Synch Or Swim

I recently decided to type out an old experimental story that I had handwritten in a journal. Here is the first half of it:

 

WE were sitting out the heavy wait that had become our Friday nights of late. Our silent company giving the air substance. Slowing time until it was thick enough for even the faintest brush of cotton to ring a shrill, piercing alarm throughout the small apartment. And that is what happened. It came on as a slow rolling tide in the night. She issued forth such a steady, controlled breath, as not to disturb the settled debris that blanketed our luxurious sarcophogas. Until then, my selfish ego was contentedly lulled into lethargy by the idea of a friend in hell. A cohort in captivity. But this angel enchained sighed a sirens swansong that spoke both of dedication and suffering. Love and sacrifice. All in one perfectly pitched puff. Her pursed lips revealed a fire that swelled inside her. A long, smooth intensity that scorched the thread of my patient tolerance. Guilt came on unexpectedly, like a silent dragon in the dark, waiting to strike.
  My tongue twitched a spoken spasm. It writhed, lashing back and forth in its cavernous confines. Sounds stumbled out, rolling rhythmically into a stutter. Language rediscovered itself through fossilized ruins of disconnected syllables. Scattered strata of an archaic sentence structure carefully excavated. Mined and refined. Dusted and polished restoration of vocational vernacular.
"Let's go."
  The first two words that have ever bypassed all of the censors and conformed my mouth to their escape before an automatic sensory shutdown. Vocal chords must have been struck by invisible hands on an isolated island in the back of my mind. Leaving two confused receivers to sort through the rubble of the attack for some sort of black box full of answers. But alas, I am red-handed with the weight of the medium. Luckily, she plays the control in this newly constructed lab that I may play off her reactions until it blows up in my face. She is putting on her coat.
  As I keep face and let my fluttering hand take the keys to our freedom, analysis of the words continues.
  'Let's go.' Let us go. Who is 'us', powerful enough to momentarily take me over? And to whom would someone with such power be requesting a 'going'? Ours were the only ears in the room and so we roll. The new blood pumpling through my warming body suggests that the catalytic conversation piece was a godsend. There is even a moment where I conjecture that we conjured a spirit through the ouija board in my throat. Whatever it was, I am now closing the locked door behind us.
  As new ground is tread, we follow the thread which turns out to be ignited by sheer will. I've accepted the responsibility of those words, still floating fresh, that lit this fuse that we must refuse over and over, lest detonation ensue. And after what seems like forever, a message is relayed like pavement over the foundation of 'Let's go'.
"Where are we going?" she deftly inquires, with a fluent grace that can't be imitated.
  Her voice has the opposite effect on me than 'mine' did back at home. The self-inspection is cut short and introversion makes an exit out of the ether, tagged onto her line. She effortlessly executes each earshot with the precision of a delicate hammer, sharpening my now needed senses, led by a hearing as in a courtship ritual out of order, determining my state as sound and fit for society in full sensuality of the outside.
  'Where are we going?'

   Tear yourself away from the tide of progress before it begins it's inevitable clockwork recession and pulls you down. Jump tracks and let absolute reorientation be the new state. Withdraw and be utterly struck by the innate perfection of nature/reality/home/nameless grounds from which strings spring! Nothing comes close to what is. The dream of the simulacrum only heightens our appreciation of what it yearns to be. The beholder checkmates it's subjects and reveres the unreachable, meeting it halfway. Meeting, as a constant act, reflecting the spiraling impossibility of contact and laughing tears for the sake of one's own life.

  I live in theory. Allusory stories and dreams are traversed with a freedom of movement and a speed, marked by spontaneous complex architectures, that would take lifetimes of physically fleshed out algorithms to reach any sensible description of. I've withheld all due respect to the lowest common reality because I'm not above the earth. I love the other world that I consciously deny every day and don't get me wrong, I do long for it. How do I describe the being that I've become? I am a trembling tower under a thousand coats. Reason and logic buttress my design flaws and my entrances are subtle subterranean storm drains reached only by acrobatic guilds.

 

II

So, when does the I finally accept that collect call to action? When do I resuscitate that perpetual chorus of sighs that threaten to blow my house down? How do I reconcile anticipation with arrival- without compromise- with tact- without excuses- with absolute resolution... The path to the present is accidentally broken into like a tilted pinball machine and true intent hides beneath countless layers. We peel off the first few by number and chronology itself already dissolves. It isn't about direction anymore, just balance. Prometheus steals heat so that he can share it. His theft is a rebellion against dictation, a towering I that survives the apocalypse of understanding.

III

When? The only question is still too heavy, my instincts search for handouts, buying time in order to prove that these words are appreciating. Frustrated memory chasing the periphery and lapping at the shady banks. Too romantic. False Roman ideals crumbling against adversity. The wind chokes our own screams into us and we stop making sense, we cling to creation, anything, scribbles, proof, even shit. It becomes a sick swamp and our company is a legion of loathing, grubby abandoned children. Nothing sacred lasts and we crawl on bloody knees out of the corner. Everything that we've committed our education to laughs back at us as we rape the foggy mirror, forcing our cursed light into a crude, undercooked snack.

This is how things end. Loose strands are tied and we look upon the tapestry from the same nursery that raised us. We are alone among the deaf and dumb and strange angels offer up grudges to help us sink. But we know that our welcome is worn. We take our pride straight and we punctuate.

