Dream Sequence #11

This dream happened a number of days ago and I've not had the time to write it out. So here goes!

In my dream,
I was in a convenience store.
I cannot recall the circumstances nor the scenery of this part now as I've let too much time pass but I do remember what happens at the store.
Some police officers come in and start shouting.
I don't exactly remember why, but I became the focus of their shouting.
One of them pushed me to the ground and as I lay on my back, he hovered the barrel of his shotgun over my chest.
In defiance I told him to suck it.
He didn't care for my words and so he pulled the trigger. Three times.
I remember the feeling of my chest absorbing the rounds and next thing I know, I'm on a steel table in the hospital.
I was dead.
This of course is not the end of the scene so naturally the dream goes on and I am inside my body.
I have the knowledge of what happened in the convenient store and also the awareness that I cannot move my body.
I can still recall the sensation of the back of my tongue and this was the first indication that I was alive on this table.
I say it like I was solving a puzzle because in the dream I had to figure out how I arrived in the room I was in with all the medical staff around me.
I could hear them talking.
I figured out that my eyes still worked but I could not blink.
A good friend of mine, that I know in real life, was a nurse in the hospital room.
After I gained control of my eyes, I made it a goal to fixate on different parts of the wall behind where he was standing.
I thought this would show him that since me eyes were looking in different locations every time he looked at me and then looked away, he would understand that I was still alive.
The doctor was the first one to notice the eye movements though and I remember him speaking out to me about moving them.
I couldn't do it though.
Next thing I know, I am beginning to pick my self up from the table.
I am now belly down and trying to do a pushup but my legs won't move.
I remember getting most of the way up as warm liquid poured from my open mouth.
I don't think it was blood, but the sensation of the thickness passing over my lips and drooling down onto the table is something that really stuck out to me in the dream.
Nothing special happened from this point on and my dream morphed into a completely unrelated topic so...
The end.

The dream parallels another dream I had of the same friend. He was with me in a convenience store and a mugger came in wielding a shotgun. This friend wrestled the gun from the mugger. I can't recall now which one of us got shot in that one, but one of us did. I thought he was a hero in my dream. I told him about it in real life and he chuckled.

Chapter 1

I was sitting Indian style at the end of the dock, the water a black expanse out in front of me. I remember seeing my spine protruding from my back almost like a dorsal fin as I labored with a fishing pole and feeling that the hump was a bit unusual to look at from this angle. As I sat with my legs crossed, I could feel the slap of water on the supports of the dock as if my body was spliced into  the aged lumber and I remember the sensation of toes digging deep into the soft Chesapeake mud. Thinking back on it now, I remember feeling as if I was the weather worn dock that had a great many stories to tell.

There was a soft wind from out in the bay that smelled like a moist antique shop and it came up through the boards of the dock and lifted the back of my shirt ever so gently. The moon shone bright in the dark sky, illuminating silver eyes out on the water that blinked whenever I blinked. Whatever they were, they would disappear and be followed by a loud splash. I was terrified, but the me that was terrified was not the same boy sitting on the dock.

The perspective in the dream at this time bounced between two bodies. When the emotion of fear came to me, I inhabited a new body; one just below the surface of the black water. I could see the me on the dock, hunched and holding a fishing pole. My face was a blur of darkness and as I focused on it, it became more distorted. I tried to focus on the space next to where my face should be but it was still not coming in to focus. What I could see, from this submerged position, was that the pole didn't have any line running through the eyelets and that the body on the dock looked disfigured and growing more so by the second as if it were metamorphosing before my eyes. The vision snapped to a more remote and omniscient perspective looking down on what was taking place. I could see my spine protruded out far enough and then doubled back so that my chest touched the base of my pelvis; it looked as if I was being crushed under a great weight.

The omniscient view did not last very long and the twisted body on the dock was erased and a quiet house replaced the scenery. I wasn't alone in the house. There were two other people somewhere, but my body was restricted to the carpet in the living room. The sun was heavy in the window and the cool temperature of the carpet below my outstretched body was wonderful. I lay on my back looking up at the popcorn textured ceiling. My body was motionless and felt too heavy to move. It felt very similar to the time I smoked too much and felt a euphoric wave of electricity paralyze the desire to move even a single cell in my body.

During the euphoria, my high was interrupted by the growing presence of an uncomfortable heat and as I attempted to lift my head, I could smell smoke coming from another room but could not lift myself up to see where it was coming from. I began to panic and heard loud popping coming from the other room that was followed by the undeniable sound of sizzling and was instantly released from the prison on the floor and snapped to where the two others were, only to find them ablaze and dripping.

I woke from this dream in the middle of a small clearing in the forest across the street from my home. My feet were cold and the sun was still several hours from warming up the leather seats of the Buick. This is not the first time I've woken to a different scenery from what I fell asleep in and I know it won't be the last. I don't mind though, it keeps things interesting. It's how I found the half buried station wagon surrounded by undisturbed loam and hiding beneath the droopy arms of that massive Willow.

Am I OCD for flipping light switches and turning knobs?

I do not know how I just arrived at this memory/tick of mine, but I did. So naturally I am going to share it with you. As as child I remember many instances of flipping a switch or turning a knob and thinking to myself just how many times that knob/switch has been used in its life. I can recall turning the knob for more heat in our family's old minivan and instantly wanting to sit there and match how many times it had been turned.

I still do this. The other day I was in my girlfriend's car and turned the knob—instantly I thought about matching how many times it had been turned. I don't know if the impulse is OCD or giving credit to how long the knob or switch has lasted through all the uses. Part of me romanticizes sitting there; the engineered plastic ridges; the discolored surface around the knob faded from fingers jamming and slapping, desperately attempting to turn up the heat in the dark; and flipping/turning said knob as a montage of moments come and go on the projector screen while Lost In My Mind by The Head and the Heart plays.

I'm weird but I feel that it connects me to all the time spent being that knob. Let me clarify though. I don't literally think about the life of the knob, and what emotions it must have felt over the years, but the events that took place around it (okay maybe I do think a little about the knob and what it felt...so what!).

The knob itself is there as a catapult, firing me into the impulse of action! Oh man...that one sounded almost romantic. Phew!

I better stop writing or who knows what will come out.

Why owning a dog sucks part II

So if you've read some of my other postings, you might have noticed that I've talked about my dog a few times (I swear I have a life outside being a dog owner...it just consists of writing blogs and reading books). Tonight is no different. Well it is different because he did something different. Terribly different.

It goes like this. I emptied an old milk container of spoiled milk into the compost pile in my back yard. This compost is a mixture of all the usual fixings a compost pile might have, plus dog turds. So I dump the milk out and that's that.

Flash forward about two hours and I let my dog outside. He finds it and enjoys himself to not just the milk, but the dead grass AND THE DIRT. I went over to inspect the pile to see if maybe he just kicked the dirt out of the way. He didn't. He ate the damn dirt. I would have also included a picture of the dirt in his teeth but he came in licking his lips and drank some water from his bowl.

I caught him in the act and told him with loud words that if he threw up in my room in the middle of the night, he is staying outside in the 20° weather. I don't give a damn.


Idiot

Itchy ass-cheek and then a piece of flash fiction

So I haven't been able to sit down and write as much as I'd like to, with the addition of this new job that keeps me between 10 and 11 hours a day. I'm not going to complain about actually HAVING A JOB but only about having roughly an hour to myself (after I finish daily chores and make food, etc) is not ideal. I'm backing up, metaphorically speaking, with ideas that will never see the light of day because...well I literally drive to work in the dark and drive home from work in the dark. For those keeping track, yes that was me explaining a metaphor with the perfect example. I'm also terribly exhausted right now and words are sounding delicious in my head.

Okay so to the point of why I started writing, yes! I am about to tell you what happened to me the other day, in the hopes of connecting. Sharing a bond with you the reader. Going for frozen yogurt and laughing over my crushed candy choices together under an umbrella (that has a massive runny trail of bird poopie).

It goes like this. So I was at Lowe's for supplies the other day. My ass itched, so I itched it. When I did this, the itch got worse! Has that ever happened to you? Scratch an inch, only for that itch to grow in intensity? It was on the cheek. Nothing gross, like the thought of me digging way up there and then shaking the guy's hand who helped me load up everything, who in turn shook the hand of another man and before you know it....well you know it, so I don't need to tell you. You're a big boy/girl.

I walked up and down the isles. I must have scratched that same damn spot 10 times. Anyone else might over exaggerate and say 100 times. Not me! Each time it felt like I relieved the itchy feeling for approximately .0000005 seconds before it came back. Whatever...my ass itched.

