I'm sitting in a hostel in Munich and I have less than five minutes of internet time left.

The obscurity of my situation - opposite side of globe, don't know what time it is back home, an empty checking account - is mighty powerful black magic against my state of mind.

Walking in circles around old cities, seeing the human creature poke its head out of history, feeling the experiment churn on under my feet, part of me, everyone, an equation of old statues, bronze becomes steel, mud becomes concrete, growing on forever.

Homesick fever dreams. Wonderful times, really, amazing, but no place like home.

Happy world. Lonely and OK world.

Out of time. Love you.

SWEET MOTHER OF GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!

I just received notice that I am being picked up for blog syndication on Nerve.com. I'm going to be paid $100 a month to go on dates and write about it for 1,000,000+ people to read.

Four hours in the computer lab filling out an application has set my life on a completely unexpected, bizarre, potentially wonderful course.

I can't express to you the joy and amazement I feel right now. I've basically started a career for myself and it all came to a head in a matter of two days.

HOLY SHIT!

I'll soon be appearing here: blog-a-log

My head is spinning. I don't even know what I'm going to do. I'm floating.

Yesterday I was on an America West flight from Las Vegas (wonderful playland fantasy city - totally bizarre and horrible but kind of endearing at the same time) to Seattle. Those little flip-down screens that are built into the ceiling consoles of many planes were flipped down when we boarded, playing a montage of placid music and scenes of mountains and fish and whatnot to soothe raging, panicked us. After we taxied, they retracted, then when we were at cruising altitude they extended back down and started showing advertisements for the airline and Cranium trivia. There were also ads for some stupid Cranium offshoot toys and photos of all the wonderful places America West - and only America West - can take you.

When the stewardess asked me for my drink order, I leaned over and asked, "Is this business going to be going on the entire flight?"

"Yeah."

"Can it not be going on the entire flight?"

"No. The advertisers require that we show it."

I groan and shake my head.

"Well it's not like you have to look at it. ("You fucking caveman idiot.") Does it really bother you that much?"

"Yeah, well, it's so obnoxious and intrusive."

She looks at me incredulously. "You're the first person to ever complain about that." Another stewardess approaches with drinks. The stewardess already berating me turns to her friend, motioning at me: "The first one."

"That's ridiculous."

I order water, and when I put my tray down I laugh, put the tray back up and take a full thirty seconds to process what I had just seen. The whole top of the tray was plastered with an ad for some obscure laptop. I put down the tray for the seat next to me and saw a different ad for the same laptop.

It may seem like I'm being affectedly shocked at all of this, but I was genuinely surprised. It was like some overdone movie parody of American marketing materialized before my eyes.

At the end of the flight, the Alpha-stewardess made this announcement to the cabin: "As we make our final descent, flight attendants will be coming through the cabin to collect any remaining service items."

WHAT! "Service items?" Who is so offended by the word "trash" that they require a euphemism for it? Do the America West managers really believe people could ever possibly be offended by that word if it wasn't suggested that they should be?

Craziness. George Carlin rolls over in the grave he has yet to fill.

I am done with this college that reads The Dharma Bums and sits in a circle sighing and nodding
you all talking about how it is a book for young people with a slow drawl making young people into
words like fuck and shit
(DO YOU HAVE NO PASSION MUST YOU SIT THERE AND BE ASTUTER-THAN-THOU AAALWAAAAYS!)
and I try to tell you No this book has conquered literature because it is Truth Forever and Ever
because it is a piece of a soul it is beautiful things and emptiness and honesty pacing back and
forth at the top of a mountain kicking rocks into the void
but your pencils go scribble-scribble-scribble
and your years calcify in your bowels.

Stuck In the Past Again

We all sit around the
fire on the beach feeling
"Let's have it, bring us
our futures" and
wandering about filled with
nameless knowing, touching
once and then again
at each others' elbows
until it is
time to
go.

I've had about enough of contrived profundity,
of the urgency of poetry,
of the guilt over not being always prodigal.

Of crying over trees
of isms and
the masturbatory nonsense of plots and characters,
symbols,
even blankness.

Snore snore snore.
What is is.

We're all so tangled it's charming.

I say HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA to serious me. To hell with pathos.

Here is the first draft of the heretofore untitled article I am submitting to the Cooper Point Journal, my college's student newspaper. The article will consist of reviews of all the awful merchandise I can find at Goodwill. This is a review of "Cruisin' Ukuleles," an album I found in the two-dollar bargain bin.

I don’t know how the ukulele was invented, but after listening to this album I can only conclude it was the result of some evil warlock’s failed plot to shrink the hands of honest, hard-working Hawaiians everywhere; dooming them to pluck sad little mutant guitars forever. Considering the fact that “Cruisin’ Ukuleles” exists, I also conclude that this black magic is alive and well in the world, corrupting the hearts and souls of Pacific Islanders and annoying people worldwide.

