people work better when driven (insane) -x)

The queen of dark matter and star-sucking, star-spitting violence, expelling religion, power, politics, and compelling economies the color green… the Queen she boomeranged (not jettisoned) 2 deepspace twelve (and back) all zipfile collected archives of recycled history which then, upon extreme impact re-entrance, froze the atmospheric firewall in what she described as: glorious triple-threat, back burnout, recedivist fashion… In service to her brilliant, proper planetary alignment initiative by which security fix satellites could have full access 2 the hard universal drive and its partitions… In retrospect, good people of planet earth survived another virtual day, though infected telelobotomized heads had to be exploded to kill the virus replicating adware into universal cellstreams twenty-four seven if not greater frequencies (now possible)…At the funerals, loved ones often wept, but the most plugged in of mothers knew and sometimes podcast to the mourners that their child died 4 a good cause… Most had grieved the loss already, many years back, when television first apprehended  their children… the royally decreed experiment carried interest where many asses had been kicked: 2 the never ends of the earth… we will be all right the sky said to the ground, or we  will not, the ground whispered to the grass, overheard by all the gossiper weeds standing at the ready, who, by and by, began to sway side to side with worry (not unlike their human counterparts) beside the creeper vines flat with indifference…the whole ecosystem seemed to take it all, the wrong way, too.

people work better when driven (insane) – ix)

Some money making murder mystery venture was proposed, to save the world.  But money could not help us now. Unless we wanted to sit on a sidewalk in san francisco. For the park-your-ass meters. To keep the park-your-ass enforcers off your ass. You got to have dry wall for brains or some quiet desperation, to wake up one day and decide to act out by some innovation on pickpocketing. But that’s exactly what happened, when it was clear the world was not for saving. Maybe the whales, but not the world. Just as  Steve Jobs and crew were in his garage creating the macintosh… just as Packard and Hewlett were in a garage creating the printer…simultaneously as all garage bands ever were in their garages plugging in and cranking their amps to eleven… some asshole was learning how to steal your identity in his parents’ garage (because i am sure he didn’t own a garage, himself, not yet anyway).

So we take the good and the bad, together, naturally. All of those garage experiments evolved into cottage industries and then empires, over the course of thirty years or more. While you and me were coming home from work (or not), and planted in front of the TV. Could we reclaim all those hours lost in front of the former tube now pixelated flatscreen phenom, we may have devoted them to better causes than working our marvelous retinas into a pulp.

People work better when driven. Better than being coaxed into a couch, sucked into that singular, savage and brutal addiction to the once marvel of engineering become luxury item become mass-produced producer of idiocy via artificial contrived morality tales to snakeskin sales pitch to fear-propagating political weaponry, become feng shui killbot 2000, become that which we must now look out for as gravity takes it from the arms (through the window, above us) of the desperate if not suicidal multitudes who, having lost all personal integrity and dignity to the thing, found, in reactionary thoughtfully thoughtless rage,  immediate end to the problem and all its projected yet false happenings which made superfluous the very lifeblood flowing through any man or woman or child. To the sole singular purpose of pressing a few simple buttons to todays essential pseudo life-giving (soul stealing) contrivance or advertisement or other lobotomized offal better known to drainage pipes and sewer systems and other some such forgotten, abandoned, set away from human senses so as not to offend, offenders of our tentative and more than ever before gelatinous hold on society…finally did the right (though mad) thing by throwing another sorry-assed lightbox out the nearest window…. which, i propose, never would have happened, had they not been driven insane.

by Katya 07/13

Atlantis, times three

i am trying to find myself

between commercials

apparently

i am located

somewhere deeper

than that

Atlantis

times three

i remember almost dying

the weight

was too great

i got

stepped on

like flagstones

I saw you there

we could touch

almost

through our

imperial pints

of tears

drowning

Atlantis

times three

i got stripped

like a stripper

but without

so much

a choice

off the walls

in the paint

in the darkness

the memory

faint

gracefully

i laced up

to give them

something

2 remember

gracefully

i tried then

2 forget

sometimes

i grabbed the knives

in the kitchen

and turned

toward them

screaming

its real painful

to look

i could drown

in it

Atlantis 

times three

i found me

by looking

baptized

by watercolor

bled down

in the city

bled out

to the valley

sweet canvas

of colors

shelters me now

the painted walls

i like to

leave them

this way

i am different

i am young

my spirit

touched by

the sound

of the colors

dripping down

Atlantis 

times three

is where

i am found

-Katya

July, 2013

people work better when driven (insane) -viii)

