081210

“The Internet is full of music. Some of it we like, some of it we don’t. Then, there’s Phil Collins.” – Unknown

“The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds.” – John Searle

So, I think my iPod can read my mind, or at least understand my moods.

Preface: Whether the device is benevolent or malevolent remains to be seen. Since it’s essentially a manmade device it is thereby removed from the sticky regulations governing human ethics, just as a gun is a gun; at once a weapon of destruction and an exciting television remote, depending on the hand that wields it. On these shaky grounds, I suppose it can be said it possesses both good and evil. Whether I snapped it in half and used the jagged ends to carve crude epithets on the foreheads of cornered strangers, or used it for its intended purpose, it’s still neutral because it can’t act on its own. Just to be on the safe side, I keep it on ‘shuffle’, the rough equivalent of ‘free will’.

My iPod plays what I refer to as ‘baseline’ when I’m doing something that doesn’t require much involvement, such as riding the Metro or walking down the street. I think of these as background songs because they are ‘just songs’. They contain very little magic and only trace amounts of passion, yet their melodies have gentle impact on my perspective, changing the way I feel about my surroundings in subtle ways, like a director moving the viewer along from scene to scene and emphasizing certain things in the frame. These songs provide the soundtrack to a movie that never seems to end.

That begs another question: how does my iPod know where I am, what’s going on around me, or even that I’m on the Metro? Damned if I know, but it does! Maybe it’s got my behavior patterns down so cold that it knows I wake up at 0645, get ready for work, and board the morning train at 0730. (I’m kinda OCD that way, so I suppose that’s one possible solution.)

Another question; if the songs in my library could be considered a means of expression and communication for my 4GB AI, am I limiting its vocabulary with the music I choose to listen to? Does it ‘like’ the same music I do, only because it’s never been exposed to anything else? Obviously an iPod has a ‘priori’ and ‘a posteriori’ knowledge, long bits of code that give it a rudimentary identity, and tell it how to interact with my computer. Do iPods come to resemble their owners in the way that pets do (in more than physical characteristics, like tacky leather carrying cases, and poor color choices?) I know there are probably far more important questions I could be asking here, but I don’t have the time. I’m on my lunch break.

In the morning, my enlightened little friend knows to play songs that drive me and motivate me, songs that compel me, propelling me along as I weave in and out of dense morning crowds of commuters as though I were skydiving through a slow motion explosion… I envision myself in freefall, a HALO jump, alighting perhaps on a giant chunk of what used to be an office building spinning gently through the morning light. I charge along the length of this tumbling platform and fling myself from the opposing edge with all the grace of an Olympic diver or a practitioner of Parkour, stepping gingerly across torn fragments of detonation-damaged I-beams as though I were crossing a quiet country brook on the moss-covered tops of common stones, the slap of fragmented dust and debris slapping against the fabric of my protective suit like raindrops on a sleepy tin roof as I continue my descent. (Sometimes I wonder what other people think about on the way to the office!)

There are songs so indescribably powerful that, when I hear them, I get the distinct impression that I’m trailing fire; long blue tongues of visible flame that seep from my skin as though I were perpetually striding through the gateway of another world, another dimension. These songs make me feel as though I were experiencing on-the-spot evolution, as though I were shedding my weakness, becoming More; swapping emotion-vulnerable flesh and blood for the impervious safety of machine-driven precision. As though the vaguely recollected fragments of a long-lost destiny were being decoded from songs and related only to me. (“This isn’t your world, you’re just passing through, you belong up there, out there…”)

There are songs so potent, so utterly overwhelming, so perfectly consuming, so wonderful that I wish scientists would hurry up and invent a way for me to climb inside them, so I could bolt the doors and stay awhile. There are songs that make me feel that time is slowing down, coming to a halt. Sometimes I catch sight of the second hand on my watch running backwards a few ticks before Greater Laws take precedence, and the Blessed Machinery of the Universe resumes authority with a quiet hum.

There are songs so heartbreakingly mournful, so absolutely barren, that I have to thrust my hand into my pocket with a gunfighter’s speed and fast-forward to the next track lest I fall to my knees, incapacitated on a busy sidewalk with great streams of tears running down my face; forced to relive some now-forgotten heartbreak, some ancient feeling of abandonment, some prior loss or rejection. Sometimes they’re not even my emotions, which makes them even harder to deal with. During those interludes, it’s as if everything were coming down around my ears at once, and a very real, very tangible, weight were bearing down hard on my shoulders, on my bones, on my heart, and on my lungs. Enough!’ I cry aloud. ‘It is too much for any one soul to deal with!’

