by Tomorrow's Man
May 2001
Tuesday, 1 May 2001
When everything's the same, evolution ceases; when evolution is done, so is life. Change = life; evolution is change; when everything is the same, life ceases.
The music on the radio today - the tempo, the key, the voices. The coffee at Starbucks; the clothing at the Gap. White we are; or un-colored. Young we are; or fopping off old. Poor we are; but living on credit. American we are; or dreaming to be.
Devolution is sucking our life away. Remember fashion in the seventies? Remember polyester and bell bottoms? Well, we're just as obnoxious carrying around our Gap socks and Gap shoes and Gap pants and Gap SCENTS in our official Gap bags (or Perry Ellis, or Donna Karan, or Aeropostale, or Bugle Boy); remember the music, the artistic albatross of corporate rock? Well, explain the constant #1 sensations of 120 BPM hip-hop, with one male rapper and/or three female crooners; explain Limp Biskit as popular as Korn, and both huger than Faith No More ever could have been, and Tool (comparatively) unknown; explain Dave Matthews and Coldplay, Creed and American Hi-Fi, while Manic Street Preachers remains almost a mystery. Devolution. Fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of a challenge; weakness of the species.
Many of us are very weak (but many of us do not have to wear it as an Official Copyrighted International Logo every day.)
Fear of a challenge; it's what keeps most of us at bay. Life is a challenge. It's easy to hide from new songs, new trends, new places to buy your coffee (God forbid it isn't French roast!), new ways to think each day.
Surprises. Initiated circumstances, without expectations. Shots in the dark. Spontenaeity. Kicking sand into the faces of regret, humiliation, despair and death, fearlessly and all with one big ugly shoe.
Swing yourself 'round the Maypole. Kiss someone new today; don't profess love, don't profess lust, don't use the act as an insidious tool; just kiss someone new, because it's fun to be kissed. Laugh at nothing at 11:11 AM. Imagine what you want for dinner tonight - and spend the day getting it. Masturbate, just beneath their noses. Wear something outrageous. Tell a baffling joke.
Cause a shift. Cause a change. Because it brings about evolution in you. Make the world a more energetic place; not by staying the same, but by changing. By deciding to Bump, while they all Waltz. By dreaming. By doing. By sending your prayers to the Great Illustrious Grey Ether Above, and by expecting no answers.
Change. This is evolution. Evolve.
Wednesday, 2 May 2001
It's been too warm, too beautiful, I've been in too good a mood, I've been losing weight, sleeping well, reconciling with friends and enemies, doing a bang-up job at work, and the Red Sox are still close to first place without Nomar.
Something awful is going to happen.
Thursday, 3 May 2001
We were evicted today. Landlord called in the middle of one of God's finest sunsets to let me know he'd be flexible about giving me 60 or 75 days. What a guy.
Don't ever, ever forget folks: Anyone strong enough to raise a hammer can kill you in a blink.
Friday, 4 May 2001
Do you wake from dreaming, the complexities of conversation between two, three, or several people still fading out in your conscious mind, their reparteČ interesting enough to you to make you want to grasp it, write it down, share it with real people later?
I never realized I could write such quick dialogue!!
Saturday, 5 May 2001
So the baby dies, the dog eats. Shots ring out, but there is no revolution, just the death of a mother, and a feast for a cur. There is only power. Survival. They consider you a number, they slice you out like a cancer, they will eliminate you for a penny. They want that penny, gimmie it, it's MINE, they say.
I can't think anyone inhuman. The dog needed to eat; it's what dogs need to do. Dogs are inhuman. Humans can only ever be human. The man with the smoking gun and a smile, the woman in the bath with a re-formed coat hanger, the priest with blood and children's tears in his shorts, the nurse with the needle who delivers babies to god. These are all humans, performing human acts.
Welcome to our power structure. Welcome to the real. Welcome to devolution. Welcome to the end game.
Welcome to it.
Sunday, 6 May 2001
I feel like
My face is buried in the angry bees, friendly as foie gras force-fed to the geese, constantly queasy, waiting to fall, waiting for the ground to shimmer, dissolve and leave me in Wile E. Coyote space, suspended and fucked in disbelief, I had always hoped I would die without that stupid look on my face.
Monday, 7 May 2001
Could someone please help me? I seem to have misplaced my serotonin. I had it around here somewhere...must've sprung a leak...
