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Re-post:

CLICHE GUT-WRENCHING EPIPHANY

MACHACA

It's Sunday evening and I'm sitting here trying to make sense of everything. And trying to make sense of anything is were I usually go wrong.

I return to my Aunt's from a month of being lost in the decay of the city, feeling the grind of effective skull-cracking and mind-numbing distraction in self-hypnosis, but the good thing about entropy is that everything is merely transformed, supposedly. I've been playing part-time contortionist, bending over backwards for sustenance as I struggle through hypoxia against pressurized rib-cage and suffocated lungs, squeezing between people as they elbow my waist and hip, step on my feet, shove and push me off curbs into traffic/trains/masses of crowds...sort of like the shameless madness that takes place in a playground: kids laughing and bumping and elbowing each other, having a good time and playing games. 

It's the feeling of being ripped off and cheated that brings forth an onslaught tide of paranoia and worry, and as I contemplate what I will do with the five dollars left to my name before next paycheck,  my mind is occupied with the time I saw my father through the iron bars of the kitchen window--his scattered Chalino Sanchez CD's and those drunken Sunday mornings of him listening to corridos while my mom silently went about her chores. His life could probably be summed up in bars. 12 bars. Iron bars. or just bars.


But the past is gone, supposedly, unless it haunts the present...I must be some sort of masochist, sadist, a payasito, losing time over something I have no control over; I should be more concerned with the 5 dollars in my pocket ("trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents"). I sit in my aunt's dining room, re-attaching my thoughts to my body as my aunt knits a bufanda in the living room. I feel lost and confused:
THIS IS THE MOMENT OF RECOGNITION
I AM SUPPOSE TO "REALIZE" SOMETHING ABOUT LIFE
INSERT CLICHE GUT-WRENCHING EPIPHANY HERE


My Tia looks over at my face and she already diagnoses that something is wrong. She must note it in my abstracted eyes as she gently weaves her threads. She gets up and starts a kettle and soon comes out with a warm cup of something. Ten mijo. Tomate esto. I don't even ask what it is. She knows I need it. I want to cry like hell and tell her everything, but she never asked to be my mother; I want to spit out the implosion of my guts. The whirlwind in my mind from years of being pulled apart: a time here with my mother, there with my father, a minute with a friend, my brother and sister, somewhere; this neighborhood, that park, half memories (or neglect) of domestic violence, blood in the playground, knocked out, suddenly 12th grade: all of these scattered pieces of me, pieces of a large canvas that didn't quite fit in anywhere, that didn't quite sit well with the other paintings, something always seeming off-putting about the piece(s); Everything fleeting and receding before me like a mocoso riding the merry-go-round and reaching for the Gold ring that doesn't even exists; the more I reach the further it all distances from me. I want to tell her of the loneliness at night. The feelings of suffocation. The aches from sleeping twisted. The nightmares. los nervios. But she knows all of this. She watched me grow up...from a distance; she's known the damage inflicted by my own family, "victims of circumstances," etc. Boo-hoo. I swallow the emotional lacerations and mind tearing injuries down with the sip of a warm tonic. 

That tonic, years of curanderismo and remedios caseros restoring what has been lost in the motorpsycho nightmare of living in the "postmodern." Gracias Tia. I owe you more than I have, which is very close to nothing at all, and it makes me feel ever sorrier for having not a single thing to offer in return, this intensifies the fucked up shitty feeling inside that I mask with my composure. She asks how is work and school, and I want to tell her that the education system has told us that we can win the jackpot; that we can live large as hell with an education. When they ask you, "what do you want to be when you grow up," no one ever says nothing. No one ever says happy. No one ever says I want to find out why there is a man that sits all day on the sidewalk and pushes a shopping cart that contains no groceries. Instead, I tell her that everything's fine. she knows this is a lie. She understands my discomfort of being open and, instead, we talk about the past, leaving out the pain and remembering only the good. I wonder if she does this for me? Then I think of my selfishness; I feel worse. 

With time, even all the bad perhaps starts looking good, that it, whatever it was (look at me I'm full of cliche's today), wasn't a big deal, and perhaps with time you realize that even that distinction was, as I've been taught to analyze and repeat, a "false dichotomy," and then you think about the past and Hitler, and Pol Pot, and Bush, and maybe you say, it's not so golden, and you remember a poem you read by someone that talks about "nothing gold can stay," and you say...fuck the past and it's nostalgia, and its' nostalgic fallacy. Then you forget that nonsense and realize you're thinking about the past too much, so you revert to the present. The present, despite the pain, will look good. "It'll all work out," she tells me with her laughter as she recalls a time I danced as a child. Y le dabas con tus botas, vuelta y vuelta.


I CRACK A SMILE

...

She tells me to visit her friend, the sobadora. You need it, numskull. I need it. I need a good pummeling from the unauthorized unlicensed psychotherapist bone specialist. She makes house calls, fixing twisted ankles, knees, and backs. Mangled nerves and hip pain. She'll re-adjust what has yielded to attrition and gradual wear and tear of bone on bone from running with an M-16 and a rucksack in the mountains of Korea; metal, flesh, muscle, fibers, wires, radios, static, noise, frequencies, shocks, taser guns, and strangulation. That time I took off my mask in the smoke chamber and shook and sneezed and shook and spewed and coughed "kackckcakcakk" until all that was left was a sack of meat: a brute and his foamy orifice; I coughed and shook and coughed and sneezed and shook once more until I lost control, until I lost my name, until I lost my body, until I lost my self, until I lost everything, but Uncle Sam gave me a new and improved one: a well oiled green lean fighting machine. One with a sharp mind and ready for bulleted presentations with snap judgement ready to take the initiative when necessary. This new body. This newbody. This now body. This no body. This no thing no body. This mere Nomenclature.

