Hello to you, you clever clusters of molecules!

Thanks for taking the time to read!

I know there’s plenty of other things you could be doing that are much more of an instant gratification thing, than this slow burn experience of reading.

So way to go you. You are an arbiter of good taste, there’s no doubt about it. Especially as you’re here. Reading my words.

You must have found me through your own good auspices, because i’m not famous, never sat in a room with someone famous, never wanted to be famous. Which is strange for the modern world but that is probably a topic for some other day.

You know.

Possibly Maybe, as Bjork sings.

If you’re new to my writing, let me say now: Sorry.

I’m going to waste your time.

Deliberately.

You probably understood such things better as a child and a profit obsessed world made you forget it. Consider this my way of returning it to you, or reminding you.

As Kurt Vonnegut so eloquently put: “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

For those returning,(hi) I can say this is in my usual caliber of rambly shambly prose, but don’t let that fool you: I hid all sorts of sharp poking sarcasms and guerrilla ambuscades of emotion within, to compete with the satires and logic defying absurdity of our present reality.

Another words, even in the dumbest and most barbarous of times, or maybe I should say especially in the worst of times, we need the joy and inspiration of stories great and small to help us maintain some semblance of sanity, and try to pass the days without succumbing to deep despair.

My mangled, tangled, and paint splattered art will also stalk and haunt between the paragraphs to help further invoke the manic chaos of how thought rampages through our skulls.

Or at least, just mine.

I also offer to you a momentarily respite from the tyranny of your present moment. You may leave your worries and cares aside for right now, trust me they’ll be right there waiting for you, when you’re done.

Read on, and step out of your own orbit of pointless observations, and inner narrations, into this one. Allow my words life in your own mind, as if they were your own, and suspend some disbelief for a while.

One last thing, I will add: This is as close to my personal brand of grey matter chaos as I could make it. It isn’t a normal type of story, or a dozen all moving in one direction with a lovable cast of characters and semi familiar plot lines about underdogs making it big or Fools & friends triumphing over undead dark lords.

It is full of anima or life force that I have crammed into as many sentences and pigments, I could, with a shameless idea to amuse and entertain, using the way my dreams and subconscious pool and seep into the folds and nooks of my reality.

But no, not the crannies. Never the crannies. Because that would be an English muffin commercial.

It is fiction and non fiction forced to sit together at the front of the class and work together.

It is real life, fantasy, and whatever else I felt like balling up into letters and art.

This is the Dream Bleed. A shout into the abyss, of being alive, of being this strange muddle called me and the world that exists inside this nobody from nowhere.

It is, as someone far more wise and witty than I offered: “Now Here”

My story of now here.

-):

-Prologue : Lucid Dreaming & Asleep Living-

~The beginning, a predictable place to start~

:(-

Sometimes it’s not always clear if you are awake or dreaming, just a vague notion of familiar landmarks and usual reality perceptions. For me, and my acres of free range thoughts, it’s currently like this:

The tv is on. The pillow is soft and cold. A blanket wraps around me, tucked into favored places between my knees and elbows.

The dog snores. I secretly find this more reassuring than anything else in the entire world.

In my opinion if you want to feel right and relaxed, listen to your treasured house deity saw wood for a while. It’s good for what ails you. (I have also found the snore-purr of a cat reposing on your lap has the same effect.)

My bedmate murmurs. Occasionally recognizable English slips out. “Pelican…. Strawberry…..Sadly.”

Sometimes I talk back depending on how sassy I feel.

Tonight I respond “sparrow. Mango. Happy.”

Outside, conveyances powered by explosions boom by, but I don’t really pay it much mind.

It’s just another bit of a strangers day drifting into my life for a moment or two, and then gone for possibly ever. It happens all day everyday.

That’s living in a highly populated place for you, the trajectory of strangers is hardly paid any mind at all.

Perhaps this is most places, minus rural 12 people burgs. I admit I don’t really know, I’ve never lived in a place that wasn’t a human hive or right next to one.

Ambient noise of nearby roads were as close as it ever got to quiet.

Back Inside, I am supposed to be asleep, the clock reminds me in its usual irritating way.

I turn. Then turn again. Then to mix things up, i punch the pillow a few times and then turn.

Of course it’s ineffective. It always is, and yet I always feel compelled to do it anyway. There’s comfort in a routine too, I suppose.

We humans seem to be fond of finding comfort this way.

Due to my tossing and turning, the blankets have crumpled to my thighs , and the pillow is now warm and smells like my shampoo.

I sigh.

But that doesn’t help anything at all.

So I sigh again. Then I yawn.

It still , doesn’t help, but I didn’t really think it would.

“Performing for an invisible audience” my mother called it.

I think about this a lot, not just when I’m trying to sleep. I wonder why her generation treated emotions and feelings, as some moment of performance rather than that of expression… but such thoughts are hardly conducive to sleep so I give them up. (And by “give up” I mean shove to the back of my mind along with all the other things I’m trying not to think of)

Yet, sleep seems reluctant to come tonight, I think glumly. I was always jealous of those that could drop right off…to me sleep was hardly ever an involuntary act but one of quiet intention. My mind had to be slowly unwound. It was an act of focus and patience ; only then could I sleep. (Obviously drugs could help this but trading one hardship for the same hardship spiced with addiction hardly seemed a remedy)

My mental traffic keeps me tethered here to the waking world, and of listening to other people sleep.

Which of course was better than listening to people eat, but that’s looking specifically for a positive.

I shut my eyes. Textures I’ve seen all day wash up on the back of my eyelids and then disappear into splotches of dark pinks and blues. I chase this for awhile, but focus on it only causes it to disappear.

A strange connected memory rises to mind. It concerns a movie I saw when I was a child, about an invisible man who had trouble going to sleep because his eyelids are invisible too(an accident made him invisible so he had to adapt to this new life)

I’m not sure why I always think about this when I’m failing to fall asleep, but it always surfaces…along with inner conversations like this:

How would I deal with such an ordeal?

-Sleep mask duh!

Quips a voice at the back of my head.

_Or failing that drooping a dark cloth over your face?

-No way you’d suffocate yourself!

_With a cloth? If that were true people would be dying all over the place due to their sheets.

-Maybe they do?

_Yes you can’t find news these days without hearing about a new death by blanket case.

-So now I read police blotters?

Whatever happened to common sense I wonder?

-it’s obvious: it became less common that people have sense

_ok fine, I got it! it can be done classic execution style with a handkerchief tied around the eyes.

-yeah that might do it actually…but you’d be bound to lay on the knot, which would be uncomfortable.

Which is why the sleep mask option would be best. I don’t know why this keeps going…

_enough! We are trying to sleep, not think about stupid shit.

-Ok. Ok….but all we think about is stupid shit? Remember? It kept us from doing well in academia.

_that wasn’t the reason…at least I don’t think?

Can’t you sleep with your eyes open? Is it possible?

_I think so. It happens in movies?

-oooooooo, then it must be real!

And so on….

Basically, my brain won’t turn off, and will hold conversations with itself when deprived of outside stimuli.

I glance over at the clock which informs me I should have been asleep ages ago. Which is unhelpful, just as it was a moment ago. So back to blankly staring at the ceiling I go.

Not the whole ceiling of course. The same spot I stare at every time sleep refuses to come.

This spot, is a single smudge on an otherwise completely white ceiling:a lone, soot colored fingerprint.

Way up, far above the reach of anyone in the family(without a ladder)

Imagining or analyzing who did it and why, is another trying to sleep, favorite puzzling pastime of mine, just like the Invisible Man movie recollection.

Only tonight, I discovered, the more I stared at it, the quicker my thoughts and inner conversations began to retreat.

The room began to dim then fade, and one by one my senses dropped off.

SLEEP glorious sleep! I think to myself

Until I realized I was floating upwards at the fingerprint which had got bigger and bigger the closer I got.(or did I get smaller and smaller?)

I realized with a sinking sensation getting stuck upside on the ceiling would really complicate my life…without once objecting to the fact it was happening in the first place.

“Uh hey i’m trying to sleep! Put me down!” I wanted to yell.

But when you begin to dream your reasoning and logic are missing: oh a big literal block of cheese is discussing Carl Jung? Hmm seems ok to me!

With a gloopy splash, into the print which was now like a pool I went…

With it came a suffocating embrace and then a pulling, yanking sensation as I surfaced, finding myself in some new place that resembled a desert. All around me were letters jutting lopsidedly out of the sands, along with paper birds flapping in the strange blue-black, matte looking sky.

Nearby a pack of feather quills danced and scribbled on the nearby embankment, creating looping cursive letters that rose up and followed in their wake like ducklings.

Letters began to rain down too. A lopsided cursive A splashes on my head. Sending a shock of cold water dripping down my back.

“Gahhhh.” I say with a shudder.

Gross. Letter-water. I think, followed by:

Wait what is letter water?

Nearby there is a ballpoint pen barking at me, running along the shoreline.

This place is strange.

For that matter, why am I not more surprised at this strange turn of events? Words usually stay in notebooks and books, not swirling about me like leaves in an autumn breeze, and pens most certainly don’t feed their young like the curly dip pen just did, in a letter T tree nearby.

Without warning, the inky waters carrying me washed down a slide, which was shaped like a towering letter S , and I was thrown clear into a cavernously large rubbish bin stuffed with crumpled paper and parchment.

Just as I was wondering “Am I in the trash?” I fell through the bin and into a long darkened tunnel.

All this falling upwards and downwards instead of frightening or elating me, was just annoying me incredibly.

What the hell was going on? Was this some kind of dream?

Garish spectral shapes and more letters rose up and dissipated around me as I slid downwards.(or was it up?)

At one point it felt like I was being drawn apart as my reflection rippled and drifted across the glossy sheen of the tunnel…or was that the real me?

It was like being inside a static scrambled channel of an old tv.

A strange sensation of being thinned out and pulled back and forth continued more intensely the longer I fell (or rose?)

I don’t know how long this took but at one point I thought of possibly being trapped into some kind of time loop: I was at the top, then the bottom , and back again.

Just zipping up and down like gravity was a sadistic child and I was some unfortunate insect.

Without a point of reference it was hard to detect any kind of direction, only the change of the tunnels textures, and the intense stretching, thinning out feeling.

I couldn’t even tell what was a reflection and what was the real me anymore.

This funhouse grasp of perception had left me without a sense of true self.

Then with a rush of relief the feeling of shifting velocity was suddenly gone, as I became pulled sideways into the gravity of something new. Something different.

An eye shaped pool opened, revealing a strange, bird’s view of an unremarkable parking lot below.

As I got near it, I suddenly realized I couldn’t tell if it was an eye shape or a mouth, but either way I was being pulled into it.

Was I passing into another world or being consumed?

I tried to trace back to the beginning of this all, but couldn’t quite remember…something about a fingerprint?

Again that weird truncated train of thought…

Ironically this is what brought fear up in my mind, not the strange tunnels and all the falling, but losing a vital part of my usual ability to think.

I didn’t have long to linger on this anxiety because a moment later there was a flash of fading afternoon sunlight, and I floated downwards until my feet softly found asphalt, shuffling unsteadily. Diesel fumes waft and linger up my nose as I take a deep breath.

I glanced up to see if the eye shaped hole remained but it was now gone, and I was here in some nondescript lot.

Despite the recent montage of strange, I somehow manage to wonder: did I drive here?

/ Miscellaneous Mundane Noise Generator\….Running….

