This little piggy...

A woman is more convinced by what she guesses, than by what she is told.  He remembered this only after he had told her everything.

In my youth I had more than ample opportunity to attend county fairs, and rodeos.  This was simply part of life in Wyoming.  A reality I grew up with....I grew up in.  It is no longer a part of the reality I exist in, but the memories remain.  These events are fraught with the most entertaining combination of child and animal abuse. The mutton busters were great.  Little kids in football helmets on sheep.  Always a good time.  My favorite though was the greased pig chase.  This is, well...exactly what it sounds like.  Some asshole would grease up a pig, scare the shit out of it, then turn it loose while a bunch of kids tried to catch it, all while drunk parents stood outside the gates screaming, "Come on Dusty,  go on catch that sumbitch", and sipping on Pabst signature Blue Ribbon from a plastic cup.

I don't really remember if anyone ever caught the pig.  Probably.  I don't remember what the prize was if they did.  Hell, maybe they got to keep it.  Take it to the butcher and fill the freezer.  I don't really know.  I do remember kids falling down a lot.  Getting bloody. Trampled. Crying.  Cheering. Tons of laughs to be had all around.

Maybe there's a god above, 
but all I ever learned from love
was how to shoot somebody
who outdrew ya.

I would watch and laugh with the rest of the folk dressed in their farmland finest. I would eavesdrop the conversations about the weather, and the coming harvest, and the local gossip.  Wanting nothing more than escape.  Wanting to be the angel staggering on tenament roof.  Wanting to rage against the dying light.  Wanting to be that mind, starving, hysterical and naked, destroyed by madness.  Not knowing then that the madness was in the wanting.

And I often felt like that pig.  Scampering.  Running.  All these strange hands reaching for me, to catch me. To control me.  Fuck I dunno...take me to the butcher and fill their freezer.

I still feel that way sometimes.

He watched her. She knew he was watching, but he wondered if she was aware the scrutiny.  He needed...so much he needed a way to let go of her. She had caught him. She knew.  And she knew that when she had, he immediately became uninteresting.
He knew this also, and was desperately attempting every method to escape the snare of her.

And now I share this rock with so many strangers, and have discovered that although we call it by so many different names, it's all just chasing greased pigs.  And there is trampling, and crying, and blood, and laughter, and some drunk asshole cheering us along.  What seemed novelty at the time, is now so much background distraction, on a much grander scale.

Visions. Omens. Hallucinations. Miracles. Ecstasies, Gone down the American river, but this time without exclamation.  Because we've taken this trip so many times, and now when I rage against that dying light, the guy in the window above me, tells me to get a grip, shut the fuck up, and quit thinking I'm special.  The tenament rooftop dance has ended, and my card is empty.

He made every attempt to lose his attraction.  He watched her through worlds eyes, and noted everything this existence defines flaw.  He made her voice nails in his head.  He painted her gray, and erased her from his desire.  He took from her the power she'd given him.  He knew she'd never miss it. He let it fly on the wish of other things, and closed the night alone.  Knowing the flavor of that false kiss. He left the night reborn.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.  So said once a madman, and I hope he did.  I hope I will.

A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved going the opposite direction in this too big world.  So said once the same madman, and I still hope he found the words.  I need him to have found the words, because if he did, that means they exist, and maybe I will too.  But then again...he was a madman.

We're all mad here.  So said once a mad cat.

The pig used to squeal a motherfucker.  I might too if being chased by a multitude of strangers intent on my capture. Like that pig, I have no where to go, but I have to keep running, because the alternative is not running, and not running means I may just end up in someone's freezer.  Or my own freezer.  This world is too big.  There is too much.  I will miss all of the good stuff, but goddammit if I am not intent on not missing the good stuff.  I will see the things I want, and do the things I do, and live in abject poverty, and abstract delight.  I will watch.  I will listen.  I will jest, and my god will I laugh, and my god will I lie.  I will give you the exact fiction of me that I want you to have.  And I will keep myself for myself.  This is far more fun.

Every day he remembers her.  And her.  And her.  And her.  Every day he feels the name of her scratch the blood in him, and he thanks her.  Every day he remembers the little things.  Everyday he plants a new seed somewhere else, that will not be her, or her, or her, in hopes that the future forrest provides the shade that will hide him from her, and her and her.  He walks the days a vision of calm, while the fire inside comsumes the hope he had of her.  And her.  And her.

