Alternating high and low

I want a warmer inner narrative. The one I have now is self-protective, and it makes it hard to make friends. I love having friends, friends who chat. I am not one to chat, but I do enjoy the sound, especially of pretty and vicious women, their double-speak and fingernails clicking and wineglasses clinking on the counter. Something of a domestic man, I feel most comfortable in the kitchen, where I lack the necessary parts to pose a threat.

I'm tired of being proud. There's no reason to carry more ego than necessary to function on a day-to-day basis and get paid, son. Sometimes I try to fix that. Tearing myself apart is a bad solution, although the brutality can be exquisite and gleeful, like eating a whole roast chicken. I have a very sharp knife inside, so sharp it almost doesn't hurt to cut. An ego carved into a clever, mocking shape, though humbled, makes me feel inferior, cold and contemptuous. It's hard to take jokes in that state. It's like being fourteen again without the crusty sheets, the crusty pillowcase, the crusty socks, and the crusty chicken Kiev. What a way to get salmonella.

Inflating others (people, not dolls) to be bigger and better doesn't work because then they disappoint. That is essentially cruel. I've never been good at concealing disappointment. Ask my wet nurse.

What I try to do is practice ritual humility before the universal human themes: birth, death, eating, pooping, love/hate, and the unknown. Yes, it's tough to be humble before your own poop, but maybe that's the ultimate challenge.

Almost a blog

I think I get it. I'm part of the world, and I can ease it toward greater honesty by being honest. Things are done in increments. Meanwhile, I can enjoy the comforts of my fine apartment and these apricots that I bought at Andy's Fruit Ranch, a grocery store, not an offensively named, Western themed male brothel. And if you thought I meant male brothel, what did you think I meant by apricot? Well, they're small, cleaved, peach-colored, a little fuzzy, oh, no, no, this thought ends here.

I'd like to be more affectionate, like Mediterraneans are, but there are a lot of people out there who I don't want to touch. I think it's an inside-out process, like method acting. Advice would be appreciated. Anyhow, it's nice to know you readers are out there somewhere, living and making someone happy.

Muse

I don't like the word "muse" and shortly you'll know why.

The kind of man who seriously uses the word "muse" invariably wears a turtleneck and a ponytail. His breath reeks of expensive coffee, and he just sheds dandruff. He uses the word to describe his rat-faced girlfriend. He says, "She's my mewwwws. She's a poem. I don't know what I'd do without my mewwwwws." Unless he writes rodent control pamphlets for a living, I wish he'd just die. Then I would take her as my mewwwwws, luring her into the bedroom with bits of cheese and peanut butter. Peanut butter, really. They like that shit. Look it up. But what about the rabies? God, there's always something.

The Big Eye

When I'm not quite together, I trust the big eye that floats in the upper corner of the room to make sure that no one gets hurt. The eye never directly intercedes (what would it do?), but many times its gaze shames me into questioning what I am doing.

The eye never faces the wall, which is why I won't allow it in the bathroom. It rarely blinks, but when it does, the lashes whoosh. Unless I'm in a position of power, I prefer to keep the eye away through controlled breathing and staying in the moment.

Thoughts on cats

You either identify with a cat's aloofness or you don't. In high school, my phriend Phran used to say that cats are so human, soooooo human, sooooooooooo human. God I hated that. She also used to say that if I had longer hair, she'd be all over me. Yet I never considered growing my hair out. I guess having a mustachioed Korean girlfriend anxious only to defy her parents didn't quite appeal. Now, though, it sounds pretty good, provided she's not attached to the mustache nor it to her.

I'd like to get a cat. I suppose I'll need to get a cat. I have serious reservations. A single man should not have a cat, unless it's a real badass cat or it's a remnant of a previous (human) relationship. Why? A man with a cat gives me pause, claws. I've trained myself to suspend judgment, but between you, me, and the lamppost, there's something unmanly about owning a cat, a cat owning you.

It's probably easiest just to reject binary gender. It's something I've been wanting to do, and besides mythologists, who needs it?

General advice to myself

When I go to the bar, and it's less and less these days, I like to order my martini "bourgeois." This, I explain to the bartender, means measured by eyeball and served iced in a rocks glass, not shaken, stirred with a butter knife, olive dropped in by hand. I also order wine this way, sans olive, but if they have a fresh berry or two lying there and there's nobody around to call me a sissy...

Anyhow, drink only takes me so far. I need to acknowledge self-doubt and accept it, and to speak with the confidence of that acceptance, those limitations, a man who looks his foe in the eye. My words may be halting at first, despair coursing through my thoughts, unable to articulate why because I don't know why. No one knows why.

Some mock me out of fear, and others laugh to relieve their own anxiety. Laugh, laugh, laugh, I speak to alleviate. Others too speak from that same place. They fear also, the compassionate more so, but they accept it and deem it more important to tell what they see. That person who doesn't fear others' unedited honesty is an idiot or enlightened.