I STRETCH OUT MY ARMS AND LEGS, YAWNING. ＼（´Ｏ｀）／

Feeling lost in the post-postmodern sense makes no sense at all. I need healing. I need yerba buena. Ruda. Vicks Vaporub and "Broncolin."  I need to go to Misa, my Aunt reminds. My Aunt never misses Misa. She's a mixture of ancient remedies and ideology of foreign Gods, and together they concoct things like chia-nopal & Kale smoothies, or blowing smoke in one's ear for an infection, followed by prayer to La Virgencita Guadalupe. 

My Aunt needs to go to the doctor; she has an appointment. Before she leaves, she informs me, Ay! tengo que ir otra vez. Mijo, let me tell you...the doctors, all they do is give you just enough medicine to keep you going back for more, and if they can't do anything, they seem afraid to admit defeat. These doctores. Many times it's not even about the illness; the treatment adds to the illness, sometimes even becomes the illness.

She's been on a steady diet of pills for as long as I can remember. Her cabinet is a motley of prescription drugs and Mexican medicines from Tijuana. She's been going to the doctor, and they give her more pills. more and more pills. I imagine a doctor with baggies of pills hidden underneath his long white lab coat, popping them into mouths and making addicts that come back for more, praising hallelujah and lifting their arms and opening their mouths for more.

I, as well, get ready to head out once more. Next week I won't be returning. Next week I will go completely though the process of pulverization. Next week, I will send her letters and information through my cousin via text message, letting her know that I'm ok. Letting her know that I'll be back when I can offer her everything, which is probably never...Letting her know that I am looking for my mother, her sister, and that when I find her, I will try to bring her to her; that I will try to mend the bridges; that I will burn the bridges; that I will build the bridges. That I will be ok even if I lose my mind, even after I run out of my dollars anc cents, because I carry a crucifix in my pocket for good luck, and because every morning I open the blinders, just for a little bit, to let the sun in from the City Terrace hills.

Bodysuit, MeatFlesh, MeatSystem and Brainspace

As most things occur, it happened while I was totally unaware. I'm perpetually lost in the shift, like that one time I took a dive, on a dose of pendejismo, and was tossed and twirled by Poseidon's trident. Picado y tirado! Chingado! I need less pendejismo (or more?), but I tend to gravitate towards it. Even when I don't try, my mouth, my limbs, my eyes, they twitch through my nervous system and make movements that give me the illusion of total control. No excuse. Ya!

But on that day I was 100% saavy! (well, at least I think so!). Point being that I was lost as usual, though I thought I possesed complete agency. So, there I was at the "cybercafe"...first time "entering" the "user" realm. After gaining access into the stock room, the "barista" started removing wooden so to reveal a dark path with lights and tidbit clicks and lights coming through. "g'head man, let's go. Already told the Tek". I walked down into the shop for a so called "upgrade".

With Coffee IV's hooked into arms, customers also had brain zappers: battery hooked electrodes that transmitted transcranial currents directly to the brain. Wire and tube conduit lines all over the place. The JAVA JOLT Collective, a counterculture subculture of Bio'lectricks underground, had much to do with the unconscious submittal of free will and one's humanity as it did with the Con-global amalgamated publicity that was pushing for a trans-humanist and post-humanist utopia: "be more than human--become god-like." Gain more freedom by expanding your human capacities. It's always the quest for more.

Anyway, these two cats. They were running "low-batt" on synthetic telepathy interface, so their world was becoming "normalized" and mild panic would often set in from not being accustomed to existing without their d-vices. They twitched and whispered to one another, perhaps about me, perhaps about the blurs, perhaps about Con-global.

"Juice me up man, 54gigz" said one.
"muh..muh...Me too," said the other.

The Technomancer handed them chargers and they went in to the zap-stations. The automated robot came by asking the two if they wanted anything to eat--they each ordered a bowl of mush injected with all the essential vitamins and minerals necessary to sustain their meat-systems. 

The JAVA JOLT was the place that these two meatheads would engage Project Genesis, an experimental updgrade that supposedly lead to machinery consciousness, and also a rumored myth throughout the GRID  (i.e., the space formerly known as Internet^3). When the robot came by, they quietly seized it by shutting it down via an EMP disturbance; they proceeded to hook wires and nodes along the bots' exo-cortex.

This gave them away, at least to old systems like myself. When I walked in with my obsolete e-Goggles (and nearly obsolete state of existence), I noticed a glitch in digital space--the augmented space in front to these two individuals appeared like static, with tracking lines distorting the zap-station like an old VHS tape unspooling and slowing to a mesh inside an old VCR.

I walked in on a desire to get the brain-download bio-upgrade: a tiny computer that hooked into the brain's dendrites and axons which tracked synaptic activity and allowed for "total deliverance from meatspace;" at least that was what I understood from crypto-collectives threads in darknet forums. The d-vice, located behind the ear, seemed like a very complex operation, but with modern technology, the operation was made easy-- all you have to do is press a button.

The Technomancer looked at me suspiciously, understandable since I wasn't a regular. And, as I was inquiring about the upgrade, two young punks dressed in monochrome black ran past me. The tek-no_man followed in hot pursuit: "oy! you two!"


So now I'm here...

in this unfamiliar space. Everyone is hooked into the zappers and is oblivious to what is occurring. I hear an automated bot going haywire. If it had any, it looked as though it was losing its "mind," but little did I know, and was later to find out, that, in fact, it was gaining a "mind."

