We set-up programs

The kid drew an airplane crashing into a building. The teacher called the cops. The child was taken for examination. He said he saw it on the Tell-u-Veesion. It was in the VeeDee-o-games. It was in the Myou-sick. That it was in the Pain-tings, etc.

The glass in front of him was covered with a film of one-way privacy mirror. On one side the kid faced his reflection, while on the other a number of professional types diced with his fate. Probabilities and culpabilities. What could it be? They moved back and forth, texting their spouses, children, and lovers that it was going to be a long night. At the bottom of the glass, it read, "objects in mirrors are closer than they appear."

Outside the mother wept like a banshee and the father talked to authority types. The father stammered, "I filed Goddamn it!"

We paid our taxes and did our jobs. Perhaps we didn't do so well, but we did them. We paid and we paid. And, we set-up programs. We set-up goddamn it! We set-them-up real good.

The sister posted on the anti-social-web:
"What a snobby fucking brat! last night I cut my wrist and I don't get any of this sentimental revolution bullshit."

Underneath, the tectonic plates were slowly shifting.

The kid, given crayons and construction paper, reviewed his national anthem:
I pillage alleged....I gape a village...I ape..all...egiance...I pledge allegiance...

"look! look! let us examine...ah there! look, the form reveals the content, his scribbles...those jittery letters; the nervous system"

"no doubt his parents must be associated with a very powerful terrorist organization"

The child continued:
of...of...the Unit-

The sudden earthquake stopped everyone in their tracks. Everything loosened and came apart. Many attempted neutrality, balancing in place and maintaining their bearings. Lastly, the glass shattered, and the kid came face to face with his assessors.

Sketch 'n time: manikins & figurines

You see them around, these time-zoner's, flowing back and forth in their to-go bubbles of set disposition. Their movement yields an appearance that obscures the rigidity of their spellbinding trance-fixation.

These manikins, these...figurines, if you will, follow the trends and flow in the anti-currents of atemporality while being RF-Eye'd and computerized, effectively gauged and measured into a capsule that reflects a (com)pressurized profile--Sorted, stored data.

Your own ideas start to work against you because they (your ideas) supply others with enough precise information to manufacture the tools necessary for capitalization, and capitulation, through optic nerve exploitation.

The experts of steganography (forgive a mere fool for having used such a term) place their digital and physical foot-and-head prints all around us--in the space field of our immediate surroundings. Decoding the imbedded cryptographies becomes the task of the paranoiac, who mostly carves against the anticurrents of time. He warns of the subtle programming communicated in the plain open, but the words fall flat like tinkling cymbals and sounding brass, which makes good music for ridicule and for the mass: kshh-shh, kshh-shh, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo, as Everyone satisfactorily bubbles in their uni-spheres.

The girl in the cute skirts expresses an air for times of past. She likes ye olden poetry and exudes a passionate desire for that type of romanticism of the late 18th century. She read to me from her mini-tele-phonic device, "In the southern clime, / Where the summer's prime / Never fades away, / Lovely Lyca lay." And What does the speaker in the poem mean by southern clime? I asked. A time of timelessness, she answered, taking in a full breath and exhaling to show her state of relaxation. Her friend walked in and handed her a poem. Her friend writes poetry. His poem alluded to the greeks, and the Geats, and their feats, and their massive fleets. What philosophy! what might! such tragedy, and comedy!

He said, I didn't even know I was doing that, ho-hum! 
She always smiled and pushed up against him. Look, could you help me in understanding this question. It was a simple answer, he said, as he pointed to the issue in her problem while the girl rubbed her breast on his forearm, which served as a repellant that caused him to push off as nicely as he could without seeming rude.

The other one, She eats her lunch while wearing sunglasses most of the time. She often waves hello and shows you her pearly whites. Her hair is in the shape of two braids, intertwined and sometimes tangled, which she decorates with a daisy. Her lips shine a dull red that matches the cherry lollipops that she likes to suck. She moves in and out from the Station of the Hieroglyphs. A place dedicated to the improvement of the written word.

