every voice every ghost everyone I talk to the past week the past eleven days find myself describing. transmuting. dissecting. what I’m doing here how what the actual is happening to me to the process and. one answer two. the velvet warms and binds. you’re religiously cold. I have not been this sober sharp clear since 2012 another loop another eleven layered over the other within the next the loop coming now unfolding down alt timeline possible the salt flats dead ends escape rooms tunnels narrows barrens hollers and bottoms. not since 2012. not near.
the phineas books were all written in a state of hyperfocus touch of mania and prisoner duress. locked in motel 6 or the Basque in north beach. no phone no wifi no room service. boots watch knife glasses laptop. coffee and cigarettes. prisoner duress. sleep deprivation. only drugs were what I could hustle down the tenderloin or in whichever sketch waffle house truck stop lot. lizards pimps tricks whores punks thieves lost angels and me. either no drink or too much and a mutant form of method acting. kiss me, judas is the only book that spilled out totally sober as I am now no drink no pills opiates no ups downs pinks pressed blues nothing. coffee cigarettes water. repeat. I finished judas under an eleven day lockdown in brother Fred’s east bay edge of cali ghetto art studio surrounded by his work paintings huge canvases best described as say what if O’Keefe were a dude and sometimes a particularly weird dude with obsessions similar to mine. Fred whose other name is mike Fred Michael Terry painted the same thing over and over same as I wrote the same stories and scenes over and over took the same photos of the same looming highway dusty road same black hallway again and again slight variations glitches and flaws cooked into the oil so hard so furious sometimes the canvas should have torn apart the paint had such raw texture and some of those paintings the cakes balloons clowns clouds guns knives lingerie and eerily sexual cakes and pies all the shit that been swimming the data cloud between me and Fred since we’re both nine the age of black slivers of yellow up in his pirate fort in memphis where we plotted and schemed and drew thousands of comic panels wrote my odd steampunk sci-fi tank boy fairy tales back of across from town named hercules. the studio was a warehouse style garret with high ceilings rock wall rock floors a toilet sink window coffeemaker and an ugly yellow couch that stank like dog like Fred like Chris like cigarettes fear fury and mania yeah Fred was cool he didn’t smoke but he never didn’t that asshole smoke in his crib.
regarding punctuation. if the english sentence is composed just so around iambic base with meter mercilessly maintained percussion never out of synch syllables counted syllables never unknown that sentence needs no punctuation. Cormac McCarthy was doing it for 25 years before you ever picked up a pen and I’ve been counting syllables for decades. syllables are the wood blocks the atoms of language. the subatomic bits the phantom particles of language are a long thorny chat for another day. eimear mcbride does the same in a girl is a half formed thing. olga rawn does it in the employees. faulkner and joyce they did it in analog. the language poets. they know who they are. my theory of stories is humans tell each other stories spin fables legend myths and record history primarily to maintain their grip on reality and construct narratives to guide the pack and as narrative is nothing without drama conflict violence our stories take us where we take them and the blood the wreckage the collective trauma comes with. does what it says on the tin but it was precisely this odd skill the only one other than the thumb worth a damn that set us apart from the apes and wolves was language and language sparked a jump forward in engineering science and consciousness perhaps but all the evil shit we can dream up too and the only evolution that I can see has been technology not the humans our bodies and brains are still hunter gatherer as fuck we just have bigger weapons.
the letters. the lowercase shit bewildering and inconsistent I know. partly may blame auto correct I’m always grappling that fucker that shadow ai looking over shoulder partly it has to do with the colors. some letters I can’t abide the cap version so fuck that letter you never see me start a sentence with that letter. the word Chris with cap c is a particularly orange word in lowercase but with the cap c always looks like it’s shouting at me. I stopped telling this shit to people sometime in the ‘90s because the looks you get. are like the slash of light around the corner where you forgot to pull the curtains and the yellow the knife hot white cuts your eyes rounding that corner out of shadow into light. an uneasy look to receive.
if a question is properly worded it needs no question mark. the question mark and most of the superfluous punctuation marks the the semicolon the godawful but oddly effective exclamation point these are static. detritus. clutter. white noise to the eye. to mine. to my knowledge my reckoning I’ve never used an exclamation point maybe once sarcastically in a text because texts are. not writing not really. texts are spewed or blathered or cryptified yes made up word into morse code haikus. my name then three words four in my head never cared for it in caps too loud the colors wrong. I never heard how she did it and while it sometimes looks odd in a random magazine article but always thought it was gangster as fuck how bell hooks just said no to caps forever.