{clap clap clap}

(Dream Bleed is filmed before a studio audience; that way you’ll know when to laugh)

-Turn to side B-

*vinyl scratching noise/ Mean Mr. Mustard \

[Dream Bleed today is brought to you by Soma™ “A Gramme is better than a Damn!”]

| cd MF1 | …

MF1> start.exe <

-/- (-)

Memory Fragment One)

-/- (-)

I begin to wander the parking lot suddenly stopping by a file cabinet with wheels and an engine. That wasn’t normal was it??

I looked at the other vehicles which had usual truck and car looks to them…and then back at the filing cabinet…I still couldn’t think straight, my thoughts came on struggled and smothered, but I was sure this was absurdly out of place.

As I look closer at this ridiculous thing, I notice there is a tiny sliver of a memory camouflaged as a flyer, that sits under a weather beaten windshield wiper which was welded on to one of the lower drawer handles.

Before I can begin to question this, the wind pulls it free and swish! My reality lurches violently backwards.

The entire parking lot is crumpled up and stuffed into a drawer, and in its place, a slapdash crooked environment begins to wind around me as I struggle to keep my balance on a ground that switches from goopy to stiff in seconds.

By the time everything evens out and I can confidently stand like usual, I find it isn’t only the environment that changed but also me.

Scars, tattoos, burns everything melted off my body, and left a weird inky spot on the ground.

As I take it all in, I see that I am in a place I remember well.

After what felt like age of strange, wonky thoughts, I grasped with both hands something that seemed familiar.

These waters I could easily navigate because I already had countless times before.

My train of thought seemed scabbed over and rather than sit and pick at what seemed off, I decided to just go with it.

Nearby an ornate set of stairs curl around and I walk up them. By the time I’m at the top I forget about the parking lot and filing cabinet, and everything before that.

-:-

Here I am. I’m 16 or 17 years old, Standing in an art gallery in Philadelphia.

:thinking:

It was just a fucking soup can. How was this edgy art? Looked like a marketing campaign to me.

Maybe I was missing something crucial or maybe they only were displaying his most tame work.

Warhol.

They all said it with reverence…and a soup can.

I couldn’t make it work in my head.

I was missing something I told myself, something vital. Maybe he was a lightening rod for other creatives, and that’s why he was celebrated. Maybe he had other work that was much better.

David Bowie sang a song about him. That was almost like a reference in my eyes.

But this made me feel nothing.

Well nothing, besides annoyance.

Somewhere I could imagine hipsters clicking their tongues in supreme disapproval for my dismissal of one of their hugely revered creatives.

I hoped I wasn’t sneering. I probably was.

Maybe he was a Luminary of a generation not mine and I’d never get it truly… but that felt like a cop out, an excuse to protect mediocre art, or protecting one’s golden calf from the barbarian youth.

Maybe he was just overrated.

Or maybe I was being an ignorant little shit.

It felt like a little of both.

The neon portraits of his gave me pause. I certainly liked how much life they seemed charged with. I made a mental note to look up his work on my own, sometime when I didn’t feel so hopeless.

But for now it wasn’t enough to shake me, and so I moved on.

This all felt strange. Snobbish.

Here I was in a whole building dedicated to expression and nothing was inspiring me at all.

This had never really happened before, I always enjoyed field trips to museums and art galleries…why was this so different?

Surely there was bound to at least be something that accidentally inspired.

But no. Not yet at least.

It was starting to make me feel like I was losing a part of myself I enjoyed, and traded it away for teenage angst. That was a terrible deal.

I walked along the hermetically sealed art, and blobby sculptures, trying to feel something, anything besides creeping boredom, and grey-scale despair that was draping the world in predictable, uninspired blahs.

A cranky old man passed by, told his companion “now this is art” in front of some boring picture of fat faced royalty, which only reminded me, of why cousins shouldn’t marry.

“Nothing like that modern art.” He finished spitting out “modern” like he probably said “liberal” or anything else that was new or unfamiliar that frightened him.

I got the feeling, somewhere in the world was a room with a Lazy-boy and Faux News on at a painful volume, that was missing him terribly.

I wondered where the modern art , he so despised was, for I was positive that meant I’d like it. Maybe this sarcastic reverse recommendation thing could work. Just find the most loathsome people and find out what they don’t like, and seek it out.

Some people hated like others loved, and so I imagine this method would work quite well.

His smugness radiated through the room and I wondered if anyone else found him as instantly odious as I did. Certainly his companion did, who was a completely silent wisp of a woman that moved sharply in his wake, and seemed to exude resentment.

I decided for sanity sake to get away from such a person(him not her), and looked for another place to go in this room he complimented loudly and repeatedly, as if daring someone else to argue.(despite the fact the room was full of people who paid to be here)

As I moved away I recognized it at once from all the miserable bastards I knew already: they lived for public arguments, forged an identity based on nobody ever telling them they’re wrong or stopping them mid lecture. It was clear he was hoping someone would tell him to shut up, or just argue with him.

This exhibit had a lot of strange explorations on religion, with lots of paintings of pale, sick children praying, and colored statue like models of disapproving beardy men pointing.

I supposed that was God, or someone suffering from constipation.

Maybe both. It would explain all the smiting, salting, drowning and proposed filicide in the Bible.

At the end, in a vestibule all on its own was Leonardo DaVinci’s work. I decided to spend a few minutes absorbing things here, really enjoying the detailed line work and sketches of contraptions he thought up.

I thought of futuristic stories using them, but that only kept me amused so long, and Besides the odious old man I was trying to avoid was getting closer again.

“Rothko what a crayon toting child! Not in the same class as Monet(Mon-ett)!”

Ugh. I didn’t believe for a second that he didn’t know how to say Monet’s name right. Again he’s desperately hoping someone corrects him.

I was finding inspiration it seemed. Inspiration to never be like this.

I forced my attention back on exhibit.

I enjoyed Da Vinci’s paintings too, but I found the way he did people to be…strange. Off putting.

When it came time for the crown jewel this feeling only intensified.

The Mona Lisa.

History won’t shut up about it. Perhaps one of the oldest hype campaigns?

Mona Lisa’s smirk was disconcerting. I wasn’t getting mystique from her but rather the frozen mask of someone not really paying attention to your side of the conversation.

This is what made people write essays and artists to spend days copying?

I attempted to like it on principle. The cracks in the paint, the steady brushstrokes, the play of shadow and light…but no matter what I always returned to the fact it was a portrait that leaned hard into uncanny valley to my eye, a creepy factor to it I couldn’t ignore. Maybe that’s part of its charm to those who love it?

Or maybe it was just the gaggle of adults including the pedantic man , who praised it so highly, that it made me hate it on sheer scene hating principle.

“Art will never produce something this good again. It is a constant reminder of the legacy of western civilization.” His lips farted out, while his silent companion rolled her eyes so hard and so fast it broke the sound barrier.

I was positive this man would have spent hours lecturing me on why I’m an ignoramus for not feeling moved by it, I’m sure, but I of course wouldn’t give that chance.

I was too busy feeling dejected, and very much unmoved.

Perhaps this would always be my life now. Semi depressed, and completely unmoved by the beauty of art and creativity.

I’d be like those boring, miserable fuckers who can’t go 5 mins without finding every flaw in life, the universe and everything, to be a personal affront and worthy of long standing grudges, the cultivation of which consumes their entire lives and identity.

Not unlike Mr. pedantic back there.

I shivered.

I really hoped that wouldn’t happen to me.

But every consecutive minute I spent looking at these rooms of curated “classics”, the more belligerent I became.

Maybe it was a room crammed full of people which is generally never my favorite place to be, that soured this all.

Or maybe, the constant self satisfied air of those who kept talking about “the debt to western civilization” didn’t help me like it either. A dog whistle was an unmistakable thing, and the opposite of what I was looking for.

Or anyone with a functioning brain, really. Or is it a functioning heart?

To complicate it all, History was one of my favorite subjects, why was this different?

I hypothesized that who ever picked out the pieces here was intent on boring people, and was very good at it.

Because I was bored. The stuffy atmosphere was positively chaffing me now, along with a sense of Deja vu, that kept popping up like I’d seen this all before.

I thought again about leaving, but in the end mainly stayed because I knew the teacher who brought me would get in trouble if I just cut out and took public transit home.

The art teacher who perpetually sported a Julie Andrews “Sound of Music” haircut, brought me despite not being in her class anymore.

I was supposed to be bored in Trigonometry right now but managed to be here because of her intercession.

I confided in her, and when I told her my life was “feeling grey” she Insisted I come and “find my muse”, like a muse was a set of lost house keys.

While I suspected it probably wouldn’t help, I liked the idea of skipping a class that bored me incredibly for a chance to go to a gallery.

So I came here. Which was I was now thinking was a mistake.

With my current mood, it was getting increasingly hard to believe any real art, of the kind that would give one a chance to feel something, would be present in these rooms and corridors that seem saturated with pretension and cheap rosewater smelling perfume.

Something about the way this art was being presented and the affected manner of those who stood looking at the sealed art, behind dusty velvet ropes, that repelled me.

It felt like viewing some fossilized remains of dead art.

As if to prove my point, a nearby guide gave a long winded explanation of why this artist used red and the symbolism behind the mirrors, and on and on, filling the air with memorized uninspired fare, instead of giving the students a chance to feel something on their own, or draw their own conclusions, and ask their own questions.

To me it all seemed so very squeezed of joy, until  I chanced upon a section that held a whole empty Goya Exhibit….

Right away I felt my mind quieting, with the overwhelming onslaught of the world through his brush.

His colors, uniquely alive flashed off the walls and lodged themselves into my mind, in a way I’d be thinking about for years to come.

What was this feeling? It was breaking through all the pretension and my stubborn expectation not to find any kind of muse here.

I was amazed.

They were so beautiful. So moving. So powerful. They lingered in my mind in a way I didn’t completely understand, but loved all the same.

I felt thrilled by seeing them. So much unapologetically different from what I endured before. The shadows and light, the world his imagination and skill opened a window. It felt positively magical.

It was the same visceral reaction I had to first seeing Van Gogh: hopeful, inspired, in love.

I had already seen some of the works as prints or little illustrations in a book, yet standing before them was completely different in a way that I found the Mona Lisa to be lacking.

(Wait was that even the real one?)

The hands of the clock spun off and I spent The rest of the trip slowly memorizing and falling into his works.

I couldn’t even really reason out why this affected me so in a way the rest of the exhibit singularly failed to.

Rounding off the trip with a smattering of Dali prints, I wondered if I had just come in on this side of the building would my whole day have changed?

I left not much later, my heart considerably lighter, my imagination super charged by new examples of art and color expression…there was more beautiful expressive art out there than what was in galleries too, of course. I would just have to find a way to discover it, even if the efforts felt futile at first like today.

Julie Andrews had been right. I had found a muse here, and with it new color invaded my life.

I made a mental note to thank her for bringing me.

As the bus wound its way home, somehow the world seemed much more intensely colored than I ever noticed before.

Drab gray traffic and claustrophobic city streets were occasionally saved by the glowing colors of those gifted with spray paint, or the posters tacked on top of each other like some manic collage peeking out as we slid by.

It was like I had been blessed with some new sense…I realized I had never truly seen the life and vibrancy of color itself. It had always seemed just a detail before.

Life was shifting perspective in a major way, and I could never go back to the way I was before…

Part of me was thrilled and thirsty for experiencing things in a new way, but also somehow melancholic.

What now? Now that something fundamentally had changed inside me, what do I do with it? How do I go back to living the same life?

As I gradually fell asleep lulled by the rhythm of the students chatting and, with such questions rampaging in my mind, I felt even the art I dismissed at first had left an impression.

All of it from adverts to works of geniuses left traces in my subconscious, and they all left a thread to pull on and find it attached to something that was a hybrid of us both.

