We are always, always mortal

2007-12-01T12:11:00.001-06:00

moved: wearealwaysalwaysmortal.wordpress.com

2007-11-26T22:36:00.001-06:00

Sleeping a lot but still remaining tired makes one question themselves. What have I been doing with my life that makes me fall asleep every time I sit down on a padded surface, whether it is a rug, lounge chair, or stool at work? Am I addicted to stimulation, and thus, my body naturally balances this addiction with sleeping at random intervals? Maybe, it is because I do not eat meat, but who really needs protein anyway?

Yesterday I went to a memorial service, among other things. I did not know the guy. I knew his wife. But finding myself completely connected with him kind of made me wish I went to random funerals more often. First of all, I do not cry much, and I cried at the service. It would be beneficial if my body produced more tears. Also, I am quite pessimistic when it comes to life. Going to the service made me think that maybe there is some meaning in it all, if only a little.

Lives are just so fascinating. We might not do much in the grand scheme of things but seeing what one person has done with 20, 40, 60 some years is illuminating. They obviously touched people’s lives. Hell, I was sitting there, crying, touched without even knowing the damn guy. Do a little, meet people. It’s something.

Of course, funerals always make one question themselves. What if I am addicted to stimulation because I want words of inspiration to be said at my memorial service? I should start befriending comedians or poets before I die just to ensure that the speeches will really make me look good. I guess, in the end, everyone looks good.

So what have I been doing with my life that makes me fall asleep and never feel fully awake? Obsessing about the end, obviously.

2007-11-23T18:26:00.001-06:00

Thanks to Thanksgiving break and much much coffee, I have created my first zine! Monday I will go around and distribute them. I will send anyone free copies of my zines if they promise to write me back a letter or reaction or a zine of their own. Email me your address or comments to wearealwaysmortal@yahoo.com.

2007-11-05T16:29:00.000-06:00

“Art does not hurt us. The tears that we shed at a play are a type of the exquisite sterile emotions that it is the function of Art to awaken. We weep, but we are not wounded. We grieve but our grief is not bitter.” – Oscar Wilde

2007-11-05T16:22:00.000-06:00

age: 78
location: Montana
Sometimes I wake up questioning my sanity. I hear dreams evolve from what you think of two hours prior to falling asleep. So when I wake up after dreaming of giraffes dying their fur brown while carrying a machine gun in their hand, I have reason to be worried.
It’s not just that. There’s an intense pain in my right index finger and my hip when I try to kneel or stand up or walk up or down stairs. Mentally, I’m not too well either. Sometimes, I find myself completely lost in my Montana home in which I’ve never moved out of. Suffice to say I think I am dying.
So the other day, I made a list of the things I want to do before I die. It was a short list, mainly because I don’t have many expectations for life, but a list nonetheless.
1 – Cheese fries. I want to try cheese fries.
2 – Meet a ~~politician~~ cop that I can respect.
3 – Find the best piece of literature ever written.
As you can see, I had a lot of work to do. I made it a little easier by changing the respectable politician to a respectable cop because I don’t have a lot of time, ya know? And it takes a lot of time to achieve the impossible.
The next morning, I call my friend May Atwood, whose husband owns a motorcycle, and I asked if she wanted to give it a spin with me. Maybe take a day trip, I said. Really, I just needed a way out of this town if I wanted to get my hands on some cheese fries.
May, being the doll that she is, agreed and picked me up. She rolled up in one of those bikes with handlebars real high, and I hopped on, and we set off in the wind. I felt just like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider except that May and me were two aging women with grey hair and a helluva slow metabolism.
You see, Montana isn’t home to many burger joints. Towns in general are scarce, and I can’t say I’ve had a yearning for anything different. I wouldn’t want to be driving through any other terrain except that of Montana’s.
May just kept driving, never looking back at me as to when she should stop. She’s a free spirit, that one. When I did see a fast food restaurant up in the distance, I had to tap her shoulder and ask if she was hungry cause I sure was, I said.
We pulled up to Mickey D’s and my legs were weak with anticipation. I went up to the nice young man at the counter and asked him very slowly if he had any cheese fries. “Cheese fries, hmm,” he said, “We don’t but I’m sure we could melt some cheese and put it with your fries.” My heart sank.
“Oh there is no need to do that.” And I turned around and left even before May walked in the door.
“I thought you were hungry,” she remarked.
“Oh this place is trash,” I said because if I was going to do this then I was sure as hell going to do it right.
We hopped back onto the bike and drove on ahead, leaving that so called fast food joint in the dust. The state was coming to an end though, not that Wyoming looked much different, but we were getting pretty far out there. You always think that you could just keep going and going before you realize at some point you have to turn around and go home. May would’ve kept going for days if I hadn’t suggested we go back.
What was I thinking, looking for cheese fries? Maybe I am going about this all wrong. Life is not a checklist. Still, I must carry on.
And that’s when I saw it! About 200 meters ahead. It had the lights on top and everything.
“Hey, May, why don’t we see what this baby can do!”
She revved up the engine and we were about going 100 mph when we passed the cop car. Sure enough, he came right up after us. May wasn’t the least bit fluster and then there I sat, more excited than when we went to Mickey Ds. I thought for sure this was a sign.
May lowered her sunglasses at the officer.
“Miss, do you know fast you were going?”
“Oh for god’s sake, we’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said.
“I’m going to need to see your license and registration.”
“Oh for god’s sake, I left it at home.”
I couldn’t even speak. I wanted to ask him of his family. And his career. And if he loved every moment of his life.
“I’m sorry miss but I need that license. I am going to have to right up two tickets.”
bastard.
You know what most people mutter under their breaths? Well, May says them out loud. I swear, she scared the shit out of that goody two shoes, play by the rules, son of a bitch. Still, he handed May the tickets and we sped off, getting home in no time.
By the time we reached my house, night had fallen. And when I mean night, I mean so black a light bulb is only glimmer, so silent the crickets make a melody, and so cold that no one would know its summer.
May and I said our goodbyes and as I watched her leave, I realized no one can come close to someone whom you’ve known your whole life, as I have with May. Regardless of whether or not you enjoy their company.
I sat on my porch that night to say my goodbyes. Sure, the trip was a bust. No cheese fries. No respectable cop. As for the best piece of literature, I would definitely have to say it would be this one.
Its really okay, though because you know what? Not once did I feel like dying and that’s the best way to go out.

