Phantom Limb Syndrome

12FEB2012 – Dutch Boy, Franklin Avenue, Brooklyn. Waiting for coffee and eggs Benedict amidst the sonic swath of: the singing click of washing plates, running water and loud reggae flowing forth from the kitchen; the layers of conversation bolted to the cafe walls by sibilant hooks ejected into fricative fucking existence by the deadlier of the species dominating the room; the silence of couples exchanging a kiss on the sidewalk outside.

On top of the world one minute, lying prostrate in the valley with a face full of frozen pig shit the next. It’s not as complicated as you make it. (In fact, it’s much, much worse…) The clock ticks louder, each second resounding like a rifle shot until the explosions are loud enough to wring water from blood. Each blastwave shakes the table, rattling flatware and clinking the glasses. I am beyond screaming at this point. This goes unnoticed by everyone else.

Everything we do takes place in this world, during this timeline and in this dimension. We are captive court jesters; reciting our lines at the top of our lungs and juggling just as fast as we can, giving our all to a sleepy king who yawns once an hour, resting his fat head on a meaty palm. No escape pod, and no way to hug the beyond from here.

While escorting a friend to Grand Central Station on Saturday, I theorized that our emotions were somehow anchored to the ocean. When we enter this world, we are issued an anonymous measure of the sea which goes about behaving as the sea is meant to behave, all the while manipulating our moods, governing our capacity to give and our eventual tendency to need something in return for ourselves. The throbbing desire to give is proportional to the clawing need to receive. Some of the blocks are subsurface, cold and salty. Some of them crash frequently upon sunny shores and white sand beaches, aerated like blue champagne. When we pass on from this world, our block of ocean is returned. Renew, reduce, recycle. Our emotions are by no means new. Sign and date here, please.

Maybe I’m getting it right but I’m not loud enough. Maybe I’m doing it wrong and thankfully no one has noticed. Or maybe I’m doing it wrong but no one has bothered to tell me, like the elderly deaf uncle who shows up to a funeral with his fly open. I have no choice but to carry on — the desire to write burns as brightly as ever.

On good days, it feels like having lengths of exposed copper hair shoved deep beneath my skin; there is a stink of ozone and tiny sparks are born to die as the wires are scraped across the leads of a battery with a pop, propelling my left hand to spasm and flail for the nearest pen and begin stabbing words into existence across the surface of anything that will carry ink. Those of us afflicted by this terrible disease meet twice weekly in anonymous church basements, sharing our shame over stale donuts and buckets of burnt coffee. It is foolish, embarrassing and wrong but I know I’ll never be able to stop, even if I fail.

Putting way too much thought into the expression “I don’t mind”,

The Phone Call of Cthulhu

Deployment of World Ocean Circulation Experiment buoy, one each.

27JAN2012 – I’m in an office on the second floor of a shoebox-shaped building on the southern tip of Manhattan. It’s raining; the background hiss is partially clouding my thinking. I can’t help but wonder if the static-based sound of falling water impacting like gentle ordinance on filthy concrete might have the same effect on the human brain as noise-cancelling headphones; impeding one’s overall ability to think or act clearly.

I wonder about a lot of things. I’m not saying any of the questions I ask are valid, or even that important in the greater scheme. In this day and age you can ask all the questions you want; the answers are probably out there somewhere. But what you do with the result is up to you.

There’s no one else here at the moment, so I’m listening to Pigface (rather loudly) and packing for my trip. I’ll catch a train to New London, Conn., and then a military C-130J south to Elizabeth City, N.C., before heading north again to St. John’s, Newfoundland, where I’ll be flying further still out over the North Atlantic with a crew whose job is to spot icebergs orphaned from Mother Greenland and translate this information into assorted charts and helpful warnings. I’ll be taking photos, handling the media who’ve signed up to fly with us, re-reading Neal Stephenson’s fucking awes*me work of maximum geekery, Cryptonomicon, and fighting to stay awake whilst the vibrating tremors from mighty engines work themselves under my skin.

Camera bodies, batteries, cables, lenses, chargers and a MacBook Pro are shoved into my camera bag with all the enthusiasm of the “gear-up” scene from a Rambo movie. All that’s missing is a fuck-off big hunting knife in the sheath at my hip, a red headband made fast around my brow and some heavy-lidded mumbling about war, weapons and drawing first blood. I’ve got enough equipment in this bag to document a revolution and I’ve planned my trip to the nth degree. Nothing to it but to do it, and hope my planning reveals no signs of potroasticus cerebellum.

29JAN2012 – Amtrak 160 headed northeast, easy like Sunday morning. The shifting perspective of the countryside as viewed through the horizontal arrow slit of this shiny metal worm reveals a large-scale zoetrope of naked trees and pulsing bursts of sunlight. It’s giving me a fucking Japanese seizure is what’s it doing. That, and allowing me the rare opportunity to experience e-ink properties in my actually-analog book which I can’t seem to concentrate on, so I close my eyes.

Blood-red shockwaves inspired by the flashing sunlight pulse violently against my lowered eyelids, which keeps perfect time with the dated sounds of Ministry’s ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod’. My ear goggles are flooded with the warm honey of crashing bass. Turns out I can’t sleep either, so I open my eyes and look around; first at the slumbering Asian girl with the British accent and gentle overbite sitting across the aisle from me, then back out the window again, and finally down to the much-abused notebook on my lap. The rocking motion of the train has transmogrified my commonly-careful cuneiform into a document prophesying the coming of what appears to be multiple earthquakes.

The landscape rolls and yaws like a fighter jet alongside our forward surging inchworm, affording the passengers on the right side of the car with fleeting glimpses of backyard wealth and modest prosperity; seasonally-stranded fishing boats, multiple modes of muddied transportation and sprawling houses with oversized windows, each overlooking bodies of water — no matter how insignificant. These are the outward symptoms of a fortunate soul in an uncertain economy. And where there is stability such as this, there is typically found the Bounty of Favor and the unspoken Marital Return On Investment.

What I’m trying to say here is that the MILF of a rich man probably fucks like she owns the place. She knows from whence her bread is buttered. With her primal needs and American dreams of food, shelter and matching drapes fully realized, her nesting instincts rev right into the red faster than a NASCAR Napoleon on nuptial night. She’s met a man she can depend upon; a steadfast sumbitch who can help to unclench her ovaries, change her flat tire, slap her up a spice rack from leftover floor shims and drive her to the hospital with one calloused hand tied behind his L.L. Bean red plaid shirt…

–

Where the passing riverbeds are revealed, the smoothed earth echo of mental mud is exposed as the individual folds of a great brain. This section of the Earthbrain’s purpose is to do x. A few miles over, that dry winter lakebed’s folds are designed to execute function y. The Earth is alive, its cognitive abilities spread out over its entire body like skin. (If someone cuts off your hand, you can’t think clearly. Follow?) People still wave at passing trains, swaying their limbs overhead like friendly flags of surrender, a gesture one doesn’t see much of inside the 11216 zip code.