HA HA these are the things that I have been holding to myself. OMG aren't you so lucky I shared this garbage with you? Well let's be honest...you are still reading. So who does that make the joke on? YOU KNOW WHAT! No one is the joke on. If the joke was a switch on a railroad track, it would be flipped no where. It would be dangling in the middle and desperate to connect with one side or the other. Yearning to be either on or off. Not today it won't not be not on but not off. I think I did that negative thing correct there.


I will leave you with a piece of flash fiction I'm going to spontaneously write...after I use the restroom.

Okay I'm back. LET'S DO THIS!

When the trail could go no further he stopped and sat at the edge of an overhang. Down in the valleys of green, the landscape maintained the illusion of crawling forward as he had only experienced on this trail of the High Divide. To the North East was Mt. Larrabee and directly East was Winchester Mountain. Beyond that, the cutouts of endless mountain ranges, each a little taller, greedily positioned themselves to get closer to the blue of an afternoon Spring sky. He was positioned in a tree limb that stretched out over a tall vertical cliff. He had crawled out to be in the breeze and to avoid the biting flies. In a day dream he thought about how perfect it would be to let go. After all, he had hiked alone and didn't leave a note about where he was headed. It would be several hundred feet of weightlessness down to a cropping of uneven boulders that had no visible connecting trail. It began to sound romantic in his head and he fantasized about the fall and hard smashing; the amount of time passing before someone stumbled upon his body; the acknowledgment that it was done out of pleasure; how it was his decision to make that could not be undone.

Dream Sequence #10

In my dream,
I was in a tent with some other people.
I do not remember how I arrived inside this tent but there I was (I think I might have been four wheeling or something).
The tent was one of those military green tents, the kind with two flaps on either end, and supported by two bars immediately noticed, in the direct middle, once the tent flap is pulled back.
Now that I think about it, it might have just been me in this tent and made up having people there.
I remember feeling a sense of panic as the idea of a bear outside the door came in to my head.
I opened the flap to see an enormous grizzly bear about 15 feet from the open tent flap.
I was afraid that it was coming to eat me, but afraid in such a way that I knew it wasn't real.
It felt like one of those moments where you know that nothing bad will ever happen to you but always someone else.
Next thing I know, I am in a different location.
There is a house and part of that house is a covering (picture what you might find at a local public park where there are benches below the structure and usually a bbq pit somewhere close by) jutting off of one side.
I feel like this was a camp I'd stayed at before as a scout but not literally that exact camp.
I remember someone panicking and mentioning a tiger loose somewhere on the premises.
Instantly I knew what I needed to do to keep people safe.
I would take the pool ball (the billiards kind...not the water kind) and bash the tiger over the head.
I remember planning the attack in my head and as I moved towards the area where I knew the tiger would be, looking down at stripped ball (I'm almost never solids) in hand and thinking that it could not possible go well for me.
I remember moving to hit the tiger on the head but having it overpower me with its strength.
I desperately tried to climb onto the roof of the building and can still visualize my grasp on the gutter and how it failed when I tried pulling up on it.
The tiger is below me and my vision jumps to that of a small cat flailing its arms at a piece of string.
Except that this is a tiger and I am that string.
The tiger morphs into me and what happens from there is a little difficult to describe.
I become the tiger but my body that's still trying to scramble onto the roof is also me.
As the tiger, I am describing to an audience what meat tastes best from a human.
I start explaining the less tender bits (the calves, followed by biceps) and conclude the anatomy lesson with the tasty bit—the buttocks.
I make certain to emphasize that this is the area that tastes the best.
What happens after that is really bizarre to me still.
So the me that's hanging from the rafter is all torn open like you might imagine a cadaver would look.
There isn't any blood, and all the veins are perfectly intact and the muscles are where they should be, but there isn't any skin.
My legs are spread wide open and I remember feeling both the tiger and victim at the same time, as the tiger talks about how the subject had three testicles.
As the person, I remember feeling alienated that my three testicles were on display, but looking at them without any skin on them, and my legs spread far apart, was unique.
I wasn't distressed or in any pain.
It felt like how I would imagine someone in trauma might feel; overrun with endorphins and able to step back from everything and feeling almost blissful.
The end.

My new favorite person

"Why do you have to be such a suck fuck all the time?"
This is one of the first things I heard out of the mouth of a very tall man, leaning against his work van, smoking his cigarette, and harassing another coworker who was just dropped off.


Let me explain. So I recently landed a new job; a blue-collar job installing various "weatherization" elements to homes. It's unlike any other job I've ever had, in that everyday I am privileged with hearing this man say some of the most eloquent insults I've ever heard. As a college graduate (with a degree in English, and dreams of landing one of those AMAZING jobs that don't exist) I've never had direct contact with the type of men who work as roofers. It takes a special breed of person to roof homes, especially up here in the PNW. The homes battle constantly against mold and it's not all that uncommon to drive around and see shingles with a sheen of green (that often becomes quite slippery when wet).

I'm getting off topic now. So back to the "suck fuck" man. I've been at this job for exactly three days now and have debated starting a Twitter account just to post the things he says. A group of five of us (I use that term loosely as I was not really in any circle with them, but standing back a bit and peering in at their tight-nit circle) were outside in the cold morning. One of the roofers turns to this tall man and asks him when the last time he Googled himself was. The tall man said, "I ainght never fuckin Googled myself. Why the fuck would I fuckin Google myself? What the fuck does that shit even fuckin mean?" The first guy explains that he was looking over the local jail's roster online the previous night and found someone he knew. The tall man knew this person as well, and the both of them shared that "hahaha it's about time that crazy motherfucker wound up in jail" laugh. So the first guy says to the tall man that after he found that online roster, he Googled his own name and a very long list of all the crimes he had committed popped up. "No fuckin shit?! Just like that huh? For the whole motherfuckin world to see? Your shit is just out there? Ainght that some fuckin shit! I don't believe yo dick ass though." So the first guy eggs him on. He tells the tall man to Google his name. The tall man pulls out his phone and falls silent for about 30 seconds. He randomly explodes with, "No way! How the fuck do they know that?! What! No man! I ainght told no fuckin one about that shit!"

Meanwhile, I am just standing there looking in a different direction now, and simply listening to him talk. I love it! Never before have I encountered such a person. Nearly everything he explains has the word fuck somehow attached to it. In no way am I saying that I am naive and never heard someone say "fuck" before. What I'm saying is that I've never heard someone use it quite like this tall man. He doesn't know it, but he's my new favorite person to listen talk.

So far in the three days I've been with this company, I've heard him say the following:
- The word "ass dick"
- "That shit was on there tighter than a pair of fuck nuts."
-"With your no work fuckin ass"

I should explain that I don't work with this tall man. I only see him for about five minutes a day while he waits for the rest of his crew to show up. After that, the crew I am on and his crew go separate ways. I can tell he is the type of guy that everyone listens to on his crew. I don't think he is in charge, but the way he carries himself tells everyone that he is that "alpha" type. He seems like a jovial person. That last three days I've seen him, he has always come into the shop with such energy. Always giving people shit and then laughing about it all. I get the feeling though that if someone crossed him, he'd morph into a monster. He's quite stout and reminds me of a guy I used to work with when I was a teenager that liked to shake my hand, only to trap me with his bear-like strength. He'd squeeze my hand so hard that I often fell to my knees and begged for mercy. I HAD TO! It hurt so damn bad. Every time he'd do it too, I'd look up and see his face to check for any sign of strain. Not once did it change from his normally expressionless face. I use the image of his face sometimes when facing pain. I think to myself that John never showed pain. Man did he love to laugh though!

Today in History

So the title of this entry reminds me of when people post topics of antiquity that happened on the exact day some time ago. This is not one of those times. It is however something similar in that today in history, I picked up a book and read words from it. Those words enlightened me on two practices of execution for acts of treason that were enacted into law to illustrate to people what gruesome things would happen to your body if you committed such a crime worthy of torture.

The first one is terrible. Well I guess that they are all truly terrible, but this first one must have really got your blood boiling.

Okay so Henry the VIII (that's too many damn roman numeral letters to enumerate if you ask me) put into law in 1531 the legal practice of boiling a subject to death. This immediately made me think of that analogy used about a frog in hot water (it's too dumb to jump out of the water if you place it in cold water and slowly heat it up until the water is boiling). Well that's exactly what Henry did to people. He put them in a pot placed above some logs, and made a fire. Ironically, the first person to ever be executed using this technique was a chef by the name of Richard Roose. He was the chef of some bishop and convicted of trying to poison said bishop with a meat sauce containing hemlock and the "deadly nightshade". Now I haven't done any research on how and why this "nightshade" is deadly but what I do know is that tomatoes are part of the nightshade family. I'm thinking it was more than a tomato though that earned the quotes around "deadly".

So the chef, and anyone else who was committed to this type of torture, sat in the water for a grueling two plus hours while it heated enough to be lethal. As someone who takes "cool" tempered showers, the thought of sitting in a pot suspended above an open flame for two damn long hours hits a nerve of disgust. HA HA, you liked that slip of personal connection there didn't you? I sure did.

