Regaytionships

To preface, let me just say that yes, i know in the title I cleverly placed the word gay within the word relationships. Yes, I did use the word gay in a somewhat negative context. Let me just say that I fully support homosexuals and treat them equally as I would any other human. I fully support the idea that same sex couples should have every right as any other. In fact, I think gays should get tax breaks. Yep, you get rewarded for not increasing your carbon footprint and increasing the worlds population. Gays have more money to spend anyways since they don't have to spend it on children, we could stabilize the economy like this! and help the planet! I've never understood why people are against gay marriage because marriage is gay anyways.
  I'll go one further and say that I wish that 95% of the other men on this earth were gay. Then I would have less competition for women and there'd still be some dudes around for the grenades, the sea turtles and the land beasts. 


   But please, I'm asking all my gay friends, just let me have that word. I like calling stuff gay. It's not like I use it in the MOST negative connotation. It's not like I say "Hitler was totally gay". But look, until recently in the 20th century the word meant something totally different and we gladly gave the word over to you. If someone asks me how I'm doing today I can't say "I'm feeling really gay today, Steve!" because that translates into "I want a throbbing cock in or near me"! Lots of words have different meanings, so if I could please go on using it that would be great. thanks.


   Onward to my topic. It seems that most of the problems in the lives of people I know stem from relationships. Problems with, the lack of, one that they can't seem to end, somebody's cheating, not enough sex, fighting etc, etc, etc. I must say that I have found a great peace in my life and I'd like to share with you how.
  
 For a while now I have made the joke "I don't care anymore like Phil Collins". A reference to his the first track from 1982's "Hello I Must Be Going" album. I said "I don't care anymore" so many times in jest, that one day it just burned itself on my heart. When I hear about relationship problems that people are going through, I can usually relate because my relationship career ran the gamut from beautiful to ugly, meaningful to stupid. I've been through long term, short term, shallow, friends with benefits, cheaters, liars, fighting and boring, but now I have this disconnect...it all seems so foolish to me.
   The only thing you can count on in this world is that you can't count on anyone. People are fickle. They change. They get bored. They get tempted. and all that's OK. We're all fallible and there's a beauty in that. Why do people set themselves up for failure by saying "I'm gonna want this person all up in my face forever and ever amen"? I've always said "Never say never or forever". The worst part about marriages failing is that people had to make a spectacle out of it. If you feel so perfectly aligned with someone that in your heart you feel like you'd die for them and never leave them why not do that shit quietly, then if you change and fail it's not so bad. It's like all those people who have straight edge tattoos. Straight edge for life? yeah right.
   I think as a culture the need for marriage is phasing out. People have options nowadays. you can survive as a single parent. So why go through all that hullabaloo? Just live together til it aint cool anymore, then you don't have to fuck with the law, you don't have to give anyone money and you don't feel like a failure.


"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."- Albert Einstein


   I tried and failed so many times I think it would be insane to try anymore. I had some amazing times with some great people. I learned volumes about myself through my relationships and especially through my breakups...maybe more through the breakups. I was always so afraid to let go. Fear was the greatest motivator. I didn't understand that you don't have to possess someone to appreciate them. People are like sunsets, all the more beautiful if you just bask in them while they're here and not lament when they're gone. There'll be another one tomorrow.


In fact I think the stupidest I've ever acted in my life was over relationships ending. Fucking crying an shit? Acting like it was the end of the world, feeling like I wanted to die. I look back now and can't believe I acted like that or felt that way. Time gave me perspective and now I couldn't see things any other way.


   "But Christian", you may be saying, "This girl is special. Her vagina is made of hope and wishes. It has different rooms. It's another portal to Narnia. Elves and unicorns live in it. The elves bake warm cookies and your dick squishes into warm, chocolaty cookie goodness". How much is your fear based on sex? Haven't you learned yet that sex is easy? That anyone can get it at anytime? That often times it's not worth the fear of disease or the drama that goes with it or the fact that you have to hang out with them afterwards? I challenge you, guys and girls. next time you're on your way to hang out with someone of the opposite sex, pull over to the side of the road and rub one out. Just masturbate on the side of the road. I assure you when you're done you'll be thinking. "wait...I have all this stuff I need to do". But, if you still want to hang out with them, you may have something special there. I can't stress enough, once you realize that sex is easy then it won't be your motivating factor anymore. I've proven to the world that I can get laid...now what? How about making something of yourself?


