I began reading The Ghosts of Evolution by Connie Barlow a few days ago. The digital tome is a enumeration of fruits with attached stories concerning their evolution alongside mammals utilised to distribute their seeds. These mammals were but propagation machines and nothing more. I agree with this use of mammals, in general. Anyhow, Miss Connie’s focus is on a number of fruits that still exist whilst their means of propagation do not. A prime example is the avocado, whose flesh tastily enfolds a seed that is far too large to pass through the digestive system of any existing mammal, excepting possibly elephants and whales. Any semi-alert reader may have noticed through his or her observations or studies (humans still do that, right?) that elephants and whales do not cohabit the same ecosystems as avocados. Any semi-alert reader may have also noticed, having noticed the last point, that avocados therefore are dunderheads. To castigate the dense fruit, and being an avocado myself, I shall continue to commit genocide on my own species by cannibalism. When I, alone, remain, I shall nibble away at my own fleshy parts until only the seed remains. This seed will begin a new, modified race of avocados that will repopulate and ultimately dominate the earth, returning it rightly to the plant kingdom.

Basically, Connie tells her readers, who, themselves, are also dunderheads, that these plants evolve very slowly. They haven’t noticed yet that gomphotheres and ground sloths stopped consuming them some ten thousand years ago. I’d like to make an analogy to certain humans. I’ll even ponder on my readers’ favourite subject: my parents.

I posit that many adults, especially after a certain age, let’s say thirty (that’s possibly a bit low) stop evolving intellectually and culturally. They don’t keep up with what’s shakin’ with the current mammal population, honeybunch. An excellent example is, again, my readers’ favourite subject: my parents. At some point, they both ceased augmenting their scientific and cultural knowledge. They still get skewed and melodramaticised blasts of current reality from the tele, but those hardly stick and are anyway dubious at best. When I introduce a topic concerning zoology or astronomy to my parents and attempt to update their knowledge with something fascinating to me, I usually stub my prodigal toe on the cinder block of their stupidity. Blank looks and comments along the lines of but we learned it THIS way in high school / college gouge out my interest in continuing. They just stopped wanting or needing to advance mentally after a certain point in their lives. Perhaps that is a simplification and the process was more gradual, but now only the aforementioned cinder block remains, and it is certainly not pleasant company to my fleshy footsies.

I sometimes fly off the handle and exclaim that they are still living in the fucking fifties. But they are, to an extent. Current social interactions between man and goat or woman (choose as you wish, dear beastie) baffle them, no matter how often the skewed and melodramaticised blasts from the tele attempt to nudge or sway them. Their teen years and possibly their twenties define their points of view. They drifted into their own West Texas dreamland by the mid sixties and the hippie revolution of the late sixties did not touch them. For all its faults, that revolution could have opened my parents’ eyes at least a little. But I forget. West Texas was most likely never exposed. Another source of their malady is that bleak isolation - the one I broke from long, long ago - that never changes. West Texas is static.

Let’s waste our youths working in an oil field, my friend. I promise that grueling work will make you a tough man and an honest man and wipe away any semblance of art in your life.

I see symptoms of the same illness in the eyes of the majority. Cultural and intellectual evolution has left them behind. During the ponderous course of one day, one month, or one year, they retracted into what would become their puntos de vista for the remainder of their lives.

I call for a culling.

A fork in the proverbial road and Shambal chooses the way more recently paved and travelled since he’s hoping to meet more chicks.

It’s a truth that one cannot ignore that Shambal was once a prolific womaniser. One of the many epitaphs crudely carved into his immense sarcophagus reads Although his flesh wilts, his stillborn progeny plough other pastures. As an aside, the mystery of the tomb persists through the ages and leaks across countless quantum universes. You see, dastardly reader, Shambal was the only known sentient being on the moon he called home when he passed.

Ah! The road less travelled metaphor. It amuses me sometimes, or, actually, all of the time, that metaphors such as this one were drilled into my consciousness time and again during my youth. Yet, somehow, the whole philosophy (I laughingly call it a philosophy) of my padres ran counter to them. Any deviation from the norm resulted in my castigation. Normally, these castigations were psychological, involving gouts of emotional blackmail. As in times of old, my parents had a clear course in their mind mapped out for me.

It still infuriates them that I never finished university. Questions dribble radiomagnetically through the atmosphere, piercing my ears. They ask how many hours might I have left to achieve a degree? Any degree. The picture etched into my parents’ minds of me standing tall, smiling and pious holding a rolled diploma persists. I suppose it will be the final disappointment in my mother’s mind as she lies, organs failing, skin drooping, on her deadbed.

The road passing directly through university is definitely one of those least travelled in the holy United States of America, but not by the invaders, pale and strong. It was my right as an elite white to clutch that holy paper to my chest and succeed in the corrugated american dream. I surely would have got more chicks. Yeah. May I never remind my padres that those lowlife scum minorities in the sacrosanct United States of America plunder more twat weekly than any gringo other than the hunky bulks that call themselves High School Football Stars. Fuck um.