There is another one. Her pale water colors mask the face that cannot hide the speck in her abstracted eyes. She recognizes the sawdust in mine. She comes in searching for Michaelangelo high renaissance online. She knows the paintings well. She seems to be the only one that truly arrests the time, if not for herself then at least for others. She's a walking paradox; her ability to become more than a sketch 'n time--manikin or figurine--renders her unto a time-space on a canvas of a still life. Guys go goo-goo ga-ga gargling gape mouthed and jerking with galactorrhea, praying and screeching Hail Mary.


At the end of the day, the lights are turned off. Everything gets unplugged, and everyone carries home their burdens. They plug in again, perhaps for a bit of distraction (who understands these impulses that drive our addiction(s)), and effectively forget about time. Some lose time. Some attempt to capitalize on time. Some even try to catch up with time. And detached because of a sense of senselessness, disoriented by a whirlwind, you see them the next day, with all the knowledge in the world and no sense of time in history, further trans-fixed in their bubble-sphere, reading ye olden poetry, singing in the rat-race choir of classics and ageless masterpieces.

Burroughsian Echoes

The text is a fleshy image. In the beginning was the word, and the bird is the word. The Chinese seem to have this figured out, so did the Egyptians. Word as image, like little birdies etched onto a tablet or parchment of papyrus. Blocks of information contained in a symbol that captures the thing and the abstraction.

You will be reading these image sequences that are void of any film. Text reflects an image, and indeed, words make up a symbol system that is ultimately recognizable as images. When one reads, they are seeing images in a film sequence. The point of this movie is to show you the real behind the reel, which may be nothing but a mere show.  So sit back and don't relax. What I am about to tell you is intended to condition, perhaps de-CONdition, your mind.

You have all the necessary equipment.

When you have a tool, it only becomes a matter of proper priming for my usage. With enough triggers, I may be able to establish control, but control implies a controller, which means a captain needs to be in the driver seat at all times. But a controlled subject becomes a tool irrefutably when the tool applies its usages and operations on its own. In other words, no control is needed for a tool that is ruthlessly, completely controlled. In fact, such a "subject," or rather object, can operate mechanically and automatically. With enough suffusion of proper imagery, the film can be set to re-play the word and verbs necessary for my, or anyone else's, benefit. In fact, when fully taped, the movie can replay and replay and replay and replay. Like this: replayerplayerplayerplayer. The thought or idea of control becomes foreign to the subject-object. Thus, full and effective control can best be seen in the object that operates under the impression of subjectivity.

The recording device is in your mind; the film records in your brain, in the hippocampus, the "hem;" What I choose to implant and impress will follow in these next images:

A clown on a date with a gorilla.
A monkey on a children's playground
Zombies on a train plugged into Computers
Animals packed inside line 70A from DTLA
Vultures tossing out bones of a lifeless carcass

These snippets of movies lack plot. They are but compressed images broken down to their savage nakedness. The point: to umask the reel. The real deal: Barbaric savages posing as civilization. With these snippets I have captured and recorded time, just like any other recording device. I have shown you the world as it is, as my camera has captured it. Brief, indeed. For the purpose of a brief point. Here's the reminder: The world has been darkened by Atomic Power. The world has been disconnected by the wide-web-inter-net-work. The movie has been shaped meticulously so as to render a tragic ending. This movie has no happy ending. All of the stories end the same: Death. You start at point A, then move through B (something interesting might happen), then you die at C. Look at the setting of your film. Look at the Actors and note the roles. The real transmutes into a surreal reel. Check the reel, then re-check it. Note the psycho enviro-science that is hidden in plain sight.

Do YOu REally think yoU DIRECT the fILm in your mind?

"My lover is experiencing reverse evolution...I don't know how it happened, only that one day he was my lover and the next he was some kind of ape. It's been a month now he's a sea turtle."
-Aime Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt.

spacewalker

The whole absurdity of life and its all too seemingly designed, deceptively random, distribution of violence came into full perspective for a moment as I perceived the playfulness of children on a cloudy evening.

