Polyphasic Sleep Experiment, Days 2-3 (4)?

Ah yes, the delirium is finally starting to set in. I'm being invaded by an army of ants; this part is true. But for an already paranoid person, sleep deprivation is probably not the best alloy for fixing up chinks in the ol' armor.

I awoke from another too lucid dream (already forgot what about but it seemed to last all night despite my being asleep for only half an hour), went to get some ginger ale from the kitchen, and was relieved from that annoying post-nap stupor by an orgy of those crawling fucks openly reveling in what can only be described as Dionysian ecstasy all over my kitchen counter. This is probably something I should've seen coming - I'll explain why - and I remember kicking myself briefly before grabbing sopping paper towels and wiping sheets of tiny swarms into the trash. This is what god must feel like when he's concocting an earthquake or a massive tidal wave.

Like I said, this is something I should've seen coming. I did put the bait trap right there and the box did say that it contained something that apparently ants find very appealing and irresistible. Essentially I put an ant crackhouse on the kitchen counter. And that stuff really made them go.* These normally business-like creatures were exhibiting signs of unpredictability and drunkenly irrational behavior. And the most telling thing about all this was the fact that there was food - presumably the thing that these animals are after most - in cabinets and drawers right next to where the buggers were celebrating but the crack-in-a-trap was just too tempting, too available to pass up.

There's an obvious human parallel here but I'm too respectful of my readers (read: lazy) to actually go into it. My eyes are shutting involuntarily so I'll have to go into the paranoia-driven details of my sleep-deprived mind at a future time.


*footnote: Ants are nature's hardest workers. They're organized, efficient, and have this amazing ability to use their collective power to carry out incredibly complex projects by sacrificing the will of the individual. For whatever reason I have this habit of personifying animals and animal species and ants automatically flash impressions of the Chinese or Japanese.

** An interesting article on the subject printed a few days after I wrote this: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/science/13traff.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Polyphasic Sleep Experiment, Day 1

I'm trying something new. It'll probably end in some kind of brutal violence against me due to my own brain deadness or will just flicker away because I couldn't hack it. Either way, I'll see how long I can maintain a sleep schedule consisting entirely of 30 minute naps every four hours or so. I'm one day into this and you can probably tell by the more than usual sloppiness and lack of rhythm that it's making a minor dent in my cognitive skills already. I hear day 10 is the horizon. Others have hit it by the fourth day. I'm really hoping my hump is sooner than later because if the side-effects increase exponentially I'll be certifiably retarded or Tom Cruise loony in a few days.

The one thing that immediately presents itself upon starting this little adventure is what do do with the extra five or so hours that you have each day. Nights, I presume, will be the hardest. Besides watching tv there's not much to occupy yourself with that doesn't involve dozing off or having the cops called on you. Tonight I'll try to arrange for one of the girls come over to keep me awake. This is obviously going to take a lot of night-to-night maneuvering. But I didn't say it wasn't fun.

One more little tidbit. Today I was feeling really groggy and it was hot in my apartment and I felt I'd seriously lose it before my next nap. So I threw on some clothes and walked down to the local college to talk to the girls over there. It was mostly dead and the few that were around seemed intent on getting to the destinations without much delay. They were responsive though, and cute and giggly but completely driven by the clock-gods. I still haven't quite figured out how to make a woman stop on the street. It's a lot easier when they're stationary. This little exercise gave me a little energy and brightened my mood a bit. It was all good fun the way it should be. None of that frigidness you'd get from the same girl if you transplant her from the street to the club. But that's a whole 'nother game.

Stay tuned.

lol

I feel like I'm turning down the path of a serial killer, without the social awkwardness. Maybe one day I'll write a book about it and have a big laugh about the whole affair; a big laugh all the way to the bank. Or I'll just massacre a large group of innocent civilians at a diner one morning and the only one laughing about it will be the Cosmic Joker, the Creator of us all.

After a pie-eyed period of experiencing a new place, a new set of circumstances, the ennui sets in. The hope and optimism and plain wonder of your newly-acquired toy starts to become stale. I hate to sound like I'm whining, even when I am. Once you've been around for a while, when you're no longer a teenager or a child, you expect yourself to adjust to the natural pendulum swing of life; at least see it coming. But I'm a Romantic in that regard. I want to think that without managing expectations, by plodding through the thick latex of one's own imagination, one can actually embrace the pendulum like a wrecking ball and go careening to the other side like Slim Pickens.

