UNCONDITIONAL BLOG

Friends,

*PLEASE READ THIS BLOG IN SARAH SILVERMAN'S VOICE*

[I the undersigned agree to this term and condition] X______________________________

Well, friends, in about a week or so I will be going through puberty again. This may sound like one of my super-secretive ultra-witchy coded-backhanded attempts at surrealistic realism. But honestly, you can take it at face value. Don't read between the lines (in Silverman's dulcet-electric tones).

Here's another thing--I forgot to worry about polka dots. When I take the time to worry about every tiny thing that could possibly go wrong in any given situation, then usually nothing goes wrong. But it didn't even occur to me to worry about the dots. Now they are here, doing the polka on my flesh. Uh-oh. And it's too late to worry so I'll just have to deal…

Here's another thing: Thanksgiving is all about shopping and football. And gluttony. But for me Thanksgiving has always been a secure place from which to assess the entire year & decide what to be most thankful for.

I saw lots of thankful posts on Facebook yesterday & I loved seeing that even if I didn't comment or hit the 'like' button as many times as I wanted to. I think we really have shifted from being an ego-driven species to being a spirit-driven species in just a matter of years.

I like to say this shift started happening around 12-21-12. But it really started right after 9/11. It has just taken this long for enough of us to get it. And we couldn't have done it without Facebook (or MySpace. Don't forget about MySpace. MySpace is the Mary to Facebook's Jesus). 

And we couldn't have done it without making mistakes. Oh, I've made many mistakes in this life! But I've been watching you & you have made many mistakes too. But I don't feel as horrible about my (or your) mistakes as I once did.

It's all okay. And the millennials will do a much better job at facilitating evolution than any other generation. Once they turn 40, that is. They still have to go through their own generational puberty pangs.

So…yeah…thankful for Humanitor surging ahead in its evolution.

Another thing I'm thankful for is that 2015 was not 2014. 2014 was unspeakable. But I will never forget it. Never bury it deep in my anatomical graveyard. And I will indeed speak about it. Someday soon--

--because I've seen & heard a lot about anxiety & depression going off the charts recently. And I have my little 2 cent contribution to that conversation. But not today.

Today I want to enjoy how thankful I am for many things, not just the date on the calendar ( and in spite of these hideous polka dots!)

*********************************

During our move I found lots of old boxes of stuff. Including some Childhood Art!! Here we see a very old version of Vin & Juliet. In 1st grade I became obsessed with wanting to be Chinese. [This was well before the Michael Derrick Hudson scandal or the Rachel Dolezal fiasco] I was not only gender dysphoric, but racially distressed. I think my yearning to be Chinese had more to do with past life remembrances than any real understanding of race. But all of my artwork from 1st-2nd grade was Asian inspired.

NOW--HERE IS SOME SURREALISTIC REALISM TO SINK YOUR EYEBALLS INTO !

How do you make new friends? How do you recover from 40 years of grief that welled up overnight and spilled from the rotten core of your soul all at once? What is this boulder left sitting in my chest? Who do I call to haul it away? Surgeon? Saul? Jim Beam? I'll just sing through it--my boulder song. The rock song that'll finally make me a star. Just in time to save the world from Hard Sparkle Countrycore and Postgangsta Gratitude List Hiphop. How do you make new music? How do you know where to put the words you want to say? How do you know you've wandered to the ends of the internet? How do you ask your imagination for forgiveness? 10-30-15 

*****

Forced spontaneity is ripping at a fog east of the highway. It's tying a spider web at all four corners of my mind with the pair of hands I keep in my skull. It's pretending there's no spider in any of the silken strands. It's pulling teeth from that spider's phantom jawline. It's chewing on a rough idea that tastes like a cow pie in July. It's November with 80 percent humidity and moderate chop. It's 50 percent anxiety in the morning--down from 100 percent a year ago. [Yay] 11-4-15

*****

Even the Cat In The Hat had to be Asian

Aggravated apiary blessed by cathartic calm. Deafening didact eliminated early from fatal germ galaxy. How hexagonal it is juggling javelins, kidnapping killjoys, letting loose…My maudlin neighbor narrates octopus obituaries. Purple pansies quell quarrels, relieve riots. Savage songbirds tag trenchant uvulas under 'vintage vomitoria.' Why would xylophones Xray young yaks, zone zodiacs? 11-19-15

*****

Pixel rolls on the patio, belly up, purr-meowing in permutations of sunlight that penetrate this thick rainy day. Eloise is about to step outside when an airplane growls by. She waits with her ears on crooked then joins us shyly.

Pixel eats a spider right out of its web. Eloise sits, gopher-like, attentive, her big pink schnozz enraptured by something I can't see.

There is lots of debris on the porch. I think it is mud and leaves from the rain. It is really a bunch of dead frogs.

