Staring down the blender

You, blender, stop looking at me with all your buttons and your funny hat. Your malevolence will not be tolerated here. I'm a real live person, don't you look at me. I see you wanting to grab my hand, to try to puree it and prevent me from getting into the honey roasted peanuts. Because of the calories? Or maybe you're wanting to grate, grind, crumb, or chop my hand along with the honey roasted peanuts and have me use my other hand to spread the mixture on toast, a sort of honey peanut butter and jellied hand with bone and fingernail fragments? I love honey roasted peanuts, even chopped, even bloody, but my hand is too important. No matter how undesirable, obscene, and disgusting the words I write, I am people and you are machine. We are not the same. I have something extra.
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Pens and Kleenex

(I'm sorry.)
(It's okay. This is a not unique condition.)

Pens and Kleenex are ubiquitous in my home, the instruments of writing and the notebooks of masturbation. The pens spread black ink, the Kleenex collects white. Both enable relief. One day the pens will make the Kleenex obsolete. I will have only one box, warm, instead of this patterned cardboard harem.

Let it go

Today on my walk home past the iron-spiked fences and the rainbow umbrella-ed tamale stands, I considered the problem of excess emotion. I also bought a pair of day-old pork tamales from a man who, if he's going to continue selling food products, probably needs a hairnet for his mustache. Some time later, I considered the problem of excess nausea, heartburn, indigestion...upset stomach, diarrhea.

My strategy for empathy in reading or listening -- close attention to the words, feeling the tone, holding it inside like breath -- doesn't work for authors too skilled or experiences too intense or complex. I reach a fullness, then the excess emotion begins to spill over. I've found that in order to avoid getting badly spun, I need to open myself to the collective, give of that pain or pleasure, let it go, then ask myself why I'm humming in monotone. To internalize explodes everything. It all goes to goop. I fill with jelly, or maybe preserves. Preserves are just a coarser jelly, right? Like jam is a smoother one?

To better understand, I want to expand, maybe through interpretive dance, like a cloud of smoke or the mist that rises from certain sewers. Where does that mist come from? Nausea, heartburn, indigestion... upset stomach, diarrhea. And maybe worms. Can you still get worms from pork? Can I?

DJ Laundromat

In the laundromat I add a Dixie cup of ink to a stranger's load of wash because fuck a stranger in the goat-ass. Strangers are mostly foreign, mostly Other. I'm anxious. Next time I'll add a squid for humor. These fluorescent lights are too bright.

The ink will warn others of the stranger's impurity. The radio tells me what to do of course, and the power company, and the makers of vinyl records for sure. I too control behavior with my soldiers: my two turntables and my microphone. Anyone in my sphere will obey the waves that crash from the speakers. I am close to completing the perfect mix, the mix to end all mixes, the mix to raise an army. Voluntary, of course. I intend conscription using the pleasure of beats. Our junta will rule for generations. The dryers go thrum-thrum-thrum.

The stranger is checking her wash. Eek! There's ink on my hands. Oh my God, here she comes, this stranger is wack. She hates her whites gray. She doesn't respect me. Let go of my hand, you don't know who I am! My ribs, my face! Take off your shoes, tequila woman! Stop kicking! I shriek. I bleed.
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Problem/Solution/Com- plication

Problem: Summer rain has soaked my hair and I'm dripping on the floor.

Solution: A towel.

Complication: My new Chinese friend is now free to scream for help or beg to use the bathroom again or complain about how the nylon rope is cutting into his wrists and ankles or insist that it wasn't his fault that last night's delivery included four sweet and sour sauces and three spicy mustards when I specifically requested four spicy mustards and three sweet and sours. Oh, the injustice.
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Abstract thought disposal

Alone lies beyond lonely, free of values and emotion. It is pure, awesome and awful, the biggest coldest fucking. I fill the nothingness surrounding me with anything really, but I prefer very big themes.

Art comes to those who can hold alone within them, see beyond the illusion, recognize that they are part of the yawning void, feel it as their destiny and maybe even love it a little. Art is coping with that.

I may arrive, but I doubt there is a destination. I can console myself. As always, pork rinds, chicharrones, remain delicious and available.
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Bedtime dialogue

Sometimes I wear a shirt and tie to bed so I look good in my dreams so I don't wake up insecure.

Do you wear pants?

No, I feel good enough without them.

What do you tuck your shirt into?

Something that doubles as a belt, evidently.

How does that work -- you have to tie it or you punch holes in it?

Oh, not into piercings. I pull it tight and tuck it. I don't have quite enough to tie.

Ever modest, you.
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