Everything I saw, experienced, or felt either revulsion or respect for floated in the opaque depths of my subconscious.

One day, maybe I’d find the words to write about it…or enough mental mana to conjure something visual that would echo it..

For now it was enough to partially understand another facet of myself, something at once experience, imagination and memory, a tapestry of creativity, all woven together within.

A power I already called on to help me write but now it was like a visceral new function had been unlocked for me, a new power to interact in the world with.

As I began to slip away, i saw the echoes of this day burn anew in my heart, with a fondness even for the strange divine muse all those classic artists chased.

The pressure and velocity of being pulled and dragged along began anew, and this memory flitted away, taking with it everything except a prolonged shifting feeling.

I was a dreamer again, amazed that I lost myself so easily…I had to try and focus on this fact or risk losing the ability to differentiate between waking and sleeping.

Which was probably bad.

What if I woke up in a nightmare and went a lifetime thinking it was real?

///-RiPpLe- ///

Like reflected sky in a puddle muddled from a recently departed boot, The world sloshes past, splashing forward and then back.

A classroom decorated for halloween reveals itself in drips and drops, and my body shrinks down again, much smaller than even before

Another memory fragment?

-“- this is a dream -“- i recite in my head. This time I would try to remember, and not let the memory take me over.

An old map unfurls and lies on the floor in front of me. A teacher, suddenly at my elbow smiles and begins to sing:

“…Shift goes the world, and out go the lights, and your poor little sanity rolls out of sight…”

I feel awkward. I always did when adults paid me so much attention.

Well anyone for that matter. I was much more used to being ignored or grouped in with others.

“There are witches in the air!” A little girl next to me sings.

“You should run and run and run.” Said a boy to my left, looking directly at me.

“You could go crazy, but we don’t care!” Chimed in another, with the same pointed look as the last.

Then they all turned to look at me expectantly, to finish the verse.

I hadn’t forgotten that this wasn’t real.

-“- this is a dream -“- My hidden thread of disbelief held fast, and with a mischievous smiling creeping to my face, I stood slowly, with all the gravitas my new/old little body could muster then:

“FRAUD!” I yell triumphantly. “Hah!”

…

But no one answers, no one even moves. They are frozen in expectation staring at me. It is distinctly creepier than before.

-:-this is just a dream?-:- doubt was creeping into my lifeline, fraying it.

Suddenly a warm yellow light blinks on nearby, from a desk nobody is sitting at it but the old fashioned typewriter, which begins to move and clack its key, loudly in the quiet.

—(Typewriter noises)—

The room fills with the din of click-clacking, bouncing all around me like some broken sound effect button.

A spotlight blinks on in front of me, and the old map on the floor rises up, now playing a screen for the new memory fragment that starts up as if from an old projector behind me somewhere.

::A vaudeville like melody plays in the background::

\ An even younger me, stands in a rundown market, staring off into space as suddenly I am accosted by a fully grown man who barks at me sending toxic spouts of whiskey breath into my face. I was deeply confused and a little scared. Adults didn’t usually act like this. Why was this stranger barking at me? Why did his breath smell like that, and the mantra of the unfortunate: why me?

Nearby a surly store clerk yelled

“knock it off, asshole, you’re scaring the fuckin kid.”

The look he gave was dangerous as if asking the man to disobey so he could respond in kind. I noticed it almost looked like he wanted that…

The strange whiskey man growled in response but sauntered off leaving me wondering just how many other adults wanted to bark at me too but resisted the urge? Was this something that will make more sense when I grow up? Something told me no… maybe in his universe this was how you amused, or said hello to people? Had I unwittingly stepped into his territory?/

With a snap, and the sound of a strange chime, the world blinked out.

Triangle - Hit Play

- Shift-

(Track change) (Polythene Pam)

-volume up

^Sumerian Coins taste funny. Or so they say^

<Nanni finds Ea-nāșir’s Copper to be shitty along with his attitude. Mesopotamian Yelp 1750 BCE>

+remember no matter where you go, there you are +

=what’s a little fallout, huh?=

-)-

Song Two)-(woohoo?)

-in a moon age daydream oh yeah-

-(-

I am rain falling to the ground, drank by the parched earth, and the endless mosaics of roots just beneath the surface.

Time passes quickly like years are seconds.

Sunlight trickles down like water into the earth causing me to push upward, out of dirt and into the cool air.

I bloom just as the world changes, and I turn back into a person.

It feels like a demotion, somehow…

-:- This __ ONly @ DR.3AM -:- flashed across my mind…it felt important..breadcrumbs left to help me find my way back out of the forest….or was that a fairy tale? Maybe both?

^an extremely familiar but unplaceable song plays^

There is a Brilliant blue sky that sneaks in above me, with not a single cloud in sight. A warm caress of sunlight reaches across my lap as I sit.

A whooshing beat

^Thump-thump bumpbump Thump^

Random passers blink up and zip past, chime noises start echoing at stopped intersections and seemingly synching with the movement of pedestrians and motorists alike.

The whole world becomes some artsy MTV montage.

And I love it. I watch the movements of cars and the blinking colors mirrored off glassy surfaces.

An enigma of thought and cognition is accidentally sighted just beyond the imaginative veneer around me.

A reflection in a puddle that reveals a distortion of the world at large.

”Observation always changes the result” the sanguine sage had quoted, and those words now bounced about in my head like a plinko game.

The music continues to carry me as I can’t help but see a world where thoughts pull at minds and then bodies, and some dance under the machinations of those who play them.

Invisible binding, and orchestrated events that seem to be the true motivating force behind the pace of society, of what was called “progress”

Is it identity or shrewd engineering? What in our world is actual control and what is chaos following a floodplain?

Hidden words bloom in the gaps between letters and repose unseen and obscured between the lines, awaiting the right reader to compile it into something that can be understood. Like a coded dispatch.

Truth without perspective. What does it even sound like? Can any one of us truly say?

Melody is there again, somewhere between the sounds of wind in the trees, warbling vocal cords and the rush of traffic.

Meaning stays elusive, thousands playing chose your own adventures without ever really getting to read what will be on the last pages, a life doomed to survival of ceaseless adaptation.

-Percussion blends with melody in a way that makes my foot tap in spite of myself-

The business of exploiting the weak is always booming, and busy little bees will always sacrifice to work their lives away. Some people will forever be addicted to the motion of having a purpose, no matter how important or trivial that role is.

The beating heart of progress and civilization is a corpse calling to the carrion crows, an orgy of haughty feeding calling to the absolute worst of and in, us. The greater the power being wielded, the more putrid the corpse, and more violent the ensuing struggle for the best parts.

-:::) -::::) -::::)•(::::- (::::- (::::-

The song may end, but the day goes on, the gift of music helps us to forget the inevitable that draws closer with every decaying second.

It helps us all to think and feel without explanation, or specifics. Without having to organize, alphabetize, or gather one’s own thoughts and feelings, in the same way anything else does.

It is a magical spell with no incantation, a waking dream of a contained moment, a conjuration of specters from the past present or even future.

A lucid vision of hope so brilliantly pure, it can easily be hidden in chords of despair and still remain luminously untainted.

The world shimmers and shines reminding me before the next track can start this one has to finish….

As a new track begins playing, I find myself drifting outwards with the sound, flocking like a bird to the formation of these sound waves decorating time and space.

A flash of paper birds crosses my mind…where had I seen this before?

(((SWISH>>>>>)))

-Refer to our weekly Newsletter-

.99 cents no less

Free Mason- I didn’t even know he was imprisoned.

-Groans-

^ Bartender nods and says “what’s your poison?” The customer replies “Oh no poison for me thanks, I just want a drink” ^

-“Peace on Earth and Salsa Mild, God considers your bathroom tile” -

-:- [] []»»»

Narrative Parcel Three)—»

-/- [] []»»»»

Moving along the soundscapes of music, a new room very much resembling a department store crumples and unfolds itself like a glove to catch the wavy lines of sound. Of which I seem to be ride along with.

-/surfing on sine waves

The store finalizes itself into position, just as a man stooped by age and circumstance, strides up to a larger open space in homeware, clearing his throat.

Then this grumpy, crumbly man spoke in monologue, his voice loud and unwavering. One could be forgiven in suspecting that this man must have done movie narration at one point in his long life.

Nobody appeared to be listening but he, in fact, had the entire shop’s attention.

Crowds love spectacle after all. Even executions were seen as like a day at the movies. Though that may have just been a kind of “at least it’s not me!” Mindset.

It didn’t seem like he began anywhere with a preamble or introduction, his speech started as if he had already been speaking at length:

“During social events I’m forced to attend I will always seek out the animal to spend time with them, rather than the people, and 9/10 times, it will be right choice.” He said to a few smiles, but no one seemed willing to go further and give him eye contact.

Undaunted he continued at full volume:

“At her wake I spent the time in the stable with the horses. At a friend’s 21st I was in the basement petting and bonding with the dog. At the wedding reception of my brother, I was outside feeding a gang of stray cats, that evidently lived at the venue. Animals are way better company than your Uncle Andy I promise you.” He said smiling a tiny crooked grin that spoke to the horseshoe similarity of a stubborn old man and mischievous child.

“Many of my milestone memories are like this, and I don’t find any embarrassment with it, no no quite the opposite! I have found so few humans I like in this life. Perhaps my Mother’s “the only monsters in our world, are other people” speech was too effective.” He paused here genuinely analyzing if he just said a truth he hadn’t intended on.

“It’s hard to say.’ He said after an animated shrug ‘ As far as I can tell, many people think this too and just never say it. Maybe they have more tact, or just politeness. Not me. I am what is frequently called “an ass” He says pausing again as a phone begins to ring.

Realizing it is his own he plucks it from a pocket and silences it, without looking at who was calling.

“The phone is ringing in a tone you did not pick…what a modern horror….” He mutters to himself, before replacing the phone and continuing.

“Ahem. What an apt metaphor for what living today is like eh? Everyone’s attention is unwillingly on a madman talking about himself in any place or space he can.” He chuckles again. “Kinda like another person that dominates the headlines, eh?”

“ And on that note, I find it comforting to imagine the people and things that drive me to distraction and despair, 1000 years into the future when nothing remains of us all, but fucking smudgy dust.” The ghost of a smile flutters across his lips as he says this.

“I invite you to do so too, to have a nice moment of imagining all the drama, people and events that make you worry or rage and seeing them gone. Not just simply gone, but Long gone. Legacies, consequences you name it, poof! Replaced with nothing. Just empty space.” He says to those closest to where he stood.

“It is a blessing of mortality: the promise of an end. Not a metaphorical one but a very real one that comes no matter what you or anyone else does.”

“It’s become rather a morbid thing maybe even nihilistic thing to think on, but by not doing so at all, we lose a rather powerful tool in our natural mental protection arsenal.”

“Our end. God can piss on you all your life but only drown you once, as the Sicilian proverb goes.” At this he smiles and allows a moment to pass before continuing:

“All misery and triumph of the unworthy and corrupt will end too. It’s not a question of If, but rather when. Tomorrow always sneaks into the procession of today’s, just like that sugar packet informed me.”

By now he was pacing, so lost in thought it was possible he forgot he was addressing an entire room of strangers. (Addressing is doing a lot of work here, when in reality he is just monologuing in a public space)

“There’s not much that stands up to that, this undeniable truth of all mortality; Time is relentless in its pursuit especially when your life here is based on the survival of ticking meat sacks like us.” He spouted off over his shoulder at the people lingering around a bargain bin.

“A kind of perverse satisfaction can lay there too. Don’t you see?”

“We all have decaying biological equipment to work with, and knowing even the worst most privileged, and famous named, patrician has times of body malfunction, and things like sunburn, insect bites, and painful poops too, which can cause levity where once there was only rage.”