One road less travelled during my adolescence that I was forced to take was that of the hermit. Like any other teenage ape leaking sticky, hormonal juice, I craved interaction. My padres feared corruption by alcohol, drugs and counter-Jesus ideas. The three were obviously going to arise from doing what any other teenage boy would do - socialise with his peers in gangways and alcoves, parked cars and pristine living rooms, all outside of the schoolhouse. I was sequestered by a phantom lock called religion and its equally phantom compatriot key called guilt. I spent my time in a cave (as Christián would have dubbed it).

The only interaction I got, for the most part, was during the hours of schooling. In this regard, I was forced to take another particular road less travelled. I expelled most of my social energy during these hours, in contrast to most of my fellow students. They expunged the welling urges within by drinking, fucking and simply hanging out during evenings and especially weekends. I had no such opportunity. Weekends saw me cloistered in my cave (as Christián would have messaged it) reading, listening to music, or fiddling with an ancient difference machine. Either this or i was whisked away to Seminole to the sublime pleasure of a visitation with my dead grandmother. Only these visitations ultimately saw me cloistered in another cave (as Christián would have exfoliated it) reading or contemplating the theme music of my existence: pick any dirge.

Weeknights, after alienating fellow students and feeble and strident instructors alike, I sat in my rocking chair in my cave, listening to records. Yeah, I had a plethora of them. I still picture the wooden crate cradling them in my mind. They were a buddhasend. I probably read a bit and fiddled with those aforementioned difference machines, too. That part is foggy.

I walked along that ill travelled road by upchucking my captive social necessities from their prison and onto any maggot within projectile vomit reach. These living, wet, ovoid gops fueled by anxiety invaded classrooms and even the school newspaper. During the hours set aside each day so that the erudite masses of Fort Stocktoner teens be educated, I never held back. I poisoned every environment I encountered. I made few friends. I made myriad enemies, students and instructors alike. Few were indifferent. Peering backwards, I congratulate those few. Emotional resilience is a quality to be applauded.

The majority of my infractions saw me castigated at home. My father found out all. He inserted his proboscis were it ill belonged. He was, still is, a gossip monger, and I was a turbine billowing rumours in my wake. Let’s hope he dies soon. Real soon.

Fuck um.

I started going to a psychiatrist recently. She prescribed a type of anti-depressant. I cannot recall the exact name, or even the inexact name right now, so I shan’t mention it. The pills have ostensibly been affecting my system, my outlook and my personality in general for approximately two weeks now. Have I noticed any differences?

I am not very sure, Mr. Goat.

Although a paranoia piquing in my system guesses that the chemical itself denies me the ability to sense its effects, I am merely guessing by a mental restlessness that it has done very little to change my inner workings. And actually, isn’t a fucking anti-depressant supposed to counter paranoia? Perhaps it wants me to take more acute notice of psychological life. Any reader would know that I have already done this. Alternately, Taking a pill every evening could simply be a placebo to assuage any onset of depression (more on that later). The act of scheduling a pill taking session could make me hyper-aware of moods.

When I last saw the psychiatrist, we talked only in spurts and dribbles about my ostensible problem with alcohol. I’ve written about it at length in other entries, so when I add a full text search to my blog sometime during this century, my surely ecstatic readers can find said information easily. In fact, to whomever is reading this at any particular moment before that other moment within this century at which I complete full text search functionality, please take note now that you may browse back through blog entries at that other, later moment so that you won’t forget to do so when that moment comes.

In any case, when I last saw my psychiatrist, we talked only in eructions and heaves about my ostensible problem with alcohol. The remainder of the conversation focused mainly on what she saw as self-absorption. She repeated a variation of the following question time and again:

What do enjoy doing in your spare time?

Anyone who knows me past a few hours of conversation could easily answer the question. I love to write, as I am doing now (though I do it far less often than I wish or should, but that is a subject for another epoch). I compose music. It brings me fantastic contentment to be creative. This includes creations among others. That is, being creative within a group of other people also paints a honest smile on my twisted and snarling lips. The mention of group brings me to the point she hammered into my skull like a mallet to a flaccid, rubber spike.

Why don’t you get out and participate in activities that involve others?

It broils down to - well, I should do more sports! It assuages the mind to do sports! It curtails depression to do sports! It gets the gonads pumping to do sports! After doing sports, you’ll want to hop into bed with your squash or badminton-mate and think of nothing at all but doing another interpersonal sport!

SPORTS!

I have no problem with sports on a theoretical level. The simple and unavoidable fundamental fact of my personality is that I am an introvert. To those readers living on the dark side of Phobos, Spain - the country in which I currently live - and especially its population is not known for its introversion. In fact, and my psychiatrist verified my supposition, it is seen as a sort of illness in my current country of residence. Some of the humans here even consider it a mild but specialised form of autism. Fuck um.

As I was writing, I have no problem with sports on a theoretical level. The basal, transparent truth is that I am an introvert. I love to cycle. And I’m not talking about the piece of music I wrote called Cycle, though that, too, paints a ecstatic smile on my contorted and scowling lips. Hiking also toots my inner muffin. I used to play squash and had a fling with badminton. I sucked at both, but especially enjoyed the former. These are mostly solitary sports, I am aware, but, as I mentioned, the singular and pervasive case is that I am an introvert. My fondness of such forms of sport limit my interaction with others, obviously, as one set is completely individualistic and the other two individuals competing.