30JAN2012 – I haven’t flown aboard a C-130 since my days in Alaska, but the sensation comes flooding back; I’m buckled into a row of surplus theater seats (my luggage is strapped to the deck about where the orchestra pit would be) and I’m facing a wall of tool chests that would make the eyes of any self-respecting hillbilly gearhead turn green with envy. The seats are bolted to a large slab of aluminum locked partway between a series of rollers, further attached to the floor of what appears to be an immaculate but highly complicated basement workshop during a long and gentle earthquake. You’d need a plane this big just to cart around the instruction manuals that go with it. There’s likely to be a jargon-rich chapter for each and every screw, bolt and wingnut aboard.

Warm wind blowing across my face from an overhead vent makes my eyes heavy for a time, and I remember nothing until our overfed tires punch the earth in the face and I am jolted from my slumber. Presently the engines wind down; the rear ramp of the plane performs a complex raising and lowering procedure and fresh North Carolina night air boards the aircraft, chasing away the sand of sleep. I blink myself awake and assist with the offload process inasmuch as it involves helping the other personnel with their luggage before jumping down to the tarmac for a look-see. The tail of the aircraft towers above me, lit in false moonlight generated by the white lights from the hangar. I can see the stars and you have no idea how happy this makes me… I gather my bags and we head for the gate, we head for the hotel, we head for dinner. Later, I head for a bed.

–

01FEB2012 – We stop off at a Food Lion for sandwiches and lunch supplies enroute to the airfield. The store is full of nourishing foodstuffs but my needs are specific, bordering on demanding.

The item must be small in size, marginally ruggedized and reinforced against accidental mashing. It must require minimal preparation (i.e. unwrap it), and offer maximum protein output when weighed against the aforementioned size and weight guidelines. After a considerable amount of clinical analysis, I select a turkey and cheese sub from the deli, although somewhat wary of biting into moist bread later…

Now for the important stuff. I carefully select my fuel cells; a pair of 355ml aluminum cylinders containing a highly-caffeinated and sugar-free substance, the packaging of which features a duel of blood-red bovine engaged in violent conniptions at the center of a burning star. (Red Bull doesn’t give me wings so much as it allows me to vibrate my way into other dimensions.) Just tell them, “I wanted to go higher.”

I score a Skor bar and a pack of gum while waiting in line. The man ahead of me is buying a case of Coors and a generous supply of Sparks. It is not quite 8:30 a.m. Shine on, you crazy diamond…

–

One hour later, our baggage and equipment is aboard and we’re at last preparing for our departure to St. John’s, Newfoundland. I’m seated closest to the door. It’s not by choice. It was the only pair of seats left available, and my camera bag requires a crush-free zone of its own. My legs are longer than Beowulf so I have to sit sidesaddle in order to keep my giraffe knees clear of the narrow aisle as the air crew rush back and forth shining their lights into overhead spaces and checking things off their lists. That’s what aviators do.

The engines kick in and the lonely patch of tarmac still visible outside the open hatch begins to flicker and blur as the props gain speed, turning faster and faster until their shadows fall away, dissolving to nothingness, evaporating in the sunlight. Suddenly the ground becomes crystal clear again. Wheels up at 1007. Time to read.

Welcome to Gander. Abandon warmth ye who enter here.

1700: Welcome to Gander, Canada. We’re here for a quick “how-do-you-do” with the local aviation authorities and a perfunctory conversation with customs officials, who give us the once-over for cash, knives and guns. (Fuck! I left my passport on the plane. I really wanted a new stamp…) We’re waved through regardless. The airport is deserted – and I mean literally. It feels like the setting for a video game. I pretend we’re being watched. It helps pass the time.

I ducked away from the group to use the restroom and as I stood there, imminently vulnerable, ejecting five degrees of my core temperature into a ready-made sculpture, the following thought crossed my mind: “This is it – this is the scene where the Red Shirt wanders away from the landing party and gets his face chewed open by a toilet-squatting zombie.” Figures it’d be the photographer who gets it first. The others will no doubt pilfer my supplies and reach the objective without me.

The waiting lounge, however, was sumptuous; a full-sized pool table, a full-sized coffee maker, a big screen TeeVee and a generous selection of video games, none of which we had time to enjoy–

“Say, how much time do we have?” One person answered five minutes; another replied with half an hour. Weighing the difference, I plopped down in a leather chair by the window and called AT&T to request a Canadian phone plan. (Or maybe it was a firing plan. Sometimes I have these unfortunate moments where I black out and ask Santa for what I really want:

“Come on, lady. The code is Almighty, coordinates 090264712. It’s all in here!”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that! I’m going to need to speak to my supervisor…”

The air traffic control center was a bit more populated; grizzled old men in tucked shirts with carefully trimmed beards and the look of church about them sat in glad adoration of enormous monitors bursting with crisscrossing neon lines. They spoke strings of alphanumeric incantations into headsets, pronouncing the magic spells necessary to guide multiple aircraft safely toward their destinations: “Alpha Charlie one Tango, I have you at two-six-seven, request you two-seven-five northwest at five-thousand…”

We were wheels up an hour later.

–

The runway at St. John’s, Newfoundland, was under attack by a squadron of tiny tornadoes of dry white snow reminiscent of hourglass sand, and the wind gnashed blindly at our props. Once we’d come to a complete stop and the hatches were open, I grabbed my camera and hustled to the hangar hoping to catch some shots of the plane being towed to shelter.

“This is the worst part of the trip,” said the pilot. He’d appeared behind me undetected while I was framing images in my viewfinder.

“Oh? Because you’re not in control?” I asked, turning to face him, realizing this might have been a presumptuous thing to say, and regretting it immediately. Sometimes I clear leather before I check the safety on my mouth.

“Exactly.” He either didn’t hear me or he ignored it. Or I was right about something for a change. “Last time we were here, a jet blew past us on the runway and the wash almost knocked an empty box into the side of the plane. The nose cone is where all the radar equipment lives and it’s worth at least $500,000. I love to fly, but this is really the only part that makes me nervous.”

St. John’s appears mostly deserted. Minimal traffic, fewer lights. A skewed yellow trapezoid announcing the Best place to Buy electronics burns bright like molten gold against the swirling mass of starry ice. Apparently Bryan Adams is playing a show here this week. Somehow this makes sense.

Once I’d checked into my room and changed into clean clothes, I headed for the hotel bar for a salad and a pint. I was tired and stretched a little thin but genuinely happy to be on the move again.

The waitress was wicked cute as waitresses go, but I think she hates Americans. (Hates. Present tense. Pay attention. She’s still out there… waiting.) I say this because I was the only person in the room she didn’t smile at. She smiled at the dopey guy with matching hair, a gold chain and no chin who was drinking white wine and reading a book at the next table. She smiled at the old codgers in ball caps talking about tractor parts. She smiled at the two older ladies in — I mean, she literally stopped smiling when she saw me! If she remembered me from a past life, I had no idea what I might have done to piss her off.

“Hello! I’d like a beer, please.” I placed my hands palms down on the table where she could see them. No sudden movements. She could probably smell fear.