But my cynic won't let me follow through. This is the problem with Dualism. It's the reason nearly every epic trying to solve the riddle of man's ultimate reality has had at it's epicenter the inner struggle between two equally powerful and conflicting forces vying for each atom of their host. Usually it's simple: Good vs. Evil; Bad vs. Good. It's right there in the Bible, it's easy for the layman to swallow. But obviously it's not as simple as that, even when it's dumbed down for mass consumption. It's why Ismael had his Queequeg, why Ahab had his Whale.

Sadly, for most of us, it's all about decisions.

Ultimately, the lucky ones find themselves. One side triumphs and the hero breaks on through to the other side. Others succumb to the voice that's not their own. The worst-off of the bunch spend their entire lives vacillating in a mad tug-of-war of schizophrenia, derangement and hysterical dismay.

Phallic Trickster

Sorry for the extended absence. Things have been a bit manic lately and I think a leave is better than faking your way through it. Ask Pearl Jam.

I miss the punk scene from high school. It's weird writing about this, considering how the punk elitists foam at the mouth when they smell an outsider. But fuck 'em. They're bigger posers than the ones they try to protect against.

I don't know how punk it is, the middle-class suburbs of New Jersey, but it felt alright. If I had to conceptualize it from nothing; to create a scene just from the feeling I wouldn't change a thing. I wasn't punk. I was in the smart classes. I got good grades. My parents were still together (I don't know which category that should fall under). But it was real. And that transcends everything, I think. That's why so many of us weren't "punk." And maybe we were the only ones who really got it.

You try to go back now and understand what the hell you were so in love with then. But it doesn't click because once the feeling's gone, everything else goes with it.

Listen to Gogol Bordello, you'll understand. It's completely thoughtless and absolutely brilliant. Just like the real thing, it melts your left brain and makes you feel ashamed to venture beyond the Id. And that's what I remember now, trying to remember how I tried to rationalize this to my parents. Trying to explain the connection. And it's so fucking sad to think that me trying to remember that passion is like listening to myself at 16 and attempting to understand the logic of the rawest fucking thing you ever felt.

There's no context. No backup plan. Just this profound belief in yourself and the sheen you naturally exude. There was only beauty because flaws were just part of the perfection. And I miss it. I really do.

Rethinking the Reverend

Can the acceptance of Christianity (the religion of the enslavers) by slaves in America be considered a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome?

Crowded and Cold

Sometimes it's too black to drink. Like when the sifting becomes too heavy or the waves lap over pictures of those who become themselves in the receding water. Who said it: That when you start to think you stop writing? Pushkin said that; or Tolstoy. No, Gramps said that in a moment of lucidity. But maybe he was just plagiarizing. I plagiarize too, you know.

It's those kids. Those two beautiful kids. I could have wept right there. But it's my cynicism - it's why I don't weep; I should. And those kids, brother and sister. They're caught in this Brazil'ian system, knowing the waiting, the patience it takes to be digested. They've seen it: Fights, foster care, bringing little cousin milk because his mama doesn't keep any in the house. And they'll make it somewhere, maybe with each other. Maybe not. But what if they were from somewhere else? Somewhere where you're smart and you're beautiful but you're not damaged.

When god is out of the picture, everything is permissible.

Sometimes it's too cold to think. And sometimes it's too hard to wait.

And sometimes, Selfish is the only way to be.

Sometimes you write to make yourself feel. And sometimes you write because you feel. But mostly, comfort is the hardest fitted skin.

Schadenfreude, Part III

Of all the posts on the topic this one is probably the hardest to write. And that likely explains why I've been extrapolating (procrastinating) all the different aspects of Amadeus and not essentially getting to the point that I set out to make. This one requires some of the 'digging' I've been talking about (see? I'm still doing it) to hone in on why these seemingly insignificant parts are so poignant.

At first we were consciously moved by the scene of the young Salieri signing away his feral ghost (it's funny how classically, pacts with God require one to give up everything that makes life actually worth the trouble [selling your body] and pacts with the Devil require that one give up everything that connects you with the next world [selling your soul]. I'm not sure, but a progressive, modern individual might consider God to be the more shrewd/conniving merchant in this scenario [a character trait typically assigned to the Devil]) to reach immortality through music. Next, we figured out that in actuality our subconscious was moved by the scene with flamboyant Mozart and voyeuristic Salieri (and the whole giant, floating metaphor for the movie itself - blah, blah, blah). Anyway. So why the anticipation for these scenes in particular?