People would gather 'round these events to watch the person in the pot grow steadily more uncomfortable. I wonder if the victim was forced to sit with the water up to his/her neck. The book doesn't elaborate on that part, but I'd imagine that if it was a short pot and the individual was only in water up to their chest, that eventually they might see bits of flesh boil up around them before the pain was intolerable and sent the body into shock.

Don't worry though, this was only in law until Henry the VI outlawed it in 1547. For those keeping track, yes that is the older Henry outlawing it after the younger Henry passed away. Why so many Henries? Ah never mind, no one really cares why.

Okay so I know I made it sound like there would be more examples. Quite frankly I just don't want to type any longer, so I am going to stop....right....now.

Dream Sequence #9

In my dream,
I was in a room with an old friend from high school.
I was asleep in this bed dreaming up a dream. (So it was me in real life, having a dream about me as a younger person, having a dream about something abstract, and then reflecting on it as the me in real life now as a much older person).
Confusing to follow I know but an important element of what makes my dreams feel so real to me.
Anyways, I was lying on my bed and listening to this friend speak about a trip he recently took.
He went on to describe how he was in Alaska and would point off in the distance to a slope and explain that he would pick a spot on the hill of snow and slide as far as he could.
It was more scientific than joyful when he spoke about it.
His tone was very matter-of-fact.
This part is difficult to describe as none of it makes sense in the real world.
He would point to the hill and I could see a line drawn in the snow.
Below that line there was a pool of water and he would describe trying to slide down the hill as fast as possible to get as far down into the pool of water as he could.
He was a seal when he slide down the hill.
The pool of water was sliced in half and I could see the top of the pool and the clear water below it while he slide down under it.
They way it was sliced reminds me of how the diagram of a car motor would be cut in half to show the inside mechanics to illustrate what happens when the car is on.
Or maybe a better example is one of those brain molds cut down the middle to show the two hemispheres and where the different parts of the brain are located.
Does that make sense? I hope it does.
Back in the room he crawled under the covers that I was under now and placed his head on the pillow next to me.
I remember feeling really weird that he had done that.
It was because in real life he was more like a friend of a friend.
The next thing I know, I am alone and looking at my teeth.
My front two teeth had chips in them and one had such a large chip, that red flesh material hung from my gums and maintained the shape of the tooth.
It was as if the fleshy innards were really inside the tooth the whole time and now that the tooth was chipped, the fleshy bit was hanging unprotected.
I remember brushing my tongue over it and feeling a weird sensation that reminds me of when you lost a tooth as a child and exploring the new gap of warm fleshy gum.
My mouth tasted like pennies.
I was paranoid that no one would like me because of these enormous chips in my teeth and in the dream I remember thinking that I was an adult reflecting back on my time as a child.
Basically the tooth experience was me (in real life) thinking about how my tooth really is chipped and day dreaming about what it would be like if it was more chipped, but of course I was asleep (in real life).
This is a common element in my dreams.
A dream within a dream.
Next thing I know I am walking down the street with another friend of mine.
This time it is with a friend I grew up with and knew quite well.
We were carrying a log for some reason.
The both of us were barefoot and it didn't matter.
I remember walking over glass at that moment of noticing my bare feet as if my dream was teaching me a lesson to wear shoes.
At that instant of walking over glass my mother called me.
The way in which I spoke with her is bizarre.
It wasn't on a cell phone, but on a projection of her face on the inside of my eye ball like a projection screen.
She called me and I had no ability to not pick up the call.
She asked me if I had heard about Jimmy (another high school friend).
I told her that I had no idea what she was talking about and she told me that she heard about his story on the news.
He died in the line of duty and I remember feeling extremely sad at the news.
I reflected back on the time we drove in his Ford Escort and then thought about him in a military uniform over in the Middle East.
Back to carrying the log and the street turned into a sandy path between some homes.
On the other side of the homes I could hear the crashing waves of the ocean and next thing I know, my friend and I are on the sand and watching the waves.
I should inform you that this friend who is carrying the log with me is the same friend that surfed with me when I was younger in real life so in the dream it felt natural that he was on the sand with me and assessing the size of the waves.
The end.

The time I saw a dead body in the park

The other day a friend of mine called me while she was out running. I said hi and she said hi. I asked her how it was that she was running and talking to me on the phone at the same time. She said it wasn't a big deal. Then I asked her where she was running. She named a park that's around the corner from my house. I tell her, oh by the way, that's the park I found a dead body at a few months back. She tells me to not joke around about it. I tell her I am serious and that I truly did stumble upon a dead body there in that exact park she is running at. We banter back and forth about the details. While I was defending my sighting of a dead man to her -I don't blame her for not wanting to believe it- I was trying to recall his name. It still escapes me.

I'm stalling...I know. I've held on to this story because I wasn't sure how to approach it. I come up with ideas all the time for stories that are far worse off than this. This was real though. This was in front of me. I don't want this to be read as me trying to solicit my blog by taking on a topic that appeals to the dark part of people's minds. It's a literal thing. This happened to me and I want to share it. I want to grow and learn from it.

I remember calling my father and telling him that I had just crossed off seeing a dead body in person (outside any medical setting). He responded as he did (as any real person might do...with more silence than answers). I told him that Jessie and I had walked through the park earlier that evening on a walk with Lucas -my dog- and seen this man lying in the corner of the park. It was a sunny day so I paid very little attention to a sun bather. Anyways, it was about 45 minutes later and we returned to the park on the way back to my house when we came down the steps and stumbled upon the man still lying in the exact same position and spot. He was motionless. Jessie and I stood there for a number of seconds watching for his chest to move; that eerie feeling of what it all possibly meant creeping into my thoughts. When the realization that no matter how hard I stared, his chest wasn't moving, my mind went reeling for answers. Well what does this mean? What do I do? Who is he? Is he dead? How long has he been dead? WHY THE HELL IS HE DEAD IN THIS PARK RIGHT NOW?! The tingles in my hands became intense.

I can remember standing there with my dog and watching Jessie walk over to the body. She is in the nursing profession so this was nothing to her. For me, I kept thinking about this man springing to life. Maybe it was my mind coping in some weird way by telling me that life was still there. Right? At any second he would roll over and walk it off and I could go home and have a weird story to tell. Not a story like this one. Anyhow, she bent over him and checked for a pulse in his neck. She didn't have to say that it wasn't there. His legs were bent in unnatural ways, so there was that. His sweat pants were soiled. His skin was blue. His stomach was quite bloated.

The body had baked all day in the warm sunshine not more than 50 feet from the children's playground where kids were still hooting and hollering as children do.

I called 911 and as the parents of the children playing on the swings saw me on the phone and immediately heard the sirens coming, they all stood still and watched. I'll never forget looking up and seeing every adult face in the park looking directly at me. I could see what they were thinking. One mother gathered her kids and walked off. I don't blame her.

The police officer told me the man was homeless and had no family. He had been admitted to the hospital the night before for detox. Upon release, it was assumed that he went and purchased more alcohol and consumed it (he did have a can of Steel Reserve next to him). He came to the park to sleep it off and just never woke up. So now I can say that I've seen a dead body when I was least expecting it. In person.

Ramblings and then a poem

I haven't been writing much in the last two or so weeks and I don't want to fall out of things, so I am sitting here now with no idea what will come out. I have not lost any part of me, but fallen into a terrible habit of distracting myself with meaningless goals: vacuum the floor and then go write. Well I still don't feel like writing so maybe let's go to the store and buy Cedar chips and make the house smell better. Lucas looks like he needs to wrestle. 20 pushups and then write. Well first let me check Reddit and see if I can't find something to inspire me. Okay now it's 5:30 and Jessie wants to go to dinner and I do as well, so writing can wait. Maybe along the way I will find something to think about. Now it's 11:00 and miserable with guilt. I need to write. Why did I wait for freaking long? It's a purge that needs to take place, that if left unchecked, begins to overflow into other parts of life where it does not belong (that sense of confusion/irritability in a situation that at any other point, would be another moment passing unnoticed). It's maintenance; similar to pruning a tree so that when it comes time for fruit, the branches will be strong enough to support the extra weight of apples. I'm beginning to ramble now when I mean to talk directly about interconnectedness. It's all about checks and balances. I can't continue to put off writing out words because the pile will grow too large and my broom too small.If I don't write, and I sit here all day thinking about how I should give up looking for a writing job and go get a job digging ditches. At least then I would come home exhausted and have a real reason to not write.

I've been thinking -rather extensively- lately about managing every aspect of life. How miserable of a task that is to give yourself. Here man, let's think about the endless possibilities of the smallest happening in my daily routine. You enjoy that kind of stuff, right? This is my mind asking me what I enjoy. I know what you're thinking...this man is rambling and crazy with incomplete sentences and thoughts. Just what is he talking about? If you're reading these words, good for you. I just needed to get out my walking legs and put these fingers on the keyboard and write.

