Gopher - Issue 28

WRITINGS FROM THE RODENTS OF THE UNDERGROUND
VOLUME 3, ISSUE NUMBER 28
© 2001 by Rewired and the Gopher Society. All rights reserved.
E-mail editor at: rewired@trianglepants.com
web: http://www.trianglepants.com/gopher
(For the Non-Brainers: The opinions of any one individual in this zine
are not necessarily the opinions of any other individual in this zine.)
Lady Luck is a [see you, auntie].

-Editor-
rewired

-Spelling, Grammatical Correcting-
cibman

-HTML Conversion, High Powered Ultra Slacking-
mister g

-mental abrasions brought to you by-
The Disease Plaguing the Human Condition.

-ATTENTION!!!-
Members of the Land of the Meek, Home of the Slaves!
Uncle Sam wants YOU to sell your soul to the Machine –
he wants YOU to be his high-order drone!
Lack the money for college?
Are you poor due to rising gas prices?
Have the desire to do something mindless and extreme in your life?
Do you desire to learn a second language composed of nothing but mind-boggling acronyms?
Are you a sociopath looking for a good outlet?
Join our inane Military!!!
So many other lost souls are doing the same (and who wants to be different?!?!?!)!
There’s an array of choices:
Army, Navy, Marines, Reserves, FBI, CIA, MJ-12, Air Force, CFR,
and probably a couple of factions not known about at the so-called highest levels of power!
JOIN NOW!
UNCLE SAM WANTS YOUR SOUL!
[This message brought to you by a lowly civilian e-zine editor
sick of watching his friends get sucked into the Military Vacuum]

-Recent Realization-
The bathroom is a recurring symbol in both
my dream and waking life.
What could it symbolize?
Flushing the shit away?

-a fucking goddamned moment on censorship, dammit-
Remember, it's not fucking nice to use any goddamn swear words. That shitty language is reserved for people who want to fucking express themselves. For these goddamned individuals, swearing can be a very fucking healthy thing. Words like fuck and shit are words of power, and are used to express a shitload of fucking feelings that need to be emphasized, goddamn it. So go with it, if you haven’t fucking lost yourself.

-Bad Joke-
What do you get when you cross an Atheist with a Jehovah’s Witness?
Someone who knocks on your door for no reason.
(Shut up. I though it was funny).

-Dedication-
To Bob, the self-proclaimed Alcoholic
and arcane pseudo-philosopher and mechanic
and mental terrorist and edacious vomitter,
for escaping even metaphorical death.
I, for one, am glad you are still with us,
and not working for the enemy.
And here’s to being all you can be –
your own fucking way.

-and though I am not an alcoholic, I found this rather funny thing on a site-
TOP 10 REASONS BEER IS BETTER THAN JESUS
10. No one will kill you for not drinking Beer.
9. Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.
8. Beer has never caused a major war.
7. They don't force Beer on minors who can't think for themselves.
6. When you have a Beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.
5. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured over his brand of Beer.
4. You don't have to wait 2000+ years for a second Beer.
3. There are laws saying Beer labels can't lie to you.
2. You can prove you have a Beer.
1. If you've devoted your life to Beer, there are groups to help you stop.

-Sentient Bipedal Life Forms that Wrote Stuff for Us-
big bad jane
beka
yustin
isis (brainlessly called `issa’ by me in past issues)
mood
star-gazing dreamer
me
3i
Nightfall

-What the Life Forms Wrote-

editoriallairotide	by Rewired
Letters to Rewired	the Readers
To All the Friends	by Big Bad Jane
Sparklers in the Dark	by Beka
Am I Who You Think I Am?	by Yustin
My MTV Needs an Enema	by Rewired
Apprehend - 5 Synonyms from Therapy	by the Horde
On Free Will	by John Weaver
Untitled	by Beka
As Is Usual	by Isis
Piteous Me	by Beka
Spinor	by Rewired
Fear of Losing my Mom	by Mood
Untitled	by Beka
The Road	by ME
Who am I?	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
You Ask Me	by Rewired
Untitled 2	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
The Complexities in Karma	by Rewired
Untitled	by Yustin
The Sand, Man	by Isis
The Dream	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
Final Revenge	by ?
The Last Memory	by Rewired
A Blue Sky	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
A Fight for Custody	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
Storm of the Stoned	by 3i
Fragments of Memory	by Star-Gazing Dreamer
Stepping Off	by Isis
Brains4zombies.com or The Insanity has Returned!	by Nightfall
Friend Store	by Isis
Confessions, or Two Cigarettes and the Meaning of Life	by Rewired

editoriallairotide
by Rewired
Saturday, April 14, 2001
3:13am

"Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it."
-- Alfred Alder.

It’s been a wild last two months – but mostly just interior shifting and subjective thunderstorms. Not all that much has changed in my external life: same job, same friends, same enemies. There were, however, a few interesting things that occurred – almost got with another girl, but circumstances got as they always do, plus the annoying synchronistic fact that she is joining a branch of the military as soon as she graduates high school. I did, however, get the chance to get off my procrastinating ass and put together this issue of the rodent. I think it’s a good quality heap of material, and you should read some of it – better yet, read it from start to finish rather than merely passing over the articles and poems and reading the quotes. Shame, shame, SGD.

On a personal note, which is always long and drawn out, there is something very strange going on in my life – but I’ve taken some time to focus on my reactions to things, which may pave the way towards the revelation as to what the cause of my problems are. The reactions aren’t strange to anyone; everyone, to a certain degree, has them. Specifically, I speak of the negative emotional reactions we have – the ones that perhaps drive the intellect we have and actions we make, often without our conscious consent. As much as we hate these feelings, we cannot seem to override them. Sometimes, for better or for worse, we cannot seem to control them. Fear, for instance.

Fear is a cramping force, which once its reached its peak one loses all sense of caring and plunges into depression. Inevitably, if this source of fear and depression persist and cannot be overcome or avoided; the result is anger. One might take anger to be a force of release, but it isn’t, really – it only feeds itself into rage until one finds himself punching walls, computer keyboards and monitors, boxes, throwing stereos out the window, beating up a pillow, swearing, screaming on the way home from work in the car until your throat feels as if it’s about to split, vivid stories involving death and decapitation (once suggested to me by a social worker when I was younger), until we finally begin waging a war against the actual source of the fear, depression, anger and rage. We recognize that it isn’t so much the person, place, thing, organization, ideology or social order exactly, but something that it contains or represents; as if the enemy is somewhere in the unseen midst of some parallel universe or plane of existence and it has multiple manifestations. Ever more often, we try to initially reject, but later come to force ourselves to face the possibility that the enemy actually originates within us, and we’ve rejected that portion of ourselves and stuffed it down somewhere, and force all our negative feelings on those people, places, situations or things that seems to share likeness to that hidden, rejected beast hiding past the threshold of our self-awareness. We take this further, realizing that if our enemies are defined as such by ourselves because they represent a repressed portion of our own psyches, that our battles with them, our facing of them, is a representation – or a replacement? – of the battle with the corresponding aspects of ourselves.

Defeating them kills nothing. Running from them doesn’t accomplish a damned thing either. Still it’s lurking; you see the monster hiding behind other masks, other faces and other institutions. Is this because you’ve realized the disease is outside of you? Is this some sick enlightenment, and seeing manifestations of the monster again and again forces you to believe in its existence in man? Or is it the monster hiding within, projecting those feelings away from you and pinning it on others who have just the least bit of likeness to it? As the equivalent to a Western Shaman-in-the-making said to me once before he ridded me of a horrid psychic parasite that had been plaguing me for five years: Is seeing believing, or is believing seeing? Is the disease in the collective of mankind, or does it stem specifically from oneself? Is this a battle for personal freedom and understanding, or is it a mere distraction for oneself put up by oneself to keep oneself from the actual truth – a conspiracy by the Self and for the self? It’s hard to find answers and to fight the battle when one isn’t entirely certain in which world the battlefield has it’s proper place. One isn’t certain of the answers to the most important of questions, specifically Where, What, Why, or even Who the enemy truly is. It would be ironic to finally spot the enemy in true and absolute form and to finally bite the bullet, cock the gun and fire at the sick sonuvabitch –
-- only to watch the mirror crack.

To: rewired@trianglepants.com
Subject: are u dead?
Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 16:41:59 -0700 (PDT)

Tim-
P____ and i were just contemplating your sudden absence from the face of the earth, and we reached the disturbing conclusion that you have been picked up by the feds (i.e., the little people who don't let u drink pucker. them sadistic bastards....) If u need help, press 1,followed by the # key. If you just don't wanna talk to some stupid schmucks like us, press 2,followed by fucking yourself. If u're just too drunk to type and have become a raging alcoholic and/or heroine addict don't come to us for money to support your habit we're both about as broke as a pimpled face pickle farmer. That’s poor.
Anyway i just thought i'd let u know i've escaped the grip the enemy and have returned to sunshiny Ohio, home of the giant buckeye that gives $5 lap dances to conspiracy theorists who sit up all night dinking coffee, smoking, eating ritz crackers, and bitching about the state of the world to anyone who'll listen.(that's right, Tim only $5!!! supplies are limited so call now!!)
Man, this email is even scaring me!
Oh, well, i won't be the one receiving it anyways, if u're still alive and/or able to send email, drop us a line. because the shortest distance between two points may not be a straight line, but fuck it looks reasonable next to warping the space time continuum just to use the shitter .(man, i'm nuts)
….
Anyway hope to see u and discuss a few ideas i've been considering...like mass prostitution of
radioactive sheep. i can get a flock real cheap good shit too! they moan with both heads.
enough of this insane rambling. write back, goddammit, or i'll go rescue u're ass from the pentagon wouldn't want me to look stupid wandering around the pentagon with your picture asking if anyone there has seen u, now would u?
This is the R_____ brothers signing off.
over and out.

[Contrary to popular belief, I have not been picked up by the feds so far as I consciously recall – but I don’t consciously recall all that much that the masses of people I know all-to-often regard as of utmost importance, which is why I never seem to call anyone or e-mail them. Though the government has been hijacking a vast number of my friends – through these so-called recruiters – I will not work for the enemy. And since when are lap dances only five dollars? These places have a name? Haven’t been to a meat show in awhile. I’m in the mood for some reasonable torture. I shall cease commentary on the sheep; I am not that tired as of yet and I do not wish to be overwhelmingly disgusting.]