   After the last relationship I had I was bummed for a year. A fucking year! But you know what I did? I made movies, wrote songs, went to the gym and did a host of other things I wanted to do. I worked on myself mentally, physically and spiritually until I found that peace, that completeness. It's like my friend's song says: "watch what I can do today. I'll climb a mountain, forge a river, cross the steam. I'll show 'em all today". Now I think about how much time I would've wasted watching movies, making dinners and eating ice cream. I don't have time for all that shit. I'm not looking to waste time. I've got a world to conquer. I don't get to wake up and do exactly what I want to everyday and I need to relentlessly try to remedy that. Last year I acted in 9 film projects, directed one, played a load of shows, wrote music, gained 20 lbs at the gym and did a shitload of other selfish shit. Not one time did I have to entertain someone, make someone feel special, hang out with someone's family, listen to someone's problems, deal with someone else's drama, tell someone where I as going or have someone all up in my face an shit.


  And how much of your fear is based on pride? You want to break up with someone and do and everything is fine until they fuck someone else or you even think about them fucking someone else. Then you try real hard to get them back. You can't possess people. And why would you want to? They all have expiration dates.


Everywhere I look I see people settling for less. I see people struggling to hold on to something that's not working. I see people unhappy. I see people jumping from one relationship immediately to another. Why is everyone so scared? I used to get lonely, but now I have no time. Worlds don't get conquered by people snuggling up to their special boo and eating pie.


And all the people that accuse me of being feelingsy? Generally they're all involved in regaytionships. The proof is in the pudding, and I'll have myself another bowl of I-can-do-whatever-the-fuck-I-want-pudding while you eat your same-motherfucker-up-in-my-face day-in-and-day-out-hold-hands-and-watch-tv pudding.

The greenline, hippies and the rule of 5%

Woke up with that old melancholy feeling. I guess it beats waking up totally depressed, or hating my life in the morning because I have to go do work that I hate. Mornings before work are always hard. I'm always thinking about what I could be creating that day instead of grinding one more day off my life.
   But I love working for myself. I booked a job for monday and left the house with my dog to go get coffee. I hadn't been drinking it these last few weeks. Trying to detox a little bit. But last night was a late night and goddamnit i needed it. The day is beautiful. It feels like spring. I decided, fuck responsibilities. I'm taking my dog to the woods.
   My whole life I've always been attracted to the in between places. Woods, ditches, empty lots...anywhere that 95% of people wont go because they don't want to get their shoes dirty. I guess I've always been troubled by people. For years my favorite spot to go to was the railroad tracks on what is now called the Greenline. Now, I'm not complaining. Memphis needed something like this. I'm actually surprised they did it. Memphis usually only supports things that are dumb and safe and only suitable for the great unwashed. The greenline is free and you have to go through the woods for a bout a mile. People might get hurt out there and not be within 20 seconds of a walgreens. I figured the Memphis Greenline would have vats of Ranch dressing for us to drink every quarter mile. In a way, they took a sacred spot from me, but I'll gladly give it up if it means people getting outside and off their fat asses.
   The bridge over the wolf river was a meditative spot for me. I spent many hours sitting on that bridge, smoking cigarettes and looking at the stars. It was a perfect crossroads. You could go east, you could go west, you could plunge into the woods or you could jump off and die. Just like life, except sometimes in life your choices just aren't that clear.
Me and Brian Moore used to swim in the pond that the greenline crosses. We'd actually wait for a train to come and when it got real close to us we'd jump off the tracks into the water. If you swam down to the bottom it was cold and if you plunged your feet in to the muddy bottom it would release a sulphuric smell. It's funny the dangers that we look past as children, just to experience life. There were snakes there. The water was probably polluted. We could've gotten hit by one of those trains.
   As I write this the memories that I made there come flooding back. One of the first times I went down there was with Grant Fey, who just offed himself a few weeks ago. It took us forever to build up the courage to jump off the tracks into the lake, and I was the first one to go.There used to be a train door that floated on the lake like a raft and we would push it around with long sticks, sometimes with 5 kids on it.. One time me and Jason and Chris Forte bought a watermelon at Easy Way and went down there with a .32 and blew holes in it, imagining it to be a girl that one of us was dating. There was the time that about ten of us trudged through the swampy woods at 4am with one flashlight looking for an alleged pot plant. Or when a still mulleted Joey and I hung out down there even though we were arch enemies at the time and someone pushed me in the lake.
   One of my all time favorites was when Jason ran away from home in the 8th grade. We had not been friends very long. He couldn't stay at my house so we decided he was going to live in those woods, and still go to school. We camped out that night in the cold, ate chunky beef stew out of cans by the fire, smoked poison ivy and walked to school in the morning. During first period, the cops showed up and took him away.