Furthermore, she (my psychiatrist - not the badminton-mate that I later fucked) encouraged me to collect (my words, not hers) more friends and spend time with them frequently. Doing so should shew away any encroaching periods of depression. The more I think about myself, and I am not sure if this is the placebo talking or not and shall not really ponder that part of the matter, the more I come to the realisation that I haven’t had a true dip into depression that wasn’t alcohol withdrawal induced for over fifteen years. To verify this, I may simply read back over my blog entries. My written journals mostly date from before said fifteen years and they are full of glowering entries of self-annihilation and despair. I know this. Perhaps I grew out of some sort of light bi-polar disorder into an alcoholic.

Whether it may be the placebo writing now or not, and I shall surely not explore that avenue at the moment, my sober states do not veer towards any sort of clinical depression. When I feel adrift during any day, usually from doing the same activity during a prolonged period, stretching the legs is a simple rescue. My mind resets shortly thereafter and I am ready to pursue whichever activity once again.

See, you ungulate fucking cyst - I am perfectly normal.

Happiness is not necessarily very constructive. My first real (ha!) girlfriend, Marcie, despised me for years because the following attitude:

I’d rather be intelligent and depressed than stupid and happy.

Mr Roger Soden told me in 2009 that she still despised me, after fifteen years. Bizarre. Although, I’ve never been one to hold grudges against, well, anyone, though I can think of many against whom I should (again, a topic for another blog entry entirely and that surely has been before, and, as mentioned, you, the mesmerised reader, will be able to use a full text search feature at some as yet undetermined point in the current century to find ramblings on said topic).

Christián will hold me in contempt for being black / white here, but I’ll just say now that there are two types of people (actually, there are six, but again, a topic for another blog entry, etc). On one side of the grimy coin, let’s say the sighly off-white (it is a grimy coin, after all) since being clean, pure or what have you is the fucking pits, we have the gents and ladies who wish to achieve bliss and bliss alone. Forms of attaining such a goal are many and mostly contrived. Find a spouse! Vomit out children! Buy a big house and multiple vehicles! While away vacations and subsequent retirement on a beach or in an igloo, whatever toots your inner muffin! The point is clear.

The dark side, which is the side that is always churning, and I mean that in the most evolutionary of ways, is wont to have a number of overlapping goals, one of which may be ultimate contentment, but never it alone. The act of creation, and I’m not talking about vomiting out foeti here, is always prominent. Individuals have differing aims to said creations, be it eternal life etched into the memories of humanity, or eternal at least until our nearest star engulfs the planet, or the personal nirvana the process unleashes. Creation alone or in groups. The beast rises from singularities within individuals to shape itself from formlessness into grotesque beauty.

It’s art, baby. It’s art that matters.

Cynicism reigns supreme on the dark side. It’s contagious and it spawns fluctuations in the quanta from which the aforementioned singularities are born. The big fucking bang of an idea, vole. The acknowledgement of desperation all around agitates the creative sensation. No, it births the creative sensation. A pallid, endlessly happy outlook, the bubbling mindlessness stumbling through vacant days until death, has no use for birthing from the black spirit world of cynicism. Let um trip and tumble past. Inner turbulence sires new worlds.

If Lee was right about anything, he was about this. Perpetual happiness and stupidity are closely linked.

Fuck um.

The female sitting in the seat in front and to my right has a skull. Well, reasonably enough, all female humans have skulls. Let’s not forget rodents. Female rodents also have skulls. The unusuality about the particular skill in front and to the right of me is that it resembles Susie’s skull to an almost disturbing degree. The curvacious lips tip a slightly protruding jaw. Her maw widens and narrows like Susie’s. Being an American human (or rodent - it’s hard to tell from this angle), she even speaks like Susie. She uttered to her neighbour as the denizens of my aeroplane arranged themselves a squeaky Oh. I’m sorry! that sucked me back into the autumn of 1998. Now Susie’s face hovers in my mental projector space.

It could be that the consciousness that inhabits Susie also inhabits this being. It could be that consciousness molds the soft bones of foeteses even in the womb, for possibly it possesses them even before they are spewn into the noxious atmosphere from their slimy tumor-sac. It could be that the limited number of everlasting consciousnesses have to inhabit more than one creature at a time. My theory conforms to biological populations waxing and waning but a constant troop of entities persisting througout timelessness.

Knowing these disturbing ideas to be true at least in my biological mind at the moment, I should no longer be surprised when I encounter clones. Not clones. Partial clones? Beings that run on the same foundations, with similar states of inception.

I’d groan at the interpretation a mere fifteen years prior. The energy flowing through my biology, the force that built it and keeps it vital, is shared by other beings. I certainly hope my companions in spiritual resonance are either capyparas, goats or stone martens. Humans? Fuck um.

Shambal Brambel sits at his usual table in The Rabbit’s Foot tavern. With his back unassailable, the corner table gives him view of the whole room, even through muddy air bereft of wafting currents. The tavern isn’t particularly large, but somehow cluttered and cramped tables make it appear grander. Bar flies bumble and stagger towards and then away from him. Shambal doesn’t bother to brush them away or even give them a glance.