Why I like musicians

A song, like an angel, scares evil. A song harnesses energy, living energy, the simple power of dance. A song simplifies living.

No curtains, but respect

I went to the fabric store to pick out some fabric for bedroom curtains. I find the best way to really get to know a fabric is to pull a good portion from the roll and just rub it across my cheeks and get my whole face in and take some good long sniffs and lightly moan and sigh and feel the rhythm of the waves.

To make up for having the police escort me out, the fabric ladies gave me a free sample of a nice paisley pattern to cover the tent in my pants. I really respect that. They must really respect me.

Pen to Paper

Putting pen to paper feels basic, primitive, just me using the cave wall to make sense of the terrible and wonderful world outside. There is so much out there. The possibilities stagger me.

These words are my vitality expressed through my right hand. They are electric signals, the soul's coded broadcast, searching for another who understands. I want my readers to know me intimately, and I want to be intimate with those who meet an arbitrary standard, which is probably wholly unnecessary, but nonetheless there.

This intimacy refreshes my words, giving me a new physical vocabulary -- the rough edges soften, the contrasts shimmer, everything bathes in a new light. There are more textures and temperatures and playful moments.

My children, the words, play from line to line. They are like me, and I hope they grow better than me. They swing together with innocent curiosity, asking what each other means. They laugh about common letters in constant joyful discovery. They ask inappropriate questions and questions that require an honest answer.

Editing means their death, cruel and objective. The word is here, then the word is not. It dies for a reason, and it will not come back, at least not how we knew it, how we loved it. I kill it with my hand, a black strikethrough, nothing noble about it, just human. It's an act of brutality. Why?

I don't know. It's easier to delete on a computer. There's no body. But the word processor (yes, this) processes words as the meat processor does meat, squeezing them into uniform shapes for sale to the undiscerning masses.

"Good words," they say with a mouth full of them.

"You got an 'r' stuck between your teeth," I say.

The word processor is a cold exact machine that does not allow the letters to touch. In touch there is warmth and humanity and imperfection. In touch there is tenderness -- a balm for a world that sometimes seems bent on wounding us as we try to share.

Perfection bores me. I need a challenge. Imperfection makes something worth reading, worth anything. Imperfections, when seen as beautiful, create love, shards of love, weaponized love. Certain unscrupulous people (though not all unscrupulous people) use this weapon to imprison, and the prisoner doesn't even want to escape.

Words have power: the ability to generate emotion, to inspire, to alter the mind, however temporarily. It is important that they be used responsibly and cared for.
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Problem/Solution/Com- plication

Problem: Beauty's decay

Solution: Beauty's decay is in itself a form of beauty.

Complication: Grandma's friend's neck tastes medicinal. Her lips taste worse.
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The Allure of the New

New experiences replenish joy. Relationships form and improve by sharing the anxious trial of newness, the sense of wonder. I would like to go to church because I haven't been in a long time. I believe in no God, but I'd like to go with someone to experience the sublime together, stained glass on a sunny day and a sermon preaching love, and when it's time to shake hands with other churchgoers to say, "Love be with you."

A bun-topped woman will whisper, "You're supposed to say 'Peace be with you' -- love can mean too many things," and it's not her fault that she gets it and it makes her uncomfortable. By "love" she also means, "yes, blessed passion's excess." I'm not going to judge her, but love be with her. Am I offering? Well, I didn't put anything in the plate.

More realistically, I would like to go with a new person to the same old bar and grill where the staff either like or tolerate me. I'd reflect his or her new wonder, feel wonder myself, and laugh. I do just like to laugh and laugh, insides aching, sick in every clinical sense. I would spend my life laughing, but sometimes I need to catch my breath.

Contagion

My cousin brought her kids over, and I'm pretty sure the younger boy had the mania. While sitting on my lap explaining in a roundabout fashion how to count to twenty, the lousy kid sneezed on me. I mean fucking cover your mouth.

"It's good manners to cover your mouth," I told him. That's what I was told.

"You put the one and the nine next to each other to make nineteen," he said. "The one and the nine love each other."

"Hmmm. Well, yeah, makes sense as much as anything does."

The kid squirmed off my lap to run around the room, grabbing at things that I couldn't see.

Now, two days later, I'm hypersensitive to art, beauty, and music, and I can barely eat because it feels like there's a hot filament burning inside. I can feel its light shining unhealthy from my eyes. I must achieve, compete, solve problems.

Damn kid. Ah, it's not the kid's fault. I too have been sneezing into the air just so I can watch the diffused and diseased saliva particles sparkle down to the floor. The mania is great.

Voice

Thousands, probably tens of thousands, have the same basic voice as me, taking into account language and upbringing. I embrace the similarities. We with the same (spoken, written) voices share something important, and we can understand each other more quickly, more deeply in less time. I speak like I write, but with more, uh, vocalized pauses and shit.

That's not the point though.

