There is no Difference

There is nothing going on here. I disappear. I am silence. There is so much action out there. It’s endless. Should I go bowling? What’s the difference? There is conversation and there is interaction. But it’s out there. It’s always out there. What does it mean to sit alone in pure nothing, without drugs, without alcohol, with nothing but the bewildered self? Is it the same as being out there? I’m here. I’m in here. Am I missing something? Or am I missing something when I’m out there? Am I trying to hide from myself when I converse and interact and consume? Yum yum yum, can I please have another one? Let me tell you what I think, or what I think I think, or what I want you to think I think. Let me demonstrate the me I think I want you to see. Who is the me who is trying to be? It’s empty, time passes, and there is only nothing alone, and that’s all there is. Nothing. Until we depart again and interact, return to the bouncing, spinning, magical illusion of particle collision. Here I am. Nothing becomes something in the eyes of the other. Two nothings create each other. But here I am, alone, interacting with a keyboard, pretending myself in solitude.

Update on Modernity

I scratched my new goggles cleaning them with seemingly safe goggle cleaning material. What’s wrong with a cotton shirt or even the soft glasses case that came built in with my new high-tech jacket? I mean seriously, old sunglasses or goggles didn’t just scratch up at the slightest touch. Modern technology sucks; except for jet-packs, heat seeking hand-grenades, and Ipods when they’re working. Some poor woman in aspen was just arrested for dealing Xanax, which is clearly because she did not have the prized letters, d and r, before her name. No, there is no shortage of new news in our wonderful world of dumb. Man still seems to be looking for love in all the wrong places. Two satellites collide in space in a burst of passionate debris, which will orbit, twinkling stars of trash, for eons. Or the nuclear submarines the other day, whose metal tips kissed dangerously in the depths, giving a whole new meaning to British-French relations. How exactly does having these giant underwater dildos carrying nuclear WMDs, many times more dangerous than your average STDs, patrolling the waters of the earth, make us any safer? Or how about the woman in Connecticut with the pet chimp? They slept and bathed together, she dressed him in cute little outfits, allowed him to sit at the dinner table, and he even used silver wear and brushed his teeth, which is more than can be said of many husbands out there. It actually sounds like a pretty healthy relationship. Straight people should be able to marry, gay people should be allowed to marry, and both straight and gay people should be allowed to marry a chimp. Let’s get the Aspen City Council on this right away. We can even put this item in front of that proposed main street median they wisely backed away from. At least the chimp didn’t abuse his own woman, just her jive talking friend. Who wouldn’t have just ripped her face off? I mean she was trying to get him to move and he was enjoying a good Xanax buzz (no connection to the alleged Aspen dealer as far as I know). Now that we’ve gotten the chimpanzees out of the way, let’s get onto Eric Holder, our new attorney general who isn’t satisfied with how the races are mixing on weekends. I was also convinced that our country was still pretty damned racist beneath our salad bowl facade, but then we elected a black president, which made me blink, maybe Holder didn’t notice the color of the man he’s working for, who was raised mostly by a white woman, who I imagine he spent many of his weekends with. Furthermore, there are many tan white people who are blacker than Eric Holder and his little Inspector Clouseau mustache. Not that we aren’t cowards, though, he may be right about that, but I think he needs to ease up on the race thing because it shouldn’t matter what color we are since we are all the human race. If we are all the human race then those of us who have taken an introductory anthropology course know that we are all African Americans around here, even the Native Americans. Our ancestors are all from Africa, where they started walking on two feet and got handy with tools, millions of years ago. Let’s not forget the discoveries at Olduvai Gorge, and one of them they named Lucy, not Shaniqua, contrary to popular opinion. OK, so now that we’ve established that we’re all Africans, it really shouldn’t matter what color Africans, black, white, green, yellow, or red, we are dining with on weekends, or whether we are eating watermelon, fried chicken, burritos, Pad Thai, or caviar with Fiji water. Which brings us back to our cowardice, our inferiority complexes, our rocket propelled grenades, and our giant nuclear dildos sliding quietly beneath the seas as we launch giant flaming phalluses into the sky.

Signs

Tired old coot with a silk trombone
Tired and alone
Just bought my last pack of cigarettes again
Threw it away
Was the best 6 dollars I ever spent
Pulled into the grocery store
Used to be open till midnight
Before that it was open 24/7
Must be the recession
11:45 pm it was closed
Sign said new hours
Seven to eleven
Damn
99 Luftballoons on the radio
Jumped back into the car
99 red balloons go by
Valentines day 2009
No cigarettes for me at city market
Wasn’t gonna smoke
There’s the gas station
Need more toothpaste
Pull in with car running
It’s open
Only toothpaste is travel size with mini toothbrush included
And a pack of American Spirits in the yellow box please
Unwrap them
Back in the car
Window’s frozen again as I’m pulling out a smoke for the drive home
Take a left onto main street and immediately run a red light
At which point I take note of the song that is playing on the radio
Sign Sign
Everywhere a sign
Blocking out the scenery
Breaking my mind
Do this don’t do that
Can’t you read the sign!?
Window won’t roll down
Pack of cigarettes in my hand

Threw them in the trash when I got home
Can’t barely walk tonight
Cause I worked all day
When I say I worked all day, I mean I worked all day
8 AM till 11:40 PM
That’s a 16 and a half hour day
Longest damn day I ever worked
And my feet hurt
I was born with the silver spoons
But I spent a good part of today just cleaning them
Hand wash em up real nice
Then polish them with the gloves on
Somebody else’s Silver
Somebody else’s stuff
Got to be that fly on the wall
Serving wine and listening
Our China’s all disappearing
Bunch of idiots in the family done lost it all
I’m just another one
Sign Sign everywhere a sign
Bunch a fucking drunks out stupid all the time
These billionaire Jews don’t drink like us
They have a damn good inventory of all their expensive shit
They have responsible help
Hold them accountable
I’m an undercover butler
Shining somebody else’s silver
I’ve watched the waves roll in
Watched the water pull back
Sucking off the shine and leaving sand
Drying in the sun

The Circles

In my right hand
This is freedom
Over here
In my left
This is addiction
Freedom is not always fun
But addiction sure can be
We don’t keep hitting the button
Unless the pleasure membrane
Gets its kick
Feeding the ego bubbles
Until the I behind the I
Completely disappears
Writhing in the mire
Of the delusion of separation
As we descend
And another circle
Runs its course
To here
Underground
At the roots of freedom

A little Ford Taurus creeps down the road
With a mystery driver
Satellites collide in orbit over Siberia
The middle of February and cold
Washing dishes and polishing silver in a mansion
Owned by bottled water magnates
Simple life in the butlers pantry next to a large kitchen
With laughing chefs
Picking up coffee beans
Wasting votive candles
Criticizing china
Nuevo richer versus nuevo poorer
Laughing at the absurdity of existence
Drinking water shipped from a distant island
The Jamaican dog trapped alone in an empty room
Good night