In the incomplete light I see the dance outside.
You're waving me on with those golden-orange
fans I call your hands. It's a dream I think,
but the wind feels nice on my face.
You're so adorable in this light but I cannot find the words in my mouth
so I smile.
There is a man sweeping the sidewalk
and I cannot help but think how miserable clean lines are.
"I'm afraid of sharp edges," I say to you, still watching him sweep.
"Step into my warmth," you say.
"So long as you don't tell me how," I reply.

What I would name my sail boat

 So I got to thinking the other day about if I ever owned a sail boat, what I would name it. I know there is a sacred ritual around naming a boat, and it needs to be taken seriously, but I decided to come up with some names I thought might better announce to the oceanic world, how seriously I took the boat naming process. Below is just a small sampling of names that I came up with. Have any ideas of your own? Let me know in a comment.


Sail Boats:
-Beluga Horn
-Anchor Slap
-Ocean Schwack
-Old Growth
-Captain Captain
-Vintage Sheet
-Mast Flute
-Oceanic Zamboni
-Magnificent Sycamore
-Starboard Port
-Crooked Stern
-Female Name
-Marital Woe
-The Undulator
-Water Bed
-Swollen Harpoon
-Please Bow
-No Moor


Dinghy:
-Ostentatious Oarfish
-Tom Foolery
-Iron Wedge
-Brackish Port
-Explosive Stint
-Backwards Swordfish
-Jelly Jellyfish
-Octopus Booty
-Dwarven Delight
-Skip's Skittle

In my small town, chain stores are depressing

It occurred to me today, that the root of my contempt for some of the large chain stores in my town comes from having to look at unattractive people.
Now before you get all rage on me, let me explain.
Whenever I visit stores like Kmart or Target, I am in and out as quickly as possible.
This is because the moment I am dunked under the water of these depression tanks (like one of those pitching-dunk-tank type games) I have only a certain amount of time I can hold my breath.
It's the people.
The people are ugly in that special kind of way.
Some imperfection in their physical appearance that ultimately lead them to try less in life (you know, from all the emotional scarring of people putting them in "their place") and end up as a cashier or jewelry clerk for some large chain of stores for which they could honestly care less about.
The ugly part is that they smell of giving up and bitterness for the world that shaped them.
I can't blame them though (just merely pointing out what I've gathered).
God they make me feel terrible inside.
I never thought that the physical appearance of another individual could cause such obtrusive internal feelings of anxiety and depression.
I don't want to feel depressed.
I mean, who actively seeks out such horrors?
I sure as hell don't.
I people watch at the mall but this is different.
When the void of life is ubiquitous among every "team member" that all avoid all eye contact because the job requires they be over friendly and courteous to clientele who are the type of people that knock crap off the shelf  because it got in the way of reaching for their bag of puffed cheese balls and walk away feeling okay with themselves, it differs from people watching.
I realize now that by walking through those automatic doors, I become an active participant.
In that torturous death ball, I have to interact with the slumps who are internally raging over cleaning up vomit from one of the changing rooms.
I don't blame them!
But this doesn't make my experience any better because I can't offer them any words to make them laugh.
Right?
I'd just be that person who makes a "seemingly funny comment" that the team member laughs at out of sheer impulse and later begins to resent me for making them feel something in an environment that sucks.
It just freaking sucks.
I waited tables for awhile so I know what it's like to fake laugh at someone's joke when you really don't want to.
HA HA, yeah you are right. I am less attractive than you when you've had four glasses of wine.
That's all I really want to do though.
Tell them how much of a joke it is to be working in an environment where even the simple procedure of paying with my debit card is complicated.
DEAR JESUS!
I had to swipe my card at exactly the time the cashier needed.
Not before she was done swiping all the items across the scanner.
Not after she was done but before she had to ask me if I was donating to blah blah blah foundation.
Certainly not before she clicked the button on her screen indicating I was paying by debit card.
I had to re swipe my card too many times is what I am getting at.
Grrrr, I was annoyed!
How petty of a thing to be annoyed over.
BUT IT ANNOYED ME OKAY?

I could be like my girlfriend though.
The type of person that misses out on all the negativity I just seem to hone in on.
She loves it when I point out crap she was oblivious to.
In the end she always thanks me with that backwards way of telling someone they failed at keeping their thoughts to themselves.

I feel as though I got off topic but still maintained some of the core reasons for posting this in the first place.
I also realize that I may have made you more rage but whatever.
Don't be so rage on me.
I also feel that I did not cap off each thought in a nice little bundle and recognize that some need major overhauls but I am not willing to go back through and correct it.

As always, if my words brought you even the smallest tinge of excitimatation (ex-cite-eh-ma-tation), share it with friends and look through some of my other postings.

"Soft Mix"

I have been sick this past week and not able to think straight, so I decided to paint this instead of writing. I would have posted the painting on this blog but the size was an issue. I couldn't get it to fit properly.

http://i.imgur.com/JPRXR5M.jpg

Found Poetry #3

I wish we had been born like bottle caps;
not actual bottle caps of course
but rusted, gutted, and ready to live:
the slit-chisel grasping the math of every folded body
subtracting what we've so long been dreaming.
I've seen versions of the holy;
my back supported only by the grim-stone tributaries
like the back wings of a stone angel
(yes I just compared me to the ephemeral).
There are heavy lead anchors that rest unmoved in the glow of her red tide.
How beautifully she swims in the boom of dark regions
like broken poetry in the name of art.

****************************************************************************

When I was the jukebox
I pointed to the flame of her indomitable body
and enacted into law an empire of hand-holding
to keep the leaves from suicide
and the last of the seasonal light
from becoming full of nights songs.
Sometimes when I see her at the bar I become technical
like prairie flowers stripping away their seed fluff
I can only think about soaking into her power lines
like a good book sticks to my finger tips.
"Do not suffocate dear," she says to me, "for I believe
that you are quite wicked."


If you enjoyed these poems, check out the others on my blog. I've kept them warm for you.

Tsunami

There is a tall cliff, several hundred feet high, dotted with the nesting sites of thousands of sea birds, that overlooks the northern edge of an Oregon coastline town. The locals nicknamed this overview “The Mullet” as the exposed grass bakes in the hot sun all day and is short. Beyond the grass stands tall pines that sway in the late-afternoon breeze.

On the flat of the plateau, a woman and her adopted daughter enjoyed the afternoon. “Serendipity,” the mother called to her child. She received no response. The mother looked back down to reread a sentence from an article in the Signal about the town's new gas station. She had to reread the sentence several more times as her mind persisted in evaluating why the child did not respond. Maybe it was my tone. Certainly she respects me—she must. But it's rude to not respond when someone calls your name. She was not going let it bother her that she got no response. Today can still be fun she thought to herself. Children need to play and be children. 

With a shallow sigh, the mother stopped reading and looked down at the shine of her new wedding ring as she trailed off in thought. Happy that she had someone who listened to her when she talked, she got up from the outspread blanket and walked to the viewpoint near the edge of the cliff. She was hoping to catch the small dot of him smoking outside the shop.

She did not get the glimpse of him she was hoping for. Instead, she was startled to see the ocean had sucked way out. It was not like this when she left the house this morning she thought. Surely she would have noticed.

The shallow surf where the two of them first made love was a shimmering flat expanse of dark sand. The tide was the lowest she had ever witnessed. The barnacle covered supports of the dock were exposed and crab pots lie on the sand; each connected to a length of line with a numbered float trailing off towards the horizon. Boats that were moored in the harbor lie on their side; their owners in awe and confusion, were out circling the boat that rested on the ocean floor. The water's edge was further out than she could see; almost flat with the horizon. She tried to block out the sun with one hand and squint really hard but still she could not see where it had gone. From high on the bluff she returned her focus back onto the town. She could see out-of-towners gathered in packs and the small dots of children running out to touch the sea life stranded by the unusual retreat of the tide. 

The mother turned her back to the ocean and began to search for her own child. After a moment of scanning without luck, she decided to head back to the blanket and pack up. As she took a step though, she tripped on a rock jutting from the dirt and fell to her hands. Anger coursed through her small body sparked by the sudden jolt of physical pain. No longer able to tactfully hold it back, she became furious. The mother, in an irrational fit, blamed everything on the insolent child. If only we had done what I wanted today, I would not be on my hands like I am now she thought. She must be bent over in laughter seeing me in the dirt like this.