I wrote the phineas books in a state of mind best described as self inflicted damage danger despair deathseeking. entropy. I was a sin eater.
what’s happening to me is this. sober clear as crystal seventeen months first time eleven years. photo memory coming total recall to such degree it might fuck me up break me send me down the bottle down the long black rabbit hole that twists turns back on self like internal ethereal mobius strip. if I let it do so. if I soften fall or slip off path if I lose thread if I glitch out of phase. entertain my demon. chase my dragon. if I let myself suffer my internal fool. if I let the voices the noise the numbers colors the strobe flashes internal the slashes of yellow light if I let that shit drown me I’m done so this time round this run of the gauntlet I will not. I have a dog named mouse riding shotgun I have my final tank girl my family my brother my bloodsisters guardian angels all with me in head and heart where I need them the asshole brotherhood my thousand and one ponyboys tomboys ghosts of self I have them right were I want them where I need them.
I wasn’t so obsessed back then with kiss me, judas with the stream the flawed nature of subjective continuity I didn’t trust it or it made me feel like relapsing. I know it is funny that the only comma I’ve dropped in hours is that one it sticks out on the page like a mote of dust on the screen an eyelash twitching at my retinal flow but that comma stands out of respect the gut punch knowledge that hits me now and again the idea that I will never write a better title. that one is gold. that one is the yellow within the black. the drink the pills they slow and dull the voices help me blot out the blackhole sun of the past the years in the negative the years to the left of zero. I was far more deeply more obsessed with white space. empty space and line breaks. the way the pages flow in judas is intentional. measured. counted. vitiated.
this stack will feel like it’s under construction for a time. I have at the moment seven essay stories flashbacks theories and frankenfiction streaming all at once. six of one and this one. I’m writing in notebooks one left to right one right to left I’m recording audio files hours of self my voice talking into abyss describing the unfurling. the reverse unraveling. the flood of childhood memory flashes photo sharp are in such a way that. I see all the timelines the possible the imagined the supposed real. the consensus reality but I mean I see the big timeline left to right the past two thousand years back to zero the day the christians reset the big clock in such away that the years before christ are negative numbers in your head. my head. the slipping point of view in the jack fell diaries are a thing. I’m aware of it. sometimes doing it on purpose sometimes not but always aware I’ve been counting syllables for decades. when properly in the zone the place where snipers live I count them as I go typing lickety quick or scrawling by jagged hand silently counting tracking measuring.
the next few stories will go up raw bloody rough at the edges unfinished creatures seeking form. shout out to Luke O’Neil. I don’t want to lose them so I will just post them drop them flail torture them out raw not quite cooked. if the chaos is unsettling or too. too everything I understand you may want to watch and wait for this cloudstorm to pass and settle into narrative order for the strands to gather then venture back down for a calmer more measured walkabout in my head but if the process the sausage grinder the carving of blocks into words shapes into sound is your jam I expect this will be great fun or if nothing else a gawkish sort fascination like the eleven car pile up you didn’t witness didn’t get caught up in but rolled past the smoking wreckage slow and watchful and thought there but for the grace go I. some of the bodies on the track coming toward us.
tomboy nation
the stay gold ponyboy theory
sevendrunk
the 27s
the vitruvian kids
the black elf problem
mister pink
the first and last dead bodies
eight mile I am
the razor smile
tank boy fairy tale
smear the queer
family of pirates
the stalker assignment
vitiated ghosts
throwing colors in the hood
dementia bob
the girl who was blue
blood porn and the free willy story
I go through my notes and the list above just. the exponential. later today I will come back to this post and drop in the first paragraph or so of each of the above soon as I round them up the murder cats like to run and chase shadows in my head.
peace.