(p_art 2 shall be uploaded in (an-other-ti-me) and space_[frame])

[an-ti-me-other-an-ti-me-other-an-ti-me-other-an-ti-me-other-an-ti-me-other-an-ti-me-other-an-ti-me-an-ti-me-other-an-ti-me-other-an-ti-me-other-an-ti-me-un-tie-me.]


Also, an overdue, perhaps "illogical," R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy, aka, Mr. SPOCK

Interesting!

Clip Source:
Star Trek TOS episode 2x24, "The Ultimate Computer"

Nothing new under the sun

Break time. At the AMPM. "100% real beef" hot-dog. "High voltage" coffee. Deep breaths of "relaxation" while gasoline fumes season the mushy gulps of bread and meat down my throat. sludgy sustenance. Re-fuel for the grind. Sentence fragments reflecting my fragmented mind. Broken record: I've written about this before. What's new? nothing new under the sun.




Here, how about a story?  "psy-fi"....


Setting:

• c. 1968, the parallel omniverse

Situation:

• The infamous West Lost Sit-ins. Student protest, refusing to leave school. Want to start their own curriculum.

In response to rotating cogs of a people generating a sense of self, the Fractal Bureau of Instigation, which deals with nu_clear visionary Narkotraffik, launches Operation Institutionalized Re-vision: OIR.

The F.B.I., cutting edge mafiosi equipped with the latest in crypto-low-tech: drones duck-tapped with cobalt-45 cocaine and radioactive marijuana, are a very highly organized body whose job it is to keep the neon black market revolving; it needs this invisible, darknet ecomony to name countless excuses to pin down guerillas, rebels, and any faction that works towards autonomy and awareness by labeling such groups as "e-terrorists" and dissidents. By invisibly controlling the black markets, pinning blame and justifying illegal detentions were made easier. Operation OIR aimed its sights at shooting silent soundwaves through AM/FM radio that would effectively disturb the solidarity of the sit-ins. In fact, many would be urged to walk out en masse. Walk out as a means of transforming the system from without. A statement. The Fractals worked toward implanting these "walk-out" ideas in every minute structure of reality. 

You see...

Many people live Somewhere. Some live Nowehere. And if you're anything like these students staging sit ins, most of your days are "lived" Otherwhere--blind spots behind the periphery, a plasmatic space where denizens of _____ dwell. It's a space where souls float and where cognizance and awareness gain form from the phantasmagoria of plasmatic space. The unconditioned space of Otherwhere floats in eternal creativity, at least it seems that way. A sacred coil that evades discovery with every turn that attempts to reveal its phi-psy-cal structure.

The F.B.I. has been trying to to pin it downl. Make it a science. Exploitable, Deployable. That's where the sit-in's come from. That's where your dreams dwell. Childhood forgotten trauma, there. Memories of pain and doubt. The F.B.I. and its mad science, trying to figure the Otherwhere out. How could it do that with these students disrupting the ebb and flow of progress? Re-programming was top priority, and the Otherwhere held the key (at least that what they thought was the source of the disruptions). no no no, reprogram them and let them settle, or call for "appeasement," for after the hormones are gone and they settle into their virtua-machinery of a comfort zone existence, they won't really care (unless it feeds their ego); after all, just be thankful you live the the United Universe of America. 


I've been observing this from the sidelines. I'm a neo-universe wormhole space trekker. Traversing into and out of the pores, orifices, and rectums of time-space. I hear the FBI tapping and the students marching. Prufrock hides behind me.

I'm trying to figure out the plasmatic "blind" space myself. The Other day (indeed, an "other" type of day), a blow of -ism hit me in the face whereby my neck twisted so fast that I caught a glimpse of a shadow that looked pale as a ghost, and then it disappeared; I haven't been able to see reality the same since. It might be the Fractals at work, or it might be Otherwhere...after Operation OIR I haven't been hearing, seeing, thinking things too soundly. I think it's just that I have nothing else to write about nothing else to write about. write about. Nothing new under the sun.

#chale

Love in the time of Loquera

She said, "if you write so much, 'man of words,' why don't you write about love?"

After a joke about my "manhood," I said something along the lines that I was not experienced enough in the subject of love. That my mere calling it a subject should illustrate the fact. That the world doesn't allow love and if there is any ounce of love, it's altered into lust. Distorted by neglect. Crushed by socio-economic status. Love seems to be a luxury: over-indulgence and gluttony.

real love? you're either born with a talent for it or not. And, my senses seem too gross: my hands crush when they ought to caress.

"That's bullshit. bullshit defense mechanism. Pre-emptive surrender," she said.

"Then I surrender to love."

"bullshit"

"and these conceptions of yours, of love, are conformity, and delusions"

You want a love story, huh? Momma? Want to hear me voice romanticized ideals encapsulated in pretty words. You want that "priceless" type of love, baby? My honesty and truth and communication? oh! but it's too many words....and your nails, your hair, my clothes, the make-up, the whole gamut of products, split us into "I" and "me," into mere reflections of a conditioned existence  lusting for affection, lusting for connection. We're producers of filtered love and emblematic monoliths of that laissez-faire type of love. Our love is packaged, bought, and sold. You want to know real love? it's ruthless, it's tunnel-vision, it goes all the way, one-way.

"What?"

"I mean that...look, hand me that book on the dresser, here...read this. Karl Marx knew love:

'Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. -- real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms...

Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking' -Marx and Engles, The German Ideology

in other words, our conceptions of love are totally mixed up. We produce 'love' and fix up ourselves for that idea of love: a produced love, amor. By the way, where's your Gucci bag?"