To all the friends I’ve loved before. I do love you. I think. I did. Maybe I do or did or something like that. When the world asks, “ Are you sure?” What do you say? Do you say yes with no delay or do you drag your feet on the answer. Is anybody ever really sure? I am never sure. I double guess my self until it’s too late to change my mind and then I double guess myself again. I don’t have too much trouble following through the first time but that doesn’t stop me from rethinking the situation afterwards. Of course if I decide that I have done wrong and need to start again or change something I do not recap right away because to me, that would mean that I was wrong, and I hate being wrong. Choosing a second time also requires me to have faith in my second choice. I had a hard time deciding the first time… how hard do you think it is for me not to double guess the changes that for a moment I was nearly certain needed to be made. Never mind changes to the changes. And then changes on top of that. Unfortunately for me change is what life and the world is all about. Nobody is ever truly certain. Everybody is allowed to change their mind. Still, I am full of doubt. I think I might be overflowing with it. I’ll decide and get back to you on it. Meanwhile my life is put on hold until I know how I am going to control something not even in my reach.

Sparklers in the dark.
barefoot on manicured greens.
freshly raked sand pits are beckoning.
I could never seem to resist a half crazy fling...
...at least not with him anyway

Darkest waves are lapping .
unseen at our feet.
I talked forever it seemed, words flowing endlessly.
blown away by a breeze and their gone but he always listened
and that meant everything...
...at least to me it did anyway

Night air seemed to ring with laughter.
my head was just ringing.

I am knocking at your door; I am chanting "nevermore," I am running through the glade. I am the night air around you, I am the problems that confound you, I am pain and love. I am all; I am nothing. Oh, if only I knew what I am, it would be such a joyous day! Alas, it is not to be so. I am ne'er to know what I am or from whence I arise. It is impossible to know such things.
Every morning I get up; every morning, I don a new mask. I do not do this intentionally, mind you, it is just habit. There are many things that happen in all of our lives, most of which are beyond our control. All of these things mold us, shaping us into the beings that we become as young adults, and adults. There is nothing really that we can do about it. I think Socrates put it best when he said, "Wherever you go, there you are." This is the simple truth. No matter what we do, we will still be ourselves. The self that we are, however, is subject to change (void where prohibited.) It may change once or twice in a lifetime, or from minute to minute. It depends largely upon what is going on in one's life.

I want my MTV – more specifically, I want my MTV to start playing music videos.

MTV, as I recall hearing somewhere, stands for `Music Television.' I was under the impression that the station was initially created for the purposes of displaying certain sequences of images, usually choppy, fleeting ones in black and white, as a visual depiction of their background music -- the music that could be found on the tapes, CDs, and other such audio recordings that these videos were promoting. The sequence of visual images played to this music was referred to as a music video, and MTV was created for the purposes of playing these music videos (hence the name, `music television'). I find this mighty strange. The reason is, of course, is that they DON'T SEEM TO LIKE PLAYING VIDEOS ANYMORE.
Most of the time when I sit down to put the damned station on I find it void of videos. Instead, they have borderline-porno sitcoms, complete with floozy women and brainless men engaged in obviously fictitious often sexual /relationships played by unspeakably bad actors to horribly written scripts. Worse yet, or a close runner up are the extremely bad shows that follow the footsteps of a bad movie (yes, I'm talking about Blair Witch) such as this show ‘fear’ they're playing now. Or poorly drawn cartoons that play out themes that have been consistent in TV sitcoms for the last thirty to forty years mixed in with the modern lingo and some dreadfully annoying voices. Or stupid `teen-bop' programs hosted by thirty year old men who, regardless of their age, seem to have yet to hit puberty, with audiences full of pre-teen post-adolescent girls drooling over the latest fad as the `top ten' favorite videos of these young teen-bopping girls are played. Rarely do they play a wide variety of videos without such cheesiness anymore. Even us insomniacs must suffer -- for, although these shows and top-ten things were obviously made for young girls whose bed-times aren't past eleven, they still play these brainless shows and no videos. The videos are nearly gone and have to suffer at the hands of stupid shows orchestrated by idiots for younger idiots because the specific idiocy is the current, and most popular brand of idiocy.

And what's with these fucking idiotic shows like `the real world' and `road rules'? What the hell is going on -- I thought MTV a bit creative for a while, interesting, even independent in the fact that it played short videos to good songs, but now they seem intent on making shows? Even more, they are at such a loss for a concept, in such a need of a script and some good actors, that they actually decided to hire idiots with cameras to follow around a few other hired idiots and observe how they live together -- no scripts, no plot, just a bunch of assholes interacting. Now this stupid Survivor thing -- no doubt inspired by MTV's lame idea -- is starting the new trend of stupidity. Fucking idiots. There going to be just like all the other channels now. They used to have the courage to actually play videos, now they go with the main flow and play their little fucking shows.

*Note: Misspellings have been left in intentionally, names have been altered to respective pseudonyms.*

apprehend- 5 synonyms away
Author: Cibman (---.STUDENT.CWRU.Edu)
Date: 04-03-01 08:23

Hey Rewired.. I'm thinking I might go telephone pole hunting this weekend. Interested in coming? If so.. bring some rope I might need it.

Reply To This Message
Re: apprehend- 5 synonyms away
Author: Mister G (---.cs.wright.edu)
Date: 04-03-01 18:01

and what do ye be needing wit a telephone pole, then?

Reply To This Message
Re: apprehend- 5 synonyms away
Author: DTPG (---.lightstream.net)
Date: 04-03-01 21:29

we can cook them and eat them. YUM.

Reply To This Message
Re: apprehend- 5 synonyms away
Author: Cibman (---.STUDENT.CWRU.Edu)
Date: 04-03-01 21:44

It's a reference only Rewired should get.. but I figured I'd put up something cryptic to see what sort of feedback it'll generate.

Reply To This Message
Re: apprehend- 5 synonyms away
Author: rewiiired (---.alltel.net)
Date: 04-03-01 23:35

Answer: No.

Response: None currently available. Head presently up ass.

Thoughts:

Of all human emotions, guilt has got to be the most overwhelming. It attacks you from every angle, blocks thought and disallows you from enjoying anything until it's had it's way with you. And it takes it's time having it's way with you. You look in the mirror and see a fool, a fuck-up, a heartless idiot who cares for nothing but himself and his own various forms of gratification. The paranoia that comes with guilt only amplifies it. Wondering what the others are thinking, what the others are saying, and, most of all, what the others are feeling...
Though it's horrid when the guilt stems from the knowledge that you have done wrong, it is far worse when others have that unspoken agreement with you: yes, you are a heartless fool. You can almost see it in their eyes. Especially when, on various occasions, you've left your closest friends wondering just what kind of person you are, and whether you really deserve the title of friend at all.
For the person bearing these feelings of intense guilt, he often wonders why, after repeated experiences of a certain type, he still continues to pursue such desructive paths when it always ends up leaving him feeling the saem way. Is he trying to master an emotion? Overcome a feeling? Rip apart a situation to better understand it, it's nature, it's implications, it's causes, it's effects? He, too, is left in a sort of confusion, that doesn't pass as an excuse, or even a reason, but an admittence of his own ignorance toward his own internal motivations, insticts, social strategies and manipulations.
Is morality truly a personal system used to interpret and dictate the actions or inactions of the person in question -- or do we all live in a world where there is a definate, solid bold line that exists between what is right and what is wrong?

Response Now that Head Has Escaped Ass Temporarily: I am a fucking idiot.

Reply To This Message
Re: apprehend- 5 synonyms away
Author: Mister G (---.NIPR.MIL)
Date: 04-04-01 05:59

what did you do this time, rewired? did you get someone pregnant?

Reply To This Message
Re: apprehend- 5 synonyms away
Author: Cibman (---.STUDENT.CWRU.Edu)
Date: 04-04-01 13:31

I'm not really sure what to say here Rewired.. I'm not really sure this applies to the situation that I had in mind.. I don't really see guilt as being a big part of it. Perhaps you were commenting on something of your own situation.. I could see the second paragraph especially as potentially applying to how you could have seen yourself in the instance back when we didn't see eye to eye.. I'd say that even more so that guilt, confusion can be more overwhelming to the mind. With guilt you run through things over and over but the scenario stays the same.. eventually it runs itself into the ground. Confusion, or perhaps a better word might be misunderstanding, however leaves you wondering.. did this mean this, or that, or the other thing.. The mind strives to make sense of things that aren't matching up with what it had expected to find. In my instance here for example did it have to do with drunkeness.. anger.. trying to provoke some reaction.. attempt to avoid a situation.. or simply a neglect to realize that there was any issue whatsoever. Also it could be a combination or none of them, or something not yet realized which keeps you guessing even more. In other words I think it has more to do with what you were talking about with the end of your first paragraph.

Now to try to analyze why someone might lead themself down such a path of confusion.. I think your discussion on that matter was pretty on target in terms of how I've been looking at the situation. I think that a lot of it also has to do with hope.. Hope that one time I'll try the path and it won't lead to destruction or hurt feelings etc.. The cause for that hope being the knowledge of what sort of wonderful things that the path can lead to should it be open up to you.. I hope this isn't becoming to great of a sexual enuendo because that isn't really what I intended..Also is the knowledge gained by the pain endured; as I told you before "It's all about the Juliana Hatfield.. a heart that hurts is a heart that works"

So what does this have to do with morality? I'm not really sure. I don't think there is a right way to tackle some forms of confusion. I've found that asking questions to try to clear up confusions often leads to only more confusion and misunderstandings. The more fuss that is made about something, the further you can get from the goal that's trying to be obtained. Individuals are often apprehensive about talking how they feel about things for fear of not being accepted among other reasons. The more you try to push for information the further the person you're pushing will push you away. Especially in relationships if the happy balance between in depth emotional topics and day to day friendship talk doesn't reach the right equilibrium it can create discomfort and communication breakdown between the two people. I believe this makes the challenge of trying to start back up a relationship far more difficult. The reason being that there's normally one person who wants to plow ahead and get through all of the relationship status and expectation type details so that whatever the new relationship is, it won't be ambiguous and worries about stepping over certain lines will minimal, and the other person who's not sure what they want from the new relationship and wants to take it as it goes seeing where things lead. Eventually these two viewpoints tend to clash when the person who wants to take things as they go gets annoyed by the other's questions for which there are no definite.. or perhaps only vague answers..

So the goal of the questioner becomes in how to phrase questions to be non-assumptive, open ended, and non threatening. I personally.. being of the blunt nature that I am can find this difficult to do, and in ways sort of manipulative; like it's a game I'm playing with letting be known how much is on my mind. Yet I still find myself playing the game for fear of rejection based on a person's defensive reaction toward my inquisitive assault.