She gathered herself and once again headed towards the blanket, this time more mindful of her steps. After folding the blanket into a tidy bundle, she spotted the child digging feverishly in the dirt below a pine. “Honey I would like to get back into town,” she called. She did not want to provoke the theatrical side of Serendipity, so she purposefully omitted the sense of urgency from her tone. To her surprise, the child turned and acknowledged her stepmother, but quickly returned to digging. This made her very upset and so she cursed under her breath.

Onlookers down on the beach began to celebrate and cheer; pointing out to the return of the ocean. "Everything is fine see," a corpulent man in a small swimsuit said. "Maybe the moon just wanted to play a trick on us," he offered as a joke. As he was explaining why the joke was funny, people began to hear the sound of distant thunder and again pointed out towards the horizon. This time they did not cheer. The wall of water could be seen crashing over large boulders that had fallen into the sea from the cliff with terrific force.

When the first wave hit, the surge of ocean was incredible. Those that had ventured out onto the exposed beach, now tumbled violently beneath the terrible weight of thrashing water as the wave moved with ease through the shopfronts. Vehicles parked next to the boardwalk all down the beach became play things for the water to toss about. The salt water poured into an antique store like a mob of looters. An exquisite champagne colored wedding dress with its long train bundled and snagged on a taxidermied head of a moose, along with other treasures, were carried out with the ebb of water through the smashed shopfront window.

The husband of the woman on the bluff was at work. He owned a small marine repair shop and was behind on a project. When the first wave smashed into the side of his workshop, he saw the shop walls shift from his periphery and clicked the grind wheel off. He was behind he thought, but not enough for the boat's owner to come pounding. As he grasped the handle to the door, he noticed a small trickle of cold water flowing from the lock. The door was heavy to open. He figured that someone was playing a prank on him so he pushed as hard as he could. The door swung open with the greatest of ease and the ocean roared into the shop, knocking the man down and pushing him across the floor. He was unprepared for the sudden rush of surf. It flowed with such weight that it toppled over the supports holding up the 32' sailboat he had been working on. As the supports buckled, the keel came down across his right thigh, snapping his femur and leaving him pinned under the boat as the shop filled with cold ocean water. 

Water swirled in the streets—slurping and sucking like an uncivilized mongrel lapping up soup. The boats that lie on their side in the harbor were now bits and pieces strewn across rooftops of small buildings. Wave after wave pounded the small seaside town to bits. The ocean devouring everything.

Every year the town would practice the tsunami drill. The locals went through the motions like seasoned airplane passengers; most ignoring the drill, assuming someone would come save them when the supposed “tsunami” struck. 

The line of cars on the single lane road out of town was long. Some people resorted to running. A young bachelor, in a frightful bit of panic, filled his backpack with pictures of his favorite dead dog, some toilet paper, and a fishing pole. Whatever could be rescued. A man and his wife, both carrying blankets wrapped tight with cotton cord, each firmly grasped the small hand of a child as they headed out of town. The mother telling her two children a small lie about where the family was going in such a hurry.

What I learned today

The following information I found in a book titled Panati's Extraordinary Endings Of Practically Everything And Everybody.
The book has tons of fun things to read and I highly recommend picking up a copy.

This is a condensed version from what I read in the book.
I promise that it will be worth reading.
Okay so John Keats had this friend.
His name was Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Now Percy was married to Mary Shelley (lady who wrote Frankenstein).
You don't need really need to know that loop, but what the heck.
So Percy was told by his doctor to move to Italy.
Italy at the time was seen as having a rejuvenating climate.
Percy travels there with his wife and two children on their yacht.
Within a year, their infant dies from a high fever.
The following year, their two-year-old falls ill and succumbs to his illness.
Life was fragile. I'm sure you can deduce that from the proceeding sentences though.
Okay, so Percy goes into a writing frenzy after his children die.
He pumps out a number of famous poems over the next 3-4 years.
In 1821 he hears news that his friend John Keats has passed and decides to write his "perfect poem" to commemorate Keats.
This poem, much to Percy's disappointment, gets negative reviews and so he decides to end his writing career.
Percy becomes depressed and suicidal.
In July 1821 Percy decides to lift his spirits and sets sail with friend Edward Williams.
He sails to Piso and enjoys himself.
On the return trip, he is sailing from the harbor as a sudden storm sets in.
A man in a fishing vessel, by the name of Trelawny, waves his arms frantically to get them to turn the yacht around and head back to the harbor.
Edward and Percy ignore the man (who Percy befriended during his stay in Piso).
The storm struck and passed within 30 minutes but during that time, the yacht capsizes and both men drowned.
Mary Shelly becomes heart broken and clings to the hopes that their boat went off coast and will show up on a distant island.
News gets back that he was in fact dead and had drowned at sea.
Trelawny happens to be around when the identifying of the body takes place and he quickly points out that is was indeed Percy.
In Percy's breast pocket was the last collection of poems written by John Keats before he passed away.

This is where it gets interesting.
Now there was a law that when a body washed on shore, it had to be burned.
This was to prevent the spread of disease.
Now Trelawny, some friends of Percy, and some curious locals are the only people at the burning.
Trelawny, who worshiped the poet, reaches into the fire and pulls Percy's heart from his body.
He sends it to Mary Shelly in a jar and the heart sits on her desk for years.
Percy's ashes get sent back to his wife and she puts them in a grave.
Trelawny travels to the grave site and is not satisfied with the grave accommodations.
He uses all the money he has and purchases two new headstones for two graves.
One for the empty plot next to Percy.
You'd think that he would do the noble thing and have the plot for Shelly.
In his infatuation for Percy, he writes a letter to Mary Shelly and informs her that the new plot next to Percy is for himself.
To this day, Trelawny -the man whom Percy knew less than six months- is buried in the grave next to the famous poet Percy Shelly.
Not his wife.

If you enjoyed this bit of writing, make sure to check out the rest of my blog. WARNING: I'm no famous poet and I don't plan on drowning at sea. END WARNING.

I had to change

In the hopes of landing a job, I've had to change some elements of my blog. Beginning with using a pen name instead of my real name. I want to land a professional writing gig and posting about pulling grass out of my dog's asshole isn't exactly professional.

I'm still me and the content will not change. I'm just that mystery man making grunting noises from the stall over.

Dream Sequence #8

In my dream,
I don't remember how I arrived in the ocean at night but I was out in the Pacific somewhere in the dead of night.
There was an enormous cruise liner floating in the water about 500 feet from my side.
I remember wearing a full neoprene wetsuit and had one of those handheld underwater cameras you see on nature documentaries.
There was a small light fixed to it but the ocean was so dark that the light could not penetrate into the depths.
The ocean was slightly choppy and the perspective of what was happening in my dream was me observing me bobbing in the chop.
I was the omniscient author observing the protagonist up close, yet feeling the same emotions as said protagonist.
I remember writing the series of events but also fulfilling the role as "me" going through them, and changing the outcome immeasurably. 
Sorry if that was confusing.
I don't remember why I was out swimming out in the ocean at night but I remember feeling extremely nervous about what could be lurking.
Over and over, I had to tell myself that nothing was going to happen.
This soothed me momentarily and then I would think of a leviathan type creature with long tendrils coming up from the depths and sucking me under.
Again I would tell myself that it was irrational of me to think such ludicrous things.
At one point I was comfortable enough to dive under the water but quickly surfaced with extra panic.
It was after this moment that the omniscient me just became me.
No more dual perspective. It was just me now.
The water was just too dark.
I wasn't afraid of sharks, I remember that specifically.
It was the damn thought of something I could not explain that left me in fear. 
Off in the distance, in the sky above the cruise liner, I saw a large pink explosion.
It made no noise, but the sight of it after having just tried to swim underwater and surfacing from panic was too much.
As I was making my way back to the boat I saw the explosion again.
It was not a natural sight to see and I thought it was extraterrestrial activity.
This thought was due to the fact that the explosion was A) Pink and B) In the configuration of a large elephant.
Still, as funny as it is now to think about, it woke me up and I was not able to fall back asleep.
So I walked around my house for a few minutes.
Sometimes when I dream, I wake up and feel what was happening in my dream as reality.
If the dream was spooky enough (never content wise, but always my emotional state of being in the dream) I will wake and not want to fall back into the same dream.
So I find small things to do or fixate on to pass the time so that the dream that woke me will be replaced with one more friendly to sleep.
The end.

If you want to read more dreams, visit the archives of my blog. I cannot promise more will have pink exploding elephants in them, but I can promise that the majority will make you think, "waaaaahhhh?"