“Made in God’s image, indeed.” He said pausing to shoot another nearby old man with a conspiratorial look.

“It’s inescapable. No matter how lofty they act, how better than others, how evolved and smart etc…they still own bodies that will dispel any illusion of godship. Dignity is a fragile thing at the best of times. Everyone can be gotten to from peasants to kings. Flesh is beautiful in its imperfections, this way. One just has to keep in mind the fact human religion has tried eons to erase: we are animals too. We live, we die. The world moves on. Hi ho. Hi ho.”

“The best and worst, and everything in between: we all have the collective destiny of becoming a farm for insects.” he finished, looking around at everyone before shuffling off back into the random he had come from.

Did people listen? He didn’t care. In the end it didn’t matter. He had wanted to have a moment of desperate connection, a moment where his words would be remembered perhaps, or something, anything of what he thought, or who he was.

It was so easy to live life quietly, wither and then fade, to pass on leaving very little to nothing, to mark your time here.

I think, he was gifting a story to the dozens of patrons that stopped to listen, an anecdote of that guy who spoke loudly in the store one time. The kind of easy story that could be told to acquaintances and long time friends alike.

A moment of distraction and hope for meaning where there probably wasn’t any; The modern standard minimum of any situation good or bad.

Perhaps this is what he wanted too.

The store and its patrons turn frozen, the lights blink off, and just like that the store and loquacious man are gone, and the dream empties into a new cistern, taking me with it.

{a Reality Periscope rises and shoves the world into a small rectangle, revealing open ocean and noise. So much noise bearing down on us all} :

-Click to subscribe to wisdom. You won’t get it but you will get a coupon for boner pills which is nice right?-

-what do you do? Oh, I glow in the dark-

Noise noise noise all the time, splashes of conversations that soak you just walking down a crowded street:

-wag wag wag goes the mouth that is always shoveling bullshit!- 21 century American Political Proverb

-the face of privilege and autocracy is a smug smiling shit who is unqualified for their job, inept in all things, and always ready with someone else to blame

-Wahhh, wah wahhh! Goes the world’s richest ghouls who are destroying our world out of insatiable greed and narcissism. Everyone hating them is not their fault!

-the absurdity of these days has destroyed the genre of subtle satire. Now is the time of Slapstick Satire!-

^Welcome to the times where headline news is indistinguishable from the sarcastic jokes of the Onion^

Then a famous movie quote:

^^on second thought let’s not go to Camelot; ‘tis a silly place^^

(:-:)

Memory Fragment Four)

(:-:)

XxX

^^^

Music so low you can’t make out what it is plays, and suddenly I snap out of what felt like a really long stare at the blank text field.

What was I doing before this? I couldn’t seem to place…

-::-a 2543 (:),):!:- a broken sentence rattled around in my head…what was it that had been so important to hang on to?

Something about Hansel and Gretel?

I distractedly glance out the nearby window.

The night is alive, lighting strobes the sky at irregular intervals, along with thunder vaguely murmuring to itself, at distances that seem not very far off.

The air is stagnant and full, and from my vantage point everything seemed to have a hazy foggy look to it.

Not a drop of rain yet, just the humidity that lays heavy on already sweaty skin, a veritable breathable swamp lingering in the air, or loose walls of water vapor lurching through the night, in search of someone to splash on.

It’s one of those summer nights that seem to warn of madness or chaotic inclinations of nature to burst forth at any given moment.

The whole world another words, seems pregnant with pause.

Sound itself seems stifled, and strangled, though the din of crickets is almost as loud as the distant rumbling thunder itself.

The wind finally washes along like a tide in the tops of trees, and I smile for a moment as it caresses my skin ever so gently. What a beautiful gift moments like this are… It stretches on, adding to the feeling of being on the verge.

On what or why I have no idea.

The feeling is unshakable however.

So I do what comes natural : I sweat and begin to type.

I search for a feeling, dropping letter after letter into the notepad and pace.

Like I do with all these moments of staying up until the poorly lit hours of the night, wading through rusted detritus of discarded emotions.

Or

hunting for that sliver of enlightenment I must have left in the microwave.

It’s here somewhere!

But

In the end it’s all miscellaneous something or auspicious another,  songs of self deprivation and a lot of pointless narration, to drive one to digress a digression.

It’s a hot fucking night and instead of sleeping I’m here at this mess, chasing the fading color of a departing muse.

But all I’ve found is that I feel hot and sweaty. Have I mentioned that already?

It smothers and scorches until I can see that even the sentences I write, seem to be sweating and wilting little by little from the constant hot breath of the season.

It’s certainly hard to distract myself from, especially as sweat drips from my forehead and stings my eyes.

I annoyedly wipe them away, trying to read what I already wrote.

It’s also dark.

The nearby interstate wooshes in its constant white noise undertone, coming in the cracks of a the nearby window.

Outside there’s no wind, so I smell nothing but oxygen and wet.

But…

I’m here alive at this momentous moment of nothing. Perhaps out there in the muggy mists someone else is having a world changing event. Perhaps villains were vanquished, or innocents murdered.

But as for me, It’s 1:43 am, and the words have run out, and a nice fan offers a pleasing envelope of cool, provided I lay directly in front of it, and don’t move.

Maybe not even think. Was that even possible?

• *

  (__)

*buzzing noise

*fuzzing sound

*Adding the Razzle Dazzle

A beat up stereo plays on unnoticed in a corner:

“Tuesday’s on the phone to me, oh yeah. “

And

“the ice age is coming, the suns zooming in, meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin, engines stop running but I have no fear ‘Cause London is drowning and I live by the river “

*FEAR STALKS THE LAND

(It’s just obsessed with us)

-/—:-

-/ /-

Insomnia Fragment Five)

/- -/

- : - -:- -:-

My brain buzzes like a swarm of angry wasps.

I take a moment to taste the air and unclench my jaw. I’m not sure when I started grinding it.

The room around me is blank and dark. It’s just me, a sofa, and a laptop. The blue light of the monitor doesn’t illuminate the room, rather only seems to mingle weakly with the shadows.

I’m writing.

Or trying to.

The page is currently empty, except for the blinking cursor which seems impatient to me.

Calm acres of tranquil topiary carefully arranged in a verdant hedge mazes, spin up out of the goopy depths of my brain jello. But sadly produce no words to feed the impatient little cursor, and so it hungrily remains at the top of the text field, trying to shame me into feeding it.

Violins and Harps play odd little melodies somewhere on the other side of the night. Like a score to a very uneventful moment of my life.

Suddenly with no warning at all, nothing happens.

no one came to visit, no bombs exploded, supernatural beasts and pan dimensional beings continued to not reveal themselves to me, and my secret powers went right on being secret even to me, for another day at least.

With such staggering nothing to deal with, I wasn’t sure how to react so I just didn’t.

Sometimes I don’t react even when a great annoying something happens.

Being a human is like that. Sometimes I think we should have named ourselves moody sapiens .

Ok not that but something like that. Maybe someone wittier than me can take a crack at it.

As the veil of nothing continued to spread quietly around, I glanced absently out the window, promising myself to come up with a better title than that.

Maybe I could write about it.

“Weirdo stays awake to experience the everything of nothing.”

Riveting material. I can hear the angry yawns and polite familial style (dis) interest, already: “oh what a very unique idea! I really like how you used words to describe it! No I don’t want to read it, I just want to…look at the paragraphs. Ah they’re in English, good for you.”

Dawn is creeping up to my window, and I forget again whether I’m dreaming or awake. It felt like both. Could it be both?

It always felt like that, for me anyway. Some of the more surreal moments of my life, I have been wide awake for, after all.

It was like familiar places and memories were set up for me to fill in with consciousness, a quiet place filled with my own brand of brain noises. Was it dream, was it reality? Or something in between…?

Regardless, the strangeness of being continued on, and I guess so do I .

I climbed into bed where no one held me, and dreamt about nothing. It was like a long blink.

When I awoke the world was exactly as I left it, with the cursor on the screen continuing to blink like some vigil flame.

But there was a lingering feeling that made my memory all fuzzy. What happened before? Why was everything different somehow…?

Wait.

Something was clearly off.

What was it?

Most certainly a something,

I continued with this nagging gut feeling, that wouldn’t go away until I found out what it was.

The cursor. It wasn’t blinking. In fact it was on the laptop anymore, at all.

I turned and in the gloom of my familiar bedroom, a shadowy creature stalked close..it was the cursor, snarling at me. Menacing with a blink blink blink.

It wanted me to feed it words….

Uh…

I said and it gobbled that up.

Wanting longer words, it demanded more blinking at me in menacing Morse Code.

“Ameliorate?” I said feeding it the largest word my panic stricken brain could produce, which of course caused it grow in size.

Little shop of horrors came to mind. I saw where this would end.

No thank you.

I turned and ran. Clumsily tripping through my house in a desperate bid to get away from this beast.

Oddly the pain didn’t hurt as much as it should have…again the feeling of offnness struck a loud chord.

It sounded like a Banjo to my ear.

The monster didn’t care about such things and continued.

It blinked after me and…..

……Ok……

wait a minute.

Time out.

I stop running, frowning.

-:-this is a dream-:- flashes in my head clear once more.

I put my hands on my hips and glowered.

“This is silly. I’m not going to do this anymore.”

I yelled, somehow ripping a hole in the nearby wall and walking out into the deep dark void behind it.

The cursor sank down and dejectedly returned to the laptop, circling like a dog before coming to rest in its usual spot, blinking in a usual expectant way.

“Next?” I yelled completely obscured by the dark, outside the wall.

The entire world shifts and blows away quickly, like a deflating balloon : making rude noises, propelled forward by its own escaping gasses.

The low hanging fruit of such a metaphor prompts me to make a joke but I’m above such crudeness.

Fart!

Ok so maybe I’m not.

|\__\|\

Story Segment Six)

|—|/\ “the consequences of Togetherness.”

—/—/—/

|_~_|

Unity.

Its tough. Humans are kind of unlikable when you get right down to it.

We’re finicky. Impatient. Ignorant. Petty. Selfish. Inconsiderate.

In short, a whole lot of negative adjectives could truthfully be applied to many of us, even those considered our “best”.

The business of connection, of romance, love, affection, is an ordeal of games, subtle psychic warfare, and a universal, desperate, timed desire for companionship and deeper understanding no matter the cost.

The world is much more manageable with others to help, but such help is never a given.

We build these fragile worlds using flesh and blood as foundation, which death or divergence can bring crashing down.

It can change our whole life trajectory, maim our hearts, and leave us with a remainder that feels very cold, and confusing.

Yet we still persist. Even those who aren’t interested in the intimacy or sexuality, I would suspect, want some kind of companionship, some kind of acceptance without condition.

All an outsider need do is take a look at the fruits of our imagination and creativity, and see how many stories, art pieces, movies, sculptures, photos, and so on, that invoke themes of the complexity of coming together and getting along.

We all acknowledge this, and on some level understand it, yet each soul’s journey through this world and its inhabitants is unique even if much of our stories rhyme, and sound similar. Every person’s smiles, frowns and words represent an entity inside that is wholly of its own substance.

How we each learn to navigate the world we are born into also slices these experiences, and even a nobody like me has managed to experience some beautiful, and low moments with those I’ve come into contact with.

I never really considered them all at once, being something of a sarcastic and cynical outward disposition…

Or maybe just not emotionally masochistic.

The lessons of the heart always found me willing to learn, and so I never felt a desire to close what can’t have closure, or ponder too deeply why some sparks failed to produce fire.

