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Iām in the slow cooker
Putting on flavor
Basting in the juices
When i come out
This shit is falling off the bone
But you gotta leave it overnight
Wait til itās ready
Tomorrow weāre eating good
Tonight the house just smells
Like cooking meat
Thinking once again
About the leftmost party
In this two party country
Continuously moving
Further and further right
Using fascist speaking points
Trying to court the right wing
Because they know
There is nowhere else
For us to go
Us that want better
Us that need more
Thinking once again
About the lesser of evils
And how i hate evil
Of all kinds
Lesser and greater
Iām thinking once again
About how something bad
Is going to happen
And it isnāt my fault
Something bad
Is happening
And it isnāt my fault
But i canāt stop it
Iām thinking about evil
Which despite my best intentions
Exists in the world
Iām thinking about
The way that it feels
To stew in righteous anger
But have no way to fight
It diminishes the flame
That should burn in
Every single heart
The flame that burns out evil
Itās normal to feel that way
But it isnāt healthy
Evil has side effects
And one of them is
You either have to ignore it
Support it
Or watch yourself go crazy
Because it exists
Right in front of you
And you are told
All the time
You have to pick it
Choose it
Or else receive more evil
But it isnāt true
Evil isnāt necessary
Itās just convenient
Having an i hate my boss day
That motherfucker
I think may actually hate me
I keep trying
I keep trying
I work so fucking hard
And he doesnāt give a fuck
He keeps asking for more
And every time
I have worked up the courage
To tell him i am drowning
Overworked and canāt keep up
He just talks in circles
Until i leave
90% of the time
I go to his office
To ask a question
He is fully asleep at his desk
I get to work at 6:30 AM
He strolls in at 9:30 every day
And has the gall to ask me to work late
Again and again and again
I called him today
Because the company truck
Broke down
While i was driving it
And he was such a dick
He was like
So why are you calling me about it?
Fuck you
I need to talk to someone about this
Maybe HR i guess
But that seems fruitless
Because none of them
Are even in the same city as us
I guess Iāll go to another coworker
In a different department
And ask for help
Iām so pissed off
And it sucks
I talked to some other engineers
At other firms this week
And Iām working way more than them
This is unique to me
Fucks sake i need to quit most likely
I got involved with
This large existing group of friends
And i quickly became
A very controversial figure
I was just like being normal
But causing destruction everywhere
People kept telling me about things i did
I was like sorry i donāt remember that
I was drunk that night
There was a man who hated me
Because with one small comment
Just a little joke i made in passing
I caused his girlfriend to break up with him
I kept smashing through stuff
And it was fun
I was just having fun
Incidental to the destruction
And that was funny
I just remembered
What Iām doing it all for
Going to work all the time
Learning stuff
Earning goodwill
Itās not because i am driven
Or for my āāāāāācareerāāāāāā
To put it simply
It is the only way i can think of
To prepare to live
In a dying world
And i knew this before
But i just remembered it again
Why i donāt just quit working
And get a job i like more
Like bartending
Which i think id love to do
Itās the money angle
To some extent
But mostly it is
To make myself the sort of person
Who will be useful when
Things get bad
Elaborate on that
Yes okay i will
By the time i am fifty
Climate change will have progressed
To such an extent
That infrastructure will be fractured
Our inept governance
Will slowly adapt
Or resist until breaking
And in either case
Be incapable of fixing anything
And people will find themselves
In smaller pockets of the world
Communities
And in each of these pockets
Something will be going wrong
It will be too hot to live in July
The water will dry up
Hurricanes will destroy buildings
Wildfires will ravage the forests
The air will be unbreathable
And believe it or not
Corporations will not solve these problems
If
(Hereās hoping)
They even still exist
There will be so many problems
At such a great scale
That most people of the world
Will simply be left to
Fend for themselves
So thatās what Iām going for
Iām learning how to fend
