Sunday, October 30, 2005

BuKaufman

It's been over two weeks, and I don't think anything means any more than it did the last time I wrote.

My last line has come to fruition, and I no longer work at the Center, which is truly more of a blessing than a curse, as much as it feels like I'm trying to convince myself of that rather than simply stating it as fact. I will say that the Mrs. has been a tremendous help in pulling me out of my odiferous funk, and I will say that, as good a job as it was, it can easily be replaced with something that doesn't suck my soul out of my navel quite as effectively as sitting there, day after day, surrounded by illiterate and violent degenerates does. Or did. Or will, for that matter.

Last night was the fourth annual Sundown Film Festival, a yearly marathon screening of three select horror films I choose and show in an attempt to edify, to coagulate, but probably mostly to congregate, to gather and to revel. It was fantastic. I dressed as a squid, my costume self-made, my pinkness saturating. The Mrs. was my cat. Not a cat, my cat. I could have eaten her alive and, later, in a strictly non-sexual context, I think I tried to. It was a great, great day.

I finished reading Ham on Rye today, in lieu of fighting practice or, indeed, showering and rising as the rest of the world did, and instead surrendered myself to the self-imposed imprisonment Bukowski himself so relished in the novel, and the slight embarrassment of receiving "Kitten" Blanchard having just gotten out of bed and still wearing the bottom half of my costume, the effect of so much pink only accentuated by a white t-shirt bearing the standard "Barefoot in the Park." Proud as I am of that thespic triumph, I was a touch out of sort.

I wish I had known The Buke. I would have liked to have known him, even in passing. Maybe I want not so much Bukowski himself, but someone like him, that I might know someone that I feel so very much like, social paraih-isms and all. Not even someone I'm really going to get along with, someone I'd like, for I doubt very much that anyone, let alone myself, could get along with the Buke in any traditional or long-lasting sense, but just to know someone that, even through such anger and dejected, badly-placed hatred, I felt was so much like me, at least in all the ways that matter. God forbid I have to spend any time with someone who's like me. The Mrs. is nothing like me at all. We have a ton in common, and we think alike, and we get along fantastically, but this is all because we compliment each other, we are two halves of one larger peice. Thank God she's not like me, for my sake as well as hers.

I wonder, reading what Bukowski writes, when anything is going to mean as much to me as everything seems to mean to him. He throws away a medal he won on a fluke, and it's a metaphor for the man's fucking life. Me, things die, people die. Things change and, cripplingly, stay the same in turns. I scar and burn and war and rage, and the next day I just don't want to know about it anymore. I feel, and have felt, that I'm waiting for something to happen, that the world will turn, that I'm waiting for my bottle to open. I know, one day, for better or worse, it's going to. In the meantime, building up to that, there's nothing. There's waiting for that, there's erecting an existence to support that catalyst that will, eventually, get here. And all along, there's the quiet, nagging, horrifying thought that either it's never coming or, worse, it's already happened. I didn't miss it, I just didn't notice it, and I'm waiting and preparing for something that I should instead be doing and enacting and mixing in with the rest of everything that I am. In the meantime, I'm dying, the world is crashing in on itself, and one day it will be over.

One way or another.

The sun tossed yellow everywhere and I cut through it, a crazy knife on wheels.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Conjunction

Why is it that the second you nod off, be it in bed getting ready for sleep or in class for a moment out of boredom and exhaustion, does your breath immediately smell like the rain gutter in metropolitan Turd City?

Is there a hormone prepared to release? Is there an enzyme ready to go to work? Is there something that can be done outside of constantly carrying a toothbrush and mouthwash? Must I go everywhere armed to the teeth?!

And, on the pun, I conclude.

...

I stood in a battle line facing rows upon rows of bright red shields hefted by men in bright, shining lorica. They looked at me, shield and sword, cerberus and kopis, and they waited. I stepped out of the line, into the no-man's-land between the two forces...

And they stepped back.

I stepped forward again, shield up to protect me from the spears that began prodding and poking at me.

And they stepped back.

And so Saturday went for me at Great Western War. I fought better, literally, than I ever had before, and I killed many a free-standing Corvus who never bothered to learn how to fight, thinking their beautiful armor and staggering numbers would be enough to assure them victory. In reality, they just gave me that many more people who can't defend themselves.

It was the best war I'd ever attended. My brothers and I, for the first time, had our very own encampment, our own house. The Trojan horse was a complete success (even though, at the touch of an unknown fighter, it feel apart) and we plan on using the body proper as a table for our campaigns to come. The next war is Estrella. Will the horse be attending?

Neigh.

Which is horse for "yes."

Many beautiful pictures were taken by the Mrs. with the help of Digital Jones, and once I sort through them I'm sure I'll be posting them here for your viewing pleasure. There were tournaments, there was delicious food (prepared by the lady of my house, my very own darling goddess) and there was a ton of fun for me and those I dearly care for. Honestly the best war I've been to, and honestly the best thing that could have happened to the Mrs. and I. It was just fantastic.

I love war. God help me, I do love it so.

I love it more than my life.

...

Whilst walking through the Olde Towne section near campus the other day with the Mrs., we happened upon the facade of an antique shoppe (of which there are many, I'm sure I've written on before) with a strange figure in the window. Two bronze demigods were intertwined in passion, holding small objects in each hand and candidly copulating (genitalia and all). The Mrs., understandable, and probably rhetorically, asked what it was.

I went on to explain to her that it was an example of Vajrayana Buddhism, a more esoteric sect of Buddhists centered mainly in Tibet that believe enlightenment can be reached quickly through the use of magic as augmented through mudras (hand positions) mantras (chants) and mandalas (magical diagrams). Also useful are small talismans used to focus divine energy called vajras, where the sect gets its name, which the figures were each holding in their hands, and which represent the male genitals as well as male traits like power, wisdom, etc. The combination of male and female powers (symbolized by vajra and bell, respectively) through the act of copulation is a way to achieve enlightenment, and is not necessarily a sexual act at all.

All of this is not made up. This is all truth, which I knew on the spot.

And which I had learned not a month before.

God. Damn. It. I love school.

...

I've had the song "Nine More Gallons" by Rick Moranis stuck in my head now for a while... and I couldn't be happier.

Rick Moranis? Yeah. Rick Moranis.

Yeah, that Rick Moranis.

He does too have a country album out. Leave the guy alone.

It's good.

...

Regardless of whether or not they let me go here at the Center (which they're apparently convening to decide on) I don't think I want to be here any longer. I've outgrown this place, and I no longer feel comfortable even walking around here, let alone being told to perform any and all mundane requisites far below my abilities. They people here are pricks (for the most part) and I'd do well to follow the example of seemingly everyone else around here and leave as soon as I can.

The worst thing is I know I'm not man enough to do that, because I'm still getting paid and I know I can take it. I'll take it and I'll take the money until they won't let me anymore, just because it's already set up and there's nothing to it. I'll do it today and tomorrow and if nothing gets terribly bad and if they keep letting me I'll probably put up with a whole lot more. Then I'll be 24 then 30 then dead and the weeks will be filled with nothing but so filled to the brim with nothing I won't do anything with them and nothing will change it nothing.

Not unless I get fired.

Oh God, I can't wait for that.

...

Nine more gallons, and I'll have me a hat.