“Well, we have sixteen of them on tap.” Her voice was frosty, her body language clear: Take your pick, fuckstick. I’ll personally pee in whichever pint you choose. Hesitantly, I glanced over at the bar. There’s no way I could read the labels from here and she didn’t appear to be forthcoming with name brands, so…

“Okay, I guess I’ll just wander over and pick one out…?” I was preparing to slide out the booth and review the selection myself if only it meant we could end this uncomfortable standoff. I was hungry and my brain was being unusual.

She repeated her previous statement but slower this time, as though she were addressing a partially-deaf dog rapist who suffered from a terrible learning disorder, and she couldn’t decide between abject hate, or burning pity. How could the number of beers on tap possibly apply to my inability to visually discern between the labels? On a whim, I asked for Guinness. The fates smiled upon me.

Presently my food and drink arrived. I sipped at my (pee-free) stout and devoured my salad, jotting impressions in my notebook and humming quietly along to The Clash’s “London Calling” when it came up on the jukebox.

–

02FEB2012 – Next Bat-night, same hotel Bat-bar. Today was all about gym, pale, and laundry. Clean clothes, quick workout. Read a lot, wrote more.

Somewhere to my left, the synthetic blue thunderbolt of a camera flash erupts in the brown wood darkness of the room. Morrissey howls piteously from the stereo. Just doesn’t fit the vibe of the room.

Spent all day alone. It felt good, like when your doctor and your priest and your boss and everyone else tells you the next drink is going to kill you, but you drink it anyway because what the fuck do they know? Solitude only hates you when you’re new to the game.

You know what’s weird? Accepting that a place like St. John’s is populated. It’s the edge of the world. I mean, sure it’s the year 2012 — people have to be born somewhere and I bet it’s drop dead gorgeous in the summer — but it feels small in a way I can’t properly describe. And it’s back-dated somehow, like maybe the city was founded by visiting aliens who’d gleaned all they could about Western Civilization from television signals they’d intercepted on the way here and thought it’d be a hoot to build their own ant farm, so they placed a sizable credit card order with some sort of aliens-only, Wile E. Coyote-based Acme City Store in order to bring their creation into lockstep with the 21^st century:

“Oh, look! It’s finally here! Let’s open it!”
“Wait — do you think we should maybe do this outside?”
“Good idea!”

These far-born city planners eased their giant wooden baby onto a dolly and together they cart it to a nearby clearing, eventually dropping the handles with a joint huff of exertion. One of them slits opens a document pouch on the side of the crate with a trusty penknife, dons a pair of reading glasses, licks a thumb and begins reading the first page of instructions:

“Congratulations on your new future, it will bring you years of enjoyment… all new, lifetime guarantee… let’s see here… yeah, it says here we get a Best Buy, 2-for-1 pitchers of Budweiser and something called… Sirius XM radio?” He peers over the top of his reading glasses and licks his bottom lip, eyes full of question. “Does that mean it’s big?”

“No, dear. You’re thinking of XL.”
“Huh.” Reads some more, rubs hands together. “Well, here goes nothing!”

On the count of three, they tug hard on the bright red handle marked PULL ME and take a few careful steps back as the gossamer gold balloon begins to expand at a terrific rate… highway off-ramps, strip malls, strip joints, breakfast shops, lunch specials, fine dining, small businesses and hotel chains—all of it begins somersaulting its way free of the confines of the box and sliding into position, clicking and whirring and turning this way and that with a terrific amount of rushing wind and noise, finally locking into place with the imperfect click of casual Chinese craftsmanship, bristling mazes of big screen TeeVees, and clone-grown actors destined to run screaming for New York City just as soon as their legs finish cooling—

“Did you want to order something, sir?” I’m jolted from my reverie by the earnest expression of the winner of the 2012 Cutest High-School Senior competition (Runner-up: Best Rack). I have no idea how long she’s been standing there and I’m taken aback by her display of sudden ninja trickery, but I manage to stammer out something that sounds an awful lot like ‘chicken garden salad with no dressing and black coffee with one sugar, please,’ but it could have been – well, it could have been anything, really…

I glance up at the TeeVee screen while I await my repast: a sporting team consisting of giant people from the newer city of York are scheduled to engage in a mock land war across a mighty lawn with a group of patriots in the name of lucrative contracts. The winner of this contest shall be eligible to have their likeness displayed on cereal boxes across the land. Apparently these contests take place annually…

Huh.

–

03FEB2012 – Flew today. Somewhere along the line the plane became 250-plus-pounds lighter; minus the weight of a current-tracking WOCE buoy; minus the weight of foodstuffs and sandwiches purchased from the local Sobe needed to feed thirteen people; minus the amount of fuel burned; minus the amount of engine heat and carbon dioxide lost to the *fuck-you-cold of the North Atlantic (*that’s metric, by the way), but plus the infinitesimal weight gained across three flash drives by taking photos and videos of the aircraft. In another lifetime, I’d kick the shit out of pure math. Not this one. Next time, maybe.

So. Today. What a weird state of affairs. Three or so hours into the flight, the tail of the plane yawned awake with a high-pitched whine. One section raised, the other lowered and between them the cold air of the North Atlantic bum-rushed our show. I was about six feet back behind the buoy crate, one arm wrapped through a loop of cargo net, crouched low and braced for stability whilst trying not to fall against the leg of the CBC cameraman I’d positioned front and center of the action.

Seconds later, two members of the aircrew shoved the box into the wild blue yonder. A peppermint parachute snapped open and the box disappeared into the frigid waters below. A successful launch.

An estimated eighty percent of an iceberg is below the water line and, much like a sailboat, they are pushed along by ocean currents. These buoys, part of the World Ocean Current Experiment, will allow scientists to track said currents in the areas where icebergs are typically found, giving them a better idea of where to look and thereby keep mariners safe. But you probably knew that already.

–

04FEB2012 – There are no flights today. In fact, nothing is happening today. St. John’s is being audited by a blizzard. Or maybe it’s more of a snow transfusion; out with the old, in with more of the same shit. Knowing in advance that this was going to happen, I stayed awake till 5 a.m., writing and consuming Red Bull like it was my job. This morning, as I sat in the hotel restaurant, someone brought me a Denver omelet and a pot of black coffee.

Minus 24-hour access to the pool and an unlimited supply of fresh Alaskan halibut, brown rice and steamed spinach, this, my friends, is my American dream!

There’s a young boy sitting at a table across the restaurant with two older men. I can remember what it was like to be that kid; I’d rather have been outside playing tag until dark, riding my bike, reading a book or dreaming up reasons why a salt shaker would make an awesome spaceship (figure out the propulsion system, locate the bridge, decide upon a classification and determine if it was built on Earth or in orbit), versus wasting a perfectly good snow day being held captive to the natural ebb and flow of boring adult conversation. The nearer of the men appears to be the boy’s father, as he is looking down at the child with an unmistakable love and pride. The shortest member of the three is busy sipping different liquids through his straw, oblivious to the gaze of admiration.

