So this is what it feels like to go back to blogging.

Literary theorists of fifty years ago would have had a field-day with the blogosphere. Or not. I say not because of the distinct disassociation from general society that literary critics seem to have upheld over the years. Camille Paglia being a refreshing exception.

It is a bored Sunday evening and I wish I could accept it with as much resignation as my dogs.

Lately I've had to accept the end of many things. The ends of certain eras and the end of friendships coupled with the pesky new beginnings that seem to arise, to push from the ashes.

All of this is incoherent ramblings to be read by no one, yet I put it in a place accessible by all. What you don't know won't hurt you.

The season is changing and it reminds me of death. But wait. Let's not be sad. I mean, of course, the beautiful things about death, about putting things to rest that really should be put down, forgotten, filed away.

This fall I am clearing the air. The arena, as it were. Come loneliness, come all. If you never really knew how to relate, who knew? If you weren't kidding when you kidded, then it's all the same. Life and death. Endings and beginnings.

So I will go now to write songs while there is solitude, while there is absence. I will revisit all the indulgent loneliness of a younger life and come up gasping for fresh air, but with fresh inspiration.

DRIPPY SHITTY PURPLE HEARTS

This one goes out to all the people who stopped calling me.

After much heartache I’ve given up on you.

I’ve looked at myself, over and over again, to examine what I’ve done to earn your disregard, but I’m not sure what it is, and it’s your job to tell me. Since you won’t, I’m not going to waste any more time than I already have guessing. I’m over the guessing. And I’m over the groveling.

Simply put, it’s over for me at this point. I’m worn out. And you’re all used up. You’ve used up all the get out of jail free cards with me. I don’t want you anymore. You and your hurt.

I’m going to have to just let you go. So this is goodbye. I put all your drippy, shitty, purple and droopy attempts at being in my life in a little box and I sent that little box far, far away . . .

The Self Born

What is on everyone's minds these days?

Please god don't say the election. The media has been pumping us full like geese being prepped for fois gois with election coverage and as much as I might want to rid myself of it, I can't combat the ceaseless barrage. So I won't do further damage here.

So a different topic: living for oneself or living to impress others. This has been on my mind. Inside of everyone is a secret life. A secret being. This being is the director, the one who gives orders in an unheard voice. The being is the ghost in our machinery. It is the ego, and it's tied to the mind, taking in information, cataloguing data, observing and making decisions about survival, advancement, recognition, fear and irony. The ego is a creature of habit. It likes routine. For some the ego almost solely takes external cues (e.g. emulation of a life), rather than taking directives from the inner self. This usually happens when one believes the ego is their inner self, their only self. I know this sounds like a bunch of Oprah bullshit, but if you break it down into categories of the conscious (ego) and the unconscious (inner self) it begins to seem a little less ridiculous.

So, living for oneself or living to impress others??? This is a slippery question to resolve, but it always comes down to motives. We can examine our actions and seek out the motives for those actions. We can do the same in observing others. It's not my intention to discount the importance of the ego, the rightful human need to impress others and the inherent survival advantages in mastering appearances, etc., but rather to be critical of a life dominated by the ego. The ego is important, but it is, at its root, empty. It is a puppet. It should not be running the entire show, but only a portion of it. For example, I think the ego knows nothing of true desire. The ego knows what the ego desires, but does it really know what the inner self desires? No.

So this, I know, is just a bunch of recycled, poorly expressed, washed-up philosophy, but that aside, it still has some truth in it. Living to impress others can seem like a worthy life. It might even be a worthy life. It might just happen that while living for appearances one might coincidentally fulfill the desires of their inner self. It would be quite the coincidence. However, I think it's a perilous path, because I think it is, more often than not, unhappy trails. And that's what I want to avoid for myself personally, but it's tricky. It requires vigilance of both motives and actions. It requires thought about myself and sometimes that's scary, because self-examination can sometimes be a nebulous form of torture.

But this all to bleak, too serious. That's where forgetting the self comes into play. To laugh, to loosen up, to let go . . .

The shaft that you fall down.