Flash Fiction #1

In the evening of the fifth consecutive day without sleep, I had wandered to the local pond. I do not recall how I made the decision to walk to the pond nor do I remember the walk itself. The delusions by this point of exhaustion were extremely difficult to separate from reality. A man suddenly appeared -I cannot say from where he came- and began to wade out into the pond. He had on overalls and the water quickly wicked up his pant legs, making the cotton a darker blue as it rose. I remember seeing this and thinking that he was being erased with every step he took; the pond just an inkwell swallowing up his legs. He stopped a few paces out and I swear to you that all the fish in the pond came to him. Dark spots gathered around the man like concert goers in an amphitheater waiting for the show to begin. He had bread in each pocket and tore small pieces off and tossed them to the fish. Him feeding the fish like this reminded me of a time I saw an elderly gentleman feeding some pigeons in the park. I watched as one flew up to land on this man's head and immediately thank him for the bread crumbs by defecating that disgusting white mess. I let out a laugh at the memory of watching it run down his forehead and dribble off his nose. The man in the pond suddenly turns to me -I don't think he knew I was there- and as he turns his face towards me, I can see that it is featureless. The skin was stretched tight over the sockets of his eyes and where his nose should be, was just a small bump pressing firmly from under the tight skin. His mouth, completely non existent, was terrifying to me but I could not stop myself from laughing that uncomfortable laugh.

If this was something you enjoyed reading, try some of the other morsels I've baked. I promise they are gluten free and don't taste all that terrible. 

Dream Sequence #7

In my dream,
I was wondering around a derelict old raceway.
I was with a childhood friend of mine and some other random people I cannot recall now.
We were walking around on the old concrete of the parking lot.
I remember seeing shoots of grass growing tall out of the cracks in the retired parking lot.
Next thing I know this childhood friend of mine had this group of friends show up.
These guys were in the business of importing vehicles from other countries.
The dream teleported me to the warehouse in "Rain Man" (the one where Tom Cruise is trying to peddle Lamborghini's).
My friend, he doesn't hesitate to help guide a tall crane carrying a boxed and sealed car.
He's guiding it down with hand motions and cutting at the protective plastic wrap.
I remember feeling confused at how quickly he went from my friend to just a man working unloading these cars.
Next thing I know, we are again walking around.
This time we make our way to the track itself.
The fencing is still up that circled the small track and I can hear motor noises.
I remember walking up to the track and seeing that it was a pool and there were people racing those hydroplane boats.
I was excited about this because as we walked up to a concession stand I noticed that you could pay for a ride on one of these fast and loud boats.
The prices were amazingly expensive (Hundreds of thousands of dollars).
We collectively sighed at this.
I turn around to whistle blowing and see that the hydroplane boats are no longer boats but are whale sized dolphins.
The whistle that blew announced that a sting ray was being released onto the track for the dolphins to chase around for a single lap.
I remember the stingray winning and a gentleman appearing to the side of us as this ray squeezed its way through a stingray sized escape hole in the fence.
The dolphins came crashing into the fence and the guy turns as says to me
"This is the fastest stingray in the land. No dolphin has ever caught it."
It's from this line that I gather these stingrays are food for the dolphins if they can catch it.
The man hands me the stingray and I remember it feeling hot and heaving from the exhausting lap around the track.
I feed it a fish to the mouth that's on the underside of this champion.
Next thing I see is this guy whirling the stingray on the tip of his finger like a pizza maker does when stretching his dough.
The end

This is a hydroplane boat if you did not already know.

If you'd like to read more dreams of mine make sure to follow my blog. I post them frequently.

Because I saw someone else do it

A few days ago I read an article about a man who only eats raw meat. I found it fascinating but only because of how it made my stomach convulse thinking about trying it for myself. I'll be honest and say that I'm the type of person who can't eat fat on steaks. Does this make me less of a man? I'm not sure. Guess it depends how you quantify being a "man". Anyhow, I cut all the fat out because my stomach has this socially awkward record of making me throw up in my mouth when attempting to swallow fat. Don't judge me! I try. It's an automatic thing. It just happens okay?

My brother and I went to the store the day of me reading this article and as he was buying groceries I told him I was thinking about trying raw lamb. We went over to the meat section and I couldn't do it. A) Lamb is expensive. B) I thought about how many worms must be living in that dude.

So tonight my brother surprises me with a lamb heart he purchased at the local COOP.

I must say that is was not all that bad. It did smell like iron and pretty much taste exactly like blood (go figure, right?).

For those who doubt my actual eating of the heart, here go.

I tried to tear some off with just my teeth but it wasn't working all that well. So I used a knife and sliced ribbons off. Not all that much is gone because my gag reflex really fought me.

It occurred to me while I was typing out this entry that me eating lamb heart and posting about it is RIDICULOUS. People eat this all the freaking time. It's sold in the grocery store after all. Tribes of people all over the world look at this as a delicacy. But not sheltered me. Not brainwashed into only eating cooked foods me.

I guess eating it raw is something unusual but I want everyone who reads this to know that I do not think of myself as being anything noteworthy because I ate raw lamb heart. It's just not something I've ever done. Nor do I think most people would even entertain the idea of doing it.

Dream Sequence #6

In my dream,
I was riding my bike down a street in a city that I do not recognize.
I remember feeling free and happy that I was on the bike which makes me think that I was young in the dream.
The bike is gone and now I am in an old convertible Buick and my uncle that is dead in real life is there in my dream and he stops me.
I remember him being quite rude which is not a quality he had in real life.
He demanded that I take my sister who was sick and throwing up, to the hospital.
I remember thinking that this was the stupidest thing to take a girl who was only throwing up to the hospital when she could just eat a Tums or something.
Next thing I know, my grandmother is there, who is also not alive anymore.
My uncle is telling me that nanny is sick too and that she also needs to go to the hospital with my sister.
My brother appears in the car so now it's a full car and the top is down.
I begin to drive and drive real fast so that the wind cools the two sick people off and maybe they won't be as sick.
The road turns into a crazy highway twisting and curving.
It's built very high off the ground and there are many different roads all twisting below it going different directions and all have speeding cars on them.
For some reason I am in the back seat now and the roof is up and my grandmother is driving.
I ask from the back seat to have the AC turned up in the car so that the windows could unfog and keep the two from getting sick.
Nanny, she is driving crazy and weaving all over and I remember thinking that if she has a temperature, she might not be fit enough to drive.
So I tell her to pull over.
She starts to do so but can't keep control of the car and heads straight for a parked car.
I leap from the backseat and slam on the brakes and grab the wheel from her.
She is pissed and over correcting the steering wheel.
I remember feeling the sensation of applying a great deal of pressure to the brakes of the car but it not slowing down much.
We rocket up this hill and my grandmother is telling me to watch for the slabs of concrete jutting from the edge.
We dodge them all and explode through this open gate onto a field of grass.
There are cars slowly proceeding in a single file line.
I quickly realize that we just drove onto a tiger drive thru type park.
They are everywhere and docile and not at all like real tigers.
Some are plump and jumping very abnormally which makes me think they are cartoons and not real tigers.
The worn out path in the grass we are on gives way to a bog and the car disappears.
The tigers are gone and now the path is really flooded and I am digging my legs into the soft mud beneath the surface of the water that looked something like you'd see on a nature show in the Amazon.
The kind where they go swimming in the flooded forest and all the tree roots are drowned with water and places that used to be dry land are now under 15 feet of water.
There are yellow flowers floating on the small channel of water that bends around the corner.
I swim and the water turns into pool water and everyone that was in the car is now back with me.
It was a new park that was a pool.
There were other groups floating on cars and looking at the animals swimming.
The pool water was very cloudy and I remember thinking that we must have been in the 1940s.
We are in a pink Lamborghini Countach and I know this because a guy in the car next to us is freaking out that we are in a Countach in the water.
My grandmother and sister are no longer sick as the cool water has cured them.
I remember sneaking out of the car and swimming in the pool and seeing a miniture beaver swimming under the water.
I thought to myself how a park like this couldn't exist in the future because someone would have been bit by the beaver and sued to the park and it would shut down.
The end

This is a Lamborghini Countach if you might not have known what it looked like.

Oktoberfest 2013 with a sexy man in a dirndl

This past weekend my girlfriend and I, plus four other couples one with an awesome pudgy baby set off for Oktoberfest all crammed in one motor home. Add that up and it's 10 1/2 people all sleeping and getting drunk and pissing and shitting and talking extremely loud farting nasty beer farts and throwing up at different times. It was an adventure for my normally reserved and quiet self.

What this post is really about though is Friday night. A good friend of my girlfriend is this rock climbing, lives in a VW bus, pisses in gallon sized containers absolutely not apple juice has long flowing sexy dirty mountain-man-hair and a beard that makes me weep with jealousy. Ladies...he's single. Yup, he can rope you into his sturdy harness and climb the steepest cliff face with one arm cradling you ever so gently think Tarzan anchor you both in above the clouds and show the world how to bump uglies like a real man totally all my words; I take full responsibility if you are 100% turned off.