Tuesday, 8 May 2001
Been a dark time lately; eviction, depression, damnation does that to a body. Oddly though, I can't help but feel a strange glimmer, a twitching glee, somewhere in this bruised red heart of mine. Perhaps it is this perfect Spring day abolishing my depression, reminding me of the forthcoming joy of October. Perhaps it is my mooning of damnation (and I've got a damned fine ass), my trippy refusal to be carried down with the stone. Perhaps, in the wee hours of the full moon'd eve, a gentle mockingbird told a secret to a woodpecker; who set it on fire, and it glowed for an owl; who sang it across the beaches, to a nightingale; who came to me, awake in my dream, to whisper the secret to me. Perhaps I have been granted a wish.
Or, maybe my serotonin levels have returned to normal.
Gosh, it's nice out today.
Wednesday, 9 May 2001
The sinister age of Case/Eisner/Gates/Turner is devolving society right before our slack faces, and it seems most of us are still bent over and rectally dilated about it.
I found out today that the Cartoon Network will be running a cartoon marathon next month in dedication to one of our finest (in my opinion) American icons, Bugs Bunny.
Lovely, right? Until your knowledge begins to asphixiate on the sticky truth of it. The Cartoon Network will indeed be paying tribute to Bugsy boy, but they will be doing it by showing carefully picked, specially selected cartoons, instead of the original plan of running all of the Bugs cartoons ever. Why? Because - and I kid you not - the Cartoon Network has gotten pressure from their check-signers, AOL-Time Warner, to 'protect the image of Bugs Bunny.'
...whaaaat??? (See that man in the dark suit hoping you won't notice the jar of vaseline he's holding...?)
Remember the episode where Bugs parodied Al Jolson, singing in black face? It was deemed too Racially Insensitive. So, Censored. Deleted. Remember the episode where Bugs was being hunted by an Indian and he outsmarted the Indian to keep from being killed and eaten?? Racially Insensitive so, Censored. Deleted - AOL will try to erase that cartoon from the collective public knowledge. (Does anyone else in here hear ominous music building?)
Those cartoons were from 1942 (Jolsen parody), and 1938 (Indian), respectively. They are, I feel I must reiterate for those of you out there getting ready to head to Manhattan and beat a flippant gray rabbit to death with your bibles, CARTOONS. Parodies - 60 years old. Stunning, exciting, sometimes disturbing, and often hilarious glimpses into American pre-WWII culture. (Remember all the war episodes? Those are going to be shown, no problem. I wonder if someday the Martians will wipe us out because 53 years ago Bugs Bunny began his oppressive reign of 'racial insensitivity' against Marvin.)
'To protect the image of Bugs Bunny.' i.e., Bullshit. To protect the image of AOL Time Warner, a big part of the CEGT Collective and rulers of the modern world ('who controls the media, controls the world'), is more like it.
Okay. A time-out from the ranting. I do like very much that Bugs Bunny - as he was 60 years ago - is still stirring things up. He was a wisecracker, he was politically incorrect, and he was sexually undecided (oh, by the way, remember those episodes where he cross-dresses and/or woos the male characters by jumping into their arms and turning them on? Those episodes will be run - because it looks good in 2001 to show tolerance of the gay/bi counterculture. GAY IS GOOD! GAY IS GOOD!).
I do not like that most of us (Americans) have learned how to gently bend at the waist and be mainlined the same drab matter into both ends at once. ('Take it, take it, don't ask questions, just eat this, eat this, just swallow this sweet intelligence substitute, just watch these pretty colors and we'll give you 500 FREE HOURS of web access!')
I will wear a dress. I will swear at Easter. I will smoke in the bathroom. I will crack nigger jokes in front of my black friends. I will drink, I will eat, I will watch what I want when I want to watch it, and they will never make me forget Bugs Bunny singing "Mammy."
Bugs Bunny is my hero.
Thursday, 10 May 2001
I want only to rhyme with orange; but living by the sea means your eyes will almost always sting.
Friday, 11 May 2001
The tears come when the brittleness, strangely strong for so long, finally gives way; when the frail cage around your heart - the one you'd constructed to protect your tender bruises from your own poking fingers - collapses.
You can hear your story in the blues; you can hear your life sung out in a folk tune.
You know then that there's a darkness, and you know then that it's upon you.
Saturday, 12 May 2001
Stand at a precipice and let the wind turn the skies grey, feel the buffet, close the eyes, lean back with the push, feel the wind treat the body as a cloud, fall, fall, soar, fall,
fall,
fall,
hit the ground and scatter like a dollop of mercury, cloning the body as a rain of perfect silver pearls.
Sunday, 13 May 2001
Where am I? Where did I go? Where have I been? Am I this raindrop? Am I this stormcloud? Am I the wind of change? Or am I just the fingernail of a sleeping giant, caked beneath me the sweaty resin of furtive dreams?
Will I awake? Or will I ever sleep?