It sucks what we have to settle for as nature here in memphis. A paved track with thirty feet of trees on either side of it, strewn with garbage. The river it crosses is really a channel cut by the Army Corps of Engineers. That's why it's big and muddy and straight. If you want to see what the river is supposed to look like drive out past Rossville. It meanders through woods and under fallen trees and you can see to the bottom. Once a crew of us drove out that far and thought we could canoe back to Memphis. We were on that river for 9 hours with our homemade oars getting eaten by mosquitoes and scratched up by fallen trees. when we finally gave up and got a ride back to our car by some Deliverance rednecks it took ten minutes by road to travel what took 9 hours by river.
   Since the water now gets rushed through Memphis  and no longer floods the woods are slowly being choked out by privet and scrub brush. When an old tree falls a new on can not take it's place because the brush deprives it of sunlight and nutrients. One day it will be a forest of privet, which is itself a non native species. The lake will be taken over by the invasive chinese carp, that eat every other species out of the lake until it is deprived of diversity.

   On this day presently, I didn't go down there. It's not one of those in between places anymore. It's a major thoroughfare, and sometimes I just need to not see another soul for a moment. To not hear another voice. I was trying to explain to someone tonight about how I hate people, but I was trying to not sound like an asshole. Maybe I am. But I understand that evil does not exist in nature, only in man. Animals are never sociopaths. Honestly, if I could blink a billion people out of existence I would. For the greater good. 
   People I know joke about me being a hippy because I have respect for nature. I resent that. maybe hippy meant something different at one time, but to me hippy means slacker. It means lazy. Stoned. Apathetic. Non violent out of sheer laziness. I don't believe in non violence anymore. I think we should have public beheadings. BP execs, wartime presidents...off with their heads. Most of the people that call me hippy don't give a shit about anything. 


   I spent that day at Shelby Forest  and left the trail, just plunging headlong into the woods. I could hear nothing. No planes, no birds...nothing. I found a rusting car in the middle of the woods and wondered how it got there. After walking several hours I found that place in myself...that clarity of mind that I can only find when I get away from people. I thought about how I used to have memories and get these "pangs". It was a longing for time I had left behind. I would physically feel a pain shoot through me when I thought of a time I had loved. I don't get those anymore. Sure, I long for the presence of some of the people I love, but I never long to be in the past anymore. I've never felt more content or clear of my purpose and who I am than right now in my life. I have no confusion as to who I am or where I am going. I have no void to fill with a relationship. This may pass, but it's a great feeling, a great place to be at. To love who you are and what you do and feel totally sure that you are on the right path. But I think I earned this place.


   I was explaining to someone tonight about the rule of 5%. The rule of 5% is a Nation of Islam teaching, and although I think most all religions are hogwash, I really like this little teaching. Basically  85% of the world's people of all races and faiths are the deaf, dumb and blind masses of the people who are easily led in the wrong direction. These 85% of the masses have neither knowledge or wisdom and are manipulated by 10% of the people who have knowledge but use it for their own personal gain. Those 10% are said to manipulate the 85% masses of the people through ignorance, the skillful use of religious doctrine, and the mass media.

The third group referred to as the 5%, possess both knowledge and wisdom, the righteous teachers and are at constant struggle and war with 10% to reach and free the minds of the masses of the people.

This person asked me if I felt like I had wisdom. I said at the time that it would be unwise to go around making claims like that about myself. But I have lived, and I have an understanding. I see a greater picture and am aware when I'm being manipulated. Things that hold importance for most people hold little for me. I see a lot as foolish, as petty, as a waste. At the same time I have a sense of peace, but it is peace through experience. I feel like I see something that 95% of people don't see. I'm not going to name it. I'll let the feeling speak for itself. It's 1:30 in the morning and I'm rambling. none of this means shit.

How was the funeral?

I woke up to intense dreams. Apparently a lot of people had intense dreams last night. When I was in the shower I got a text from my mom about an old friend of mine that died. When I was younger I thought it was morbid that anyone would read the obituaries, but as I'm older I find myself scanning through it sometimes when I'm at the coffee shop and have given up on the crossword puzzle. I always do my crosswords in pen and draw a big dick on them when I get frustrated. If you ever pick up a paper with a half finished crossword in pen with a big dick drawn on it? that was mine.
  
 I didn't know how he died, but I cleared work for the day and made plans to go to the funeral. We had gone to grade school together since the first grade. Went to each other's birthday parties and spent the night at each other's houses. He was one of my few grade school friends that actually went to my high school. We always had pleasant words for each other but drifted apart. I can't remember the last time I saw him, so I'm not sad. Only thoughtful and respectful. People die. shit happens.

  I put on my suit and went out into the cold and rainy day. Just the day for a funeral. The funeral was at the Church of the River, on the bluffs overlooking the river. The views are beautiful and if I was going to go to a church I'd probably go to this one. At least you can stare out the window at the water. 
   I met his brother and sister, who didn't seem to remember me. I'm not offended. Last time they saw me I was a kid. Probably been 20 years at least. 
  