People work better when driven, like rain. Not like nails through plywood. Not like slaves. Nothing narrow. Driven to a point as deep as bone marrow. Where the levee breaks. The point of overflowing. To the point where sanity and reason dead end. Where we may become highly emotional and sensitive. Where we conduct electricity and switch channels, facile (with ease, if you please). Irrational? for certain. Intelligence? Beyond standards. Insane? Well, not sane, in the best of any sense of not sane. A psychosis? Perhaps. Psychotic break? not necessarily. Long past the neurosis? Most likely. Ferocious? Like a tiger. Outlawed? Most definitely, like the wild are outlawed from your tea parties.

sachomes #1 by k

What american culture seemed to have lost sight of, somehow, somewhere in the past;  was the continuity and emergence that soon comes to pass. That dead end or limit, got taken literally, indeed. Never mind if travel may continue on foot. If left unbound and not institutionalized, unmedicated in some cases, people can get relocate themselves in the land of the lost. What by all appearances looks hopeless, even criminally insane? May find self-remedy, in the realm of the spiritual. The soul has no ordinary bounds, you see. The soul was made for being extraordinary. This is the soul’s inclination.  Past the point of knowing, really nothing is clear. Past the point of comfort, the mapped out area. Past the well worn territory of both mind and body. Past the breakpoint of rpms in your Ferrari. Past familiar. Out of area. Quite impossible, and why? Because part of our nature needs to learn how to fly.

People work better when driven (insane) -vii)

We stayed in the Motel Seven Deluxe Suite, you know, the one with the hydrogen bed and the nitrous oxide satellite feed? We fastened one another into the zero def chambres, where we felt HBO and TellTime into the night. Tactile feedback chambers were all the new rage. Supplemented, and in some cases supplanted, all visuals. Transcended temporal limits. The future! Was it really with us? In accordance with the present. Uhh…wow?

Wicked! was the exclamation all over Boston, when MIT held an open house to showcase the event. Of course, two billion watched at home. Only five or six thousand bipeds actually crossed the Charles River. Most of those took the Redline. Some took the bus. A few trifling souls, actually swam and never made it. The river was being sanitized, but the project yet to completion. Not everyone apparently knew. The Boston Harbor was much cleaner. Chalk it up to universal solvent. The Harvard crew team sculled right into one of the gas filled corpses, the next day on the river. It hardly made the news. What with the breaking of the tactile chamber phenomenom. What with the not-so-far-fetched claims that our human undertaking had finally brought the two into alignment, present and future. Despite the predictably unwelcome intelligentsia criticism. Which came back across the dirty Charles in elastic and immediate response. Faster than an EMT to an heart-stopping event.

The problem, the small world of most educated braintrust informed, was that said invention professing temporal re-alignment, if not a hype (which many knew right away, probably was), occasioned the grave consequence of leaving the consumer with no apparent future. But this was all shuttered into the past. Our emotional scales of distress smoothed out over and into the world, like the skips of skipping stones, behind us. The braintrust was archived. We could only remember how we virtually cried our carbon tears into the deluxe thick wet darkness of the light. At the moment of passing of the longest virtual night. How the tomatoes rolled off of their vines, and planted themselves in West Hollywood sauce vats. Sloughing off their celebrity skins. Their seeds and juices bubbling up effervescently, acid-mannered offspring of the rich and the famous. We could see red, again. Without having to immediately experience the frightening momentum of our great cultural furies. A safe and projective identification was no longer impossible. Standing on the sidelines of the regular though tawdry self-mortification which comes of a reacting-out upon the fingered source.

So was the way of the world, in the past. The common tale of intentions, paving the paths to hell. Now hollow and insensate, paved over in the gloss of primary colors, dutifully lacquered by some diligent postmodern botomaton. The thread of today, diving into the embroidery of tomorrow. So much for the phrase; to beg, steal, or borrow.

people work better when driven (insane) -vi)

The mouth has been watering for some time for a little taste of the really real! Far from the office-as-is. Far from the home-land-security-cam. Far from the life-support system. The Business class. The identical non pinstripe suits. The ladies unable to wear open-toed shoes. Life which is not a beach, even when you live directly on a beach. The gentleman frowned upon for windsor knotting their ties. This isn’t England. We don’t have time for that shit. Deducted from your paycheck. The mentality here. The program we must follow or else. Leave your dreams at home. Put your unpublished novels in the shredder. There’s no glory in your personal story of desecrated ennui. You owe yourself and your country some restitution, for all that rest. Bipolar? Autistic? Schizoaffective? Come one, come all! People wait in line for a diagnosis, just to get away.  Fuck the stigma. Be the illness. Covet the experience no more. Self-actualized mental illnesses. You wanna work it like that? Stranger things are happening, so get in line. Start somewhere. Let a county physician try and know you better than you know yourself. Cognitive behave yourself badly. Be a kid again, or role reverse your kids into parenting you. This is the quiet desperation of those who have spent the better part of their wonderful miserable lives within cubicles.

