040203 Teh-dsa predicted Esriel's cafE. I mean, it's a pretty blatant clue, i'n'it? The name itself has vaguely (or, really, not-so-vaguely) religious under- and overtones. Esriel used to be a man! She's a little older & a little wiser than her mundane exterior denotes. People come into her cafE and experience it on whatever level they need. * I remember my friendly, roundish Sociology teacher in high school explaining how people who were a little bit rich, almost rich, were more likely to try to act rich than either the very rich or the very poor. As if by sheer force of will and method acting they could bump themselves into that tantalizing, elusive echelon. Chagrined to realize: that's how I am about intelligence! 040303 My nose tingles and my heart aches. My mouth tastes acrid and my feet complain dully. Dully. There's a goofy looking word. Time for some Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch. Songs of lamentation leak out of the back room of the cafE, day and night. It's getting so the people can hardly concentrate on their breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners. Let alone a mid-afternoon snack during the slow period. If something doesn't change soon, I'm going to have to kick those bastards out of there. Their rigorous schedule is giving me the blues! Even if you have no justifiable problems nor captivating perspective, it's up to you to relieve yourself of the odium of legitimacy. Break the mortal bounds and sink into the morass. Humanity sells. Give a flower. Break something. But no matter what, preserve bodily joy and dream. 040503 I'm a Cosmo girl now. I took these self-tests (quizzes) on the Internet, and they told me I should get help for depression. Should I mention that that news, no matter how silly or "our-questions-imply-their-own-answers," made me gush tears, sitting alone here at work on a fucking Saturday? When you're the only one in your head, no one can tell you how serious you are when you tell yourself you hate your life. 041403 Pink yellow white, pink yellow white, pink yellow white.... Ka-chnk, ka-chnk, ka-chnk, ka-chnk.... Let's just get some air moving in here. It's not my life I hate, it's the lack of it. 041603 I smoked one fricking cigarette the other day when I was suddenly drunk (halfpint of Jameson's in the car) and now all I want to do after work is go to a cafe, smoke and type, smoke and type. Maybe I just for fuck's sake should. (Well, okay, it's not the only thing I want to do....) 041803 I also want to get gruffly but sweetly fucked by that native from Gilligan's Island who wanted to kill Gilligan for the rights to the personal slave girl. You'd better let your poetry be accidental, and your stories, if anything, intentional. Smoke, drink, smoke, drink, fart, yawn, read, die. There's got to be some way out of this cycle! he cries, staring at the way out of this cycle! he cries, staring at the way out of this cycle! he cries, staring at the way out Just try not to be so sullen all the time, geez! Did you ever think of that? Pages and pages and pages-no, kilobytes & kilobytes of this same, raspy, tired grass. Mow it, chew it, whistle thru it, but do something soon or I am going to kill. Myself. your mind remains your most powerful & vulnerable element. 041903 the things a baby does that are amazing aren't the same things that a grownup does that are amazing. So go easy on yourself if your old tricks aren't working any more. You may simply need to supplement them with some new tricks and twists. Find some new ways to amuse yourself. NOW GO! 042103 TV won't kill you. 042203 SITTING HERE at Fuel, unstoned, with coffee and a picked-at pecan roll. Enjoying myself working on typesetting for John. Enjoying the morning, the filtered sun; I've been here an hour and I didn't even think to smoke until now. And now, I'm enjoying that too. The fresh smiles of familiar strangers. Okay. Now it's after work, and here's what's happening, if you want to know. The dragon is breathing belaboredly. The pink sky is jagged. The knight flogs the prince and the knave jerks off. In the bathroom. The dirty, stubby, fingerprinted crapper back of the burned-out inn. I go in the inn because I am dying, and in my dying I am more pathetic and glorious than I will ever be again. I'm so fucking horny. Why not just go home and fuck my wife? because i am a slave to my fantasies. ZoE walks in, naked above the waste. I feel lethal. I stare at him until he comes over to my table. He holds his knife in his fist, and he slams it down. It quivers in the rotten wood in front of my eyes. I sit here, comfortable in my festering high-backed chair. The flowers are singed, the arms are frayed. ZoE breathes like a stallion; his taut little nipples scream hello. My fingers struggle to release the buttons of his jeans. His red hard-on thrusts out. I grab it with my fist, and it sends grubby electricity to my guts. It comes closer and I smell it. It doesn't matter what happens to me anymore. I saw a piece of something that belonged to me, lying among the quasi-randomness of the landfill. A bright bit of color, staring out of the exposed underside of the human condition. I slowed down to gawk at it, as some people do when passing a bloody wreck. There were no lurid lights, no sirens, no uniforms. It was sunny and quiet. A rural scene with tinges of methane. I drove on. I stroke the computer to keep the horny bodies