Prelude to Zombie Apocalypse

Three years ago, I was at the height of my academic years. I had already completed the well-rounded primer that is a BS in geology, and was readying myself for the pursuit of a masters degree in a field which few know what’s actually studied. Bidding my time, I decided to take easy classes that seemed stimulating. Back to the studio with J** who still looked like Jamie Hyneman from the show Mythbusters; drawing glass is still hard as fuck. There was also the time spent with K***** meditating on Nazi propaganda and Mel Gibson films. From these discussions, it was suggested I read some philosophical essays and excerpts of dissertations that questioned the meaning of symbols and images in our present times. After admitting that I thought Susan Sontag was basically envious of Leni Riefenstahl’s craft, K***** suggested that I read Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation” in order to understand the “hyperreality” of our present age. It was after a short trip to the copy room that I received a Xeroxed copy of Baudrillard’s treatise on the symbols throughout society.

I remember being rendered numb after I’d finished Baudrillard’s philosophical discourse. I understood how this postmodern theory applied to my own ideas of stylized cinematography, yet the impact hit deeper. Practically overnight I became fascinated with all philosophical theories. Prior, themost interesting ideas I’d read were those of Turing. Baudrillard took the Turing Machine and abstracted it down to something that appeared to lack any traditional meaning. I began asking myself questions to which there were no answers. “Isthe profession I choose reality or fantasy? How much can something be corrected before it is perfect? IfI were to play a song on the radio, how many alien receptors would pick it up, dig it and then re-broadcast it over their airwaves? Do I have a genuine personality?” I realized that thetheory of simulacra could be supported through past conversations with friendsand family; thinking back to previous discussions.

Three months prior:

“I swear, I’ve never met anyone quite like A****.

“Oh really? Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve met someone just like him not so long ago. I used to think that I’d never meet the same type of person as such and such, but that’s not true. You’re bound to meet someone who fills the place of a former friend.

Two years prior:

“What do you think Norman Mailer thinks of the Village Voice now? I bet he’s against the things they publish.”

“I don’t know about that, but I’m certain he’s happy that there’s always another overweight shut-in filling the gap of counterculture commentary to be found on the Internet. Maybe the Voice will devolve to something like the comments section of amazon.com.”

One week prior:

“Why do hipsters constantly want to reprise things from the Reagan era? It’s as if Reagan’s ghost haunts the minds of kids with a horrible fashion sense.”

Later that night:

“I swear you can turn the Chase logo into a swastika.”

This all really means nothing if you, the reader, don’t know of Baudrillard or what simulacra are. And if you disagree with him, then this is all false. Then again, if there’s a reference to his discourse in The Matrix, maybe you’ll be convinced with kick-ass fighting scenes picked fresh from Hong Kong.

November 2006

very, very hungry
I sit waiting for pierogis to fry. I smell the onions in the butter and oil and my stomach punchs itself in the face. I have had nothing to eat all day and it is 8:12 PM. The reason for the absense of food is one crazy schedule. of course, I've put things off, deadlines approach and my procrastination haunts my empty stomach. but there is something to be said about being hungry; hunger reminds me of our early human ancestors. I understand why people fast. there is some spiritual gain from fasting, yet there is also a biological one involving a re-adjustment of the digestive system. mentally, it reaffirms life's bottom line. FOOD. My hunger makes me appreciate food more, and in effect, it reminds me of what I have in life; I love the things I call my own. Through this, however, I do not deny I am very privileged compared to millions of other people. Self-induced hunger is one thing that makes me feel alive.

Dead
They picked his head, they stuck his feet in mud, they ran rivers over his back. He still could not hit a golf ball to save his life. Still, his best friend was dead, deader than Dan Quayle’s political career.

It appears his life was not exactly fit for foraging for compliments inside his wallet. His gestures were too subtle to be noticed by anyone, save his own mind and maybe the eccentric friend. But he knew only the crying game, the nude sculpture, and the lost-mold technique. Having seen him in deadly predicaments prior to his current eviction, I sent him candles: wick and wax in a box full of newspapers. He lights candles, jumps over them and places a piece of fabric underneath where his right foot lands. The fabrics are all chosen carefully based on hue, material and susceptibility to flame. He rhymes colors with genders.