I watch as a young girl loads a spearful of prostrated chicken bodies into Hell’s Ferris wheel. She performs a last rite of sprinkled herbs and spices before sealing the door of the inferno. Immediately, the tiny cube is filled with hot light and every aspect of the birds’ bodies is revealed. The slow orbit begins. In ten minutes time, the tender pink of their skin will turn a lazy golden brown, like the tan of a college girl with time on her hands and too much rum in her system…

To Be Continued…

WE ARE HERE TO MAKE WORDS.

I wanted to be an astronaut until I realized that I sucked at math.  That was the fourth grade.  I’d failed the same stupid test for the third time in a row, consequently developing a deep, psychological hated for red ink pens…

My next “when-I-grow-up moment” didn’t really come until high school, when I decided I was either gonna be the guy who made monster suits and spaceships on movie sets, or I was gonna be a writer.  I’d been writing since I could hold a Crayon and figured it was as good a destiny as any.

I was still a freshman in high school when I typed up a nine page short story about a guy who drove around the country hunting down the losers of a state-sanctioned lottery as an alternative to global thermonuclear warfare.  I sent the story to my parents, who unbeknownst to me sent it to a publisher, who in turn called me up and told me that if I finished the story before the end of the summer, I’d have myself a book deal.  I panicked, blindly polishing every spark of creativity out of the story, missed the deadline and shelved it forever.

But the experience gave me a real push toward words.  From that point on, I became obsessed with writing.  Maybe this was a doable destiny!  I started forming the idea in my head that if I just focused on this lone and immaculate objective, I’d someday perform a great and magnificent feat: I envisioned doing something amazing, something that could change the course of history and unite the world in a common emotion, like an athlete who trains their whole life for one shining moment while overcoming great obstacles along the way.

I decided that I wanted to be able to express human emotion in a way that no one had ever done before.

Still in high school, I looked into haiku on the advice of a much-respected English teacher, quickly becoming a fan of the medium’s prison shiv beauty — short, sharp and, inserted just beneath the ribcage, designed to take your breath away.

In just seventeen
syllables, I swore I could
smell cherry blossoms.

As you can imagine, I was crap at writing haiku.  Everything I wrote looked suspiciously like something someone else had already written a long time ago and I felt ashamed.  Plus, I’d made the mistake of telling the wrong people my dreams.  Presently I gave up on haiku.  Why not?  I was nowhere near a temple, and there were no monks to guide me.  Sweeping the floor was just sweeping the floor, and a glass of water was just a stupid fucking goddamn glass of water.

Still obsessed with words, I then had the notion that a person could somehow open their mouth and let brand new sounds tumble forth — words and phrases never before spoken by a human mouth, in any language, by any race, anywhere on the face of the Earth.  Beyond dead languages, beyond glossololia.  I thought that maybe the key to expression was locked inside this new box…

Except I had no database or monthly scientific journals to base my findings upon.  So I made a lot of retarded noises and jotted them down, hoping one of them might be even slightly virginal in nature.

(It’s no wonder that I remained in a similar physical state until I was in my early 20s.)

After that, I wanted to come up with an answer for the question of why we find some people more attractive than others.  I thought that maybe it had something to do with the measurements of the human face — the height, width or angle of the nose, the spacing of the features, the length of the jawline, the width of the mouth, or the specific color of the eyes.  What if all these factors added up to some sacred number, one that doomed a small group destined to succumb as prey to holy integers?  Years later, I would find this on the internet:

It’s nice to know that as an adolescent, I wasn’t completely off the mark; just off my rocker.  And understandably horny.

Following high school, I gave up on my dream of being a special effects artist.  It seemed the only way to achieve this was to move to Los Angeles and hang around on movie sets until I found someone to teach me.  Instead, I applied and was accepted to a prestigious Midwest art college.  I was hopeful — until they told me how much it would cost.  So I revisited my writing dream and, after reading too much Hunter S. Thompson, decided I wanted to be a war correspondent.

And Uncle Sam was gonna fund it, because I sure as fuck couldn’t.

At first I considered a stint in the army, or maybe the Marines.  I’d need to learn some very valuable survival skills before setting out into the wild.  I had a vision of myself in four or five years time; a half-smoked cigarette permanently attached to my bottom lip, a gaggle of battered cameras slung around my neck, an ancient carbine across my back, dust-caked goggles pushed high on my forehead, and an ancient Underwood under one arm.  Once I finished my enlistment, I’d take any assignment, no matter how dangerous.  And wandering to some of Earth’s far-flung shit holes, I’d explore the last remaining exotic lands still hidden from the light of Western progress.  I would write stories about the things I saw there, and take photographs of the fascinating people I met.

And one day I would simply miss my deadline, never be heard from again.  That was my retirement plan.

I was not yet 21.

So I approached several recruiters and attempted to make an intelligent decision based on the horrible lies they were paid to tell me.  I tested well, and applied for jobs in photography, journalism and for some reason, cryptology.  But the recruiters all told me those fields were closed, and that I should pick something else.  We went round and round in this manner until finally, disgusted and hopeless, I stormed into an office and spoke thusly to a Navy recruiter:

“I want the most far-flung, whacked-out job you have, something that will take me to the far side of the globe, without threatening to bring me one inch closer to the chair I’m sitting in.”  And that’s the story of how I never became an astronaut, or a war correspondent, or the guy who makes monster suits or spaceships for movies.

Had I known that recruiters are instructed to ‘guide’ people into certain job fields where their respective service was experiencing shortages, or had I only been willing to wait.  Well, the outcome might have been different.

Instead, I went to Europe and built bombs for four years.

I’m pleased to say that the desire to write came with me.  I started keeping a journal just after high school, and I took it with me where ever I roamed.

Journal writing frustrated the fuck out of me at first.  I lacked skill, and I was impatient.  I was in a big damn hurry to write perfect things and powerful sentiments.  I didn’t know the first fucking thing about real writing but I still wanted to do something amazing, something so insightful that it could lift the veil of reality, and part the curtain to another world.  I wanted to write modern spells and conjure new truths.

I wanted to surpass all previously written works for their ability to inspire and split foreheads with the lightning of the profound.  I didn’t even know what the fuck I was gonna write about, but I figured that once people read these holy words the message would spread like wildfire…

The world would lay down arms.  Millions of people would wake from a terrible dream, weeping and gnashing their teeth.  The leaders of the world would turn to one another and exclaim, “Goddamn, but we’ve been going about this all wrong!  The last book has been written, all words can rest!  We must now aspire to fuck one another with the cock of peace and harvest grain together under the same sun, washing our clothes together in the great river and turning our swords back to plowshares yet again.  God won’t save the world.  Science won’t save the world.  The earth plain-ass wasn’t meant to be saved.  This book has said everything we’ve been trying to say, everything we ever thought about saying, and everything we probably would have said in the next ten thousand years, but didn’t know it yet!”

Sure, I was a pretentious ass.  I wanted to write magic holes through mountains, and weave spells, blah, blah, blah.  But I also genuinely wanted to understand beauty, and lust, and savagery.  I secretly hoped I’d go crazy when I got old so I could map my experience in a journal, holding on clarity like a fading lamplight as I ventured down that last and darkest of tunnels.  I was convinced that there was so much more to the world, but I didn’t know how to express it beyond my diet of tabloid headlines, song lyrics and science fiction movies.  Sometimes the words were right there on the tip of my tongue.  I wanted to be able to communicate anything to anyone, and make the whole world understand everything.

