Midweek In Lieu Of More Imaginative Title

It’s so cheesy 

cheesy like the orange fingers 

on a dateless wonder

but if I call you brother 

I mean it 

desperately 

like a cardboard sign SOS 

spotted on a freeway off-ramp.

In the night 

when the breeze is gentle 

can I tell ya how terribly strange 

this all is to me? 

can I tell ya how scared I was 

trippin’ on shrooms and that it was your 

voice that brought me back? 

Will ya come to me in the midnight hour 

with the knots you can’t untie? Will ya? 

Unknown

I’ve only been doing this thing for a week. Somehow it feels longer than that. 

I feel like an itch has been scratched. I feel like I ain’t got no itches to scratch today. None. Is that a sign of trouble? 

I guess boredom, shit. No. This isn’t boredom. I don’t know what this is. I swear I’ve been aware of a keener sense of myself lately. No matter how keen your sense gets, you still find that your sense isn’t all the way calibrated. There are uncharted waters within you. 

Maybe this is just being chill. Maybe this is how most people are. 

There is another state of being I sometimes find myself in though it is rare. This is the state of being unfuckwittable. I’ll try and describe that to you some other day because right now there is no fucking way I’m going to be able to do that justice. 

I can’t do most things justice. 

I wasn’t even going to try this today. I was just going to leave it but that seemed like a bad idea. 

I sit here at my desk. Daily Mix 3 playlist from Spotify is blaring and I keep hitting repeat on a particular song. I don’t know why. Not in Love by Crystal Castles. Sometimes I kinda nod my head to it and sometimes I low-key white boy dance to it. The words don’t really speak to me. I can’t really speak to the beat or the musical qualities of this composition because I’m laughably unqualified. 

I find myself thinking of ending montages in TV episodes. Ya know, shots of the characters with little or no dialogue in the closing minutes of the episode as some song plays. 

Yeah. That’s it. Drive safe. 

I sorta tried. Sorta. 

My desire is to become better at writing. Why? My sense is that it could lead me to a more fulfilling life. My standard answer to the question, “Why write?” has been that I find it satisfying but it’s more than that. As a human being, my desire is to lead a fulfilling life. In fact, that might be the thing that I want more than anything you care to name. I don’t think it will lead me to anything like financial security though. Financial security is elusive. There is tension there. This world is a bitch to live in like that. Everything is so god damn expensive. This shimmering dream of a world that might really be a nightmare has us all running ragged for a collection of dead Presidents that is just big enough to make it through another day. 

This is gonna sound like bullshit but I also connect my writing to the struggle for justice. Writing is a vehicle for conveying truth. Words can bridge the gap between human beings who are profoundly alienated by the endless chasing of nickels and dimes. People who work jobs that leave them bleary-eyed and bored and angry need to know they aren’t alone. Maybe I can reach out and touch a few who are on the same frequency. Maybe I’m not even qualified to do that but I figure that I’ve got to try. Why the fuck not? 

I get the sense that I’ve got to challenge myself. I gotta try and write something that takes some effort. I was thinking an essay of some kind. I’ve got to give it some thought. I don’t know that I can pull it off and maybe I can’t. I might learn something from trying. 

If this reads like inspiration porn, I apologize. I hate that shit. 

I lay in a semi-dark room and listen to Hulk Hogan's old walk-in theme "Real American."

This song is America.

"I am a real American. Fight for the rights of every man. I am a real American. Fight for what's right. Fight for your life."

If only.

I also scroll through the normie politics subreddit and people are wondering if we are one violent incident away from this country exploding like a Roman candle.

I see it.

Everything is so sinister and mean.

Sloop John B plays in my ear.

"This is worst trip I've ever been on."

We're on that trip, America.

In some kinda half-asleep state some time this morning or last night, it occurred to me that life is a trip. Yeah, I mean trip in a similar sense to a trip one might take on psilocybin mushrooms or LSD. Life is the trip. It's all a trip. That sounds like utter bullshit but I mean it. I'm being completely sincere here.

