The first time

I remember the first time...


I didn't know it at the time but I was painfully sliding out of my most sophamoric year in university. I was in my third year and was finally being granted license of thought over mere regurgitation of fact (disputable as it may have been).

I lived with my roommate and his dog, in between his prized antique purchases. His cluttered Americana softened to the eye by smatterings of caustic throw-pillows and the odd-burmese mountain dog; slick with slober. I can't recall living in such a warm austerity at any other time. Ray, my room mate could add a gentle comfort to any room he occupied and his home reflected all of this. I think it just happened that his period of choice favored wooden benches.

I would study in his, in our home for hours on end. I was in that AA/BA overlap when I actually cared about 80% of what I was contending with. It has been the only time, on those wooden benches that I have been afforded a complete consumption of what I was passionate about. I was justified in pursuing only that which I wanted to disappear forever in.

it was nearing finals. It was winter I think, though this is only because I remember most of all my love at that moment for his wooden stove, which i fed at every pause.

I couldn't study in my room. It was basically a bed made by my grandfather and a sea of dirty clothes over which I had to jump in order to sleep. In retrospect I probably would have slept in the living room had Americans popularized plush couches prior to the 20th century. Honestly I can't remember if the house sported a washer and dryer... just Ray, his giant, slobbering dogs and hard, woodend furniture.

Finals aggressively challenging my ability to procrastinate but I had managed to procure what meager source material my university could supply on short notice. The internet, at the time for me, was basically a set of hubs linking universities and dot-matrix printers. Not much literature was compiled on many of the more luxurious subject matters, so the throw pillows had to move aside for 10-20 obscure books on the 'low-renaissance', the Reformation and some more modern distractions.

My challenge was great. I could find little documentation written about the subject of my thesis, which was exactly why it intrigued me. "Hieronymous Bosche; the first Reformist..." or something of the nature. It was my first real foray into practical critical thinking. I savored writing my bibliography.

I settled in amongst my throw-pillows, afghan rugs, candle-light, wood-burning fire and sticky-notes (not the electronic kind), notebook and yes; a mechanical pencil to begin builing my protestant case.

Something was missing from the equation, I realized after about an hour or so. Data? No... I was having a blast watching my theorum begin to take shape - and realizing that the evidence I was procuring was not that far-fetched - and more importantly - was not being fed to me by some other historian.

But something was missing none the less.

Music. Music goes with history, candle-light, wood burning fires and dried giant-dog slobber very well. That was it.

I carefully unstacked all the books and [with sticky notes] tried to keep my train of thought. I ran back to the tiled-coldness of the kitchen and groped the old radio we used for entertainment. The only TV was in Ray's room which was impossible to watch as his bed filled the entire room... upon which the two slobbering beasts usually resided. We had no cable, so the price of showering after every episode of mST3000 really the only worthwhile foray into tv land. just as well.

I rapidly spun the dial away from Ray's 'Sound of the 60's', which reminded him fondly for some reason of his otherwise very painful childhood to my station of choice - 'All Classical - All the time", or something of that nature.

I spun the only other analog dial up to three-quarter volume and upon hearing that 1970's "Old-Spice-infused" voice at the proper dog-safe volume, i leapt back towards the warmth of my books.

About 10 minutes later, while trying to cross reference dates of the few recordings of my favored artist with known Reformist activism, I realized the radio was and had been silent for some time.

VEXATION! I wish I had a jesuit handy to go remedy this radio's blasphemy.

Bouncing back in a flurry of thumping books on wooden-benches I head to tweak the analog.

Something grabs me mid-stride and slows me half way across the room. It is a sound, but a sound that hits me first in the stomache. A vibration. My legs stop before I realize anything is wrong.

A harmonic series being slowly pulled up my legs and my chest at the same time... something vibrating in my stomache. I can't hear it so I stop, feet cold on the polished, American wood.

waves of Anti-nausua start to roll up and down me just short of my ears. I can feel the BPMS... I don't remember for certain, but i believe i was in full crouch trying to figure out where this crimson-vibrato was coming from.

Bass pulled like slow-roasted pork. Juicy, deep and guilty smearing what soul i had left exposed.

A vibration being rubbed into you by fat, greasy and careless hands. Beethoven's subtle irony.

Double Bass not caring if it was heard because he knew how deeply you had to feel him.

So breathy and slow I could feel the blue being torn from the red.

It was there. That open fifth. repeating.




repeating.



again.



up.



down.


left.



right



1st.



diminished 5th.



Caressing you the way some lover does that first time...



...When you know you could fall in love.



Very Deeply...



Confusing...



And real...

Notes from the Whorl...