    His brother told me it had been a suicide. Typical. That seems to be the leading cause of death for people i know, followed by overdose. Every 6 months or so, I hear about another suicide or OD. I get it. I understand why. I suffer from a mild depression. It comes in waves. In 2010 it hardly reared it head at all. In 2009 it was around big time. It can be triggered by events, or even the weather. 
   
   I'm fascinated by suicide, but don't worry. I'll never do it unless I have some disease that reduces me to a shit and piss factory. I will die with dignity, goddammit. And if i did, i would make sure I had enough strength to get out to the woods. Let the crows and coyotes eat me. My parting gift to the world.

    There was a slide show on the wall with pictures of Grant. Pictures from when we played soccer together at St. Louis. Pictures of him as a grown man hiking in what looked liked Yosemite National Park. His brother told me he had been living in California, had a long term girlfriend and enjoyed hiking. At one point in my life I would have asked "with all those things to live for why would he kill himself?" Depression is not rational. When I'm going through a low spell, I could make a list of all the things I'm grateful for, all the people that I love and love me, and it still will not help. Depression is this ugly funk that comes from the center of your heart and it's hard to see anything else when it's around.
  
    I was interested in Grant's love for hiking because it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I recently read Into The Wild and then I just finished another book called A Walk In the Woods about a guy who tries to hike the Appalachian Trail. I've been fantasizing about doing that. Walking for 6 to 8 months through woods and mountains, camping every night with only what I can carry on my back. I'd give anything to try. And I know that if my depression ever gets too big a hold of me, that's what I would do. Instead of killing yourself, why not do the craziest thing you ever thought of. Walking the Appalachian trail you will either quit, succeed and learn volumes about yourself or die. I wrote a song once that said: "with nothing to lose, you could have let it ride instead of folding your hand. at least you'd still be alive. Just stand up and be a man." I wrote that about two other friends who had killed themselves. But then again, it's a rational mind that would think: "I'm miserable. I might as well go for broke". A depressed mind is totally obscured by dark clouds.

   During the sermon i stared out at the river. The words were delivered by stiff old men. They were all about praising god and worshiping god. I looked out in the grey cold and tried to imagine what it looked like before all the hardwoods were cut down, before everything was razed and divided. The idea of worshiping god was silly to me. The only reason we want for anything is because someone, probably a stiff old man devised a system so that they could have power and control and be rich. Everything we needed was out there for the taking and they took it from us. That's probably why people get depressed and kill themselves. This world was designed for the rich and shallow. Rather than have the biggest condo overlooking the river, I'd rather look at an expanse of river unpolluted my man's trivialities. God was all around us. It was not in a booming voice from the sky, but in the sun and the rivers, the animals and plants. These things would be abundant and if they were not, we would die and death is nothing to be feared. The dead get to sleep. the dead don't have to toil. The men who took over had not the wisdom to know this and I have little faith that the men who hold power now will ever know it either. Power is a liquor that causes madness.
   
Staring at the river made me think of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse where he goes to the river and is thinking suicidal thoughts.

Siddhartha walked through the forest, was already far from the city, and
knew nothing but that one thing, that there was no going back for him,
that this life, as he had lived it for many years until now, was over
and done away with, and that he had tasted all of it, sucked everything
out of it until he was disgusted with it. Dead was the singing bird, he
had dreamt of. Dead was the bird in his heart. Deeply, he had been
entangled in Sansara, he had sucked up disgust and death from all sides
into his body, like a sponge sucks up water until it is full. And full
he was, full of the feeling of been sick of it, full of misery, full of
death, there was nothing left in this world which could have attracted
him, given him joy, given him comfort.

Passionately he wished to know nothing about himself anymore, to have
rest, to be dead. If there only was a lightning-bolt to strike him
dead! If there only was a tiger a devour him! If there only was a
wine, a poison which would numb his senses, bring him forgetfulness and
sleep, and no awakening from that! Was there still any kind of filth,
he had not soiled himself with, a sin or foolish act he had not
committed, a dreariness of the soul he had not brought upon himself?
Was it still at all possible to be alive? Was it possible, to breathe
in again and again, to breathe out, to feel hunger, to eat again, to
sleep again, to sleep with a woman again? Was this cycle not exhausted
and brought to a conclusion for him?

Siddhartha reached the large river in the forest, the same river over
which a long time ago, when he had still been a young man and came from
the town of Gotama, a ferryman had conducted him. By this river he
stopped, hesitantly he stood at the bank. Tiredness and hunger had
weakened him, and whatever for should he walk on, wherever to, to which
goal? No, there were no more goals, there was nothing left but the
deep, painful yearning to shake off this whole desolate dream, to spit
out this stale wine, to put an end to this miserable and shameful life.