There are songs in my collection now lost to me, songs I’ve shared with former lovers, songs that summon up their smiles of perfect warmth and angelic light, such adoration as I may never know again; chords and notes that contain their smells, their tastes, and their touch upon my skin like lockets worn about the neck. Those songs hurt me in ways I cannot fully describe here. Suffice to say, I find it necessary to remove them from my library altogether, until such a time as their memories have sufficiently faded and they can be released back into the wild. (Presently, my entire collections of ‘Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’, ‘Clutch’, and ‘The Melvins’ are on temporary suspension. You’d think I’d learn to be secretive about my music, hide it away from new flames and interests, learn to protect my heart, preserve my collection. But then, I’m not the one spinning the hits, am I?)

The experiment continues…

TWM

 

30NOV07 in the City

With a tremendous rush, the 5 o’clock yellow line comes thrusting out of the tunnel near the platform where I’m standing, driving before it the musty and mysterious smells of a dozen subterranean concrete wombs that it’s penetrated along the way. Headphones in, hat pushed back on my head, squinting into the wave of grit and wind, I wait till it stops before boarding the last car and sliding into a seat. Never cheat children, women, the elderly, or the infirm of a place to sit. These are rules to keep you honest, rules to live by. Remember them. A pair of gushing teenage girls take a seat to my left, giggling about something on their camera. I think for a moment about how much power and kinetic energy they hold. In their young lives, they will gain access to places I only read about in magazines based solely on their looks and implied access to their sexual favors. Spending this currency too readily means they’ll have the hardest time being taken seriously when they get older. I can’t remember being that excited about anything when I was their age, and that’s probably a damn shame. I’m sitting in a rail car moving backwards at X speed telling you first hand that the distance between Crystal City and DCA is remarkably short.

It’s Friday. Don’t believe me? Look it up.

TWM

01DEC07 – Sitting in Chipotle on King Street on a Saturday afternoon nearly paralyzed with pleasure, my legs tingling from the cold bite of the wind, my lips basked in flames from the heat of the salsa. The girl who assembled my burrito asked me twice if I was sure I wanted it this hot. I’ve been indoors for most of the day (the internet is evil!) but I got some work done as well. I have a camera, a notebook, coffee, and food. My Maslow’s are met for the moment.

The brown paper wrapping used to cushion my burrito is covered with the names of musicians. I read through them, and wonder at the tastes of someone who might own all of these albums. The selection is so bland! Who the fuck was the marketing department hoping to reach? Thirty-something’s in pressed jeans and color coordinated wardrobes, the relaxed faces of people you see in advertisements. Every race and gender represented, all with perfect teeth. They have a lot to laugh about. Their sparsely decorated homes feature the latest in labor saving devices, check their bank balances at the beach, and they drove there in a brand new Acura, maybe a Saab. These are decent people who live in respectable neighborhoods, vote responsibly, engage in vanilla sex, and spend lots of time shopping. They genuinely like Jack Johnson, and invite their college friends over for taco night.

Who the fuck has taco night? Men with perfect feet, lean physiques and six-figure incomes, that’s who. Women who own their own businesses and never get periods, that’s who. Couples with picture perfect weddings who name their daughters McKenzie and their sons Blake. People who shop at Eddie Bauer, wear their alma mater on sweatshirts, talk down to their children, and refer to themselves in the third person as mommy and daddy, that’s who. I don’t know what fucking planet these aliens came from. I only hope they come in peace.

Later, walking down King Street as I often do, immersed in observations and remote participation, exercising caution on the wet cobblestones. DASH buses entombed in a soft blue glow glide past on glass wheels, carrying no passengers. Everyone gives a stink eye to the poor around here, and no one wants to be reminded of the Facts this close to the Season of Giving, or how unpleasant things can get just beyond the walls of their personal Empire. A dollar won’t do shit. Anyone who knows anything knows that. That’s almost as good as taking the money and flinging it into the street. People only give to make themselves feel better.

Passers-by emit clean wi-fi, broadcasting their likes and dislikes in the clothes they wear, the products they sip, the shoes on their feet, and still we fail to understand one another. Someone once told me that ninety-five percent of the people you meet in your entire life are sound asleep, but that the remaining five live in a state of panicked awe, doomed to stomp the high ground alone, misunderstood and feared.