Anyhow.. what does this have to do with hunting telephone poles? Hunting telephone poles is the forcible metal switching of your mind from worrying about a situation. I can make you laugh at your silliness for spending so much time looking for answers that you know you'll never get answered. Hunting telephone poles is reminding yourself you're still alive, that you're still human. It gives back perspective on what it's like to be hurt and that there's always a way of dealing with pain.

By the way apprehend is 5 synonyms away from the word therapy.

Reply To This Message
Re: apprehend- 5 synonyms away
Author: Mister G (---.NIPR.MIL)
Date: 04-04-01 13:47

and now.... let me triavialize all of this - hoo boy, you guys shure have a lot of time on yer hand to philosomize over junk... but then again, that's why this is here :)

Reply To This Message
ACK!
Author: steen (---.musiclib.wright.edu)
Date: 04-05-01 13:49

Hey , can you guys not write so much.
I'm not supposed to read for long periods of time, it just might stimulate thinking. Ah well, back to my cartoons.
have a double-plus good day!

Reply To This Message
Re: ACK!
Author: rewiiired (---.alltel.net)
Date: 04-05-01 21:55

If you don't stimulate thought, you fall into a belief; when you fall into a belief, you stop questioning that aspect of existence; when you stop questioning that aspect of existence, your brain becomes vegatable. You're not a vegatable. You must stimulate thought.

Reply To This Message
Re: ACK!
Author: rewiiired (---.alltel.net)
Date: 04-05-01 21:57

And cartoons are evil. Especially Anime.
But to avoid hypocracy, I can't be certain that I'm correct.

Reply To This Message
Re: ACK!
Author: Mister G (---.NIPR.MIL)
Date: 04-06-01 06:30

ooh , yer itching fer a fight, mister... Someone around here is way into Dragonball, so beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee careful!

Reply To This Message
Re: ACK!
Author: nightstar (---.AKRN.splitrock.net)
Date: 04-06-01 20:04

sorry Mr. G, i agree with rewired on this one...

Reply To This Message
MOO.
Author: rewiiired (---.alltel.net)
Date: 04-07-01 04:34

Yo G: Dragonball? I no understand word. Anime movie, perhaps? If so, sorry... the cartoons are goffy, though; the voices don't match up to the mouths, and my friends spend a lot of time putting me in front of their TV as Anime was playing and making me curl into a tight ball. And then they tried to burn holes through my head with their eyeballs. That hurt my head. (All you -- cry for me). But I am just not big into watching cartoons; I just like drawing them...

And Cibman: I have a response, and I actually set aside a night to do it, but it's about five pages and I figured I'd do a good job and e-mail it to you. I got carried away, but it's a list of observations, theories, and feelings towards relationships in general that I think may apply well to what you've been pondering; I also would like your input, and I'd like to get feedback while your brain is still in this particular and crucial gear. Some of it may be board material; but I think the length makes it a bit much, and some stuff is a bit personal. Just so you don't think I'm turning my back on your words... to the contrary...

Reply To This Message
Re: MOO.
Author: rewiiired (---.alltel.net)
Date: 04-07-01 04:35

What da fook is `goffy'? I speeel lik DTPG. (Cheap shot of the day).

Reply To This Message
Re: MOO.
Author: Mister G (---.wright.edu)
Date: 04-08-01 18:40

hrm - rewired - havent you heard of DragonBall Z? the whole reason the mouths don't match up is cause the original is in japanese - we're watching a dub... oh well..
I am well aware of the classical tim ook response that happens when you're supplied an instance of anime viewing

Reply To This Message
Re: MOO.
Author: steen (---.wright.edu)
Date: 04-08-01 19:35

rewired,
you are way melodramatic

Reply To This Message
POO.
Author: rewiiired (---.66.alltel.net)
Date: 04-09-01 00:30

Melodrama: It's just one of those accursed Scorpio things. Or maybe it's just one of those annoying Tim things...

Reply To This Message
Re: POO.
Author: Mister G (---.NIPR.MIL)
Date: 04-09-01 05:38

heh rewired, you should work on putting the mellow back into melodrama ;)

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Re: POO.
Author: rewiiired (---.57.alltel.net)
Date: 04-09-01 21:21

To be calm is to be confined. "I'll be mellow when I'm dead."

Reply To This Message
Re: POO.
Author: Mister G (---.NIPR.MIL)
Date: 04-10-01 06:23

I'd digress to an extent - Allowing yourself to ba calm allows you to channel your energy towards a target rather than an uncontrolled burst....

This being said - there are times where an uncontrolled burst is needed, but sometime you just need to channel your efforts...

Reply To This Message
Death = mellow.
Author: rewiiired (---.alltel.net)
Date: 04-10-01 21:16

Well put. I do channel my bursts, however -- I usually know where their going and generally what their affect will be, though I do occasionally let them go in the wrong places or at the wrong times. Calm on the other hand means peace to me, which is certainly not associated with anything I've felt inside myself for a long time -- and to be honest, and not to sound masochistic, I think my internal chaos is a constructive imbalance and that it will serve me well in the long run. There are those occasions when I'm relaxed and calm, but I can't meditate all the time and every encounter I have with a girl is brief and, in some ways literal and some ways not, the experience is always cut off at the climax. And drugs no stronger than the green makes me see things, and alcohol, though relaxing in it's affect on the inhibitions, always leaves one feling idiotic in the morning, usually starting with waking up looking gazing down into the waters of the toilet. Anyway, I'm apparently quite naturally on edge. So I go with what I know until I learn more, and for me that's usually running with something to the extreme smack into a brick wall. Calm is not a present choice to me. Calm is incomprehensible. So death = mellow.

Reply To This Message
Hrm... a question:
Author: rewiiired (---.alltel.net)
Date: 04-10-01 21:22

Completely off topic: After reading the above, which I just wrote, a thought occured to me: whether the ranting paragraph above would appear to everyone else like a rude rebuttal, or words said with anger, when in fact I mostly agreed with him... anyway, the question is this:

Do you people ever catch the emotions behind the written words of others -- for instance, you were reading something and you catch a tone or an underlying emotional state that the writer was in when he wrote it? (Perhaps this question was phrazed wrong, but I haven't gotten my coffee yet and I ahd little sleep last night... so anway, you get the gist of it... answers...?)

Reply To This Message
Re: Hrm... a question:
Author: DTPG (---.lakeland.cc.oh.us)
Date: 04-11-01 10:29

I do think I see what the auther was feeling at the time however I always wonder if what I think the auther was feeling and what the auther actually was feeling are the same thing. I see it as me decideding what other people feel, which I have found dosn't work and usualy gets you in a lot of trouble. My litterature and english comp. class has been good about getting me to read a bit again, something which I have been doing far to little of, and I do look into the storys a bit. I have written things on occation which had some sort of thought pattern to them and even though I go back and read it later I sometimes think I was feeling something diffrent from what I was. I find judging the emotions of a auther like judging thoughts of an artist by there work, it is too easy to misinterpret what someone else was feeling. I tend to try not to dwell on what they are feeling but what it makes me feel. Emotions are to personal of a thing to decide what someone else is feeling. I know some people that have written exteamly joyous storys when they are most depressed perhaps in a way to make them feel better becuase it makes them think of better situations than there own.

In my opinion, which by birth I am so graciously entitled, life is not the time line from birth to death but merely all of the fleeting moments in-between. Being subjected to this materialistic society, one with a free mind is able to realize that personal possession, regardless of `tag value,’ means nothing and can always be replaced, but the beauty of life itself can never be stolen or replaced. True, these are nothing more than opinions based on my short experience on planet earth, but my opinions can be changed; if I keep an open mind. My surroundings will teach me. And by attempting to live by these ideas to the best of my ability I understand the very emotion and/or action is based on choice.

The human animal is cursed with free will. All of the chemicals I have used were not forced down my throat by peer-pressuring teenagers with queer ideas of fun, but by my own hand, by my own free will. I used them to feel good, even though I didn’t know I felt bad until I used them. Thus this experience leads me to believe that being human I feed on chaos and every problem’s face is brought on by my own free will, the ability to choose my own surroundings.

he was always just a six foot three year little boy to me.
so hard to pick apart.
i wanted so bad not to believe, not to care, not to see.
but it's too late.
I know now. he has a wicked heart.

Drowning in a pool of thought. Strangled in vines of emotion.
Snared in a trap of fear. Tangled in a web of confusion.
Feelings, wretched feelings.
To be numb. Oblivious.
Ever asking why. At a loss for reason.
Misery and pity hand in hand.
Is life all pointless dreams shimmering in Time's sands?
And love...
Ever searching.

I'll try to catch you if you fall, but i can't guarantee anything.’ Cause
i'm hanging by one arm and i feel myself getting weak.
Is it the jagged rocks below that worry me?
I think it's just the fact that i've lost my wings.

I watch in amazement as he takes flight, spiraling towards the sun. Watch
until the light blinds me.
Silky ashes fall drifting from the sky, land on my face. Tears leaving a
sooty trace.
He never should have left me.

It was a thoughtful drive home. The moon shone down upon our little car like a spotlight. My mind flooded with thoughts, nearly overwhelming. My body is in such a state that the slightest flashback of the good times would make me cry. My hormones are in an uproar.

I had flashes of thought as Moby played in the background. The moon reminded me of sitting on the roof of the duplex with D__ our first year of seeing each other. Then to the painting on his wall that I only seem to notice when we are going through rough times. It always takes me back to that one night up there, holding each other in the cool, crisp, night air.

I thought of my grandmother, perhaps as one of the stars watching me, and things that I do. I’m sure she wouldn't be happy with me if she were here and knew everything. I always loved her, and her sparkles. I remember her checkbook had those stick on earrings all over it. I’ll always remember the bingo chips she had, too.

I also thought about T__. How much I miss that boy. Always good to talk to. To sit and wonder what lies behind those eyes. What makes that boy work? Then the realization that I’ll never know. He will always be part of my own private wonders of the world.

I thought about how I express my feelings. Realized I do it best, whatever emotion, through intimacy or sexual relations. Sometimes I just can’t put it into words, but only feeling. A soft, gentle touch, a little scratch, or bite, a warm kiss or even just a smile in such a fashion as to convey my message.

I thought about how I don't think I get the point across just with writing. Not with music, either. Nor pictures or paintings, just with the way I behave. I am not and never have been very good with words.

The apartment was cold, not nearly as cold as the outside air. Lonely as hell, though. As is usual.