A hang bent over the bank of the river, a coconut-tree; Siddhartha
leaned against its trunk with his shoulder, embraced the trunk with one
arm, and looked down into the green water, which ran and ran under him,
looked down and found himself to be entirely filled with the wish to
let go and to drown in these waters. A frightening emptiness was
reflected back at him by the water, answering to the terrible emptiness
in his soul. Yes, he had reached the end. There was nothing left for
him, except to annihilate himself, except to smash the failure into
which he had shaped his life, to throw it away, before the feet of
mockingly laughing gods. This was the great vomiting he had longed for:
death, the smashing to bits of the form he hated! Let him be food for
fishes, this dog Siddhartha, this lunatic, this depraved and rotten
body, this weakened and abused soul! Let him be food for fishes and
crocodiles, let him be chopped to bits by the daemons!

With a distorted face, he stared into the water, saw the reflection of
his face and spit at it. In deep tiredness, he took his arm away from
the trunk of the tree and turned a bit, in order to let himself fall
straight down, in order to finally drown. With his eyes closed, he
slipped towards death.

Then, out of remote areas of his soul, out of past times of his now
weary life, a sound stirred up. It was a word, a syllable, which he,
without thinking, with a slurred voice, spoke to himself, the old word
which is the beginning and the end of all prayers of the Brahmans, the
holy "Om", which roughly means "that what is perfect" or "the
completion". And in the moment when the sound of "Om" touched
Siddhartha's ear, his dormant spirit suddenly woke up and realized the
foolishness of his actions.

Siddhartha was deeply shocked. So this was how things were with him,
so doomed was he, so much he had lost his way and was forsaken by all
knowledge, that he had been able to seek death, that this wish, this
wish of a child, had been ale to grow in him: to find rest by
annihilating his body! What all agony of these recent times, all
sobering realizations, all desperation had not brought about, this was
brought on by this moment, when the Om entered his consciousness: he
became aware of himself in his misery and in his error.

Om! he spoke to himself: Om! and again he knew about Brahman, knew
about the indestructibility of life, knew about all that is divine,
which he had forgotten.

But this was only a moment, flash. By the foot of the coconut-tree,
Siddhartha collapsed, struck down by tiredness, mumbling Om, placed his
head on the root of the tree and fell into a deep sleep.

Deep was his sleep and without dreams, for a long time he had not known
such a sleep any more. When he woke up after many hours, he felt as if
ten years had passed, he heard the water quietly flowing, did not know
where he was and who had brought him here, opened his eyes, saw with
astonishment that there were trees and the sky above him, and he
remembered where he was and how he got here. But it took him a long
while for this, and the past seemed to him as if it had been covered by
a veil, infinitely distant, infinitely far away, infinitely meaningless.
He only knew that his previous life (in the first moment when he thought
about it, this past life seemed to him like a very old, previous
incarnation, like an early pre-birth of his present self)--that his
previous life had been abandoned by him, that, full of disgust and
wretchedness, he had even intended to throw his life away, but that by a
river, under a coconut-tree, he has come to his senses, the holy word
Om on his lips, that then he had fallen asleep and had now woken up and
was looking at the world as a new man. Quietly, he spoke the word Om to
himself, speaking which he had fallen asleep, and it seemed to him as if
his entire long sleep had been nothing but a long meditative recitation
of Om, a thinking of Om, a submergence and complete entering into Om,
into the nameless, the perfected.

What a wonderful sleep had this been! Never before by sleep, he had
been thus refreshed, thus renewed, thus rejuvenated! Perhaps, he had
really died, had drowned and was reborn in a new body? But no, he knew
himself, he knew his hand and his feet, knew the place where he lay,
knew this self in his chest, this Siddhartha, the eccentric, the weird
one, but this Siddhartha was nevertheless transformed, was renewed,was strangely well rested, strangely awake, joyful and curious. 

  Later on, I thought about the most retarded question in the English language. "How was the funeral"? Someone asks me every time. It sucked! It was a funeral for crissakes!

Why war with god?

   A lot of people have been writing me emails telling me that they're worried about me. People send me their prayers and I am highly appreciative of their wishes for me. i thought I'd explain a little bit more about my war with god.
   I'm really not at war with god. The idea to me is meant to be ironic. I don't believe in god the way most people do. You see, through my life experiences I've felt the connection between all things. I've stood in awe of the vast complexity of things, yet the same electromagnetic force that spins the electrons around the nuclei of my atoms spins yours. It is a force unseeable and minuscule but it's energy transcends dimension. Despite race, creed religion, sex and species. There is a force beyond names and nationalities that drives us. It is the same force that drives Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists. Once you understand this connectedness, truly realize the timeless eternity of all this, you realize the folly of the silly divisions we draw between ourselves.


  see, i do believe in creation and destruction. once you realize the beauty of consciousness you realize that we have a choice, every day every moment. We are alive with these amazing tools. We will experience negativity in our lives, but we can absorb that in to our creative selves and make the choice to only create something beautiful. to be a part of the creative force. In saying this I know that I create my own fair share of negativity, sometimes through my writing. but my intent is to share my thoughts and to sometimes be funny, but ultimately to relate the things I've learned.