coming. Digital masturbation. Fingertip fury. Pixellated passion. I circle ZoE's crinkled navel with my tongue. Her scornful white neck and red lips: ZoE's sister Clare comes looking for him. He's supposed to go do something or get something. She stares at me; I am vermin. She spits on the dangerous floor. This is filthy. I twist and jerk helplessly. ZoE's prick pins me by the throat against the greasy chair. Clare's disdainful eyes have faint humor in them. I stare back at her aloofness, hating the begging I know my eyes are doing. I will eat her shit. I will lick up her spit. I will be a slave to her skinny tits. Help me, fuck me, help me, fuck me, help me, fuck me. Make it hurt, I have to feel something. Make it burn me. Make it make me scream. I want to piss myself and jerk off in public places. The skin of this old chair in this almost abandoned inn; I want to feel it chill my pale, hairy thighs as I stroke and twitch. Giant eye of the metallic world, stare down at me and despise! ZoE and Clare are leaving now, laughing easily in the dragonfly heat. ZoE left his knife and I touch it with my fingertips, lightly, a sissy touch against the lightning heft of it. My lips are slippery and my jaw is sore. I belch a mushroom cloud of spunk. I want to be alone but the knight and the knave emerge from the ruins of the john. God knows what they've done to the prince. The prince, the prince is dead. The dragon wheels around slowly, eclipsing the ashen sun. The knave stumbles drunkenly and the knight's laugh slashes at his ribs. They make their way out the front door. Now I am alone. The sky is cold. The floor is cold when I collapse. There are no spirits in this tavern now of course. I am still waiting for some fat wench to find me. Waiting for her clear high-heel shoe to tap tap tap across the boards that aren't hard anymore, her naked toes to tap tap tap in my face and give me the tasty shame I need to haul my ass erect and leave. I am still waiting when she never comes. ZoE will be looking for his knife of course, and if I'm still here I'll give it to him. Thank god. Thank the dragon. Thank the death of the icy black sky. I think I'll go home and maybe fuck my wife now in the sun. In the green green green young sun while our windows shatter and music beats in our silly brains. Welcome to the end of the beginning. What the fuck. What the fuck. Drink another beer. Walk hand in hand. It's all over so soon, you don't even know what hit you. So you might as well have a festival and get pregnant and get crazy and almost die but get up again and go for a walk when it's summer again and you get knocked up again. That's all you ever do, you fertile field of primate. That's all you're good for: You eat and you're food. Fuck you; I love you. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! God bless the freaks and the punks and the hippies and the dirty spunk that lives in our lives! God bless living among the ruins! The campfire and the paper lamps strung up across the perimeter! God bless trashy talkin by the pump and god bless the tits and ass hangin out of the cutoff jeans. God bless the apathy of the stars! God bless how high and clear it is to hurt, at things you'll never ever get to touch. Again. God bless how only the dying are lovely. Only the dying were ever born; the rest might as well be God bless whatever shatters me play loud music now and shit bass so hard it throws you down and god, god, god, god and the dragon bless the drunk 042403 Last night, bathed in candlelight, I said to Annie: Do I love you? Yes. All the time? No. Enough? I think so. I slept pretty well last night. 042803 You know something? I think I'm in love with my wife. I think I think she's beautiful, smooth-skinned, soft-lipped and beseeching. I think she's sweet. Her sister Holly's pretty hot, too. Ya know? She won. Unfair and square. I like it. I'm a bitch. The more I worship her, the more beautiful she becomes. * They convince you to upgrade the operating system (including what new vulnerabilities? you remain unaware) and then they persuade you to buy more memory to support it. You go along, even though you know it's kind of stupid, because you don't want to be left behind. 043003 oh, that's the dictionary. the dictionary is a friendly, hungry face something is rising up in my throat. I hope to god it's not pinworms, gone backwards up the stream of time to punish my forbearance I've got it: I'll just quietly upload my journal every month, and let it sit there until the next month. Why? Because it's scary as Fucking hell. But here's the thing: I'll open myself a new screen name for it, and not tell anyone I know I know I know I know.... Writing (or whatever this is) is at least a two-stroke process: suck in, breathe out the flashlight follows your ass into the bat cave. it probes for you, you come up close and then you swim away * I don't need a muse, I just need pershidium This week's paranoid perspective: they feed us fake satire to make us think we're bold and rebellious enough. this week's conclusion: volunteer * p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-pin-worms are the glow-worms' least enemies the book is a medium that is eating its own side effects include convincing yourself that you forgot it's easier to do the stuff you're trying to do without it than with it, now my stomach hurts. i'm sorry god. i'm sorry mat. sorry sorry sorry. 1 more smoke & then I go