Recall.

When I was a kid, I’d save up any money that came my way or any change that I’d find. I wasn’t very good at it, and oftentimes I’d blow my little pocket fortune on Dollar General brand candy bars (much cheaper than the luxurious brand-name stuff) or cans of Big Red cream soda. When I had enough self-control to save, or I found enough money all at once, I’d run across the street to the local grocery store and pick up an issue of the Weekly World News. This was the god-king of tabloids, printed on the cheapest newspaper you could imagine. The pictures and text were blurry, the magazine felt like it was going to fall apart at the lightest touch, but the stories were incredible and wild. “Noah’s Ark Discovered on Martian Mountain!” “I Married Elvis…And He’s an Alien!” Flipping through the pages you’d see stories about schools teaching deaf children to read minds, women giving birth to angels, and the ever-present adventures of Bat Boy. To this day, it’s a source of delight that I followed that whole saga through my childhood; I kept the issues where he appeared and thought of them as treasures, an 11-year-old’s white-trash heirlooms. When Bat Boy got his own stage production it was like watching my kid graduate high school.

Looking back, I think those ratty old magazines might be the biggest creative influence on me out of all the art I love and treasure. Sure, Terry Pratchett brought me into Discworld to show me that among the hilarity of it all was a sharp eye watching the world around us. Stephen King taught me how people work, and how deep down we’re all scared shitless of the things we don’t understand. Star Trek reminded me that the fantastic wasn’t just possible, it might work out in our favor. Weekly World News was there first, though, peppering my young brain with the absurd and the weird, giving me a deep love for surreal delightful pulpy trash. It taught me that the stranger the imagining, the more joy it had the potential to bring. It was also comforting to know that I could Go Somewhere Else and maybe pull a little wisdom from the odd places. 

I’m plugged into Twitter these days. I primarily follow writers, politicians, and practitioners of magick. And among massive thrumming creative energy and shouts of ‘fake news’, I find myself missing the feel of a copy of WWN in my hand with its cheap-paper smell, absorbing the bizarre articles, the curmudgeony advice columnists, the ads for X-ray glasses…the prophetic pulp rag that showed the young me that the world was Weird, and that this was okay.

I’ve started paying close attention to coincidences. I notice patterns more frequently, and I’m quick to mentally label things as omens and signs and portents. I might be finally going full and proper mad and will wind up watching The Number 23 until my brainstem atrophies. I might just be expressing post-election doomlust in a slightly different way. I may just be Odd. All the same, I learned today that Weekly World News was based out of Boca Raton when it was still being printed, and that the old printing press was on Broken Sound Boulevard, not ten minutes away from where I live. Eleven-year-old me would be over the moon. Twenty-six-year old me still is. 

Stay strange. Keep sharp. 

Happy New Year.

Ponder.

This is nothing more than a careless lack of understanding.

This is certainly nothing less than a classic dilemma of identity brushed up against a lunatic-stark contrast of culture and paraconformity. It's not really really, when you get right down to the bottom of it. The problem itself only exists in the fact that the problem exists, so what you wind up with is a sort of existential Mobius-strip-cum-ouroboros, which is quite literally the most pretentious thing I have ever thought of, much less written, in my entire fucking life.

See? Right there. Why did I let that bother me? Why did I let that thought, the idea that an idea I just shat out on paper was absurdly pretentious, trouble me enough to warrant pointing out its pretentiousness? Was the act of pointing out pretentiousness an act of pretentiousness in and of itself? Have I just escalated into realms of metacrazy? Am I caught in an infinite loop of postmodern brainwanking?

I'm proud as shit of the phrase 'postmodern brainwanking.' Bet your ass I'm working that one into conversation at the office on Monday.

If you want to know a secret, and you don't have a choice but to say yes because you're reading something I've already written, the only reason I'm putting any of this down on paper right now is because I fucking love the way my keyboard feels. The action on this thing is incredible. Space bar is a little stiff but that's also to do with the fact that I'm retraining my hands, my thick and stupid hands, in the way that I type. I used to hit the space bar with my right index finger, see, but I realized that this was slowing down my typing speed potential and I really wanted to get that up to 85 words a minute. Ironically, I've slowed down to about 70 because my right thumb, like the rest of my hands, is thick and stupid and doesn't take kindly to learning and absolutely refuses to hit the space bar when I want it to.

