubs. And yes, there were times when the drag queens were on stage and they had the full audience’s attention--- but more importantly, how did the club implement its business of creating the imaginary?

On hip hop nights in the nicer clubs, the drinks would change. There would be shots that were tailored to the hip hop crowd’s desires. Again, consumerism was here merged with escapism, creating the true hypocrisy of the situation. Lighting also played a crucial element in creating an ambience where people could relax. When the lights were pulsing and everyone was dancing, the entire room was energetic and filled with a buzz. People would smile, stagger to bathrooms, or lean against walls because they had been dancing and were now sick. The atmosphere would become very surreal. You were, at that time, living in a dream of imaginary which I call the social hallucination. You may have, at any moment, realized that you were going to have to drive home drunk, or that you had an impending test, but for that moment, the social hallucination would expedite escape, and you would be caught in the delusion of the club/bar.

This illusion would fade as soon as the lights came up. The club would make a “last call”, which meant that you would have to drink fast, or not at all. Here, the exclusiveness of the heterotopia would again become evident, as you would either have to make a purchase, or you would be refused service later. The lights would blind you, and the social hallucination would end. The dancer’s faces would be smeared with make up, or everyone would look drunken and lonely. The bartenders would lose their smiles, and the whole place would become what it truly was: A building. A simple building. A design constructed to assimilate escape. For money.

The music would die down, and this is when you knew that you had to go home. As soon as you left the building, the social hallucination would be just another hangover. The drag queens lived for this social hallucination, and in fact, they occupied the social hallucination to an extreme that bordered on relative insanity.

Escape was the meaning of the heterotopia, and through this escape, everyone was happy (Goss, 1999). Until the lights came up. Until the music stopped. Everyone was happy. But this happiness was fleeting, and dominated by the smoky atmosphere of a structure comprised of people on the brink, in need of escape, in need of solace--- from nothing more than their every day. To me, this was the problem.

AFTERTHOUGHT:

Some clarifications can be made on the drag queens. There were a few drag queens that held real daytime jobs. Not all were on drugs. And finally, they were not all mean-spirited stereotypes *while in drag. However, from what I saw, this was the minority.

I am still friends with a few of the queens. These people I love as their waking lives, and while I may find their drag personas to be complete bitches, I still admire them for their talent. The queens I have maintained friendships with fascinate me because they have found a balance between display, and their true beings.

Also, not everyone who went out to the clubs/bars was drinking. I wondered why these people wanted to socialize in such a false environment, but nevertheless, they did.

My study is just starting. I now want to focus my efforts on the effects and creations of the social hallucination.

About the Kitty.

2007-03-22T23:50:00.000-04:00

I went for a walk with my Aunt Kitty today, and we decided to take up some mail to these neighbors that live on top of a hill my sister had so-titled "Rock Mountain" when she was a little girl. This was before the rocks were removed to level the top of the hill for a house.

We started walking up the hill, and I realized that I had not been to the house since the Blizzard of '93 (Georgia's one true snowstorm). It was a weird feeling of coming back to a place I had seemed to dream... only: No, upon reaching the top, everything was exactly the same as it had been when I was a child.

Only. Well. Not EVERYTHING was the same. The lawn was littered with old car parts, toys, animal cages, pieces of wood... and other trash. The garage had been closed in to make another room. Everything was... diminished.

My cousin used to live in the house, but he moved to Rome, Ga and his mother built an underground house. This all happened some years ago--- and since then, the house has been occupied by all manner of sleaze... It's such a shame, though. It's such a waste of a view.

There we were... me and my Aunt... and she was like, "Well, I guess we should go to the front door....."

The front door? Actually, Aunt Kitty- I now realize that we went to the BACK door. So disoriented with the crummy yard, we had forgotten the layout of the house itself.

Sad. The back porch was completely destroyed. The paint was flaking off the rotting wood. The door itself, when my Aunt knocked on it, opened... In an eerie, haunted way--- juxtaposed by the evident lack of proper door handles.

And saddest of all--- the animals.

Apparently the people who live in the house own a pet shop "in town". We have heard their exotic birds, and sure enough, there the birds were.......

In what could only be described as a scene from that show on Animal Planet where they rescue abused animals, I saw the beautifully colored birds all assembled in their tiny cages... Each screaming, each biting at the wire in futile, laborious attempts at escape.

And the yippy dog that ran in circles around my feet. He needed such attention that for a minute, I thought: "This could be my gay-person dog. It's so small I could get it a little bow and a little bag..... I could save this dog... Or at least throw it a stick or something."

But soon, all thoughts of saving the dog were instead transferred onto the cat. I didn't even recognize it from the day I had been sitting in one of the fields, watching the sky with a friend and chatting about art or some other pretentious subject.