The liner notes begin, “The arrangements on this recording come from an era when cruisin’ the drag and listening to music on the car radio was the hip thing to do. If you didn’t have ‘wheels’ you could always stop at the local hang out and hear those same special tunes on the jukebox. Let us take you back to an era when the music made us feel good. Come join us as we take you cruisin’ ukulele style.” After about ten seconds of play, it becomes clear that “cruisin’ ukulele style” constitutes a harrowing thrill-ride through the twisting mountain roads of pure, existential anguish.

Imagine a fifth-grade recorder festival. Now imagine the fifth-graders are all forty-year-old Canadians wearing fanny packs and tonelessly thrashing 112 ukuleles (literally) while a chorus of young girls chant Beach Boys lyrics in eerie, spiritless harmony. Take the whole scene and place it on stage at a yacht/barbeque/riding lawnmower convention and you begin to appreciate how difficult it is not to pass out while listening. “Cruisin’ Ukuleles” couldn’t be more banal if it was performed by an entire fleet of nine-year-old girls riding ponies.

The Ensemble’s perspective of American history is questionable. As far as I know, no jukebox playlist in this country has ever included the songs “He Ono La,” “Lahaina Luna” or “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Ostensibly, the Langley Ukulele Ensemble is attempting to reinvigorate some vintage favorites with a fresh and quirky sound, but the end result is something akin to renovating a decrepit, classic automobile only to use that automobile to run over a troupe of boy scouts who are also orphans. The highlight of the whole album is “Four Chord Medley: Silhouettes / Blue Moon / Heart and Soul / Diana / Rama Lama Ding Dong,” a baffling ukulele mashup of five golden oldies that surpasses the Ensemble’s own precedent for inanity. I don’t know what “Rama Lama Ding Dong” means, but my best guess is that it’s Asshole for “we will not stop until we have destroyed everything you hold precious and beautiful.”

So if you like ukulele solos, “special tunes that make you feel good” and misery, Cruisin’ Ukuleles is for you. . As for me, I’m throwing my copy into the cold waters of the Puget Sound, where it will languish forever before the tiny, mercifully uncomprehending eyes of crabs.

Fuck you Wulf Zendik with your promises of holy loneliness with your arrogance and beautiful hatred. Fuck you whatever part of me it is that strives to be ever more alone until I am simply a shivering point in space.

Who convinced me that solitude is the divine ultimate truthful thing from God’s mouth? Who convinced me that this born into thing is wrong, so wrong and horrible and soul crushing there is simply light and the illuminated, there is a celebration of present things yes of PRESENT things not apart and lonely things but of things which defy all that is lonely by occupying space it is the revolution of flesh and stone and air, an impossible and holy comedy one joke after another one absurd little molecule of presence pressed up against another all vibrating and joyous in the face of absolute nothingness daring to be here now. HOW CAN YOU EVEN SAY THE WORD LONELY much less fill your life with it, you fool, I am a fool.

I am saying fuck you my past filled with horrible loathing and doubt I am saying fuck you Zendik Bukowski Me who dip my loneliness in gold and smother the face of God with your very very very so very important malaise that is more important than love that is more important than the joke, ha ha ha ha eternal joke, eternal joy and being and togetherness.

I will huddle in the darkness with that first bit of hereness, whatever buzzing little fleck of matter was first to drift with that terrible ecstatic wit that made everything I will bask in the absurdity in the unlikely furnace of creation of life and the forever dance and laugh and laugh and laugh fuck you my dear loneliness.

Maybe you don't want to read about all my loose ends. In which case, sorry. It's just that this year continues in its subtle brutality and makes me think about all the years that came before it. They all unfold into that kind-of-beautiful thing. You know.

I just want very badly to be able to translate some of the geography of my experience onto your computer screens because I feel the collective Poetry of anyone's life is the greatest gift that can ever be given, and I want you all to have mine, because I want you to know me.

I have become terrible at levity. I read too much by serious men with black-and-white pictures. I'm going to learn how to breakdance as soon as my foot and knee heal, if that's any consolation.

If there's one issue that currently defines our identity, it's our treatment of the environment. Our conscience is crippled by it. The guilt touches every one of us, because we've been brought up to hate ourselves for our implicit cooperation. I say to hell with all of that. Whatever is happening may be happening for a reason and it is the height of arrogance to impose an aesthetic (it's little more) on the consciousness of entire generations with all the dogma of an inquisition. It's the lack of ambivalence that offends me.

There is a better way; my father promotes it. There is compromise. The spooky graphs and statistics we summon are not nearly as important as the questions we ask about our purpose; whether we continue to nurse our sense of loss or make something useful out of the experience. I just wish everyone would stop walking around thinking they knew exactly what is right for the world. We will never have that answer.


The Frightened Earth

You are all afraid and guilty,
I can see it in your talking,
endless talking
and alarms in the
night,

as a baby screams because
death is still fresh in its soul.

You are a part of it,
maybe,
smokestacks and dead penguins.
But why feed betrayal to your children,
why this endless lament
when you don’t know,
when no one can ever know
where it ends
or
why?