-/-Wooooooooosh-/-

*a stomach clenching feeling of falling comes over me and then:

I am standing on my childhood porch. How did I get here? I tried to sift the chain of events that lead to here, but was having trouble… something about a parking lot…and my old art teacher…and a department store?

Wait that couldn’t be right…

My thoughts felt funny.

All Wiggly and Wobbly, impossible to get a handle on.

Nearby a soft breeze tickles a wind chime, and directly to my right, the Wisteria Tree hums with happy bees, buzzing among the pale light lavender color of its flowers.

In the backyard itself, my parents looking much younger are smiling and talking with the neighbors.

it all seems annoyingly familiar, but I can’t place why. It’s an unclear, foggy sort of sensation, something between being on the tip of Deja vu, and the feeling of being in a play ; An affection of freedom when in fact everything is flowing to a preset rigid pattern.

My younger sister is in the pool, clear on the other side of the yard.

She is happy. She loves being in the pool even though she can’t swim yet.

She sees me, and at once begins an emphatic wave, that suddenly makes her lose her balance and she goes over board, off her little raft, with barely a splash.

Panic unfurls inside me, as I helplessly turn to see if the adults have noticed.

They haven’t. She’s now been under for 30 seconds or more and nobody is even aware there’s a life threatening problem.

Fear of losing her coils tightly around my neck and for a moment I feel like I can move, cant breathe.

I yell, something garbled and awkward but they ignore me or can’t hear me.

I realize it will be me that has to do something, and this shocks me into action.

I sprint across the yard without another thought and leap into the water fully clothed, not wanting to waste a single second more.

The chlorine stings my eyes but I keep them open to look for my tiny sibling.

She’s nowhere to be seen but a large finger print shaped hole at the bottom of the pool seems to pull me in, displacing reality in the process, and causing me to fall deeper into a acid trip shift of shape and color.

Panic now gunks up my ability to think, just as it had moments before. (Fear is the mind killer, indeed Frank Herbert!)

I search for a place to surface or at least bump my head across the bottom so I know which way not to go.

Anything that could help stem this tide of panic setting my brain on fire…or was this the lack of oxygen?

The pool makes and re makes itself over and over in a kaldescope of strangely textured geometries. It would be entrancing if I wasn’t drowning. I think glumly.

A tiny small surface the size of a puddle appears where the bottom used be(I think?) and as I approach it, I can see it is a place to surface, as strange as that was.

As I pop up taking a deep breath glad to have found a place to get away from the strange circumstances.

Only it’s not big enough to pull myself through, only enough to let me rise to about my shoulders.

I look around at this new place, and find that it’s a puddle in an alley, leaving me a very specific view of a nearby shop, and it’s weathered awning.

The rain is downpouring, yet I don’t feel it drumming on my exposed head.

Then with a sound of giggles and the slapping of waterlogged shoes on pavement, a younger me and the Empress are using the awning to stay out of the rain, practically holding one another to stand back from the rains encroaching reach.

It is cinema, and memory all at once. We romantically begin to kiss as the spring rains dump on the world around us. My lips suddenly remember the softness of hers and the touch of raindrops on our cheeks… I remember this moment vividly.

One of the most romantic movements I’ll ever feel and it’s the last we two will have.

After this we will never see one another again and I’ll be left chasing the shadow of her through future relationships…

My heart tightens in my chest and I decide it’s Time to move on. I don’t like this. Being deprived of oxygen hurt less than reliving a moment that wrecked you.

[rhythmic sloshing]

Surfacing in a new place, sent cedar smelling water up my nose which I spat out coughing.

All around me a lush, damp forest went about the usual business of a lush damp forest. There were puddles and mud, sun jumping between them and the beads on the leaves, an earth smell pervaded everything, and somewhere nearby two people are talking quietly.

“Well I don’t love you.” She said deadpan

In normal circumstances this would have been a devastating comment, but after a few months of fake smiles and an intimacy that felt shallow and forced, it was a mercy.

A beheading during torture.

We came to such a beautiful place to put a bullet in our relationship. Was it on purpose? Or did this trip just kind of cause it to come to a head?

I don’t really know.

I also don’t care.

This heart wound long since healed.

Why am I reliving these moments? I know for fact I had at least a few deliriously happy moments far more suitable for reliving than these.

Where were those?

I took one last deep breath and submerged for a third time . I already went through the awkwardness that comes next, no sense playing tourist to that.

Actually you couldn’t pay me to go through that again.

Onwards.

I found a current which pulled and pushed me along, light zipping past in strange lightning bolts, and SPLASH!!!

I surfaced in dark brownish…cola?

Ice cubes bumped against me, as it appeared I was now very small.

Looking around me I saw I was in a cup in a cup holder, inside a tiny, messy car.

a woman who sat in the drivers seat, stared out the window.

“It’s like this…” she began.

No.

I dropped at once into the Cola just as my heart was about to be put down like a distracted steer.

“Nope nope nope nope.” I thought trying to exit as quickly as possible.

Not this one. Never this one.

Back into the strange abyssal pool bottom!

Why was I coming to all these shitty moments? Was there a reason at all?

A wall falls away and reveals an image of my sister, saved from the incident and walking away, with some other me(is that really how I walk?)

“Well…least that’s sorted.” I think just as the wall snaps shut again and I’m sinking…I think. I try to swim , but Every time I swim toward what feels like up, the world snaps and folds its self like puzzle toy, so I’m not, but I was determined to pick my own path, somehow. This whole floating on thing that’s been going on was really starting to get on my nerves. Surely there was an exit if I looked hard enough?

I wasn’t sure how long this has been going on for but I really didn’t want to rehash my romantic life. Once for the most part was more than enough, especially moments like this.

Odd shapes surface in front of my face and then curl away: a sudden gush of heavenly oxygen as I find a new place to surface.

This time a beach, all deserted except for two people walking hand and hand.

Finally a happy moment. I think watching as the waves gently jostled me back and forth.

Suddenly out of nowhere a piano drops from the sky crushing her and causing the slightly younger me to drop to their knees crying out “WHYYYYYYY?”

“Oh come on that didn’t even happen!” I yell diving down again.

Was it possible some supernatural force had taken my mind simply to mess with me? Was I already dead and this is my punishment for wearing mixed fabrics?

Well.

I didn’t know and I didn’t have to dwell if I didn’t want to! Time to move on! Maybe next I can see someone punch my mother in the face? Relive the memories where I get injured but add slapstick looney tunes noises? Or maybe treasured family members can be maimed by anvils, accompanied by the 1812 overture?

Another long submerged tunnel of weird texture melting and I finally found myself somewhere I didn’t recognize at once. Which was encouraging.

Also it had oxygen. Which was the best part.

It was nice to breathe.

Think I’ll put it on a shirt.

This is the most macabre place yet: a completely unfinished room, which only had a fluorescent purple kiddie pool that I was in, and a lawn chair, occupied by a cat in a dinner jacket, and a tie complete with a stick pin.

He looked bored in that haughty way only cats can effortlessly display.

“Ah.” I say “ You must be the one behind all this strange business.”

The cat answered by yawning and suddenly becoming interested in a spot on the chair.

“That is why I’m here right? You’re going to explain the point of all this?

The cat answered by lounging on the chair his back to me, obviously annoyed with my mouth noises.

I was genuinely stumped. It’s not like anyone can educate you for moments like this.

Maybe if I accorded this creature the respect I’d give any supernatural being who enslaved my mind it would reveal itself? Or maybe have some mercy and give me better things to watch. Even Netflix can sometimes do that.

“Please uh Honorable Cat being, am I dreaming or did I fall out of reality? Why am I revisiting these moments?”

Ears down.

That’s the only response I got.

Feline irritation.

Suddenly a beam of light filled the room, which was blindingly bright, and left me squinting in pain.

I squinted until it was extinguished with a sound of a shutting door that reminded me distinctly of a sound effect from a messaging app of my youth.

Then standing before me was a being of pure color blue, holding a clipboard.

“Sorry I’m running late. It’s a large galaxy you know.” They said in perfect English despite the handicap of not having a mouth. “Wait. Were you talking to my cat?”

“N-n-no. Of course not.” I retorted weakly “he is a dapper soul though .” I said hoping to move this away from my attempting to make a cat talk back to me thing. Apparently even in strange places like this, you couldn’t make them do things.

“You thought he was in charge didn’t you?”

“That’s absurd…cats can’t talk.” I retort weakly

“Well it’s a strange galaxy out there”. He said genially “Now listen, there’s been a mistake. You’re not due to be here yet. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m going to send you back home now.”

“What? Wait. Is this like an afterlife thing, or..what should I do to get better memories?”

“No. Sorry confidential stuff, and all that, just you know, try to be kinder to others and love more and laugh quicker than finding anger, you know the usual I’m ok, you’re ok type shit. Au revoir!”

With a shove I was sinking below like a stone until suddenly, I fell from out of the fingerprint shaped hole back on to my bed.

“Ughhhh” I said in something between language and a guttural sigh

Rain pelted the window while nearby the dog snored…

It appeared I had finally woken up for true….

Everything around me appeared normal: treasured sentience all around me safely sleeping where I usually thought of them sleeping, the half eaten crackers, the stacks of books piled into the corner…everything seemed to point to being awake again.

Comforting yet bladder encouraging rain drummed on the window, and yet a whinging tiny voice told me something was off.

Maybe I had just woken up within another dream? Or was the “something’s off” the usual voice of anxiety and modern absurdity the underlies my thoughts on a normal day?

I lived life feeling like the dagger of Damocles was always just overhead anyway…so was this garden variety waking paranoia or my mind telling me I’m still dreaming?

How did one usually tell? A pinch?

I pinched myself. The room remained in place.

I guess it was the real world.

My phone chimes: it’s 5am.

“Oh fuckle stix” I say making up a phrase, because why not.

Such times called for creative cursing.

“Orange. Fire. Boats.” says the voice beside me, almost startling me.

“Green. Snow. Trains.” I reply quickly, my mouth shaping the words weirdly as if I hadn’t spoken in years.

I continued to scan around the room. This certainly appeared to be the waking present, and at least I had fallen asleep for a little while.

“Turpentine.” Said emphatically

“Acetone.” I agreed.

I suppose on a philosophical level that’s what life is about, finding the right place to wake up in…and this one certainly seems like the right one…well at least the one I started the night in.

I gave up trying to sleep and instead pulled out my pen and notebook. Somehow this powerful weird sequence already fading from my mind needed to be recorded…before it was gone or too forgotten to draw anything from it.

Life bled into dreams and vice versa. It was an echoing sound of screaming into the void, of loving hard and finding your own meaning among the noise and muck of collective survival.

Of stories unfinished, of potential yet to be realized. A song of your soul, the melody of your heart, and the composition of a world through your very own eyes.

It is you.

And me.

Our shared worlds and the hidden ones we think we are far better at hiding than we ever actually are.

It is a spiritual alchemy turning inspiration into cities, and abstraction into languages of thought. A myriad of universes filtered and stored in our minds, and of how they seep into the waking world through us, in our memories in our words, or our stories.

Pupil cracking light appears, smearing itself all over the windowsill, as outside the sun rises, and a new day begins.

Just like dreams end in the morning, so too does this find its dismissal by sunlight.

The ending end thingy. That’s what this is, but that’s a technical term.

As in technically not a term.

I hope for a moment you found a laugh or possibly a distraction somewhere in here, or maybe find you have similar brain noises as me.

[]_[] []_[] []_[]

Thanks again for reading you amazing constellation of chemicals 😊

Hello there!

Thanks for stopping by! What a wonderful thing for you to do!

You should definitely pat yourself on the back for having such good taste. I mean, who wouldn’t want to read these exploits of a nobody from nowhere?