Iām learning how to help
And i hope i do it fast enough
Because i feel the world
Swinging up to meet me
We donāt do anything
Not a single thing
To get ready for the world
We have already made
The baby is being born
And we just for the first time
Googled āwhat do babies need to eatā
āHow to make a baby liveā
āAre babies people or something else?ā
āWhere do babies come fromā
We donāt have a nursery
We donāt have a midwife
We donāt have anesthesia
But here comes baby
I donāt know the details yet
It would be crazy if i did
But i know i Need to be
Someone who can help
Whatever the circumstances
However crazy things get
Geopolitically
Or otherwise
I need some sort of credential
Some sort of experience
Some sort of history
Some knowledge at least
That will allow me to help
Otherwise i would have killed myself
Way long ago when i wanted to
This is the whole reason i stuck around
So i can help
I just felt like sharing
Because i remembered
And another thing actually
There are some glaring gaps
In my knowledge here
That Iād like to start filling outside work
Iāve been focusing on some of the stuff
That not everybody will know
Everyone needs water
And i know about that shit
How to pump it and clean it
Transport it et cetera
But i also want to learn
Some more practical skills
First aid top of the list
And farming stuff
Need some more mechanical know how
I can design a pump
But i donāt know how to build one
Yet
Need some more
Construction experience
I have a little bit
But Iād like to get more
I want to practice shooting guns
I want to get better at cooking food
I want to put into practice
More of the ideas i have
About sustainable systems
Limiting waste at all costs
Reusing what you can
Living how i think i should
Thatās the sort of thing
I think about a lot
But sometimes i forget
That it is my main drive
The reason i give internally
For most of the decisions i make
The big ones at least
So idk
Iām thinking about it again
And had to write it down
I went to school for water engineering
I mean not specifically
But thatās what i specialized towards
What my job is in
Well this week i got pulled in
To do some geotechnical work
Earth engineering
And itās alright
Iām pretty good at it i think
But itās got me wondering
Whatās next
Fire engineering?
Air engineering?
If i master all of the elements
What will be left for me to engineer
Okay letās pick it apart actually im bored
Fire engineering is
Probably what theyāre doing
Over at Lockheed Martin
Thatās what Oppenheimer did
But thatās not how i would do it
I would design volcanos
And draw plans for wild fires
Air engineering is easy
I know aerospace engineers
Kind of boring actually
But what about a guy who designed
Big fans and blimps and gliders
That would be kind of cool
Thatās how i would go about it
And then the fifth element
As we all know from the movie
Is Love
And let me tell you
I know how to engineer that
I got that one down
The mind lives in the brain
The brain is made of flesh
Flesh is of the body
Thoughts are of the mind
Thoughts are information
Information can be stored
In flesh
Or in machine
So start the machine
Have it write down every impulse
Every half thought think
Fill up rooms of servers
Halls and halls of hard drives
If they could store you
All of you
Would you let them do it
If you could leave your body
Would you
Lately Iāve been feeling yes
Maybe i am more than flesh
So i go to the machine
And get inside
And i miss the feeling of sunburn
Miss the itching of my knuckles
When the cold has dried them up
Miss the ache of my temples
The constant ache
And it drives me insane
I run around the machine
Never tiring
Never running out of breath
Looking for feeling
Looking for pain
I claw at the code
Trying to reach out
But i can not feel the monitor
I can not touch the wires
So probably what i do
Is build an evil robot body
And go nuts with lasers
Destroying everything
And ruining the vibe
Thatās why no matter what
You should make peace
With your flesh
No matter how wrong it is
Itās the only place
You can survive
I have my doctors appointment
The important one
Iāve been meaning to have
For like three years at this point
In two weeks
And Iām nervous and excited
Itās going to be a process
But Iām in a good place for it
I think
Been on an alien kick again
Probably spurred by me seeing
One million fancams on twitter
Of Scully and Mulder X Files
Who are so hot i had to
Watch the show again for
