Uncertainty - Look What the Cat Dragged In

Old, never published before. Now seems good. 

Sunday, September 20, 2009

"I find this uncertainty exciting and embrace the indecisive nature of my work." - I don't care.

My computer, crashed. My cell phone, dead. I couldn't ask for better circumstances.
It came suddenly.

For me, I've never felt the desire to slow down, become one in isolation. But I love being abandoned in the middle of nowhere. I love being inaccessible to humanity, no one has any idea where I could be. I love that. Stranded, helpless, in the wonderful vastness of nothing.

Now, I hope that great expanses of technology collapse. Some say, solar flares are gonna burst up 'round the year 2012 and that will demagnetize everything and destroy computers all over. Makes Y2K look weak.
Or, better yet, the poles are gonna shift (in 2012 again) and demagnetize everything again. No more laptops, iPods, or 3G networks. Fuck it all.

I don't really believe these fantastic theories, but one can dream. I want to be sent back to the stone age. All great things must come to an end.

But until then, I have my moments of isolation, where I have no perceived audience, where my rules are my own, where freedom is it's own weight.

In the desert, I imagined it much differently. Everything hot, with a warm filter on the lens. Sweating heavy, til it dribbles down the bridge of my nose, dabs my lips and I can taste nothing else.
I would extend a stiletto and cut down the forearm because I wanted the swelter to mingle directly with my blood. Would anyone understand that? That I need fire in my veins.

I would have brought a gallon of water and enough bread for three days. And I'd pour the water over my head, til it soaked into my salty flesh. I would have fed the bread to the vultures. I would have screamed and run my fingertips over cactus needles, sewing them into my fingerprints.

But what did I expect? Instead, I walked for less than ten minutes, drank what little was left in a small water bottle and discovered nothing. I found the burned out wreckage of a car, perhaps set aflame in the desert by drug cartels or the Mafia. But nothing else. I returned to air conditioned slavery and schedules and homework and paychecks, directly deposited, every two weeks.

Starving! Thirsty! Delirious!

The End can't come soon enough.

(appendix):

A second visit to the desert proved more fruitful. Where were we, the other end of the planet? It was darker than a basement, the stars like old, white Christmas lights.
We happened upon some bombed out shell of a brick house, inside, nothing but the remains of pests. Nothing even infested this place anymore.
Of course, we burned it all. I flicked cigarette butts into the underbrush, hoping to "accidentally" start a blaze, but it didn't happen, of course. I pulled out a flare and it bloomed like the sun and wielding it like a torch, chased Luke through the wilderness. He swung a wooden bat at me, but even as I stepped back, my voice advanced with eerie strength.
"C'mere, c'mere," I said. Yet, it was not I that spoke.
The flare burst in two directions. Eric sparked up a bonfire and the flame grew luminous and green.
The air is not natural here, I thought.
When the flare started to dwindle, I threw it into the fire and the whole blaze turned red as blood. I darted off, blinded and snagged myself on a rusty barbed wire fence. I was able to snap it back and the wires crumbled in my fists.

I'm OK With Giving Up

( note: I'm in the process of moving my blog to filthfiller.com I just gotta learn how to use an FTP server. )

What a good way to kill an afternoon. The clown is Bernie. The music is fienix.

Bus Fire

There was a bus fire a couple of weeks ago at Union Hills and the I-17. My friend Dave and I drove out of our way just to see it. It was considered a hazmat site because the Valley Metro buses have special gases in their tanks.

It was really cool and exciting, watching it burn, as a crowd gathered around us. It was strange, how I met people I never would have known if it wasn't for the negligent destruction of a stranger in a government occupation. It's strange how we connect sometimes.

You can see more pictures here:
http://flickr.com/photos/menetekel/sets/72157612265305327/

Day Eighteen: Pyro / mANIC

So I've been lighting candles every night since I've been here. There are truckloads of them in the basement and I just light them and blow them out, on again, off again. I like the smoke and the fire more than the burning. I dip my fingers into the molten wax and let it crust over my fingerprints. Love isn't right, but it's the first word to come to mind.

Why is this so important? Because I haven't been able to light candles in a long, long time. NAU doesn't allow me to, and my mom didn't allow me to when I lived with her. They're afraid I'll burn down buildings.

When I was younger I used to light a match and watch the fire ebb into the wick. Inhale the sulfur, toy with the heat. I would switch off the light and lie on the floor and talk to God and just be calm.

My mom made me throw the candles out or something. It's been a long time. I can't even remember how much it meant to me.

Anyway, light candles now wouldn't be important if my candles didn't have personalities. The blue one is new and she is arrogant and clean. The red one is angry but now that she's melted down a lot she's mellowed out a bit. The green one is a filthy bum that needs to work. The orange one, that has four wicks is kind and boring and unoriginal. The three or four that melted into puddles and went out are just a blur now.

I've been feeling this way toward my candles since I've gotten them, but only now realized how I felt. Subconscious inversed reflections. These thoughts are associated with the mental phenomenon synthesia. It does that to you.

When I was younger, I thought my synthesia was making me crazy. I didn't know what it was. I used to think my dishes had gotten dirty on purpose to punish me and make me clean them. I used to think the clock was causing me to suffer, mocking how much time I had left to live. I smashed that clock in with my bare fist and swung the rest against the wall. I bled a little. The next day, I walked down to the ditch and tied it to a pole.

So I'm a little abnormal.

Day Sixteen: Showoff

Note: I was unable to post last night because of a thunderstorm power outage. Actually, my grandparents just unplugged the internet router.

I woke up in one of my token hate-the-world moods. I don't know why, but I'm blaming you.