Like genders, he is usually happy or sad. Two of the same means two different things to him. I first saw his inner conflict when he left a house with no sex. He walked straight for the nearest tree and burned it down with his Zippo. He planted a new tree within a fortnight. After leaving the house, sexless and disgruntled, he wanders to a liquor store, buys a fifth of vodka, usually, and drinks only one shot, vehemently. The remaining ethyl is then poured on a flower, usually a rose if he can find any, or else, as I have observed during later outbursts, a tulip, someone’s lawn, the windshield of a car, a pile of garbage, a fjord, a dog, a man, a little boy, a sparrow, a woman or a stop sign will take the place of the rose. The empty bottle is then filled with milk shakes and he mails the bottle to his failed lover. He sometimes, as he has told me, writes an original poem on the bottle; ties are permanently severed upon deliverance of the bottle. This does not always occur, this iterative tirade. His severance is usually followed by intervals of isolation. I once did not see him after he mailed a fifth of Smirnoff (filled with strawberry milk shake) to Leonard St. for one month and four days. When I do see him again, he is in denial of anything, carrying on his business without faintly any indiscretions, as if he had been working at the market for the entire month.

Deprived

Freely accepting the remnants of coldness that blow from a northern latitude. Days have been unusually clear up until this past one. I have the urge to remain awake at all times. The brain's active and not affording me snooze time. A long bike ride is calling me.
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The dimple on the wall ... it must have been the sambuca/vodka shooters.

a mother rat had given birth to a small litter the week prior. There were tiny squeeks three nights in a row. M*A*S*H was on, Alan Alda was hatching some schtick to woo his secret admirer who'd sent him a love letter. It was past 2 AM and a sleep-deprived trance had set in. The TV began pushing itself away from me, it seemed tens of meters away. The image on the screen never fuzzed-out, my eyes focused on Hawkeye beginning to sound more and more like Groucho Marx. My eyes slowly move downwards, glazing over my stomach and chest. I saw little people mingling on a stretched out plain that was my gray shirt. They were feeling around my chest for a something, the glow of the TV illuminating their search.

My hands were now larger, vibrating gloves without motion. I couldn't see the ceiling. My perspective had now panned out, yet I looked at the screen and it was larger now. Jamie Farr was now on, clad in a sundress. His skin was tanned and oily. I marveled at his large schnoz. It matched his smile so well. His face filled up the screen without any problems. I couldn't tell what he was saying, but I knew when to laugh.

Hawkeye now had wine, waiting for his mystery admirer. Like a gray matchbox car bolting across the floor under the screen, the hypnotist snapped his fingers. Bolt up, stars etched onto my eyes. Walk two steps, see a tail. "WHAAAAA SHIT!" Like a hobbling hobo reaching for a machete, the small little league bat that was always in the same corner. The gray-tailed admirer was fast. It dodged a Nike, then the large textbook (was it Chemistry?) before flying under my legs. Straddling back and to the side, trying to wake up, hearing the laugh track in the background, the grayness now making its way under the desk. The computer was still on. You cannot escape through cyberspace.

I see this rodent cowering in a corner. It's young, without a mother. It cannot understand its fate. It is a foreigner, inferior. I wield power over it. Now i see the cardboard lid of a box. I take the bat and push the lid closer to the cowering grayness. It now is trying to climb up under the desk. I hesitate for a three seconds, before slamming the lid against the gray fur with the bat only one time. Rodent-cardboard-wood.

Skull. No movement. Remain squating, then fall on my knees, gradually slumping downwards and forwards towards the rodent. no laugh track, no cross-dressing, no admirer.

sambuca and luksusowa with one ice-cube x ~30. the dimpled-wall, that's lamenting the admirer. i hit it straight, open palm, wrist tilted 65º left of the normal. Spackling is cheap.

coldness envelopes

Downer nostalgia:

I remember a commercial on the radio for Lollapalooza. I was 9 and listening to Soundgarden. Loud announcers……1994. Solar eclipse……”crocodile tears.”



Transformed sport:

my first experience leaving the bar ended in a joint being smoked under scaffolding to an audience of intoxicated hecklers.
my most recent experience leaving the bar ended in a malnourished metal-kid bumming a smoke from the former joint-roller.