Take my pain and I will spin it into something lovely... - m4w - 32 (bellevue)

Very attractive and professional male - just coming out of an emotional vivisection I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Looking for someone to take the pain away... a feminine distraction... at least for the moment. I'm not in full frontal fetal - but I would like someone to hold... someone upon whom to transform this energy into something more beautiful for a time.

I had only recently moved prior to my psychological disembowelment and really don't know many people. Regardless I am here and would love to turn this into poetry at least for a time.

I'm looking for someone's touch - or to touch someone. I'm hardly in the space for the abject intimacy of sex.... but am extremely sensual and would rather make someone else feel good than continually make myself feel bad.

I doubt this forum would produce such a muse - but even in typing this I am occupied with something better...

Notes from the Whorl...

Since one in four gummybears don't have brains,
Does that mean that they never knew how much
We enjoyed them?

That it didn't matter what color or flavor they were to be,
Or that it didn't matter they were brainless.
For we enjoyed them just as much
As the other three.

Notes from the Whorl...

OFFLINE CHAT

23.35 Can you talk?
I mean buona sera cara.

23.36 I didn't deserve you any way.

23.37 I saw my married lover's family today downtown. I ran away.
You are my confessor. I'm not catholic.
But you are sort of a priest to me.

23.38 He looked at me.
I checked out his wife. She is fat.
and ugly.
And I am beautiful and not fat and he is with her.

23.39 And I am the one he fucks til he comes.
And no one must know this at all.

23.40 So I sort of feel safe with you and that is a great compliment.
I only wish you felt safe with me.
As I am lonely and need to talk.

23.41 You are offline.... yada yada.
I am a crazy drunk incapable of meeting friends to
talk to about her personal problems with her lover.

23.43 He is a mormon priest.

23.44 I told him in my email he must end it. Because I won't.
I won't.
I know he feels bad. He ended it twice already.

23.45 And the third time he said just give him a couple months.
and I did
And he feels very guilty about me.
But I don't feel guilty at all.
mea culpa
God, answer.

23.46 So, you are god-like in your response, which is nothing....
:)
already you made me smile.

23.47 Come over tonight and make love to me and I'll give you money.

23.49 I'll sing for you.

"...Seeking a Softer Nothing. w4m, 28. Seattle, downtown"

Snatch me from sleepless tumble.
Shake and distract me.
Notice me.
Slaughter me or save me.

Catch the dead in me,
All the real left in me.
Touch but don't feel.
Taste but don't swallow.
Smell me and think of dust.

Push inside me.
Crush me with that wild indifference,
That only men produce.
That only a man could mistake for love.

Forget me or use me.

Make me again.
Make me something else.
Some other girl in,
Some other story.

Whisper her name.
Dress me in her forgotten things.
Cut the parts of me away,
Lose me somewhere.

Orphan me and seduce me.

Spare only your laziest lies.
Undress me without a kiss.
Caress me dry and saltless,
Kindless and cold.

Trespass upon this strange inheritance.
Where warheads bloomed one day,
Upon a frightened child.
My tits and ass.
My open mouth, silenced.

My cunt bared to you,
Bare for you.
My object d'art.
My Plan A and B.
I didn't make them.
They are making me.

They are the least of me.
They are the worst of me.
They are all you see,
Smell and taste of me.

Blame me.

You grope, you claw,
Passed clothes you won't see.
You pull and grasp,
At each salmon-flecked flash.
You lick, spit and bite at
My softest of surpluss.

Hurt me carelessly,
And mistake my swelling breathes,
For adoration or desire.
Hurt me faster and harder for it.

Listen but hear only that rush,
Of enraged blood pumping.
Smother me in sloppy arousal.
Suck the salt from my skin,
And coax from me perfumed approval.

My incense of rape and consent,
Smell the same.
My betrayal and deceit.
My shame.
Make me yield now.
Make me helpless.

Once again blameless.

Make me cry if you can.
Just make me something.

Turn on baby.
Soul-fuck me.
My perfect machine.
Dumb fucking machine.

You have only one reason.

To Lend me some purpose.
Convince me at least.
Tell me more lies.
Spill and splash and,
Spit and Grind then.

Make me wet with them.

Turn on baby.
Soul-fuck me.
Displace me.
Replace me.
Bare me out on the backs of my tears.

Fill me with a softer nothing.

Turn on now, baby.
Soul-Fucker!
My Perfect fuck machine.
Lost before me and,
Lost again inside me.

We are a tangled disenchantment,
Sightless and choiceless in it.
Blinded and pumping through it.
Assaulting deeply and,
Completely,

Replacing me.

Renew my lingering sorrows.
Remind me I'm lonely.
Teach me that prayer about Angels,
Just touch me please.

Tell me that last little lie.
Waste one more breath on me.
Waste yourself upon me..
On my tits and ass.
Make me swallow your pride.