Only the barkeep keeps him company, if company is what it can be called. Her name is Brenda or Billie or something with a B, but Shambal always calls her Anežka. She puts up with it, just like everyone puts up with him, and eyes him more with pity than revulsion. She goes about the morning tasks, watering down various bottles, wiping away insect faeces from tumblers and snifters, and occasionally thumbing her swollen clitoris through dirty stockings. She’d handed over a smudged tumbler of Brandy just five minutes earlier. She’d called it Brandy. Shambal always orders Brandy in the morning. It came out of a bottle with a rumpled label that said Brandy. It probably wasn’t Brandy.

The tumbler stares at him vacantly. His stubby claw hands poise themselves centimetres on each side as if guarding a treasure that has been lifted. He’ll order another soon enough. Ten in the morning is beginning to become his personal late evening. Lately, he’s been stumbling back to his hovel at high noon. So far, each showdown with the padlock that slows access to a musty sleeping pad has been a success. However, habitually, at around ten in the morning, he’s got used to mulling over a possible losing showdown.

His torpid mind etches a portrait of him batting at the padlock, or pair of padlocks, or trio. Vision and motor skills are two of the first physical failings he experiences during the tails of his evenings. Stabbing at the aperture with his key like he sometimes dreams he’d do to Anežka with his penis, his eventual success is short-lived. Slipping in a slough, he goes down while still gripping the key. It snaps.

His head snaps up and his claw hands grip the tumbler. Don’t pass out! One late afternoon, he awoke with bruised ribs, tumbled beside the wooden wall of the tavern. Passed out, apparently he’d been kicked aside from the immediate doorway. Thankfully shaded by an overhang, he’d only been suffocating on heat and dust and not torched by the Sun. Skin disease was a real threat in his world. It had claimed his brother the year before.

Glancing to the left of the tumbler, he sees the precious metal case where he keeps his cigarettes. He’d rolled eleven upon awakening the day before. This made Shambal a light smoker. He’d never exceeded nineteen in any given day during the last three years or so. He was not only a light smoker, but a latecomer to the addiction. Unsticking his claw hands from the tumbler, he opens the case.

Briefly, another thought shambles across his late shadowed brain. How could I still have the case at all? Perhaps the denizens of my village give me more respect than my bi-polar disorder suspects. He’d lain drunken not only in front of the tavern time and again with any one of his possessions easily liftable by any passer-by. They must respect my talent. I am, after all, the village jester, entertainer and philosopher, all wrapped up in a single skin-package. He smiles and the thought tumbles away. He places a cigarette between his index and middle finger of his right hand.

Anežka sees his hand raised and emitting a helix of smoke through the gloom and caws loudly, as her sisters taught her to do. If ya want you another drink, Mister Shambling Shambal, ya gotta come get it. Her thumb pokes involuntarily at the cleft of her stocking and a shocking sketch appears of the lout who is attempting to stand pounding her from the back behind the bar. To assuage the horror if the image, she pours herself a Brandy. She’ll be slightly blitzed throughout the day, yet it had happened before. Fuck um. Since she is one of the only nubiles left, a little day tipsy won’t harm a fly. One of the myriad bar flies lights and seems to watch as she put her drink away with a single swallow. Then it moves on. Shambal is stumbling across the room towards her.

A brandy, please, Anežka.

You forgot your glass.

He peers back with a touch of anxiety.

Ah, shit. Can I get another one, darling?

Her eyes shift from him to his table and back again. They were faded hazel.

I sup’ose it don’t matter. And don’t call me that.

Shambal opens his yam to retort, but he doesn’t have the strength to voice a claim. Additionally, even in his current state, he is aware that her antecedent is not clear. A thin line of drool snakes down his chin and then throat as he decides not to bother. He shuffles back to his table with his Brandy, thinking better of taking a sip during the journey. Maybe an hour more of this haze. My life is on repeat. I wish I could change it to shuffle. Across the room, from over an endless proliferation of empty tables, the dual doors of the tavern creak. Perhaps they wanted to warn Shambal of an upcoming change of routine - perhaps not shuffle but skip skip skip.

Half of his Brandy eats away at his stomach lining. Anežka is no longer at the bar. She is in back placating what she considers to be a need. The Sun positions itself to spray beams through the hollow above the tavern doors and into the gloom creating smudgy rainbows that coalesce, shift, and dance with bar flies. The doors creak again and more rays tumble in as if to flee from a gaunt shadow. Apparently, they are. A man dressed in bleached skin, bleached clothing, a bleached panama and bleached oxfords with red laces enters and stands still for a moment. The moment passes, he glances with bleached blue eyes across the murk, and walks weaving around tables directly at Shambal.

Shambal raises his claw hand, which was stuck to his second tumbler, to his mouth and drains the Brandy. After setting down the tumbler, it stares back at him from the wooden table, reflecting empty thoughts. For the first time in ages, he doesn’t know what’s going to come next.

