Thought Process

How can we just sit here and let everything just pass by? There is something ingrained in our culture that allows us to not participate; there is something that allows us to sit and to not think.

Tell me. Teach me. Gimmie gimmie gimmie.

While some lay in their hospital beds, IVs connected, food tube in their throat, others will always have their fork and knife ready to pick apart their meat. Some will sift through the good and the bad. "I don't want this, but this, oh this looks good". Some of us will eat what is good and some of us will allow others to decide what we eat. I would never let somebody else decide what I eat.

Of course this is just a metaphor, but I'm hoping you get the idea. When you read the news, you are sitting up in your chair, folk and knife handy, with a giant plate of food for you to devour. This sounds good to me. I have the luxury of doing away with the bad news, taking what I want from the plate. When you watch the news, you are in that hospital bed, unconscious, with the food being shoved down your throat- letting those fucks in suits telling you what you should believe. Do you want to choose what you want to believe or do you want to be told what to believe?

There is something in our culture that makes this okay. How many people have you met today that you are sure they haven't picked apart a single thing? Are you one of these people? Am I one of these people? How easy is it to not think? Here, in America, it's really easy- I can tell you that. In fact, it would be much easier to not pick apart each word, each letter, as if it didn't have some other meaning. Sometimes your words don't. And sometimes I think they do. For me each phrase is something else, it's alive. In my world, nothing can stand on its own. There is something behind it. It's in the way you look at me, one leg crossed while I talk looking at the ground, not afraid- but ashamed to meet your eyes for more then a second or two at a time. What am I ashamed of you ask? I would not be sure how I could even answer that. Ashamed is that feeling. You know it, when the only place your head goes is down. You are hiding your face. We identify each other through our faces, and so we hide them when we do not want to be recognized. I'm guessing this means I don't want to be recognized by you, but the ultimate irony is that I want nothing more than to be recognized, and nothing more than to be recognized by you. And yet I am ashamed. Did this occur to you at all? Although I can recall times, even dreams from years ago and still have them affect my thinking, I do not expect anybody else to be in a similar disposition.

But we still don't second guess a single thing that happens. We don't think. And maybe it is for the better. I doubt that much of anything would ever get done if we were all subjected to this chronic issue. If we all spent our minutes speculating on word choice from the middle of a nonchalant conversation, I'd imagine all of us sitting in our chairs, thinking. But what is more fascinating than looking at someone deep in thought. You attempt to get their attention but it is to no avail. That fictional voice in their head is a thousand decibels louder than your loudest yell. Do you know what we are talking about here? Your yell. Your scream. The way in which you make physical air molecules vibrate; the way in which you make real things move could never compare to whatever is going on in there. Sometimes it's just not worth the trouble. Listen, it really isn't worth your trouble; I'm a lost cause.

The Berlin Wall Tune

Twenty-five years ago, if you saw this, it would probably be the last thing you saw before you were gunned down. Now we can look, touch, take. We can do whatever.

Here is a little Joseph Brodsky for you. Ill get off this "other people's poetry" kick soon; I promise.

Dull is the day here. In the night
searchlights illuminate the blight
making sure that if someone screams,
it's not due to bad dreams.

For dreams here aren't bad; just wet with blood
of one of your like who's left his pad
to ramble at will; and in his head
dreams are replaced with lead.

Given that, it's only time
who has guts enough to commit the crime
of passing this place back and forth on foot:
at pendulums they don't shoot.

That's why this site will see many moons
while couples lie in their beds like spoons,
while the rich are wondering what they wish
and single girls eat quiche.

Come to this wall that beats other walls:
Roman, Chinese, whose worn-down, false
molars envy steel fangs that flash,
scrubbed of thy neighbor's flesh.

Thank You Bukowski

...I never post the work of other people, but I was just so enthralled with this Bukowski poem that I felt the need to share it with somebody.


Charles Bukowski- A Smile to Remember

We had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, “be happy Henry!”
and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week
while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn’t
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!
why don’t you ever smile?“

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

I knew I would take the wrong train so I left early.

It's an old cliche, I know, but it really is true. Sometimes the best thing come in small packages. But wait, let's think about what we just said here for a minute. What is this notion of "things" (whatever that word means) coming in packages? Why does my great small thing have to come in any package at all? Because I bought it, that's why.
Next time you go into a store, any store really, take a look around. What do you see? Shelves lined with plastic see-through containers and cardboard boxes with images of the good that is contained inside it.
Think about this. We go to this store, we are overwhelmed with all these things they have for us to buy. Yet we are completely convinced that they have what we want. Listen, they tell us what we want. When we find a really nice shirt we think we've won- we have wandered through the depths of the aisles of this store and picked out this one shirt that is so for us. For me. Shirts, pants, socks- dozens of each type in different sizes and colors surrounding us and somehow we decide on this particular shirt.
"Mine" you think in your head. "This is my shirt".
Wrong.

We are told what to like and we accept it without a fucking thought. We let it run right into our heads like dumb little assholes. When we were young, we would pick and choose our friends by which clothes they wear- by which standardized bullshit their mom bought for them. And the worst part is we still do this. We are the product of a society built on exploitation that not only handicaps the exploited physically, but mentally handicaps the "beneficiaries" as well. In a word or two, nobody benefits from this. And yet we continue to work as hard as we can to keep it in place.

the everyday

What you look at everyday is going to affect your thinking. The university I study at happens to be quite unappealing, so I thought I would start first with this wall. When I go outside here, it is not as if a new thought is going to strike me. You have to create your own pleasure. What have you created?

It's a strange feeling, being the first one to wake up and the last one to go to sleep. You sit up, in a feverish state, reading, working, thinking. All the while, most everybody else is sleeping, doing nothing. It's always strange that while you are still alive, still awake, they are dead, sleeping. To me there hardly is any difference. You know that feeling, when you are reading your favorite novel, but your eyes are slowly closing. The words all begin to double, triple and and you can't read a thing anymore. The voice in your head, you know, that one that reads to you? The voice in your head starts echoing. You are in a cave, it's getting darker and the echos get louder. The light is fading out and why the hell are my eyelids so fucking heavy? Your thoughts begin to leave you. What was I just reading?

Your eyes shoot open. Whoa. What just happened? You reset you gaze on a few lines earlier and keep on reading. Slowly the feeling comes back. Now I'm angry. All I want to do is read this but no, my body has to to fight me. It says to me, "Close your eyes! Go to sleep! We need to rest...now!" But I really don't want to. The last thing I want to do is sleep. Another sip of coffee and you feel like you are going to throw up, but you cannot think of anything else to keep yourself awake. No, a nap and then continuation is not an option. This is called giving in. Giving into this crap is so bad for you. Sometimes you need to force yourself through these things, unless you want to become one of them. You know what I mean, one of them. One of them who drive around drinking large sodas. Eating burgers. Watching television. One of them who allows all their stimulation to come from some sort of screen. "Feed me information!" How much of this are you going to retain if you let someone else shove it down your throat for you? Do you really think? Do you ever think? I always wonder what goes on in the mind of these people. Do you think anything ever goes on?

I know of a woman. Constantly people are asking her, "are you alright, are you okay?". Her answer is usually, "Yeah, why do you ask?". She bares the mark, the oh-so-typical sign that I love. She seethes with experience, knowledge- she knows. She is someone I want to talk to, or rather, someone that I want to talk with. And I will talk with her any chance that I get.

Here are a few things that I once noticed.