The cat had walked right up to us. A white Persian, I think. Long haired, blue-eyed, and soooo sweet. We petted it once and it purred and purred, and would not leave us. Even after we were finished talking and were making our way back home, the cat followed us. It only left us after much drama involving us naming it, wanting to take it home, then subsequently deciding that it was so well-groomed that it must live on Rock Mountain.

And it did.

That cat, which had seemed so magical and joyful, was reduced to a mangy, horribly unhealthy state of being. He had a ring around his neck where no fur grew, but that looked like it could have had a heavy piece of leather wrapped around it, preventing the fur from growing. Indeed, maybe the dog had been biting at its neck and this gnawing had caused the condition. I doubt this to be the case. Black streaks concealed its white coat--- like it had curled up inside the exhaust pipe of some old truck, and had intermittently been shooed from its cubby hole by the cranking of the car. A huge ball of fur was matted against its ass, and I got the idea that shit and all manner of thorns and thistle were winding their ways up its hair in nonstop pain and annoyance.

Again, I say that I did not even know this was the cat from before. But it was.

Two girls answered the door, and they were nice enough. They were pretty. For a second, I got the idea that they were new to the house, and sure enough, they had been living with their mom and now had moved to Rock Mountain to live with their dad.

I started thinking that maybe their juju could erase the bad juju that I sooooooo felt. Maybe they could make the birds happy, and play with the dog. Hell. Maybe they could even take a brush and a bottle of antiseptic to the poor kitty.

The sadness abated and the package delivered, my Aunt and I left the house and started back down the hill. Sure enough, the dog followed. So my Aunt went back to the house, me trailing behind, to give the girls their dog. I waited at the corner of the house while my Aunt talked to the girls.

And that damn cat. It jumped up on an old pet cage and started going:

"Meow. Meooooww. Meoooooooowwwww." Only it didn't sound sad, or lost, or scared. It sounded evil. The evil, bad juju had worked its way into its very being, and in return, the magical, stable qualities of its nature had been displaced by the ugliness of Rock Hill.

I stood in front of the cat, watching it, hearing it meow again and again and again.

And I wanted to scoop it up and save it. I wanted to take it home. I wanted to call animal control. After all, these people own a pet shop!!! Geezzzzzzz.....

My Aunt came back, and again, we started to make our way down the hill. This time, the cat followed.

It walked with me like I was its chance at escape. And my Aunt, she told me that the cat was diseased and she didn't want it around her. I guess I can understand, but I am kicking myself now for abandoning it.

She walked it back to the house, and then I stood there, halfway down the hill, watching the sun cast shadows over the green, rolling hills. The picturesque scene. Behind me, only filth and decay.

I must save this kitty. It has a name: Cosmos. And it has a home. Not with those people.

I need an excuse to go back to the house. Perhaps I should just wait for another package that needs to be delivered. I only hope I have enough time.

Why allow such a beautiful animal to suffer so much? Especially at the hands of a pet shop owner.....

Maybe they have been jaded by selling animals. Maybe they quietly hate all pets.

"Yes, this is a beautiful bird."
"Oh yes, aren't these kitties nice? They need a good home."

If only the public knew the truth.

Tell You How I Become the Prince of a Town Called Bel Air (is that the right lyric??)

2007-03-19T00:54:00.002-04:00

I love cheese. All sorts. Except for brie... There's something about its consistency that makes me really hate it.

Yeah.

This semester is almost over and I feel like I haven't been in class at all. I hate taking Tuesday/Thursday classes because I am only on campus two days a week... and it takes me a while to adjust to not being there--- then being there again.

I'm also getting really burned out on anthropology. I still love it a lot, but I need to focus on my English major. So... next semester I will be taking all English (writing) classes... Hopefully I can finish one degree in the next year..... grrrrr.....

Atlanta is going well. I am branching out of East Atlanta more, finding my way back into other parts of the city.

I threw a party with my roommate that went really well....

Except for the fact that I had to ask someone to leave after they called my friends faggots.... Not cute. At all. And the fact that Ansley was caught in our ditch the whole night.... Everything else was SOOO much fun. At least for me.

So: If you're a friend, and you read this blog... then thanks for coming. You made the party enjoyable... and I'm glad that you were there. I hope you had fun.

Everyone, with the exception of one person... who said they would be there--- was there.... And all the food and alcohol was consumed.... This, to me, is the hallmark of a good time. HAHA.

I feel like writing blogs again, but I'm liking this pace that I'm at right now--- with only occasionally posting. I feel I can think more of what I want to say--- not spew out my emotions of the moment, but allow my feelings to simmer over days, and create a more stable blog or whatever....