But how could I?  I didn’t understand myself, and I couldn’t separate myself from what I wanted to write about.  I didn’t know where to begin, or where I ended.  I didn’t know jack shit.

So I kept writing.

I continued to write through my early twenties, but without success.  Journals came and journals went.  I wrote letters about this, that and the other thing.  My friends were full of praise, and they let me live in the world I’d created.  I was The Writer.

I devoted years of attention to the recommended greats – the Beats, those who’d come before me and who by measure of their poverty and fearlessness were far more devoted to the craft than I knew how to be, each of them a pioneer in some regard.  They explored and exploited their own wormhole, staking their claim to a particular voice or style one step ahead of the gold rush.

The voices that called loudest to me were: drugs, music, sex, and road trips – oh, my!  And the strangest of those voices?  Assassins.  (Giant fucking millipedes??  Really??)

I wasn’t prepared to give up on writing, but I also realized I wasn’t very good.  Still, I promised myself one drunken night in a land very far away that if I ever became homeless I’d still carry a pen and a piece of paper.  “You can abandon your work, but your work will never abandon you.”

Years passed, and I thought that perhaps stronger measures were called for.  Suppose I made a Robert Johnson deal with You-Know-Who, and waited my turn at the midnight crossroads, armed with the wing of a bat and the eyes of a newt.  Would the Horned One grant me my deepest desire based on the strength of a pinkie swear, or was I going to have to slit my palm with a crude dagger carved from the jaw bone of a murdered stag?  Headless hooves stomping in the bloodied winter grass, the end result of my quest to harness above as the below…

But I didn’t believe in the Devil, and I didn’t actually think I could murder a stag.  So that plan was out.

Time passed.  Journals were purchased and filled.  The majority were dog-eared, covered in duct tape and existed pretty much as ad space for my ego, their pages weighted with stapled concert stubs, proclamations, one-liners written on airliners, photographs of models, quotes torn from magazines, strange things and coffee rings, but mostly drunken heartache.  Twenty years, nine countries, five states, three islands, one Indian reservation, and one snow globe later, and still I have no idea of what I was trying to say.

My apartment is pitch black tonight, and my hands look so much older by the glow of this laptop screen.  Time is out there, snorting and stomping the snow, exhaling demons from its nostrils, waiting… sometimes I think I can almost feel it at my elbow.

Like right now.

I’ll be 40 in a few months, and no closer to writing anything more powerful than a good one-liner.  In the absence of my all-powerful epic, I’ve managed one novel, sixty short stories and thanks to a second enlistment in the other nautical-sounding of our Armed Forces, a stack of official-sounding press releases — none of which has ever escaped being disemboweled by a red pen.

There is the known, which we sometimes tire of.  And then there’s the rest of it.

All I’ve learned about life is that I don’t know much.  And from what I can tell, neither does anyone else.  Everything we think we know takes place on this planet, and in this dimension.  We are born here, and we die here.  We are bound to this rock.  The stories we tell are of this world, for this world, and by this world.  They describe our experiences in this dimension, and how we live this life.  And we know only these stories and their endless spin-offs.  We’ve described our home to death, and pretty much worn out our tongues.  I don’t think there are any virginal sounds left.

I recently deleted The Doors from my music collection, but I’ll give Jim Morrison one last nod: “No one gets out of here alive.”

There’s no such thing as magic, only science we haven’t figured out yet.  Emotions are not facts, and love – as much as you wish it wasn’t true – is purely chemical.  Relationships are all about timing, security and chemistry.  And one man’s words aren’t gonna change the world, so long as there are people around to disagree with them.

Being successful in this life only means that your physical needs and comforts will be taken care of while you’re alive; inhabiting your body, existing in this dimension and playing your role in this traveling production.

The pawn and the bishop go back in the same box when the game is over.

But there has to be more!  Something just beyond, something left behind, maybe something we’ve forgotten?  I feel as though we’re living in a collective dream, standing tall on the edge of a trance:  All the while you thought you were having a lengthy conversation with Iggy Pop in a half empty bar late one summer night in 1993, in reality you’ve been standing in the checkout line of a Memphis convenience store for the past ten minutes, transfixed by the mutated face staring back at you from a Pringles can on the conveyor belt, and frankly people are beginning to notice…

In the end, maybe Words have failed me.  Maybe I failed the Words.  Maybe there was nothing to fail.  George Washington Carver once said that if you love something long enough, it would give up its secrets.  Was I deemed not worthy to peek behind the curtain?  Did I perform the wrong spells?  Whatever the reason, whenever the moment, when it came time to select my Holy Path, I chose the soft option.

And so my reward was a different life.  Instead of leaving this world on a pillar of fire to walk among the stars; instead of traveling to distant lands and capturing beauty reserved for only the bravest; instead of a day-to-day fight for survival and a life lived on the edge of a fast-moving knife; instead of summoning sentences both sage and surreal, crafting tales with the power of the Old Gods like the Jackie Chan of Juxtaposition, or the Wolverine of the Who, What, Where, Why and When…

Instead, I’m writing this blog.

Thanks for reading.

(There may be secrets left, but I’ll be damned if I know where to look for them.)

Charlie Sixteen

14OCT2010 – MSY – I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy to leave New Orleans…

The piece of paper that sent me down here in the first place clearly stated that I was to be “(*)repeatedly stretched to the breaking point, ground into paste, ingested and excreted from the assholes of both September and October for a period of no less than sixty days at the leisure of the King of Hawaii for no good goddamn reason at all.” That I should find myself in the departure lounge, boarding pass in hand forty-four days later is a lucky break, and I have no true business staring into the mouth of a gift horse.

Howe’er.

I arrived at Louis Armstrong International only to discover that my 1130 flight back to LaGuardia had been canceled, and the next one wouldn’t depart until almost 17 p.m., getting me home at 21 p.m.  Lesser men would have screamed, possibly taken hostages.  And still others might have hailed a cab and headed back out in search of debauchery.

But in some weird and admittedly perverse way, this makes me happy. I’ve got the entire gate to myself, I’ve got a seat next to an outlet, and I came prepared: laptop, iPhone, headphones, journal, Sharpies, a brand new copy of Cory Doctrow’s “Futuristic Tales of The Here and Now”, a lightning fast Wi-fi connection, and a damn good cup of coffee.

Pending a zombie invasion, a Die Hard-esque shootout between a burned-out cop and Ze Germans, a colicky baby or some other natural disaster: I’m aces, thanks for asking.

One hour till departure: Seat near the window, bonus! Listening to: Dead Can Dance, Led Zep, Deftones.  Charging: my gadgets.  Checking: my email. Watching: Several hundred tons of taxi gather the much-needed speed to fuck its way into the unresisting sky.  Gravity, lift, drag, and thrust.  Peanuts and Sprite.  Over and over, these common theme of my travels.  All those people, all those aliens, all those dress shirts.., (X) ft of white headphone cord, and (Y) lbs worth of “Compounded Negative Body Issue Monthly” being spread like a fucking virus, their once-glossy corners now gently bent and fetal against the protective interior leather of designer carry-ons.