"you and your foreign words. Rhetorical tricks. "

Ok, here we go, I said.....you have no idea of the rosy spells you cast over my blind vision. Of the dream you have become in my memory whenever your perfume or the faint scent of your warm body creeps around corners or lingers like vapor in a coffee shop. The lipstick on a burrito that we chose to share. Blah blah blippity zippidity doo day. Are these words something that you'd like to hear? are you questioning whether they "come from the heart"?

"you talk too much, and too bad its all nonsense"

"Whatever. Love in this time of loquera, it just seems too rare. I told you I wasn't experienced; I don't know how to love; it seems a madness, really. Perhaps a disease I wasn't fortunate enough to catch"

"now you sound like a bitter, sad, lonely man"

"that's what happens when lacking love"

"I'm sorry"

"I don't need pity. But you ought to chant some Hail Mary's at your altar and wish upon a star as if the dying light were angels reaching towards the blue marble floating in space to save you with love. I told you I don't know anything  about love. Love is a word that has been corrupted. What? here is a dictionary definition: an intense feeling of deep affection. Would you like to hear some deep affectionate words about how I looooove running my fingers through your hair yet absolutely not think about your warm, almond bronze legs? That's a dehydrated type of love, mi amor. Like I said, love seems an innate talent. I don't know what love is. I know that there exists a lot of hate and confusion, and that that separates us from one another, and hate and confusion is what corrupts understanding or feeling love. Love is another dimension of reality. A plane(t) of existence in and of itself. One that we, or rather the "I" and "me", are yet figuring out. Love is taking away all the hate and confusion in all of its varying degrees of jealousy, stress, sadness. Love is your brother punching you in the back and you taking it because you can absorb it and make it better. Love is your mother calling you and telling you that your father mistreated her and absorbing that as well. Love is absorbing all of the hate and confusion that the world throws at you and showing the music of the soul through laughter and smiles. love is...love is...."






"shh...ya callate. And, put yer lips to good use"



Then I surrender

Then I surrender

Then I surrender

I surrender

I surrender

I surrender

I

I

I

i

i

!

MeXcal: borderline merger of realites

Gray days make for strange times around Los Angeles. Time seems to slow down and the day is gone before you even get to enjoy the possibility of an onset of gray ennui brought about by the haze of smog and ashy skies: everyone seems to pause in a monochrome daze. But, on sunny days, heat seeps into our skulls and microwaves our brains into varying degrees of lunacy.

And today, like most days in L.A., it's a sunny day. Patches of clouds float like white cotton candy on the backdrop of a massive, overbearing blue canvas. Metal machines in the shape of a cross fly high above the Angeleno smog. On the 710 exit at Valley Blvd, engines emit black smoke and hum vroom! vroom! while the man with the cardboard sign coughs ack! ack! The heat intensifies the more one remains in place, but you move forward, catching a hot breeze here and there. Cars congests and twists and turn as the traffic lights conduct the symphony of traffic like the bellow lungs of an accordion. Push. Pull. Stop, go. Slow down. Speed up. Breath. Go! hurry. Inhaaaallleeee. Exhaleeeee. It's turning! now! wait. halt. honk honk honk~

I'm stuck in traffic, racing to be on time and surrender my energies to higher powers. I'm not speaking figuratively here; I'm talking socio-economix blues (I play my part in the suicidal concerto, pressing the mechanical pedal, accelerating the disengaged clutch: rrrooom moo moo moo moo)

Ads. Commuters. Walkers. Disputers. Computers. Stupider. Smog. Oxygen. Homeless. Homemore...This "modern" world possess' the ability to breed schizo-bodybuilder-narcissistic-anti-cool-consumers children of the future: #whatever #whateverwhatever #ImSoOverIt. And these metals and concrete boxes that possess the ability to numb and sleep you to death does not help the barrage of concussions that can slowly grind you into amnesia. I'm just here pressing the "pedal to the metal," and eating cheese crackers.  

My dad used to say, estamos en Califas. Canijo!
Oh yeah, hell yeah.

Me&Califas.
meXcal, a borderline merger of realities.
MexKali: miXture of Time and Death. Kali, "the black one," and Me. 
El meXcalero
"para todo mal, mezcal, y para todo bien también"
aqui, no mas, Nomas aqui. No Mas! Canijo!

Some resemble walking dead amnesiacs, while others are literally killing themselves on the daily grind. It's an assault on life, living everyday in the constant drift of movement away from humanity (destiny? Perhaps it's not that bad. The next evolutionary step might be tech.no.logic.(k)ill, and the "great dying off" will be the consequential shed of the biological skin so to enter the technological hive: OUROBOROUS: twisting and turning and evolving back and forth, like that boomerang Ellison describes)

Still in traffic. This heat. This shinny sun boiling my brain into a soupy stew of soft meats in cerebrospinal fluid. I'm not dead yet though it feels like I am, but how do the dead feel? They feel nothing. It's like going through these motions, in line, honk, me next. Walking under the sun reminded of eventual decay, looking at every step taken to move forward while the grave remains underneath my sole.


A recent Vice report said that "Unemployment is Killing 45, 000 people each year." something about the number of suicides related to unemployment rates.  A Que Canijos! #whatever #whateverwhatever #ImSoOverIt. Its either death from no work or death by overwork; the Japanese call it Karoshi, 過労死 (かろし).