It's been written and thought about ad nauseum but really, what can we learn from the juxtaposition of these men's situations besides complete, arm-dropping despair? Not to be gloomy (though invariably that's the only way to reasonably talk about this), but when taken to its logical boundary this train of thought stops (I'm so sorry. I swear I'll never drop something like that ever again) at futility and meaninglessness. It's really hard to grasp this, I mean really digest it, unless it's personalized. And there's nothing easier than "understanding" someone else's misery when you don't have to live through it. It's probably why most people think sympathy and empathy are interchangeable. I had a futile moment like that not too long ago. It was at a club (of course) and it involved a girl (of course) and a distant acquaintance who is much taller/handsomer/smoother than I am. It wasn't tragedy, I mean it was for that night, but it left a really ugly taste. It was just a small inroad to the pandemic powerlessness that pervades (ok really, I'm going to stop now) us with the ultimate Why? It's the Southern blacks who had to watch their own get lynched for whistling at a white woman and then see the perpetrators walk. It's the Soviet Jews who were categorically denied seats in the University despite being smarter and more capable than their gentile peers.

I think Salieri - who prostrated himself before the Universe and then was forced to watch another devour everything he ever wanted, and more, without desire or effort - was Camus' 'absurd man;' the Sysiphus who hauls his rock ad infintium without hope or end in sight. What meaning can we derive from the meaningless, our constant chore in a world that recognizes neither need nor effort, only the luck of the draw.? Camus says "the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart."

I can't agree with Camus' conclusion that the only way to live is to embrace the hopelessness, to acknowledge it and make it fully conscious; that truth will conquer it. But maybe I'm not old (cynical) enough for that yet. Nor am I convinced of the fate of the absurd man in Dostoyevsky: The recognition of futility but with a glimmer of hope embodied in faith and God (this probably becomes more relevant in reference to the aside about selling one's soul/body. Who knows, maybe the makers of Amadeus saw Salieri's celibacy [I'm not doing this on purpose] as that glimmer of hope, the reward at the end of the ride).

What I do know is that between the absurdity of this world and the uncertainty of the next is the thin, sticky realm of Art; a higher threshold that makes irrelevant concepts of meaningless and also hope. Art is beauty. Beauty is truth. From that it must follow that art is truth. So it seems that Camus, in a way, was right. "One must imagine Sysiphus happy."

Schadenfreude, Part II

So last time I started talking about why I'm such a homo for that scene in Amadeus where Salieri makes his pact with God and is on his way to becoming one of the most famous composers in Austria. When you think of that scene on its own you say, 'So what? Big deal.' And you're right. But what makes it so striking is the context. You see this young kid swearing off everything - women, booze, anything that can bring you pleasure in this life - just to play music. And almost immediately after that we see a teenaged Mozart, effeminate, flouncing around with a train of beautiful squealing young girls, drinking champagne and playing piano upside down (imagine a Victorian Dennis Quaid [a la Jerry Lee Lewis], with powder and matching wig); meanwhile the not as handsome/talented and shy/withdrawn Salieri looks on at the whole show like a hateful specter.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's this scene that really gets me and not the one I espoused on earlier. Or to make an analogy (in SAT form), maybe this scene (Mozart and entourage) is to Salieri is what the earlier scene (Salieri's pact) is to Mozart. In other words, to go back to the filmmakers' clever device I talked about in the beginning of part I, while the "pact" scene is the one that makes you consciously recognize it (i.e. - naming the film Amadeus and ostensibly making it seem like the movie is about him), what really has the effect on you is the flamboyant Mozart scene (i.e. - Salieri being the quiet driving force of the movie and having the strongest impact subconsciously where Mozart is the outward/conscious lead). [Nota bene - Though my two analogies really have nothing to do w/each other per se, they really just encourage a deeper look into what we think motivates us on the conscious level versus what is actually moving us from a subconscious standpoint. Most times you really have to do some serious digging to find out why you do the stupid shit you do and where the lunacy that triggered the actions came from.]

This is turning out to be longer than I thought. Believe me when I say that when I started this thread I had no idea I'd be writing about the subconscious effect of an effeminate Mozart prancing around drinking champagne. But it is important and in the next post (lord-willing, the last in this series) hopefully you'll understand why it is important and why the scary German name for this topic. That's all for now. Try to get a grip on those nightmares.

Ctrl + Alt + Del

Can you ask Windows Task Manager to use it on itself when it's not responding? Isn't that like forcing it to suicide bomb itself?