My eyes move around the room, mining the details, but wholly unable to keep pace with the flow of arriving passengers, the rolling rectangles, the designer sunglasses and three thousand other items of little to no consequence. It makes me wish I could sketch.  Finally, my oculars come to rest on the matched set of thigh-high silver cylinders guarding the entranceway to Charlie Sixteen, my home of record for the next hour.

Trash cans they are, and trash cans they will stay. When one finishes ones damn good cup of coffee, one is expected to do the decent thing and force the empty paper cup into the mouth of said cylinder, where it will tumble briefly southward before coming to rest in the whispered clutches of a petroleum-based, quasi-disposable stomach lining, later to be gutted and gathered by minimum wage taxidermists whose first language is probably not English.

Look at the trash can, now look at me, NOW BACK TO THE TRASH CAN:

Out of sight, out of mind. But when you throw something away, what does away really mean?  The more I stare at the cans, the more I begin to see them as something else, slowly rebuilding them in my head, swapping the plastic intestines for something else:

Suppose that when you tossed a piece of trash into the can, it was instantly incinerated, and that the energy extracted from the incineration process went toward creating the energy required to incinerate the next piece of trash, and so on, and so forth.  How far ahead in our technological evolution would we have to be to pull off a stunt like that? Get back to me on this.

There’s my flight,

TWM

(*not really.)

Hipsters in the Mist

Hipsterus Williamsburgia in his natural element

An Ohio native, Thomas McKenzie, is inspired by anthropologist Dian Fossey’s work with Rwandan mountain gorillas, and decides to devote his life to the study of hipsters.  Relocating to deepest, darkest Brooklyn, New York, McKenzie becomes fascinated with the lives and habits of the rare urban hipsters of the Williamsburg jungle.

Appalled by the poaching of the hipsters by locals for their ironic attire, scrawny tattooed hides and novelty sunglasses, McKenzie complains to the city council. They dismiss him, claiming that poaching hipsters is the only means by which some of the Brooklyn natives can survive in a stifled economy.  McKenzie rejects this stance, and dedicates himself to saving the rare Williamsburg Brooklyn hipster from illegal poaching and likely extinction.

He mysteriously vanished one weekend shortly after his arrival. What follows are the only remaining fragments of his research journals, rescued from a fire.

May 7, 2010 – I shall never forget my first encounter with hipsters. Sound preceded sight. Odor preceded sound in the form of an overwhelming musky-barnyard, humanlike scent. Peeking through the vegetation-like display of a Slim-Jim rack in a Korean-owned convenience store, I spied a curious phalanx of black clad, tattooed hipsters peering back at me, their eyes darting nervously from behind heavy black-rimmed glasses and the brims of their respective trucker and snap-brim hats as though trying to identify me as familiar friend or potential foe. I was fascinated with the expanse and expense of their tattoos, and wondered how they could possibly afford what appeared to be thousands of dollars of old-school flash which adorned their arms, hands and necks, while wearing what appeared to be common bungee cords through the belt loops of their three-dollar thrift store corduroy slacks. After establishing that I was not a threat, the males went back to a series of actions that included chest-beating, scratching, yawning, and texting each other. The females stood to one side while the males glared at the ground and nudged rocks with the toes of their Chuck Taylor’s, fidgeting with the excessively long chains of their biker wallets, and sharing what I can only assume were skateboard tips and the general lameness of the local music scene.

Research notes: The term “hipster” is cross-applied from the 1930s Beatniks. Hipsters rejects “mainstream” culture while embracing and contributing to an independent culture all their own. They typically live in young, artsy neighborhoods of a major city such as Wicker Park in Chicago; Greenwich Village in Manhattan; or Williamsburg in Brooklyn. A hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat. Yet, they rely on reusable earth friendly Whole Foods bags for carrying their overpriced organic food. Must have no reliable monetary income, and rely on their parents to shoulder the cost of living in expensive metropolitan areas. Hipsters work (or want to work) in music, art, or fashion. They are known for “elitist” musical tastes and listens to nu-rave (i.e. The Klaxons, Cut Copy, Hercules and Love Affair), minimalist techno, independent rap (i.e. Spank Rock, Talib Kweli, Aesop Rock), nerdcore (i.e. YT Cracker, MC Lars, MC Chris), Elephant 6 (i.e. of Montreal, Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples in Stereo), garage rock and punk rock, in addition to all manners of independent rock, the more obscure the better.

June 20th, 2010 – Spotted an unusual specimen today crossing Humboldt Avenue. Far from dominant, this male was attired in crusty canvas shoes, pencil thin jeans, a worn t-shirt emblazoned with a slogan I was not familiar with, multi-colored plastic novelty sunglasses, and a coonskin hat perched jauntily upon his greasy mane, despite the raging summer heat. He seemed entirely oblivious to the oncoming traffic, dragging his feet slightly as he crossed the street, his shoulders slumped forward. Not wanting to spook this magnificent specimen, I averted my gaze but continued scribbling in my notebook as he slumped away down the sidewalk sipping a cup of Starbucks coffee.

And now, a documentary on the athletic habits of the Williamsburg hipster:

Putting “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” to shame, it’s

TWM

100507/08

IN WHICH I have less than 48 hours to get to New York City, find a place to live, seal the deal, and return home, victorious. Period. This is my account of my housing reconnaissance, May 7 – 8.

I’ve always had this thing about New York City. Ever since I can remember, it seemed to me a terrifying mixture of too much concrete, too much hype and too many people hell bent on doing each other too much harm. Obviously, I have entire storehouses of negative New York memes running rampant through my already imaginative mind. I pictured NYC as a cruel and uncaring place; a wretched empire for the young, the rich, the jaded and the exceptionally greedy, where being pick-pocketed, mugged, and robbed was just something that happened while you stood in line for coffee.

And then I learned I was being transferred there.

Once I stopped hyperventilating, I began pouring through the history of the city; spending hours hunched over Google Earth, memorizing subway maps, bus schedules, and generally reading everything there was to know about this mecca of perpetual insomnia. I imagined that IF I found a place to live, it’d be an overpriced cubbyhole beneath creaking stairs in a condemned building. I imagined that crackheads, pimps, thieves and junkies would take turns breaking into my apartment while I slept, stealing everything that I owned, over and over, until I went mad. I further imagined that if I went to my employers and complained, they’d somehow blame me for negligence. (I pride myself on being a law-abiding person, but I’ve had some bad experiences with authority figures in the past, instances which I’ll not expound upon here, but which have nonetheless left me permanently mistrustful of bureaucracy of any sort. Die, trust. Die.)

Two pieces of information did wonders for my mood: One, NYCScout, a production location specialist I follow on Twitter, revealed that there were only three “real” New York alleys left in the whole city.  The odds of me being dragged into one of them by a gang of vicious 6th graders and beaten within an inch of my life was officially slim to none. And two, there was the legacy of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; a blitzkrieg on the underbelly of New York of old, which many say resulted directly in the dwindling crime rate.