The newcomer is out of place from sheer whiteness. He stands in front of Shambal’s table for a moment. The moment passes, he picks up both tumblers with one pale hand, banging them together with a muffled clink, turns and approaches the bar. He raps twice on the bartop with the knuckles of his other hand, but didn’t speak.

Anežka emerges a few seconds later, looking disheveled and harassed. She eyes the stranger warily, her hazels quickly moving vertically, squinting slightly from ostensible brightness. He places the tumblers on the bar.

Can I do for ya something?

What’s your name, young miss?

Brandy. Yours, stranger?

I’m Raun and I’m thirsty. What sort of goom is that dero setting over there drinking?

What?

What’s that vagrant in the corner been drinking?

Oh… He drinks Brandy. All we got here is Brandy. Whereabouts are you from, mister?

Please pour me two double Brandys, then, please, miss. I’m from another world.

She starts to pour, stops, but the stranger curls the fingers of his left hand palmwards. She resumes pouring.

Another world? For real?

The first tumbler is full. Anežka begins the second.

Is there a difference?

He lays a few coins on the bar. She frowns, but is still chewing on his last statement, so says nothing. Raun doesn’t appear to mind that talk has fallen dead. In fact, to Anežka, he seems to shine brighter. He walks back towards Shambal with the two tumblers.

Shambal greets the newcomer with a grunt that is a quarter as loud as the growl the chair makes as at scrapes along the warped floor of the tavern. Raun places a tumbler in front of him. It stares at Shambal, now contrasting his vacuity. The stranger takes a sip and grimaces.

Pleased to meet you. I’m Raun.

I heard your banter with the barmaid.

I see. This tastes like turp, not Brandy.

Honestly, I don’t know what it is, just its effects.

Are you, like me, ending your day’s work with a stiff drink before passing away into the land of dreams?

I’m mostly already there, actually. I’m the village singer. A tenor. Or I was, I think, in another life. Why did you ask Anežka Is there a difference? to her question about your whereabouts, friend?

I was poking fun, I suppose. I had the gall to say something I knew would probably confuse her. It’s a failing of mine. A failing I don’t wish to repair, really. The dreamland you are walking towards is another world, in a manner of speaking. I am a relativist. A singer, eh?

Yeah. I play guitar and banjo a bit on the side, too. Nothing special much, though. Villagers like weepy ballads, mostly, and especially the later it gets and the drunker they are.

A pity.

Yes. A pity. What do you do?

I hunt lycanthropes.

Ashley pointed out on Facebook:

I keep seeing things like, “People shouldn’t be doing (fun thing) when (problem) is happening in the world!” This reasoning essentially chastises anyone who ever does a fun thing, since there are always huge problems in the world. So, no dinner with friends while there’s a refugee crisis. No karaoke while there’s war. No water skiing while there’s poverty. We must solve everything before anyone is allowed a moment of happiness.

Since I was a child, I have found myself in similar situations time and again, though on smaller scales. The key foundation of what Ashley refers to in his post is expectation and forcing one’s own expectations onto others. Ultimately, I see this as a form of fundamentalism.

Therefore, I wish it to perish.

Another way to view it, and I am aware that this is a form of meta-pun, is how those who choose not to share focus with the arbiter or designer of a current context are punished. I encountered it at funerals, family reunions and other important events according to my parents. When my focus drifted from the focus I was required to have, I was in trouble. I had somehow sinned. That or I’d crossed a line into a space from which I should’ve immediately withdrawn.

Distractions were not allowed. I floundered for hours in a pool of boredom. My toes barely touched the bottom and therefore I always ended up emotionally exhausted.

I get it, sure: at a funeral, one is not allowed to have fun. No, the expectation is that one should mourn. Most never take into account that no rule-book that I know of has ever been written that states there is an overreaching code of conduct for expressing grief. Unwritten conduct exists, but it differs depending on context. A child is supposed to absorb these rules by osmosis, or so it seems to be in retrospect. Fuck um.

Widening the ellipsoid, expectations are toxins whorling through the atmosphere in any social occasion. I agree that one must remain within a certain part of one’s more expansive personality. There is a cone radiating from each individual indicating the space in which one’s focus can wander. Drifting outside of this cone can lead to anything from odd looks from other participants of said social situation to ostracism. Depending, the cone has a fatty buffer zone, fuzzier to some participants than to others.

Getting back to Ashley’s point - those who ultimately come across as controlling cunts should die. The GOAT BLADE need impale them. And I want to watch their faces twist in pain. Their brain death will benefit their peers. Fuck um. Their allowable cone of focus is at times slender to the point of one-dimension. If, truly, a human tells you that you cannot enjoy yourself since a tragedy is occuring elsewhere in expansive human sphere, stroll in a direction orthogonal to the current carrying that human. Or, alternatively, impale them on the GOAT BLADE.

Emotional exhaustion ages everyone. It is a common form of stress. Hanging out with humans who force more on you is not worth the minutes, hours, months or decades. Walk away. Fuck um.