2007-11-01T19:33:00.000-05:00

2007-11-01T19:32:00.000-05:00

“Me, wherever life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.” – Walt Whitman

“We have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the primates.” – Alan Fletcher

“If you look at the path, we do not see the sky. We are earth people on a spiritual journey to the stars. Our quest, our earth walk, is to look within, to know who we are, to see that we are connected to all things, that there is no separation, only in the mind.” – Native American

2007-11-01T18:16:00.000-05:00

2007-11-01T18:14:00.000-05:00

Every time one thinks, that thought exists.
That scene envisioned exists.
That person imagined exists.
Reality is only a fraction of what
Is real.

2007-10-24T20:41:00.000-05:00

(articles I thoroughly enjoy)

THE TRAVELING LIFE -- FOOTLOOSE AND RENT-FREE

OUT OF THE RETAIL RAT RACE

2007-10-24T20:39:00.000-05:00

“The fuckers, the bean counters, the lawyers, all these assholes at every label. Those are the people who wrecked the record business – not Napster, not some college kid downloading shit. The people without vision.” – Anton Newcombe

2007-10-24T20:30:00.000-05:00

(articles I thoroughly enjoy)

MODERN NOMADS

THE LONG GOODBYE

2007-10-24T20:27:00.000-05:00

age: 24
location: New York City
This is not a story of what I want to do because I’ve done it. This is not a story about who I am or what I am because I am not. This is a story about the stillness of the city at night, when you catch it at the precise moment where the air is as fragile as the light from the light posts, and the streets are as asleep as the sun, as asleep as the many that lie in their bed without enough energy to weep anymore but just to close their eyes.
I find myself caught in this moment not as much I would like. But whenever I am, I have to tiptoe through the midnight scene just as a boy does when he gets up and leaves the family he has created in search of a new thrill. And those lucky few that have eyes opened enough to catch the city’s state tiptoe too. No one wants to be responsible for interrupting a baby’s rest. No one wants to let a moment become a memory.
Which is why I don’t know if others realize it when they step out onto the dim lit pavement. When their drunken chatter emerges. When smoke rises up from the cigarette they just lit. I had just witnessed a how alive street sign could be, how poetic the doors of closed storefronts are, and how beautiful it is when one can feel the world start to spin less and less to where they can keep up with it. I can’t spend the rest of my life trying to keep up with it. I can only spend it searching for that moment again.

2007-10-24T19:40:00.000-05:00

POETIC TERRORISM
Excerpt from Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchy by Hakim Bey

"WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. Later they will come to realize that for a few moments they believed in something extraordinary, & will perhaps be driven as a result to seek out some more intense mode of existence.

Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.

Go naked for a sign.

Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.

Grafitti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public momuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement...

The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst--no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone's life (aside from the artist) it fails.

PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now.

An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life--may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE.

Don't do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don't stick around to argue, don't be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives--but don't be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you.

Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don't get caught. Art as crime; crime as art."

2007-10-24T14:52:00.000-05:00

“I think death is our reward. When we die we go straight to nirvana Heaven and that’s that.” – Kerouac

“Don’t think. Just dance along.” – Kerouac

“See the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.” – Kerouac

2007-10-22T23:20:00.000-05:00

age: 23
location: Chicago, IL
I amount to nothing. Thank God. I am at Jimmy's Bar on Ashland listening to poetry by creative writing majors, who also amount to nothing.
I talk to Jimmy, the owner, as he pours me a drink.
"Are you a poetry fan?"
" I've never met a poetry fan. The only ones in love with poetry are the ones writing it."
I smirk. "Well there's quite a crowd if no one likes it."
"Yea, well, people gravitate towards anything containing the illusion of meaning or some profound truth. Even look at me! I am sounding like fuckin' Oscar Wilde," he laughed, "Do you want another drink?"
I nod and then listen for a moment to the poet on stage. If he didn't talk so slow then maybe I could appreciate it. Everything is ruined by the attempt to be something greater.
Thinking back to the drafts of work on my own floor, I sigh. Sometimes, I cannot wait until I die so that my writing can be uncovered, while the world realizes the tragedy of my death and what a loss it was. Oh the talent! It's not that I want to die but I want a chance for another facet of me to live.
Jimmy pours the boys next to me some rum and cokes then turns to me.
"So yesterday," he says, "I decided that I would stop buying gas station sunglasses."
Jimmy is growing more and more into his over-the-hill persona, reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that he received a government check in the mail. We went to college together. And all through college, he was an advocate for gas station sunglasses -- wearing them indoors and out, proclaiming you can not get a better deal elsewhere.
"Don't. You love them."
"Yeah but I think I only loved them because they were cheap. I thought hey, four dollars, might as well! But now, I realize that whether four dollars or ten or twenty, a waste is a waste." He lit a cigarette while I shook my head at him.
We turn to the poets on stage and pretend to listen but like everyone else, we are instead immersed in our own thoughts.
I've long forgotten how to regret meaningless conversations. Thank God everything is nothing.