OMG... The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is on.... this is gonna have to be cut short.

Laters.

P.S.: I am reading this awesome book called, "Man on Earth".... It's an anthropological record of different human beings living in their respective environments on the planet....

Like: The Islanders, the Swiddeners, the Potato Growers, ETC. Please read this book.... if you can find it.

Perfectuation

2007-01-14T23:51:00.000-05:00

Early ages. Past experiences. There is little learned, but nothing is ever truly treasured anyway.

Mr. Boy-America, ready to take on the insecurities of human capability--- thrusting the two-sense into cyber media... expounding on the futility of time.

THE MUSIC WILL HAVE TO STOP. THE EARS WILL HAVE TO CEASE TO HEAR. THE HUMAN ANIMAL DEPARTS, THE HUMAN MIND EVAPORATES-- THE ENERGY OF THE SOUL IS TRANSFORMED... INTO THE WEIGHTLESSNESS OF SPACE.

Science causes freedom but can not explain how plants can live without brains. So relax... Be jolly... and just know that the questions are too absurdly elementary to ever be fully realized and assimilated.

Eat your pasta. Date your future Mr. Mrs's. It's all ok... cause you're just energy encapsulated in heightened states of consciousness.

Cures for cancer? SURE!!!! But just know: Your life and death has never been any more important than any other life or death before, after, or during your own.

You invented something?!?!? That's spectacular, man!!! Congrats... But it doesn't really matter... Cause who did you invent it for?

Your species??? Well that's great... but... Why does your species matter?

Because it knows it can matter? BORINNNNGGG. No... Because it WANTS to matter.

And why does it WANT to matter? Because it is in love with perpetuation.

Science fused with barbary. If there truly is a Heaven, then what exactly is this middle road good for? BORINNNNGGG.

So forge on, brothers and sisters. The answers? They're already here.

Staring us in the face. Penetrating little dots of light pixilating in our frontal lobes to create the Drama.

Does Anyone Remember Friendster??

2006-12-17T16:06:00.001-05:00

My dad says MAH-THU instead of MAR-THU. It annoys the shit out of me. He should just as well put on a bonnet and walk to the egg house to collect the morning hen's unfertilized embryos.

He hates eggs, too. I can understand why.

Anyhoo.

I logged onto friendster today for the first time in about a year, and I was amazed at how stupid my profile was--- and how little effort I had put into making that profile cool.... I mean, I had this fucked up picture--- 25 friends, and just this lame-ass shit. LAME.

So. It made me question this whole "online friend community" thing that we have going on. Take, for instance, this blog: When the HELL did blogs become so cool? Or at least so normalized. And myspace.... What the holy fuck-a-fuck is that? When did we all start joining myspace, posting pictures of ourselves, and writing our favorite everything's for all the world to view? And youtube??? I mean, damn. We're just marketing ourselves out there left and right, front and center----

I think I want to use myspace for promotion and art. I don't want real friends on myspace, really. I want fans. Is that so wrong? I think not. Real friends are people you like, talk about your coldsores with--- not people living in Switzerland who you add cause they're music is cool. So why not put art out there... and promote yourself? As lame as myspace is--- it's an effective tool for networking.

But the whole thing scares me. I kind of want myspace to go away.

Remember when we had home phones, and like... no caller ID? And we'd have to listen to our answering machines, and actually record real messages instead of using the computer-generated messages?

Remember when you'd wait by the home phone all day long for that special crush to call you--- and your Aunt would call, and you'd answer, thinking it might be your crush... and it'd be her... and you'd want to totally get her off the phone in case your crush was trying to call???

I kind of long for those days when cellphones were carried in large bags... and like--- IM'ing was "new", and "cool". At least you knew who your friends were back then.

It was kind of fun just waiting by the phone.

Merry F****** Christmas, Assholes

2006-12-15T02:34:00.000-05:00

I am so over the holidays this year!!!! I don't wanna fucking watch a Christmas cartoon, carol--- eat the food, buy the presents... or any of it. Is that bad???? I mean, I guess I should be like setting up all this Christmas crap and being all "Christmas Jingle, fucking yes yes, have a merry day...".... But I just don't wanna!! You know what I want?? Well, for one--- I want this blog to space properly so I can make a new paragraph.... But more potently: I want springtime and sunshine. I want nature. I don't want a Coca Cola Santa, although a Coke would be nice right now. I don't want a scarf or a fucking glass of egg nog. That shit is like drinking watered-down creamed cheese. I'm not bitter. Seriously. I don't want that, "Don't be all Bah-Humbug" bullshit... Cause I'm not BUYING it anymore. I just really hate the idea of having to compartmentalize love into gift-giving, Christmas parties, and all that shit. We should love year-round, and give gifts to each other all the time. This whole holiday is just another marketing ploy- just more propaganda: This year, spend time with the ones you love by buying them a toaster.... Nothing says Christmas like a poster of Jesus fucking an American flag.... HAHAHA. OMG. That was funny. Ride that pole, Jesus. Ride that F'n pole.