Clawing at the seam that holds us together. Picking at a loose thread that leads to tangles in a bed corrupted. A sanctuary to selfish lusts. A few moments of oblivion, cares forgotten. And I'm left bleeding. Turn on myself with the harshest loathing. Purity is lost. The road behind me is scattered with regrets. I stop my journey of destruction to gaze at the scenery. How I wish I could simply light a match and drop it on gasoline drenched memories. Watch everything eaten by flames. Only a dream. No matter how fast I run, try to escape the past, each time I turn around I find it's still all there. Haunting me. Lying in my bed my arms wrapped around me. How much it hurts. No one can see. Because I go by day in a mask of denial. What ever happened to the innocent child, that I’m sure once was me. Inside I'm all ugly. Stand in the warmth of the sun. Feel the breeze lapping at my body. If only it would blow away the weight of my misery. To be rid of the unseen burden that comes close to strangling me. There's nothing I can do, only learn and keep going. Mind of confusion, wipe away everything. If only it were that easy.

It's hard when my body wants, at times craves, so hungrily. To fulfill the love of perversion, I have unknowingly imbedded in me. So I stare into the sunlight until it blinds me. And I feel free, if only for a moment, from my worst enemy. Blinking visions lost distracting me. But you can't escape yourself. Trust me.

How many times have I said that I wouldn’t let it happen again? It's fucking disgusting. As I've found myself to be. My dreams are full of abandoned friends. Who got in the way of my fucking "needs".

Let's face it -- mother nature's a bitch as much as she's a beauty:
for every sunset there's a forest fire
for every love there is a rape
for every flower their is a tidal wave
for every butterfly there is an earthquake.
And destruction breeds creation
and a single so-called moral act is a mere push of the domino
leading to, perhaps, the death of millions;
leaving room for many other lifetimes.
The beauty in her is destructive
and the bitch in her brings balance
as it lies in microcosm in every town, every situation, every soul.
And the human condition has reached a twilight
of a new manifestation, a new transformation,
so I'll choose my sides and tow the lines
as I strive to keep an open mind in this dark world
casting the light of awareness on the shadow nature
of the things we're conditioned to be afraid to
think of and to consider, to
say, to act and be.
Every hero contains his enemy
every tree casts it's shadow
every yin has the eye of yang and
every problem contains it's own solution and
to know good you must experience evil, and
to live right you must dance in all aspects of wrong,
for what's life if not lived from multiple perspectives?
It's only two-dimensional -- so I do a 360, 540, 720 and
back again, to feel whole again, complete again
and to understand who I am, through re-integration
and where I've been, through breaking down the blockages
and how I can make peace with myself and
peace with the collective whole
in light and in shadow,
in good and in evil,
in bitch and in beauty
and back again.

I really hate to think back on all this, but it will do me a lot of good. See, a few months ago my mom under went surgery. She had a double lung reduction. The doctors said she would be in ICU for one night, but she spent 14 days in ICU heavily sedated, with a machine breathing for her. I can still remember how she looked the first time I saw her. After her surgery her face was swollen like a balloon. She had this big white tube down her throat. She looked very scary to me and all I could do was cry when I looked at her. And it didn’t get any better.

The next time I saw her was a week later and she was still heavily drugged. As I stand there and look at her once more I cry harder. This time she is jumping around on the bed, her hands were tied to the bed rail, and her head would pick up from the pillow and just fall back down. I tried to stand there and hold her hand and tell her how much I loved her and wanted her to come out of this, but I was just so scared of losing her. I mean I was 21 years old and I wasn’t ready to live life without my mom. So I would just look at her and even though I don’t go to church or believe god works miracles, I prayed for her to be okay.

Well, I don’t know if it was god or not, but my mom started to come out of it. She was able to breath without the machine, and 14 days later she came home to me. She is still very weak and has very little voice from the tube being down her throat. She still has to wear her oxygen all the time, but she is alive and I still have a mother that loves me very much. I just wish she were in better health.

I hold onto something i can't see.
Bury myself into something i can't feel.
Grasping for something that isn't' there.
Tear myself apart for nothing.
Come back to the real world ripped away from my illusions.
Draped in a blanket of misery, sewn together by pathetic feelings.
I lingered on the edge of an abyss that for so long seemed to be
beckoning. Then i'm lost in the passion of his kiss. Feels so right, yet it's
all so wrong for me.
Turn over, you don't want me. spread myself wide open offering my
body, little does he know, it’s so much deeper than this.
I can't see what it is he found in me. Just another night of stalling
lonely. He falls beside me, I say i'm sorry. He just says it's not meant to be.
Don't just turn over 'cause you don't want me. I can't face another
night of lonely.

I wake up asking myself, what am i doing.
The fuck if i ever know what i'm doing.
yearning for something more,
that wretched, endless yearning.

As I sit there driving down the long and winding road to me next stop I realize that the people of this earth are zombies. You see they all get up one day and realize they are adults and have to work and have a family. That is all fine and dandy but they fail to realize they are missing the one thing that they need most, and that is happiness, I mean come on how many people are really happy with what they do for a living.

Well any way all these people get up each day and get dressed. Then they rush out the door without a good breakfast, which is important, and hurry to work to get there late anyway. They talk on their little phones and race in and out of traffic without even a second thought about what is happening next to them or behind them. (Just the other day a had a guy cut in front of me at 65mpr and hit his breaks and when he looked into his mirror he saw a huge orange tractor barreling towards his car. He dropped his cell phone and punched it to get out of my way and then had the nerve to give me the finger. If he had been paying attention to what he was doing none of it would have ever happened. It takes 6 ½ football fields to stop a tractor-trailer at 65mpr on dry pavement and he expected me to do it in 150ft, what the fuck man!)

They cut people off expect them to get out of their way because they are late and nothing else matters to them. Then they repeat the process on the way home for dinner, well I got news for you dinner isn't going anywhere it just might be a little cold, so fucking warm it up.

To get back to my point if people liked their job then they would get up in time to eat and make it to work in a safe manner and come home happy and wanting to be with their family. This is a warning to all that drive on the same roads as I do. Don't cut me off because it is company policy to run over what ever gets in our way, if there isn't enough time to stop. We aren't aloud to swerve since we will still flip the trailer onto the object we want to avoid.

I am the one that you will wonder about.
I sit in a corner, mostly to myself.
Friends distantly seek a hello.
I keep up with the pace of life.
Seeking, searching, for a meaning.
Reading, writing, for a release.
I listen to the music of my life.
I hear a distant cry of pain.
Society has drowned another victim.
Small amusements creep into my day.
I see the squirrels cross my path.
I make a pot of hot coffee.
Going to movies, mostly with friends.
Eating popcorn and laughing out loud.
I question myself and my morals.
I ask why I continue dredging on these sidewalks.
The pathways to truth have been blocked.
I can’t settle for the falsity anymore.
I walk at night with the shadows.
I gaze upon the stars for hidden smiles.
Ignoring hardships, I still enjoy life.

Your free country
is raping you up the ass.
Your `one-and-only-god’
seems to have turned his back.
Your government, `by the people and for the people’
is ruled by and for the higher class.
Both church and state demand blind faith;
no questions asked.
And you ask me why I’m angry.

My fingers cry these words onto this page…
because I cannot. My eyes have dried out and my
mind has ceased to live.

The Complexities in the Karma
(another escapade into Morality and Karma and that damned cosmic force that keeps following me around)
by Rewired
6/3/00

The morning brought an interesting experience to me. The experience was a good one for a change – at least at first glance, but my mind can turn what first seems like a simple event into a complex mess that summons fourth deep questions concerning internal motivations and so-called morality.

I couldn’t sleep. The day prior, I’d slept fifteen hours or so, and if you calculated out the fact that the normal human being needs eight hours of sleep for every sixteen, I deduced that I should be asleep about the time I started work. So I decided to – big surprise – go up to the restaurant were I work and have some coffee and write a bit before my shift.

I left the house, and there was some traffic back-up and everyone had to get in the far left lane. As can be expected, a vast array of selfish assholes wouldn’t let me through, and all the while my car stalled again and again. Finally I worked my way through and turned in to BP, and I was lucky that I had made it there – my car had been running on empty for some time. I got out, checked to see what pump it was – it was five – and went inside, hoping that they had some cash machine.

I’d never been at the place before. Behind the counter I saw a very strange and short elderly man.

“Do you have a bank machine?” I asked him, as I looked around in the hopes that I could answer my own question. I found a machine at the far end of the place that looked like one of those card-sliding thingamagigies, but under close observation I found that it wasn’t an ATM at all.

“I’m not sure,” he said politely – the elderly, fuzzy-bearded short man who resembled a pot-bellied leprechaun. He had approached me in a polite manner that, at first, seemed crudely acted, perhaps even sarcastic. “The guy who put it in didn’t explain it too well, and to be honest with you I never really asked him about it, though I suppose I should have. I do know that the machine won’t let you withdraw cash…”

“Well…” I just stood motionless for a moment, trying to get my brain working. Under massive amounts of caffeine mixed in with sleep deprivation, clear and focused state of mind can be a hard thing to accomplish. I was thinking how I was going to do this. I was still quite angry at the whole road escapade and my rage was making static in my mind. All I knew for certain was that I didn’t have the money in my pocket.

“Well, I’ll tell you what I could do,” he said, in that same, crudely-acted, perhaps sarcastic, and painfully polite tone of voice, “I could lend you the five bucks, and you could just pay me back some other time. My name is…,” and then he rambled off his name which I, of course, don’t remember, and would probably get sued for writing down here anyways in light of the way karma seems to work in my life.

It is possible that I didn’t really forget his name – it may not have registered at all. I was, of course, about to shit my pants over his offer. Was this all real? The whole moment had a surreal quality to it, like what I’d imagine a bad trip to be like. It reminded me of television in a way as well – really bad television, like a horribly-constructed skit on Saturday Night Live, where spooky, polite gas station attendants end up being hit men for Gang Green, the Irish Mafia.

I was dumbfounded. Tongue-tied. I didn’t know how to react. He’d shaken up my reality and cracked my mind. He appeared to be human – didn’t logic dictate he was supposed to be a cold-blooded asshole?

He was already taking the money from his own pocket and ringing it up. I was juggling my anger over the whole traffic thing I had to deal with moments ago and my amazement over the current presence of an obviously-malfunctioning human beings’ unprecedented goodness. In an instant I knew the answer that should’ve been clear all along – this man must be an alien drone sent on a strategic mind-fucking mission.
“Are you sure?” I said. Maybe I’d misunderstood him. Maybe I had been hallucinating. For some reason, and I wasn’t sure exactly what that reason was, that would make me feel a whole lot better.