As I sweep I realize some of the frogs are still alive, and it becomes a rescue mission. Pixel gets a frog before I can save it and a leg goes missing. Eloise, more enchanted by the birds & squirrels beyond the screen, is missing out on easy meat. She chatters back at a squirrel. It tells its friends about the dangerous psychopath in their midst.

I go get my computer and some coffee. I sit at the picnic table and type something about my cats.  11-22-15

*****

A fun drawing from 3rd grade

Where is the edge of this existence and how do I get there? Or, rather, how many times have I been there? I think the edge isn't so much a distal drop-off as it is these bodies we live in. When you live in a body that doesn't match your soul, you live in mid-fall. A dead leaf who will get raked into a mass grave if it ever touches land. You fall a hundred times a day as people call you "miss, miss, ma'am." You refrain from shooting anyone but you hiss and spit like a cobra-panther. You bury yourself in a grave of flannel 2 sizes too large and you fill your head with another world. In your head-world, there is no country music. There is no hormonal divide. And there are no people, only angels sharing space like pie. Every living moment an act of divine street performance. 11-27-15

*****

And here's the very first incarnation of the Flowers in the Attic drawing. Probably 11 or 12 years old, but the drawing skill looks about Kindergarten. I added a 5th person to the line-up, because I always saw myself as the 5th Flowers in the Attic sibling. I'm the boy on the right.

The most recent Flowers in the Attic sketch. From 2011 Brooklyn Art Library Sketchbook Project.

See you soon Octopus Diary-snoopers. I hope you enjoyed the childhood art gallery too!

STREAM OF SOLEMNITY

Friends,

I hope you are alive and well.

Today I was going to launch the Serious Topics series with a ramble about the stigma of mental illness. But some events have taken place in the world and I feel like I should say something about that:

Terror, people. If it takes a well-coordinated, large-scale attack on a city that is the designated hub of culture and romance on this planet to get people to understand that ISIS is everywhere, then I won't be upset about the "selective outrage" that follows.

I understand that most people in the U.S. don't dream of honeymooning in Beirut or have close friends spending Thanksgiving in Kenya. Beirut & Kenya are not hubs of romance, and that's okay. But ISIS did strike those places too and it didn't quite make the headline news here. And if it had made the news, would we have cared so much? No, we wouldn't.

In the last week though, ISIS has been very busy and very successful in doing harm in many places, including (now confirmed) planting a bomb on a Russian airplane, killing 200+ people.

And ISIS is here too, people. In our country. Right now. Masterminding the next big strike on their Playstation grapevine. 

Anti-Culture Conversations w/ Vin and Juliet. Realistic panel.

What can we do? Well, for one, we can all get on our Playstations and become citizen spies. We can all stay home which is a good idea but would contribute to the death of society {Meatspace!). We could censor ourselves and never talk about what a douch-y prophet of god Muhammed is, but then the terrorists would be winning. We could outlaw all religions, but that wouldn't stop people from doing things in accordance with what they believe.

Or how about this--We could live in a strict police state where everyone was heavily surveilled and every enclosed space was patrolled by "good guys with guns" and metal detectors and bomb-sniffing pooches.

If we want to know how to live in a world where radical terrorism could overshadow the "lone gunman who never got laid" at any moment, we could ask an Israeli or Palestinian how they live in such a world.

The fact is--there are too many people in the world. Until we understand how to populate the earth in direct proportion to its resources, there will always be an overflow of humans into the margins where anger, poverty and desperation live. Hoplology 101.

Cartoony panel. With visible brain activity.

********

There. Sorry to get preachy about shit that has yet to affect me personally. But I truly do see the potential for it to affect everyone (American, Canadian, Venezuelan, Australian, East European, British, South African, et al…) Global threat. Hoverboards be damned. Jet packs too.

Surreal panel. Enjoy.

NOW HERE'S SOME CREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS (CONDENSED):

I can't decide which I fear most--the world or my mind. Lately I'm caught in this full-size Chinese handcuff. A painful isolation drives me outside to see other faces, hear other voices. But what I see & hear is humanity's fading beauty, skins with customized lesions & shrapnel caught in the throat. Monstrous Humanitor, cackling inhumane at itself in the mirror. Robbing itself at grin-point. Selfishness ringing in operatic mezzo-soprano sing-song conspiracy notes. A cordial baritone dictatorship linking the food-chain to the fence. I run barefoot and destitute back to my cavernous skull, where once I found whatever I wished to be true. Where fantasy now meets solitary confinement.  10-14-15

Don't dilly dally with that ball and chain. Step right up to the plate glass sunrise. Answer your phone on the first prophetic ringtone to take down dictation to a crumbling dictatorship in an Arabian Springtime for Hitler--what a jerk! Get to work on your new screenplay about the guy with the car, and the gun, and the ego. Be sure to find time to masturbate to your coworker's wardrobe malfunction, whatever it may be--running hose, missed tampon, open zip bar code for I'm in the closet but get and come me in the bored room. 10-23-15 

Morning grey as a twisted spine. That's more like it, November. I've slumped in this waiting room crushed by eye contact and body odor so long I can't remember how many times I sang Happy Birthday into debt. Copy right, copy left. Over the shoulders of dying doctors shake the salt. Put some pepper in your step and in your diet to live forever. I only have the appetite for waiting. A trapezoid once so triangular. A mountain moved by humans becomes a plateau. A tablet crushed and snorted becomes your wild imagination. 11-10-15

**************

Good-bye Friends. I send you love through my computer screen, because that's the best I can do right now.