Everyone has issues, no one is exempt, all of us serving time here on the Pale Blue Dot. We are born, we become aware of ourselves, our surroundings, but seldom do we grasp the length and breadth of our lives until somewhere close to the end of the film, looking back over our shoulders one night with a glass of Scotch and seeing at last that our wild adventures took place within the narrow confines of a dog run, understanding for once and all that we lived each day according to a set of rules we didn’t vote for, experiencing a sense of guilt when we sought to please only ourselves. Then one day, we’re introduced to the concept of our own mortality, and it becomes the only name and face we remember, despite having met literally thousands of interesting and attractive people at parties throughout the years. Nothing lasts forever except nothing and forever, and there is no such thing as security. Our lives are over in the blink of an eye, like the shadow of a great bird crossing the surface of a lake by the light of the moon. There are no rollover minutes, and nothing is carried over, because none of us believe in the same version of today, tomorrow, forever, Heaven, or Hell. It’s just that simple, and just that complicated.

People in their cars
scatter like sparks from a fire.
Who knows where they go?

TWM

11JAN08 – I have difficulty with time; an ailment if you will. Things that happened to me years ago feel like yesterday, and vice versa. I think most physicians would refer to it as a Billy Pilgrim moment. Walking to the Metro, I suddenly find myself slinging ‘Pink Panty Pull Downs’ split three ways and bottles of Bud Lite served ice cold at that crappy little dive in Hilton Head, making hundred dollar bills hand over fist and spending all my free time inebriated pool side. When I opened my eyes again, I was on a Metro train twenty minutes late for work in the year 2008, older, wiser, and just as uncertain about tomorrow. How did my predecessors manage to live in this world, and create the great works that made the world sit up and take notice? I’m barely able to keep my head above water, spending much of my day finding new ways to stay interested in my job, with little success. My roaring 20s are just a memory, and I’m nearing the end of my depression-era 30s. Time just keeps marching. Most of the greats died young, unheralded.

Burroughs managed to hang on for the long haul with only his guns and his cats for company in the end. Kerouac drank himself into regressive stupidity, mummified in his mother’s apron strings and denying all that he’d accomplished. Thompson far exceeded his own predetermined finish line, and put his wife on hold while he ate the business end of a shotgun. Kesey went quietly, Casssady died counting railroad ties. These Junkies, drunks, malcontents, wandering madmen, Zen poets, and acid-suckling Pranksters were heroes to me, and yet I spend my days slumped in an ergonomic chair, manipulating electrons and shuffling file folders for Big Brother, living a life straddling both sides of the fence. I feel spikes of pride when I read about the lives we’ve saved, but this false sense of security, this wet blanket I live under is sapping me dry, and every day I’m that much closer to breathing my unhappy last.

“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s a fact of life,” chides a co-worker. “We all have to work!” says this stupid son of a bitch with a pair of dog’s balls sitting in the pan where their brains were meant to go. Is this your call to arms? Is this the trumpet call that spurs you to battle every morning? Maybe you’re in worse shape than me.

Enough of this talk. It’s Friday, and for once it’s not freezing.

Two days later, making observations in Murphy’s (God Hell, I swore I’d never come back here again.) Some relationships go on much longer than they’re meant to, like a Christmas sweater from your grandmother you’re told to keep wearing long after you’ve outgrown it. You get sick of the role you forced yourself into when you were lonely and you’d rather be anywhere else, but here but Here is the only game in town. Don’t think I’m alone in this. Someday you’ll get to a point where you can’t call the shots anymore. They’ll call you, and you’ll have to wait by the phone.

Still, these precious hours are the apex of the weekend, the part we all wish could go on forever. It’s as though we were in a carnival ride, swinging high out over the cornfields, closer to the stars in this moment that we have been all week. In this time and place we can see forever, and in a few more hours we will have begun our re-entry into the atmosphere of Sunday morning. Right now everything is clean and holy, and all we need is a few dollars in our pocket, a place to sit, and a strong drink with which to wet our lips. We can ignore the slappers, the bad Irish music, and the constant sports feed (on not one but two big screens!) Our ancient home continues its orbit around a prolonged nuclear explosion. All we ask is a few more precious seconds of this warmth, this innocence, this endless stretch of hassle-free nothingness. Monday morning is coming up like a sunrise on the horizon, but right now the Earthbound tedium of our workaday existence is a million miles away…

CUT TO: Monday morning. The hustle and bustle on the road to Doom, people racing each other out of the Metro station, up the escalators, fighting for a seat on the shuttle – just headed to work. The faster they travel up the ramp to that daily abattoir, the better they like it. The girl with the violin legs is back, in her tall brown leather boots and a skirt like theater curtains…I’m listening to the Rolling Stones, watching it all happen, as I always have, as I always will.