The suns been out all day, heating the land. People's soles hot under the Sun, salpicando and dancing the impassioned masquerade! Gimme gimme gimme some o' dat unemployment suicide blues! and Mezcal! Lost souls that could have been. Shoot. Lost causes to a potential workers solidarity movement. What have you got to say on the matter, Marx? Kropotkin? Gramsci? Lukács? Althusser? Deleuze? Guattari? What's that ya'll say? class struggle? that the proles are alienated, and without an identity, or income, living Hell!? And what else? since many people's sense of identity results from their employment, they feel lost?....oh Boy! ooouuuu weeeee!!! I don't know any o' dat nonsense talk! You guys and your special vocabulary with yer subalterns, yer culture, yer ideological state apparati or however ya say it!, and and and and yer yer dissociation, and ancillary culture and all that jazz. Them words be zounds! Gimme gimme gimme some o' dat unemployment suicide blues! and Mezcal!

I've been dazing and daydreaming most of this day, lost in inner space from radioactive intake of one too many doses of gray. I blackout on the drive home. Suddenly, I'm in my room. It's late and when the sun goes down, the 'lectric moon keeps me warm.

It's time to give in.

Catch the Gold Line on Mednik and Beverly into the veins of Kali on the gold train. Cortez, our gold is yet in Boyle Heights! it's in East Los. It's still in the golden thighs of brown and sun-burnt bodies. In the movement of Afrikan Soul.

 

Here it comes. Hop in. Snake through and under the concrete and steel of the sun burned Angeleno metropol. Maybe die of cancer someday. Maybe get run over. Careful, it's too easy to get on the "wrong way" or miss your stop, or maybe you were meant to get lost and meet that "random" person. Fuck you muth'fucka. and you momma and daddy. Shut the fuck up bitch! Keep talking! Thwack! someone just got crunched by the weight of gravity of a 410,000 pound punch from a vato with a loko motive. Remain calm and coherent for as long as you can before possibly "snapping" into reality on the Blue line. I saw it once. 1am--last train to Long Beach. Man mumbling something into the reflection on the window. Spooked out from something he saw. Ran out. Left his bag behind. It smelled bad, like rotted ass flesh gone more than one too many days without a soap and water. People started moving and cursing: hole shit mein! ouuuu weee boy! aw, hellll naww!


Here comes the hustle man and his goods. $10 for the reds and $20 for the blues, but for you amigo, special price. Give me both. Here's 30. Take the change, and tell the vulture organization to stop laundering money from Big Cocaine through these candy pills. Shit! I missed my stop. This is the richlands. Cerros and mountains. The land of swine, and slave profiteers. Imperialist and colonialist. Philanthropists and Humanitarians. Shh, the white folks are sleeping on mountains. Let's go for a hike...express your technicolor feelings by trying to capture them in a moment of still life, and thus adding to the digital pastiche mosaic of 1's and 0's that everyone Oh's and Ah's.

The pill takes its form. Red and blue make purple. Purple people on the gold line. The hustle man was really a medicine man, man. Is this that purple stuff? I'm tripping. And, I'm tripping on the trip. Purple haze vision and mysterious apparitions: Swine. Rats. Snakes. Sheep. Rabbits. Coyotes. The train forks here, careful on the time slippage, it can easily fracture here, and you'll miss your departure/arrival point once again. You might end up "lost" amid the various tiny villages of Los Angeles. Canijo! #whatever #whateverwhatever #ImSoOverIt. I'm losing my grip on reality.

The cliche old man whose suppose to be the "wise" messenger archetype symbolizing a good omen next to me asks, "How are you?"

Fine

There's no connection. He has as much company as I do! hahahaha!! but it feels good. Sharing the diddly-squat is something.

That smelly bag on the train is still there, except there are many more now. There's a man high on patriotism. High on nationalism. He's got a veteran's jacket. He fractured and lost, just like the rest, but he's holding on to his sanity with psychotic fervor. He's yammering something to people on the train about Aguas Blancas. He's drunk blabbering: A yo! tzinapa! Mireles Valverde! Ahua! Tlataya! I can see him from the reflection on my window. Atenco! Atenco! Acteal! In another reality, that could be me.

I've had enough tonight. This is my stop fellas. You can open the doors now. On the L.A. trains I'm Warren Fuckin Buffet! the Wizard! I leave behind me the disoriented Mestizo beside the Afrikana and a medley of brown, black, and bruised bodies. Watch out ladies and gents! Warden Buffet is leaving the fucking building! Off you go now! I'll let some of you sleep in here tonight! All of the trains end up in the same place! don't worry about being lost! Especially you there! looking at the window reflections with the thousand-yard-stare! ou weee boy! snap out of it! Look at me! I've got $20 in my pocket 'till next payday and that's enough. Learn to live like me, fellas. Just live a little, would'ja? Just a little. not a lot. just a little. just. live. a. little. just a little.

I hear sounds of train tracks and whizzing cars and muttering retreats and half deserted streets. At my exit I see J. Alfred Prufrock; he walks toward me, then recedes his steps, then moves left before moving to his right and ends up back in the same spot. On my walk home, years of explosions flicker down tonight as the light pollution diminishes the visibility of starlight. It's all for good; I'm too busy watching my step to look up and wonder about stars.

Illegal legalese esé

You can see drifters gliding to and fro and never quite moving forward since they're not fully grounded, and repeating the gestures of yesterday and going "hua--hua, gluh gluh, eh eh" in pauses and stupors around El Sereno. Depending on their state of mind, their plane of existence must be one of purgatory or hell; either way, the repetition and boredom must be a nightmare.


Then again, these wanderers could be living examples of the manifest and latent functions of restrictive covenants emplaced by the justice system that barred mexican-americans, or rather non-whites, from purchasing homes in El Sereno. Illegal legalese esé.

