Don’t Patronize Me

Driftin
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

I don’t look like an idiot, do I? No, no I don’t. So don’t treat me like one. Don’t think that I’m so taken with your daydream lie fantasies as to actually believe them. In fact, they kind of insult me. So stop with the storytelling. Please. Don’t say it if you don’t mean it. It's such a basic SOP – but maybe while it was nodding to the universal obvious, you were looking the other way. And in that case, here’s a bucket of ice cube alarm clock face slap. Maybe now it’ll it sink in.

If this is supposed to be a lesson in enjoying the moment, then let it be just that. No need to bring family members or years not yet past into the mix. So take a deep breath and repeat to yourself: “Don’t be an asshole.”

Hydrating

Riding High
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

This is not the northwest aux Etats-Unis. Nor is it the fabled isle of the snaggle toothed. So what gives? The rain is falling faster than a meth addict on rollerskates and the ten day forecast is one big Zoloft-less frown. It looks like a waterlogged raindrop.

I guess this calls for a creative solution; a new color palette pleading ignorance or blindness or some rare skin disease causing a perma-rift between itself and all things tangible. Yes, that sounds like just what the under-DEA-surveillance doctor ordered. Amen. And with refills.

I call it my NYCing Maine plan. And yeah, I may call it that, but you can bet your sweet little ass it's got a call list all it's own. Baby's list of demands is impossibly long not like legs but like the wish list of consumption's obese guinea pig just back from Milano. (It makes you think thrice before coddling.) So heed these words of mighty caution, my mighty friend: I stopped after round two and now I find myself assembling a toolbox of internet radio programs and stations and Canal Street trinkets and subway photographs just to get to the tail end of this wasteland of lighthouse moose madness.

But by all measures, things could be worse. Much worse. And they would be worse if not for this Japanese newsprint. It stares at me through a thin coat of white acrylic and smiles. And as I prepare to drool, it reminds me to save some for the whales because they get thirsty too.

Looking

holes
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

Waiting through the wait,
Translating
breath pattern while the
ambulance is called
and the tea leaves
oxidize.
Calling through a series of pauses
and intakes while Morse
rolls his eyes
Dot shashing and looking
at neck vein skin
thin blood coursing
teeming and
the words tucked away
in the storage bin
between the hearing aids and
the old mirror you've had
since before time had a name,
boiling the water
looking intent in the eyes
then calling its bluff.

Riding with Strangers

Free Zone
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

I did a lot of elevator riding last weekend. One night I was gracious enough to share my vertically bound chamber with Al Franken, his male companion, and a heavily medicated grandmother. Me, Franken + one, then the old lady. That was the boarding order, each at a different floor. And no, I'm not trying to kill you with details; it's called setting the scene. So I'm in the elevator iPodding, grooving to something or other, when Franken plus one get on. I side glare. And eavesdrop. That's the beauty of headphones. They're manmade miracles, really. Miracle shape-shifter truth serum gems. And they don't necessarily need to project noise or be hooked up to an audio device or even be real headphones. They just have to look like headphones and the mere act of wearing things that resemble headphones is akin to sprinkling oneself with invisible powder. With the help of these avec cable ear covers, you come pretty damn close to thinking you could look up girls' skirts without notice. But trying is probably a horrible idea unless you like the thought of being labeled a sexual predator and having your town plastered with poorly designed photocopied flyers bearing your likeness and announcing the danger you pose to people's private areas.

So I am standing in the elevator with Al Franken, his companion, and my ear covers. Then the old lady joins us. Words are exchanged, side looks are given. The conversation content is irrelevant; what does matter, though, is that I love the pause button and I also love laughing at my own jokes. The pause button love affair needs no explanation. (I mean, how much more overt can one get?) The laughing at my own jokes thing - well, I guess I could offer up a few syllables. Basically, it's like this: I'm fucking hilarious. I'm so funny it hurts. It hurts me, it hurts you, and it hurts [to-the-point-of-killing] pain. So of course I laugh at my own jokes. I'd be stupid not to! And why shouldn't I? When did self-entertainment become a crime? Why should I be deprived of enjoying my frontal lobe's hope-you-brought-a-change-of-pants concoctions while the rest of the world gets to bask in my comedic glow? I can't think of a good reason or even a mediocre one. So I'll continue laughing at my own jokes. And oftentimes, I'll be the only one laughing. End of story; or is it?