Netflix execs and publishers of all kinds are bothering me all the time I can tell you….

Ok that’s a complete lie, if the sarcasm wasn’t quite as molasses thick as you are used to.

Nobody really cares but that’s ok. I’m writing it anyway.

Moving on—>

I’m going to tell you something and I want you to hear me:

You are special.

Thats right.

You may think “you don’t even know who I am, how could you possibly know I’m special?”

Because you’re here of course.

For years I’ve only written to an audience of a myself , a few amazingly patient people, and now you, whoever you are.

That is significant. That makes you important to me. You’re about to be closer to my thoughts than those who live close to me even get.

Also if people can hate for reasons unclear to even themselves than surely I can like and appreciate those who chose to give my words life.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my semi autobiographic project called “Wanderings of an Idle Mind” which occupies countless text files and notebooks across my life, is something I mean to post here every so often, especially when I find coherent enough parts to patch together and create something worth reading.

Recently as I was organizing parts of my little studio in the attic, I found a small narrative biome crammed into the backend of an old pocket sized spiral-bound notebook.

Re reading it was a bit rough, so I decided to gather up all these threads that were forming in my mind, and try to create some kind of small post here about it.

As I began to fill it with words and art, it ballooned and soon I realized to tell it properly, I’d have to tell it all, even the darker subject matter at the end and include some of the still remaining doodles, which I kind of hate.

So it remained here in my drafts.

“After all” I told myself “who the fuck cares? There’s so much chaos out there, where actual children are dying. How in the world do I deserve to speak? Why inflict my nobody story on the world?”

Of course I don’t have an answer to that. Perhaps that’s why I’m so fine with such a quiet voice in such a loud place, why I will continue to tell my strange little stories, though words and colors.

Who’s really to say what story gets told and when? Theres plenty who will of course, be very glad to tell you what you can and can’t do but they are cursed with small minds buried in what should be; not what is or could be.

So maybe one day I’ll finally post this.

But probably not.

*Side note: this story predated a major depression episode, one that halted my creative life for a few years, and very nearly ended my actual life.

My hope, is that the quiet vernacular that lives under these words helps you the reader, find a moment to inhabit another life and thus shift the weight of what you carry in your own heart, your own world and find it much lighter, for a little while at least.

Perhaps that’s what all good story’s basely give us; a chance to stop pushing our own rock back and forth for a moment or two.

Places to watch the world go by.

That’s what I wanted. The walls of home were much too close, as was the noise of the other humans that orbited it. It felt like I could hear all the overlapping voices of everyone on the block, including their tvs and radios. It was like a migraine had planted itself last month sometime and still hadn’t completely gone.

Worse still, There was also a malignancy lingering on the peripherals of all this . A souring malevolence that would suffocate me gladly if I let it catch up…so I paced, tapped my foot, paced some more, stood on a chair facing the wall, and sat in the middle of the kitchen table.

But it was no good. I felt like a caged animal, and so that day, I walked out. No plan whatsoever, and without a word to anyone else. Who would care anyway?

I wandered lost mere miles away from where I lived. I chose any motion at all to give me a sense of fleeing, though I knew full well, what I wanted to escape lived in my head and would therefore come for me, no matter where I went. There was no forever escape, except death.

But for the moment, the movement, the wind in my ears, the tightening of the muscles in my thighs, somehow made it seem close enough to escape as I could manage, And for that present, moving away from familiar places and faces was as good as it got.

—/////—

Traveling by foot in this endless suburban conveyor belt, wasn’t exactly easy, but I got to find great perches from which to watch the life of the word drift by for a while, and hidden refuges of calm to scratch letters into my pocket notebook, or poke letters into my phone, maybe even doodle a bit.

Have you ever people watched? Not in a peeping sort of way but rather just an extended period of passively observing the tides of strangers as they come and go.

Stories arise. Individuals stranger than a fiction writer could imagine materialize and then are gone forever. You can easily tell the People down on their luck or clearly privileged by the vehicles they drive, the clothes they wear, the state of their appearance etc.

And that’s not all.

A few paths and perches were so far outside normal travel patterns, that I met some wildlife: a few skittish deer, curious feral cats, a wayward dog I first mistook for a bear(no he was just a really fat brown dog), oddly chickens for some reason, and dozens of other small birds that sang in the trees, shutting up at once when I passed under, but then returning to song when I got farther away.

I also came on the sudden appearance of a man in a glider who appeared to only speak French or what I assumed was French.

Or maybe he was another wayward misanthrope, upset to run into another human. I never found that out and when I tell these stories to others, they are always dubious that it actually happened.

It is Ironic to me, how many fictions we buy wholesale from strangers and yet are always skeptics whenever someone we know experiences the strange or outlandish.

But I digress.

The cats followed me around for a small time which I loved, getting one to allow me to pet its ears, but eventually it grew deserted and time pushed me onwards.

Since I had decided on such an impulsive departure, I’d only have so much time before I’d have to head back home for practical reasons like eating and sleeping.

So I continued on, coming out of the more rural area, I found a jogging path(?) or at least I thought that’s what it was: a thin long cemented path that ran parallel to the roadway.

A bench sat nearby looking comfy and Inviting and so I sat.

It was glorious to just sit somewhere after all the walking I had just done. I sat still and stared at the ground and thought, gloriously about nothing. Nothing at all.

How delicious it was.

Sometimes, however, we unknowingly play roles others bestow without knowing why.

A woman passed by once. Then a few mins later she passed again. It seemed to me that she also had a storm on the horizon that she was fleeing.

She was very tall, and seemed very unsure about something. She lingered nearby observing me, while I continued to look at my feet, drawing myself down like a mouse.

After a few more uncertain moments she came and sat at the other end of the bench, gingerly as if worried I might suddenly mutate into something violent and feral. It made my heart hurt to think of the world she inhabited, where even a stranger could treat her poorly.

I turned to look briefly with a slow reassuring nod, hoping that if indeed, I was the cause of her worry, that she needn’t do so. I’m a nobody, who’s barely here.

For a time we both sat silently. She kept looking over at me as I resolutely kept myself balled up and empty.

After a time I realized she was crying. Soft, agonizing sobs that rocked and wriggled against the wood of the bench slats.

My heart skipped a beat, as I realized I had no clue how to proceed here. Should I leave her to succumb to misery alone like she most likely intended?

Also who was I ? Some sweaty, and most likely dirty looking stranger who was trespassing in some safe place of hers? For all I knew this could be the one spot she let herself go and here I was, ruining it all by being here.

Self loathing, powerful and poisonous, burst forth inside me. Everything I did was shit and apparently just being present somewhere was an affront. I became acutely aware of my stupid clothes, and dumb face. Why do I keep this charade up? Why is my life such ridiculous comedy?

Gods I hate myself.

Worse still, me? Dealing with emotions? What poor fool would want that? I never ever learned when people wanted lies and when they wanted truth, and so was never well suited to comfort or nurture someone else.

Especially a stranger.

She turned again to me, and this time I met her teary eyes with my empty, ugly ones. Hers were two luminous globes of hazel. I fancied I could see lichen, moss, shadows and fog all contained within, like viewing the whole of a forest through a keyhole.

The urge to look away rose at once, the intimacy and almost telepathic connections forged with prolonged eye contact made me uncomfortable at the best of times, but this was different. This was something new.

She seemed to be some incredible being and me something people clean off their shoes while pulling a disgusted face. It seemed unfair that such beauty was wasted on a nothing like me.

I couldn’t break it however. Something was happening to us. The minute and second hand broke off the clock, and time just up and disappeared. It was cinema yet somehow also real life.

At one point we closed the distance and had grasped hands, but I hadn’t even noticed, being so entranced.

Her long pallid fingers curled tightly, with her well manicured nails around my thin, ink stained fingers, sending waves of warmth through me. Normally such sudden contact would result in my feeling self conscious about the state of my own grooming, but I somehow, didn’t feel that at all.

Then suddenly, a kind of buoyancy filled us, causing the heavy, cloying darkness that we both were seeking refuge from to dissipate.

Vague scenes and jagged faded memories danced up in my mind, yet they felt unfamiliar, as if they were hers, and together our minds were speaking and sharing in their own language.

I felt rejection, masking, pain inflicted by the trusted, violence both real and threatened, and without a doubt, an unmistakable courage and strength that seemed to pulse with her heartbeat.

The unruly, primal crucible that lay at the center of it all, was the resource she needed most, just to live day to day.

Which in turn had caused it to be more powerful than any of the things that held her down…she just wasn’t aware of this fact.

Yet.

I understood then, I was in the presence of someone amazing. I didn’t need specifics, or details about who exactly she was. I saw inside and caught a glimpse of the blindingly bright soul that lived within, and that’s all that I needed to know.

I could just see that all her woes would try to overwhelm and smash her down, yet never actually break her.

Miraculously maybe even mechanically, she will always rise back up and drag herself on, and when she finally reckoned with her own will and power? Those who hurt and opposed her would have a shocking time coming… that made me grin in spite of myself, a tiny wiggling thing that tickled at the corners of my lips.

Suddenly I felt like…The world felt much less….well shitty. Seated beside me was a chrysalis about to burst forth as a butterfly, and without a doubt change the world. Even if the world wasn’t ready yet.

Whatever goal she pursued with her heart would succeed, because she’d never fail. She’d never stay down, and just give up.

Whatever had hounded her to this bench wouldn’t be triumphant for long…

I could see that so clearly.

On the street nearby, a loud jalopy of a car passed burying us in a loud, lawn mower sound and obscuring us a moment in bluish tinged exhaust smoke.

With that, the spell was broken, and this oasis of understanding and comfort went dry.

With bracing smiles and one last hand pump, I rose and continued on, my mind now fixated on the feeling of having had one of the most intimate conversations ever, completely without a single word uttered between us. Nothing I’d been through before had been anything like this.

Usually such intimacy was only afforded via bonding in an emergency, long friendships or romance and sexuality. Higher bonds I’ve felt. This was something else completely

However I was no where close to home yet, and the sun was already dipping low, and so my thoughts became focused on whatever was coming next.

I turned back as if to confirm it wasn’t some dream, but she was gone. Maybe she’d never been there in the first place. My mind was mess anyway so why not hallucinations too?

But that didn’t feel like truth, just more of the malignancy speaking again….

I pushed myself into a faster pace.

-//////-

By the time dusk set in, I was hungry and finally came to a restaurant that, though lit up like a Christmas tree, was already closed.

I’m not sure what exactly I said to myself but I assume it’s some variant of “Dafuk?” The regional expression(not really) of puzzlement.

Managing to get a kind server’s attention , and of course with some currency persuasion I obtained some French fries, which I scarfed down sitting on a planter outside, probably like an animal.

An older couple passed and threw quarters at my feet. I’m not entirely sure why, but made a mental note to examine how shabby my clothes looked, and how feral I looked while eating.

The French fries themselves, were probably some of the best I’ve ever eaten, but take that with a grain of salt, as I was very hungry and would have probably enjoyed whatever they offered.

No sooner had I finished and was about to rise to leave, when what must have been one of the kitchen staff came out of the building at the far end, adjacent to where I was.

He produced a zippo lighter which he began to whip around his fingers and into the air like some kind of subtle fire dancer.

(Yes I am aware how much of an oxymoron “subtle fire dancer” may seem)

He snapped his fingers and it shot up in the air lighting itself and landing on his palm. Next he spun it around his hand working it between his fingers as if it weren’t literally on fire. Then, Into the air it spun bouncing on his elbow, and arcing over his head. to land in his now extended other hand.