(“Tell me, Sister Morphine / when are you… coming ‘round again?”)

TWM

…And Someone Shouted ‘MacIntyre’

Feels like a thousand nights ago that I quit smoking. Fat lot of good that did me.

The smell in here is terrible, hot, and choking. I imagine I’m trapped inside a giant Plexiglas box, the walls of which are covered in a filthy yellow film, as I gulp down lungfuls of swirling second hand smoke in the name of relaxation.

The room is so fucking loud I can’t hear myself think, and I’m pinched between two rickety tables in the middle of the floor. Result – every time one of the painted, shrieking secretaries behind me wants to have a pee, she shoves her chair hard into my back.

At first, the old girls were aware enough of their surroundings to mouth the word ‘sorry’, to which I’d reply with a tight grin and a wave of the hand signifying, ‘No problem.’ We are nothing without manners.

As the night wears on, they’re lucky if they can stand up on their own let alone apologize for whacking me in the fucking shoulders, or spilling my drink. I grit my teeth and ask my friends (once again) if there isn’t another table available. No such luck from these fuckers.

“No way!” They’re all smiles. “This is a great table! We’re right in front of the stage! Rocky’s playing tonight!” Somehow, this answers everything. Outnumbered and outgunned, cheap beer and simple times are all that matter to this lot, adhering to a simple philosophy: Any bad situation can be easily mended with a tired joke or a gander at some pretty bird across the room. “You just need more beer!”

“No, I don’t.” I shake my head, confused, somewhat irritated. “And your logic is fucking retarded.”

Relax, calm down. Something must be done. I examine my options. One, I could lose my shit. Stand up, shout my good-byes, call everyone a bunch of dirty names and stomp out early. Bad form. I’ll become an instant asshole, and no one will understand the real cause and effect of it all.

Two, I can quietly get up, thank everyone for a good time, and slink back to my depressing little apartment near the Metro for a late snack and a movie, which sounds so utterly fucking depressing that I decide against it straight away and head straight to option three, which is ignore the bad vibes entirely and lose myself in a conversation with my trusty notebook, as I’ve done a hundred nights before, as I’m doing even now.

So why am I here in the first place? Because the few friends I have in my immediate life graciously invited me. They haven’t known me for very long, but they told me when I arrived in Old Town that ‘Murphy’s was the place for a guy like me.’ I never got a real explanation.

Now, being lower-class, an atheist, and a spin doctor for the Man you’d think I’d employ some really effective anti-bullshit measures, making me completely impervious to such shameless ego-stroking wankery. You’d think. It should in fact make me ninja smart, a man who carries out his personal affairs with the steady precision of the Godfather himself. It should, at that. Instead, it makes me just another sheep on the abattoir ramp, albeit with his eyes open.

Granted, I didn’t have to come tonight; no one held a gun to my head and demanded that I enjoy myself. I like being alone, it lets me charge my batteries. But after awhile the batteries are full and the charger gets hot, and what’s the point of charging your batteries if you never use them?

Which brings us back to another Saturday night sitting around a wobbling, sticky table trying to decide how best to forget my work week. There’s Scotch – quick on the draw, but hard on the wallet. There’s bourbon – the sticky sweet nectar of my youth. And there’s beer, which will make me feel like I’ve shot-gunned a loaf of wheat bread and give me hellacious mud shits tomorrow.

Murphy’s is your ‘completely unique, one-of-a-kind, quirky little neighborhood Irish experience,’ …and not really just another wooden hole along the street where a fellow with a touch of the Auld Country and an acoustic guitar sings the same tired repertoire of drinking songs passed along from generation to generation, night after fucking night. (Yes, it is.)

Another song starts in, and the whole place lights up like they’ve never heard it before. Judging by the reaction, you’d think a goddamned meteor just crashed through the roof, cracked in half and shat out a man with two heads and an acoustic guitar, who launched into a never-before-heard rendition of ‘Who The Fuck is Alice?’