I swallowed my pride. I tried my damnest to repress my anger. I took a breath so my voice wouldn’t reveal the threatening things in my mind.

“Hrmm,” he said, suddenly sounding nervous for some reason. He had a wary look on his face, as if I had asked for his address, name, age, phone number, social security number and how many pets he had.

I asked him again if he was sure, and he said it was no problem, so I thanked him again and went out to get gas, my head still buzzing due to whatever game That Unnamed Cosmic Force had slipped me into.

As I filled up my tank, I noticed Dairy Mart three buildings down. Without a moment’s hesitation, I ran across the street, across the parking lot and through the doors. I noted that the same dark-skinned Mexican guy behind the counter that had been there every time I’d ever been in there was, in fact, still there. The scary part was that I visited Dairy Mart all the time, at every possible shift, reinforcing my belief that he must be part of a top secret government program that was attempting to genetically-engineer sleepless soldiers with bad linguistic skills. I went to the ATM I knew was there and got out forty bucks.

“No, not today,” I said as pleasantly as I could, as I ran back out the doors and down to BP, and walked in the doors of the gas station. The Leprechaun was talking to some sweet-sounding attractive girl at the counter. I flashed my twenty and laid it down at the table. I felt good in a way, as if I had accomplished something – as if I’d thwarted the cosmic test that the sinister universal forces had tried to cleverly guise from me as they ran me through it.

The wind stopped blowing. Cars stopped honking. There was no movement at all, no sound. Somebody, for a moment, had freeze-framed reality.
I stood there, just looking at him.

I suddenly realized that he had figured I was going to leave him the twenty for being such a `nice guy’ for lending me, a guy he hardly knows, five measly fucking dollars. He saw me sitting there and then the reality bulb flicked back on in his elfin brain.

He now seemed quite depressed, and perhaps a bit guilty over the fact that he had been expecting me to pay him three times what he had graciously offered to lend me simply for being a nice, jolly old elf. I was almost angry at his expectation. I suddenly realized, however – as that annoying empathy kicked in – that he had, in fact, been a nice guy and I should reward him with something. He handed me a ten and a five for change. I put the five back on the table.

He looked up at me – too quickly. If he hadn’t expected it, it should’ve taken a moment to register, as he threw a confused glance at me before a burst of realization appeared on his ripe old face. He didn’t. He just quickly looked up at me, the Bad Irish Actor knowing all along that I’d give in, and fork over some dough.

Karma had just circulated and balanced itself out in the span of about five minutes. I was left feeling good – but I only felt a quarter good. I also felt a quarter angry, a quarter guilty, and a quarter mystified.

I was happy because I didn’t take the guy’s offer and run without the intention of ever returning to pay the guy back – as I suppose many would do. In yelling about the inconsideracy of others on the road, I hadn’t mindlessly slipped into this situation that took place seconds later and taken the chance to become the biggest hypocrite on the face of the planet. I had done a good thing; the right thing, and perhaps then some. In the process, I felt that I had also fully justified my angst towards the inconsiderateness on the road.

I felt guilty because of why I may have done it; because of what I thought may have been my internal motivations. If I’d taken the gas and ran, I would’ve felt guilty. I would’ve felt worse if I would’ve bumped into him again one day somewhere else and he had recognized me. So when I took his offer and paid him back immediately thereafter, was it due to the fears of that gripping emotional response I had toward the situation? The sole reason for my so-called moral and considerate action was the fear of an internal emotional reaction – the fear of guilt?

I was also certain that I would receive bad karma if I hadn’t `done the right thing’ – so again, my moral action was made out of fear? The thought had also crossed my mind that perhaps if I hadn’t come back that he might have gotten my license plate number and his boss might have tracked me down or something.

Above all, I may have done it because I wanted to make him feel good. I didn’t even know him, I know – and the only reason I would want to do a good deed towards him is to outweigh his good deed towards me, beat the surprise he had given me, and disallow him from using this instance to justify any preconceived prejudices he may have against any obviously angsty post-teens.

I was mystified because it seemed as if some underlying consciousness was testing me again, or trying to confuse me or send me a message or something. It was that and – aw, dammit, he was too nice to a scraggily-faced, post-teen, angst-ridden stranger dressed in all black with a ball cap on backwards for their NOT to be a sinister motive behind it all.

So I drove my way to work, with my head being the usual containment unit of chaos and over-analyzation. Amidst all of it, I now wonder: can anything good happen to me – and can I ever feel happy about something – without having myself be so suspicious concerning the nature of the experience?

I am neither adored nor adorned
I am pouring out my very being
I walk alone in a busy world
I am bearing all I have left
I am stripped of all pride
I am only interference
I repulse with a glance
I repel with a thought
I am writing a song
I am dissatisfied
I am oppression
I am obligation
I am suffering
I drive off all
I am unloved
I am unclean
I am naked
I am pain

They bottle up their feelings
They see not what is truth
They turn from me in fear
They are wrapped in lies
They tune out the world
They hide in themselves
They cover themselves
They avert their eyes
They scurry about
They are too busy
They are too late
They think not
They are fake
They care not
They are not
They beguile
They lust
They lie

You wrap not yourself
You open your mind
You are not bound
You listen to me
You talk to me
You look over
You are real
You walk by
You breathe
You smile
You care
You love
You are
You

I am so damned tired
my energy used
my friends’ve conspired
I’m just so confused
I’m all I have left
I can trust myself
I know I’m not daft
my brain’s not on the shelf
I had held some hope
like dust through my hand
now I knot the rope
watch the falling sand
only time will tell
and show me the way
hear the warning bell
as time slips away
I feel so alone
curled up with my bear
no one of my own
nobody in there
my heart is empty
it’s cold once again
with smiles of plenty
jump off the deep end
the rope is pulled tight
watch the last grain gall
I’m not going to fight
I don’t care at all.

The Dream
by Star-Gazing Dreamer

Sobbing, salty tears
No longer breathing
My stomach ached
I longed to touch her
To hug her again
I felt her air cut off
as did mine then.
Her blonde hair
And loving hugs
disintegrating in time
Escaping with her
I wouldn’t let it go
Wasn’t ready to accept
Then I needed her
More than ever
But she was gone
And no apology of mine
was acknowledged
Wishing I had been
at her side, for her
My chance was gone
And her fingers
No longer moved.
My pillow was wet
And my eyes were sore
When I woke to find
It had to be a dream
Fear dissipated
Still I sobbed
The thought still hurt
I managed to fall
back asleep I went
for a few more hours
before waking up
And calling her
to hear her voice.
The feeling returned
and near to tears
I told her I loved her
and that weekend
went home
to hug her again
because she was still there.

As I reached over to turn off the bedside lamp, an arm from under the bed lashed out and grabbed mine before I could think to pull it away.
I jumped in shock and squeezed the glass in my other hand, causing tiny shards to fly into my legs.

The hand pulled me further, and I hit the front of the small desk facing my bed. As my head throbbed in my pain, my entire body hit the floor and an appearance emerged and hovered over me. His eyes burned into mine, and his mouth was open. You could clearly detect the ugly, chipped yellow teeth as he drooled.

He looked mad. Not angry mad, crazy mad. But I knew it was all my fault. I couldn’t help but think I should have been nicer, and maybe this would never have happened. He pulled out the knife from behind his back, and I realized I could do nothing but lay there as he got his final revenge…

the last memory was a dream come true
like my dreams of you, so surreal, so mystical
I saw the look in your eyes, and for once I trusted it
uncertainty turned in on itself and self-destructed
a snake quickly eating its own tail until
passion melted away the bars of inhibitions, and
desire broke me free of habitual patterns
and I fell right to you
and you smiled and fell with me
they clapped and cheered
so much for the discreet
so much for carefully-guarded reservations
so let what is be, and I swam for awhile.
and then later, doubt swept over
my mind searched for your true intentions
it's never what it seems on the surface
a speck of reality inspires worlds of mind's inventions
so I thought, what was your motivation?
it couldn't really be me
my heart said, why choose complication?
go with what you feel and see, but
the alcohol wore off, as did my confidence
I crept into the chair, and you crept beside me
here I am, thought I, scared like a child
and you, such experience, fearlessness and beauty...
and I fell right to you
and you smiled and fell with me again
the evening was giving birth to new feelings
a disruption, a sad friend and death calls meeting
I walked away to the dark again, with the limbo in hand
I came back to find a smile on your sleeping face
touched your hair and gazed at you and never have seen you since
hoping the next time won't ruin the last memory...

A blue sky fell before my feet
And I took my camera out
So I could enjoy it forever
The picture lies here now, old
Beside it is my ex…
Along with some old friends…
I’m afraid I wouldn’t remember
If I had not the frozen in time
Our happiness… dissipated
Trapped in that picture

I sat there on that smooth, wooden bench,
kicking my feet and staring at my new She-Ra sneakers.
With the emblem of the powerful heroin
surrounded in reds and yellows staring back at me,
I thought to myself,
“I wish I were that beautiful and that strong.”
My guardians sat next to me.
I didn’t know why I was there,
and they were explaining it
in a way where I still did not understand.
I showed my mother the smelly paper I was scratching.
It smelled like rootbeer!
At that moment, a tall old man,
in his sixties at least, I believed,
summoned us to enter another room.
There was a lot of talking carrying on
between my guardians and this old man.
There was at least one other person in the room.
I recognized her but didn’t know
exactly who she was…
I was tired of being there,
and I really wanted to go home and play.
The tall man looked at me and asked,
“Who do you want to live with?”
I was frightened of him,
and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do…
so, I sat there in silence.
He stared at me, and my guardians
and this other person I still did
not recognize did the same.
Did they expect me to answer?
I still stared into his pudgy old face,
knowing my answer but unable to say it.
“Would you feel better if I took you
into this room, where we could talk in private?”
he pointed to a door; an escape, I saw it as.
Immediately I nodded, curious to where this new
passage would lead. Entering, I noticed
there were many people, occupied at their desks.
The tall old man leaned down toward my face,
and whispered so I could hear,
“Who do you want to live with?”
and I whispered back,
“Please don’t take me away from
my parents. I love them.”
He looked at me for a second, thinking,
and consoled me as everyone else
had always done, half-heartedly,
“I’ll see what I can do.”

In January, the year after the world was supposed to end, I decided to visit my old friend Mary Jane. I hadn’t danced with her it in awhile. I’d recently told a friend who I had smoked with that I occasionally smoked pot, but it wasn’t a daily thing as it was with them. It was a rarity, but it did come to happen on occasions that I smoked it, and I’d been contemplating doing it again for several months.