Scary Old Man in the Library

2006-11-18T20:59:00.000-05:00

Today I spent my Saturday morning in the library, printing articles for a take-home test. It was rather uneventful...

There was this redneck woman beside me who had this friggin baby who would not stop touching me... It kept dropping its passifier, and the fuggin lady would be like,

"Can you pick that up?"

I was seriously trying to get some work done. Apparently she couldn't see that not all of us wanna work for Sonic when we grow up....**

**Can I please note that I know many college graduates who friggin work for Starbucks and places like that? There's no jobs, man. None. This world is ending. Ansley's right: It's the End of Time.

Ahem.

Anyway, this man who works at the library (oldish-- late fifties) kept looking at me... And I was seriously getting a little--- um, weirded out. Here I was trying to look up articles of Sexual Slavery, and the expoitation of children in Thailand---

(Yeah... businessmen go to Thailand and rent prostitutes... little boys and girls. They're mostly white males from America. Isn't that lovely???)

Thinking: Uh... I kind of feel like one of those kids now....

Anyway, I was done printing, and he brought my copies out from the back room...

(Apparently you print in the back, then pay at the front... PLEASE bare with me here)....

I was also looking up conservation in Africa, so when they were done printing--- he brought them out, too....

(Here, note: British and others went to Africa in the early 1900's and were like, "Let's build roads here, bridges there--- but we'll make this whole area pristine... Let's just tear down the villages and move them out--- fuck them... THIS IS OUR POSTCARD!!!.... And then they drew pictures of the beautiful African wilderness... when the indigenous African was like, "Fuckin-A, beaaches... I wanna fucking hunt that gazelle like I've been doing for THOUSANDS of years...")

and he was like,

"You know about the Masai warrior??"

I was like,

"Yeah" (by this time, I knew he was a flamer)....

He said:

"My Aunt lived over there and I was with her... she casts bronze figures of wild (somethings) and they're in the Smithsonian."

This interested me. But I was totally trying to get out of there... I seriously wanted to sing to the Eagles, and they were only to be found in my CD player--- in my car... Know what I'm saying??

So I politely made him go away...

Then I went to pay.

The copies were .25 cents a piece, and I had TONS. I was like, this has to be at least thirty dollars....

The lady was like,

"How many copies did you have? How much was it?"***

***Uh... So now we were going on the Trust System?? Please. Could I just have a bag of wheat and a couple of strings of licorice to go with that (This was a lame attempt to correlate my experience with Little House on The Prairie...)?

ANYWAY. Geez. This is getting longwinded--- I MUST be hungry.

I was like,

"I don't remember... But I printed a lot of stuff..."

The guy came out of no where... He said:

"Let me count it up.... Ok... It was six dollars..."

I knew this couldn't be true. Just one of the articles had costs five dollars.

So I was like, "Here's a twenty..."

They looked at me like I was friggin Mother Theresa bringing bread to the poor and suffering.

And then I said, "This is a great place to study... I'll be back..."

And the ladies all smiled submissively, yet with authority all the same... But that fucking guy looked me in the eye and WINKED.

SOOOOO CREEPPPYYY.

Really.

Uh. Yeah. That's the end of this story. Lots of buildup to a rather bland ending. But still. At least I told you about Thailand and Africa.

BITCH HAZ TO EAT

2006-11-15T22:36:00.000-05:00

Ok. I just have to relay this story because it's fresh in my mind. And I will forget it if I don't.

About half a year ago, I was at the KFC on Ponce. In Atlanta. For those who don't know, Ponce Avenue is notorious for street-walkers, homeless people, and various others who just-- well, have become rundown by life.

I had just gotten my KFC Snacker and was headed back to my car, when I noticed, much to my--- amusement, a prostitute staggering her way down the street- in my direction. She had on short short short-ass jeans shorts, some non-descript tank top, and a ballcap. I could see that she was struggling. For real. Looked like she was on the TINA... or drunk--- cracked the fuck out.

As she got closer (by this time, I was in my car fumbling with the keys), I saw that she had a five o' clock shadow, which meant, yes: SHE WAS A HE. The ballcap was also barely covering the mess that was HIR hair- a dirty-blonde frazzle of split ends and tangle.... and she was limping, with a very serious look on her face.

She sat down to wait for the bus- and started talking to this man. Apparently they were friends, because they were laughing hysterically with one another, and she kept touching his arm and stuff.