Solstice songs:

Ohm+

3-XI-08 (Birthday month)

It's been a slow existence since the beginning of August. My travels down south to Maryland having ceased, I've fallen into the repetitious motions of two kinds of work; financially supporting myself and the road towards a masters degree. As I trudge into the fourth month of this regimented schedule the manifestation of depression around me seems to have become accentuated. I've been focused on the growing worries and concerns of others, as a climate of anxiety continues to build around me.
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The dreams that define who I am have grown into old beakers, vessels for suppressed memories. Gone are the cinematic dreams of subterranean space wars, the banishment to the realm of garbage or devil dolls incinerating churches. I am in prison with a former lover, and she tells me that an inmate will rape me before the day's end. I am an observer of a deathmatch involving old friends I never talk to. Finally, I am on a trail in a vaguely familiar forest, and I am being led by an old elementary school teacher to a place where I'll be made a eunuch.
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As I grind rock down to the width of a hair, I am beginning to perceive that most advice is flawed. I say this after spending over a month's time, intermittently, in a lab that should be neutron bombed in order to disintegrate all the inhabiting Cold War ghosts haunting the lab's residing pack-rat. He surrounds himself with half-finished projects and obsolete machinery. Yes, I choose to ignore that corner of the building.

Stepping out of the trance

I heard some extraneous account of whalers trying to save a penguin from a hoard of orca whales today. They killed tons of whales to try and save one penguin, the water brimming crimson from the spilled orca blood. I'll take this as a poetic analogy to how Congress is trying to solve the economic crisis. It should just allow the practice of fractional-reserve banking to die gracefully, or at least to transmogrify into something more stable. I'll continue to be a stoic observer.

Autumn cleaning

Deterring rain, a mentor who renigs, revealing documentaries and tantric lessons. Humidity lingers in the middle of September. I'm trying to ignore the negative premonitions.

Lollapalooza 1994

Kansas City, 11 July, 1994

Washed Back

I was on a huge plane of garbage, like lost in the 2nd dimension. But I got a lucky lottery number and I wound up leaving.

Then I was found to be alive, and I had gone back 5 years to 2003 when I got lost on the vast flatfield of garbage. It is 2005 right now, and I'm not catching up 3 years fast enough. I need to get ahead of myself.

West 8th St. & Surf Ave.

i remember working in coney island, the day they stopped using coin tokens. there were those who disagreed with the banishment of tokens. (the fare had only just been raised to $1.50 and new-shaped token had not being circulating for long) the Metrocard had been intended as a temporary invention, but it caught on, going from blue to gold, to simply a debit card. but for some reason, ease of the "swipe" notwithstanding, carrying coins for fares in your pocket brings a smile to my face (Boston, Philadelphia, Montreal)

for those who forgot, the fork goes into the mouth. eat the beans and savor the iron.

"the first of many goodbyes" (reprise)

I used to work at a gas station down on Nassau and North 15th-Banker Sts. The fumes would render my synapses limp by the time I would arrive home. my father suspected the fumes would make my hair fall out and replace the bare patch in the backyard. Luckily, they closed that station with a wrecking ball. The triangle lot still exists, barren, separating the "Billy Burg" scene from the Polish of Greenpoint. (the day they were filming the Substitute sequel in the vocational school across the street, they made us all fill up the deli trucks without them paying us) The view I used to have from the top of the tankers was a Manhattan skyline filled with fudged clouds of smog. I imagined what it would be like to eat a poison fudge brownie. The taste must be excellent for poison.

Arsenic in your coffee (Arsenic café...?) meets sulfuric brownies. It comes with a coupon where you get $1 off a pound of doughnuts at the Dunkin chain. Though, I must say, I was glad that the gas station was wrecked, since i wasn't making enough money to get anywhere fast. I'd have died before I found true love, as so many visionary artists who have stolen from each other over the years would say. I give them all credit for making some people cringe and cry with delight. After the wrecked N 15th station I had to go work at a printing company. The Gazette was smelly and foul with tiny mice living inside the back rooms where the giant ink cartridges were kept. i could get all the ink on my toast as I wanted, though! Black India! (no, not exactly) the interesting thing is, for some reason, they would grow bamboo in one room, cut it and split the ends in another room, before making brushes in a third. I always thought bamboo was rare, though it actually grows quite rapidly. It's been a major invading species since the colonies were set up back centuries ago. The 17th century must be grinning in it's grave. Technicolored morticians mesmerizing titular dignitaries from the western hemisphere sometimes seems unmitigatedly farcical. Pixelated screens mesmerize. I hear communication companies laughing in each others’ faces after the allusions to their divine plot are revealed through constant satire. Getting no where fast.