So if you've never been to an authentic Oktoberfest, I will quickly break down what attire that's clothing; I know it's an outdated and very tired word a person needs to wear by showing you a picture of an excellent representation of how to make more friends at the festhalle than you'll know what to do with and take more pictures with random people that want your babies and have more dudes approach you than the slutty dressed blonde-haired beer wenches:

We couldn't walk more than a few steps without people wanting a picture with this beast. I think he got the most free drinks any person in history has ever received and all without taking off his dirndl maybe just a few flashes of what's under the dress.

All in all it was a good weekend. Could have got more sleep but I figure that sleep can come when I am dead.

If you support men wearing tight corsets and rocking hairy legs in a dirndl with the biceps to choke out a buffalo, share this with your friends. Let's get this man a woman! Team on three. 1...2...3... TEAM!

Lentil soup smells the same coming out

I might be alone on this one but what the heck. Has anyone ever noticed that lentil soup smells the same coming out as it does going in? I realize that most people don't eat lentil soup (as it's always on sale at the grocery store I go to) or possibly don't even know what lentils are. The best way for me to describe lentil soup, if you don't already know what it is, is to name another delicious soup that turns most people off: I'm talking about split pea soup of course. I love it. Give me baby shit green split pea soup with small chunks of ham any day. I don't care that you think it's disgusting. MORE FOR ME!

Mmmmm split pea soup.

Anyways.

I want you to eat lentil soup (more specifically the Progresso can kind) and report back to me if your next bowel movement smells pretty close to how the pot smelled cooking on the stove.

Sincerely,
Your avid split pea and lentil soup consumer

My lentil soup eating posse. Share this with your friends and let's get the word out there about the joys of these exotic soups!

Why the word "deadline" made me stop and think

I came across the word deadline today and I had to pause everything. WAIT! SORRY PEOPLE OF TRADER JOE'S. I thought to myself that the word deadline has very little connection to how we use it. It's one of those words that I wonder where the origin came from. Right? Dead and line together have many combinations. Someone will be dead, if and only if they cross that line. That one I get. Makes sense. A line that is dead could also be a way to interpret it. Although this one is hard to agree with because really, what possibly could a line that is dead really mean? Like, "The line at the grocery store was dead today, so I'll need those papers on my desk by morning." (By the way, do offices use paper anymore? I need to think about this. WAIT!)

Another way I thought about it was that you could see this hypothetical line and on one side of that line you are not dead, and on the other side you are totally dead. More dead than anyone has ever been before or will ever be. So dead, that they'll write an article about you in Time magazine. HA get it? Because time is how we measure life. Because we need a way to remind us that sometimes people die much younger than they deserve but if no one had an age, that guy who died on his prom night might not be remembered as someone who "died too young". Because we need time to put all of life that came before us into perspective. Because in the end, time is much too large for us to really grasp; I mean, think about how long you've been alive. Now multiply that by some stupid number that takes too long to write out all the zeros. Because time just is okay?! Geeeshh

Anyways.

I pictured deadline as an old scene from a western movie where a line is drawn in the sand sort-of-thing. But this also makes little sense when plugged back into the way the word deadline is used today. I don't imagine a task begin assigned and in small print it says, "Oh by the way, cross that line without having what I asked you to complete, and you'll cease to be a person. Go ahead. Try it. I have extra freezer space at home. Also a Costco sized bottle of Tapatio"

What am I doing? What am I even saying?!


But can you see what I'm getting at? Am I using too many euphemisms? I'm sorry. I get sidetracked. All I'm saying is that the word deadline probably means nothing at all what it was originally intended to mean. It first was used in 1864 so it probably originally meant to tie your slave to a line and drag them behind your ship until they drowned. Just a guess though.

If you rock the car, so will I

Tonight, on the way home from Pho, some college kids in a large old Isuzu pulled up behind me at a stoplight. I watched them in my side mirror rock the SUV back and forth while the driver had the dorkiest smile on his face. They had their windows rolled up and cheering on one another (loud enough to be heard with their windows up AND my windows up AND my music on. So at the next stoplight, I decided to get my girlfriend involved in rocking our car. Needless to say, the kids behind us got excited. It made me think of the time a kid at a party came up to me and said that I could be his friend because we were both drinking Bud Light; a connection between two people need not always be over the top. Simply drinking the same brand of beer can suffice. Anyways, the kids behind us rolled down their windows and began to holler. I looked in the side mirror again and their SUV was rocking side to side.

It made me laugh to see these kids so damn excited about doing this at stoplights. Lesson learned: sometimes it's fun to make some college kids' night.

Dream sequence #5

In my dream,
I remember traveling down a country road in a classic car.
The dashboard was not very bright and all the knobs were chrome.
I remember bouncing in the bench seat every time we went over a bump.
It took me some time to figure out that Taylor Swift was piloting the car and that I had no earthly idea where we were going nor why Taylor Swift was driving.
I have this generic picture in my mind that surfaces whenever I reach a point in a story or novel that describes a country road that winds through a high-desert hillside and we were traveling down this same mental picture.
The trees were dark and I was floating above the car looking down from a home with large windows that sat at the top of the hill.
I could see the tail lights of the car as it past down on the road below and then teleported back to the car with Taylor still at the wheel.
She looked over at me and told me that she was taking me to see her family and some of her friends.
It wasn't until this moment that the impact of her being a celebrity became a thing in this dream; before this moment she was just an attractive woman driving the car with me bobbing up and down in the seat next to her without a seat belt on.
I remember slowly pulling up to this sharp 90° corner in the road and as she began to turn the steering wheel, hand over hand, we skipped the turn and were now walking.
Off to the left was tall grass illuminated by the headlights of the car we just left running.
The scenery became something I remember seeing in Nitro Circus when the guys fixed wings to the dirt bike and tried to get it to fly.
The grass was cut short and straight like a run way with tall grass running parallel on our left side.
We were walking and I remember holding her hand and thinking that I wasn't going to be like any other boyfriend she had.
I would buy my own dinner and pay for the things I wanted to do and not ask her for anything; I thought she would find this noble and want to be with me.
I pictured me working at a fast food joint and being damn proud of dating Taylor Swift but still keeping my job and independence. 
We were walking and kids starting showing up all around us.
There was a roaring fire off to our right hand side and down the runway a bit.
Some adult were gathered around it with cans of beer in there hand.
I remember knocking kids down as they ran screaming up to her wanting an autograph.
I became her body guard and thought to myself that this is another way she will see how different I am and thus want to be with me.
I told her that I get how annoying it must be for fans to always want a picture and that I would prevent that as much as possible.
Taylor would giggle at me slamming these kids down all while still holding he hand gently.
The people all disappeared and we were having a picnic in the Arizona desert sun in a small cul-de-sac type outcropping in the shrubbery.
Just me and Taylor swift on a blanket.
I asked her to sing to me and she began to sing a song but it was not her voice.
It was the voice of the singer from Lamb Of God coming from her mouth, and Taylor moving her lips very delicately like she does in her music videos.
The end

My dog needs to see my face in order to shit

Sometimes I wish my dog could talk just so I could yell at him and then afterward explain to him in a calm and parental voice why I would gladly choose any other dog besides the shitty creature I adopted that can't seem to poop in the backyard. I hate how he makes me go stand out next to him in order to take a crap. I know he needs me to poop because I watch him from my window. He will sit forEVER at the gate just looking through. His stupid little dog brain associating the closed gate to his previous owners abandoning him. I have no intent of shutting the door to the yard permanently and just leaving him outside. Like I forgot completely that I have a backyard altogether and when I look out the window from my room, really what I am looking at is just some grass that grows in a space next to the house. But how can I tell him that?

The other day he was outside and I needed to grab something from the shed. Now, I had put him outside earlier because I knew he had to poop but had forgotten he was outside. I opened the gate and walked to the shed and in that brief few steps from the gate to the door, he spun around and headed to the middle of the yard to poop. I came out of the shed and there he was, arched back and pushing. His tail straight out and just piles of crap coming out of him that he'd been saving for days.

At this point you might be asking how I know he has to poop. Well it's quite simple. His tail bounces more and exposes his pink starfish sphincter. Sometimes he has to poop so bad that I see him prairie dogging it. I can actually see him sucking it back in. It often times looks like a fish gasping for air each time he tightens up. HA. This imagery makes me laugh every time. Because of just how DUMB a creature can be. JUST GO SHIT! I SWEAR THINGS WILL BE OKAY! OMG SHIT! PLEASE JUST DO THIS ONE SHITTY THING!

Still, he won't poop without me there. Even when the shit is already pretty much coming out all on its own. His body is telling him to evacuate the chamber but no, he holds firm until he sees my face. Then he can poop in comfort.

He's a miserable thing.

If you like what you see, remember to share it. Like how your mom wants to hook you up with a girl she met at the grocery store...three months back.