So I keep teaching.

I make music at you all because I love the sounds you make back at me. I change the sounds I make at you so the sounds you make back at me are louder and more fervent. Performance is a great big ol' metaphor for lovemaking. Ain't that something? Come to think of it, so's cooking. Shit, I bet a few minutes of thought and you can turn anything into a metaphor for lovemaking – it is, at the end of the day, the end goal of us as organisms, making more of us. Hell of a lot of fun, too. I get to make music regularly, though, so that metaphor only goes so far.

One thirty eight aye em. Will this be another sleepless night, I wonder? No, no, I can feel myself getting tired, that sort of dry itch around the edge of the eyes, but I can tell from the thunder-rumbles deep in my brainstem that it'll almost certainly be a *restless* night. Not a whole lot I can do there but lie down and toss and turn and take what little unburdened sleep I can grab.

One day someone is going to find this; it'll either be for research into my unauthorized biography or to establish a motive for willing my own head bones to shatter. Either way, this person is going to think I'm fucking crazy. I might as well be, it's a good look on me.

Wait.

I never did like sitting still.

Time-biding was never a strong skill of mine, and when the chance came round to do it I treated killing time like it was heroin. Doing nothing, making no moves, shaking no worlds and rattling no chains is incredibly comfortable when you're filling it with mindlessness. I've played the first half of dozens of games but never finished them because that would be Getting Something Done, and that defeats the whole point. Letting days flow by without putting another notch in your gun barrel is easy, right up until the point where you realize it's all starting to rust.

Shaking no worlds and rattling no chains is comfortable. What is uncomfortable is very long stretches of silence. Thelonious Monk was famously quoted as saying "The notes you don't play are just as important as the ones that you do." Musically I kind of understand that, but if you ask me to explain I'm just going to grab a harmonica and honk at you until you either nod sagely or go away.

Keep a rhythm. Level entire cities, and then sit down and lie in the newly-created, slightly rubbley fields. Do great things and then do no thing.

This has nothing to do, by the way, with me having not written a damn thing in two weeks. Smartasses.

Exhale.

I stink of cigarette smoke and the ghost of last night's beer. There's a touch of whiskey there, I'm sure; I drank one glass and had the second spilled on my left arm by someone who'd had much the same line of thought in regards to drinking.

Drinking is an exorcism; it's certainly my favorite way to remove spirits from someone's house or business.

I try to think back to last night and realize that I wind up looking forwards; mental mirrors reflecting what's yet to come. It's not a refusal to dwell on the past, per se, as I'm trying my damndest to dwell. I don't seem to have much of a desire or need to, and that's as pleasant a surprise as any.

My ears still ring. Ghosts of sounds, monitors at that perfect volume where I can snatch a single instrument out of the wall of sound without losing the bigger picture. The roar of crowds. Hollers of 'cheers' and glasses clinking, conversational murmurs. Singing.

Singing along to the music.

It's a good feeling to know that some folks have taken words you had a part in putting together and committing them to memory. They've listened enough to have taken part of the song in. Music's a shared experience.

And now I'm drinking wine. When it comes to wine the glass is always half-empty, mostly because I've drunk the other half. The sun is setting slowly, hanging low and pregnant over a forest halfway between great towering buildings stretching up past clouds, reaching as hard as they can for God.

This day is full of ghosts. Phantom whispers, long-past moments played over and over in my head. Most happy, some melancholy. All bittersweet, much like the wine.

The sun's gone now, and now the ghost of light lies across the sky in shades of copper and rose and bruise-purple. Some folks will start to think about lying down while others get ready to leave and not return till sunrise. That'll come, too, hopefully -- I want very much to compare this dusk to a dawn. I'd imagine that will come with its own hauntings. In a way, they remind me -- dawn and dusk and memories and phantoms and all -- that I've done well. I've been lucky, and there's no point in slowing down now.

I welcome all the ghosts.

Focus.

A lesson in writing.

Have your chosen writing implement of choice. Some prefer a pencil, some a very certain kind of pen, others a laptop or keyboard. Typewriter. Clay tablets. The sky.