There are so many stories to tell.  So many little treasures to hide in plain sight.  There is in each fucking moment, of each fucking day, a new flame to fan, and fire to build.  There are worlds to build.  I'm currently building three, and it is slow, but my christ is it rewarding.  I watch these people who don't exist anywhere but inside my mind shape new words, and new pain.  Tell new secrets to old friends, and I can't do this...I couldn't do this...

If I wasn't like that goddamn pig.  I have to run.  I have to squeal.  I have to find my way away from hands that would trap me down, and fill their freezer.  I have to turn over the rocks that everyone else walks on, so I can see the bugs underneath....also running and squealing to keep away from my hands.  I have to write on this page....all the things that don't make sense...so I can write on other pages the things that do.  I have to let the words happen.  My brain cup runneth over.  My heart cup is empty.

And now I will put this one to rest, so that I may move on to another.  I'll stop chasing the little pig in my head.  In another place up in that dusty attic, are four campers who probably don't like each other as much as they tell each other they do.  Or...maybe they like each other more.  I don't know yet.

In another place in my brain in a man in a bathtub, who can't see the woman who is also in the bathtub.  Or maybe he can only see her when she is.  I don't know yet.

In yet another gray cavity is a woman mourning the loss of her husband.  He recently died, and left behind something she's discovered, that he never got the chance to explain.  It's all very tragic.  The things we don't say to each other, and the moment we realize we'll never be able to.  Really though...it probably doesn't matter....

It all ends in tears anyway. - Jack Kerouac

Taillights

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. -Tom Robbins

On a warm Las Vegas night, early in 2006, my wife came back to the apartment we had shared for some time, to gather more of her things.  I helped her load them in to her car.

Once she was finally ready to leave, we stood in the driveway and held each other.  I could feel her tears.  I was glad, because I genuinely wished I was making some of my own. It's not that I didn't feel the pain, I just...

I just held her.

Finally there was nothing left.  She told me she loved me.  She got in her car, and she drove away.  I stood there, and watched the taillights. Those red squares becoming increasingly distant. Until I  couldn't see them anymore.

In my memory, she never returned. A few months later, the divorce was finalized.

Not quite a year later, I was preparing to leave Las Vegas.  I didn't really have a plan, but I felt that Salt Lake City was probably it.  I didn't leave with fanfare.  There was no real announcement of departure.  I didn't tell many people. A couple. A few.

She was one of them. We had a very brief moment.  Spent with some words.  An exchange of sentiment.  I'm not going to share much of it, because it's mine, and I intend to keep it, but it was nice.  It was...

And every day, of every year since, I see those taillights.

And I remember that I have known love.  Love like that.  It was transformative. It made me different.  And although we are not together, she will never not be part of me.  In this, there is gratitude.

I tried it again a short time later.  That was also nice, though in the end, it was confirmed in my mind something I'd suspected before.

I am, and I hold, a different kind of love. I am not meant for certain things, and sometimes my aloneness is lonely, but ultimately I think, for the best. 

So much I think, I do much to cultivate it.  I don't date.  I don't pursue.  I don't make myself available.  I use my social media as a barrier.  I make myself generally less desirable.  Less...

I make myself less.

I have frequently and often stated my dedication to my bachelorhood, and I hold to it.  This is, I assure you, not simply posturing.  It is calculated and intentional.

A few days ago, I engaged with someone I hold very close to my heart, in conversation about love. You see, although I have, and do maintain my singular status, I also understand that to close all the doors in life, limits opportunity of experience...and my god do I love experience.  That said, it is not an absolute zero in the scale of probability that I will remain single til death.  It's very likely that I will...but...

So in this conversation I explained the type of person it would take get me to make that change.  I also explained how and why I don't think that person exists. I don't think I explained it well, but it did help me clarify in my own mind, exactly what it is I'm not really looking for.

Because every day, I see taillights.

And every day I love.  And I do.  I love you.  So fucking much it keeps me awake sometimes. But not just you.  I love...I love this fucking life.  I love every tainted breath I take.  I love that emptiness inside me.  It's a goddamn drug. It's heroine, and cocaine, and LSD, and caffeine, and nicotine, and I get to put a name on it. And sometimes it's your name.  Sometimes it's her name.  Sometimes it's a name you'll never know. It is every name, of every person, male and female, old and young, married or single, who has ever had an affect on me.

And there are so many of you.
And you.
And you.

And on not a single name, not a single person, not a single entity of consciousness in existence, do I place even the smallest expectation or obligation.

In fact...that is key.  That is paramount.  THAT is the crux of the mystery and puzzle. The absolute necessity that there never be expectation, or obligation.