Monday, 14 May 2001
Lunch today with Deepak Chopra and Tupac Shakur. Deepak talked around his Kimchi about learning the Process of God; Tupac, enjoying a cilantro and arugula salad, noted his enjoyment of Deepak's philosophy, and explained how it influenced him in the writing of his own book, The Rose that Grew from Concrete. I had been candy flipping since 3 AM, so I just stared into my rare hamburger waiting for its opinion of Bovine Spongiform Encepholopathy while they talked on and on.
After lunch, over double espressos, they unravelled God and made a cat's cradle together.
They carried me out about an hour later; Tupac got the check. Hell of a guy.
Tuesday, 15 May 2001
Metal. The cold strength of it. Metal. Even the word. Metal. Robots and power and large silver boxes built solid by five letters. Metal. Ladders that reach rigidly to the moon, thick pipes that siphon the sea. Metal, the opposite of meat - though they share the alphabet (a foreshadowing). Metal, from a planet-wide asteroid to this scratching tip, Metal; the cool, sharp strength of it.
Wednesday, 16 May 2001
Managing life on the...side? That is where it began, where it's begun, where it begins. Awaken gumming a tarnished spoon and kiss the world by May Day.
Or maybe a couple weeks later.
This is a day that will live in...no, no, not that quote. This isn't that big. I need a new word. Glip. This day will live in glip. Forever.
Managing life on May 16; I've been doing it for a year. Remember this day; if not for the non-execution of Timothy McVeigh, then for the single callow candle that burns on this birthday cake of blips and bleeps, bits and bytes, heart, body, sex, and soul.
Here is where I am.
Thursday, 17 May 2001
I possess a light that is the size of Manitoba. I like to wave it about, winking. I like to bring you in like pretty moths, and then sing to you. I hope today I am in key, but even if not, I hope you enjoy dancing around my light.
Friday, 18 May 2001
Crouched on a rooftop, feet uncomfortably cut with a subcutaneous throb, knees locked in a position held too long, what drove her up there? Is it the full moon? Are those small dark stains spattering the darker shingles tears?
Look up. What would you do?
Saturday, 19 May 2001
What you gamble deserves your scrutiny; from the pedantry of a dollar bill leaving your hand forever due to the falling of numbers to the quick jog across the wide, dark highway, remember that what you gamble reveals what you treasure.
Sunday, 20 May 2001
If you are ever on an airplane, especially if seated somewhere in the first few rows, take advantage of your position to witness one of the more bizarre sights humans have invented:
Turn around in your seat as the plane is coming in to land, when the air pressure in the cabin is rising like raisin bread, and you will catch hundreds of people in unison gaping wide their mouths and showing their uvulas, trying to pop their ears, hundreds of people looking exactly like fish out of water which, of course, they are.
Monday, 21 May 2001
He's back, he's forth, his eye is on the taxi-man, his eye green like the sea rained down in the desert, he's down, he's up, his eye is on the captain, they're hand in hand and dancing above the patchwork land, he's back, he's forth, he's touched ground again, he's here, he's there, he's gone, he's home.
Tuesday, 22 May 2001
I committed an act of melody strung the action of lights into arias I left seeds of grandest secrets just waiting to be illuminated by the most precocious flash lights,
go children,
commit this act of memory.
Wednesday, 23 May 2001
Gosh I wish I had a Scottish accent. I love it. I love 'em all, really. I guess mine is okay. I sound like a Bostoner filtered through a newscaster. Ted Koppel wanting to pahk his cah; i.e., I pahrk mahy cahr. When it runs. It doesn't. It sits. It sits on tires, on the ground. I've done that. Sat on a tire on the ground. But it hurt. My parts. Some of them. Not Van Morrison's band Them, the ones that did "Bright Lights, Big City," the ones that did the soundtrack to Harold and Maude. No, wait, that was Cat Stevens. That did Maude. Not Bea Arthur, no no, I never said that Cat Stevens did Bea Arthur. Maude, heck of a show. Bea Arthur rules. "If you get caught between the moon and New York City...." Wait...no that's Arthur. The movie. With Dudley Moore. The guy who was in Art of Noise. Or was that Anne Dudley? Yes, that's her, Anne Dudley. It was her and Tom Jones in Art of Noise. Wasn't it? No, that was another guy with alot of J's in his name, Tom Jones was only on one song. Tom Jones is that great singer guy in Vegas with the long pee-pee. Who was the guy with the J's in Art of Noise? Jim something? Jim Brown, that's it. No wait - he's the guy in Mars Attacks with Tom Jones, right. Great movie. Lots of Martians and singing and cows and stuff. And fight scenes. Jim Brown had that great fight scene in it with Jaws, the big guy with silver teeth. Or was that in Live and Let Die? Yes, Richard Kiel had the fight scene with Roger Moore in Live and Let Die. Yep, definitely. Roger Moore, the other James Bond, second to Sean Connery. There was never a James Bond like Sean Connery. Great actor. Great accent. "Preshishley, Mish Munnepenneah."
