2 Minutes. Go!

Literally, your whole life is making me gag. I need a new pencil. I need an eraser with a tip. Don't EVER say that to a fellow artist; it is so rude. I'm not even done, but this is looking not-as-terrible as I expected it to. Just promise me you won't react too badly to my drawing because I don't want to feel bad about it. I want to feel powerful, spinning and golden. I want everyone to follow me on Instagram. I want to work up to sly addictions and social climbing. 

Do you want to buy a print?

I don't drink almond milk because my father was an almond tree. A cow raped my mother, so I eat beef at every meal. Wash my car with milk. 

It's so irritating when people try to make a living, feed their family. It's not anything to do with you, we're just being funny people, having a laugh or two. I just want out. 

Stop.

My car is so electric it's not even a car. It's an old Duracell battery that I glued skateboard trucks to. I don't use any natural fibers or plastics. I am going to stand naked in the middle of this forest clearing and just vibe.

Do you want to pay for my vibing seminar?

I want a president who has star appeal. I want my senators to have nice teeth. I want Chinese concentration camps and kids in cages. I'm into composting. 

Baby teeth will enrich the soil, right?

I just want to want things. Things I can't have, but can create a close approximation of with filters and funny camera angles. Do you mind if I lean against your luxury automobile? Just for one second? Tell all the thirteen-year-olds that it's mine. Blow that shit up on Social Media. Make myself real. Sell prints to rubes and noobs. 

So, do you want to buy a print?

2 Minutes. Go!

The notes are sticky, man. They're hanging from the ceiling: fat, purple and swollen. They're gonna drop on your head, drown you. You're going to have to swim for it, and you might beg it to stop, but thin man gonna keep blowin' that horn. Motherfuckers are gonna keep slamming those drumsticks. That fat man with the big ol' bass is gonna rewire your shit, retune your heartbeat. Ain't nothing to do but drink it in, keep swallowing so you don't drown. 

Shit gets hot all over town.

That guitar run went up your spine and played it like a xylophone, son. Sounds like plastic, wasted misery. Sounds like Chicago on a summer night, screams over those flat punches. Get it in the gut; close your eyes so it can't take you over, Buttercup.

Light one up and lean out over the fire escape, shit's just turning up. 

It don't matter if you can understand the words, man, you get the gist. You gotta chew on it like gristle, get the juices out of it. Let 'em run down your throat while the fast women run up and down the dancefloor, collecting heartache. 

It's a long night, and you ain't got but one heart to break. 

So, let 'em bang the drum, the beat, the summer heat. Let the politicians lie and the poor folks suffer. Let folks freeze solid and call it American Perseverance. 

America is going cheap. It's on clearance. 

2 Minutes. Go!

Lost

The cliff face is steep, sheer. The drop will be deadly; you know this, but in this knowing you learn things about yourself that you would rather not know. You learn about fear and anguish. You learn about self-reprisal. You learn that your bluffs are sometimes just bluffs, and that your stubborn streak could kill you.

The smart play is to turn around. Clearly. There is nothing to prove here except to the hikers who will find your body at the bottom. Figure you slipped. They won’t understand that you were proving something to yourself. They won’t see that it mattered. 

So, it won’t matter.

You don’t realize as you hang onto the rocks that you will still be reliving this moment far in the future. 25 years later, and you still wonder if you could have made it to the bottom. And, if you had, what would it have meant. Doesn’t matter. You climbed up, went home, got drunk. Played some shows.

The cliff is still there. You will never find it. But maybe, someday, it will make sense. Maybe someday you will forgive yourself for being so lost that you couldn’t make a decision. Couldn’t do right by yourself. You didn’t figure out a way to die, so you had to figure out a way to live.

Sometimes, it’s a long walk out of the woods.

 

Calm

You’re in the eye of the storm, but don’t get comfortable. Outside the eye, everything is chaos. You can’t feel safe, no rest. You can’t relax because those tropical winds will suck you right the hell of that momentary calm. Send you reeling. Farmhouses flying by and Aunty Em, Aunty Em, was that a little black dog?

See, that Dog got sucked right out to sea. It’s drowning now. Bermuda triangle.

People are going to swirl by you and it’s tempting to reach out and touch them, grab them, pull them in towards you where everything is peaceful. Quiet. Careful, they might also pull you into the maelstrom. And maybe they’re having fun out there. 

Just because you like peace and quiet doesn’t mean it’s good for everybody.

This is last time you will ever feel at ease if you don’t find a way to stabilize yourself. Winds blow and the sky will get dark. There will be thunder and lightning. Still, the eye is one of your own making. You just have to make it. One man’s calm is another man’s storm.

2 Minutes. Go!

I climb this hill because the hill is there; maybe from the top things will look different, but I figure they'll probably just look farther away. Like looking in binoculars from the wrong side. I smoke a cigarette because the wind is picking up, and I want to watch my smoke baptize the city, the grid of the Mission district laid out like a compulsive graph. The swallows tear up and down the side of the hill, snatching meals on wings that I cannot see, but still believe in. They are there, I know they are - the swallows aren't crazy. 

In my back pocket is a pint of cheap whiskey, and it is enough to pause the entire universe if you drink it fast, so I do. Two long draughts. Spit a few times if you feel like it's gonna come back, it helps. If you can keep it down for a minute, it's all gravy. The warmth starts in the belly to the lower back, the sun goes down, and the lights come up and they twinkle with whiskey giggles.

I light another cigarette.

These places you carve out of life can come to dominate everything. You can spend hours obsessing about getting drunk, then do it, only to regret it almost immediately. Or, it hits right, and you get a respite from everything, but re-entry is going to fucking suck. That's alright. That's why God made taquerias and liquor stores. 

I go home because that's what you do. I climb the roof with a new bottle and watch the busses pass. Listen to the junkies roar. I came up planning to jump, but I don't want to anymore.