Another Layer of Words & Images Polluting Your Spotless Screen

FRIENDS,

How are you? I hope you are well. I can honestly say I feel better than I have in a year & a half. For this I am unspeakably grateful…not just forced-gratitude-list-grateful, but really, really, really fucking off the charts thankful.

If this life were a gratitude contest, I would be winning.

And I say that with more humility than you can read into a simple blog post.

[it's okay, you can laugh here]

I know I said that when we were settled in the new house I would be talking about some more serious issues here in The Octopus Documentary. And I'm working toward that. There is a lot of serious shit to address in the world. But I'm not ready to be serious yet. 

So please enjoy this backlog of Streamed Consciousness until I'm ready:

**********

And so I leave behind another haunted house. Who knew I had another family of ghosts tucked between heart and lungs. Fat, ugly emotions lodged like unchoice meats in that critical cavity. Intangible residents, still getting mail from Victoria's Secret and huckster dental associates. No resistance from elastic ribcage. Breathing became a worn out pair of underpants. All egos are dead. Yours too. Columbus is coming to get us again, only his ships will fly in from above: The Nina, the Pinta and the Droning Maria. 10-12-15

************

Like settlers we crossed the highway in our covered wagon/SUV hybrid. Left behind the genteel plains of Southern Pine, the numerology of eleven-eleven. Just as we left the wild, wild ghetto three years prior. The only soldiers we left behind were figurines. We foraged for mattresses and food. Our cats fought over the empty space by our sides, then shrunk to their haunches in the screened wilderness. We met other settlers who claimed our happiness would be arriving shortly. We explored on foot, found some old bones and a fresh corpse hanging. The turquoise walls closed around me like a storm of calm cement. 10-20-15

Lower Life-forms play Jeopardy!

************

I used to deal in words/I used to heal in images/Now there is layer of words & images polluting the skies of the minds and oceans of eyes/Now I need to find a bigger band-aid, a quieter rave/Now i sing my swollen heart back down to size/Now I stay home every night trying to solve discordant equations with my tiny dried up peanut brain/Now I will consult the Emotional Thesaurus whenever the dictionary won't do/Now I will fail as a human because my senses got the memo 10-24-15 

***********

Feeling numb in sensational places. I know each zip code boasts a bottle of top-shelf loneliness shaped just like me. Our own special brand--shared just out of reach. On the label--a sand spur, a bloodstain, a centipede. A silver border keeps it all in check like an electric fence. Throat of glass, tightened not by fire but fear. Belly vaulted against emotional extremes--joy is the enemy. Who could fall from that plane once more? Only a robot who doesn't care, whose belly doesn't tighten right before the climax. Only an auto-pilot's empty cockpit. 10-26-15 

***********

Warm on the porch…where are you November? I watch the windfall like wind made of anvils…the humidity a punching bag I can't hit hard enough…the sun a loud outgoing neighbor coughing in my face then asking me to help move potted plants across the yard. Useless work…concentration camp monotony…stone piles trading spaces then going home again to broth and rat turds…where is my October…the month I masturbated my mind back to happiness…how can I be happy when the weather won't cooperate? 11-2-15

It's a Potty!

**********

So…."Molly" is just the new name for Xtasy? I thought Molly was a whole new drug tweaked by the underground chemists for a new generation of tweakers. But it's pretty much the same chemical compound as Xtasy--the rave drug of my humble X-generation. If you know me at all, you know I dream of the invention of a new drug that solves all the problems of Humanitor. It would have to be a psychoactive happiness-maker as well as a pain-remover. It would have all the good properties of Xtasy, alcohol, marijuana and cocaine without being addictive or hangover-inducing. And let's just say it would cure cancer too! Oh, what a world we would live in if someone--anyone!--could concoct, finance, market, package & distribute such a product! When there is a presidential candidate whose main mission is to do this--why, then I will be so so INTERESTED in politics. Until then I will dream of an Ayahuasca adventure in Peru & continue to regard politics with satirical ennui. GOOD DAY. 11-5-15

************

Whew, that was a long stream! I promise to keep up in the future so I don't burden you like that again.

Enjoy everything you can…

Love-Vin