This is where I now come to depressurize, fart around without the responsibility of communication. Maybe something good will actually come out all this mental masturbation.

enTITLEed

by

Yourself

I am a vampire. Sleeping away the light and suckling at strange spirits under the foggy blog of night. The homuncular parasite, secretly siphoning the life from your distracted soul. Sitting on your treasured chest cage, clearing the congestion to isolate the charger. Every step is deliberate, holding up a face under a downpour of circumstance. Sniffing at the wind, testing it's temper before letting it in.

In here, none of me has to wait for feedback. I'm all in. Probability is informed by the records department, with all access backstage passage to the capital Eye. Macroscopic perception responding on a dime, the free slave forever getting used to the taste, the tongue of the world swishing, rotating the crops, seasoning veterans under the machine. Reading my own rites as they are caste, there is no question about what moves me. If there was, I'd be tripping, hoping to land one... I often pray for heavy fire. Clear the field of debris from space. Nature is my master, but the role is only for my own fucking good. Frustration for mommy. Laughing tears for no reason. What's it all come down to, ultimately? Brakes. Revenue claims and stock quotes of the day. Pitches from ditches.

Reading My Own Rites

I haven't written solely for myself since I was a child, and even that was only a short-lived stint filling the first section of a small journal with exclamatory descriptions of my family's Disneyland vacation. I had no censor. No reflective "other" sitting shotgun with it's critical gaze cast upon every element of style, scolding my runny fingers for being so accident prone. I've personally never found it to be worthwhile to keep a personal journal, as the prospect seems to only encourage neurosis. I should find the idea of maintaining an online blog to be ludicrous if there weren't any feigned audience at least floating formless in the writer's banks. Naturally, I find myself writing to the nearest riders I've read, answering them respectfully and likely formulating new questions. Acknowledging directions and letting signature flairs fill in the blank stretches. Burning out easily and resting often.

I take my time and somebody acts jealous.

"Must be nice" they would spout with that trademark cynicism, in all of one breath condemning good fortune as they validate themselves with another number, peer pressure enabling longer periods of smooth, unnoticed surrender. I gradually dissolve as I enter the scene, implicating myself until I can no longer physically gauge my affect on others. Blind faith would hardly last here, as the conscience quickly metabolizes it, abandoning the hollowed host to sleep off it's lingering doubts. Who is this crowd that haunts me? The oppressed become my own oppressors and we suffer well together. The moment I'm forced to defend my freedom, it becomes something else. My constitution is public domain. Proof read. Going through motions, hoping to catch a break. Can I get a witness?

 

Ultimately, every breath is a small sigh that disturbs the air. My presence sets off nerves like tripwires under the ether. The transference holds all the grace of a hurdler without legs. Yet, even if it means razing the delicate, time-honored structures of the permanent residents, it still feels like a well justified exercise in futility. These questions of purity and this discrimination of nature drag like old habits. The last reservation of our pride preserves it's trash and calls it giftwrap. Shame is only the ghost of one's own promises tapping on the mirror in a familiar code. The threat of love begging is what gets us up. We never want it to come to that. Eloquence is a riddle about the mundane, dropping inconspicuous hints like rose petal candy wrappers. Losing virginity is never worth it, but faith does grow hoarse. We eventually want to send the flares, shoot the works like peacocks excusing their own vulnerability, embarrassed over our misbehaving children... We want to share the fruit that springs from the secret gardens of our minds, without making up for our own misrepresentation. I write these words for us, placing bets on my intuition in a race without a finish line.

I have decided to pick up this dusty old husk of a blog again.
Originally intended to be a promotional showcase for the short graphic novels that I completed years ago, my blogger "dashboard" now tells me that this place has received 2815 page views since it's inception in 2009. What's more is that it still seems to average at least a handful of hits every week, which is of some consequence considering the length of time since it's abandonment. Every blip on the counter is just another slightly disappointed surfer passing by...

I picked up something today that I have shamefully been neglecting for far far too long now. The familiar novelty of creasing that sturdy cover back against it's pristine binding, flipping through the ten or so pages that lead into the actual substance... Well, there is no experience like it. This book is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and already, one chapter in, it is proving to be as welcome a return to fine literature for me as it is a departure from the countless other incidental writing forums one encounters day-to-day. What I'm trying to do is point at the 'book as format', not only physically, but as a representation of intent. The consideration that goes into simply binding a collection of words is a ritual that separates itself from everything. It commands a level of respect that is otherwise absent, not only denoting a definite beginning and end, but giving it a spirit.

I can so easily come off sounding like a bewildered stoner when I write. This is one major reason for my reanimating this space. After breaking into the surface of a new book early this morning, warm, dark coffee at my side, I felt a passion begin to reconvene with my consciousness. Trivialities slowly became important and my own inner voice began to harmonize again. Nothing as dramatic as a rebirth, but more like the pure contentment of returning home. I took a shower, my thoughts abstracting and congealing freely, impulsively. I began to plan on writing this blog entry as soon as I rinsed and dried myself, turning the lens, curbing the waves of ideas. And, like always, I find myself unable to catch that elusive fire. Playing catch-up on the page, hoping to recreate that first time... But this is an okay start.