In understanding my connection to it all I've learned what things in life that most value that are illusion. Time is and illusion. Ownership is an illusion and Death is an illusion. You cannot posses a person, only reflect on them and appreciate their beauty, but friendships and marriages only provide a brief sense of security. If you never had it, it can't be torn apart from you. Property is an illusion. The things we expend so much energy to amass, we cannot truly own. In the end they will all be swept away and we will realize what we wasted trying to pursue them. It is an affront to the creation, to believe we can divide and parcel. All things existing belong to all. To disrupt the earth, to destroy other species so that we can own snuggies and eat mcdonalds is a disrespect. We are not the center of the universe, we only perceive it from there.


   We have an obligation to allow all life to exist. To lift up man as well as the beasts and the plants an the land itself. This truth is not always clear in ancient books. Through mans fears he divided himself from everything. to feel special we put our own human characteristics on the force of life and tried to justify our dominion over the earth. We do not have dominion over anything. we are intrinsically entwined to everything. We have to go beyond what man wrote in the books and listen to that force, to try and see what connects us all with our own eyes. then we can create heaven on earth and beyond.


People may cal this hippy dippy bullshit, but I promise I've had moments of clarity where pain is an illusion, where loss is an illusion and I've felt these things with my core and that was only through going beyond the books and the labels and tapping in tho the experience. If that force drives you and gives you life then you are as equally a part of it as any prophet. No one consciousness has authority over your spirit. You are bound to a greater consciousness and a greater spirit. the thing to do with this knowledge is to walk and act with respect and awe of the beauty of this whole thing.

8 maids a' milkin my prostate

I've hated Christmas my entire adult life. Fucking corporate holiday. When they start playing Christmas Muzak in the store right after Thanksgiving I know it's not to spread holiday cheer, but to subliminally make you want to buy shit. I always sing the words "buy people shit" to the tune of every Muzak Christmas song. Try it next time.
   But I didn't always hate Christmas. When I was a kid it was magical and rad. I remember lying on my back on the floor in front of the Christmas tree, watching the lights play on the ceiling and feeling warm and hopeful. That same year I had a bad split in my lower lip that was pretty painful for a 5 year old. On Christmas eve i prayed to Jesus to heal it and when I woke up the next morning, it was healed. This was proof of the existence of god to my young mind. Years later, I prayed to god again when i was in the midst of a terrible depression, but I was just left to flap in the wind and pick myself up by my bootstraps. Fuck god.


   Perhaps growing up in a dysfunctional family made me hate Christmas. As a young child I loved going to my grandparents. The food was good, there was a fire in the fire place, we were wearing sweaters and then there were the presents. My Grandparents were always generous with the presents. As a teenager, however something had changed in me. I loved my family, but noticed that no one ever "got real" with each other. Everyone wore a facade and conversations bounced off awkward walls and defenses. It seemed to me also, that the presents were given out of obligation. I began to resent the obligation. I never had any money and was never really good at equating my feelings for someone with a material possession. We just gave people we hardly REALLY knew tokens of our affection without knowing if they really wanted or needed them. I always just wished we'd just make dinner, get drunk and have it out with each other. Sometimes "getting real" is painful, but it's worth it in the end. I was always told that presents didn't matter, that I could "just make something". I was trying. I've been trying to make something of myself my whole life. I've been burning the candle at both ends for as long as I an remember, trying not to end up like the average mouth breather....but hey, I love you. Here's some socks. The truth is, I would have traded all the presents in the world just to get real with everyone in my family. For some of them, it's too late now.