Everything had a bit of an optical illusion effect as it was now dark, and so every roll or whiplash of fire seemed to leave trails of orange and yellow.

I stared. Ok maybe I was hallucinating? Maybe I finally snapped and this was another lovely threshold of insanity to cross?

No it was actually happening.

Not only that, but it appeared there was no one else watching: from where he stood, he couldn’t see me, but I could see him, and also see he was alone.

I felt impressed, and wondered, was he just doing this amazing routine for himself? How long had he been practicing this to get to this point? And why a Zippo?

It also made me wonder about all the things we hide under the heading of hobby or keep from the eyes of others.

So much beauty there must be in countless others that will probably never been seen, or seen by a very intimate few. All this magic and vitality we put into such simple innocuous things and letting fun fly free for its own sake: This guy and his flame tricks, those who decorate even door hinges, or really just about anyone who lets it all out when they think no one is watching.

I made it back home at about 10:30 pm or so, tired but absolutely brimming with inspiration.

Instead of sleeping, I spent the time painting drawing and writing, trying to capture the various things I saw while fresh in my mind.

I needed to get it all out, and would only be slowed by my own inept skills. If drawing stopped working it was back to words, or getting the paintbrush out.

It quickly turned to a feverish pace, as my inability to look at reflective things warned me that indeed, something wicked this way comes…and it was coming fast. Especially now that i was back in all this claustrophobic noise.

Already the days events began to fade to grey, and soon the desire to do anything but lay in bed disappeared under a smothering pillow.

The malignancy stalked close. Color seeped out of the world. Then taste. Music was replaced by white noise. I treasured sleep and its sweet nothingness.

Then, simple and insidious it whispered a command:

Destroy.

It .

All.

And so the writing I kept in my phone that day was deleted, along with whatever else I kept for artistic purposes. Then I turned my attention on all the finished and half finished canvases, which I massacred with a palette knife that was destroyed in the process as well…the only thing that ended up escaping this purge was a small notebook which had fallen behind the bed.

By the time it came down to the last and final thing to liquidate, I was tired and unbalanced and just longed to get it all done.

With very little emotion, I constructed a narcotic cocktail that would provide a proper ending for a nobody like me, no fuss, no muss. Whoever got stuck finding me or hauling my ass out of the house wouldn’t be overly traumatized. This I imagined was my parting kindness to the world: compost that doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable.

But no letter. Fuck em. Let them make up their own stories, they would anyway.

I drank deep and remember feeling nothing but resentment as everything faded away. What a complete waste of time that all was. A cement mixer had added more to the world than I had. What the fuck had been the fucking point of all that???

It was at this time, life laughed in the cruel way it sometimes has, and I awoke the next day. Like something out of fiction, instead of dying as one should my body said “nah,lol.” and I kept right on living.

The frustration of this broke me all over again of course. This had to be some kind of record, some pinnacle of stupidity and ineptness. I was bad at everything.

Art. Music. Writing. School. Social situations. Relationships. Work. Now death? Who is bad at that? Humans do it all the time just getting out of a bathtub the wrong way, but it seemed for me, I couldn’t even do mortal privilege right .

Some of us are frequently stymied by the fact we are of life and not of death, and can’t seem to invoke the customs of the opposite, no matter how hard we try, or how useful it would be.

—::::::—

I’m not entirely sure how I kept living. I didn’t see any cosmic entities or avatars of celestial or infernal powers. People of stronger religion or spirituality will say variations of “it wasn’t my time” or “someone kept you safe”, “Goddess has a plan for you” and so on.

And sure, that could be true. That could indeed be this story.

But it’s not.

The secret I’ve kept until now, is I dreamt that night and now I’m not sure if i woke up in the right world.

Maybe I did die and this world is not the one I started in. Maybe that world was a dream of this one, or perhaps I’m still dreaming, even now, and will eventually awake in another one.

Who could even tell me that I’d believe? We are all on this crazy ride and I’ve never been one to trust those who claim to know the machine from their place next to you.

Regardless, life went on, and so did I. My creativity was burned out for a long while after, but so was the desire to die.

—!!!!!!!!!!—

It would take me a long winding journey to come to terms with that fucker that keeps appearing in mirrors or creeps within my shadows, but this isn’t that story.

This day of wandering and the inspiration blitz after, were one of the last bright spots before a long stretch of dark, that I’m sorry to say sapped much of its light, and the intensity of the memory.

Yet to give this all a little happier end note, I can tell you, dear reader, that once W.I.M is resurrected a few long years later, it is a completely different me, who, while still hunted, no longer listens to the demands for silence and endings. That beast has been bested, or rather I learned to live with the damn thing, resigned to see this all through anyway.

Moving on—>

Well here we are at the end of the post! You made it! What a classy, patient soul you are.

The voices out here in the Great Digital Everywhere™ are millions, and there are certainly more famous people with easily recognized names, and other professional creatives who actually can make a living off of all this, but you, the smart, witty person you are, have chosen be here. Which is exactly what I wanted. I don’t care if everyone hears me, just that you dear reader, hear me.

To reclaim a little of the heavy mood:

CAT AND DOG!

Hey, they always cheer me up?

Stay safe out there in the harsh cruel places of the world, and remember…something encouraging someone else told you at some point in your life?

Also try to listen to more music, and make more art! Not because I said so, but because they make your soul grow, and maybe one day you might forget the beautiful things, being so besotted with the miserable.

*+* ^o^ •v•

special thanks to the community of support and inspiration here on Substack. You all are amazing and everyday I feel myself become a stronger, more confident creative, and it’s because of you all!

Hello Readers!

Thanks for finding your way here to my words! I’ll try to make it at least vaguely entertaining for you, as thanks, because Im a firm believer in the writer/artist Hippocratic oath : “if you can’t amuse at least don’t bore”

So come with me on this little jaunt into what life-the universe-and everything has been like for this nobody from nowhere:

—INSPIRATION—

No artist creates in a vacuum. We all take slivers of inspiration from the worlds we inhabit, and the art of others, where we learn what’s possible and what we might do on our own. What washes up in our subconscious isn’t solely ours, but what we, in turn do with it of course is.

With an eye to that, I wanted to share what helps me maintain sanity in this insane world, and that which meanders in my mind until it winds up on paper(or a screen in this case)

-JULY ‘25-

The Summer heat has rendered my little attic Atelier uninhabitable which is an annual obstacle for me to overcome, for about two months every year.

Depending on projects and other unrelated life details, I transfer as many pens and paint that I can, into my bedroom, where an AC keeps it (and me)nice and cool.

However without a designated table space, and the freedom to be messy, it makes it tricky to paint and so usually I just spend the time sketching or doodling in sketchbooks, along with digital or pixel arts if they call to me.

It’s been about a month or more since last I painted,  and already I miss things, such as the mixing processes of pigment, consistency and so forth and really just the feel of painting with a brush.

Which may sound odd, but something I find impossible not to comment on.

For instance:

I’ve always enjoyed ink over pencil, simply because the sound and feel of a ballpoint pen was more enjoyable than the scraping scratching of a pencil.

Painting is no different : there’s something to laying paint to paper(or canvas) with a brush that I can’t quite describe, something sublime between the quiet flow of wet bristles, and the feel of the handle resting on your fingers.

I know, I’ll find my way back to it soon, until then I suppose I’ll just write essays about the act of painting instead of using the effort to actually paint.

What can I say? We humans are an illogical species, of which I am but one.

The neighbor’s sunflowers are starting to bloom, and every time I pass them I snap a picture at different angles for reference photos or to just make art out of them if the photos are any good. At this point I’m sure the people who live here refer to me as that “person who lingers in our front yard”(kind edit)

These flowers are so absolutely vibrant with life, and color, you’d never guess they flourish directly adjacent to a well traveled roadway, and not in a nursery.

I’ve been watching them grow since planting, and as always it’s been well worth the wait. Such magnificent flowers change a setting from commonplace suburbia, to a place brimming with coy mystery, where beauty raises itself to bless us regardless of the caustic touch of car and tarmac.

There is a new stray with fluffy, luxurious fur, who confusedly mimes the two regulars to get food, queueing up as if waiting in line in a shop like a human.

I’ve taken to calling them “Rex” because they are quite regal looking in the way they move and nod when I approach.

As with the others I’m not entirely sure if they are male or female. Apparently you can tell based on where their buttholes are located, but that seems a rather creepy thing to do to a new , or old friend, so I just leave it a mystery. Life is more exciting that way.

These strays provide more than just friendship but also provoke tons of short silly stories about the adventures I imagine they have, and the countless impromptu cat doodles they inspire.

It’s also been quite fun to name them and get to know their quirks, as time goes on.

I am thankful for their companionship as much as they’re happy to be fed, so it really works out for us both.

-these resilient ivy leaves and their colorings

A plant that has been growing since before I was born, which was first planted outside, then transitioned into the basement, still grows its tiny arms around bins and spray bottles, playing a game of hide and seek under the grow lights.

As if daring an onlooker to try to follow its maze like tendrils.

I’m always drawn to the textures and colors of these leaves, I find it to be a quiet old muse that has grown and flourished on my peripherals, one that I’m thankful I get to see daily. It makes me think on this leafy legacy left to me by my family, and how such things are so easily ignored or overlooked.

-I learned that Pufferfish leave these geometric designs when trying to attract mates.

To me they are so aesthetically pleasing, that I spend hours creating little circular patterns trying to capture them without directly copying. Nature amazes in so many unexpected ways.

-scriptorium art: it’s just so odd and unique, it feels like the start of an evolution that ended with a school student’s notebook; the art of copied information with doodles all around it.

It’s like the monks were the first student slackers, bored with the subject matter and trying to use doodles to infuse it with fun and adventure. It was a place where they were free to imagine crazy animals that don’t really exist and rabbits in jousting lists, wearing armor. To make beautiful fonts offset by drunk donkeys and impossibly large birds with human anatomy for some reason.

Being a history nerd, I found that many of these medieval period manuscripts and hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt spoke in such vibrant ways to my impressionable young mind, along with the eternal gravity of Ancient Greek & Roman Statuary and mosaics.

If only it were taught in the vivid language I know it in and not the boring sterile reduction of names and dates, I feel more people would be drawn to it, instead of bored.

-the art of Marina Roca Díe : an artist I found here on Substack first, and have been a huge fan of since I first slapped eyes on her talented work, and angrily wondered why I hadn’t seen it before.

They flow with a vibrancy and life that is immediately apparent and absolutely amazing.

She, for me, represents the brilliance of the old world traditional artists conjured into the brush of a modern painter.

Her work is fresh. Unique. Beautiful.

Passions and pigment coexist in a primordial miasma that pushes what your eyes see and draw forth from the paint and paper.

It seems at once modern and classical, as if time itself is sidestepped to focus on that of a dream unfolding, a perfect dance of the imaginative and the profound, that has me hopelessly enraptured within its rhythms.

In this strange world, those possessed of such genius level talent are mostly forgiven for being arrogant snots, as what they bring to the world is worth far more than the patience needed to interact with them.

Not so here. She’s the genuine article, a fellow traveler on this weird and wild ride, who’s not here to craft an identity to sell, but to share her knowledge and beautiful work.

She is one of the warmest, kindest people I’ve met on here, and always has art-centric or thought provoking things she writes and posts on her Substack.

She’s not only a talented artist but a great writer too! It’s enough to make a weaker soul, envious!(not me, I’ve certainly never felt a pang of envy in the sight of something so breathtakingly beautiful, I despair of creating anything like it . Nope I’m well adjusted!)

I know I’ve built her up quite a bit, and of course I want to because she’s an artist I deeply respect and a friend(I hope?) but also because of two important things:

1-seeing her work for the first time really drew an instant emotional response, of the kind I haven’t often felt.