Two bowls were being passed around the small enclosure, and one of them tasted a bit different – it was Stank, a highly-potent type. Things began to get very clear, very vivid. Everything was shifty, as if the mechanism in my brain that allowed me to perceive one moment as melting into the next was malfunctioning. As turned my head, for instance, there seemed to be a brief pause as the perspective slowly changed from one angle to the next, as if my eyes had to move inch by inch as they turned, rather than smoothly turning at once. I could liken it to a VCR playing a tape on slow, only I could almost feel it as well. Perception also shook occasionally, sort of how it is when one’s drunk, when the `world is spinning.’

I consciously and purposely envisioned white light surrounding me; a pulsating cocoon healing me. It was easier to visualize and get a fuller experience of the protective cocoon while stoned than it was while sober – I attributed it to the drug, which allowed me to screen out more objective experience and allow me to sink into deeper subjectivity. I focused as hard as I could (without fearing being noticed by those around me) on the word, `heal’ and envisioned myself wrapped in a healing cocoon of light. It was a very warm, comforting experience when I did that. I went on, however, to try other things.

When I focused on one thing – for instance, this girl’s face – I saw it in full clarity. The world is still, and though the background is much more clear and vivid than normal consciousness, the object of focus seems much brighter and detailed, almost taking on a luminescence of it’s own.
It was as if I could only focus on one of the six senses (the Buddhist categorizing; including smell, touch, taste, sight, sound, as well as purely as the catch-all category of `mental contents’ such as thoughts and ideas, and perhaps perception itself) at a time. I kept getting distracted by the noises of the machines in the place. The sound that distracted me the most I’d rationalized to be the heater, though I’m uncertain as to where it originated from exactly. To me, is sounded like rushing water – it was as if my focus on the sounds, on all the sounds in the foreground, made them melt into a certain point and was expressed in my mind as the sound of rushing water. It was a nice sound, peaceful in a sense, if it hadn’t been for my preprogrammed reactions to it. That rushing-water sound meant that the faucet was on at the sink, which is exactly what I vividly pictured in my mind’s eye – an overflowing sink. I kept looking over toward the sink on reflex, almost getting up to go turn off the faucet. I couldn’t see it but was so certain was on – I kept telling myself, however, that this was all in my mind and an affect of the drug. I just shook my head and laughed. It happened at least twice. The others laughed, too; I was certain they had no idea what I was laughing at, and I was certain that I was much more stoned then them. Then again, this wasn’t a daily routine for me.

I also got a few feelings of de-ja-vu washing over me – and I realized that this was probably due to the drug stimulating a particular part of my brain that, under unusual circumstances in the naturally-fixed mode of human consciousness, would produce such feelings as `this has happened before’. I had heard on a documentary some time ago that there is a part of the brain, from which scientists believed the sensations associated with religious experience derive from that, when stimulated, elicit the intense feeling of familiarity labeled as de-ja-vu. I had to keep myself in check, reminding myself not to take these sensations seriously or react to them, but merely `observe’ them and document them and catalog them from a detached perspective.

I was beginning to feel extremely stoned. I’d gone to scratch my ear, which had felt rather strange and itchy, and then felt a wet sensation on my fingers. I looked down at my hand and saw a bit of blood on my fingers. I was immediately certain that I had, in my drug induced state, scratched my ear – no doubt as novocained as the rest of my body – to the point were I had bled. I felt rather stupid about that. As I watched the blood and turned my hand, however, it quickly withdrew to a common point and disappeared altogether. It was a strange feeling, not unlike having a dream and being entirely certain it was true, having rationalized its cause and excepted its reality, and then going so far as to mentally map out what I was supposed to do next – only to wake up suddenly and be amazed that it had been merely an illusion.

I noticed that when I focused on the outside, objective, external world it was more complete, and when I focused inwardly, subjectively, I also felt that I was perceiving it more completely. The bridge where I usually reside during the hours of normal, waking consciousness seemed unachievable. In that state, it seemed, in fact, to no longer exist – I was either perceiving sensory representation of the external world or I was completely in the subjective, internalized world of mental contents: there was no limbo.

Suddenly everyone was getting up. It was time to depart, apparently – and I was a bit nervous. Throughout the time we had been smoking, I’d hardly said a word, as talking seemed to be the hardest thing for me to do in that state. I’d promised this one kid a ride home, and after saying goodbye to everyone else and getting in my car with him, I told him to smoke a cigarette and roll down the window to kill the smell. I kept asking him if I was driving all right, and he kept assuring me that I was doing fine. He directed me to his house and I parked I his driveway. He proceeded to explain to me what he considered a very easy way back to familiar territory from his house. As he explained it, I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying at all. It wasn’t registering; I wasn’t memorizing. Extremely embraced, I asked him to repeat it again, this time clearing out everything else in my mind and focusing intensely on what he was saying. I shook his hand, he exited the car, and I backed out of the driveway. I hadn’t a damned clue as to how I was going to get home.

I was generally pretty bad at directions. Unless it was an easy route that I knew well and traveled often, I always missed turns, took the wrong turns, drove in circles, and ended up getting quite upset. I was even worse in bad weather. I’d gotten lost last time I’d taken the kid home – and I was sober and the weather was fine. Being stoned during a brewing storm did not help in the matter at all.

As I drove down the road, the storm outside grew, and I began growing rather nervous. I kept swerving to miss branches, driving over a few entirely and worrying about what they might be doing to the underside of my car. It seemed as if I’d been on the road for far too long. I began getting really paranoid, thinking that I could’ve easily passed the road ten minutes ago and not known it in my drug-induced state. I was about to turn around when I found myself grinning widely.

I suddenly realized that if my state of consciousness as well as my mode of perception had been drastically altered by the introduction of this drug into my body, my sense of time might also be greatly altered. To test this theory, I looked at the clock and noted the time, focusing on it in memory alongside the `simple’ directions (complex to a stoned mind) that the kid had given me. I waited until the time-perception in my brain indicated that ten minutes had passed. Looking at the clock, I found that not even a minute had passed – it was the same time as when I had last looked. That amused the hell out of me, and got me to relax a little. As a wise drunkard I know had been saying, and which I had been coming to believe in my studies on sensory perception: this is all in my head.

I made turns only where I recognized streets or signs. I tried to make myself relax, ensuring myself that that was the key to getting home – having a mental breakdown wouldn’t aid me in achieving my goal. I kept slipping into subjectivity, which began to worry me. I was now virtually unable to keep my awareness from drifting into internal reality, where there was far too much to concentrate on in external reality. The speedometer, the road signs, the right side of the road, branches – it usually all came on reflex; it was usually easy to let my mind wander and let my reactions run on autopilot, but they seemed to have disengaged the automatized robot function in my brain. Every moment had to be carefully measured by acute, external awareness.

Pulling in the driveway was only partially a relief. My worries were still on whether I smelled of marijuana, looked stoned, or if my parents were awake. I smelled myself and I only smelled cigarettes – but that was nothing to ease my mind, as cigarette smokers aren’t as aware of the scent as non-smokers, and it may be just the same for pot, not to mention the fact that this was a psychoactive hallucinogen that could desensitize me to the smell of it as much as it made me see blood on my hands were there was no blood.

The lights, however, were not on in the house. My goal, then, was to gather up the things in my car as quickly as I could and make my way up the stairs and into my room with noted speed and dedicated silence. As fast as I could, I’d go into my room, lock the door, turn out the lights, strip and go to bed. So I gathered up my things, went inside, and slowly crept up the stairs, telling myself that it was just a bit farther…
Then I heard creaks upstairs.

When I was almost halfway up, I saw my mother standing there in her pajamas. I saw my father, out of the corner of my eye, walking towards her. My heart started racing. My eyes shifted here and there. I lost balance and almost fell face forward onto the steps. I put my hand on the wall to steady myself. They said they just wanted to make sure I’d gotten home okay, and I quickly said I was fine. Too quickly, it seemed to me. My mom asked if it was bad out there, and I said it wasn’t bad at all. Then I quickly corrected myself and said that it was, indeed, pretty bad. My actions were quick and shifty, and my eyes were flighty, and I was answering in a quick, paranoid fashion in a voice that seemed alien to me. I was so afraid that they had noticed. What would my mom say? What would my father think? I told them I was going to bed, and tried to move passed them as quickly as I could without seeming too obvious – all the while certain that it was, indeed, more obvious than anything that I was stoned out of my gourd. I clutched my things close to my chest, rushed to my door, locked it behind me, placed my things down, stripped quickly and fell into bed. The doors of my parent’s room closed and I wondered what they were saying to each other.

I could feel my heart beating faster and faster, like some monster in my chest trying to break free, and I couldn’t get it to slow it’s pace. I tried to drift off to sleep, but whenever I began to I’d hear a noise, or wake up frightened out of my mind, swearing to myself that I’d stopped breathing. Had everything that had previously been involuntary in my body now require conscious effort? I wondered. Had that just been weed, or was it laced with some other drug? No one else seemed to have been effected even remotely as much as I had.

The wind grew out side. I heard trees cracking, big branches falling to the ground, things hitting upon the side of the house, the rain angrily beating against the windows, the wind slamming against the house with brutal force. I wondered to myself in a fleeting moment if I’d wake up in Oz. Once more, before I finally fell asleep, I reminded myself that I may already be there – and my only hope was that the morning would bring Kansas.

My hair sweeps back and forth
As the wind screams its story
And sends chills down my spine
“Your hair is so beautiful, Shannon.
How did you get it to be so long?”
“I don’t know. My mom takes care of it.”

My feet press forth along the path
Crunching leaves and killing weeds,
I tread upon their natural home
“Can I give you cherry bumps?”
“I don’t know. Last time it hurt.”
“I won’t do it hard, I swear.”

My eyes search for the stream
Where I caught crayfish long ago
And skipped along the rocks
“I want to be the mother.”
“Grandma and the baby are left.
You can be either of them.”

My hand searched through the water
And turned over a few rocks
To find that life had ceased to be
“She told me what you said.”
“She lied to you because she’s jealous.
I never said that, I swear.”

The sun’s coming up,
the roads are icy.
I feel a strange magnetic pull
every time a car drives towards me.
Maybe I’ll make it home alive,
Who knows…. who cares
I’m giving up, I’m throwing in the towel
Stop the planet, I’m stepping off.
My cares, my worries and my faith in life
all scattering like dust in the wind
Don’t care where I’ve been
Don’t know where I’m going
Getting out of `Dodge’ is all I want
I’ve put too much trust into people
Never trust anyone with your heart
They all have the tendency to drop it
Then it shatters and gets swept under the carpet
and forgotten about.
My thoughts hurt me. Still, I push forward.
There’s got to be an exit somewhere.