Schadenfreude, Part I

Saw Amadeus again. Always loved the concept. How ostensibly the whole movie is driven by Salieri, who's the narrator/main character, how it's really his movie but it's the prodigy, Mozart, who ends up appropriating the movie for himself. They even named the damn thing after him. And it took me a while to even realize this blatant device by the filmmakers; that Salieri was essentially playing second-fiddle (no pun) in his own film and, on a grander scale, his life. But then again, I always surprise myself at how increeeeeedibly slow I can be sometimes.

There's one scene though that every time I watch the movie really gets me. You know the one scene in certain movies that completely floors you the first time you see it? And then every subsequent movie is just anticipation for that single scene? (When I was younger most of these scenes involved female nudity in one form or another. For those who remember, I would like to introduce Exhibit A, Total Recall. The scene in question of course involved the beautiful alien lady w/the 3 breasts. That scene perfectly embodies the "anticipatory moment," as I call it). In Amadeus that scene for me is where Salieri makes his pact w/God. The whole thing is comically absurd to a degree and probably as close to campy as the movie gets but for me it sums up the emotional character of the film. And despite the fact that it is slightly campy, the scene finds a way to be incredibly poignant and - if you look at it in the context of the entire film - devastatingly sad.

What happens in the scene is that the young Salieri, a boy of about ten it seems, wants more than anything to be an accomplished musician. But his father isn't having any of it. So Salieri stands there, looking to the sky, and prays to God to grant him his only wish. He swears that he's going to be celibate and sober and every other thing that Christians believed God wanted them to be. Next thing we see is Salieri's father, who's been standing in the background the entire time, dropping dead. Literally. Just like in a bad SNL sketch (which is most of them nowadays).

Why is it always these idiotic things that come through the hardest? I'll try to explain my best but I feel a long session coming on so I'm gonna reserve that for part II. So as long as I don't keel over myself, I'll see y'all (and by y'all I mean, me, the only person who reads this silly thing) in a few.

Clinton Portis

You ever notice how he looks like an evil, bizarro-Carlton from The Fresh Prince? No? Not a sports fan, huh.

Bigamy

Shouldn't the plural of 'spouse' be 'spice?' Wouldn't that be more appropriate in so many ways?

Entropy

Silence is crushing. Not the silence itself but the space that the silence fills, that used to be occupied by something else. My dad calls it entropy, the inevitable balance of energy within a system; one thing taking the place of another but always the space stays the same. But the Hindus had this down long before Rudolf Clausius blew away the scientific universe with his discovery. They called it 'karma.' It's funny how simplicity works sometimes.

As I sit here writing the silence disappears too, for the moment. Things come in, take the place of something else; simple. The noise in the silence is what's frightening. Before, just vacuous fluff. It reminds me of the Pink Panther insulation commercials I see on the local cable channels. Those giant rolls of pink cotton-candy that save you hundreds of dollars in energy costs. And it's always nice to know you can go down to the corner and buy yourself a 40 of that pink fluff, to insulate you for the night. But when it's gone, there's nothing to insulate you from the cold you wanted to keep out in the first place; the wind howls a lot closer. Even whispers in an empty hallway echo louder than it feels they should.

Silence is ugly. It's worse than nothing. Fluff is nothing, that's purgatory, that I can deal with. But when so much is displaced at one time and you have to replace it all, there's just not enough beauty in this world. Barry Hannah said it's all about not averting your eyes - art is staring to the point of rudeness. But when the whole thing is so ugly, when you stare long enough to realize this, it's no wonder the world loves a freak-show. It's us but it's not us. We can forgo the silence and still consume ourselves with that pink, cotton-candy mush.

In Genesis, Abraham was promised that the twin cities (one being anal intercourse's namesake) would be spared if ten righteous men could be found in them. But is that enough? If we apply this allegory to ourselves, is there enough beauty in ourselves to sustain such a challenge? Or is it all just fluff? And how much of that wonderful ambrosia is enough to drown out Iago's repulsive hissing in his giant, silent ballroom? Ask Hemingway, or Hunter Thompson. What would they say?

Say Hello

So I stopped drinking recently. You might have noticed from the strange new coherency this blog has taken on. And it's not because I got sick one night and swore that I'd never drink again; and then didn't, for like a week. This is different. I don't feel as though I'll never drink again, but I won't do it anytime soon. I have my reasons. And for the first time in my life, a decision like this has nothing to do with a woman. I mean, yeah it does in a certain sense - pretty much everything I do is in one way or another associated with some woman - but this is a decision I've come to separate and apart from that.