And then, she did the funniest thing I have ever seen. Bitch pulled something out from her bag. I thought it was gonna be cigarettes or a lighter... hell... maybe even a crackpipe. But no.

As I looked closer and closer, and the object became more focused, I realized that she had pulled out the most ginourmous oatmeal raisin cookie I had ever seen, and was munching away on it, then holding it out, talking with it.

I couldn't take anymore. I just burst out laughing. And as I pulled out of the KFC, I was pointing and laughing... And she--- well, she just waved back and kept on eating.

HILARIOUS.

"The Pact" EDIT 3

2006-11-01T04:59:00.001-05:00

"Charlie! Charlie! SON!" He turned the key.

The sky was dark like night, but it was still mid-afternoon. They were in their ears now, screaming with evil and desperation.

Charlie couldn't find his footing. Each piece of gravel had become another boobie trap. The car was base, but Charlie couldn't reach it.

“Grandpa, Grandpa! I can’t hear you, Grandpa!”

The boy had always been slight of hearing, and the screams weren't helping his problems.

“Grandpa, Grandpa!”

Grandpa pulled him in the car, and they sped away. In the rearview mirror, Charlie could see the birds coming closer and closer.

They formed a single flight of black.

Grandpa was sweating. His face, pale, his hands, trembling, his vision, blurred.

“Dammit, son! I told you to never, ever ever go into the basement! I told you, son! Why’d you not listen? Why’d you have to be so goddamned curious?”

Charlie heard static... Grandpa was miles away.

He could remember opening the door and then, as if the whole world had fallen out and the gates of some other place, possibly Hell, had been opened, there had been the cries of a thousand ghosts clawing their way back into the living dimension.

Charlie should have listened to Grandpa. Everyone had warned him about the basement.

His mother, long dead, had made him swear he would never open the basement door. His grandma's eyes had glazed over anytime anyone had said anything remotely similar to a cellar or hollowed space.

Apparently, the place was off-limits.

But Charlie had learned to be stubborn and never trust what others say.

Above all, Charlie wasn't a child. And he wasn't paranoid.

But just as grass is green, the birds were supernaturally surrounding the car. They flew like bullets from a gun, and set their targets on the flesh within the small metal frame.

A bird smashed the side mirror. Its innards looked like bile, and Charlie started to gag.

Grandpa put his hand on Charlie’s knee.

“It’s ok, son. Everything’s gonna be ok.”

But in his heart of hearts, Grandpa knew this was only the beginning. He had been through this.

Many years before, when he was close to Charlie’s age, his parents had bought the old, white, archetypal antebellum home and made it their own. His mother had sewn new curtains for the kitchen. His father had plowed the fields and grown his corn.

And Grandpa, then naïve, had, everyday, played in the basement.

He made up stories of ghosts and demons and all sorts of deviant spirits. It was all evil fun that had hurt no one- that is, until it became dangerous.

It happened when he was seventeen and still in high school.

He and his girlfirend, Sara, were in the basement playing one of his games. In reality, he was only trying to impress her. For some reason, she had always liked his weirdness. She said he wasn't like country people. He thought he had an edge.

Grandpa knew he was different, but he especially played it up for Sara. The evil became more evil. The dark, pitch black.

She played along, enthussiastically joining in.

“Richie, let’s conjure something,” said Sara.

Out of the tiny basement window, Richie saw a bird. “I'll make that bird show up down here,” he said.

Sara's eyes were fireworks. “Richie, you’re fool. That bird’s in the sky!"

She looked down, started pacing, and her skirt picked up loose dirt that made dust fly in Richie's face.

"Besides, that’s not what I had in mind...”

She found an old book and flipped through its pages, then slammed it shut with a finality that was deafening.

“I want to conjure something new.”

A headache started. Richie felt uneasy. “Ok, what do you have in mind?”

Sara knelt down and picked up something off the floor. “You see this?” She held it out. It was a long-dead, dried up bug.

Her cheeks turned red, and her eyes darkened. Her face contorted. Richie felt she was not the same simple, country girl.

“I want you, Richie, to make this bug alive again.”

“You serious?”

The smile never reached her eyes, but they gleamed disconnectedly from the rest of her face. She puffed, and blew the bug off her palm, towards Richie. “Do it!”

It had all been games, the darkness. Games and spells and nonsense. It had all been a joke, escapism- something to take his mind away from the house, the pasture- and back into the city.

Sometimes the wind had blown harder when Richie had focused on the breeze. He had heard voices at night, and had, on occasion, made his soul leave his body and float outside to the big oak tree.