I knew at some point I would touch on my exepriences with psychedelic compounds. I just didn't really know it would be today. I am not a veteran psychonaut by any stretch of the imagination and it's not something I ever thought I'd do. If you told me a decade ago that I would develop an interest in psychedelics, I would have thought you were quite insane. My experience at this current time has been exclusively with psilocybin mushrooms which are popularly known as "magic mushrooms."

The first thing I became aware of even at relatively low doses of psilocybin was my personality coming apart. Basically, I would become aware of all the parts that make up me. All of these parts are distinct.

There is a part of me that freaks out almost instantly and is basically a slave to fear. I was acutely aware of the sound of this part's voice, its presence.

There is another part that is calm, analytical. It speaks in soothing tones. It's wise. It says, "Hey. You're just tripping, dog. It's okay."

There is yet another part that is suave, ultrasexual and rarely seen by anyone really.

I can also recall being aware of the words I was saying internally being audible as a whisper in my head or something similar.

It's almost a given that I'm going to cry during a trip. I don't mind this much.

Visual hallucinations really don't intrigue me that much. It's about the thoughts that come to me.

I'm barely scratching the surface here.

I'm typing this on my phone at work. I'm trying to not look as idle as I actually am. I'm playing the part of the dutiful employee. In less than an hour, I plan on sneaking out of here. There isn't jack shit anyone can do about it.

I managed to get an appointment scheduled with a therapist on Monday.

I guesss I'll end on that note.

Been kind of a brutal weekend for me. 

Didn’t know that I was going to be dealing with a sick dog. All of that wrecked me. Think I got my cry quota done for the next week. 

I’m exhausted. I feel beat up. 

I’d take a hug or two.

That dog is hanging in though. She is this adorable thing but god damn, she’s tough. 

I think I’m way too up in my feelings right now. 

I’ll get back to you. 

It really was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but that reflection I did on Alex Vitale’s The End of Policing was satisfying to me to write. It was scribbled out at work during downtime with a black ballpoint pen on a legal pad that I had swiped at one point to write work related notes on. There was a time where I used to hand write pretty much everything. There was just something about the feeling of moving a pen on the page. There was something about looking at the words I had formed with my own hand and smelling the ink from the pen on the page. That’s part of the writing process that I definitely miss. For some writing, I’m definitely going to return to the pen and paper. 

Sometimes inspiration does hit you. That can be a beautiful thing. It really can be. It arguably hit me at least twice last night. Inspiration can be like love. Love. Sweet love. Dirty love. Dangerous love. Sometimes it can take you to places that you really didn’t plan on going. Sometimes it can take you fucking nowhere at all. 

What the fuck do I call this?

If you know where the dream ends, you’re being watched. 

If you can find the seams, the stuff you jerk off to that you don’t tell anyone about is being written down by a government agent who is slowly falling in love with you. 

You make the nipples of their soul hard enough to cut diamonds. 

I clear my throat, “Look. This is bullshit. See, the beginning of wisdom is being able to tell where the dream ends while at higher frequencies. If you can do that, shit will be less scary.” 

See. There were moments here. Undeniably. Some of it was bullshit. Maybe most of it was bullshit but some of it was not a dream. Sometimes I heard right. Sometimes I heard just right. 

That song I know. That I heard somewhere. One time. 

Yo man. I don’t know how I feel about that song thing, man. 

This is garbage, isn’t it? 

Maybe. There were moments though. 

There were moments you thought I kinda had it. 

Maybe. 

Maybe. 

Maybe. 

The audacity. 

to try to utter the unutterable. 

Holy shit, I better stay in my lane, right? 

The crowd builds messiahs. 

Nobody is insane enough to believe that about themselves unless they are high 24/7. 

I don’t gotta worry about that though. 

I’m not that good. 

This though. 

This is courage. 

If you tried. Fuck. That’s cheesy. Good night. You know what I’m getting at though, right? 

Seriously though. Good night. 

I’m tryin’ to try

but if I die

I’m like, “Okay. Yeah.”