The other day, while whiling away an hour or so in my brain, I came across the notion that it might be possible the most amicable relationships consist of two humans (or homunculi) who detest their existence outside of the relationship itself. For instance, at one or several points in his existence, Shambal Brambel earned his keep lying for ten hours nine and a third days a lunar week in a septic drain field. He came across this profession after being diagnosed with a rare talent for absorbing filth and trasforming it into nourishment. The science of this epoch was paying him to be studied. He did bring a book at the beginning of every shift, though reading material usually spent most of its time lounging in various bubbling excrement pools peppering his field on any given day. You see, Shambal was even more dyslexic then than his corpse is during the present epoch.

I have drifted from the original subject and I apologize.

Shambal Brambel lay in septic drain fields. That was his job. I used to walk past him atop tributaries of cracks on sidewalks bordering each side of the fields. The stench seared the hairs from the insides of my nostrils. I remember each membrane of my face swelling from the caustic air. Shambal was miserable. I could feel it through the pallor.

Then he went home to his Karla. Each day a revelation took place! She was a goddess awaiting him on the doorstep, having endured her own dastardly hours scrubbing drool, mucus and semen from the floors of the theatre. Sometimes Shambal, seeing her scabbed hands, felt even a little lucky. At least he was only tortured by endless daydreaming in the slime. Physical labor was not part of his employment contract.

The immense contrast with their oppressive other lives brought them closer. Happiness enveloped them when they met, as if for the first time, every evening. They made ugly love like grunting warthogs, playing out scenes that would make even those with the strongest of stomachs turn quickly away.

Do happy couples thrive because of misery elsewhere in their lives? Though Shambal and Karla truly gained from their situation, I’d be hard pressed to get up from this chair and conduct a study to verify it as a more general truth or not. I did stumble across the idea whilst taking a stroll in my mind the other day…

The nigger falls from the tree. His abdomen is pierced by a fierce branch of a blackberry shrub. The goat wanders over to nibble the fruit. He nibbles the whole plant from within the nigger. His holy goat-saliva heals the nigger’s wound.

They both wander their separate ways - the goat to nibble more and the nigger to the town, to be captured by different coloured niggers and eventually flayed. This proverb illustrates that no matter how arbitrarily benevolent the actions of the holy goat are, niggers like you and me will still die horrific deaths.

Wheels are spinning beneath me once again. I haven’t scribed that line in eons. Sitting on a train, feeling the smooth transition from moment to moment away from a stagnant place and towards one of budding life, gives me hope within a future that is entirely static. Whether this universe is the one I have chosen or (surely) not, my elections have landed me here, gliding on these tracks.

In fact, the stagnant place is always behind and the one of fecundity is always beyond. The place I am sitting in now, like very moment, is limbo. And limbo is where I get my work done. Sweet Entropy calls me. She whispers into my unclogged ear canal: Every moment is limbo. Every instant is a transitional phase. Here we go again.

The head of this moment, as opposed to the middle and then the tail, which will both follow, becoming their own particular heads, I shall begin organising the music I shall send to Christián. Three parts exist for him to sing in the now dubbed The Sheriff Lies. Parts one and three will be entirely mp3s created from my midi drafts. I have not recorded live versions of these. Yes, yes - the demo exists in recorded form, but does not contain Christián’s parts, which to me, have become essential to the whole piece.

Part Two has already been sent once to Death To Tuesday, but I’ll email it along with the other hovno so the crusty old man has everything in one place. That includes sheet music. His part is labelled GOAT.

Christián is rather goat-like, if you think about it.

I am unsure if the mp3s entitled goat1.mp3 and goat3.mp3 were attached correctly to the email I sent to that shivering stink of flesh quivering in his flaccid skin. If not, they will be uploaded to thinklikeamink (along with this entry) and the tail of this extended moment becomes the head of the instant that I am sitting drunken on the bed of my hotel room, doing those punishable deeds.

Why are they punishable?

Pure creativity is becoming less of a criminal act, I agree, but it is still frowned upon in most circles I have tread upon the surface of. I see social circles more as spheres, really. Or ellipsoids. Or ovoids. Or whatever three dimensional construct the reader wishes to pummel his / her mind with. These three-dimensional objects have surfaces. Beyond those surfaces is void, or even limbo were I to write optimistically.

I once wrote in a poem later translated to song (the pertinent line is here for illustrative purposes, aunque the whole was also rather poor quality and now decays inked on yellowing parchment in a box in either mine or Tony’s archives, best forgotten): Two clouds meet and drift away. I should have written Two clouds merge and drift apart. I was naïve during the autumn of 1990, naturally. I suffered from unrequited love, as I often did in those scintillating days. The days brightest blind us to the awaiting drift into the reality of limbo, where creation actually does or doesn’t happen. You see, my social skills were putrescent. No, that is not exactly correct. For something to become putrescent, it must initially be ripe - metaphorically attractive and alive. In contrast, my social skills never really grew beyond a tiny, greening bud knocked from a miniature of a bush in a West Texan Desert. Fuck um.

The two clouds were people, of course, and a mingling of minds, or souls, or spirits, or animas, or bodily juices. Most possibly the most latter. But the ellipsoids also match the cloud metaphor. They drift close. Their skins touch, They buckle slightly. Some of these entities bounce entirely from one another, but most of their cell walls tentatively break and their cytoplasm temporarily merges.

This is a fun, but very heavy-handed metaphor.