After I quit the Gazette, I had to go work in an office. I felt like I'd die from heat exhaustion in a fully air-conditioned room before getting any of the work done they wanted me to do. It wasn't even the fact that it was difficult; the tasks that were given to me were the easiest of tasks to tackle. The sheer boredom and mundanity of the work made brain cells pull a Cobain on Sunday. I lasted 2 years before the day came when I had to go learn things and pay for it afterwards. we all know what I mean by that.


Last I left it, the Greenpoint Gazette had burned down, the rainbow having cut a deal with the Gustapo in Greenpoint. Hey now, get me outta that deal! That’s the real reason I quite. No room for Mafioso. Find me a hat and I’ll forward you a new bit of string for the inner stitching. If you cut corners, your hat will fall off in the mildest of breezes.

So I’ve been dwelling on my failures at the Gazette for a bit too long. I can’t soon forget all that, the pulp and the endangered trees. I feel like it caused me to grow up too fast. I can always go back to a youthful existence, yet I suppose I chose not to and still do. Do I isolate myself purposely? Has it always been so? It’s all a blur really, everything from high school onwards. I can remember a lot from before that, but my perception was different then so it is all without much merit. I remember sneaking onto city buses because I felt since everyone else did it, I should simply follow along. I knew it was wrong, but it didn’t matter. I had a free pass, and the good seats by the air-conditioning would be taken up if I waited in the front of the bus. So sneaking through the back door really benefited me without taking anything away from anyone else. Of course, the person who would have sat in the seat prior to my decision to sneak through the rear door might not have air-conditioning. I was a little selfish then. But who cared? I didn’t know what I wanted, and life was dictated to me by others. It still is, but at least I know how things work and how I can change it. I was only ever bullied in junior high school, because I was white and had pimples and couldn’t play basketball or dance. Without a bit of chemicals in me, I decided to be content with videogames until I could think for myself. That came in high school, along with alcohol and drugs. Fuck all that now, though. If I need a drug, smell my hat, feed me some pumpkin bread and send out the pill to someone else.

Before the departure from the gazette, I had a man talk to me about life without pay, and how important it was to make sure you had continuous pay. I listened to every word he said, yet his meaning escaped me then. I know now he meant that I should always benefit from everything I do. For him, this mantra had monetary conditions of interest. For me, I know this is not always about money. In fact, it rarely is. I get satisfaction in the most mundane things. I woke up to a smiling chicken disguised as a cookie jar one morning and I couldn’t stop smiling for hours. The idea that you have happiness witin and that this intrinsic happiness is triggered by something is wonderful. It’s a love you always have, yet what or who can bring that out? (music, jars, de-foliated trees?) It’s the same thing with all emotions. What brings out the sadness, the anger, the regret? It’s not that simple, since it’s about ephemeral moments in our lives. Here is a little greeting, a short goodbye, and a long stare out the window. The long stare is you thinking about the greeting (the hello) and the premature goodbye (subtle rejection). This is what separates people of action and people of thought. Here is a hello, a goodbye, and now let’s go back to work. That cannot be me. No one asked me where I should live. I live in the most convenient setting so I can think of how I should live.