Brains4zombies.com or
The insanity has returned!
(in the form of too much R. A. Wilson and Valhalla.com)
by Nightfall

This is the true story of two very insane people who plotted to take over the world. While the story is true, it contains NO factual evidence nor prophetic visions to a possible future. These events, while they really happen in this story, are not actual truth nor should be confused with the actual truth. If you have any questions about the validity of the following story, rotate 90 degrees and remember, it is all true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and meaningless in some sense.

Once, in a town not so far away, there lived two very insane people. But they didn’t live in the same town. Actually, one of them lived in the Fried Chicken state. Despite the distance, Agent 6 and Agent 235 were in a town not so far away planning to form a very secret society called The Secret Society to Take Over the World. TSStTOtW decided to hire assassins to assist them in their quest for world domination, so they hired noids. You know, like the ones in the old Dominoes Pizza commercials. The noids were to assimilate the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then hold the president hostage. At least, that was Agent 235’s plan. But since noids were only a fictional essence, they chose an alternate route.

Agent 6 suggested that they hire little gray men to carry on their plans. The problem was: where would they find these little gray men? They went to the local bar first. To avoid looking suspicious, Agent 6 went to the bar and ordered drinks while Agent 235 scanned the room for sight of these little gray men who where rumored to live on Earth. Approaching a tall, dark man with a spoon up his nose, he asked him, “Excuse me sir, but…”

“I know, I know,” the man interrupted, “you want to know why there is a spoon up my nose. Well… at least it isn’t a fnord.”

“Actually, I was about to ask you if you knew where I could find little gray men.”

The tall, dark man looked at Agent 235 and giggled to himself. “Why don’t you try Mars?”

“Because you are not me and I am not you and thoughts are made of Lincoln Logs. I think.”

Agent 235 ran over and grabbed Agent 6’s arm and said, “Hurry, we must go to Mars!”

The very drunk Agent 6 looked at him and began, “We can’t. You see, the little frog over there on that stool told me that we can find Jesus behind my sofa. If we use Jesus as a front, we can gain power through the church and wage a war between the church and state.”

Agent 235 looked at the stool but found no traces of a frog. There were, however, astral traces of the Great Cockroach that will rule the world after the millennium, but since no one can see astral tracers, this bit of information is utterly useless. He dragged the intoxicated Agent 6 who lived in the Fried Chicken state while they were located in Ohio to his TSStTOtW mobile and they drove to their TSStTOtW secret hideout. Agent 6 and Agent 235 ran and looked behind their couch and sure enough, there was Jesus, sitting in the fetal position mumbling sweet nothings to himself. While Agent 6 was busy holding onto the floor, Agent 235 carried the frightened little Jesus to the shower and cleaned two millennia of dust bunnies off of him.

Meanwhile, Draknok the Rabbit Hunter, climbed in through the window and attacked the dust bunnies with his scimitar. He received 3 iron pieces and 25 experience points, decapitates the corpse and donates a bloody head to those in need. Draknok leaves west.

“Last thing I remember, I was buried in a cave and I woke up behind a couch. I’ve been stuck there ever since.”

“Well…. At least we found you. We have a lot of work to do if we are going to take… er, save the world,” said Agent 235.

“Save the world? Again? Damn, you people just can’t seem to survive on your own, always begging deities for assistance every time you fuck up. When will you learn? Oh well… where do I start?”

“Well, for starters, you need to appear before the pope and convince him that he needs to take back his power from the government.”

“What do you mean which one, isn’t there only one in Catholicism?” asks Agent 6.

“That sucks! How can the average man realize his true nature if someone says he can’t be pope? Your religious system is all gfuncked!” complains Jesus.

Nightdragon Banished from Knights of Solamnia Clan (evil alignment (-1000)) arrives from the south. Foo the elf arrives from the south. Nightdragon attacks Jesus with his hand axe.

Jesus screams in agony. Jesus punches Nightdragon, but he is unharmed. Nightdragon gashes Jesus’s chest with his hand axe. Jesus is mortally wounded. Nightdragon gashes Jesus’s hand with his axe. Your blood freezes as you hear Jesus’s death cry. Nightdragon gets 3 copper pieces.

Nightdragon gets a brown robe. Nightdragon gets a holy book. Nightdragon buries a corpse.

Agent 6 looks in astonishment. Agent 235 cries, “Damn, I guess we’ll have to form another plan!”

The two agents set on their way to their local “Kwality with a ‘K’” K-Mart. There, they play video games and wander around to toy department for inspiration.

“Because the world in which we know it is just a novel! Not even that! It is nothing but a short story that doesn’t make any sense. It is nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing……………”

With that, Agent 6 and Agent 235 and K-Mart and TSStTOtW dissolved into nothingness. The moral? Well…. The moral of this is actually 101101100001101110110101 1000101011100111 0111001100110 0111000011010111010110 110011110010101011 011100111001111001 01111000111000111011010001101100011001100011100 1110001110010110110110101!1 1111000001 11001100011010101111 111001100111011100 11001100110001110110 11100001101110101101011011011 111010011011011001101100011111111010101010101010.

This is nothing but white noise… white noise… noise… this is nothing… nothing…. nothing but white noise… this is nothing… nothing… nothing…. nothing… nothing………………………………..101001011011001101001100101111011

This has been a test of the Immorality Broadcasting System. If this was an actual subliminal message, the binary you have just read would have told you to buy a trench coat and shoot up your school. But this was only a test. Remember:: this was only a fucking test! It was nothing but a test.

All of my smiles are free
laughter comes by the pound
but frowns cost a dollar
and hugs are handed out
there’s no secret Password
and there’s no monthly fee
all these I give to you
giving nothing to me.

I started up the car with my heart in my head. Seeing her come out of the door of her cousin’s house, with her slender body walking across her driveway as she came to my car’s passenger door, I was reminded of every other moment that I’d ever spent with the beautiful girl. The fading dye that had left her hair amber as it worked it’s way back to it’s natural blond, and her ocean-blue eyes that poked out of that simple, delicate, and innocent face of hers. It sent electricity coursing through me. Whenever I felt a shred of doubt in what I’d come to realize - and it never seemed to extend passed that - all it took was being in her presence to remind me.

She opened it up and climbed in, searching her pockets, I assumed, for her cigarettes. I turned the tape player down and asked her what was new in her life.

“Nuthin’ much,” Claire said, letting the words hang mysteriously. After she closed the door and pointed the way for me to drive, she still waited a moment before speaking. “So,” she began, not hiding the fact that she’d had something on her mind for at least the last few minutes since she’d said her last words to me. “What was that you wanted to tell me?”

I suddenly felt as if I’d been cornered. As if I’d been put on the spot. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this; I was supposed to wait for the right moment. Though, I reminded myself, I’d been waiting how long to say this? I froze, though. I hesitated.

“C’mon, tell me, what is it?” She said. “It’s not something bad, or…”

“No, no, it’s not something bad - at least not to me, I guess,” I told her. The conversation wasn’t going as I had planned, for she’d started it instead of me - but I had to do it. I had to.

What is this about? The question echoed in my mind. It was about so damned much, I thought. I felt a volcano in my chest, and it was doomed to erupt. It had to be here, I thought, the time has to be now. I had a moment of silence, reminding myself why I felt this was so crucial. In that moment of silence, my mind drifted back to a year ago.

She’d called me up one evening after we’d broken it off and asked me to come over top help her with her homework. She answered the door in a black sports bra, told me to come in and asked if I wanted a Pepsi. I was awed by her, as I had always secretly been. There was something different in the air, however. Something lit by her, something cryptic, almost sinister - as if there was some game at work here. I was conscious at the fact that I was prone to irrational paranoia, and I should quit worrying about everything. What had I to be worried about? Certainly nothing important. Nothing that I was aware of, anyway.

Her English book sat on the coffee table - and it would remain there, untouched. I sat nervously on the couch as she played Sublime on her living room CD player, bouncing about like a playful child. I couldn’t help but smile, the way she seemed so free before me, so trusting and uninhibited. I was the polar opposite. She asked me to get up and dance with her, but I couldn’t - I was locked up, frozen. I wasn’t that open. I had never been.

She sat down beside me, and I tried to start conversation with her. It was difficult for me; I was never good at small talk, and after all these years of knowing her I was still quite locked up around her - especially in a house were both her and I were alone. She lit up a cigarette and seemed to find my nervous state amusing; the way my stomach would growl and the way I bit my bottom lip. I watched her; I saw the grin on her face. I noted the way she still licked her lips every few seconds. I almost laughed out loud - almost. Then she ashed her cigarette and finally spoke. It was odd the way she did it. It was as if she had planned this out all along, and had been waiting for the right time to start talking.

I swallowed hard, and looked at her with a wary eye. “Okay.” I said, “what game?”

“Confessions,” she said after a moment thought. She waited for another moment. “Okay, I’ll go first. You remember a few years ago, when you first got the post office box for the Gopher, and you got a submission from a young girl who secretly believed that she loved her boyfriend?”

I knew damn straight where this was all going. I’d already been told. She didn’t know what I knew. The Gopher was an internet magazine me and some friends had started my senior year of high school. We made no money off of it, but it was a good means of expression. As a personal note, I had a place to spill my stories, poetry and essays, all of which were of such poor quality I would never have the chance to get them published anywhere else. We all wrote under pen names as well, and so no one outside the group knew who the authors were. We got submissions from out of state, through friends, by post office and email. We had writers I’d never met, and writers from unknown locations.

Shortly after I’d gotten the post office box, I’d gotten my first - and only - submission from someone. I really liked the writings. Some time later, after we’d broken it off for - what had it been, the third time? - that a friend of mine told me who the mysterious girl was.
“Yeah.” I told her in an emotionless tone.

“That was me.” She said. She laughed; almost an insulting laugh, a prelude to insulting words, whether it was her intention or not. “I thought I was in love with you. Isn’t that funny? The old days…. I was so young and foolish…” She seemed to be awaiting my response. “Isn’t that funny?”

“I’d figured it was you,” I said to her. I tried to say it with as much coldness as I could, as if I didn’t care. It seemed appropriate enough. She’d intended to shock me - to let me know she was over me and that I’d had it all set up for me and fucked up, I thought. And that was fine, but I’d burn in my own personal hell before I let her win at this little game.

I watched her face. She seemed a little put off, a little saddened by my tone, if not my words. She quickly recovered, ashed again and said, “Now you.”

“Tell me a big secret you have,” she said. “Something you’ve been hiding. Everyone hides certain things about themselves.”