Your predicted response: “But I miss the whores in Times Square!” I realize that NYC means different things to different people, and there are some of you who probably love it. Awesome. I’d like to point out that you already have fond memories and experiences on which to base your opinions. I, at the time of writing this, do not. So please, allow me the opportunity to be wrong.

Housing: I knew I was going to need a place as close to the subway line as possible. There is such a thing as a real estate triangle in NYC; SPACE, LOCATION, and PRICE. You can have two. Unless you’re a household name, you probably won’t get all three. There was no way I could afford anything in Lower Manhattan or Greenwich Village, which was a straight shot uptown on the 1 Red line. My secondary was Brooklyn; specifically, the quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods of Williamsburg.

The subway and bus routes were like colorful rivers that cut through the city, flowing straight toward the mouth of the Staten Island Ferry, and without a better source of info, I based my apartment-hunting strategy on this. A stroke of good luck: a fellow photographer and good friend introduced me to his brother Anthony; an up-and-coming real estate broker who just happened to work for the largest firm in NYC. This made all the difference in the world. I contacted Anthony; we agreed on a time and a place to meet, and he advised me as to what forms I would need to bring along. There was nothing left to do but go.

I caught the 0635 train departing Union Station on Friday, May 7. Next stop: facing my fears.

HOUSTON WE HAVE LANDED. 10:26 AM May 7th via Tweetie

Friday, 10:36 – Climbing up out of Penn Station, I was immediately overwhelmed by the mass, movement, meat, and metal around me. If I were an asthmatic, I’d have been sucking on my inhaler like it was my job. Truth be told, I’m not a big city guy. I like small towns, quiet neighborhoods, and lots of silence. An ideal afternoon is spent hiking along in the woods, or exploring abandoned buildings. I can’t really explain the tightness in my chest brought on by my first glimpse of the city.

Time to focus. I moved east toward my hotel until I looked at my watch — holy fucking fish fingers! I had less than 25 minutes to find the subway, make my way to Brooklyn, and meet my broker! Fortunately, I believe in redundancy and prior planning. I’d already downloaded HopStop and plotted out my course in the event that I ran late, and everything I needed for the weekend was on my back. I tightened the straps and turned South along 6th, making a beeline for Herald Square. After a few wrong turns, I descended into the subway. (I’m going to miss the swipe card technology of Disco Charlie’s Metro system.)

AWAY TEAMS: DEPLOYED, NAVIGATION SWEEP: ACTIVE. SUBWAY: CONQUERED. Good morning, New Yorkers. A tattooed giraffe walks among you… 11:09 AM May 7th via Tweetie

Friday, 11:59 – Now in a rental property office somewhere in Brooklyn. Arrived just minutes before my broker. (Go, me!) I’d dressed sharp for a change; new brown shoes, khaki trousers and a respectable navy blue button down. I lost all sense of “with it” in the restroom when I sprayed room freshener on my hands after mistaking it for hand soap. The upside? I smelled like flowers. The bathroom mirror had fallen from its mounting brackets some time ago and was propped in place with bricks of Styrofoam and blocks of concrete. At least I could see that my shoes were tied properly.

Friday, 1:30 - I found a place! (*sigh of relief*) MAYBE. The property hadn’t even been listed yet. One bedroom, gas stove, new appliances, wood floors, fresh paint, great view, plenty of floor space, tile bathroom, NNE-facing windows with a balcony, and plenty of storage space. Third floor, steel doors, secured building, good locks. I’d have rooftop space with a view of Manhattan, AND it’s in a tree-lined neighborhood just a few blocks from a Lego-simple train ride to the office, AND and it’s within my price range. It even included a giant wardrobe that matched my writing desk and bookshelf. I thought about how great it would be to move in.., clean the place from top to bottom, stock the fridge, arrange my bookshelf, open the windows, light some incense and wait for the rains to fall…

Conflict: I wanted to get my hopes up. / I couldn’t afford to get my hopes up.

Even as we were viewing the apartment, I was told that the top floor apartment had *just* been taken. I immediately staked my claim on 3R, and hoped for the best.

Later: Turns out my broker has a similar interest in pulp sci-fi, and he’s been working on an “old time” radio show, but hasn’t had time to get it off the ground. We talked time travel, wormholes and exchanged globe-hopping experiences over beer and tacos in a Mexican place nearby.

Later still: Man, they aren’t kidding about Williamsburg being the capital of hipsters. I think I’ve seen Beck about thirty-five times in the past 6 hours. Painfully thin and bearded is where it’s at, apparently.

Q: How many hipsters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It’s a very obscure number, you’ve probably never heard of it.

Friday, 5:00 – I checked into my hotel on 6th and 37th. Unpack, unwind. I laid out my gear in an orderly manner, everything spaced evenly along the counter from largest to smallest and in order of use or importance. (Yeah, I’ve got a little problem…) Ventured out to get some food, returned to my room. “Oh, but you should have explored! I would have looked around! I’d want to see everythin –” Yeah, I’m sure you would. I wasn’t in town to spend money or explore. I needed every penny for tomorrow. There’d be time for that later. Hopefully.

Not surprised, I couldn’t get a signal in my room after 9 p.m. Watched TV, once again reminded of why I haven’t had cable in over a decade: because it sucks.

Saturday, 1230: Once the application forms were signed, I walked around my (hopefully) new neighborhood, figuring the best thing to do with all this nervous energy was learn the lay of the land. I found a grocer at the mouth of the Graham Street subway stop with all my favorite things on the shelves. (see also: Guinness, Naked, fresh fruit and vegetables.) I was so optimistic about my apartment and a new life in this neighborhood that I must have wished ten little old ladies a happy Mother’s Day. (Kind words from a 6-foot boy scout in Buddy Holly glasses makes old ladies smile.) I found a Thai restaurant, a coffee house, AND they’ve got a little something called Barcade; a happy marriage of beer and electronic nostalgia. Galaga and Guinness, here I come!

From their Twitter page:  2 new games just arrived: Satan’s Hollow and Paperboy. 3:41 PM Mar 24th via web

I walked back to the Frost Street apartment and stood across the street, visualizing myself living there, establishing a routine, and becoming familiar with my surroundings, a fixture in the neighborhood.  If this didn’t happen the way I hoped it would, I had no idea what I would do. I wouldn’t have the time and money to make another trip north. This was all or nothing…

Grafitti from Williamsburg, Brooklyn: http://twitpic.com/1m62gn about 21 hours ago via Tweetie

More from Frost Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn: http://twitpic.com/1m66xw about 21 hours ago via Tweetie

Next objective: I took the subway to my new office and timed the route. Thirty minutes later, I was standing at the front door of the southernmost building on Manhattan Island, buffeted by the wind and squinting from the dust being blown up around me. Easy! I’d be up and out the door no later than 0655 every weekday. Plus, I could work as late as I wanted and still catch a ride home. Checked my watch again. My train pulled out of the station in four hours.