Stare at something. Walls are good for this because we are nearly constantly surrounded by them. Stare at a wall. If you're outdoors, simply rethink your definition of 'wall.' It shouldn't take long before you're feeling mildly claustrophobic in the great outdoors.

Take a sip of coffee. Take another, longer sip of coffee. Coffee is important for this; tea is an acceptable substitute depending on your culture and upbringing. It should be in a mug at least. Sometimes it can be whiskey. Don't serve whiskey hot.

Take a deep breath. Do not do so while you take a sip of coffee. This will end poorly.

Now don't think. You've done all your thinking before, when you're on the way to your job or caught in the middle of a long grocery line when you really just needed some eggs, when you're staring at a wall and you realize that there's someone who hasn't been in your life for a very long time and you deeply regret that. You've already thought about the fact that the person you miss isn't real, not anymore. Time passes and people change. You aren't the same, and they certainly aren't either.

Think about the uncomfortable sense you have that your days are so rote as to be interchangeable. Think about the fact that because you have thought this you have marked this day as unique. Think about the fact that thinking about thinking about the facts might just be another element of your rote days. Contemplate the definition of meta. Realize you miss the feel of a lover's skin under your fingertips. Realize that your fingertips are in contact with a writing implement.

Take a long sip of coffee. 

Realize that it's a beautiful day. It may be storming, or oven-hot, or grey-cold, or night. Realize that the state of time and weather is irrelevant. Realize that it has been a beautiful day for a very long time. Contemplate the definition of beauty. Do not contemplate the definition of day.

There is noise. Tune it out, listen closely to it, or replace it with whatever noises you in your godlike capabilities feel compelled to conjure. 

Think about all the people in your life. Think about people who aren't in your life. Create people in both categories. Make them want things. Make them do things. Make them take long sips of coffee. Take notes.

Chime.

Here we are. It's another day. The sun's out, or it isn't. The birds are singing, or they aren't. You're filled with a sense of existential dread that you're masking a little more than usual.

Or you aren't.

I love the idea of a New Year's party. We have people from all across the world and all walks of life cheering our little planet on as it makes another turn around the sun. I like that thought, all of us shouting encouragement at the Earth as it books it for the celestial finish line. I like even more that the race starts over again but we're still cheering until someone hits someone else or throws up in public.

Or maybe I don't. I'm not sure yet.

New Year's celebrations are beautiful in the darkest way; for a few minutes we completely embrace the passage of time, hoot and holler as the clock winds down, the numbers go up, and we get a little older. We celebrate our own mortality, raise drinks to our locked drift through the days, and make our own peace with the end of it all. New journeys start as old adventures finish.

You know what the greatest part is? We all watch a clock and count down the last seconds of the last minute of the final hour of the final day, pushing the time along into another year, a greater number, closer to greater and more final endings...and we start it with a kiss.

The first word most people speak every year is 'happy.' Tell me that isn't beautiful.

Drip.

Starting the day off with five moderately good shots of espresso and French jazz because Edith Piaf is one of the greatest things to happen to music and caffeine is one of the greatest things to happen to me.

After a brief voyage into strange and terrible places, I am back and radiating glory. The only real regret I have over the last couple days is that I didn't write a fucking word, and shame on me for that. There's poetry even in a massive depressive episode, dammit, and I'm going to catch it and pin it down next time 'round.

New songs are happening. Words are starting to gather around me like hungry pigeons, waiting to shit on me or peck my eyes out or maybe just eat my bread and fly away. That analogy may have escaped me but I'm still pretty fond of it.

Uh. So Christmas. I've written bitchy, miserable, misanthropic pieces about how Christmas is secretly a dark time of introspection and no one's actually happy. Younger me thought that I had stumbled on to some dark secret that maybe a few were privy to, or that maybe I was just IN TUNE enough to understand the Human Condition while everyone else lied to themselves. Christ, I was an egomaniacal little shit back in those days. This year, I've got Plans. I'm hosting an Island of Misfit Toys christmas involving myself, whoever wants to show up, multiple bottles of whiskey, and Die Hard. I've never seen Die Hard and dammit, this is as good an excuse as any.

The espresso's long since worn off. Time is getting lazy on me. This is good.