The best I can liken it to, was seeing a Dali for the first time, back when I was young, and the unforgettable shift that resulted, which changed how I saw the world.

It forged a new, vivid ideal of something profound, and sacred, through which all things would now be judged.

More over she made me believe there is still soul in art, that it still has the ability to move me, and bring back that same enthralling fascination and excitement the Dali once did.

That is so important to me, not only as a person, but more importantly, as an artist. Just as criticisms in the wrong place can destroy, inspiration in the right place can create something truly wonderful.

These last 6-7 months since, have seen a new vibrant direction in both art and writing in me and this is because of both the support of people here and Marina’s work.

Such genius will always supercharge my own inspirations, and with her I’ve found the art I’ve always hoped to see, art that I’ve always wanted to feel. I couldn’t ask for a better North Star to help guide my own humble efforts.

2-it’s criminal more people aren’t aware of her work!

Even if I don’t command a whole lot of influence, I’ll always use what I have to boost her, because above all, I believe in her. I believe in her work.

One day I know a copy of “A Bible for Lilith” will be on my bookshelf when the world finally catches up, but until then I’ll just gush about her here, and continue to recommend her to friends and acquaintances.

marinarocade@substack.com

-Manet & Impressionism : a morning routine of mine usually involves consuming or trying to consume a documentary of some kind, while I paint, doodle, write etc… this week I found a pretty decent one on this artist and his life and muses. Focusing on the Impressionism movement and Manet’s sense of composition gave me much to think on and ponder with my own creations and work.

Just what was it I was trying to do? Mimic the world as it is or bend, even shatter reality and composition in pursuit of emotion and life.

Did I want to portray the world as I saw or the legend of living life? Should I hide brushstrokes or proudly leave them?

-Stefan Zweig’s World of Yesterday: A talented writer’s memoir of a Europe before Hitlers goons and two world wars changed it forever.

It seems especially poignant given the state of things here in the bottom of a national dumpster fire.

Zweig does what all good writers tend to do: he offers a ticket to see and feel this world through his experiences, rather than simply tell a story about them. At first I found it slow going as I had to look up a few of the people and subjects he spoke about, but then as he hit his stride I found it hard to put down.

His ability to remember people as an assembly of details, quirks, and personal interactions paint vivid characters of a quality even celebrated authors today can’t always achieve.

Zweig is a first rate storyteller and I look forward to checking his other works out.

-The words of my Photography mentor echo to me again: “what is it you wish to capture? Reality or Fantasy? Is it a dream or a vision? What draws you to do this all in the first place?

I didn’t realize it at the time, but she had an amazing Socratic way of teaching, one that left me puzzled more often than not, and it’s only after shouldering the weight of many years, that I finally understood what she was doing when riddling me or using questions to prod at my inclinations or motivations.

At the time I wondered why she couldn’t just be direct and open when discussing the craft-now I know she was, I just missed it. So often we ignore answers because they aren’t what we expect.

It was also a gift, refusing to allow me to use her and her tastes as a base on what I would classify as good and bad. She knew the journey was half the experience and that by laying it all out to me as a beginner would only make for a mediocre artist or a poorer facsimile of herself.

“You can be a lazy person, but NEVER be a lazy artist.” She’d say with a smile

-FROM THE PILES OF RUINED PAPER -

(What have I created lately?)

• the call of incantation and ink was loudest this week resulting in a new WIM here on Substack, and a new short story which seems to be writing itself, needing only to borrow my thumbs to give it life-therefore paper consumption has been much lower, than usual, as I write on a notepad on my phone

• A few doodle clusters in the Summer Sketchbook, mainly focusing on stippling/smoke techniques I’ve been experimenting with. My shaky hands work in my favor here!

• Nurturing a few starts, which involve commonplace objects(usually things that are in the room with me) and fantastical or surreal settings, with an attention to abstract compositions and textures. Not sure if they’ll transform into anything yet, but I am enjoying the time to just explore.

To be completely honest, I haven’t created much lately, but that’s ok.

For me this is the way I find most productive : by not feeling like I’m losing my identity because I’m not creating and recognizing one doesn’t always have to be creating to claim the title of artist or writer.

Sometimes it’s best to treat it like breathing: taking time to draw things in before you can release them back via what outlet calls to you, etc… Adhering to such a rigid constant production schedule will only serve to drain the joy of creation, and dilute creativity in a bid for quantity over quality.

Not being a computer printer , but a human slacker, makes it so I’m not the sum of my job or purpose, but what I do with my times of brilliance and blunder, I think are what define me.

It’s healthy to remember we aren’t fleshy possessions toiling endlessly to give a select few others excessive amounts of privilege and luxury.

We are all unique, individuals, living together in this mad, mad world. While we severely lack in kindness to each other now, it won’t always be so, just as if inspiration is lacking today there no guarantee it will be so, tomorrow.

Music, sweet music!

I find it hard to create or just live, really without good music to listen to.

During much of my youth, between my parents constantly playing records, and my closest friends coincidentally(?) being musicians, I was spoiled for great music, and miss it greatly in my adulthood, now with mainly just recorded music to live off of.

It was shared, composed, and discussed semi constantly, and much of our idle time was spent with them on instruments and me with a sketch/note book, or sneaking to see shows in the cities.

We would “jam” together, that is, basically do our own artistic pursuits parallel, occasionally pausing to ask what the other thought about a melody or doodle, or the way a sentence/song was structured, before returning to our own pursuits.

These gatherings for adjacent creativity are some of my fondest memories of the old times. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wondered about the potential of doing something similar, now in my adulthood but this seems very unlikely, as I am a homebody introvert, that no longer cultivates a large friendship group.

So of course I had to give music its own due here in this post of what inspires me.

This week’s playlist bands:

Fleetwood Mac - Purity Ring - Decemberists - Broken Bells - Dope Lemon - Bowie - Beach House- Aphex Twin - Lebanon Hanover - New Order - Radiohead - the Kinks - Squarepusher - Autechre - Smashing Pumpkins - Rolling Stones - Mulatu Astatke - Miles Davis - the Smiths-the Fall - Dead Can Dance - NIN - Garbage - Kate Bush - Sam Cooke - the Drums

In closing:

Thank you to everyone out there that have been just so kind and supportive to me, you are truly heroes!

While I don’t think I’d ever give up writing or art, I’d just go back to keeping it to myself. So really it’s because of your direct support that keeps this stuff where others can see! If you’ve ever thought what I wrote or created was beautiful or amusing or at the very least momentarily entertaining, you can take pride in it, because it wouldn’t be there without you!

Thanks For Reading!

-W3rdx

Version 44…..I think.

Besides the usual art and words I post, I’ve decided to carve out a space for this perpetual project of mine.

First a little backstory:

When I was 16-17 I had a job at a country club, washing dishes. It would be my first job and ironically the worst one I would ever work.

Anyone who’s worked in a somewhat traditional kitchen can tell you how dishwashers get treated, being the absolute bottom tier of kitchen hierarchy.

Here it was no different.

It involved frequently scalding my hands, and ducking as pans and skillets went flying from the line to the sink(I’m positive those old shits made a game of aiming for me)

After my first week, I wondered if they hired me to amuse the line cooks with anger management problems primarily, and secondarily feeding as many plates and cutlery pieces into the rancid old dishwasher as I possibly could.

It was a job for teenagers and anyone else desperate enough to take it, as it required a lot of effort, at long hours, for pathetically low pay. Like many young people, they tricked me into accepting crumbs, because “this is the real world” and whatever other cliche that slimed out of their scotch doused lips, that enabled them the privilege of taking 90% of all profit, while paying their employees unlivable wages. The hypocrisy of these old misers was a shameless, neon display here, and it only added to my intense dislike of the club and its customers.

Here instead of titans of industry or whatever they saw in themselves, I saw a room of insecure, callow people, who plug the gaping voids inside themselves with money and disingenuous praise.

Being poor my whole life I never expected people with so much money and resources to be such miserable cunts. I became desperate for a way to distract myself, afraid of turning murderous, if left listening to more of their booze addled boasts. They all seemed to operate from woefully old fashioned social conventions from the Gilded Age, and were always ready to dispense unsolicited advice to apathetic teenagers.

Here my brain wasn’t needed. The routine demanded the same things time after time, and so I cast about to try to find ways to occupy myself, and the first Wanderings of an Idle Mind (WIM) was born.

At first I used a pocket top spiral bound notebook, kept in a ziplock bag(to avoid the dousing it would receive if left unprotected) with a very old, slightly bent black ink ballpoint. I found plentiful moments to compose songs about angry stir fry, or doodle fun little creatures shaped like soap and dirty cutlery. It was also fun to watch them get angry at the socialist/annarchist quotes I left in the restroom and other places just to aggravate them. I remember they once made the whole kitchen submit a sample of writing to see who the “Commie pinko” was. (They never did figure it out)

To help inspire or give subjects for the wandering, before my shifts I would go through a large collection of books moldering in the basement of my parents house and try to memorize the NASA pictures or car engine schematics, or whatever odd drawing inspired me, and then try to reproduce it later for WIM, usually spinning impromptu stories to go with them.

Time went on, and after I quit from that place of misery, I thought I would write a coming of age story covering my own awkward experiences, or perhaps a novella about romance and reality, using the base of content I had from the first version of Wanderings.

However, I found it worked best to be a kind of dumping ground for stories or anything I felt like committing to paper, just as it had been from the start. It was conceived as a space to keep my mind from breaking due to assholes & boredom, which evolved in very little time to a creative nursery to incubate little sparks of inspiration as they struck. Little pocket notebooks emblazoned with WIM followed me everywhere.

Unintentionally, it also became an aid to help me sidestep my personal pitfalls of perfectionism, the kind that insist nothing is good enough to break the potential of a blank page. That every letter, every line must be perfect, every effort, done in pursuit of the grand or it’s an amateur effort destined to be scoffed at, and ignored outright.

WIM was the argument in advance:

“who cares? Practice drawing wood grain if you want! Write a 3 paragraph story about the stray cats you see everyday! Life is hard enough! Stop trying to define yourself by the ebb and flow of another’s life, another’s art. This moment and what you’re thinking, is memorialized here by words now, and that is grand in of itself, so practice or experiment on!”

Wanderings evolved as I did, it grew with me almost like an imaginary friend.

When I began to write all the time, it shifted into a nursery where I planted stories, and if they were good enough, I removed them to repot in their own space, with their own titles. If I was thinking of Pixel art or Painting, I doodled It first in a WIM notebook.

Sometimes real, sometime digital, it has existed as jpegs, text files, lined notebooks, paint splattered sketchbooks, on and on in an unbroken line back to those dishwashing days.

Now years and years later I’ve decided to dedicate a new space to Wanderings, here in one of the few places I feel comfortable doing so.

Theres so many lovely people out here I figure sharing my own brand of randomness and inspiration wherever I can is the least I can do.

In the end, my experiences, and odd little muddle of a world will be gone when I die. A bit morbid to say so brazenly but it’s the inescapable truth of being a mortal.

Doubly so for a nobody from nowhere.

if I don’t raise my voice up while I can, all the good, kindness, and love that made me who I am will just eventually be forgotten, and that I can’t accept. I have met some amazing people who I will endeavor to make some memorial to before time erases us both.

Many just like me, became aware at a young age, that we all wouldn’t be here if not for the right nurturing at the right times, from the right people.

Life can be a fragile thing, and without care and kindness we all can end up in very dark places alone in a crowd.

This will be my attempt to add a little bit more fun and whimsy into an increasingly senseless, chaotic world.

Thanks for reading!

-W3rdx