one two thre four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two. I could literally sit here and count to one thousand six hundred and sixty seven, but I don’t want to talk about me. That’s the main thing that’s changed. I don’t want to be the narrative voice. Anymore? I guess I wanted that when I was entombed by the fantasy of power it comes wrapped in when unearthed by little boys. Kind of like I thought I wanted to have sex with women when I thought I had something to offer them. There are just so many trite, tired, possibly true, but always, always, always oversimplified avenues to go down once you start here, or there, or wherever. Like embrace your submissiveness. Embrace your fagginess. Embrace servitude. Embrace humility. The difference between servility, servitude, and service: surface layers? The difference between humility and humiliation? These distinctions and more are a matter of one molecule here, one atom there—the hairsbreadth tweak that turns a fish into poison. The half truth is, I don’t even know what I want anymore. I have a pretty good sense of what I need though, and it’s honestly pretty basic: touch commitment faith love acceptance responsibility going outside and being active the willingness to look foolish someone to look foolish in front of, and for it to be more than okay words, language, or whatever it is that they bring into focus; i’ve always called it pershidium a few groceries and a half-bottle of kim cupcake the knowledge that i was part of my family, a valued part of my family, and that i did my part routine variety excitement repose music a hit of weed every now and then, every now and then maybe a shroomie drums, oh god yeah the drums remember: drum first, then the heartbeat. I could spend some words explaining what that means? Would you like that? My trout friend from another planet? Can a trout nod its head? My trout is listening always, hahaha. I like to think so, but even when my trout is not listening, my trout has a channel to turn into where listening can be done. My trout has basically a lifetime subscription to earth people sauce, for free, courtesy of earth people’s offgassing of toxic nausea gases which is, as far as the far reaches of the universe are concerned, all we really produce. We are a freak of nature, a quasar of not radio but soap opera. Pulses of melodrama, bleating out into the nevernever OK. I’ll tell you real quick. Put a nickel in the slot, and I’ll give you a nickel’s worth of recap: Dude kept starting out the drumming ‘classes’ by laboriously going over the heartbeat metaphor. At literally a Dummies level. What happens if the heartbeat goes off? It all falls apart. Mimes bad drumming. Everybody half laughs. Did we come here for bad drumming? It was tedious. We yearned to just make some noise but we got a lesson in what a heartbeat symbolizes. So later it occurred to me, do it like tom does it: drum first. Let the strong carry the weak. Let the weak guide the strong in judgment. Let the unique song erupt, explode, creep, coalesce, rumble, flow, wander off, mumble, sing, chant, gasp, or come together as it will or will not. When there’s a break later you can talk about heartbeats, or whatever. Let people come up with their own metaphors, or not. Above all, or I should say below all, let them drum. That’s the fundamental freedom—for the thing to be what it is. Metaphor need not be “for” anything. It’s its own thing. Wine need not be “for” a meal. So dramatic all the time. You like to have a thought or an impulse and then quick as a snap, weave it or twist it or nipple-tweak it into an edge-lord flourish. A crescendo of blood and staring. A cliff-standing, wave-crashing down-breaking of everything you ever held dear. It’s so fucking juvenile. It’s kind of cute I guess, like the way a puppy is cute that grows up and still has floppy ears. But it’s also hella annoying. A flair for the dramatic. Is that how they put it? Is that how you put it on your constant invisible tacit résumé? Every descriptor by which you attempt to sell yourself, and it’s not your fault I understand, it’s necessity, what’s a man supposed to do, etc etc, is coded language for a fatal flaw. I’ve all but given up on almost everything my younger self thought I valued. I suspect the strongest writers rarely write about themselves. How do they escape the vortex though, that’s what i want to know! I want to drive a lot lately, every day I want to drive somewhere just to feel driving. Then quick as popcorn, the brain says what this means. What this indicates. What this signifies. Where this comes from. But what if it’s just I want to drive? What if it’s as crispy and whole and fresh and raw as a pine needle? What if I want to drive around a curve like one of those coolly hissing cars in the car commercials, sea below thrashing in its mortal bonds like whatever, majestic pines god help me *soughing* above, ragged cloud ships bumbling across the effulgent sky, a pine needle stuck between the windshield and the wiper blade, reminding me of where i got the truck and who from and i guess sort of why although i’m still not sure why. I guess I felt like it would somehow save his memory if I bought the truck. And then rust, there’s rust to worry about, every little ding, every little scratch, every little potential bump, every little heartbeat every little breath. I suspect it must take a slow, level-headed devotion to a certain kind of practice, routine, or exercise of will in order to get to where you can write about anything other than yourself. I suspect once you get there, the Kmart of Jesus opens up and organ music swarms out like golden bats in your face, and you can have anything you want and suddenly you’re real good at singing too and you look around and discover you’re on an airplane but it’s open to the sky and you can walk around and go out on the wings and stuff but not get blown off and everything’s a real good warm-hearted joke and even if you did jump off you would just land in the arms of your true love who is as big as the earth and sea and sky and takes you into her bosom and rocks you with everlasting perfume comfort rolling heaving sex and strong, muscular love. I mean I can only assume that’s what it would be like. tired four panes of the dusty window the paint of the cross pieces dividing the window into four panes was white once, long ago, in the age of drugstores and boxes of bullets, ordering your groceries at the counter by the pound, cut plugs of tobacco, really having to think hard about buying that shovel, rake, or hoe, black iron and cars were a curiosity, rivets as big as a muffin that held together trains as big as your pounding, heaving dreams, over the horizon, into the sunset, when there was no such thing as the present, when everything was crayon-colored future, when love had a big fat lung capacity and spewed it in your face every day, the song, the big fat song as big as a church, up in your face, up in your face like a plate of eggs, real eggs too, from real chickens, not these palsied thin things pooped out of these wrteched bloated things, the chickens were free, you were free, your old man was free, and everything else was expensive. A pair of shoes meant something, by god. Did that place ever exist? I have no way of knowing because the past and the future are in my blind spots now. There’s no mirror convex enough to see into those mighty wings from this proscenium of everlasting present. The walmart stretches for miles in every direction. Have a soda. Have a bag of chips. Have a wife. Have a job. Hell, have a *career* even, why not get a little crazy, have a *profession,* act like you *care* about something, I don’t know why you would, the wages are basically the same whether you do or not. There’s a what? A back door to this place? Haha you’re funny. No one’s been outside in generations. “Outside.” Haha. Yeah I know but you can’t prove there *is* an outside, so I don’t have to prove there’s *not* one. You idiot. I will destroy you in the forums. I will own you on the battlefield. I have a special chair for owning people in and a special keyboard and a special joystick and special underwear and I can afford all this cause I worked harder than your mom. Haha that’s what your mom said. I make jokes about sex because people have sex you know. That’s one of the things that people have. We have a lot of things. We have all of the things really. Look it up. I told you. Is there any thing that we the people do not have or could not get if we press the button and spend the money? That’s what I thought. Noob. You fucking tit. Suck it. You cuck. Suck my tit you fucking cocksucking faggot. That’s right. I own you. I am your alpha. I work out and am strong and have a truck and a hard head and see the truth and talk sense and take care of my wife and family and drive a truck and kill a deer and chop down a tree and fly a plane. What the fuck do you do? Yeah that’s what I thought.