The struggle is not against flesh and blood (and, yes, it is real, whatever it is). Sometimes, in our blind fits, we seem to learn to direct our energies against one another, sinking together in a boat of injustice, of profanity, of confusion. Yet there seem to be certain powers that bind our pathways and string along our will which do not always make themselves clear. And the pain we feel, which turns into abusive "fuck you's" we spew, only tends to degrade: we curse each other. And, the theater of life turns obscene.

Everyone becomes a clown; the more spectacular the show, the more captivated the spectators.

You might say nothing carries meaning, and the only weight it holds comes from "logic" and meaning-making via words (words which some would call empty).

And life, well, it goes on...

In the end, it seems that all everyone is doing is "trying to get by" and in the process add zest, carpe diem, "live for the day," be positive, and all that high school pep rally stuff, be aggressive, be be aggressive: grab life by the balls and seize the future. Visualize, and be hypnotized--enact observer effect theory and alter the atomized universe and make it yours. "Do you," fuck the "haters," eject the toxic people in your life, et cetera et cetera...


and life, well, it goes on and on and on...

 

But, though it may go on, and on and on, I'm of the disposition that life cannot go "on" when the scales of Fortuna seem tipped in favor of someone that is forcing her wrists. Every time I hear these types of terms expressed in varying degrees of passion or impassioned sentiments, reactionary comments imply that one should be grateful to live in America; that one should be grateful to not be afflicted with any illnesses, bedridden, as if the statements expressed were suggesting that the individual him/herself wasn't appreciative of their privileges.

I'm often caught in between the turmoil of left and right.

The "honest truth," if any, is that sometimes I get sudden waves of sadness, and tears flood the rims of my eyes; the whole matter seems ridiculous. Any film over my iris becomes cleared. A silent howl and weep for the cleansing of the I. Lachrymal lagrimas from LA crimes in these LA times. My eyes start burning as I attempt to stay the flow of salt and water; soon, they become irritated. I start laughing because it's ridiculous, and bittersweet.

No matter what though...the popular ideology is to "keep moving forward" and not be, as my drill sergeant used to call it, an oxygen thief. I'm not a regular subscriber though. I like magazines like Backpacker that sell me romanticized illusions of traveling and getting away: "Call me Ishmael...This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship."

"we all choose to live life / we confuse how with why"

References:
Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)
John Frusciante, "A Doubt," The Will to Death (2004)

Perhaps its all of the digital ink

The first time I experienced sleep paralysis occurred at 9am on a Sunday morning when I was 15. I was laying on a salmon colored couch. It was a bright day outside, but the blinders shaded the living room. I was suppose to take care of my cousin and I had arrived at 7am; my aunt left and I stayed in the living room. I dozed in and out of slumber, laying on that couch.

Across the couch is a window. The image of a shadow walks, as if dragging its amorphous shape, behinds the curtains. I try to get up, but I feel a heavy weight and my thoughts are warm with drowsiness. I'm still on the couch. I've just seen something bizarre, but I'm melting into pinkness and warmness, like a gooey substance into the pores between a grilled cheese. 
  
Suddenly, this black uncanny formless mass emerges from around the doorway and makes its way into the living room. And my rest becomes panic. Realizing that I'm experiencing a bizarre state of consciousness, I try screaming for help, but only the feeling of pressure on my chest from the swift glide of this thing has covered my whole body. My mouth moves and I feel my pipes vibrating but there aren't any words nor sounds forming. There's a laughter in a deep tone, "Haw Haw Haw Haw Haw Haw" and every fiber in my body moves as if submerged in tar. I'm in a state of complete confusion: my vision blurs back and forth between varying shades of black as this mass pushes and pulls and laughs.

Still griped by the experience, I finally wake up yet remain motionless, trying to make sense of this senselessness. I hear crows outside and my skin tightens--"goosebumps" form on my arms.

I eventually get a grip on myself and go about the day; it was just a dream.

These episodes have reoccurred since that day, not as bad as the first time. Having become familiar with these experiences, I usually remain calm while, at other times, the clasp and squeeze in the absorption becomes nerve-racking. The laughter and the crows, however, has only repeated once.

This "phenomena" goes by various labels: sleep paralysis, night terror, or, as I've heard, "se te sube el muerto". The rationalization of this phenomena does not interest me so much; I'm concerned with meaning, and purpose. poor chap. These things can mean something or nothing. And of major significance is how one contextualizes the misery, joy, and absurdity of life into something that means anything, even if, as Camus suggests, it's all for nothing. Even if, as he suggests, life contains no meaning whatsoever and the only certainty is death. You didn't choose to live but you can certainly choose how to die; that is, of course, if fate doesn't cut your decisions short. Anything can happen at any given moment, yet the universe seems organized in its chaos. And, yeah...nothing means nothing.

So what do these reoccurring "paralyzed" states of consciousness mean? is there any purpose? I don't know. Sometimes I think they reflect the trauma I've absorb into the "subconscious", and other times I think these things are just nightmares. I don't know...perhaps its all of the digital ink coming back from the times I've deleted words that end with "-cide". 

"Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected."

-Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion (1938).    

I guess this is me trying to modify and make the shadow conscious.

"I've got no strings"

“Underneath the reality in which we live and have our being, another altogether different reality lies concealed.”―Friedrich Nietzsche

It's a MayAztecOlmeChichiMecca themed coffee shop, and I can't help but think that this place is a space that maintains ideological misapprehension through a facet of liberal expression. The barista, a causasian male flaunting his mustache--a cross between a Dalí and a Villa--probably for "ironic" reasons that I "just don't get", asks me if I would like a pastry with my coffee; it's the day's deal. No thanks.