They ran around, over, under, and into the labyrinths of steel bars and plastic swings, sometimes barely missing a head-on collision with each other or the structures around them.

They twisted into and out of the monkey bars, playing and laughing shamelessly without a care in the world. Their innocence quickly shifted to violence, and then suddenly turned to forgiveness, and finally reverted back to playfulness.

Some remained in front of the swing, declaring themselves the slide kings: You may pass, you cannot; you are too ugly, and so on. Since many others simply ignored these "slide king" kids, they whizzed by and slid down before they could be caught; this angered the one's playing superintendent, but after a while, when no one was playing their games, they switched their tune: they grew angered and attempted to force the rules or started playing with everyone else.

Some tripped, hit their foreheads, but stood back up and joined the ensemble of shameless laughing and crying.

The see-saw went hee-haw as groups bunched more than 4 onto each side, crushing and suffocating each other and laughing.

A group came out from behind the steel rock-climb wall and ran past the two biggest kids that were arm wrestling; the group was chasing a boy and a girl. Leave us alone, the girl yelled, and she threw sand at them while the boy pulled her another direction; it was merry and all in good fun.

Some got mad, some got even, some got lost, many got lost. Those lost turned to each other, and then to another who pretended to know what was going on, for directions. You stand here, and wait, and wait, and renew your strength, and I will be good to those who wait, he said, as he went off to venture into what grounds he could cover.

The playground asphalt grew hot and terrorized their tiny feet; they hop-scotched and hoped for a stabler concrete that could easily provide better footing. They gathered, I fancied, and marched over to the parks and recreation office, demanding better play-grounds. It's not fair, and you exists for our needs they chanted. The man in the coat, bowler hat, and tiny mustache replied, Kiddies, listen, life is not fair. You must tough it out and be brave, face life! like me!

As I was lost in this tiny thought of children protesters, I heard a voice calling;

Hey mister! hey mister! a young boy yelled as I looked up at the sky in confusion and awe. What am I doing here? Pass the ball back mister.

I kick the ball over to him, and he resumes the game.

I start walking back home and on the way I see a police car pull over a man dressed as a clown. Nearby an elotero squeezes his horn hahh-hee-hahh-hee and his cart trembles over the pavement of cracked and pothole riddled asphalt. The clown glances my way and he looks awfully sad despite the make up on his face that outlines a smile. The officer approaches him, shining his flashlight. He makes the clown step out, asking why he seems to be acting so strange. The man replies, "ain't you ever seen a clown before?" to which the officer replies with a bludgeon to the man's forehead. The clown starts wobbling like a penguin, dazed from a blunt pop-pow to the skull.

I start laughing and the cop turns his thirst onto me, giving me a wide smile. Soon, more cop cars arrive in their black and white time capsules to get in on the clown.
                 .                                     .     .    
  .         .              .        .          .                 .                  .           @                                 .     .     
.             .                                .        .             .                                 .     .         .              .        .          .                 .                  .                                     .  .     .         .              .        .     .         .  .  .         .        .          .                 .             .                             . . ..     .     .     
                 .   .    :                      .. .         .     .
My sense of de-arrangement intensifies and, surprisingly, after so many years, I still stand in awe to the commonplace of the subspace and the no-space of alien-nation(s). .         .              .        .          .                 .        @          .      .         .              .        .          .                 .                  .                                     .     .              .  
     .   .    ::         .        .          .                 .             .       
                      . . ..     .     .     
                 .   .    :                .     .   .:   . .                         .           .                  :     .     . .         .              .        .          .        . :                .                                     .     .     
                 .      .         .              .        .          .                 .                  .                                       .              .        .          .        . :                 .    
                                 .     .  
                 .      .           .              .        .          .        . :                 .    
                                 .     .  
                 .      .         .     .     
                                 .     .    
These black and white sources of 19th century romanticism and raw, unreserved experience mete out ka-pow's and thwacks with extreme prejudice on mere chance and whim to complete strangers. 

They patrol the battleground of concrete jungles and surveil the run-down structures of cracked houses and creaking apartments. Some of the dwellers, properly pressurized, grow compressed and depressed, reflecting the violent condition of the madhouse and gradually metamorphosing into monkeys, dogs, cats, and rats; this tends to justify confinement into a kennel.