   My favorite Christmas was my sixteenth. I left my grandparents with some money in my pockets and some new shit and picked up Charlie Wilkinson at his house. We went and picked up Drew who had some weed and drove around smoking out of my new pipe that someone (maybe Nicola?) had given me that had a real chicken's foot on it and listening to Descendent's. We had been trying to figure out how to get some beers when we saw a family broke down on the side of the road in the freezing cold. An older black woman and her two grown sons, and they were a long ways away from a gas station. I stopped to pick them up and all 6 of us somehow piled into my little Honda. After dropping them off at the Exxon, one of the sons asked how he could repay our kindness. I asked him to buy us beers and I saw him look at us, obviously underage and chew on this thought for a while. He finally went in and bought us 6 quarts of Old English or some nasty shit like we used to drink. All we needed now was a place to drink them....
   Drew and I had gone to St. Louis school together although he had been a few grades above me. Since I lived close to there I had discovered at some point that a door to the church was always open. I used to ride my bike there in the middle of the night and just sit in the massive silence and think. I had turned a place where I had bad memories of a bullshit religion shoved down my throat into a place of beauty and meditation. Actually I find something strangely comforting in the Catholic ritual and Icons....but then I think about it and it makes me want to vomit.
We sat up on the choir loft, drinking 40's and smoking for hours. I think we even lit our cigarettes off the candle burning on the altar. You may think I'm going to hell for this, but we were children....closer to god at that time than we've been since. That may have been my last good year for a while....after that the darkness came in to our crew. The Cringe, if you will.

The next night I totaled my car. After I had only been driving for three months. I had Amy and Stacy and Joey in the car and I was being emo and thinking my"woe is me" 16 year old thoughts (this is when I still had feelings, remember) and ran a stop sign. I was looking at the moon. I think it was full and half obscured by clouds when I hear Joey say "car". We got smashed into and spun around and went up into into someones yard and we weren't even a block from my house. We were OK, but Stacy was complaining that she couldn't see well until we figured out that her contact lens had made it into her ear somehow. I had to throw my chicken foot pipe into the gutter before the cops got there. I was sober by the way.
  That new years we decided it would be a great idea to eat some acid. I got sick with the flu, was fucked up about a girl and had just wrecked my car. Hey let's freak out. great idea.


But i don't really hate Christmas this year. I think that now it's on my terms, and I don't feel obligated to buy you shit. I'm poor. Deal with it. You don't have to buy me nothing, and don't expect anything in return. i love you, isn't that enough?
Plus, I'm not even a Christian, doesn't that absolve me? My god lives in the trees you cut down and put in your living room. It lives in the land that was cleared for the Wal mart you're shopping at.
If you really must give me something, go plant a Christmas tree and decorate it with the heads of republicans and tea baggers. Or go burn down a Walgreens. it can be our yule log.
Or you can get me this Christmas list:



12 drummers drumming the drum solo from YYZ
11 Piper Perabos
10 Traci lords a peeing
9 strippers dancing
8 maids a milking my prostate
7 Swanson's TV dinners
6 Geezer Butlers
5 Golden Girls DVDs
4 Larry Birds
3 French Maids
2 turtle heads poking out
and Laurie Partridge back in 1973.

The Party Bus, Dragon Cunt and Friendships

   Camille's party bus was amazing. I had such a great time and it makes me really appreciate the friends I have in my life.


but at the beginning of the night I saw THAT person. The person that I feel betrayed me as a friend above all others. Let me just say that I'm truly happy with where I'm at in my life. Mentally, physically and spiritually I've never been better. I pride myself on the friendships that I've made and maintained in my life. I never like to fully let someone go, if I once called you my friend. We have so much to learn from one another and even if we are apart for awhile it's always good to get together and share what we've done and where we're at and reflect on one another.
   I saw Dragon Cunt tonight. She showed up at the bar where me and my friends were. Now, I don't feel that I'm an overly dramatic person. I also pride myself on my understanding of human nature. People are people and you can't count on anyone fully. You just can only be a good friend and treat people with respect and hope that others will do the same. I'm friends with all my major girlfriends I've had and I have an immense amount of love and respect for those people. It's OK to realize that it's not healthy to be with someone, but still love them as a person. I am thankful for everyone of them in my life and I hope they know that. In relationships I value friendships above sex and It's always been about so much more than that.


   So when I see her and she looks away and pretends not to see me it makes my stomach drop. It's not like I want to be with her. It's not like I pine for those good times. I more mourn for that loss of friendship. and I can't understand not wanting to make things cool and achieve this mutual level of respect. Then we can reflect on the good times and how we've grown and smile about it. Now, it's just regret...no, I can't say that....I don't regret a thing.
I used to think I was this inhuman monster. Incapable of loving someone selflessly. I tried so hard in my long relationships to where it was unhealthy, but i was still trying, because of the respect that I DID have for those people. I used to beat myself up because I thought "who am I to question and be unsatisfied with these amazing people in my life?" But the world showed me cold. It showed me inhuman and disrespectful. It showed me someone who uses people and spits them out, demonizes them and forgets them. And that person is not me. I've been shown that the love I had for those people was and IS real, even if it means you don't have to hold on so tight to some people.
   Tonight I hung out with some good friends. I hung out with old friends that I've been missing. I strengthened relationships that were barely there and I made brand new friends. And I'll fight to keep those people in my life, because I can only truly see myself reflected in their eyes. It just sucks that I was used by a sick person, an insane person. I can't fathom one day being someone's best friend and the next, wishing they would fall off the planet. I make my friends for life and i hope I will always be this way.