The Gazette left me feeling relieved that I had not learned much from it. I could never be stuck in a dead-end job like the residents surrounding me. I knew I had no idea what I could do, yet watching machines eat bamboo and tree trunks all day was not the way my life worked. The pegs they created and the empty tabloids for the residents were all products of controlled population anyway, or quotients of dividing up certain populations based on infrastructure and distance from economic strong-points. I cannot begin to imagine the genius needed to divide a metropolis. I now know the ghost of Robert Moses’ marmot haunted the hallways of that gazette. It’s been proven by crackpot alchemists, yet I believe them for Isaac Newton was also into alchemy. Well, so much for modern science and religion being two separate things. Try to organize science too much and you get things like the wacky-wall walker. Try the same thing with religion and you get everything from Calvinists to Mormons to automatons in pressed collars on television. Both are useless and boring. I say if we had a church of science nothing would ever be boring, since you can always love nature like a mother-god. -2141; Nov 15 05

past learnings

remembering the old, the old vacant streets and winter shadows of early 1989. it is remarkable. that wall on this block was were i learned how to hit a ball with a bat. Below that is where I learned how to fly a kite.

final touches

i finished all my requisites, yet i still can't sleep. i'm truly without any schedule. i live until i can no longer stand, then i collapse and wait to wake-up. i fear that the mountain will fall hard, or i can ride the avalanche made of the talus which i built. things do become clear with time.


i suddenly remember walking along Bleeker and going into Porto Rico to buy tea. i think of the tea she would like, but i cannot answer. i just look at the clerk fill each bag from innards of the urns. i buy too much tea, and only one small bag of coffee, an order that was placed to many hours ago for me to remember exactly what roast, what bean, the amount to get. i hope i have enough money. i'm left with $4.68. not enough to get anything decent to drink. i had only 2 smokes left. i give some people a call. no one answers. i walk around, as i usually due, summer, winter, autumn, spring, dusk, rarely dawn, in a hurry, without haste, meander, incise a path to no destination. i think of the circles i've walked in, search every corner, being fond of some places yet forgetting why exactly. I will eventually sit anywhere i choose that seems welcoming, or have a certain ambience i am particularly fond of. i sit and wait for my thoughts to flocullate, to gather around a single point and build. i will eventually dry out in laughter, or laugh at my own misfortune.

i miss looking for public benches no one sits in anymore. i like putting the old commodities and services we've taken for granted to use. old letter shoots i buildings sadden me. light fixures with push-buttons. old library cards with DUE DATE written on top. the seems past forgets itself.

bloody orgy

there are the dreams you remember for the rest of your life, and then the ones that scare you and make you question whether you are a so-called "sane" person.

i come into a storefront, selling anything at all (the details are fuzzy) and i begin talking to this man inside. he tells me of a cult who take the paganist rituals of old Celtic and Gaelic tradition and re-interpret them in modern day america. we walk outside and the sky turns to a burnt orange glow. People are acting strange. i continue to hear the stories of this cult. the have their own secret alphabet. they worship certian gods, but it is mostly an indulgence in sex. they take sacrifices and perform grotesque acts. the scene cuts to a man dressed up in animal hide performing anal sex with blood and guts dripping everywhere. he is joined by others. cut back to the street. apparently this has spread everywhere, from after hours business men clubs to college fraternities (i attribute this to something akin to Eyes Wide Shut) they become crazed like demons. they drink a brew, a tea, brewed from the bark of a tree found in the northerwestern islands if europe, the British Isles. Gaelic, Celtic traditions which were shunned by later christian monks who came with the roman empire. the push of Catholicism by medieval monks was the one saving grace to end these diabolic acts. the knowledge of the tea vanished and so did the cult. (scene of monks in black hoods chanting and ending the threat of the pagan cult.

the man continues to explain that the irish embraced catholicism due to the forbidden participation in these cults. for hundreds of years, near millennia, the cult was suppressed by the church. but modern-day information has brought back the knowledge of the tree bark, of deranged orgies, bloody....a lot of blood and animals. (cut to a scene of more bloody orgies, but in caves and caverns light by torches......reminds me of Hellraiser scenes) the man then says he is an anthropologist who has learned about this through extensive research. he is trying to stop the spread of this cult. i am now part of his quest. cut to the future where we are infiltrating into the caverns. yet, are you to prevent this, or participate? (think back to Lovecraft's ficiton) i am dressed in animal skins. i have drank the tea. and the feeling is one indescribable. terror, dread, pure evil. i rush to a dagger and kill myself before becoming under the full influence of the sinister traditions........saving myself from inner primal rage.

does single malt scotch, brewed in these northern islands, have anything to do with this dream i've been afflicted with?