They establish their presence and set up centers of power wherever in whatever patch of asphalt they choose. This is Rodney King. This is deaf-mute beat by being misread. This is pre-emptive attack that aims it's violent force beyond the physical. This is discipline and punishment. This is madness. This is shameless. This is comedy. This is where I lose any sense to try to make sense of the irrational. This must be something I simply cannot comprehend. This is something I refuse to logicize. This is Kurtz. Over. Kurtz, do you read me? Kurtz's turds, Over. Oh, The Joy! The Bliss! This is me running fucking wild in a tight uniform and a hard-on for sadism. I am not the saint, or the devil; I am the clown and the cop...I am here for you! They might not know why they are patrolling and going to meetings, but I do, I'm here for you!

To Protect and Serve, Law and Order, in the name of Justice, Equality, and Freedom. yatta yatta.

Power to the police! power to the police! brrr! I raise my fist, they raise theirs. We are all together in this fight! yatta yatta.

Together, we will re-form! follow me! I am the KOP! pop pop! yatta yatta! I have the new rules, no rules! follow me! me! me who is you! You who is them! them who is we! we we! we we we! ya ta! ta! ta!

I will show how you how all these terms ring hollow against the crack of a polycarbon club to the skull. I will fill your nights with music and joy! My baton will make the night sing with the crying screams of clowns and laughs of power drunkards! together, yes together! In our tight tights. Sweaty and warm and oh oh oh! yatta! ya! ya! ya!

You see...
After the cops haul you in and take you to the madhouse. You have the right to remain laughing. See...They, the warden and the criminals, must return to their lives and head back to their houses and children, if any. Stainless steel cells, concrete walls, wood or plaster...it's all in the design.

One in the same, it's all insane, the one reflects the other in some manner and vice versa, only the label differs, only the name, which go by other associations but smell the same...it's all in the design:


~LAPD X3 VATOS LOKOS~
CHIEF AZUL
MISTER PAYASO
COLONEL KURTZ
~DO NOT PASS GO~


This madness reflects the nonsense conscience of a war torn vet, which, as "professionals" might add, makes much sense when taking trauma into account.

I should do something at this moment, but an immediate response invites a justification to bludgeon me directly...it's all in the design. I don't know very much about this law that they profess and have sworn to protect. I continue down the block minding my own business while everyone peeks out for the chisme. 
.                                     .     .  
  .         .              .        .          .                 .                  .           @                                 .     .     
.             .                                .        .             .                                 .     .         .              .        .          .                 .                  .                                     .  .     .         .              .        .     .         .  . ..         .        .          .                 .             .        .  .     .         .              .        .     .   .. ./.           .        .          .                 .           .    .      .                             . . ..     .        .      ....
                 .   .    :        .              .. .         .     . 

I'm out here, spacewalker, without any sense of place in the nospace of subspace. In a galaxy far far away. In a barrio in an other time and space. Consumed by the mechanix of gravity and unprovoked pressure of external forces. Is this God? the Great Unsettling that took place 13.798±0.037 billion years ago? Things tend to move in this manner: For every reaction there is an equal and opposite action, according to the Laws. Even more, for every reaction there seems to be the illusion of movement and action. Masked underneath the revolution exists the fractal that revolves around and around we go, where does it stop? nobody knows...

 .         .              .        .          .                 .        @          .      .         .              .        .          .                 .                  .                                     .     .     
     .   .    :.    .   .  .         .        .          .                 .             .       
                      . . ..     .     .     
                 .   .    :                    .  .    .  ..   :  ..                         .           .                :      ..          .              .        .          .        . :       .            .                                     .     .     
  .               .      .         .              .        .          .                 .                  .                                       .              .        .          .        . :                 .    
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                 .      .         .     .     
                                 .     .