Driving Japanese oh yes I'm driving Japanese i really think so.....

   I took a job driving around a Japanese film crew for a week. A Sunday evening prime time show in Japan where the host travels around the world doing crazy challenges. One show he swam with sharks, another he wrestled a bear...in this episode he would be halo jumping. Halo jumping is sky diving from twice as high as people normally do it. Usually people jump from 15,000 ft and this is from 30,000. It's so high that one has to wear an oxygen mask. There's a place outside of Somerville that does this kind of jumping, which is usually done by military. Apparently only 100 or so civilians have halo jumped. Would I ever do it? Even if it meant being a famous TV show host? Traveling the world, eating filet mignon and lobster and boning whoever I wanted to? Hard to say. I'd like to say yes, but I'm just fucking terrified of heights. But perhaps I'm more afraid of working my shit job for the rest of my life and always struggling. Yeah, I'd jump. To live that guy's lifestyle? I'd fucking jump.
   I picked up the van at 8:30 am and set off to Knoxville to pick up the crew. As I pulled out of Memphis I felt all my stress and worries wash off of me. I realized that I never feel more complete and alive as when I'm traveling. Something about being in between destinations and situations. You can't worry about what you just left behind because there's nothing you can do about it but change your outlook. You can't worry about what's in front of you because it could be anything...the possibilities endless. The scenery is warm and familiar, never changing because it is ever changing. Every truck stop and gas station you swear you've been in before and you look for evidence that you were there. Maybe there'll be a faded Pezz sticker in the bathroom. We used to carry a stack with us everywhere and leave our mark as we went.
   It made me miss the touring life and the ability to hit the road for a long stretch. I guess I really don't have many roots, but there's always too little money or a vehicle that just doesn't work right. I first fell in love with the road when my brother took me to Yellowstone when I was 13. There was still a restraining order put on him by my parents after they had me locked up in the psychiatric hospital. They wanted to believe that he was a bad influence on me, when really it was their failures as people that caused trouble in my life. My brother saved me from a life of conformity, mediocrity and spiritual emptiness. I owe everything I am to him. While my parents gave me life he showed me the path to spiritual discovery. Our road trip west was a big "fuck you" to our parents and it was my first real taste of peace and freedom.
   I went out again after high school. This time with Stacy and we spent a month camping and hiking. I had a taste of enlightenment on that trip, had a bear brush past our tent in the night and happened across two of our friends on a busy crowded street in Eugene OR that had left Memphis at the same time as us, but taken a different route, the odds of which are staggering.
   And then there were the tours. I would give anything to be able to spend 3 months out on the road right now with my closest friends, sleeping on floors and fighting over music. I used to get a sort of home sickness when I was out, but i get the feeling it would be gone now. I understand who I am a lot more. I understand it's in my blood to wander, as evidence by this feeling of peace. It's incredible when you realize who you are and finally accept it.When we were out I used to wonder whether what we were doing had merit and meaning, but the things I learned on the road was worth a thousand college degrees, a thousand committed relationships and all the stability in the world.
   We rode sometimes with no A/C in the brutal desert heat. We played to empty bars and to sold out clubs. We played bait shops, ran through corn fields and ate purple potatoes. We stayed with crazy people...New Mexico girls that went through our pockets in the night, skinny dipping in Kansas, driving Shawn to the hospital in Germany and getting stopped at a roadblock. We slept in an old SS barracks and refused to sleep where a junkie girl had died. We ate out of trash dumpsters and got fed gourmet meals. We fell in love at every show, survived a Nazi attack in Poland, babysat Wesley Willis, stayed at Jello Biafra's and every night we played our hearts out.


   The Driving job for the Japanese went OK. I drove the "talent" van. The Hosts and their assistants and the producers. The one person in my van that spoke English was a producer that lived in New York and she was beautiful. The female host of the show was stunning as well, but I never made any attempt with either of them. I just kept my eyes on the road.


   I think I'm just in love with the feeling of moving forward. You can't digress as long as you have a horizon that you're pushing towards. I think I would be miserable waking up to the same four walls everyday and toiling for the rest of my life. I haven't settled yet and wonder if I ever will. I'd like to leave my options open for the ultimate. Something tells me that everything I want can and will happen. It has so far. If I die tonight, I will have loved my life and been secure that I gave it everything I had. I have no regrets and no excuses. If I get the opportunity to jump if it means living the life I see in my dreams? Yep, I'll fucking jump.