I say you have invented this evil,
there are no monsters under the bed,
Al Gore is not your messiah,
it is all foolishness,
this terror,
this guilt.

So who are you to scream your
conjecture into the void and
call it law,
to make our spirit cower
and hide its poor head in the
acrid soil?

YOU MADE ME CRY
BECAUSE I THOUGHT I
WAS KILLING MY WORLD
SO FUCK OFF WITH YOUR
PRECIOUS CRUSADE.

No one knows.
No one.


This is the 500th Phobitopia post. 500 is because I wanted you to feel part of what I am, and because that part is the important one.

George W. Bush

I am sorry you had to become
this thing, George,
though secretly I think I
admire you in a way,
how you give America its
true face and make us
think about cleaner things.

I am sorry you were
born into your world
of power and cabals,
secrets and winks
and nods that mean death
for children.

You are not my villain, George.
In the way that no man is a villain
but a
sometimes
victim,
sometimes.

Because you know the hum of
cicadas,
and God sits in your heart,
maybe,
maybe.

So I am sorry that you
have become America,
as no man or woman should be
money and indifference,
as you are not,
I think.

I would sit and listen
to what wisdom you have,
as every man and woman has,
some dark night
in the White House.

It is good to be home.

It is so good to be home.

I've often toyed with the idea of creating another blog, but I was always afraid that it would dilute what little readership I maintain with this one. However, I decided to create an online dream journal because it's interesting and I can generate limitless content with a minimum of conscious effort. I will still post to this blog as frequently as I have things that need saying; I've been writing Phobitopia posts since seventh grade and I'm not about to stop.

Good Nights

I look back, and I see my friends being taken from me, one by one.

There was beauty, is joy still. But I remember my first steps into darkness. I remember the first tokes, walking for hours because I couldn't feel the pain in my legs. I remember the terrifying steps up to the front door, feeling alien to my own home. I wallowed, hid in my room and listened to the insect purr of my own mind.

I woke up in time to see my friends fall over the cliff, one by one. The powder made them hollow. I believed their empty reassurances. I was paralyzed but couldn't bring myself to hate them. I wandered with them, admonishing vaguely but staring, blankly, at the violence. Then Sean was gone from my life and the wound opened. It's still deep enough to hold the child soul of every single one of them.

Then the bad news, weeks and weeks of arguments and pleas and terror, absolute terror before the awesome power of the law. Then seeing Grant lowered into a police car and weeping into a pillow because tyrants were eating my friends alive. And they did; they ground the happiness from our bones. I wandered again, we all did, in a new and lonely world.

Just remember it, is all. Leave the emptiness. We've earned the right to be whole again.


Cars At Night

That was our holiness,
the thrum of engines.

I loved you then,
I was distracted.

I’m sorry,
I didn’t hear you,
the buildings looked
like they were going
to say something.

Is it cold?
What are we buying tonight?

That was our holiness,
caravans in the dark.

It took you then,
and I told the Earth
to shut its ugly mouth.

And I loved you.

That was my holiness,
watching you fall.

Turn down the radio,
the streets are saying
their goodbyes.

Some serious investment in existential crises is recommended. Going back to the beginning and examining your own birth and urgent terror at the thought of death. Yes. A frank evaluation of life's only important riddle. Inviting the puzzle in, railing against the injustice of absolute spiritual ignorance. Colors the world pale and new and entirely lawless, beautiful. Removes the language of entrapment. And "go fuck yourself and your atom bomb," there is too little breathing to waste on killing.

Beauty unto all of you.

In these new days.

Beauty.

Unto all of you.

In movies, adolescent boys are always portrayed as surly, distant, self-posessed. They are dark fools. A shared joke, asinine ingrates drunk on grandiose malaise.

And I see this and I learn that that part of me is a dark fool, a joke, asinine. It is not something I am allowed to be. I am robbed by art.

My favorite poets, too, are drunk on grandiose malaise. Kerouac, Bukowski, Patchen. They turn over the rocks of the soul and examine the squirming, brainless things beneath. Robert Bly talks about draining deep waters, one bucket at a time, to find the long-haired wild creature below.

But this process is made impossible, because I am male and I am young. If I stare into the void; if I say things like "stare into the void," I am a target for ridicule, a landing zone for stereotypes.

This art kills growth. Farce smothers dialogue.

Dark is damned important sometimes; turn over a rock.

Our First Story

It was quiet after entrances
into white light,
hello's and tears.
We will take you all home
now where you will
grow sated and unknowing.

They smothered all the wolves
and closed the doors.
It was warm inside,
we walked barefoot
in the streets.

It came one day after
we forgot how to play emperor
and had begun
to notice all the blood.

He was shoved into the back
of a police car with a hand on the top
of his head,
roll cameras.

They knew, to look at
our pale faces.
They knew the betrayal
and their eyelids held a steady line.
Their mouths could
form no apology.

Welcome again,
we know you are frightened
but so are we.
Gather what you can
from curfews and parades
and then set out.
Do not come back.
The doors
will close
behind you.