Twice used disposable cup

In other news I am allergic to everything because of artificial lemon scent. I bought more than a handful of new books but I am taking a break from reading to allow proper digestion of already read material as plots started to intermingle in my sleep. I am homeless for another few days coming up then voyaging back to PA.

Viddy-O-Screen (7/29/06 Magnolia)

What do you want from me
To watch the TV?
I watch the news and reel
The sublime-surreality
They don't show death on the big screen
Which logic would say means
There is no life
Since this breath can't go away
So the knife in the back alley
The bullets overhead
Whizz-bang Whizz-bang
Pop
There is no death
No pity follows suit
I'm just as bad as you
Which is to say not at all
There is bread and there is water
Husbands for daughters and
Laugher sounds the same
As tears in every tongue
And there is no one who isn't like me
They don't show death on the TV
And I don't need this red
Seeping from holes and cuts
There's enough
There's enough
There's always enough
Why stop it up
When the color is more real
Than I can pretend to be
And the pain brings clarity
To the whenwherehow
This is now-alive
And I can die
Just this once and be
Reincarnate for you
A white sheet on the oh-six-thirty news
In this not quite death of your TV screen

-Jn

Thoughts on Couches

Been thinking a lot about Couch Surfing lately. I mean this is pretty much the way I am spending my summer after all. I sent out a shameless email (The subject line even said shameless request) to all of my friends in the area saying hey I am homeless can you help out? Gathered up the responses and organized in calendar form and Bang! just like that I am homeless-but-house until the end of August. I am now wondering how long I can extend this bit of goodness into September. When the housing runs out I tell my boss sorry and I drive back to PA for a while. No biggie. But a few more weeks up here couldn't hurt right?

In reality I have been being groomed for this my whole life. In high school I bump in to my mom at lunch and mention that a posse of friends is coming over for dinner and maybe the spending night and then it happens. There is always enough food, always enough space. Even the day the ball game got canceled and there was a tornado warning and we all came back to my house where there was no power... everyone got dinner. Take in all strays, honor all persons. There is always a place if you are hungry or tired or just need a break from where ever you are right?

Wrong. I found out in college that the world does not actually run on the hospitality principle I had bashed into my head all my life. Roommates sometimes have problems with inviting random people over for endless days. Silly humans. Shrug. I do what I can.

So the other night I get whapped over the head with this concept by a shuffles at no o'clock in the morning while I am at work. I mean imagine, hundreds upon hundreds of people around the world offering up a place to crash for the night in return for... a place to crash for the night and maybe some stories besides. I will make you a cup of Honduran cafe and we can flip through my Peru pictures while I tell you about the day the brakes broke in Haiti if you lend me a corner of your floor for a few days and show me your work from that summer you spent in Nepal painting landscapes and learning how to make curry. And I will wash dishes if you cook tonight. But these people don't just use the system, they take care of the system and each other. I guess a few weeks before I joined there was this crazy crash of everything and so world travelers traveled and met together to fix things and worked round and round the clock. Those that couldn't program baked bread those that were unable to join sent encouragement and housed weary travelers on there way to or from Couch Surf Central. So it exists again or still or yet...2.0! At my fingertips I have a searchable database of new friends and people who think like me. Lets see the world and meet people and do things and then have folks over so we can share stories. I like stories.

The two things that bug me most about being a vagabond are the unreliability of cooking opportunities and tools and the inability to host. I can half do both now as I am house sitting and that is better than not at all I suppose. I don't know. When I get back to PA I am going to look up a fellow to meet for a cup of coffee and if I make it out to Idaho I will find someone for breakfast (since there are about 10 coffee shops for every .5 people I figure its more original). I will see if I can stop off for a few days in Ceiba to enjoy the night life before I head on to Trujillo. When I make it over to Europe I will give you a call. Can you pick me up at the train station at 9p? Stellar. And as long as I have a bed or a couch or a patch of floor to lend...let me know what you need.