No, it's not the end. But one is forthcoming so you can hold your horses and unbunch your panties. Okay. So I'm in the elevator with Al Franken plus two and am feeling pretty damn generous, so as we approach my floor, I decide to give my fellow riders the gift of my (fabulous) sense of humor. As the elevator door thinks about opening, I lay one down. And it was a good one. Directed at Mr. Franken. The joke combined Franken's radio show and his love of the Grateful Dead with radio production jargon. And on top of that, the joke managed to be funny. Seriously funny. Trouble was, funny man Franken didn't think so. Instead of laughing, he chose to go down the confusion-indignation-pity with a hint of disgust road. (He was obviously - and understandably - threatened. I am, after all, fucking hilarious.) And despite his wet blanket lackluster response, I'm happy to report that my own laughter more than compensated for Franken's poor sense of humor. I laughed my ass off and as the elevator door closed - concealing the three horrified passengers - I continued to laugh. I laughed all the way to my room and there, I laughed some more.

Fruit Body

Genius Fertilizer
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

Looking at her like a
fruit body that's
only viable for two days
Taking photographs with
mind camera
Its shutter speed
slow and
Sculpting with air hands
Preserving an idea
an hour
a moment
In the life of an intrigue
But maybe the
fruit body
wants to play reverse
and harvest the harvester
till the soil with photographs stained
Green,
green but red like sun blood
Complementary pair on the color wheel
Facing silent.

Flying

Being
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

say what you will about my trust fund
just make sure i'm out of earshot
because man, i've got nothing and
neither does the flight attendant
fawning over that first class asshole.
the only difference between us
is that one of us knows
her pockets are empty.
one knows
while the other is waiting for an
imaginary cardboard cutout to leap
off the page
mount a white horse, its hair just brushed
and save her.

i've got nothing in my pockets, sweetheart,
but that means i've got no delusions either.
no plastic storybook casting me as princess
royalty waiting for something - waiting for anything
to happen,
waiting and nestled in a cat's cradle
while life runs its course.
and while i carry a light load with pockets empty,
what i do have is words
but words, words
don't weigh a thing
like bags of airs no
need for concierge or baggage claim.
i've got so many words i could spare a few
and you, sweetheart, look short on supply.
so here, let me toss you
a sample pack.

inside you'll find a trial
size of this great product
called don't be a victim.
there's also a tube
of being an active agent in your own chronology.
try it, you'll love it.
might take some getting used to
but trust me,
once you get the hang of it
you'll wonder
how you ever did without.
try it.
it's like riding a bike
without emergency rooms or timid stitches.

no first class asshole is going to save you, but
don't get me wrong
it's not that i want to soil
your glitter strewn fantasy dreamscape,
it's that i call like i see it
and what i see is a woman
past her prime clinging
desperately to a consumer culture
castle in the sky pipe dream
that will never come to pass.
so dig this:
responsibility is the new co-dependence.
that means you can
stop waiting for someone to save you
and get busy saving yourself.
the clock's a'tickin.

Unearthing

Tangent
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

Remembering things after the fact can be horrific, to say the least. But sometimes recall can be fantastically hilarious and this latter case is almost ubiquitously preferred in the firsthand with the standard masochist exemption. But I'm not a masochist - at least not in the traditional sense - so I was pleased when my inadvertent recollection took the form of all things sugar dust.

At dinner last night, I was conversing with my dead grandfather. Sam. He was telling me about his retirement home in Costa Rica. West coast, I asked with my mouth and with a set of slightly raised knowing-too-much-for-their-own-good eyebrows. Oh yes, he said aloud. The "of course" was implied and I appreciated that. So did my eyebrows for they knew grandpa had lost his taste for subtly. Three tours in 'Nam will do that to a man.