This life deals unconditional doses of pain and joy, equally and without reserve or regret, but somehow I'm convinced that the grand architect is out there, to lunch somewhere, will be back in 30mins. I see it in the language that carries a structure that promotes a type of subjectivity that conditions the manner in which the public receives information (this language thus renders the subject object), but these are just "learned, cultured" theories inculcated in institution of big brain ink. Reduction of Eduction for education stations, Althusserian state apparati, I think (or do I?).

If Bill Burr where there and saw what I saw, he wouldn't be surprised at the extended whacks of the State via police bludgeon. Bill Burr, The Cosmonaut of Inner Space, that so called Godfather of Punk, would remind that the Word impacts the nervous system. The Word impacts the barrio, my community, through the forceful reminders of its power in the Black and White ink of blunt force trauma. The Word, palabra!

Here, look there, Pornification of the nation! Sex and Violence! Sex and Violins! Sex and Vile! Can you feel it? of course not, the nature of its power remains in its cunning subtlety of neutralizing with the internalization of Word. I see it in the language that carries a structure that promotes a type of subjectivity that conditions the manner in which the public receives information (this language thus renders the subject object). If Bill Burr where there, he wouldn't be surprised at the extended whacks of the State via police bludgeon, nor of the current findings in neurolinguistics. Bill Burr, The Cosmonaut of Inner Space, Godfather of Punk, would remind that the Word impacts the nervous system. The Word impacts the barrio, my community, through the forceful reminders of its power in the Black and White ink of blunt force trauma.

Here, look there, Pornification of the nation! Sex and Violence! Sex and Violins! Sex and Vile! Can you feel it? of course not, the nature of its power remains in its cunning subtlety of neutralizing with the internalization of Word...

...fuck the revolution! 

Fuck it! look...here are some more abstraction reactions.

There is a discarded leaflet beneath my sole. I pause to pick it up; it contains formulated text that convey the message of a new age of spiritualism.

There are many of these new age spiritualist wandering nowadays preaching that the Spiritual age is at hand, and that it is time for a wake up call, and that the way we are living is not healthy for the earth, but they are lost in the inner space. There is a quote by some so called Krishnamurti: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" ha! haha! hahaha! hahahahaha! No wonder I'm so ill at ease. But I'm not sick. There is nothing wrong here. This is the program. This is how it's been.




The Iron and the Intellectual still rule, mightily, crushing the airheads and awarding those able to best manipulate the Word-organism to entertain and enthrall and spellbind. That is why I pray every morning, I plead the 5th and concede to a shell of a man, I am too weak and too stupid to open my mouth in the age of the Iron and the Intellect:

Sana sana colita de rana! Everyone! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana!Sana sana colita de rana!Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana! Sana sana colita de rana!

Someday, someday, keep patient, I tell myself. And good things yatta yatta. God helps those who help themselves, so I'll help myself to my goal at any means necessary. Paradox? perhaps, do you know the mind of God? just wait and see...Silence is consent, silence is golden, Silence is...Paradox? perhaps...just wait...just wait...I'm reading my pedagogy of the depressed..."come on Harding, play the game. Play it!" they tell me, I say to you, that I say to them,  "I am playing the game! Cease interrupting! I can't concentrate!"...."play the game! c'mon play the game!"...just wait, just you wait on these empty threats!

I looke away from the smile and arriving cars. Behind me, a man screeches and weeps. There are muffled words struggling to escape the throat: mm...pp..ppl..ppoleeesee...ay!!!!

I walk forth to the sound of static from radios and silence of no wind. The moon seems beautifully bright tonight, delicate and perfectly floating in its wandering, plotted, plight.

I shake the pathetic fallacy blues and walk toward further nonsense. I walk toward a joy and a pain worth living. I get my head out of the clouds and start focusing on the walk toward production and reproduction. There is much to do, I must hurry up. Goodnight, good bye. There are places to go and angels and demons to meet; I must perfect the art of peripheral movement. I must find, carve, fill with meaning and purpose out there, here, somewhere of nowhere. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, all lepers, rejects, cops, and clowns go to heaven. There is nothing here now. nothing but kipple. junkware. Go forth now, go forth gogogo! go forth and seek the lotos for all I care. Good night and nighty night. tick tock tick tock.  See you in the front lines. Ta Ta!

