I think there are some clues as to what was altering my brain, here. Scribbled on a notebook page:
Time, aliens, sex, alcohol, fractals, Mayan symbology, voodoo, poetry, spiders, monkeys, loving someone but knowing you can't be with them, fire, eschatology, Nietschze, cell phones, Derrida, muffins, coffee, punk girls, girls that are interested in me, girls that are interesting, zebras, pens, old photographs, the cosmos, porn, hoodies, parkour, smart dogs, cartwheels, everything moving in circles, the importance of dreams, Jung, Freud, skinheads, tattoos, asses, watching your loved one move on, dumb dogs, towns that smell like dog food, oranges, winter candy apple, lines, beer, cleaning, the beard off my bathroom sink, poetry, honesty, girls with cool shoes, firecrackers, Four Loko, numerology, the fifth dimension, interconnectivity, loneliness, fear, hate, belonging, ayahuasca, Judaica, the Bible, *can't make it out*, Siddhartha, Buddha.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Quit
I quit the tire job after two weeks. A few days earlier I stood in the weak dawn light of my ex-wife's apartment, staring at my uniform, gunmetal gray. Nametag. I shook her shoulder and asked if she'd think less of me if I quit. She shook her head and fell back to sleep. My dog watched me but didn't lift her head. I went to work. Kept this in my head: you have two days off. Get through the day.
No lunch breaks. 110 degrees. Customers roll in. Flat tires, alignments, rotations. New tires. I hated BMWs the worst, they had screws instead of lug nuts, forcing you to balance the tire, cradled just so between the knees, and screw it in, find the hole. Most were relatively simple. Thank god for Hondas.
Jeans will chafe your ass and hurt your balls. First few days I wore some jeans to work. THAT was dumb. I took some pants from the rack upstairs, unworn uniforms belonging to employees who went the way I did, that is, out.
I worked with good people. Most hadn't finished high school and had kids. Didn't make it hurt any less when the salespeople, bonuses in mind, poked their head from their air conditioned office, yelling at them to hurry the fuck up. But it made it easier for them not to do what I did.
Hard work has value. I will never not tip a mover, for example. I will understand the wait at a tire place. But that is as far as it goes, once the lesson is learned, there is no reason to kill yourself at a place like that. I don't presume to know where you folks work, or how important that is to you. All I am saying is this: if you work at a place like that, for god's sake quit.
We have a very short time on this earth, and it makes not one lick of sense to spend more time than necessary doing things you loathe. This advice, again, coming from a single guy with no children.
I write stories. It's almost the only thing I'm good at, besides shuffleboard. I consider myself a "bizarro writer", and that entails a few things, the most important of which is that I have a slightly skewed view on reality. This is what separates bizarro from experimental literature: the latter twists language and structure in such a way to convey innovation. They take a form, writing, and manipulate it to create something new, which inherently pays homage and calls attention to the original form. Bizarro ignores this entirely, normally utilizing simple sentences, English at its most basic, to casually convey complete absurdity. In doing so it makes no distinction between the original language and the hodge podge, cut and paste shenanigans of experimental: the weird and the "real" are one and the same, and should be treated as such.
That's my disclaimer: I will be the first to admit that I might not have a firm grasp on things like "responsibility" or "adulthood". When I did quit, on the day I thought I had off, the ex shook her head and I was kicked out a few days later, back to making frantic calls, desperate not to sleep in my car. The man's reality really exists, and it has real consequences.
If you have children, or a wife, or aspirations to financial stability, stick with the jobs and be responsible. I really have no idea how to make your life better. If you're single, childless, and know what it is that you have to do, then please do it. Quit being so scared. Lose your apartment, who cares? You wrote a book! Or built a car or photographed a sweet moose. Quit wasting your time for no good reason. That's what the internet is for.
No lunch breaks. 110 degrees. Customers roll in. Flat tires, alignments, rotations. New tires. I hated BMWs the worst, they had screws instead of lug nuts, forcing you to balance the tire, cradled just so between the knees, and screw it in, find the hole. Most were relatively simple. Thank god for Hondas.
Jeans will chafe your ass and hurt your balls. First few days I wore some jeans to work. THAT was dumb. I took some pants from the rack upstairs, unworn uniforms belonging to employees who went the way I did, that is, out.
I worked with good people. Most hadn't finished high school and had kids. Didn't make it hurt any less when the salespeople, bonuses in mind, poked their head from their air conditioned office, yelling at them to hurry the fuck up. But it made it easier for them not to do what I did.
Hard work has value. I will never not tip a mover, for example. I will understand the wait at a tire place. But that is as far as it goes, once the lesson is learned, there is no reason to kill yourself at a place like that. I don't presume to know where you folks work, or how important that is to you. All I am saying is this: if you work at a place like that, for god's sake quit.
We have a very short time on this earth, and it makes not one lick of sense to spend more time than necessary doing things you loathe. This advice, again, coming from a single guy with no children.
I write stories. It's almost the only thing I'm good at, besides shuffleboard. I consider myself a "bizarro writer", and that entails a few things, the most important of which is that I have a slightly skewed view on reality. This is what separates bizarro from experimental literature: the latter twists language and structure in such a way to convey innovation. They take a form, writing, and manipulate it to create something new, which inherently pays homage and calls attention to the original form. Bizarro ignores this entirely, normally utilizing simple sentences, English at its most basic, to casually convey complete absurdity. In doing so it makes no distinction between the original language and the hodge podge, cut and paste shenanigans of experimental: the weird and the "real" are one and the same, and should be treated as such.
That's my disclaimer: I will be the first to admit that I might not have a firm grasp on things like "responsibility" or "adulthood". When I did quit, on the day I thought I had off, the ex shook her head and I was kicked out a few days later, back to making frantic calls, desperate not to sleep in my car. The man's reality really exists, and it has real consequences.
If you have children, or a wife, or aspirations to financial stability, stick with the jobs and be responsible. I really have no idea how to make your life better. If you're single, childless, and know what it is that you have to do, then please do it. Quit being so scared. Lose your apartment, who cares? You wrote a book! Or built a car or photographed a sweet moose. Quit wasting your time for no good reason. That's what the internet is for.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
floating
I am floating and I want it to stop. I'm not a wanderer or an adventurer. I'm someone who likes familiarity and my space. I have gone between Lawton and Norman several times in the past month, never settling down, hoping someone might change their mind. Lawton was for distance, but it is a shithole. El Paso is a possibility, I have friends there and the distance thing would come into effect again, but those friends aren't ready to strike out on their own and get their own place. I don't know what I'm doing. I guess I'm waiting for something to come into my life that says, "HEY MOTHERFUCKER." Until then I'll keep reading and writing. "Unbearable Lightness" helps. Kris Saknussemm helps. A job might help, just to give me something to do. But I'm not a big fan of regular jobs. I worked at Hibdon's for two goddamn weeks and decided that wasn't "for me", as though hauling tires in the heat is for somebody. Floop.
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