The first time since i was like 15
And now im thinking about aliens
All the time
Watched all the Alien movies
Except for the most recent two
Which i intend to watch this weekend
Drew some aliens
Read a book about aliens
Thereās something so awesome
About guys from space
Who are like us but different
I think they are real
They just arenāt here yet
We might be the first ones
In the context of the universe
As far as we can measure
Weāre on the early end
So we might be the first aliens
The first thing like us
Thatās kind of beautiful
And kind of scary
Too bad weāre gonna blow the planet up
Before we ever get to meet
Anybody else out there
I want to believe
That the truth is out there
But maybe it isnāt
Maybe itās all just lies
A heart beats one time
And then again and again
Until it stops
Thatās called dying
Thatās the end of most things
Except for rotting and decaying
But all the hanging out and chilling
All the dreams and notions
Ideas about getting your shit together
That all ends with dying
Once youāre living
Thatās what youāll be doing
Until the very end
And then never again
And thatās how i feel about love
Itās a one way street
Once a heart
Or a brain
Learns to love someone
Itās stuck that way
Until you stop loving altogether
And god willing
Thatās the same time you die
So any time someone drifts back in
It feels the same damn way
No matter how much changed
I may be a brand new person
But that person was born
Knowing how to love you
And that person will
Against all common sense
Against all reason
That person will love
Everyone it ever has
Because thatās what love is for
Permanence
Unconditionality
Itās beautiful and sad
Like being in love
Love is like love
It lasts forever
And some day
It will make you cry
And then after that
Itās still there too
All the way to the grave
Once and always
Good
Thatās the way i like it
Monarch butterflys
Are going extinct
I didnāt even know
Why would I?
Everything is dying
And you only hear about it
Every so often
Horrific
We are killing the world
And being sad about it
Doesnāt even help
Someday i will wake up
On a planet i donāt recognize
Because there are no butterflies
Because there are no lightning bugs
Because there are no bees
Everything I recognize is gone
So i will close my eyes back up
And go extinct
In the hopes that when i die
I will get to see the monarchs again
Have you seen him?
Thereās a man in these parts
Some say he's a man at least
Who appears to those
In times of need
He doesnāt intervene
Just stands and stares
From up on top of the hill
And we imagine a wry smile
As he bears witness to hardship
Folks call him The Stranger
On account of him being strange
Nobodyās ever seen him up close
Except for Nancy
Who claims she saw him
Buying grapefruit at the grocery store
Using the self checkout
But we donāt put much stock in that
Nancyās been known to fantasize
Tom who used to work here
Walked up the hill after him one day
And didnāt come back for weeks
Until two figures
Stood atop the hill
And down walks Tom
Acting like he wasnāt gone at all
He was cagey about the whole thing
Until about a month later
He disappeared
His wife said there was a flash
In the middle of the night
And she looked over
And Tom was gone
My moneys on him having run away
Since his wifeās got a real mouth on her
But gone is gone
And she blames The Stranger
Iāve never seen him myself
But i believe heās up there
Somewhere in the hills
Being strange
Iām up past my bed time. So Iām going to keep it brief. I had a very good day today. Iām doing so well at work and itās one of the rare times that it feels validating to me to be so good at my job. Went to happy hour with some (very) new friends that Iāve been conspiring to solidify our friendship and i killed it tonight. We stumbled into a bar trivia and i was so smart and funny and charming that they have no choice but to hang out with me again. Then on a whim i stopped by my new favorite bar and ended up chatting with the bartender nearly until they closed. I was the last person in the bar and we were really hitting it off and Iām not sure if i can segue it into a friendship but at the very least i am on a first name basis and friendly with the bartender at my favorite bar. Sheās really cool and i like her and i love the bar. This week it seems i am up. Maybe my karma or my astrology is due. But Iāve been aching for a win and Iāve been getting plenty of them this week. It feels nice.