But that had just been dreams, right? Reality wasn’t made of such things. Reality was concrete. Absolutism. Not absurd imagination.

And still, when Richie focused really hard, in the second before the bug reached his face, it was flying up again towards the window and then crazy, crazier into the pane, trying manically to escape.

The bug wouldn't stop smashing itself into the glass, and then it splattered across the tiny window and was dead again.

Sara's smile had disappeared. Her eyes glazed over. “You- you did it, Richie- how’d you do it, Richie... Whaddayu do?”

There was a bird at the window. It was screaming, beating its beak to get inside. It wanted to eat the bug.

Time stopped, leaving only Richie and the bird alive.

Everything became an outside winter's night, and Richie could see his breath. He felt death. Sickness, disease started to fill his mind as the headache swelled and he put his hands over his face and wept.

The ground shook. The packed-earth floor sent up dust. Sara looked caught in a sandstorm.

All Richie could think to do was run upstairs, but there things were no different. His mother stood in the kitchen, frozen, a knife in her hand, onions on the chopping block. In the other room, his father’s pipe smoke was held mid-air.

A whole flock of birds seemed to be scratching at the door. There were whispers everywhere.
The birds stopped.

“Richie, Richie.”

The voice was wispy and feminine, but not a woman's. It belonged to a very old, powerful man.

The door flew open. A shrunken, gray-haired, green goblin of a human being stood scowling at Richie. His eyes were narrow and pale. His nails were the blackest, most rotten claws that had ever belonged to an animal. He wore a rag that barely covered a nasty mess of greasy pubic hair. His knees were buckling, but his feet looked big enough to be a giant's.

He lept for Richie. “You did it! Did it! Woke him up, fool! Woke us all up! No time! Make the pact! He comes for us, fool! Back to life!”

Richie was confused and sobbing like a child. “I want to go home!”

“You are home, idiot! Damn stupid idiot, Richie! You came back! He knew you'd go down there... you did!”

The thing coughed up something gray and spit it on the floor. “And now, Goddamned us be all, Richie.... Already here! You not hear the birds, Richie? They form! He’s back!”

“What are you talking about?”

“The pact, Richie! It’s your choice. Choose now! The pact! The pact!”

“Grandpa, the birds!!!” They were madly pecking at the window, cracking the glass.

“It's been broken, Charlie. I did my best.” His eyes were kind, but sad all the same.

“And now, my son, we'll kill the beast for good.”

“Grandpa, I can’t hear you!”

Grandpa heard static.

“Yes, yes, my son. I know. It's for the best.”

It had to be this way. What else could he do? The birds were already forming arms and legs, and soon, the head would be there and the rest of the body, too.

Grandpa swerved left and right, side to side. The birds stuck to the car like flies to tape.

The car raced faster. Charlie became worried.

If only he hadn’t opened the door. If only he had listened to everyone else. And Grandpa was looking more intent on doing something now. Charlie could see the old man had made up his mind.

“... Only way! Can’t you see?”

“Grandpa, you’re scaring me! What're you talking about?”

“...Love you... It has to die. Never should have played with spirits. He wants to come back... It'll die with us.”

The car rolled over and over, down a pasture hill and way off the road. Charlie screamed as Grandpa prayed.

“Grandpa! Grandpa!” Charlie was knocked unconscious.

Grandpa could only cry. Tears blurred his vision. The blood spewed from Charlie's forehead.

“You have him- have me... broke the pact... but you didn't win…”

The car stopped spinning.

The world was quiet, except for the breeze. The wind kept blowing, and then it, too, stilled.

Maybe Richie and Charlie were in a better place. Nature teemed with happiness.

Did the world belong to no one- or nothing? Had Richie really saved it all?

A bird landed on the car. It yelled out, and then flew away.

"It Takes a Stranger"

2006-10-24T02:51:00.001-04:00

"Put it back on!!"

It was a sexual room. On the bed: The man, doggystyled-out, ballsack sagging in its compromised position.

Standing behind him: The dominatrix. Imagine her for yourself.

He had wanted this. His "business trip". Goodbye Helen and the kids. The ad in the paper,

"WANTED: YOU.... FOR ME- TO MAKE BEHAVE. CALL DOMI NATRIX...." and so on and so on.

Was this exactly what he had had in mind?

"PUT IT ON!!"

The mask. Now he could not see. What was she doing behind him? What was that squirting noise that sounded like a squimish old fart?

"You like this, little bitch? Yeah. You like your daddy? You know what little boys need, don't you? Yeah. Uh huh. They need a nice big spankin."

She raised the whip and down it came.

Pain. Ow. Yeah. That hurt a lot.

And another. Fucking holy shit balls goddamn.

And one more for safe measure? Yep. There it was.