Fill me with your softer nothing.

Waste yourself away and
Sleep between chemical-bursts.
Dream the things of men;
Of things that make you,
Meaningless now.

Reasonless except for me.

So Turn on again, baby.
And tell me I'm pretty.

My perfect fuck-machine.
My foolproof distraction.
My relentless mistake.
My anesthesia and,
My sweetest hate.
My greatest excuse,
Let me fail forever.

Just call me please.

11th Rewrite

Notes from the Whorl...

Nerves

"The fabric of dreams is ripped apart
As you feel the twist of the shadow dagger
In your pumping heart.

Nerves."

I used to work, or rather brush by the paranoid schizophrenics at the last county sponsored psych ward in California. My cousin was moved to stab a prison gaurd in the eyeball with a pencil on one of his bad days in Prison. They in turn were moved to transfer him to they psychiatric penetentiary in Vacaville (near the jellybelly factory).

I had glimpsed the monsters' in thier eyes I thought. They're fear and rage was always real enough- even more condensed and pressurized perhaps than our own.

Liquid fear, seething and bubbling through thier gums and pours. Swelling their lips and drying thier mouths in acrid washes. Adrenalyn boom inside their skull poisoning thier blood with furious survival. Pumping the will to live at high speed through their bodies from the top down. Their hands would swell and thier feet would numb. And all at once the world was against them. All at once they found they loved life more than they ever had. They're animal took over then. Everyone became an enemy bent on thier destruction. Those they trusted most were the worst and the craftiest equally involved in this private conspiracy.

Everything had meaning then. Everything was connected in this web of shadows at which they were the center spinning. Every glance or movement they observed, every object was now poised to hurt them. It was uncontrollable. The thoughts kept coming no matter how far fetched. They are boxing you in. They are signalling somone around the corner or someone behind you. When she coughed he glanced to the left. I saw them.

*

Sticks and Stones and Skin and Bones

I started my skull collection there. I remember one Xmas when I was 19...I bought my girlfriend a coyote skull and had one of the guys from the store do wood-burning on it. It was amazing...he was so talented....but when i came back a few months later to commission another piece his coworker told me he was gone...and that 'The Demons took him'... I took that to mean that the slight 'offishness' I had detected was in fact a large and crippling gap between he and at least someone with no sense of humor and the willingness to call 911. Waste of an artist.....

And of a skull collection. These are NOT mine. Mine are lost due to compramise, neglect and soul-decay.

Anyway - that particular skull, the last one he made before the Demons got him...I wrapped meticulously in beautiful glossy black and way too expensive for my salary - wrapping paper. My mother accused me of 'Blasphemy' for the wrapping paper and kicked me out of the house after hitting me with a box of breakfast cereal...which I was also forced to clean up. Needless to say it was the best gift i remember giving anyone.

So...my point?

I recently made a new friend who invited me over to "Help her with a Strange Artistic Block" she had.

So...I got there and low and behold she had the COOLEST STUFF EVER!!! Her apartment was filled with little interesting objects...large chests of collections....quite possibly the most organized pack-rat I've ever encountered.

I had brought my camera and a couple of sketch books along just in case her invitation was literal (good move). It was as it turns out - quite happily.

Things just started moving. We exchanged ideas...talked about past projects...future ideas...and soon i was picking things up from around the apartment and arranging them.

Below is the result of a couple of hours of just playing. We took turns building the basic sculptures and then adding on to each others.

It as the most fun I've had in a while....

Notes from the Whorl...

Partial Letter to a sister...

"...After all, 'Shock' is so much less electrifying without the breathy 'Awe' released at it's conclusion.

Black is so much deeper when pasted onto a white wall...

Pain becomes tolerable and even ignored perhaps if it is persists beyond our memory solice.

Love is nothing without remembering when you were not loved.

Ugly faces would melt into one another so that you could not tell anyone apart. Add a single, symmetrical soul into the crowd and watch the drab gray plates upon which most of our senses are nailed too heave and contort into their monstrous true forms.

Watch them as they hate that which forces them into their own, unique semblance. They will hate themselves more than the light that finally exposed them but will not fully realize thier self loathing until after they have killed all illumination (and most likely turned upon and greedily murdered many of their own numbers as the momentum of their rage grinds against some opposing friction).

And then there will be nothing to remind them of their own, unique ugliness but a history. And all histories are the worst possible type of lie. They will return to their homogenous, gray ocean and jiggle fearfully and as quietly as they can.

The historic truths they write for the success of their future survival are all lies - they enjoy feeding poison to their own young and even celebrate their dishonor and deceit with monuments and mementos made as permanent and at the greatest expenses possible.

They kill their babies as they slide from the womb and call it art. Their still-born generations will pour out and tumble ceaslessy forward; an endless (and equally pointless) row of neatly packed dominos.