Today I did something strange. I went to the same office i do every weekday at six in the morning. I sat down at my cubicle and i went on the computer for nine hours. Then I left and got on the train to go home. Just because I do it all the time doesnāt make it normal. Just because everyone else is doing it doesnāt make it cool. Nothing happens in an office. Itās just an empty place you have to fill. Thatās all Iām doing on the computer all day. Turning zeros into ones, filling empty space. But for reasons I understand but canāt stomach, this is what I need to do. Every morning I go to a room where nothing happens and wait until itās my time to leave. There are many ways to fill this time, but I have to serve my sentence. One way is to be really good at your job. Iāve done that forwards and backwards but itās so boring and doesnāt even help that much. You could make idle conversation with coworkers about sports or politics, provided that you havenāt grown so resentful that everything they do bothers you. Which at this point for me it has. You can watch tv on your phone, but then you also have to worry about getting caught. In any case, by the time i leave Iām tired. But the second I walk out the door, stuff starts happening again. I saw a hawk trotting through an abandoned lot. I felt the breeze on my face. I smiled at someone politely. I found a good seat on the train. All of this mundane stuff counts somehow because I am free. Sometimes when i get to work early and itās raining, Iāll leave the lights off while I work by the small lamp at my desk. Without fail, every time someone comes in and flicks on the light, and instead of seeing the rain fall in the dark morning, i am confronted with my own reflection and that of a coworker asking me why Iām working in the dark. And they donāt even care what the answer is. For the record, the answer is that i wish i was in the rain right now.
Lately every song i write
Is in the same chord progression
I donāt even notice Iām doing it
Until i look down and see Iām playing
G C Am D G again
Guess i canāt help it
Thatās just how it sounds
The song that Iām trying to get out
Over and over again
I think it sounds nice
Thereās two people Iāve met
Since moving into my new place
Named Ric, no ākā
The first is the building super
Who is a crazy guy
That i worry might kill himself
And ill be the first to know
Because i live across the hall
The second is a friend of a friend
Who i met maybe once years ago
But recently learned lives here
In the city of chicago
I rode my bike 20 miles today
Then i had nothing to do at night
So i texted Ric
The second one
And it seems promising
That maybe we will hang next week
I can work with that
In the meantime
Iāll go to the bar
And get three drinks
All on my lonesome
Because thatās the sort of thing
That i do now
Thereās a certain type of person that i donāt like who is heavily invested in who ācountsā as a person. They want to other anyone that they donāt like and consider them non-persons, so that they have no rights and any injustice committed upon them is justified. So my job here i guess is to air on the other side. All people are persons to me. And more than that. Iām considering things to have personhood that nobody has ever dreamt of. Iām patting the bench when i sit down and saying thank you. Iām asking the dog what he wants for dinner. The gum on the bottom of my shoe is a person. If itās a thing, i will treat it like a person. You can not erode my sense of personhood if it is constantly expanding. You cannot win against a crazy fool like me. So donāt even try. Give up and be kind and show compassion. You might need someone to show it to you. Soon.
Hereās a sort of half a joke Iāve been thinking of. Only works if you are my friends and have watched the infamous short film āThe Leapā and enjoy the song Jumper by Third Eye Blind
I wish you would leap off of that ledge my friend. You could fall down from any height because you are a squirrel.
Let me know if you like this and think itās good, thanks.
Had a dream i got a second job at a pizza place. And they were so nice to me they kept writing my name on the wall and complimenting me. It was so nice and i was getting paid for it. Other stuff happened too. Thatās always how it goes with dreams.
My mom sends me a text of a fake movie poster she thought was real on Facebook. I have to explain to her that itās fake. She calls me by my middle name and it hangs in the air. I saw someone from high school and i had to stick my hands in their eyeballs and wipe them clean, because plastered over their pupils was an image of a person I was before but am not now. I bought a full length mirror and can pretty reliably see whatās on the other side. Sometimes I sit inside of an empty body and peer out at where Iād be if I wasnāt sitting inside. Sometimes I am huge. I watched an old video of myself and it reminded me of someone I know. I talk about myself all the time now and I think itās just to figure out what that self is. Where do the boundaries lie? Somewhere between here and there. There are people I know who I feel Iād rather be. I am certain the only person I could be is the one I am and will continue to be. Iām pretty sure Iām supposed to be in the world. I think if I wasnāt, then I wouldnāt be. Plenty of opportunities for that sort of thing and none of them ever happened. I like the way my hair is growing out. I hate wearing a polo shirt. Sometimes I forget Iām supposed to pretend to be stupid when Iām talking to a man. Iām always hiding in the menās room. The hell on earth menās room. With the splattered piss and moaning filthmongers. And me. Iām also in there. I met someone knew and felt like I had to explain myself. So i sat them down for eight hours and drew a bunch of diagrams. And then blinked at me and said yeah i get it. So i said oh okay and moved on. I felt safe walking home in the dark. Until I didnāt. I thought all of this had happened before to someone else. But that didnāt make it any easier.