"Remember that last one, bitch. Daddy's just getting started."

The fart again. It sounded like water coming out of a mustard bottle.

"I really am feeling kind of sick now. I think this might be a bad idea. It's just- you know. I have this job and my fucking wife doesn't even suck my dick anymore. And, you know- sometimes a man needs..."

"Shh... shh little boy. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here to FUCK you!!"

And then the most intense pain ever... Did he have to shit or throw up?

"WHAT THE FUCK? YOU CRAZY FUCKING BITCH!!"

She licked her lips and furrowed her brow even more. "Yeah, that's it. Let it out. Uh huh. Little boy needs a good ass pounding, don't he?"

He couldn't speak. His mind had gone to the "other place". And she was going harder, harder, harder.

"Take my seven fat inches, whore!! Take it!!"

"OW! It hurts. It hurts. Ow. Oh. Oh. Oh. Yeah. No. Ow. Yeah. Oh. Oh. OH!"

The pain had ceased to exist in the wake of what could only be described as a dick inserted into an ass- up against the prostate. As simple as that. And as true.

"Little boy's misbehaving!! No crying here, little slut!!"

She yanked out the strapon. "Turn over!!"

He complied. And then she rode him harder than he had ever been riden in his life.

"Suck my dick. Suck my dick, you fucking coward!!"

Somehow he managed to both maintain the pace and find the dildo at the same time. He shoved it in his mouth, tasting his own butt.

He sucked and fucked. And she just laughed.

"I'm cumming. Daddy!! I'm coming!!"

"Not inside me, faggot!!"

He shot all over her belly, but not up her pussy.

He could feel her soft stomach against his face.

"Lick it up!! Clean up your mess!!"

Like a shy orphan seeing a platter full of food, he started slowly and built to a foracious swelling of sexual appetite. He licked it clean. Cleaned his plate. Finished his meal.

"Ok. We are finished."

....

On the way back to the hotel, still feeling that strapon in his ass, he could only smile with fascination. Sometimes it takes a stranger to really make you realize what you want, he thought. He had some ideas for his wife.

My Poor Right Appendage

2006-08-14T13:02:00.000-04:00

Well, it started when I was about eight. I was in my Grandmother's spring, digging out mud with my father's wok (don't as), when I accidentally swung the wok back into the front of my right ankle. I remember yelling, "I took a chunk!" to my cousin, who has now later admitted to me that he thought the whole thing was funny. For some reason my choice of words made him chuckle.

Anyhoo- my father took me back to the house where he held the leg over the sink and declared that there was absolutely nothing that could be done for the wound. Stitches would not be able to be sewn because of the location, nor would there be any chance of saving the area from scarring. So it healed with the aid of peroxide and a band-aid. It still feels wierd when I touch it.

Then I was twelve years old, coming down my driveway on my bicycle. I thought something was amiss, but didn't exactly know what- until, of course, I saw my bike being flung in ragdoll directions by the big jeep, my own body being thrown away from the whole thing. I remember crawling out of the road trying to gasp, "Help, help."

Again, my dad took me up to the house, declared that I had no broken bones, elevated my legs because I was in shock, and said there was nothing that could be done.

I still can't feel the inside of my right leg.

This poor right leg. It seems like it's screaming out to me: "Cut me! Cut me off!"

Most recently I slammed my index toe into my parent's tile floor not once, but twice in the same day. The toenail turned black and has since fallen off.

Then I was at play rehearsals when a metal door slammed back into my heel, taking out about an inch of the skin. I thought I had severed my achilles tendon, but it just tingled a little bit.

And last night. This is the best, I think. I was out by my parent's being-built pool, just sitting there smoking a blunt with my cousin (the same cousin involved in whole wok incident). I went to take my dog inside, and I sliced a nice bit of my leg almost to the bone on a piece of metal rebard that is being used to stabilize concrete.

I really should have had stitches, but I am instead opting for a battle scar.

The only question is:

What will be the next harm done to this poor leg? I mean, am I going to lose a toe or something? It's really freaking me out. And furthermore: Should I like, start walking differently or something? It seems like this leg is taking the brunt of my accident-proneness.

"I Saw Red Eyes" RE-EDIT 1

2006-05-22T03:31:00.001-04:00

Three things about that night: Fear not unlike losing your stomach on a rollercoaster- and those red eyes, smirking mouth. Four. That's how old I was. And the rain. That's what was happening outside my window.

The wind was also blowing, and I am particularly aware that the face was caught in the instant of storm when the lightening flashes and for a brief second, all the world is the color of lightening itself: Bright, indescribeable bluish silver. My mother. The toys she tripped over. Her worried face. Yes. The freshness of the memory.

All it was and all it still remains.