The first few days were tough; not extremely so but a little bit uncomfortable. Though the long-run should prove the hardest. Between the daily degradations, the constant stupidity you have to encounter from other people, the sudden pangs that need an urgent fix, a quick dulling; not to mention the social discomfit of bars and clubs. I guess I'll need another outlet and we'll see what form that takes.

I remember those first few days, with that squirming feeling and the sweating. I just remember these lines repeating themselves in my head over and over to the point of exhaustion:

don't be safe, most of all don't be safe,
don't be self-conscious...

It's a nice little thing to chatter to yourself when your leg is shaking to the point where it feels like it just might fly off on its own. But the point is to get over yourself and all the bullshit around you. "Leave it all out there" as they say. At the end of the day it's yourself you take to bed and if you're lucky, maybe someone else too. But really, you have to ask yourself who you want to be in bed with; yourself, or that person they want you to be, or think you are.

So sit still for a moment. Turn off the chatterbox. Turn off the other voices that are telling you anything. And just listen. Now say hello.

And All of That Jivin' Around

I noticed, recently, a recurring theme with some of the women in my life. I'm not sure if I can name it properly, let along adequately describe it; to the point where I'm not even certain it exists at all. But this quality, this thing that ties them together was always so present - like the way you can tell someone's touch on your shoulder without ever seeing them - that I have to contribute my only realizing it now to an amazing obliviousness on my part.

This thing, this je ne se qua is why I'm attracted to these women more than anything their sex or their bodies have to offer. It's the reason one of these women has been haunting my thoughts even though it's been months since we last spoke (and not because of how things ended. I've had easier times forgetting more elusive women). But it's just dawned on me that the same trait is present in another, not so much a friend but a strong acquaintance let's call her. What I feel for this woman is only vaguely sexual; there are many women who I find physically more attractive. And, given a chance, there are many more women I would rather sleep with. Not to say though that she's not attractive - she is a beautiful woman - but rather it's a different kind of fantasy that she haunts.

This woman that staggers me, that makes me linger for hours on each word, each syllable, would sacrifice herself, her own happiness just to let you know that she doesn't need you. She makes it evident in her every action, in every word she says that despite the fact that she knows you can bring her real joy, she can forget you (or rather, discard you) at the slightest sign of her dependence on you.

and she runs through her days, with a smile on her face
and she runs, and she waits...

And it seems to me that it's her patience that most astounds me. Like she will wait forever, if she has to. And if you call, she will come to you and you'll both be happy. But if you don't, she'll keep running, running forever, smiling all the way.

Genius

To be great is to be misunderstood. Sometimes, though, it just means you're crazy.

Untitled

When I write a book it's going to be called, "B+: The Story of My Life"

Loneliness

When I fall in love, it will be forever
Or I'll never...

be sober again.

When it falls

Drinking Johnnie Black. The tiny remote from my Jetson-like Ipod speaker system is clipped onto my ear, hanging off like a dangling, urban accessory. "I met a boy, wearing Vans, 501's, and a dope Beastie-T..."

Don't get me wrong, shit is nice. Shit is what it's all about. But it's true what they say: It does start to own you. But more than that, it ties you down; to a place, yes, but more so to a metaphysical place that's very difficult to crawl out of. And that ugly type of crawling, as from a grave, in nail-shredding agony.

I have a sense that there are the happy ones out there who find their small plots and build on them. But for the most part, for the most of us it's just collecting shit until you're up to your neck in clutter. And it's at that point - where you know that you've moved from a few, indispensable possessions to that choking feeling of clutter - that you take five things with you and move on. Burn the rest.

There must be nomads out there who are happy. It's the motion that completes them. Then there are the ones who wander forever, just looking for that perfect plot. And it seems that the difference between the two is nothing more than being born with the right set of chemicals on the brain. Pure, simple chance. Like the men of the Brittania, stranded in a lifeboat for 23 days in 1941 off the Brazilian coast. I'm sure for some the experience altered them somehow to the point of greatness, a lesson that pushed them to the brink of their potential. And at the same time, there are the ones in this world who don't have to eat their friends to stave starvation, who accomplish theirs without ever breaking the smooth rhythm that was vested naturally in their souls.

Here's to the 44 Brittania lifeboaters who kept the rest of their friends alive. L'Chaim!