Sunday afternoons are a bad trip

without a sitter

without a map

without old men with kind eyes

who tell you exactly where the fuck you are

and how to get back home.

The Grand Motherfuckin’ Conspiracy.

I’ve always kept one eye on the conspiracy theories that were en vogue. It’s just something that I’ve always done. I suppose you can learn a lot about reality by examining alternative interpretations of it. That’s basically what a conspiracy theory is. It’s an alternative explanation of reality that’s not endorsed by The Powers That Be. 

I have a lot of feelings about conspiracy theories. Complex feelings. On the one hand, they can make people feel dis-empowered. If Queen Bey, Jay-Z and the rest of the Illuminati elite have everything locked up that tight, what kinda hope does the average Joe have? I do believe that there is a grand overarching conspiracy by powerful individuals to keep things pretty much the way they are. I believe that The Powers That Be only want you smart enough to fill out the forms and push the buttons. They don’t want you schooled in critical thinking. They don’t want you to have the time to think. They want you to come home all bleary-eyed and ready to turn on the TV. The last thing they really want you doing is thinking about your situation. If people really start thinking, the whole system will fucking fall apart at the seams and there offspring will have to take that job at McDonald’s. 

One of the big names in American conspiracy theory has been Alex Jones. He’s a Texan with leather lungs who has been preaching on the radio since at least some time in the 90s. He warned about government overreach. He ranted hysterically about RFID tags paving the way for the Mark of the Beast. He’d be nearly in tears talking about CPS (Child Protective Services) being some kind of stealth pedophile ring. He was the prophet Ezekiel for American paleoconservatives who waged their own “infowar” on the Internet. 

I remember that old milieu. It wasn’t that long ago. I can remember these YouTube channels run by upstarts that were inspired by Alex Jones. They shared dispatches from the rising police state from their own neck of the woods. Maybe their local police department bought up a bunch of military surplus equipment. Maybe they noticed listings on an Internet job board for military detention specialists and they connected the dots to a possible internment of American dissidents that was just around the corner. I remember sitting up at late at night, sipping on orange soda like Kel and watching these grainy YouTube videos of possible camp locations. Imposing, empty structures behind razor wire. Huge train cars. It was speculated that the train cars were fitted with shackles for the transport of prisoners. Yep. The FEMA camps was comin’. They would be filled with patriotic American citizens who would not go along with the Luciferian, globalist New World Order death machine that was run by bankers who wanted to merge with machines and become immortal beings of light or some shit like that. 

What became of Alex Jones? Well, that’s a funny story. You see, at some point, he came to the conclusion that the only hope for America against a bloodthirsty, pedophilic, globalist conspiracy was Donald J. Trump. Trump was America’s last best hope. Jones-y always had a problem with torture yet Trump declared on stage that he loved water boarding. Jones-y railed against power hungry cops that beat the shit outta citizens. Trump joked about police brutality on stage in front of an audience of pigs who fucking loved it and yes, they are pigs. If you have a problem with that, you can go fuck yourself. 

The FEMA camps never came. That shit got especially intense under President Obama. Of course, we are now seeing people get rounded up and Trump presides over it. The Infowarriors and their YouTube channels are silent however. Many of their channels sit abandoned and those that do not have taken up the banner of Donald J. Trump, the golden-haired warrior who is making America Great Again. See, it doesn’t much matter that people are being rounded up because the people being rounded up have dark skin, they don’t speak English and they are not American citizens. 

It’s only an outrage if it happens to white folks. White pain is the only pain that matters to motherfuckers like Alex Jones. 

You’ve got no idea how surreal it is for me to see Alex Jones carrying water for a sitting American President. It’s incredibly difficult to appreciate if you’ve not followed the man’s career. In his mind, pretty much every President that came before Trump was working for them. They were in on the plot but somehow this fat, loud-mouthed septuagenarian ex-game show host who got his kicks walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants isn’t. Somehow he has been sent by God or some shit. 

The reality we live in is truly strange. As I go about the drudgery of my day, I sometimes pinch myself and wonder if the Almighty dropped acid at some point and this just happens to be his bad trip.