“I’m not hiding anything.” I said. I noted the shadow cast by the light to her left, and the way it stretched my shadow into the darkness beneath the coffee table. “I have no secrets. I have nothing to confess.”

Of course, I knew I was lying.

My mind then pulled me fast-forward to six months ago, when I still had my job at the local grocery store - the job I’d gotten just after the car wreck, just after our break up. It was shortly after I, unbeknownst to my parents, got off the medication. I was on break, sipping a cappuccino, perhaps having a cookie as well, and it suddenly hit me in the midst of writing some crappy poetry that I had gotten nowhere in my pursuit of truth. I had been sifting through my delusions and chasing after my own shadow since I had flipped out my sophomore year of high school. Truth was a futile pursuit.

Then what was the purpose to living? What would make life worthwhile; what did I want?

It suddenly struck me: happiness. I want to feel for once. I had been lost in a constant stream of thought all these years, trying to figure everything out, and I'd gotten next to nowhere. I’d nearly driven myself over the edge in my intense self-involvement.

I needed to feel something. I needed to live in the present rather than be engrossed in the past; I needed to change, and to feel something positive and caring in my life. I needed to be happy, I realized, and then I tried to systematically explore conceivable routes to happiness. I never had realized before how hard a person I was to please. There was, however, a certain key feeling wrapped up in a word that suddenly began clawing it’s way into my mind. It was a word I’d ceased to believe in and vowed never to say. I suddenly realized that this four-lettered stranger that could offer that happiness, and that passion -- that true passion, the kind I could only touch upon through the medium of my artwork. I needed that.

Had I been repressing the fact that I did believe in it - in a way almost desire it? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’d not only been seeking it - but I'd already experienced it. How else could I know the feeling, if I had not encountered it? I’d simply ignored what it had been, what I’d felt - what I still felt for her.

It was Claire. All these years I'd been wrapped up in my intellectual roller coasters, this emotional mesh that I’d embedded my whole being in. All these years I had been so lost in this labyrinth of truth, lie, in-between and beyond that I hadn't even realized or striven to hear -- and probably had in fact striven to block out - how I felt for her. How I felt with her. What I felt between us.
In trying to find words to describe how I felt with her, I recalled a night that we were on the floor of Nathan’s living room. She came in with Brad, drunk and plastered off of her ass. We hung out for awhile, and at the end of the night he had left. She had stayed behind, and promised to pick her up a bit later.

Nathan had borrowed her lighter and lit a candle atop the TV. The candle rested in this glass, multicolored enclosure, and so as the candle flickered, lights went dancing everywhere in the dim living room. She fell backward, and I feel with her. We both lay by each other on the carpet there, in front of the television, and after a while she ended up in my arms, fast asleep. I could smell the strawberry Jack Daniel’s on her breath. I felt a warmth I can’t explain, an energy that went through us, over us, behind us and beyond us. I felt peaceful in that cocoon of soft, dancing energy.

I suddenly realized that if I could spend another moment like that - feeling so peaceful, so content, so warm, so passionate, not desiring anything else in the entire world - I couldn’t ask for anything more in my entire life.

I decided that the feeling that I had denied even existed, the word I’d refused to say, I’d already experienced. I wanted that feeling again, but I knew there was a good possibility that was impossible. In the very least, I had to express to her how I felt about her. I had to have her know. I had to communicate how much she meant to me.

There I was, a few weeks later, atop my shitty and blue Mercury Topaz looking out over the parking lot, my mind reeling over my feelings. I still hadn’t done it. I still hadn’t swallowed my pride, but I knew that I had to, because if I didn’t I don’t know if I could ever live with myself.

I looked at Channing, my friend of four years, and I wondered if I should even bother bringing it up, or simply keep the issue to myself. Then I remembered just who this guy was - the wise man; the guy who would’ve been a shaman if only he’d been born in the right culture. He had been the only person that understood me, the one who had aided me intellectually all throughout the years as I was loosing my mind over my bizarre experiences. I had entrusted him with so much for so long, valued his curiosity, his empathy, his sincerity, his honesty and his mind of many channels - valued his many unique perspectives on anything and everything for so long - why stop at this, a matter of utmost importance?

“I’ve got a question for ya, Channing,” I began, taking a sip from my bottle of Pepsi. “How do you tell a girl who you’ve been neglecting for three years - a girl who’s been so caring and persistent, a girl who’s given you so many chances, believed in you for so long, only to have you disappoint her again and again - that you’ve suddenly pulled your head out of your ass a little and have come upon the realization that you love her?”

“When did you decide this?” He asked, eyeing me curiously. The thing I always liked about Channing was the fact that I could ramble out a paragraph to him, and he could show me all the flaws and contradictions, high point and weak points, and still make a multi-layered statement that went beyond all words in a single sentence. I never had that capability.

“It wasn’t a decision, really - more like a realization. I’ve always loved her.” I thought a moment before going on. “You know all that crazy shit that happened to me in high school? All the memories, hallucinations or whatever they were?”

“If that would’ve happened at any other time - say, after I got out of high school or out of a college, even - I would’ve had a clear head when I met her. I would’ve tried, you know? I wouldn’t have felt I needed to dedicate every waking moment of my life, sacrificing sleep and sanity and food and a rational train of thought, to understanding what it was that I’d seen. I wouldn’t have had the need to detach from everything else and dedicate all consciousness, all awareness, the totality of my being to answering those questions. I wouldn’t have been so self-involved. I would’ve paid attention to her and my own damned feelings. I would’ve actually been a boyfriend and did boyfriend things - get her flowers, take her out places. Maybe make an effort to call her every once in awhile. I would’ve been an actual boyfriend.”

“Not to be a jerk or anything, but you don’t know that for sure,” he said. “How do you know how things could’ve been?”

“There’s no sense playing the what-if game. Though it can be fun, it’s entirely irrelevant.” He used his hands to reposition his glasses. “Apparently you, or your overpowering unconscious, had other plans. At least you’re taking the first step toward enlightenment in this matter, in the very least.”

He smiled. “Enlightenment is all about the small but steady process of removing one’s head from one’s ass. You may have just gotten a peek passed the cheek.”

I laughed. He was a perpetual fountain of insane wisdom. “And here I am, still dwelling in my shit.”

“Think of it this way,” he said, “maybe it was the right time for all that to happen, and it just doesn’t make sense from your current perspective. Maybe it simply can’t work out because the time’s not right. Maybe the time will never be right. Then again, maybe that’s why you’re realizing this now instead of three years down the road.”
“I don’t know, I’m not buying that,” I said to him. “About two weeks ago, I asked her if me and her would ever have a chance again. I pushed for the answer when she tried to avoid it. I asked it twice because she always gave the answer with such uncertainty. The first time she simply said, `anything’s possible.’ So I tried again, about a week later - then she said, `I don’t think so.’”

“That doesn’t sound too set-in-stone,” he said. “Maybe she didn’t want to reveal something, or maybe she just didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Just give her time. You guys have always broken up, just to find your way back to each other again. How many times have you guys been with each other?”

“Three of four times. But this was different. This was a break-up. The end of that kind of relationship, I'm almost’ sure. I think it’s too late.” I desperately wanted a cigarette, but he didn’t know I smoked and I preferred to keep it that way. I bit my bottom lip instead and went on. “I think she’s over me, but that doesn’t change anything. I still have to tell her. I’ve got to do this. She’s all I’ve been thinking about, man, I swear it. I’ve had these stories playing out in my head in vivid color - how things could’ve been, how they could be. It’s like my new obsession or something.”

“Well, you should ask yourself this,” he said. “Are you going to be able take it if she doesn’t feel the same?”

“That doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “That holds no relevance. I know what I want, and that there’s a good chance I won’t get her back. I expect that. What’s important here is the truth, and my responsibility to reveal it. I’ve got to tell her. She has to know. She has a right to know. I need her to know. All that’s important to me now is that she knows how I feel towards her.”

He let the silence hang for a moment. Then he asked, out of the blue: “What if she doesn’t believe you?”

“She has to,” I said. “I don’t see how she couldn’t. In all my years with her, I’ve never said it once. Not to her, not to anybody, not about anything.”

I took another swig of my Pepsi. I really wanted a cigarette. “I’m afraid she won’t believe me.” I told him. “The more I think about it, I wonder if she even thinks I have the capacity to have that feeling.”

I almost smiled. “Because for the longest time, I wondered as well.”

As it often is with Channing and I, the conversation drifted to other topics. Eventually, we came upon the conversation regarding a movie he wanted me to watch - until he stopped suddenly. Apparently he had realized that we were in the parking lot of my place of employment - a grocery store, which had a video movie rental section. After a brief look, we found that very movie - Tombstone - and after talking to his mother, some old friend of his sister’s who looked too old for her age, and two hoodlums who asked us if we knew a good place where they could go smoke some weed, we headed back to my house to watch the movie.

Roughly half-way through, the phone rang. My mother handed the cordless to me and said that it was Claire.

“Your pregnant?” I joked, hoping it wasn’t the truth. so far as I knew, she didn’t even have another boyfriend yet. If nothing else, I had been her most recent mistake.

“No,” she said, temporarily calming my paranoia - only to low the bombshell milliseconds later with: “I’m getting married.”

You know those moments in which the world suddenly seems to stop - the noises around you meld together into static and then disappear, all image becomes terribly vivid, and your sense of hearing becomes painfully acute, and all your attention in focused on the last words that someone said, which play over and over in your head like some record skipping at the worst line of your most hated song? Times that by twenty-three, and you can’t come close to the feeling I felt when I heard those words: “I’m getting married.”

`Great’ - what a great word `great’ is. Was this a fitting word for the occasion, however? According to Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, page 568, third listed definition, `great' can be described as a “unusual or considerable in degree, power, intensity, etc: great pain”. Yes indeed, this was an appropriate word for the occasion.

“Some guy that I met while videotaping the band play at a concert,” she told me. “I guess he’s an old friend of the band’s. Anyway, the camera just kept going back to him… I dunno, I guess it was love at first sight.”

“What’s wrong?” She asked.“Nothing,” I casually lied to her. “So… I mean, when… ?”

“Oh, not for awhile,” she said. “Not until he gets back from leave, anyway.”

“He’s in the Army.” That’s where it all started - and it spread like wildfire. It spread like the Ebola virus through so many of my friends - beginning with her. A week or two later, she would call me up and inform me that she had decided to sign up for the Army herself.

“Here, Channing wants to say hi to you,” I said. I handed the phone to Channing. He just looked at me weird. “It’s Claire.” I told him.