Reference(s) and allusion(s):
Franz Kafka
Harry Gamboa
Ken Kesey
T.S. Eliot
William Burroughs
and other's I definitely forgot.

tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow

The sugar cherry plum, she bit, turned into a sweet kiss that preserved the salt on her tongue to bittersweet reminders of what some might call a time without time.

The lips became a bit numb with a thousand tiny pricks that pulsated from within, and the back of my throat itched as though a feather lightly motioned up and down.

You may consider it luck, and in some cases not quite, perhaps a curse...but in every drip of her kiss I suspend momentarily, eternally in a second hand that beats the time away and worth every tick--it suck'd me first, and now sucks thee.

When two merge to one, there is an attempt to defy the laws of physics...gravitational attraction counters metaphysical repulsions. The harder we hug, the more we push each other away. Softer. Gentler. She said. 
I apologized for my dagger hands and poison kisses. 
It's by virtue of my existence. I'm working on it.

What does a kiss mean to you? she asked...
everything, I said.

What's the matter?
nothing...

Our eyes locked, attempting to unmask the meanings and purpose of meaninglessness, and all the ideologues that fill and re-fill.

the...chemistry (if we could all it that), contained the capability to dissolve the corrosiveness of reason that reduces, crystalizes, and justifies: 

I apologize, you see...
and
What happened was...
and

Underneath the camera God-eye of the State, and among others' engrossed in their PDA's, our images flickered together, forever, and entered into the cloud database, two bodies dissolved to figures woven into the seams of an intricate network--the information angels, not half so happy...Went envying her and me.


...


We closed our eyes and at the moment of a blink, you were gone, as if taken away from me.

..   .then...the...shades..

.. .   .   ..and tomorrow, & tomorrow & tomorrow...
     .

I waited for a letter from the postman who delivered nothing but crossword puzzles.

The photo in my wallet, gradually faded, and eroded at the edges, thus revealing the glossy blank shimmer behind the monochrome images.

Until...

I thought I found you, once. I tried to remind you, of a time of mysticism and cynicism, about cherries and roses, and angels and demons, about metaphysicks, falsettos and vocal cords, oh oh oh oh...ah~

Look, I'm reading this book about love and poverty, and war.
let's talk it over over some coffee.
no, I don't want to talk about that, you said, gripping your purse and putting on some glasses.

You said that you couldn't go through that insanity again, and that I should be in an insane asylum, and that you felt sorry for me, because I needed to be cured, I needed to be cured real bad, and that the only reason I did not recognize my condition was because everyone was suffering from that which was commonplace.

What is the medicine, I foolishly asked.

And you vanished and left me in the body of your exhaled smoke, holding your ovoid necklace and filling my lungs with hot air, and feeling, for the first time, exhausted and abandoned.

My eyes grew pitch black, and shrank in the light;

29 years of non-stop heartbeats, and who knows how many more, always pounding and pummeling away, without break. The mind takes to respite, but the heart, the unremmitting persistence of the heart, was enough to cause me to feel "pins and needles" with its' rhythm being thrown off. 

the doctor diagnosed, and declared,
your nerves are damaged. 


It was now just a matter of time... 
my reflection grew pale, nearly white, and my day's were filled with nothing but clarity. 

I floated around crowds...

...commonplace...commonplace...I uttured and muttered here and there like a diseased and traumatized man haunted by the past, locked inside a re-ocurring nightmare.

HERE IS A CONCRETE DESCRIPTION OF THE LONELINESS:
(pro)NOUN(ad)VERBADJECTIVEPREPOSITIONCONJUNCTIONDETERMINERandINTERJECTION ALL SYNTACTICALLY COMPRESSED WITH SURGICAL PRECISION.

HERE IS THE UNDERMINING OF MY VERY TEXT IN TRYING TO RELATE SOMETHING I FIND HARD TO FEEL, INDEED, HARD TO FEEL.

"Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel" -Hendrix


References:
Poe, Donne, Suzuki, Hendrix and @

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.