Gosh I wish I had a Scottish accent.
Thursday, 24 May 2001
I didn't mean it. Honest. I didn't mean to embarrass the guy. I understand they spelled his last name wrong, and it was an honest mistake - the O and the I are right next to each other on the keyboard. But he was asking for it by using that nickname. Why people use that nickname for Richard in this day and age is beyond me. I mean, how was I supposed to shake the guy's hand with a straight face as he came toward me, arm extended, big grin spread wide, and DICK FISTER emblazoned across the rainbow nametag on his chest? I mean really!
Friday, 25 May 2001
I dreamt she had become a succubus serpent floating above me, undulating silently while I dreamed, her skin glowing beneath a layer of sapphire and emerald scales that mutely glittered and cast odd dappled shadows across the walls and ceiling and me asleep on my belly on the bed, she bowed her head to my feet and let unfurl her tongue which touched my toes then trawled up my body like a red silk sheet, eliciting a scratchy whisper from my skin and a sigh from my throat. . .
Saturday, 26 May 2001
Be the glue of the egg-carton bed, be the thunder without rain, be the whisker without the twitch, be the needle without the prick, be the barefoot run without the glass, be the kiss without the lips, be the luck without the chance, be the full moon without the weight, be the penetration without the stain, be the fish without the bait, be the chalk (but don't be slate), be the walk (but don't be late), be the thunder in the egg-carton bed.
Sunday, 27 May 2001
One of those sloppily clever days when I make my fun from the failures of my half-baked assumptions; everything I think I know will happen today has (so far) proven to occur in the opposite. This makes it easy to plan my Sunday night: What I'm looking straight into the eye of happening is being puked on by this sordid, greasy fella standing next to me at the Home Depot who's obviously regretting a lengthy liquid lunch, then stepping outside and slipping on a splattered trail of poodle diharrea, trying to fling the noisome flecks from my new shirt and bloody knee as the sky suddenly sieves a freezing rain down onto everything, getting home through insane malcontent traffic to find the Red Sox already losing 9-0 in the first inning to the Yankees, then having my girlfriend tell me she's leaving me for Keanu Reeves whom she's happy to say is not gay and all brains.
It's gonna be a beautiful night.
Bottle. Pop. Gentle fizz. Gullet.
Cheers.
Monday, 28 May 2001
I am almost ashamed that it took me 31 years to realize the basic importance of friends. As you get old and ugly, they're the ones who will still love you - even when you no longer want to see what is frightening the mirror.
I think it almost bothered me recently that I noticed my face is melting. But with a quick realization that everyone else's is too (including Mel Gibson's, Brad Pitt's, Brittney Spears', and even that of the cute 16-year old who works down at the CVS, albeit at different rates, assuredly), I got over it.
Tuesday, 29 May 2001
Every night I kiss to sleep my 113,654,000,017 neurons and nerves. Every nerve cell in my body. Kissed. Individually. It takes me a while, and it gets tricky when I get to the ones in my lips (can you kiss yourself? sure, just as easily as you can bite your teeth), and the ones in my elbows (can you kiss your elbow? I'd like to see you try.), but it's always worth it, and my body loves me, loves me.
I am Chris. I am Teddy Bear, the Orgiastic Onanist of Kissy Kissy. And I earned the title.
Let me tell you - I have got some nerve.
Wednesday, 30 May 2001
Today I am the sound of an old pick-up truck pulling up outside your door, a young girl leaping out and running up to you with good news.
Yesterday I was the sound of a pair of pants pulling up, smiling faces - more quiet than the zipper - staring up in the awe of silent applause.
Tomorrow I will be the sound of a white unicorn pulling up from a full gallop at the base of a spiral staircase, looking up, then gently climbing into the clouds, heading toward a higher ground than that which many of you perceive.
Thursday, 31 May 2001
It's been a cold day. I like to write on cold days. So I looked in the Yellow Pages for a while. I thought I could write for them. Checked all the letters. L seemed nice. Got to the listing for Literary Agencies and had an epiphany - it was only two entries away from Llamas-Dealers & Breeders!
I made some phone calls.
I might be a writer. I might get an agent. I might, someday, be able to live off of my ability to string these here letters together into sentences and then some. But at least I know I can wonder about it all by the side of my new best friend, Pokey. Pokey the Llama. He doesn't spit much, but he sure is cute.