Sometimes you just want to take a pill. I would like to take a pill right now, but I don't have any. I don't even have any prescriptions for pills. I have ibuprofen . . . but unfortunately I don't think Advil relieves psychic pain. If it did, they'd have to change the commercials. So what's left? Breathing? Breathing is taking so much time. Sleep? I'm still working on my sleeping-while-appearing-awake shtick, because that would be highly useful in my day to day life. The desire to run screaming from the building is like an itch I just can't scratch.

I need numbing cream for the brain. Like icy hot. A soothing icy hot brain feel. All I would need to do is perform a trepanning on myself and squirt in the icy hot with a calking gun like filling a wall with that foamy insulation stuff that puffs out all gooey and yellow looking from holes in a wall. I'd have a head with a gooey hole. And more importantly, I would have relief. I need a break like I need a hole in my head. Really.

Cyclone: The World's Blender

The people in Myanmar won't think this post is funny. And of course I don't think there's anything funny about a cyclone that has so far accounted for upwards of 22,000 deaths in a country with no real emergency notification system. Myanmar is one of the least developed countries on earth. Because of that it is home to oodles of natural resources, like precious woods and stones, that haven't yet been harvested merely because they lack the infrastructure and the means to do it, and the military junta that holds the country in a steely grip is pretty good insurance that progress isn't forthcoming.

Anyway, Myanmar is the most recent example of the World's Blender in action. Just take low-lying land, protected by aging, breaking dikes, or by nothing at all, then add tidal waves, press the cyclone button and boom! Disaster Smoothie!!

How will this mess be cleaned up so that the wounded and missing can be found and aided? Well, we're certainly not going to be helping much. The U.S. has promised a paltry $250k in aid. I'm sorry, but that's pathetic. The European Commission is kicking down 3 million. China is supposed to be on the way with another million. Thailand's kicking down too.

Hail!

Hail to the oyster that never opens, the little sleeping one at the base of the skull that occasionally pipes up in its puny voice a reminder of its existence. Inside the oyster is a pearl, a pearl of solutions, grand schemes, breakthroughs, exalted thoughts and a million tiny multiplying pearls of wisdom that if released would nest in your brain inducing an illuminated, trance-like state.

Hail to inspiration that waits in the wings while dark cloaks parade on the stage and the audience sits dully, blunted by pharmaceuticals, ego mania, caffeine exhaustion and world weariness.

Hail to small thoughts that become big thoughts that become things, something between covers, something that comes out of a mouth or out of a pen or from the tips of fingers or from the tops of heads.

Hail to the evening that jubilantly supersedes the workaday and basking in its glory forgets the tepid coffee splash drops drying and crusting in the glow of the omnipresent screen and the click, click of keys and the ring, ring of phones amid the symphony of the mundane.

Why I Am Cooler Than You

Because I'll do anything to be cool. To be bad. To be rad. To be hot. To be oh so mutherfuckin grooooovy. I'll watch network television until my eyes bleed. I'll go to Jamba juice just to try the new granola thing. I'll cross the street only at crosswalks when the light thingy says so. I'm so cool I'll do your taxes, correspond with your great aunt and become friends with your cats. I'll even call cardio aerobics, find spandex at the thrift store and film my own fat people work out video. With cupcakes. It will be called "Cup Cakes and Dumbbells, the Zen Approach to Health".

I am cooler than you because I don't care about your deep seeded motives, your love life or your childhood. I don't think tone of voice is important and I'm not going to read anything into unreturned phone calls, your love of phone sex or any other tele-perversions you might be down with. Are you into slings? Do you litter on the highway? Do you spit in other people's food? Okay. How about peanut butter? Do you like peanut butter? Me too. Let's be friends.

I'm cooler than you because I believe the world is a simple place filled with simple people and complicated dogs.

I'm cooler than you and your friend because I don't dress up to get down or vice versa.

I'm cooler than you because I can touch my toes and I know what to do with hazelnuts.

I'm cooler than you because watch this hair. I said watch it. And these legs. Oh, baby. Just watch.