street talk

yesterday i wore my pockets out and felt like somebody who could be friends with anybody. like couldn't i be the least intimidating person imaginable? if i said hi to a stranger, it would be impossible for them to be afraid of me! red plaid jumper, purple shoes, fat potato on a leash. visionary! but also this face mask, homemade and grey, which oddly enough sets me apart. have i seen even one other today? this week? oh yes, the old guy at the gas station yesterday. and a young hipster who saw me and the old dude and put his on, standing outside his car, before walking inside. but dozens of families out on walks, mail carriers, bikers, cops -- not a one. what gives? do you believe yourselves immune to contagion? or even scarier, do you believe you don't exhale or that you won't breathe yr nonsense onto others?
it's hard to wear the mask, i know. no one knows whether to believe, without a friendly smile. and coming from someone who wants to inject my nonsense into everything, i am at a loss.
but what about this potato? can't he do enough smiling for both of us?
nah, i'm over it. i don't even wanna be outside no more, he says. you dog, are my one job, and if you dont even wanna be outside no more, i'll never see the sun again and i certainly won't be receiving any green beans. especially if tennessee is truly foolishly leaping into reopening, then i aint gonna get state green beans either. and then what, buddy? then we're outta luck i guess. take me home. take me home. take me home. i want to be alone. i want air conditioning and four walls and ceiling and the scent of a meal i missed. i want to retreat to my cool dark cave, no legs or sun, a slug. a nighttime bug. glisten mud and silver silt, sing in my chair to no one and nothing. how comfy the hole starts to feel. until you don't even even realize you're at the bottom of a well and there's no way out and the sun is getting dimmer and you can't remember any other way to be.
but what about this somebody-who-can-be-friends-with-anybody business? who are they? and what about when masks were fun and felt like freedom not restraint?
i've lost the way. i'm thinking too much. i'm thinking about the finished product. i'm thinking of a product. it was just supposed to be ideas and then my head got big and thinking i could just write down a perfection without having to edit. listen YOU ARE GONNA HAVE TO LEARN TO EDIT. or else we're never gonna get anywhere. you know?? this is where we always get stuck. we get bORED with our own ideas and don't want to take the time. we convince ourselves, this is drivel and doesn't matter to anyone. so go and hit your cymbal and make something be done for once. please. ah. stop complaining. you haven't eaten in hours. you drank too much caffeine. like you do, like you always do. how long does it take to realize that patterns have become currently permanent? that they aren't just an "oh this is right now" blur, they're a "this has been the same every day for years" sort of thing.
the trouble is wanting to make something great and that is truly stifling. the trouble is judging so hard all the time, the thought "i could write something better" and then not being able to. IT'S IN THERE THOUGH.... isn't it? why do you even think that? (because sometimes you burn and it's there and the words will find you. sometimes you have written something right. or at least that has the satisfaction of rhythmic traction and ripples in all the right ways. the unnamable rhythms that drive you when you get going, when yr hot heat and flames.)
this got all lost and that is okay. maybe you should take a break and eat something. some soup, maybe.

Finally arrived home with my smokes 2am and all I want to do now is sing and/or disappear but now I'm smoking and I opened another beer. Sounds of a fire pit jingle crackle across the street and cars still swishing trees swaying bugs calling laughter from the other side of the duplex and you'd never know it's pandemic status if you were dropped into this scene. It's good to be outside although you wish you had grass instead of gas but no you really wish you had that wildflower garden promised by the seed packet if onlu the birds hadn't eaten half of it and the landlord hadnt mowed down the rest. You wish it could be time to rest but 
How ?
The strange interchange at the gas station - the person working has to unlock and lock the door as each person comes in. "I don't know where she went" my fellow late night drifter calls to me across the parking lot. "Kevin" comes back to let us in. All I want is smokes. The credit card machine fails us and I wait patiently, the only one of us in a mask, as Kevin locks and unlocks, restarts the card reader, mumbles to me about their night. Locked wm in the beer cave too. Patron #3 pays for my smokes, despite my protests, and Kevin says I'm lucky. And I am.

i am supposed to write the other thing now. i was gonna write this little essay about CARAVAN STORIES. what was my point and what was the point i missed when i wrote about it before? should i reread what i wrote or should i just try to remember? first lets try to remember.


oh yes you're missing the part that makes it universal. you wrote about how you got entrenched all in the thing. you could maybe do some more with the metaphor of "temporary resistance." but you never got to the closing. the closing can be hard. but you could do it if you kept at it. i think so. but drunk?? can i? what can i do or even pretend to do. what is this thing i keep doing.

TEMPORARY RESISTANCE TO ABNORMAL STATE.

Debris needs me to defeat 15 Rattie. Young Elf A (now so nameless?) needs me to defend them in a battle against their overbearing father, while Child wants me to pick up that good stuffrom the bar in Ork territory (don't worry, Child is an adult dwarf).

what is the point i'm trying to make. this whole thing is absurd. comical. especially when they talk about the fucking plague in the story of the game. RATTA TATTA DEBRISIUS. not really. scubby duddy osis.

i don't even care how can i make myself care.

too hot

hey ya fuck
remmeber how you are always imagining how yr gonna write to all yr fave bands n shit and tell them thank the fucking gods for you and please keep doing it and how much you just wanna tell em and maybe also they need to hear it? why aint you just doin that. why you starin at pictures or some nonsense. what are we doing right now/1 cmon. YES i know it's hot, i'ts too darn hot ot do anything but oh well.
fuk i want a smkey so bad right now. i want a porch. i want to invite my friend to sit on the porch with me. there's no porch and there's no friends aka there's no in-person friends allowed. all loud. help help help.
anyway yr phone is dead and there's nothing for you outside. it ain't really gonna be less hot, you know? you'll just be pissed.
i wish i didn't still want a smoke.
maybe try writing. let's try writing that other mess. haha okay.

shower song

you don't mow clover
you don't know no bird


i forgot the other words. but it was something about goddammit i saw this spider and i was so happy about it but i accidentally caught it on my hands so i tried to save it but in my saving i'm certain i killed it, fuck me. so bad so dead.