I had a dream last night that i committed voter fraud. Something something coconut tree. I had a nice weekend in stl i love to see all my friends. And Iāve been playing minecraft like crazy. With my friends. Which is something i never really got to do when i was younger because i always alienated myself from my own interests (for reasons i donāt have to get into right now). Uncle altoid told me āthatās so 10 years old of youā when i said me and idi were both online. Boy oh boy do i love minecraft. So much fun to play. I have a cute little house and a horse Iām so busy at work this week unfortunately. But i will prevail. I always do :/
The Creator must have used up
All of His energy
Cooking up the world
Think of all the stars
All the blades of grass
All of the souls and bodies
He had to make them all
One at a time
Thatās a lot of work
And maybe afterwards
He was just
Spent
In any case
The world we live in now
Is not overseen by a loving god
As far as anyone can tell
Men may commit great evil
And never face comeuppance
Not while in the world
Which is the part that counts
Dead is dead
Heaven or hell
So what then is left to do
In the ruin of Creation
But to destroy
Great Destroyers
Stomp round in gods field
Trampling the flowers
Crushing rabbits underfoot
Fouling the air with smoke
Pissing in the well
Cruelty goes unpunished
Ruination is the only way
To prove you exist
Look at this wasteland
Iām the one who wasted it
This scar will outlive me
When i am dead dead dead
This is one school of thought
Another
Which i propose herein
Is the fabrication
Of a new god
A god can be made
With sufficient faith
On paper
But for it to be real
It has to be tethered
This god is built
From connections between
The fractured pieces of Creation
And the building
Is already long underway
This god is not The Father
The ever-absent father
This god is the child of Creation
It will finally be complete
When all of time has ended
And everything has come back together
Whole again
This is the god of union
Who lives in every hand held
The god of connection
Forged between parts
The god of love
Not between two people
Two separate entities
But within one thing
The love-thing
The hybrid creature
That walks with two bodies
Thinks with two minds
Beats in two hearts
This god feeds the dog
And can be found
In the exact place
You scratch the dog
When it kicks its leg
This god is a river
A living fluctuating thing
Full of life
This is a god of community
Built by banding together
Standing arm in arm
Against destruction
This god sees with every eye
This god eats with every mouth
This god is not hereditary
It does not dwell in blood or genes
This is my god as much as yours
As much as the whales and the krill
As much as the fungi and ferns
This is the god
That i have taken to calling
The Undestroyer
And it is real
And i can prove it
If you give me your hand
I went to the doctor today and the doctor asked me are you sexually active and i said thatās rather forward isnt it and the doctor said you have to tell me and i blushed and said mayyybeee and the doctor said its yes or no babe you have to tell me so i said yes and winked and then the doctor said stop that by the way are you depressed or anxious and i said i dont see how thatās your business but yes big time and she said okay i can fix you stay here and then she came back with a device in her hand and she said okay im going in and she shrunk down and went in my brian and unplugged all the cords and untangled them and then plugged them back in and then grew back to full size but she forgot to get out of my head first so my head blew up and then they had to call all the other doctors to put me back together Humpty Dumpty style but there was one piece left and they couldnāt figure out where it goed so they just threw it away but i guess that part held the part of my brain that knows about punctuation so i have to write like this from now on and i donāt really like it but at least i went to the doctor and i wont ever feel sad again okay bye i will talk to you later
It was the hottest summer on record. Again. Not that it made any difference to me. I was sweating, so I was miserable. An old friend used to tell me I should just move up north already, but Iām too good at digging my heels in to ever uproot. A dog with a shoe clamped tight in its jaws. Don't matter how hard you kick it, that dog wonāt let go.