-Jn

About Books

"I see you have books under your arm, brother. It is indeed a rare pleasure these days to come across somebody that still reads, brother." (...)
"Yes,"” I said. "“It would interest me greatly, brother, if you would kindly allow me to see what books those are that you have under your arm. I like nothing better in this world than a good clean book, brother." (...)
I started to rip up the book I'd got, and the others did the same with the ones they had. (...) This crystal book I had was very tough-bound and hard to razrez to bits, being real starry and made in days when things were made to last like, but I managed to rip the pages up and chuck them in handfuls of like snowflakes, though big, all over this creeching old veck, and then the others did the same with theirs, old Dim just dancing about like the clown he was.

The 'I' would be Alex of A Clockwork Orange and the day after I read about him I received a book that might well have been carried by the poor Chelloveck that was robbed. All of the books I have read in the past year seem to be knotted up like string bits in very odd ways. This is my post-graduation book list:

Imbibed:
A Walk in the Woods -Bill Bryson
1984 (e-book, x2) -George Orwell
Travels with Charlie -John Steinbeck
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange (with ALL chapters) -Anthony Burgess
Into the Heart of Darkness -Jonathan Conrad
(I am missing at least one here. It is packed and I just can't remember)

On Tap:
Catch 22 -Joseph Heller
Don Quixote (in English) -Miguel de Cervantes

Deeply Desired:
A Brave New World -Aldous Huxley
V for Vendetta -Alan Moore, David Loyd
A Void -Georges Perec (in English)
One Day in the life of Ivan Denisocitch -Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Slaughterhouse-five -Kurt Vonnegut
Catcher in the Rye -J. D. Salinger
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek -Annie Dillard
Erewhon -Samuel Butler, Peter Mudford
Watership Down -Richard Adams
The hunting of the Snark -Lewis Carroll

Favorites*:
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Alice Through the Looking Glass -Lewis Carroll
Sand County Almanac -Aldo Leopold

This is of course the abbreviated list and I am open to recommendations. Just make sure you let me know why you think I should read a book... or any other piece of literature really. Whatever. My compy is broken so I have how many more hours in my day to spend with books? So many. But thats ok. I really like books.

-Jn


*At this point these books are so well thumbed through that I just read bits and pieces when no other book seems palatable but I still have a craving for words.

Digitally-encrypted Tears

My computer died. It has been sick for a while, coughing, forgetting things, stuttering. Sigh. I had a list of problems saved up for this week when I planned to take him to the doctor (vet?). I just didn't expect the hard-drive to go. That wasn't on the to-break list. I have a 3 year resurrection plan which has me somewhat hopeful. I will have a franken-compy with all the new parts I have to get (hard-drive, fan, battery, etc.) but it should be able to go for a few more years. But the hard-drive. The hard-drive. They are going to try to save the poor fevered brain and all the memories. They said it costs money. I said to myself 4 years of my life is buried in that beast in pictures and work and words. I know a good deal of it is backed up but not the recent bits. Not the short story pieces, not the new poems, not the research for that short story/novella for which inspiration trickles in at random intervals. I did an inventory earlier this week, cleaned organized and ordered in preparation for the back up that was supposed to take place all day today. I know what was (is?) there. In 30 seconds they put a price on 4 years of my work. They undersold me. So I left Barachio Bastardo and all of the memories he contains in the hands of someone I trust very little, signed a contract saying that I trust him very little but it still isn't his fault, and spent the rest of the day wallowing in misery over choices I made in May. I wish I had not decided I could do without a notebook for the few short weeks of summer, that I had kept paper copies of my summer bits like I normally do. But in the interest of mobility I made my library digitized and nonflammable... and it caught on fire anyway.

0730 Smoke Alarm Test

Right now: Wikipedia, Shoe polish, Couch Surfing, A Clockwork Orange, Water, Ice, Unexpected weekends, Negatively statussed, Alarms, The color green, The word bastahd, Teva's, Louis Pasteur, Black berry tea, Glazed stares, organic shade grown dark mint chocolate, Purple clover,Wild pink roses, Fire arms, Smoldering cars.