The other day at the restaurant, a waitress brought us a cheese pizza. I have never heard a voice like hers. She must struggle with being defined by it, as only a couple hundred people in the world sound like her. Her bearing was standard professional, but her voice was really beyond description, maybe a morphine-filled needle in the ear? Terrifying, then (pop!) excruciating, then warm, then numb euphoria? No, not quite, not quite at all.

Sexy? Sexy like the universe. I am attracted to things that are beyond description because I can be arrogant and cold with words, and the indescribable pushes me beyond that and forces humility. In the right light, moon or sun, nearly anything can be beyond words, although it's usually an unusual woman.
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Happiness

Happiness dresses in silly sparkling robes and wears a hat. It changes to fog to slip your grip. It bleeds to the margins.

Sometimes it is liquid. You can distill it from life's rinds if you put it before everything else, including and especially yourself. You might lose everything. You probably will.

You'll have to be vulnerable, your heart left open. Be willing to suffer, bleed, watch someone else bleed, endure ridicule, have bad teeth or a terrifying smile. You will deserve it, you foolish ass. You'll give marathon effort and fail. You'll be poor, your world a ghetto.

And then in a tidal wave of glitter you're free, you're above it all, you're naked and beautiful. And belly laughing. And not concerned about what belly laughing will do to your naked body, what will come out of it. Unconcerned. Ha! Ha-ha-ha!

(ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha)

Me? I'd settle for contentment. Contentment is mild, pleasant, like liquid hand soap and warm water. You can smile when you're amused and look grave when something bad happens to someone else, or vice-versa. Just float right through life. Ahhhh.

Ah! But somewhere in me there's a crazy notion stirring, like a living Glo Worm, and it won't be easy to quash. It's in there. Happiness is out there, pure.
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Let the drinker beware

Certain bars in my neighborhood have blacked-out windows. A few of these are not actually bars, but rather just a man standing on the other side of the door who stabs you and then drags your body in back with the other bodies.

"Why do people keep coming into this bar?" he asks his friend the pigeon.

The pigeon pecks at the floor.

"I guess I wouldn't have a job otherwise," he says.
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Hey Doc

Some days inner weather obscures the creative sun. Directionless, I stumble around, sometimes to discovery, but mostly down dead ends into trash bags. Wet trash stinks like rotten cabbage.

Other days the creative sun burns so brightly that it illuminates everything. Words race. I laugh because the path is so clear, almost too clear, and why didn't I see that before? A spill is a waterfall. Nature is a wonder.

Does this require medication? I don't think so, Doc, because there's balance. The median day is a happy mix, you know, partly cloudy or partly sunny. Happimix? Yeah, I would support that as a word, but not as a drug brand name. Who do you work for anyway?

You know what, Doc? I will consider your opinion. You are a medical professional, Doc, but I am weather.
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Sun, sex

Sun worshippers at least can see and feel their God. Also, they get what they pray for, as long as that's improved mood, brownness, skin cancer, and to be forsaken in winter.

My friend, drunk during the middle of the day, despite my empty threats, insists on calling me a heliosexual, which he knows bothers me because my penis is only ninety-two million miles long (and, as you may have guessed, a fraction of a millimeter wide). I'm deathly afraid of space junk and Venus.

I love Spring. And Sun, if you want to move a million miles closer, I think you're really hot. And I'm not just saying that. It's science.
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Conversation after Church

"Do you know her name?" Ed asked me.

"What the fuck, Ed? Why do I need to know her name? Or she mine? I can see by her mouth, hear by her words that ours have been completing each other for millennia."

"I know her name." Ed smiled.

God I hate it when Ed smiles. He has a pedosmile: all lips, no teeth, predatory eyes.

"What is it?"

"Why do you need to know? Yours have been completing each other for millenniums. You know what's been completing mine for millenniums?"

"No."

"Your grandma. Your grandmas. Both your grandmas."

"What's her name, Ed?"

He smiled again. I fought the urge to curl up, my lips curling down.

"Lilia." Tongue flick.

Lilia. Nice. Even when Ed says it while flicking his tongue.
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My Friday

Today I went to work. I sat in front of a computer and put numbers into the computer, and the computer liked it. It purred from all those ones and zeroes. Oh, did it purr. I massaged its binary soul.

I walked home from work, squinting into the setting sun in my corduroy jacket and New Balance sneakers. I think people call me "corduroy jacket guy" and laugh. I think that because that's what I'd do. Would I laugh meanly? No, not mean straight up...like affectionate-mean. I think people should always mix meanness with affection, but not vice-versa.

Yeah.
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Yuppie murmurs

The light scrape of a bare foot on wood floors is a domestic, secure sound. It indicates an environment protected by wealth and industriousness, that the creator of said environment is fit to procreate.

This is important to an animal without bright plumage, aggression, or exceptional physical strength. This animal must not shy away from its own sexuality. It must become a bright ball of sex.