After I left Battery Park, I walked north along Church St to Sixth, to the Avenue of The Americas to Greenwich to 11th the whole way to 35th. I reasoned that with all the tourist traffic this town had, it’d probably worked out the transportation bugs long ago. And if 8,363,710 could live here then I could, too.

Presently on foot moving up Ave of the Americas toward Penn Station, eyes peeled for grafitti… about 20 hours ago via Tweetie

And now, my two-word review of New York City: SHUT! UP! http://twitpic.com/1m6fko about 20 hours ago via Tweetie

Apparently the economy is having an adverse effect on everyone.

Once I got over the vertigo and the overwhelming amount of concrete, craziness and carbon-based lifeforms, I was OK. I tried hard not to get my hopes up about the apartment, but I had to have something positive to focus on. Without a home to call my own, I’d be in dire straits. Imagining that I would have a place to call home in this busy biomass did wonders for my mood. Lately, I’d had the feeling of being backed into a corner. I just needed an even break, and I began to feel that NYC might just be what I was looking for.

I felt as though my perception of the world had just grown from a two-lane dirt road in a school zone to an eight-lane superhighway complete with triple-cloverleaf overpass. Sort of.

7:00 – Saturday evening. Now in Penn Station, waiting for my 9:00 train home. Sipping at an iced coffee with two shots and enjoying a cold Guinness while I recharge my physical batteries, and attempt to replenish my iPhone’s power supply.

BASTARD! My 167 Regional ride home is :35 min late. “…as if millions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.” about 16 hours ago via Tweetie

I talked to a DeNiro look-alike while I waited, another soul hoping to make it as an actor: “So I finish my head shots, ” he says, “and I’m on H street, walking along, minding my own business, right? I put a cigarette out and this guy says to me, ‘Hey, gimme a cigarette.’ I says to him, ‘I got no cigarettes, and I ain’t tryin’ to sell ya one, either!’ And so he says to me, ‘Man, you’re a fucking asshole!’ How the fuck am *I* the asshole, here?” We laughed, then he says, “You’re a pretty big guy, he prolly wouldn’ta said shit to you.” They called Deniro’s train and he walked away.

After a :50 minute wait, I boarded my train back to Disco Charlie. I managed to pick a crap seat. No electricity.

We’re stopped at Newark airport. An express train whips past; a fantastic display of the Doppler effect. WEEEEEEOOOOwwwww…

Moments later, one of the porters comes by and flicks a switch just out of my view. Electricity! “Master Blaster runs Bartertown!” With nothing good to read (William Gibson’s “The Difference Engine” had failed to scratch my itch), I proceeded to Tweet my ass off:

@abitofmybrain I’ve been gassed, shot at, maced, violently ill at sea, divorced, and changed my fair share of diapers. I can take this! about 16 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to abitofmybrain

@myauralfixation He was AWESOME live! He stood with one foot on the rail, poised like a crow, and pointed down at me for “Mercy Seat.” about 15 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to myauralfixation

Thanks to everyone who clapped their hands and cried out, “I DO believe in timely trains!” I am now enroute to Disco Charlie. Later, NYC. about 15 hours ago via Tweetie

Travelling by train is easier than flying, but they should look into installing hammocks – or lining the seats with hippie/gypsy pillows. about 12 hours ago via Tweetie

Apparently May 8 is National Train Day, so if you know any one who’s a train, please show your support and take them to lunch. about 14 hours ago via Tweetie

@myauralfixation Inspired by yr tweet, I’m presently downloading The Cult’s “Fire Woman” while rolling along through the Pennsylvania night. about 13 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to myauralfixation

@troystith “For those about to caffeinate, we salute you!” <– Fact: The original title of the AC/DC classic, it was felt as “lacking”. about 13 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to troystith

Dear @TommyWiseau: while I didn’t grasp the full intensity of your controversial hit “The Room”, I hope you find a home on Twitter. Best! about 13 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to TommyWiseau

L/T: Black Moth Super Rainbow on my way through Baltimore. Can’t sleep, can’t shut up – but you probably know that about me by now. about 12 hours ago via Tweetie

At last, Union Station, Disco Charlie. End of the line. This concludes our programming day. Please stand by for our National Anthem. -30- about 11 hours ago via Tweetie

Home by 3 a.m., up at 7, it’s…

TWM

P.S. I got the apartment.

Control.

It really *is* just out of your grasp.

It’s About Fucking Time

22MAR08 – Getting on toward the end of yet another journal, one that has taken me across most of the state of Alaska, through Brisbane, Australia, before terminating in Washington, D.C. That’s the purpose of the thing, I suppose. Ever onward. Change, the only constant. For better or worse, hell or High Water.

The meaning of life is; trying to hold on to all that we hold dear for as long as humanly possible, all the while hoping that the end doesn’t come too soon. The meaning of life is; to fill one’s life with enough experience to understand in some small way what it means to be alive in the first place.

Sitting at the yellow table in Misha’s, sipping a large triple-shot soy latte, watching the endless possibility of human faces go strolling past the big window…

(A woman standing in line has such a terrible handbag that I can’t bear to look in her direction. I’m relieved when she buys her coffee, runs outside and climbs into a waiting car just as the light turns green…)

(A man in a wheelchair with a painfully quiet voice asks me for a light. I almost didn’t hear him over the sounds of ‘Dub Trio’ in my headphones. When I tell him I don’t have one, he maneuvers his gadget around and asks the back of an unknowing stranger who can’t hear his request over the blaring din of the 1940s. I stand up, clear my throat, and broadcast the request for him. Startled eyes blink back at me from across the shop like deer in the headlights. Oh, dear. Seems I’ve frightened the herd… I manage to locate a pack of matches in the bag slung across the back of his chair and help him light up, arranging the large brass ashtray just so before him…)

I can’t believe I’ll be 37 soon. Who’d have thought it possible? Somewhere inside, I’m still 9, still 19, still 29. Had a moment yesterday where I experienced what it was like to be ‘me’. I could understand for an instant that I was living in this body, making hands my move, making words with my tongue, manipulating a pen into concepts, and listening to the stupid things I say in an attempt to be charming or sophisticated.

Listening to ‘Host of the Seraphim’ by Dead Can Dance. If only scientists could find a way to pry open this song and let me live inside it. If only the landscape didn’t end at 6:17. If only I could crawl inside the breath of angels, drink water from the rivers and walk on the land. That’s a lot of ‘if only.’ Sometimes a song is so good you never want to see it end and when it’s over you want to hear it again for the first time, but you can’t. You can’t go home again. You have to call it something else.

Still so much I want to do in this world… what’s it like to fly a bush plane over the Serengeti plains, watching elephants fuck and lions eat slower animals? What’s it like to leap off a perfectly good bridge with nothing but a long rubber band tied to my ankle? What’s it like to spend a week in wintertime Iceland with the woman I love, soaking in the hot springs and drinking peppermint vodka as the Northern Lights dance overhead? I aim to discover some if not all of these answers. I refuse to believe this is all there is.

I like coffee and the Devil drinks tea.