Late Nights

Drink (07/16/06)

Sometimes I get to muttering when I start to think
Because it’s cold outside
And I’m old inside.
I can get warm with a drink
But you know it’s not the same.
I’m callin’ out your name at night
With some other guy by my side
Because I’ve had too much booze
And not enough you.

Sometimes I get to staggerin’ when I’m on the brink
‘Cause it’s a long way down the bottom
Of a tipped up cup,
When it’s not worth the price of think.
It’s her you seem to need.
Guess that’s the way it should be.
These aren’t my tears to cry
‘Cause I’ve never worn your ring,
And you never said or promised nothin’.

Sometimes I get to shudderin’ when I take a drink
‘Cause I mix um better
As I getting worse,
‘Cause it gets fuzzed up past the brink.
‘Cause really, I’m alone
And ‘cause when you say you’re coming home
It means her taste, her place,
The smile on her god-damn face.
‘Cause you never meant to me.

And sometimes I just am now and stumblin’
Shivrin’ hard and falling, mumblin’
“I swears to God I’m sober up with every fuggin’ drink!”
- Jn

Good Lost Thoughts

Travelers

A country.
What country?
I don’t know which
But a map
Yes a map
But I can’t read a map in English
And this is in French
Kreyol
Or maybe Kreyol
But not Spanish
No I can read that
But not a map
No not a map
Maybe a cab
What?
Call a cab
Yes, a taxi, only,
Here they are all bikes
What to pay with?
Oh that’s right
What currency are we in?
And a lingua franca
That would be nice
And a bottle of wine
A bottle of beer
To each
His own
Taxi!



-Jn

The nature of things

Dispatcher-
1. The official who signals the beginning of a race or competition
2. Employee of a transportation company who controls the departures of vehicles according to weather conditions and in the interest of efficient service
3. Computer Science A routine that controls the order in which input and output devices obtain access to the processing system. (See also Slave)

Slave-
1. One bound in servitude as the property of a person or household.
2. One who is abjectly subservient to a specified person or influence
3. One who works extremely hard.
4. A machine or component controlled by another machine or component.
5. Referenced in Involuntary servitude

Involuntary servitude
1. A United States legal and constitutional term for a person laboring against that person's will to benefit another, under some form of coercion. While laboring to benefit another occurs in the condition of slavery, involuntary servitude does not connote the complete lack of freedom experienced in chattel slavery: involuntary servitude may also refer to other forms of unfree labor. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution makes involuntary servitude illegal under any US jurisdiction whether at the hands of the US government or in the private sphere, except as punishment for a crime: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction".



Oh, God…what great crime have I committed?

Things I know today:

Sitting still too long makes body parts go numb, muscles atrophy, and limbs to turn green and come off. Staying in the same geo too long makes the soul go numb and the mind atrophy. (As these are concepts not objects they cannot turn green and fall off in anything other than a metaphorical sense. I suggest you don’t try to picture this.) If you have not left your county in a while you might ask yourself if there is anything still circulating.

There is nothing wrong with being homeless even though everyone seems so worried about it.

I have trouble ending letters because there is always more to say. Eventually they get big enough to need extra postage. If you haven’t gotten a something, wait a year or so.

The hardest time is between 0330 and 0500. This marks the halfway point of a shift, the end of the night, and the pre-waking hours for most of the normal populace. Even with friends it seems the loneliest part of the night.

A lance is something like a spear used through people or fish. It is also the action of throughing. A lancet is a small dissecting style knife and a common surgical instrument. A lancelet is not quite a fish proper and smaller than a lancet. A Lancelot is a sir and a legend. You could lance a Lancelot with a lance or a lancet but only lance a lancelet with a lancet if you caught it. Got it?

People have devised all sorts of ways to trade goods and services via la red without the involvement of a standard form of currency. Couch space and paperbacks are special enough to get their own worshiping communities.