Black dog. Tongue out. Bike ride and a rabbit

On a bike ride today; dog black and tongue out, I his owner kept a solid pace 'til foam dripping and flicking slung out from each bounce side to side he kept rhythm of heavy but not too heavy breath. The tire tread gripping old road worn out patched and bumpy we jumped curbs dodged squirrels, cats. I, listening to chain bounce slap aluminum; keep balance with leash taut wrapped tight left hand hanging out to my side waiting for him to take up the slack; pull me from the awkward height of a high seat post. We strolled through the park, his muscles firm, becoming seasoned requiring more distance with every trip out so we do this time and time a week each taking the same circle 'round the border of the park until we cross that small bridge over muddy water flooding small creek with tawny clouds creeping. We turned down a new street, the asphalt clicking his nails grinding down with every step we ventured down looking at homes new to remember; new area to explore in a town I've seen nearly all of; an old man with blue overalls blue long sleeve work shirt blue house with blue gutters and blue windows held a bucket of paint in his right hand bent over and painted his home. A new layer being put down to show his favorite color: blue. Lucas not seeing what I see. Riding with one hand on the handle bars wanting desperately to stop the wheels and ask for a picture of this man's smile. He agreeing. Me thinking the whole time of posting it online for thumbs up. Disregarding the usage of an old man; suddenly with surprise being pulled from balance. Lucas, digging for a rabbit on a neighbors lawn. Me gripping the brake tight and preparing to bail ship. The old man still hunched over, oblivious.

The ride home swift. Me pushing. Faster when it needed to be. Slower when a small hill meant hard peddling. Lucas, fine with everything. Happy. Content that he got to move his legs. Wishing that it was raining to cool him down.


Remember, if you like what you see, share it with friends. I don't mind. Requires a mind to mind so I don't.

Why you should never buy Vegan/Dairy free "cheese"

So the other day I was at Trader Joe's looking for cheese. I wanted to make a pizza and since I am gluten free, I wandered over and picked up some gluten free pizza dough. I remembered that the previous time I made pizza, I purchased one of those packages that has pre-sliced mozzarella and how terrible the gas was afterwards. This time I thought, I'd look for something that was maybe dairy free and being that I was at Trader Joe's, naturally the only cheese I could find that was dairy free, also happened to be Vegan. No big deal I thought.

I had a small laugh at the adjectives listed in bold italicized lettering on the front: "Stretches and Melts!" is what it said.

I knew from the need to say that this "cheese" stretches and melts that it was going to suck. I pictured a round table of creative minds from this company sitting around and knowing that their product is just the crappiest thing ever invented but still needing to fill the empty space on the packaging. I mean, what possibly interesting attention grabbing thing could there be to say about Vegan dairy free cheese?

I purchased the stuff anyways because. I wanted to say I purchased the cheese because I'm a risk taker. That's really what I wanted to say but some "risks" don't belong in the risk taking category with things like oh I don't know, bungee jumping or swimming in a black wetsuit off seal island where those great white sharks leap from the ocean.You know, for scientific reasons you let a team of shark biologists tie a rope around your neck and drag you behind their boat to see if a great white will breach. Both of those are valid everyday risks, okay?

Anyhow, I get home and am excited about the pizza. My mouth is salivating at the smell coming from the oven. Long story short, the timer goes off and I pull the pizza out. I always let it set for a minute or two before I cut it up. Makes the fingers less burned feeling.

I look at this cheese crap, and know that it cannot possible be good. I roll the pizza wheel to cut the larger dough down to size and the cheese sticks to the wheel. So now I have more cheese on the wheel than I do on the pizza. The sauce is super hot and I'm trying to de-clump the wheel and put the crap back on the pizza. I'm doing that dance you do when something is hot. You know, where you begin to river dance the pain away.

I get the cheese back on the pizza and take my first bite. First off, the cheese tastes horrible. Shouldn't even be in the cheese section. It should have been in the gum section next to Big League Chew. It sticks to my teeth, plasters itself to my gums and is impossible to scrape off. I take a few more bites thinking that well maybe I will just suffer through this horrendous pizza and call it good. As the cheese begins to cool the flavor goes from barely acceptable to absolutely disgusting.

HA, I just realized that as I am typing this out, I am talking shit about PIZZA. How ludicrous is that? I get to eat pizza because I'm an adult in America that can purchase the ingredients and make it for myself. There are people on this very same planet that drink blood from the neck of cows. Here I am complaining that the cheese I purchased with my own money at the grocery store around the corner from my house wasn't very tasty. That I've had better. Booo whhhooooooo.

Basically, all I am getting at is that the cheese sucked and I gave it to my dog. Who didn't like it either by the way.

If you like what you see, make sure to share it. A little liking goes a long way. Or was it licking?

Dream sequence #4

In my dream,
I can see my sleeping body as I float above it.
There is an unusual sensation that I can feel but also hear.
It sounds extremely loud without making any noise whatsoever and feels like how I picture a black hole might feel.
If I focus on it, the noise becomes louder while the feeling goes away but it also works in the exact opposite way so that one variable always changes the other so that it never goes away.
This intense sensation is at first very warm and almost feels like I am floating in warm water but quickly turns to a more chilling sensation.
My skin feels different and the atmosphere becomes dark.
All of the sudden I am sucked out into space and can see the reflection of my own comet's tail.
The space around me is a blur and I can sense that I am traveling at incredible speeds towards the uncomfortable feeling of deep space.
I become empty feeling as if the emotions of despair and love had never been a thing I knew.
Time can be altered when I think about it but I have to focus on the white blurs as they whip past me to remember to slow down.
My eyes close and I can imagine watching the lines on the freeway as my family traveled from one end of the country to the other when my father got new orders.
The memory of fishing in Yellowstone at a lake that had no fish in it comes to mind and I can smell the wind and then become a spectator to the singing along to "There's a Hole in my Bucket" in the van on the way back to the tent.
In an instant I am on a planet that is like no other planet.
It's as if I had traveled so many miles into deep space that the planet I am on abides by no rules like we have on Earth.
The best way to describe how I am on this planet viewing what is taking place is that I am vapor.
It's a planet with life but not of anything organic like humans or animals.
Everything is made of rock and gravity seems to be in between Earth's gravity and none at all.
Rocks are gathered in formations that float past the screen I am able to view.
They pulsate and snap and pop in every which direction.
Little pieces of black rock that look like slivers violently explode when these pulsations occur.
In the foreground I can see shapes moving across the tundra of red earth.
I can't exactly describe what they were but they look like Velociraptors but on a miniature scale and made of metallic rock.
They are playing with one another and I can see that something is being tossed between two of them while the others look on.
Where I imagine their chest would be, I can see Mercury sloshing about in a fish bowl like device.
The silver of the Mercury flashes and reflects back into my eyes but I look behind me and this only a distant and not very bright sun.
I look closer at the sun and it looks more like the sun for a different planet that is orbiting rather close to the one I am on.
As this other planet passes between the sun, the tundra rapidly grows dark as the other planet blocks out the sun and casts shadows that engulf the planet I am still on.
I look up and can see mountains and volcanoes on the other planet it's so close.
The end

Found Poetry #2

In the milky mangrove the Australian man sat

twiddling' his thumb, exploring the uninhabitable island in his mind,

homesick and love starved for basking on ice floes.

His Finger Cherry quotes Dickinson

'Tis not that Dying hurts us so-

'Tis Living-hurts us more

The linguistics of her hypnotic Angel's Trumpet

oscillating between poetics and gun fire.

The tall Tansy Mustard growing tall as sunflowers

shake and sizzle in the Autumn wind

tapping against the Victorian window pane of her kitchen

thirsty for condensation

desperate to touch where the Waxwing slain himself

and impetuous.

The music of wind. A short story

The wind it was said to blow down from the high hills around this time of year. As she lie there, head down in the grass, she thought about the evergreens far up on the hill as they swayed in the Autumn cool wind. "Honey," a voice said from her side, "they are on the way." The grass she was crumpled on was damp from the previous night's rain. The yellow patch of flowers growing like weeds in the grass surrounding her boomed with the fortissimo hum of honey bees. As it grew louder she began to lose the feeling of the wind that blew down from the high hills around this time of year. Her breath began to shorten and her mind wandered. She remembered the porch of her grandmother's Victorian home and how the chestnut floor boards would creak. As a young girl, she would slide the door open and sneak up to the edge, her small fingers grasping the banister. In the garden her grandmother would be humming and digging in the soil. The girl would sit quietly, all the while her grandmother had heard the creak, and watch as she planted vegetables.

The light began to fade and the wind became still as it does during the Winter. "I told her to be careful," the voice in lentando from her side said. "Oh I cannot stand to see her suffer." The wind could not escape; like a jar with its lid sealed too tight, the air turned rotten and the small and fragile flame suffocated.

The world was black now. The stars hidden behind dark rain clouds like during the summer months. The stinger still throbbing in her arm.



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