There is only life.  This one glorious explosion of consciousness.  This brilliant supernova of observable experience...before that final sleep.

And I will live mine without apology.  I want nothing more than the same for you. That is how you will shape and break my heart.  I will never ever begrudge you not wanting to walk this rock with me.  I will only ever be grateful for the few moments that we did.

And there will be taillights.  There always are.

There will also be magic, if you choose to breathe it.  It is after all, the very essence of things.

And there may yet, be a story to tell. 

Rust and Stardust

There is lightening tonight.  In the sky and in my head.  Flashes of electricity that briefly illuminate the darkness, and gives the smallest glimpse of things previously unseen.

And spark the night.

I got to spend time today with someone very dear to me.  We spoke of love, and fear, and the story we will tell together. We began what I hope will be the start of something fun.  Something new.  We will write a play together, and today we opened the door to what that may be. 

We spoke of love.  The love we have in this world, and the love that will exist in this world we create together.  We shared our thoughts and where we are, and what we want, and my heart leapt for her, because she has it, and is in it, and it scares her, and she's doing it anyway.

And today I got to witness bravery and joy. 

I shared with her some of my thoughts as well.  Where I am...not having it, or in it, and what it would take to make that happen, and why don't anticipate that it will.

She only got to witness the cynicism of a stone heart.

I win.

And from these two very different places in life, we will come together and write a play.  I look forward to that.

And in the sky tonight there is lightening.
And rain.

I like the rain.  Little drops of water.  Four billion years ago there was rain falling in this exact spot, on a planet that looked so much different, and in that water, life.

I don't know why my brain goes to the places it goes, but I follow along.

I think about numbers.  Prime and perfect.  I think about scale of probability, and scale of value. 

I think of a universe exploding into existence thirteen billion years ago, and I can't imagine a time so vast.

And nine billion years later...nine...billion...years as we understand them, (which in universal relation is meaningless, and is given meaning only by our understanding that a year is the amount of time ((another construct)) it takes for the the earth to make one revolution around the sun) our solar system was born.

We mark a year according to our sun. We count time further back than the existence of the thing by which we mark it. 

Then this earth went ahead being a rock in space for 4.4, of the 4.5 billion years...without us on it.

I mean seriously...shit happened. 

Multiple extinction events, before anything even resembling us came along.

And we're so impressed with our significance.

So we build because we can.

And we convince ourselves that it matters.

And so it does.

And the rain hits my face.

13 billion years ago, on an invented timeline, reality became real.  4.5 billion years ago, our little blue green space ship was constructed.
100 million years ago, our ancestors became passengers, and almost immediately began fighting over who gets to sit in first class.

And started a long tradition of not sharing.

And since no one really remembered how they got there, they started making up stories to explain it, then killing each other in defence of those stories.

We've been doing that ever since.

That 13 billion year old universe, and that 4.5 billion year old planet, and all of the mysteries know and unknown contained therein, don't care a bit about those pesky little monkeys who've been around for a cosmic microsecond, but....

Goddamn if we don't believe we're the center of it all.
And goddamn if we don't have to kill all the people who pray to different myths than we do.
And goddamn if we don't have to do every thing imaginable to this blue green spaceship, in order to better kill one another and collect more green paper.

And then after all those billions of years, numbers so vast I can't even fathom them, some few yesterdays ago, I got my ticket to ride this rock.

I learned the myths, and heard the stories of the good guys and bad guys.  I was introduced to green pieces of paper, and various ways to accumulate it.  I was told about all the various kinds of different passengers on the spaceship. A few times I attempted to find someone willing to ride along with me...but...in that...

Discovered I am prime.  Divisible only by myself, and like those various numbers scattered in that universal language, content to contribute to the sequence, but forced by my own nature, into singularity.

However unlike those little symbols, I am aware. 
I have the knowledge of both what I lack, and what I am capable of.

This spaceship, and all of the passengers aboard, fascinate me to no end, and it is in that, that I have become a collector of words, and stories, and an inherent need to give them back again.  

And in there lies my joy.  My heart.  In there I can hide the parts of me I'm unable to share with other humans. In there I find secrets left behind by others. In there I can make sense of what it all might...

The rain and the lightening in the sky are gone, leaving only remnants in my head and on my face. 

I visit the ghosts of those who haunt me.  I tell my tales to the wind.  I converse with the old lady, and the fat man, who have lived in my inside and upstairs for as long as I can remember,

And her.  My her.  My captive woman in white, who breaks my heart every day, and tells me the things I don't want to hear, because they are true, and she is right.