Where was I?

I usually swim on the surface of ellipsoidal cytoplasm. When I delve deep and even possibly consort with a mitochondrion, it is among social groups small and close-knit in ways not particularly universal for these strangely bulging creatures. Connections are much more complex than the three dimensional space we mere mustelids see in our everyday jaunts from ellipsoid to ellipsoid (all which share cytoplasm at the head and tail of that moment, naturally, as travelling through limbo is a solitary profession).

I recall a conversation with an exacting woman recently about social circles, concerning ideas she wished to explicitly expunge. She wanted to delete my obtuse metaphor, possibly? Bubbles that couple are actually hyper-ellipsoidal constructs, intersecting orthogonally in manners that she would complain would melt her cerebrum into an oily mass best cooked up with leek, coriander seeds and sour apples. But appreciation of her viewpoint is captivating, as visceral interpretations fascinate me until Sweet Entropy calls again to prod me like the GOAT I am into abstraction.

Swimming on a single surface, two dimensional, of myriad hyper-ellipsoids from which I could have chosen, I am satisfied to peer at the limbo. I’ll dive from the watery cytoplasm into it soon enough. My springboard is this train.

I feel the wheels spinning beneath me once again.

I miss you, Hela.

The basic premise of this entry is simply that I am able to appreciate a piece of art, especially music, much more if it can be taken out of all social and historical context and still be intrinsically moving / intriguing to me.

Get it?

I have had many conversations that have touched on this topic in my lifetime. Most happened after the age of twelve or so. I don’t exactly recall the first one, but I can recall one of the first. I believe I was around fourteen and unhappily making the transition from one moment to the next in the acrid atmosphere of Fort Stockton. My cousin introduced me to Rush. I had been already getting into more interesting music, that is, different from the run of the mill pop, metal or country that pervaded the community. Rush isn’t all that freakish or wholly different, but their music contained a hidden (for me, at the time) layer of complexity. Of course, I focused more on the lyrics, but I’ll approach that angle later.

Amy, which was the acrid name of this acrid female in the acrid atmosphere of Fort Stockton, introduced me to the album Hemispheres. We listened to side one together. It resonated with me, especially the ending section (The Sphere). I’d already been listening to Pink Floyd for over a year (and not just the post Dark Side of the Moon stuff), so Hemispheres was not a leap across a ravine. So, cool, I possibly said to myself, here is another group I can explore.

Then Amy began to explain the context of the recording as it stood with their other recordings and furthermore in her life and how it affected her. Even back then, I found this distasteful. That distaste was very undeveloped at the time, but grew steadily hover the years, and I am writing especially with respect with music here. I’d even say that it grew exponentially. I don’t want to initially know any historical or emotional connection or context. I want to enjoy the music on its own merits. zo

CADA LOCA A SU CABRA.

zo She then attempted to explain to me the transition in sound the band had made through the course of six or seven years, then played Power Windows for me. Years passed before I came back to this album and appreciated it fully for what it was intrinsically.

Later, I was happy to find out about the transitions bands go through and historical connections between early and later music. Yes. Firstly, however, I want to hear a piece out of context.

A point that has come up much too often during my existence and especially dealing with humans is how a piece of music (in this case, usually a song or band or especially singer) is tied to a part of a particular human’s life. A particular song can even be attached directly to an event.

I openly admit that I do this, as well. The first album by North Atlantic Oscillation will always remind me, at least for a moment, of either walking through the streets of Tuzla or most likely sitting in the café with my laptop overlooking the first story of what Bosnia passes off as a Shopping Center (Bah!). I let that impression light up in my mind. It soon drifts past. I let it remain neutral. I don’t want to attach any emotional significance to it. The album will always remind me of a period of my life, but effort is made to push that to a portion of my brain that associates raw memories, usually images and scents with sounds (in this case, an album by North Atlantic Oscillation). The music itself needs to stand intrinsically apart for me. It is as it is.

Bob Drake once said, paraphrasingly, A piece of music should express what it is and nothing more. That is a portion of what I am getting at. I am aware, however, that removing all vestiges of context is impossible.

Concerning the post-previous paragraph, I shall always be reminded specifically of walking up the hill here when I listen to the second movement of Shostakovich’s 12th String Quartet. The image and perhaps the scent of pollen will scuttle through my mind, but the music itself sustains intrinsic value to me. I don’t have to attach anything to it for its importance to remain relevant. Shostakovich has much music (I’d say most, actually) tied to historical contexts. I know snatches behind these, but don’t really need or even wish to know them completely and certainly do not wish to tie them to certain compositions. Again, they stand on their own, intrinsically, for me.