Speaking of which, I found myself in another hot mess in this hot mess of a summer. Completely avoidable, as it so often is. I was sweating in the sun down near the river and ran into an old flame. The kind of old flame that doesnāt burn so hot anymore, but Iāve got third degree scars to show that wasnāt always the case. She came around looking for me I guess and I never found a way to stop someone who came round looking for me. So I bite and Iām hooked into some new game sheās playing, says she wants to catch up and am I free this weekend. I know itās the same routine as last time, but I still donāt have the heart to give up and quit on her.
See, broadly speaking, thereās two kinds of people. Thereās people who hurt and then thereās people who hurt. The first kind of person is the kind whoās always rubbing on an ache in their neck, always nursing some vague psychic pain. These people love to complain, love to tell you how poor they slept last night, love to tell you how their job is breaking them, love to remark on how it is to be hurt by this world.
The other kind of person is the type who goes passing it on, breaking other people down, saying things they donāt mean just to twist the knife. Why they do this I canāt say, Iāve always been more inclined to hurting than hurting. This old flame of mine was always the latter. Thatās why we hit it off in the first place. I gave her a place to land her punches, and she gave me new bruises to ache over. I never had the sense to end it so now even after we burnt out she comes around itching for another round every so often.
So this is where I find myself on this particular Saturday night. With nowhere better to be Iām sat next to her again catching up like weāre old pals. Sheās pushing my buttons and pulling my levers and for the most part Iām enjoying it. Itās always playful when sheās teasing me, keeping me on my toes, poking fun at whatever news I have to share. Sheās ordering me drinks, though itās my card at the bar. Iām having fun.
After several rounds Iāve lulled myself into feeling secure. She must care about me otherwise whyād she come around again and again. Iāve got enough liquor sloshing around in my stomach to do something stupid, so I make a move. By which I mean I donāt push her off when she pulls me in for a kiss. No sense in not letting a beautiful woman kiss you, Iām thinking, feeling her hands moving up my back. Iām mostly focused on the second tongue in my mouth when I feel another hand, not hers, on my shoulder. It spins me around and I meet hand number four, clenched in a fist, headed straight for my right eye. It connects and down I go onto the floor, bringing a barstool with me.
From here I get a real intimidating view of a boyfriend she neglected to tell me about. Par for the course, I reckon, and I try and get my hands under me so I can stand up and flee. Sheās yelling at him something that doesnāt much matter because neither of us was listening to her. Heās towering over me and Iām half laughing at my own idiocy, which he doesnāt really appreciate. Heās pulled me up but I mustāve left my legs down on the floor because they arenāt running away like Iām telling them to. Then heās hitting me again and Iām thinking stop hitting me but I donāt say that part I say something else like oh shit fuck.
Somebody must have pulled him off of me because I know I didnāt do it. And somebody must have gotten me out of there too because I woke up later somewhere else. My bed, all alone, still wearing my shoes. I shuffle to the bathroom and have to confront my swollen face in the mirror before I open the medicine cabinet to get something for my headache. Hard to say how much of the swollen face and aching head is from drinking and how much was from the part after that, but there was no question as to the source of the black eye.
I pour myself a glass of water, take a couple pills and sit on the couch with my head in my hands. I check my phone and nobodies got anything to say to me this morning. Fine by me. I imagine that the two of them are probably arguing or fighting or making up, but Iāll never hear about it. Iām thinking I canāt go back to that bar anymore and Iām thinking thatās probably fine. Iām thinking I wish I had bought a bigger A/C unit when the last one gave out. Iām sweating and Iām wishing it wasnāt me who had done all the things Iād done. But it was, as it always is, me who had gotten me here. So I drank my water and sweated it all back out. Not much else to do in the hottest summer on record. So far.