Goodnight spaceship.  Goodnight you passengers on it and in it.

Remember for the small moment, that we are rust and stardust.

A lovesong for the lovelorn

A simple thing.  A phrase.  A thought.  But I am tongue bound and silent instead.  Resigned. Designed for solitude and watching. And I love.

I love, love.

I love this day and watching the people I love, love the people they love, and celebrate, and I wonder.

What was the combination of words? What was the play, or the act, or the book of poetry used to unlock that...what?

Reality caught up to fantasy, and played me fractured, and the story of it will make me laugh someday.

Like all my stories do.

I laugh a lot.

Today I bled distraction, and caught my breath. And wondered briefly where I've been, but it didn't matter because I had a great time, and brought back a mug that said wish you were here.

And that's the thing.
I have fun.
My god is it fun.

And sure sometimes I need a bandaid, or a face slap, but that's just part of the joy.

And not only do I anticipate making the same mistakes again, I look forward to it. To that brief interlude, that aria, that singular voice that sings me gently human.

Again.

And again.

Our fancies pass, and mysteries resolved and solved, but therein is deception.

For the blues in the rhythm is amore morte, and they all wear pink at the funeral.

And the man wearing black, said she'll never love you back, and it turned into a thought that quits.

But the music plays on, and the other dancers keep dancing, the players playing, and the world keeps spinning round round baby right round.

So I pound it against the rock, the stone, the sun bleached bones that cage it, to find the story inside...

Because the story.
My story...
Your story...
Our story together...

That's what I am here for.  I will bleed for it. I will ache for it.  I will crave more desperately for it, than for food, sex, or nicotine....

The story.
THE story.
the STORY of who we are
Versus who we may have been.

This is who I am.
The jester.
The joker.
The Astral bloke who will cry and decry mortem mortalis with the laughter of the living.

Swimming in the consciousness stream.

It really is the tragic love stories I'm drawn to.  Perhaps because they are more representative of my experience.
The play I wrote last year for the Fringe Festival was 4 scenes of people who all just had to do just one thing different.  Just one thing.

That feels like my life in review.  Just one thing different.  What if I had this instead of that.  What if I had said...instead of not.

I feel like I still live this way.

Or...

Or perhaps I'm simply living in fantasy.

I'm known for that as well.

Plays well with others.
Obviously intelligent.
Daydreamer.
Lacks focus.
Too much imagination.

Those were the things on my elementary reports.
Too much imagination was and still is my favorite...mostly because...

Maybe it is.  Maybe there is.  Maybe the worlds inside my head and heart are far too big...but...

but

but it still feels like not quite enough.
There is more to explore.
There is more to think about.
There is more to wish for.
And always...

my christ Always...

There are more stories to tell.

I'm starting now the work for the play for this years FF.
I anticipate more tragic love stories.
More broken hearts of people I've not gotten to know yet.

I think I give my characters the tears that I don't cry.

I also lack too much empathy.
Or...emotional connection...
Or...clairavoyance.
Or...ability to human.

You see I do know how I feel about all the things.
I very often don't give a fuck about how I feel.
That seems unnatural...but there it is.  I don't form opinions about how I feel.
I just feel.
Then I think about how I feel.
Then I put it in my "Huh...so that's what that is." brain folder, and just...well
there is sits.

But I have no idea how other people feel.
I am other people's emotions illiterate.  I know how I'd like them to feel, in relation to how I feel...but...
I can't make that a thing.
I can't force upon another human...responsibility for my own emotional responses.  And quite simply, unless they tell me what they are also feeling...well...
I'll never know.

And since I don't play guessing games with such things...or make assumptions...I just...
well...
I simply live in the reality that they feel nothing in relation to me...or to what I'm feeling...or
fuck I don't even know what I'm trying to say.

Here's the baseline.  I make no claim to be a "smart" guy...but I do okay.  I've read a few books, learned a few words, and have formed a few thoughts, and that's gotten me by.
I've made a lifetime endeavor of studying the art, science, philosophy, and craft of storytelling.  This is what I do, and I do it with great passion.
Funny thing is, my passion face, looks a lot like my I'm bored face...so...it doesn't really physically read...but it is there.
I am constantly on fire with it.  I burn for, and with it.  I love stories.  All of them.  And the creation of them. And the telling of them.  The fucking life inside of fiction.

And my life outside of fiction is sometimes stranger than.  Sometimes less than.  Sometimes easier than.  Sometimes harder than.  Sometimes completely indistinguishable from...but...