And I didn't mind sitting through Grandpa's horrible jokes but pretending unfunny is its opposite is where I draw the line. And draw it I did each time grandpa got confused about what funny sounds like.

My dead grandfather gave me a ride back to my hotel on his Hog. It again affirmed my love for Harley passengership. Owning or driving a bike doesn't particularly interest me, but passengership is a frivolity after my own heart. Especially when randomness and dead relatives are involved. And especially when the driver is my dead grandfather and he insists that his not yet dead granddaughter wears a helmet and a leather coat. Safety first is so something my dream grandfather would say.

In a very real sense, I think I finally got to know my dead grandpa Sam. Over bad jokes, smuggling stories, a bloody steak, and wine. I finally got to know the man behind the slanderous mythology - folklore propagated by a woman claiming to be my mother. And as I got to know my dead grandfather, I also got to know the joys inherent to myth debunking. I dare say it's more fun than riding ten Harleys while wearing ten helmets.

And much to my surprise, Grandpa, I've come to understand that I've known you all along. Grandpa, you are Everyman's Everyman. You are every illustrator's dream. Even posthumously. You are a caricature of every sexist stereotype I can think of and that's why I love you. That, and because you do it all without a hint of pretense. Grandpa, you're more natural than Mr. Natural. Crumb would have been lucky to meet you.

SOS from the Department of Lost and Found

quicksand
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

I hear St. Anthony's good at these sorts of things so maybe he can help. I've lost something. It is not the sort of loss associated with things like souls or innocence or time. No, no, this is something that can be recovered because it belongs in the non-theoretical camp of tangibility.

What I lost is my life on paper. My life on paper. It is gone; lost some afternoons ago. Lost. It's my 2005 date book. Letter page halves bound in unassuming black leather; the year 2005 is debossed on the front cover announcing its Gregorian domain with innocuous tact that pissing dogs can't begin to imagine. Its pages are trimmed in gold but I didn't mind because this date book was one of life's few artifacts that did not equate gold with Romanesque excess. And now it is lost.

My date book. Time and time again, I made the conscious decision to leave the identification page blank for fear that a lost date book would coincide with lost personal information - information that, in the wrong hands, would somehow have the capacity to do irreparable harm. Or so I presumed. I now find myself rethinking the prudence of that decision.

My date book is lost. If you find it please return it. You'll find my address on the postcard tucked between the back cover and the last gold-trimmed page. Please don't read my four page long to do list. It's the one tucked between the book's front cover and its first gold-trimmed page. Please don't read my new years resolutions. Or my article ideas. Or the various pieces of reflection written all over those gold-trimmed pages. St. Anthony and I thank you.

And now I ask you this: if Catholicism has a saint helps to recover things lost, does it also have a saint who is to help recover things forgotten? A simple google search would answer this, I know. But I'm in the mood for inefficiency.

The Really Sad Thing Is

I have a paper to write. And an exam to study for. All before seven this evening. But what am I doing instead? bJournaling.

Have I completely lost it?

Insomnia Chronicles Continued

In the Pink
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

This past week the fatigue reached new heights. Or lows. So starved was my body for sleep that I was reduced to the sorry state of a helpless, over-tired toddler who long ago passed through the gates of fatigue. After hanging out for a while, taking a few tokes off of whatever it is toddlers take tokes off of in Fatigue Land, the toddler drifted somewhere other, drifted into the universe of free reigning and illogical temper tantrums and frustration and incoherence. Somewhere several planets away from salvation. You cannot reason with a toddler who's crossed this border. I don't care how many boarder guards or xenophobic citizen vigilante groups you've got on patrol. Once over the border, no noun - or any part of speech, for that matter - can bring a toddler back into empiricism's domain. Try all you want, but success will not be had because Toddler is tired of being pushed around by you and you and you. Now, you're on toddler time, living by toddler rules. One of those rules demands copious use and abuse of the third person. Another rule says something about drinking lots of coffee and resisting delusions that try to sell you on the merits of attacking slow moving senior citizens driving shopping carts through your neighborhood grocery store at 7 in the morning. These assholes couldn't smoothly operate a shopping cart if a bag full of senior citizen discounts and free samples awaited them. Imagine the number they'd do on a parking lot?

