090618 “How’s this going to work?” he ast hisself while sitting on the couch doing the thing he was not knowing how it was going to work. He was dumb because he was already doing it but he was also asking questions about it at the same time because he was so dumb he didn’t know he was smart. Or wait. Mabes he was jus dumb. Mabes it was cuz the lead poisoning. Mabes he woulda been some kinda genius, except for that he was born in the sevendies wen everything smelt like smoke and there was cinnamon in the air and the stars was brighter. Maybe he was born in them sevendies back when they letcha put lead gas in your car and your car was a big ass rectangle and had a bench for a seat. And they letcha put lead in your gas and all that and they been painting the walls and the windows and all with lead for years, like ever since your parents was small. And they dint know that you was eatin and breathin and suckin on lead your whole life and then later on they foun out after it was too late that lead ain’t really so good for your you know whatchacallit your brain. And so you’re a goddamned retard now compared to what you coulda been. All you can do is take walks and crane your stiff neck back and stare at them stars except half the dots you starin at turns out to be lil blinkin airplanes or maybe some o dem satellites. You know like the ones they got watchin you all the time and takin pictures of you all the time cept they blur you out they turn your face in a bunch a pixels so that when someone says hey ain’t it creepy they takin pictures of us alla time they can turn right around and say nah it aint creepy cuz we done blur outcher face. Aint nobody know nuthin about nobody and nobody knows its you cuz you aint got no face and your all like shit man i aint got no face cuz a the lead. its all cuz the lead what i aint got no face cuz of. and theyre like man we dont know we don’t think its creepy we just tryin to do some good and if theres some creepy bout it we dont know that but of course you know later like maybe ten twenty thirty years later they gone come back and tell you all that was bad about it. and they’re gonna be like HEALTH WARNING LOOK OUT. They gone print it all up on all the litle bottles and all the little packages and they gone put on all the signs at the beach it gone say WATCH OUT LOOK OUT cuz we know this bad for you now. We didn’t know before we thought we’s just doing something good for humanity but now we know. We know now so we like a hero or some for telling you now and put it on the signs and the bottles and making some shit illegal. We know now. We never know shit like that until it’s too late. You know? So yeah you know, watch out look out. Don’t do nothin cuz everythings bad. Or fuck it. Just do whatever. What’s the differents. You can’t do nothin about any of it anyway. Maybe you woulda been a big wet floppy juicy flower. But instead you’s a weed now instead. Maybe you woulda been a big old eucalyptus tree, giving life and gettin hugs from little bears and what all. But instead you a piece of dirty moss in a crack in someones driveway. Maybe you woulda been a but you get the idea Nothin you can do about it anyway. Lead boy. Hey lets go beat up a cop! There is no good place to start and no good place to stop. Let’s try to remember the basic gist of the rules. Writing is like recapitulating the angel of history’s farts or something. It’s like playing a game of telephone with yourself. You are alone unto yourself; I think that’s been pretty well mathematically proven, like they proved something about black holes or something and then at the same time it was like a bonus, like a side effect or a byproduct, they were all like oh yeah, and by the way we know this for absolute certain too: YOU ARE COMPLETELY ALONE. Black holes emit this certain kind of energy and we know how quasars work and we discovered the gravitron or whatever and oh yeah here’s a fun bit of trivia: THERE IS AN UTTERLY UNBRIDGEABLE GULF OF VAST EMPTINESS BETWEEN YOU AND THE NEXT HUMAN SOUL but whatever. I mean the point is there is also a vast gulf between one night and the next. Sequential storytelling, no matter what the period or the method or the structure, has these gaps built in. Dark matter? Antimatter? Whatever the fuck you call it, there’s these memory holes between the beats of any story, and you have to rely on imagination to string them along one night from the last. There will be imperfections. Like my braggy student whose a *traceur* god help us said, it’s the beautiful imperfections that make the writing great. Or something like that. See, I don’t remember exactly. And don’t tell me I could go back and look at his email and even copy and paste his exact words, because that’s different. That’s not what I mean. That’s not what I’m talking about here. That’s not what I mean. He said. Growing increasingly desperate around the eyes. And milwaukee was enchanted last night when i dropped mil off at capoeira, her beautiful strong young capoeira class that costs too god damned much and is soo froofroo and nice compared to the ratty shabby shaggy old capoeira class i used to go to for pretty much free, down in the sock-smelling basement of the poor people’s program branch of the Y M C Fucking A. But yeah. It’s cool. She goes there, I walk slowly up and down small streets of a big old city. Still mostly a real city. Like Megan said, even if it ain’t the city you remember, it’s still the city. It constantly changes while it stays the same. Like Don Dixon said, EVERY DAY IN THE FOREST, A OLD BOUGHS BREAK AS NEW ONES GROW-OH-OH!!! Milwaukee was enchanted. Glowing like dripping gems. The cool wet air had billowed in on a magic carpet of forgiveness. The streets were quiet but low pulsing like a heart still in love in spite of itself. The colors were warm, the lights were still warm. Somewhere, some places, even now, the lights are still kind and warm. What am I talking about? If I can remember, if I can stretch a filament across the gulf, I’ll tell you tomorrow.