The next day, I was a conscious human being. The world, so green. Everything about the day seemed eeriley colorful. The steps outside my house. The forests and pastures beyond my house. We went to town. I remember. Yes. I still sat in a high chair? Or on something that elevated me way over the cereal bowl. Lucky Charms. The different marshmallows.

Colors.

A few years passed. I kept the memory out of mind. School became routine. There were cartoons. My imagination formed. Thoughts were no longer unobjectified. Rationalized, the night of that awful face just couldn't have happened.

I was in the same room. It was nighttime. I remember a lamp glaring into the window, casting light onto the outside world. I was smiling and happy. I was probably giggling. I looked up and there they were again. They were looking right through me. Terrified. My rationale had failed me.

I really had seen a Devil. And there it was just as before.

I screamed and ran out the room. To my brother.

"I saw red eyes!!"

Laughter. Mocked for years.

True story.

an exercise in mental spontenaity

2006-05-05T17:26:00.000-04:00

dog
cat
carpet
piss
smells
must
always
on
fanning
flamingoes
on
the
top
bottom
scream
is good?
enough
your
cherry
ripe
syrup
shit
on
it
is
always
on.

Native American Project

2006-04-11T17:36:00.002-04:00

As a child, my father used to take my sister, brothers, and me out to a huge field to search for arrowheads. The field would be plowed up in the spring so corn and cotton could be planted. This plowing up of the Earth brought to the surface innumerable flint pieces and whole Native American artifacts. We would scour the field for hours under the hot sun, our eyes piercing the ground in squinted vision for the excited nervousness of finding a remnant of Native culture. I was very young during these excursions, and as time went on, we went less and less into the field. Eventually, as most farms have gone in the South, the land became unused, the farmers investing their time in more profitable business ventures. I grew up and the land left my memory. When I was in highschool, I started riding my bike a lot. For some reason, I thought the huge field would be a great place to ride... and it was. I found my love for Native American culture again. From this time on I have been fascinated with the Native American. From working on archaelogical digs, to being interviewed by CNN in highschool for my efforts with Native Americanism, to going out West to the Navajo Reservations and Crazy Horse National Monument--- the legacy of the Native has been forever etched in my mind. It is from the walks with my father that this love for their culture has come about. I am forever grateful to him for wanting to share his love of the Indigenous American with me.

I am currently taking an anthropology class. At the beginning of the semester, we were told to present a cultural artifact. A cultural artifact is a physical specimen that is signifigant to a certain group of people. From the car, to the telephone--- to the CD: All are cultural artifacts. Although these items pertain not just to one culture, but to most all cultures- their relevance known by almost all human beings, they are still artifacts.

I decided to dig a little deeper and present a cultural artifact from the Native American. Gathering the resources from my early childhood (arrowheads, hoes, a soapstone bowl), I chronologically ordered the specimens with the help of my brother (an archaeologist) and then made a powerpoint presentation. I also included in my discussion of the artifact an overview of New Echota, the capitol of Cherokee civilization in Gordon County, GA.

The oldest artifact dated back to 6000 BC. When my brother told me this (he knew from the size of the arrowhead, the base of the arrowhead, the oxidation on the arrowhead: Indicative of years of exposure to the elements), I was really kind of shocked. I had no idea that my arrowhead was so old. The other artifacts were from later time periods... the most recent dating to about 1500 CE. After I examined the Cherokee culture (it is important to note that the Cherokees who were kicked out of New Echota and made to walk the Trail of Tears were Christians... so white, European bias was not solely based on their cultural customs) ... I came to this conclusion based on the ordering of my specimens:

Before I studied the Natives of North Georgia, I was thinking of them as only a--- homogenous people. I didn't think of their rich history, of their migration and domination of different cultures at different times, or of what their legacy means to me. I was prejudiced and racist to a group of people I loved so much.

Now I realize that the Native American was much more than headdresses and tobacco--- and their history can not be recorded simply by the arrival of the Spanish in 1540 and what they observed. Indigenous American history goes back for THOUSANDS of years... and all of that history is now lost. What we can now view are scraps they left behind: Arrowheads used for cutting their leather... or hoes used for tending their crops. But what we can't observe is their interactions, their customs, their faces. This saddens me most. I can only speculate what we could have learned from them.

If something of their culture can be imprinted on me--- if I can learn something from them, it is that through viewing other cultures, races through unbiased, unprejudiced eyes can we ever truly start to form a true human race. When we subgroup people and niche people, we strip them of their dignity and soul--- we alienate them from ourselves--- we lessen them and they become ghosts... And that is truly sad, for we lose what information they could have taught us to make us better able to not only understand the human as a whole, but the human as an individual.