Good Thing I Don't Believe in Hell

Illicit Booty
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

For if I did, I'd surely have a front row seat on the bus ride down. Last Thursday confirmed my reservation. It was part one of my three-part end of semester joyride. This was the part where a room full of geniuses prone to mispronouncing cognizant and blurting out racial slurs had co-opted a literature class and turned it into a carousel ride of cultural embarrassment and intellectual degradation. On the last day of this spectacle, we were given the option of participating in a poetry reading. The stakes were high: gold stars and lollipops and check plus-pluses dangled like soggy carrots.

One of the geniuses prefaced her original one-of-a-kind-and-thank-fucking god-for-that composition by announcing "I wrote this for my grandfather's funeral. This is only the second time I've read it." It was like she'd strung her bow with Siberian horse hair and then decided to play pizzicato on my heart strings. Someone get me a valium. Or better yet, some depacote, xanax, and a shotgun. And this was just the beginning. She proceeded to incorporate words like "nana" and "missing you" into the recitation. She even mentioned her family pets by name. Aaawwww, how sweet. So sweet, in fact, it made me throw up the dinner I'd not yet had.

And then came the best part. First, though, let me mention that this poem was written in the AABB rhyming schemata. Cat, fat, fine, line. No joke. Lucky grandpa. Death didn't spare us, though. No, no, we were privy to an AV-presentation - sans digital preproduction efforts. It was a display nothing short of the brilliance inherent to choppy recitation, dramatic intakes of air, tear-stained cheeks, and the most innovative use of words this side of literacy.

The best slash worst part came when the poet laureate rhymed "sad" with "glad." It was then I thought, "Too bad life and death don't rhyme." And it was then I motionlessly performed a wiping of forehead maneuver signifying relief that things like heaven and hell mean as much to me as unicorns and the tooth fairy. But in case I'm wrong, want to sit next to me on the bus ride down?

Delirium Wears Socks, Not Shoes

Eating Moss
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

This week has seen little in the way of sleep. And meteorologists insist the condition is here to stay. At least through next Tuesday. To bolster their case, these meteorologists have gone so far as to incorporate little snippets of moving satellite imagery propaganda into their forecasts. Supposedly, they're charting Fatigue's course hour by hour. Locals within a 5 mile radius are being advised to evaluate. Immediately. So far, I've caught a few Nervous Nellies sneaking by streetlamp and I say to hell with them.

To hell with their tragically self-involved attempts at stealth. You might as well go buy yourself a plastic nose-eyeglasses-mustache combo and a pair of white high top Reeboks. Seriously. And you better keep those Reeboks as clean as they day you bought them. Sneaking in white sneakers is one thing, but sneaking in dirty formerly white sneakers? You'd do better sneaking with a cowbell necklace.

And how do you think it would make those sweet little children in Vietnam and the Philippines feel knowing that the bright white high tops they slaved over - slaved over just for you! - had been turned into a pair of muddy scratch foot afterthoughts in less than a week? You think on that, neighborhood Nervous Nellies. Considering a walk in the woods or a stroll through a shopping cart strewn parking lot? How about first considering those sweet little children and their sweet little hands? Think about how hard they've worked just so you could have respectable footwear, mister. Maybe now you'll know who to thank the next time your doctor tells you you don't have scoliosis.

And if you remember nothing else, remember that you now go by the name George Edward Morse IV. Pronounced the fourth because people don't speak in roman numerals. So while you sneak away fearing satellite images and highfalutin weatherman talk, do keep in mind that the storm will only get worse between now and next Tuesday. As I stated earlier, this week has seen little in the way of sleep. My digital counter has not yet broken into double digits for Christ's sake. And when I say for Christ's sake, I mean for Christ's sake. Not for Mary's or for the holy spirit's or for a box of communion wafers.

There is so much to tell, but now is simply not the time. Soon. But definitely not now.