Nothing lasts forever and as the end of the night draws near, the beer-fueled solidarity begins to unravel, cracking and drifting apart like ice floes. The ringleader gets his feelings hurt in a simple miscommunication and wanders off into the night in search of chicken, refusing to answer the calls and text messages that chase after him.

I just wish things were different. Why can’t I make friends with people who build robots in their spare time, or find someone in the area looking for another person to round out their geocaching party? Why the beer logic? Why the tired façade?

Why anything?

TWM

All Great Things Must First Wear Monstrous and Terrifying Masks…

Attention marketing types:

“People sleeping on/
trains don’t give a good goddamn/
about your billboards.”

On the Metro ride home yesterday, I found myself fantasizing about the reversal of gravity and those brief, panic-ridden seconds before everything not already bolted down would suddenly go flying north. All around me, people would be grasping desperately at building ledges, crammed into bus stops, stuck safe inside the subway, and trapped at work. Those in traffic would have it the worst, doomed to explore the outer reaches of space in their brand new Hummer, wholly unprepared for the rushing sound of precious oxygen to go whooshing out through the rubber seals. Might as well start the engine, and turn up the radio. There’s not much left to do at that point but enjoy the view and think kindly upon your life…

The Metro is like some kind of anthropologist lab experiment; the set scowls of those who know they’ve been fucked every day of their lives, and when they wake up, they’ll be fucked again. The cartoonist indifference, the minor indignity which adds up up over time. Time rolls on, wholly unaware of our perception of it. We chop the river into pieces, and label it ‘years’, ‘months’, ‘seconds.’ It wouldn’t matter if we labeled it ‘rye’, wheat’ or ‘potato’. Did we begin to age faster from the moment we first created the calendar? I’m sitting in a rail car moving at X speed along unblinking steel rails.

07JAN08 – Staten Island, New York. This trip has so far reaffirmed my desire to avoid big city life. It’s loud, hot and way too fast. I have the distinct impression that with one wrong move, I could slip, fall, and be eaten alive by the sidewalk, yelping and screaming as the city devours my legs. A large man named Paulie from the pizza place on the corner will shrug and say, “Enh, it’s New York, whaddya gonna do?”

Winter has a way of making things look worn and tattered. This can be compounded by staying in a Staten Island Navy Lodge with a glamorous view of the parking lot, and an honest-to-fuck trundle bed that creaked like the belt of a fat man when I pulled it down from the wall. Right now, all I want to do is wash my face, brush my teeth and kick off my Docs – proof positive that I’m getting older. I can remember a time when a cold drink and a wild time were paramount upon arriving somewhere new.

Hotels used to keep pads of stationary in the occupants rooms. All I’ve seen lately are notepads, and shitty Bic pens with the hotel logo on them. It’s as if we have lost the opportunity to be elegant, to sit down and compose our thoughts on paper, or express ourselves in complete sentences. Everything is moving faster, sentences are getting shorter, attention spans are shrinking. Or maybe we’ve just shifted our medium.

09JAN08 –Later, on the train home: the job went smooth. I packed in a king-hell hurry and flung myself into the back seat of a Lincoln Navigator as we raced off to the Staten Island ferry. Saw the Statue of Liberty from the bow, and was buffeted by winds so strong I thought I would lose my glasses. Took the 1 Red to Penn Station, a heaving, groaning thing, that crawled toward me like an old farm horse begging for a mercy round. Times Square was too much noise, and too much flash; like taking a Viet Nam vet to a fireworks display in the swamp. I was braced for craziness, anticipating thievery, and moving too fast to look around properly.

But now that I’ve dipped my toes in the waters of this town, I can begin to see pieces of the attraction, and the necessity to document it. I could happily wander the streets with a point-and-shoot camera and fill the entire memory card in ten minutes with portraits, details, buildings, and a thousand different perspectives. It never ends. It’s like doing anything hot, loud and fast enough to be considered formidable, and then spending the next lifetime trying to recap that original high. I tend to function much better with a guide when I visit a new jungle, otherwise I find myself falling forever into the organic machinery of a single flower, or the weird bark of some tree, feeling as though I’ve seen it all.

Staring out the window of the train on the way out of town, listening to the Pachebel Canon, eyeing the red brush strokes of the cloud formations and the good-as-dead fields of useless marsh, wondering what Indians used to hunt what animals where.