I prefer the Conchas, Orejas, and Besos at the Aguila.

On the coffee table, a copy of Urban Xic--purchase your cultura--displays a brown body beauty that I've seen around the "chicana/o" art scene (I place this in comma's since the term means a lot of things to many people...sorta reminds me about arguments over what it means to be "punk." But the way I'm using it is simply to mean art coming from Chicano/a, and what does that mean? I don't know. I owe you an explanation, right? I'll write a book about it and bake you a cake another time).

Next to the magazine, a number of flyers scattered about promote historical observance that attempt to assert a sense of identity; solidarity through "our" collective hardships. At least one item from the w-hole stock of Chican@ catalog iconography makes an appearance: Morrisey and Belle and Sebastian. Luchador masks and Ché buttons and Virgen de Guadalupe, Pachucos, and Lowrider paintings. Cholos hugging Moms. Chicanas in Rossie the Riveter pose and a flower on their head. Abuelita's chocolate, chiles verdes, tequila and tacos, Mariachis and sombreros. Migrant workers and Crosses. Baldheaded, hooded, Cortez wearin' mustache brocha Carnales. Raised fists. Calaveras and Frida Khalo. The emblematic ensemble exhausted by reconfiguration, misconfiguration, disfigurement, and gimmick; the whole staple my dear voyeur.

I'm having a house brew at a chic cafe replete with "chicano" decorations. I'm Huitzilo-pocho  iztaya-ndose through occasional doses of Abuelita's Xocolatl with cocoa or a warm cafe de olla. A modern day Ixtic: look at me code switching, that's bona fide cultura homes, man, bruh, dog, whatever. Not brown enough to be down and too ethnic to be...whatever. I've got "culture" up the yin-yang. The pan dulce runs in the fam; oh no, wait, nevermind...these days I'm "clean" eating and going "green". Make it a coconut milk latte and a flaky vegan apple turn over. grasy-ass amigo! Tenga!


I start drafting my blog about consciousness: how it would feel to have mind and no body. How the experience of floating through cyberspace would feel. 1This is all pure fantasy; I mean, I have no mind to begin with! and I don't think the first type of consciousness to be uploaded would be that of a Mexican-American, would it? And, how does that even look? Holy guacamole! Hermanas e hermanos,  Maybe it already happened and this is all a dream!? where's that damn gong sound when you need it! anyway...

As I sip the coffee, I realize my sci-fi fantasies and possibilities of alternative realities illustrate an aloofness of being lost in place.

Thinking about love and e-motions and about going back to my space or your place so long as we attempt to fill the void of the innerspace reflects a sense of detachment. I'd like to love you but...

The consumerist empire continues its avaricious, insatiable growth, and I'm wandering and wondering, Star-Trekkkin in the twilight zone, effectively zombified by the a congenial type of terrorism that I've been taught to enjoy in every bite from value menu soy-reezo burritos. Every time I update my "status," I see infantilized crowds going ga-ga-goo-goo-gle through massive exploitation of instinctive behaviors--Kandy Krushing life away.

Perhaps its the result of 100 years of suffering for every life sacrificed for the glory of the Hummingbird (or maybe that's just the cultural hegemony speaking); if so, then 100,000 years for every person erased in the name of a people in search of gold that continue to shout glory hallelujah! "In God we Trust" from the gilded gates. I was not part of any of it, but my blood suggests otherwise.

Inheritor of dis_ease: the Bible, Smith & Wesson, lawyers and "documents," underemployment, liquor stores, welfare, rape, Ronald McDonald, Mickey Mouse, Indie music/film...and low-self esteem (I'm sorry señor, does my (l)_anguish offend you?); the whole enchilada, chingado! But it's puro pedo; everyone has an "equal" chance, right? It's all a matter of perspective and vantage points.

All I have to do is absorb all of it and then say a few words here and there in Castellano and I can assert both sides, or whatever side. Orale! you got me? Insta-camaraderie: you eat Chiles Rellenos too? Awesoooooome~

Soooometimes I feel as though I've been conditioned inside an invisible Skinner box (wait, how do I know? how can I "see" the invisibility of the box? It's a bit tricky. But you can demarcate the boundaries by obsessively observing the behavior of those inside and outside the chamber (for what other way could you observe? passively? Perhaps passivity is the issue at hand). Sometimes those outside of the box are unaware of their place in the game as well, but it becomes clear to those on the inside when those on the outside misdirect their feelings of offense by scapegoating the ones on the inside, i.e., markers such as "faggot" "nigger" "bitch" "spic" serve as sign posts, but even those signals are silly since they're too obvious and explicit. The trickier one's to spot come from the mouths of those conditioned in the objective rationalization of "-isms": by those institutionalized in the craft of justified bigotry. Nevertheless, the basic formula remains of Us v. Them, but there's always more than two parties at play. It's more like Us and Them make We and so, you gotta ask yourself, who is really pulling the (invisible) strings. And when the fingers begin to point, the operants become visible; indeed, the invisibility "forces"---I will call this phenomenon forces for I have no other means to express it at the current personal time-frame---become visible; the system glitches, and for a millisecond, people all over the community, state, country experience the possibility of metamorphosis. For a moment, everyone realizes that what happened between the cop and the kid, between the executioner and the victim (emphasis Camus) should not have been. And then, everyone in the game realizes something; we're being taken for a ride; the system malfunctions, and the blitz to recover the theater of operations becomes priority for Reality managers. Re-imagers divide tasks to various Stations of Reality making sure the proper film is broadly cast over those eyes which have caught the glitch. I make myself "invisible" by playing along; I'm the blind man! ha ha! ho ho! I'm just crayyyy and stupid! lol, omg, lmfao, smh! ha ha!--shh, it's a survival tactic. J/k lol. ;p....Feign participation; fake it and make it. The thing is...I've repeated it so much that I'm probably already indeed a bit "cray" like a fish, a piscean fish, swimming with the school).