Ever forward to only God knows where. And God could care less.

They race and tumble between the self-aggrandizing and genocidal monuments of their murderous ancestors. They bump and fall blindly and struggle against some force they imagine they might employ. They each protest for a tiny millisecond as they tumble. Without fail they see their own graves hungrily approach. They glance for a fraction of that tiny millisecond to one side or another looking for something to save them. Something to catch them. They see thousands of artifacts around them which scream offers of salvation. Things perfectly carved for them, for which they might gain purchase. The see thousands of lies stacked neatly or chaotically according that year's fashionable deception mandated (lies are always the most fashionable, immaculate and groomed with the greatest attention.

Lies get more pussy than truths. Pussy, and this is a very observable truth, much prefers to eat lies. It will always eat a lie over the truth. Lies made to order, offer an incomparable burst of flavor and go down much easier.

Lies tend to have a rather nasty after taste...and sometimes cause sickness, nausea, irritability, fear, panic, terror, remorse, regret, jealousy. anger, rage, murder, self-loathing or low self esteem, suicide, fratricide, all types of cides in fact; especially to those you love the most (or those that happened to be tumbling to their deaths the closes to you as you were murdered sliding into this fate

....but, not understanding love (for it has already choked on a lie and been 'cided') you smelled the fear of those closest too you, related to it, joyfully (although only for the tiniest of nanoseconds) were comforted by the fact that you were not alone. You were comforted by everyone else's stark-raving terror because it was not your own. You even imagined that yours was less and you were therefore different and stronger than they. That you revel in other's pain and suffering because it makes yours less is the first lie you make.

And you call this lie "love". This pain and death is what allows you the fleeting illusion of life. You are the white paper on their black souls and simultaneously you provide the black-terror-backdrop which allows the mindless fucking domino being murdered just behind you to rejoice in your suffering and love you as a brother. You are safe from that knowledge most likely.

If you were to realize that all these beautiful monuments and ideologues and reasons and logics and truths and histories and distractions which create everything you perceive to give you purpose in that tiny fraction of a millisecond you happen to notice them as you are falling to your death were all false and will never catch you, or save you or even create the illusion that you are safe. If you realized in that fraction of second where your 'soul' was elevated accidentally from contemptuous and vile for loving the suffering of your loved ones to merely selfish and egotistical because you are too busy trying to save your own ass. If you realized for that piece of the closest thing to a 'life' that you will ever know. If you realized that in this last second is your only chance because you will spend the rest of the descent staring into that dark earth that has no contrasting backdrop to give it meaning. You will be there in a few seconds and perhaps you will find nothing at all (which shouldn't be too different from what you have now?).

After that one second of chance you have to notice life through all the lies which reach out save you, so close they suffocate you and choke you but always crumble out of your way (Some even give you a nice shove to speed up your fall). But. If in that second as you are reaching out with no arms and trying to catch yourself with no legs, and scream with no mouth, or cry with no eyes, or hear the calming and reassuring screams of those you love with no ears. If you somehow manage to swim through that thick, burning, swirling panic crushing your being as you realize you are surely going to die alone. If you somehow see, hear, smell, touch, taste, feel, without your eyes, ears, nose etc...

If you swallow down the panic and you come to the realization that your entire world is entirely conceived to deceive you. That nothing outside of you exists truly as it presents itself or entirely unreal all together. If you realize that whatever is there is most certainly not thinking or caring about you.

Only then are you close to life. You are still falling just as rapidly to your death. You may then stand out. You may then be that single, simple and truthful symmetry that exists among all the other screaming, thrashing frightened masses. You will stand out and they will see you, and see themselves in your contrast. Your beauty will make them despise you. Will make them forget to revel in the pain of their loved ones and forget to wallow in the premonition of their selfish deaths.

They will forever mistake love for proximity and enjoyment of others' pain. But they will never miss their chance to hate. You don't suffer through the lies as they do. They cannot rest in their biggest comfort as long as you exist.

So you have found life now. You can see their eternal distraction and pointlessness. You may even pity them and be moved to help them. Don't bother.

They will kill you faster and with more relish. Don't reach out to these tumbling, jiggling miserable fools. Live your fleeting life and enjoy the wonderment of a world empty of things which need explanation or understanding. You are that rare, tumbling and shimmering thing bobbing in the vast black pool of vile and despair. You are the only thing to remind us that there really is nothing out there. Without an occasional glimpse of you as you float to the surface, we would see only an imperceptible blackness and we might mistake nothing for nothing.

The subtle genius beauty would be lost utterly and drowned finally within this sickening, ever-twisting violent insanity we call our normal state of affairs.

Love ya! See you soon,



Alex