Note to self: In this moment, you feel hopeful. The coins of possibility are in your hand. Don’t lose them. It wasn’t so bad. Receding in the distance, the concrete fingers of that heaving thing… Do you think New Yorkers wince when a plane flies too low? How do they take it, crammed in tight with their faces to the Wheel? I’m watching out for graffiti, a pastime of mine, and sneaking peaks at old brick history. From here, all I see are power plants and cramped little hovels advertising Chinese takeout. For sale signs grace faded brick warehouses, and empty loading bays with giant puddles on their rooftops are but empty canvasses to hooded youths armed with Krylon cans.

A window, the light is on. Someone in that very apartment will be watching TV tonight. They will answer their phone in an offhand manner, their attention divorced between the voice of the caller and that of David Letterman. They will be assailed by pizza commercials, and late night dating ads. They will laugh at something, without knowing why.

Parking lots, pink houses, neon signs, and strip malls, none of it relative to your life. Metropark signs, solid yellow lines, billboards and 4-digit numbers on the sides of the trains. No smoking; a girl with a cup of coffee standing on the platform looks like someone you’d want to get to know, but that’s just how she dresses on Wednesday. Tomorrow, she could be an entirely different person. (Everyone in NYC looks so much alike.)

Sun sets in the high rise windows, fire lights the trees. Early man probably thought his gods had abandoned him when the sun went down; left him blind and alone among the wolves to fend for himself, and all the prayers and burned-up rabbits in the world weren’t gonna make a lick of difference when the fire died… parked cars, parked cars, parked cars and Motel 6 signs.

Half in, half out of consciousness now… does God have a favorite color? If he’s above such petty things, then what makes you think he’d listen to your pleas for the Seahawks to win? But if he likes everyone equally, why worship yet another politician who can’t make up his mind? That’s why the ‘popular’ button on the jukebox was invented. Sorry, I’m ranting without purpose.

You will be outlasted by a parking garage. How do you feel about that? What will be left of you when it’s time for you to vanish; when the violins and other gentle instruments are serenading you with a swan song, and your body begins to peel away like the pages in Grey’s Anatomy, flinging into the wind like something out of a Japanese Anime. Which part of you will feel the Fear first?

Yes, think on that: when the rest of the living world takes that first step away from you, and you see the human race clearly for the first time; their heads bowed, arms linked, marching in a circle, shuffling in the dark, propelled by fear, led by lies, each step made in the hopes that there will be one more to follow… Our minds are like a universe encased in glass, giving us the ability to see forever separately, but never truly touch it as one… and suddenly, everything you are and have ever known takes that first step away from you, and you realize with a sudden shock, “Oh, God! I’m dying!” What then?

Your hands grip tight but there’s nothing there, it’s like gripping at fog, and you realize the hands of the people you’ve been holding on to for your entire life have just slipped past your fingertips. Your parking voucher has expired. Your heart will leap in your throat as though you realize you’ve just lost your wallet, and you will seek immediate reassurance, some soothing or authoritative voice to reconnect your call and send you the bill. Will you laugh to yourself, as though finally getting the punch line of a long-gotten joke? Will you shriek in terror, with your hands to your mouth? Or will you see it as just another adventure, knowing that the secret You, the one you dare not expose to your closest friends or dearest lover, will never truly die, but that You are only leaving your body behind – will you finally accept that this was all a dream?

The distant light of a crucifix shines in through the darkness, superimposed over the reflection of the seat opposite me, like an embroidered logo for God’s Private Railroad.

For a man who doesn’t believe in God, I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. The older I get, the more I’m convinced it’s a trick; one that politicians, authority figures and those who claw their way into Middle Management use to keep the rest of us in line, placing strong hands on the necks of the meek, demanding penitence and subservience.

Why the hassle? Remember that woman you met in H.H.I? She wanted to go to New Orleans to give blankets and food to the homeless. You thought it was a good idea, and you offered to help but she wouldn’t take you. “We prefer those who believe,” she explained to you patiently, as though you were dull. You wanted to help your fellow human beings, but all she wanted was for these poor fuckers to drop their final defenses and pledge allegiance to the Great Magi in the Sky, so they could have a warm blanket and a can of Dinty Moore. How fucked up is that? What ever happened to teaching a man to stand?

That happened a long time ago, but it comes flooding back so clearly tonight, borne on the smell of melted plastic and burning rubber on this southbound train in the year 2008.

I’m tired. I want to go to bed.

TWM