I went to the interview early. Thirty minutes, giving me time to wander around downtown Laconia and take snapshots. I took 189 pictures today, most of which I deleted and not all from downtown either. I haven't uploaded even a quarter of the total I've taken here, averaging about 50 pictures a day.

The interview went well. He was pretending to be nice to me, I was pretending to be a hard-worker. Showing off. I am already very familiar with how a newspaper works and all, so I kept spouting off random jargon. AP Stylebook. Feature story. Word-count. They seem to want to baby me, which I'm fine with. But still, I want them to know I can write the news. They asked if I could sometime do an online feature with a less professional, more personal spin. "You mean a blog?" I do that in my free-time, for fun!

So I easily got the internship. It pays. I didn't ask how much.

I took way too long to apply for this position. I wasn't really sure I wanted it. I wasn't really sure I wanted to even work as a writer anymore. For a couple months, I was having some serious doubt about where I wanted my life to lead. But today I was so excited and happy and at peace with myself for this minor accomplishment. I think I was right about this, at the very least.

I will be doing two primary things: data entry, which I am already doing for my uncle's company. Which I hate. Which is mind numbingly boring. But I'd much prefer doing it for the Citizen than the Man.

It's been hot and humid lately. My cousin Matt came over and we swam in the lake. It was still cold for me and gross as usual. Big oil spills of pollen were gushing everywhere and it got all over me. I poked at a dead fish. It looked cut up from a boat rudder, its guts unfolded, its eyes missing.

Later, my cousins and I took another bike ride. We set off firecrackers. For a Desert Child like me, where these toys are illegal, I was really excited. I love being destructive. We took our canes and hit them at each other, spraying sparks at our knees. We tried to make a few modified firecrackers, but they barely worked. Except when Mark taped a dozen sparklers together and lit them and it launched into their trashcan and set it on fire.

Most of these crackers were bells and whistles. Showing off. Nothing special. They make these things too safe nowadays.

I drove home, as the clouds were lighting up with a thunderstorm. Showing off. But not entirely. It's raining now, and there's that occasional clap, and this is the sound I will fall asleep to.

First First

9/08/07
For a few years, I've heard rumors of what goes on in downtown Phoenix every first Friday of the month. It's an event called First Friday, which serves as the date for all the new art galleries to open up. Lots of bands and music and art and drunks. As many times as I was invited to check it out, I never got the chance. It was always Poker Night or work or something dumb.
Recently I moved to Flagstaff, Arizona and I am less then a mile from downtown. It's a nice walk. And I went to my first First Friday last night.
I went with my friend Emily and her friend Jasmine. I was pretty caffeine high and the floor was moving when I picked her up. I was excited, but not really prepared. It is apparently appropriate to dress up a little bit. Emily and I both looked as nice as we always do, which got us a few snobbish looks from the art world elite.
Also, you aren't really supposed to take pictures. But I did anyway, until some Indian prick told me to stop.
First Friday was small, because Flag is small. In a way, this made it a little more friendly and fun. The first gallery we stopped at was full of boring abstract art and a half dozen sculptures made out of wood and old brass instruments. The sculptures looked nice, but didn't have their full potential. I think they could have gone much further with the concept.
I checked the prices and groaned.
The next gallery was small and crowded. Miniature was the word that came to mind. A small woman played a small tune on a small piano in the window.
We left and ran into a crowd on the corner surrounding a man who told me his name was Dan Stern. He was juggling lit torches and telling jokes. I taped some of it, and got some really weird pictures from it. It was worth the dollar I donated to him.
Next stop was a Native American gallery, small, crowded and boring, except for a few pictures of naked women clutching bushels of thorns. There was a bluegrass band playing outside, how amusing. We turned a corner and went into a large, shiny gallery.
This one was full of art, from many different artists. Not much stood out, except some silverware sculptures by an old man named Dion Wright. He made a lion with a mane of forks and turtle made of spoons. I talked to the guy a little bit. He had painted a huge painting of evolution, all the one celled creatures growing into worms and then frogs and then dinosaurs. I took a nice picture of Emily beside it, because Dion wasn't a dick about it.
We ran off to another art gallery, this next one filled with blown up photographs of desert landscapes and canyons and horses. I talked to the artist, Shane Knight and he told me about the beautiful places he had been to snap these expensive photos.
On our way to the next gallery, Emily had to take a phone call. While she tried to hear, I stood on the corner and took horrible point-and-shoot photos of the Hotel Monte Vista. A drunk man came up really close to me and asked me for a cigarette. I told him I didn't smoke, and he told me he didn't want to cross the train tracks because people would beat him up. But he could take them, he said. He made me touch his bicep to prove it.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. He ran off suddenly and yelled something at a few passing hot rods. I protectively grabbed Emily's arm and we crossed the street. She was still on the phone and had no idea what was happening.
We ducked into a tattoo parlor and had a glass of Chardonnay. There were a lot of drunk people here, one who thought I was trying to take his drink from him. He screamed "NO!" in my face and I could smell everything that was killing him.
The tattoos were some of the most surreal and original art we'd seen all night, but it was crowded with angry alcoholics and so we left.
We ran into many more drunk people walking home. We found a small group of people playing banjo and dancing outside an art gallery. It was far from downtown and pretty empty, tho it was larger than most of the ones we had visited. It was full of generic photography, and only one of a waterfall stood out. The gallery owner or the artist was a dick, so we left and went home.
For me, it was a great night, and I hope to do it again and again and again, every month, until I die.

Author's Note:
You can watch the video of Dan Stern eating fire here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e1W7PpHu-c