Divide and conquer. The battle takes place in the mind; the objective has always been ideological; this is the reason I tend to think on my feet than use my head. The usual implication of intellectuals is that the mind is located in the cranium, as some sort of by-product of the brain. Indeed, intellectuals are quite correct (they're sharp and cutting intellect illustrates the cunning tactic: using the very mind to locate its position!); however, the mind tends to wander. One of the common spaces it migrates to is the human gut. I've been honing the "gut feeling" skills slowly, but assuredly (or is it surely? I'm unsure, the gut tells me so!). I think that's why women tend to be called "crazy" when they get "emotional," i.e., they're not thinking "straight", they have amazing stomach powers, but more on that labyrinth some other time. What all justified irrationality seems like to me is logicized bullshit. Maybe it's all in the hair?

Ideology: the history of divide and conquer--my ego and philosophy has the bigger dick, look, here, let me explain it to you so that it can makes sense. Get it? now, give me the credit.

In any case, I'm sipping coffee in this cafe. And instead of writing about the police towing the car of what looks like a Mexican migrant man, and how he and I are in that tow together, I start my blogging about tek-no-theology:

"And on the 7th day the Applelord created iPhones. His holy aim was to allow people complete rest for the Sabbath. Why attend service? download your confession app and wire thy tithes. Taking a walk down the street and feeling lonely? Search for the nearest booth and enter thy praying station. Don't forget to log-in with your finger print! Remember that our services are provided in part thanks to the generosity of the National Security Agency. God bless them and our country!" 

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I stop. I'm just too out of my mind to think about anything. Or, as I stated above, I've no mind to mind. It's just an empty coconut. Can't get right. It's alright here it come...that sudden drift-off.  
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These stories about outer space/earth2.0 sci-fi tend to overlook inner space and somehow reveal what I attempt to conceal: shreds of fatalistic passivity to blend into the melting pot, erase and forget about my smorgasbord of chorizo, salami, and hot-dog with bacon from a street vendor identity.
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I'm sitting in front of a screen, inputting data

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Overhead, from within the AC, a crackling sound echoes through the metal gills. Something inside is loose; electro-mechanic cooling of air has lost its hold, and as the machine struggles to exhaust it's dying breath, it goes krack! cack! tink! before the force grows feeble, dwindles down, and completely gives out.
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I continue typing, deleting, editing, rewriting, completely throwing paragraphs away, playing the part of the "coffee shop writer"....カ-ta-カ-ta -カ-ta-tap-tap-[space]-click*click*click* krack! cack! tink!
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Carpe Diem and all that Jazzz~ (or, no se me aguite!)

"'Where is it,' thought Raskolnikov. 'Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be! . . . How true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile creature! . . . And vile is he who calls him vile for that,' he added a moment later."

           -Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866)

"you remain dead for all eternity, but you're alive only for a brief moment"

clip source:  

Lilya 4-ever (2002), Dir. Lukas Moodysson.

Smoke and Mirrors

"[commodification] stamps its imprint upon the whole consciousness of man; his qualities and abilities are no longer an organic part of his personality, they are things which he can “own” or “dispose of” like the various objects of the external world."
     -György Lukács, Reification and the Consciousness
                      of the Proletariat (1967).

It's rush hour at McCircus, the Las Vegas fast-food epicenter of the world. I can't help but think that more people would recognize the "golden arches" than they would the Gadsden flag; customers order by number, one after the other, and workers scramble back and forth to deliver the folded rubbery eggs (unless you ask for "egg-white" (remember, you have a choice)) between a nice warm biscuit.

It's Automatization right before my very eyes.

Board games such as "Logo Party" illustrate capitalist consciousness reinforcement through commodification of commodities consumed and re-commodified by the conditioned subjects-- in other words, it's too early to surrender my will into the zombification process, but I need an egg-Mcmuffin. I need an extra value meal.

By 10am, virtually anyone becomes a node in the (zombie/hive-mind) network and lets go of control (remember, you have a choice); Uniformed Structure of "Awareness"--an organized chaos #oxymoron. Collective Consciousness and the Unified process of capitalism by uni-frying the structure of consciousness. Robbery through commodity, i.e., fragmented reality.


This particular hub is located in El Sereno.

"I'll take a number 1, hold the putty and cosmetics. ha ha!"
"uh..m..."
"uh...nothing, sorry, a number 1 please."

Two old timers sip coffee, refilling and perhaps reflecting on memories, and for some reason it seems a little terrible--the loneliness and old age. One of them stands and proceeds to the restroom. He leaves his cup sitting on the red table, next to the other old man. The other old man, the one that remained, is missing his index. The old hands of an old man, calloused, scaling, and swollen. I leave before I see the other return. The old man remains alone, and it's not so bad.

The people in uniform scramble back and forth shouting orders and looking at screens for instructions. The drive-thru merits a paragraph, a book, an essay all on it's own; that's a job for critical theorist and philosophers.

I lift my arms and raise my hands to the sky, yawning and exhaling. The iphone buzzes in my pocket; I forget about trying to answer it or even look at it; the noise invades everything, all the way from the outside to inside of my pocket. I get in the car.

As I drive off, I think that it's way too easy to become nihilistic in a situation like this...it's no so bad.