(here)

Another anecdote (a shorter one featuring my buboe of an ex-wife):

Everyone reading the Martenblog knows who my putrescent ex-wife was, so I don’t have to provide context. She has contacted me several times since our rupture. The duration of contact each time has varied and usually ended suddenly ostensibly because of something I stated more directly and honestly than she may have liked. Fuck um. One afternoon, evening or night (I don’t recall which), we were discussing (or, more realistcally, having a distracting chat session) a band called the Magnetic Fields. Ok! I told her. I’ll give um a listen. Why not? I gave them a listen. The music did nothing for me. I’d promised that I’d do my best to listen attentively, as well. After informing her of this unfortunate turn of events, she then informed me that my opinion’d’ve been different had I spent hours, days, weeks, months, or some other extended period of time listening to the Magnetic Fields with another person. By other person, I assumed she meant lover or at least drinking compatriot, though I am not sure I ever asked for details. My reply to her clarification was along the lines of what I have been talking about the whole of this entry: I listen to music for the music is itself, not for a nostalgic bang. At least that is what I intend to do, though being a small furry animal, I am not perfect in all of my endevours.

Finally we reach music that has historical folk origins. And again, initially, I don’t want to know those origins. I want the music completely out of context when I first approach it. I know this is an impossibility in the majority of cases, especially in a live setting. At times, the cultural context is forced upon the audient (I stole that word from Robert Fripp, for anyone who does not know).

Knowing the cultural significance of a piece of music can benefit my appreciation later, perhaps, but that particular piece of music is never going to be as powerful to me as an another that can be completely divorced from historical, cultural and emotional context and appeal to me on its own merits as a raw piece of art.

Lyrics are a different matter and at the moment I tire of typing (knowing I shouldn’t, as I haven’t filled these black rectangles for seemingly ages) or I would attempt to go into great detail. A fascinating appeal of Magma’s music for me is the presence of words simply used as an emotional thrust. The sonorities are much more important than the meaning. I suppose as I have aged, I grow tired of lyrics that dwell of specificities. I still dig existential angst when in the mood (usually an intoxicated one), but time and again, absurdist ramblings are more enjoyable.

Christián displayed to me a photo from a book containing Flamenco Quatrains. Or at least I believe that is what they were. I still have not decided whether they are emotionally abstract enough for me to fully appreciate without yawning profusely. I do enjoy that I can read them out of any cultural or historical context. I am sure I can be presented with performances of several via YouTube that do not bother me with any cultural or historical context, as well.

I’ll return to the beginning.

A piece of music (and, to abstract out, art itself) will appeal to me in a more fulfilling manner, and always has, if it is presented without context. Any importance outside of the container that is the music itself IS NOT RELEVANT. My enjoyment of said piece of music (or art) will be diminished by anything outside the container initially. For me, pieces of art (and, yeah, once again, especially music) are discrete forms. Every connection, even between other related discrete forms do not assist my appreciation, although they may modify it later.

So die.

Today’s Special Consternation (toted by my current girlfriend) is indicative of the striking downfall of large, cohesive families. Yes, as i have mentioned previously, Marisa’s family is monolithic. Only the most distant edges crumble slightly. If her family were a circle, I’d be a point on a plane parallel to it and growing increasingly distant. The line passing through me and Marisa, however, remains.

One of her nephews, Alberto, is moving out of the flat that she owns near to this flat that she also owns. In another lifetime, Marisa, her ex-husband and their spawn lived in the flat from which Alberto is moving. Why she did not rid herself of it after she moved on, I am not sure. But back to that nephew who is also abandoning the place: Some wench named Kristina (or something similar - I forget) has claimed his bumpy soul and they’ll begin to add infant cretins to the family in a new flat in a distant corner of the city come September. She’s also torn Alberto away from any hope of a creative future as a programmer by convincing him he should teach high school computer science instead. It’s just so much more stable. I shall not include that story.

Alberto has a brother named Jesús, who, accordingly, is also Marisa’s nephew. They are currently living together in the flat that Marisa owns that is close to this flat that Marisa also owns. Jesús will be living alone in that flat once Alberto moves out. Will he be able to afford the flat himself? Of course he will because his parents, Marisa’s sister-in-law and brother, are the ones that actually pay. However, Jesús may not want to live alone. Someone once informed me that being alone is not wholly amusing, and though I ignored the booming, disembodied voice, Jesús obviously also heard it and chose not to ignore it.

The logical course of action would be for Jesús to find another family member to move in with him. The situation is grand for Marisa because she is paid under the table by her sister-in-law and brother, gaining her some sort of tax benefit. This wouldn’t be the case were she to put the flat up for rent to regular townsfolk. Miguel, Marisa’s son, has noted that he’d like to live there with his scabrous whore of a girlfriend, Andrea. They’d share Alberto’s ex-room. Jesús would stay put. Everyone would rejoice the arrival of hilarious complications regarding splitting rent and utilities three ways, or two ways, or maybe three ways, or possibly two and a half ways since Andrea and Miguel would only occupy a single room, and so on. Did I mention that Andrea is a scabrous whore?

All of this tomfoolery has caused Marisa a topping of stress to accompany her already maniacally stressful lifestyle. It occurs to me, as it surely does to you, that including the family first in every facet of one’s life is NOT beneficial. It’s a fucking anchor. They spend a chunk of every day commiserating in family business, in family gossip and family platitudes. Why platitudes? I use that word because they tend to touch on the same topics and pontificate using the same or similar phrases time and again. All of this family time, in my bulging opinion, could more positively be consumed by creativity, meditation, exercise or even reading a fucking book.

I’m not part of that circle. I reside in a parallel plane that drifts further each elastic second.