Smart ducks cross the road before rush hour and on weekends. Smarter ducks nest where there are not roads to be crossed. (A Roger and the Receptionist update. I didn’t catch them early enough to get a head count but the receptionist definitely led a large troop o ducklings across the road this morning and I watched via camera) It leads me to wondering. I always see larger duck families in the suburbs. Are these infant patos the neoduckyuppies of tomorrow? Will they have larger families because they possess the resources necessary and leave their unlucky cityduck brethren to grow malnourished on carbohydrate handouts in shelters as their souls waste in the squalor of city sewage? Will both classes discuss the nobleducksavages with irrational, romanticized, and idealist language while the frontier few perish in the maw of fox and falcon? Who will cry out against their class, race, and variety differences? Should not all ducks be united as one fowl and interspecific competition rooted out through a majority ratified socialistic constitution? Alas they have chosen evolution over politics and concern for the greater good. May Darwin and the Good Lord help them.

Talks about communes always create conversations dealing with much smaller issues like peace, poverty, currency, language, isolation, homogenization, parenting, educational systems, politics, altruism, and communes. This makes it hard to stay focused on the Commune Manifesto and Purpose Proposal. Honestly, what should be a 10 minute discussion and name signing session becomes a several hour ordeal. Then you realize you forgot your membership roster notebook by your bed and you find enough new converts on the way to your room that you have to redraft twice more. It makes sense that each member be required to know at least two languages but do they both really need to be mandated by the community. I feel that as long as there is a translation link between two members we will be fine and it will unduly tax current members and limit prospectives who don’t know Portuguese. Silly Gordon students making things more complicated all the time. This also makes it hard to go to sleep.

Sometimes you worry a lot about people but are unable to convey this, or to help, or to really function in any other way than conversation, sometimes not even that, and it’s confusing and frustrating.

I try hard not to give up on people and I will fight for people but I will not fight over people.

One should not ever take a piss, it should always be left. Also Pissing contests rarely have any lasting effects accept division as everyone’s piss will always manage to be better than anyone else’s by some standard measure, and no one will ever really care enough about anyone else’s piss to examine the evidence. As especially yellow as yours might be, alchemists never turn it in to gold and as mentioned before, even the most valuable piss should in fact be left.

It is silly to take pictures of skyscapes. Even the best camera will translate a panoramic dome into two dimensional space. This neuters the enormity of the heavens and kills outright all other senses. You can be awed by 5x7’s but this is still a 2 dimentional awe and not worth more than a cup of rice on the awe commodity market. And while you take pictures to wow your friends and share a bit of the joy, their two dimensional wow, however genuinely expressed and felt, will cheapen your remembered wow and the shared joy will be reduced, not enhanced. You will resent your companions or your portable skies or you will be deceived.

Spiders frequent the cameras and a veces it is possible to have all 10 cameras showing at least one arachnid. You do have to be speedy about it because eventually the cameras revert to preset. It is rarely worth it but occasionally attempted. It is also less than rare to have some other exoskeletoned beast appear betwixt the lens and the outside world. A nest of Vespula is something of a novelty.

El Fin
-Jn

Happy

because sometimes

Apart (7/5/06 RRC)

It’s funny when it finally becomes apart.
You both know from the start
But you give it a go anyway as if to say
“See me not caring and not feeling pain?
What’s to remain except a few scars?”
And the memories come hard, even the good
Like you know you shouldn’t dwell when it’s obvious like that
And there won’t be another call is all
And you won’t go back again
‘Cause ‘friends’ is stranger still
But you couldn’t really know it until that last go round
It wasn’t will broken down, there were no lies
Just a vapid, shallow goodbye
Echoing in the hollow night
Wisps of lonely, devoid of moonlight

-Jn

Things I know:

-I should be sleeping but I cannot
-The AC is broken in RRC but not here
-I am mostly homeless
-When I get a set of words in my head I should write them down immediately or they will be gone forever (I have lost at least 2 poems and one story to "I will write when I get to..." in the past 3 days)
-I have never wished for a truck until this weekend
-Church today was very confusing
-I like to read (maybe too much)
-I have amazing friends
-Catsby gets cranky when she is full of stuff
-I need to go to grad school before I run around the world because I will never come back