Love, man.

Love.

That's the kick in the ass i'nnit.

And on that, I am the greatest contradiction anyway.

So fuck me in the nuts with love.

Okay I'm wandering.  This is apparently a fuck all stream of consciouness, and in all likelihood profoundly uninteresting.  It's helping me to word vomit, but will no doubt prove no use to you dear reader.  Feel free to disengage at any time.  I won't be offended.  Hell, to be blunt...I won't even know or notice.

Okay, back to it...

I am an intellectual.  This is no claim to actual quantity or quality of intellect.  I use this more as distinction.  There are so many people among us who are more emotioinally or viscerally driven.  I am not.  This is not to say that I do not experience the emotional or visceral.  Of course I do.  I feel things.  All the time.  If you prick me, do I not "goddammit"?  I do.

I actually feel a full spectrum of all sorts of things. It's all in there.  At least to my knowledge.  I am capable of the rainbow of feels.  Thing is.  I Don't Care.  I do...but...okay...

I don't let that matter too much.  It matters.  It matters a considerable deal.  To me.  BUT...

Once I have the feel...I almost immediately take it to my brain box.
I don't just feel it.  I feel it, and then I think about it.  I categorize it.  I mark it.  I file it.  I color code all of the aspects of it.  I investigate it.  I question it.  I place value on it.  I give it a quality of relevance to my life.  I chop it up in to pieces and look at the guts of it.  I ask if there is fun to be had in it.  I wonder why it's there.  I wonder why this other person, or other opinion, or other action, or outside event, caused it.  I question if it can be replicated.  I want to know it's origin, and destination.

In other words...I move it from one place, and put it in another.
I have often referred to this as my emotional disconnect.
It's not that I don't feel.  I very much do.  It's that WHEN I do, I disconnect it.  I take it out, take it apart, and put it back together again.

And when I'm done with the science of it, and put it away...
motherfuck if it isn't still there.
And sometimes that is REALLY goddamn annoying.  Distracting.  and

useful.

Because now I know how to make it happen when I'm acting.
Now I know how to give it to a character I'm writing.
Now I know what it is when other people talk about it.

But then there's the real life.  The life where none of it matters.  Except it all matters.  Except it doesn't.

And again I become contradiction.
And a contradiction can't exist in nature.

Yet here I am.
And there you are.

And we all of us prove the rule a lie.

General Unified Theory my ass.

Because I am quantum, and you are cosmic.

And love is the gravity that works in polarity.
One way bound by all the rules that govern what we know...
and another way, in complete opposition, defying every one of those rules.

And by fuck...somehow, we're supposed to coexist in that universe.
And the string between us seems so fragile.
And so much theory.
Except that's wrong.  String theory isn't really a theory.

Speculation at best.

And that is all I have.

Speculation.  And without evidence, speculation doesn't hold up.  We can make guesses based on what is observable, but without the verification process, it's just so much fantasy.

So do what you need to do.  Say the words.  Do the things.  Be brave.

And again my hypocrisy shows like a slip.  Bravery.

Bravery.

My favorite of all the noble attributes.

So what if, it's not that I'm lacking bravery?  What if it's more
Pragmatism.

What is.
Everything must always be built on a foundation of what is.
And sometimes no matter how much we wish what isn't to be is...
Wishing doesn't make it so.

And experience has taught me far too well

That the heartbreak of unrealized and unrealistic fantasy, is far easier to digest,
than the heartbreak of acutalized reality.

Inside of fantasy is still...well...

a recognition of my own humanity.

Outside of fantasy that's much more difficult.

And in that fantasy...
In that hallway of doors...
In that maze of dreams...
She has always been there.

She has courted me forever.
In every memory.
In every story.
Since I was in kindergarten, staring out the window, while the other kinders were learning about colors....
She was there.  Singing to me.  Dancing with me. Guiding my gaze and placing herself in every story I've ever seen, read, or written.
She has always had that smile, and those eyes.  She has reached inside me.  She used to dry my tears...when I used to cry.
She has been my mother.
She has been my grandmother.
She has been my wife.
She has been my child.
She has been my constant companion.
She has been my eternal mystery.

And she is she is she inside of me
And she kills me with the idea that maybe...

maybe...

could it be?

could I?

Is it?

Is there?

Nah.

Thank you she...but the he in me reminds me of all the other things.

And he and she can argue now for a while...
but I've got to sleep
and

and it's all just nighttime braingames anyway.

Tomorrow will be real again...

and in the real...

well...