Heroes. That’s what we ought to start calling ourselves. Those of us who have sacrificed our sanity, to join the really real. Because heroes are the ones who wanna wake up, sunshine, and want you to wake up, too. No envy, no coveting nothing. No needing of what can be ordinarily supplied, to get them going with their bad selves and into the world that way, all human and scarred and shit, all making mistakes and so forth, all in the luxury of the poor, dishevelled, diy, really kinda real and  sensitive and depressed and anxious and emotional and socially awkward or not but creative in a way of living or working all day at some best effort cause with a heart and some passion or compassion otherwise sold at such a great discount and cost on some chopshop butcher block of supposedly trickled down economics. But instead owned and held dearly though appearing laissez-faire or loose or otherwise inaccurately judged, when all it is really, is worn out from trying. Worn out from giving. Worn out from being other than.

We are the  untold heroes and we are real. We don’t need to dream, but we do anyway. We might be found cracking nuts in some blue diamond almond factory down the street in the day. Or throwing paint chips at some glue-dipped armchair and passing it off for high art at some oakland first friday telegraph avenue meet bourbon street doused in whiskeytown rotgut penniless parade in the evening. All the drunken prairie dogs come up off their wooden skateboards to see. It looks like some lost vision.  But it’s not lost, not really. Just looks that way. Don’t be fooled. And sure, the pickpocketers will be among them. High art, my ass! will be the first thought crosses your mind. sometimes. Bottle bands and road flares lit up for applause. Kids hooked on ropes, bouncing off buildings. Calling it dance? There’s solid proof of wasted time and effort squeezing dreams dry. But we don’t let them stop us. Because this is heroics, 101. Acceptance. Insanity. Serenity. Insanity.

Can we continue? Not if we have to ask, no. This is the whole of it, to press on and on doing what you believe in most, then going to sleep, waking up, and doing it some more. You won’t always be happy, you will experience alot of pain and ridicule. But you grind up and juice some more caffeinated heroics, what with yourself and what you offer, and you offer your lifestyle, up to the world, and the young ones see you and wanna be you, because when they meet eyes and meet hearts with you, the mind falls away and the age and the physical and mental pain no longer affects us. We become made in the shade and bonded to one another. All artisans and artists, sisters and brothers. And we get beat up and beat down, and life throws us shit. But we somehow manage to just handle it. We work ourselves up to something good, something greater than great. I think we get there and feel it, then our bodies and minds let up and relax so nice. So natural from living this way. Then we can laugh our souls out right onto our tables, out of our windows and doors on the street. The light and the laughter. Replenished. Replete. Through and through, and another day approaches us and we take it, no fear. Because starvation cannot locate itself in something so dear. Its our twenty thirteen heroics gonna get us out of any bind. We are our national treasure, no doubt. keep our heroics in our attitude, share our talent like its gratitude. save the usa. this way.

people work better when driven (insane) -v)

Such was life, hold the tv. After the last dollar was spent at the dollar store, after the last hand vigorously shaken by successful mall recruiters, after the last, shiny remnants of humanity sunk into the glistening parking lot tarfill….whatever was left of us shrunk softly and quickly back into the vortex of  tv, hold the life. The only thing could awaken a man to venture back out, was the promise of a woman. The women would be lured back out by their children, of course. The children had the time, energy and naivite to go out again and again, and demand more. They damn well deserved more! Truly. In their machine-washed clothes, eating their fast foods too quickly. Wondering what was the purpose of papermade books were. Drinking their teeth clean of flouride enhanced waters. Sucked into screens, labels and the temptation of high fructose corn syrups. Over or under most recommended daily allowances of various vitamins and minerals.

So what was it coaxed you and me out of our shells? Out of our mobile and anchored homes? Out of our me-tv schedule scaffolding? Who or what held out the promise of the driven? What got the working men and women out of their birthday suits and angry bird slippers, and back on the not so high speed trains to their less than inviting workplaces? Was it Yerba Mate? Cocaine? Amphetamines? Fear? Was it patriotism? Capitalism? The desire for greenbacks? Dead presidents, fresh in the hand? Was it cream? Cash rules everything around me? Was it attraction or promotion? Was it some new fragrance free working man’s lotion? Witches brew or magic potion?

k by k

Or maybe we just needed a haircut. A break from the monotony. A thirst for a bigger box to live in, just for a day. Maybe a virtual mentor in the shape of a paperclip appeared to us, on our screens. Maybe an outfit had to be picked up at the drycleaners. Or a package, at the postoffice. Or some money needed laundering. Maybe the permit to gloss over guilt or shame for being layabouts, expired. Maybe the sun or the moon revved us up? Maybe a declaration of war that would be neither seen, felt or heard. Maybe it was some doctor’s orders. Maybe the meds needed refilling? Or the cavities needed filling? Or did we fall out of our apartments accidentally, after we fell out of bed?

Maybe we had not woken from some dream where we were in some strange land where we became filled with adrenaline, time and time again, and crouched like tigers and cats to pounce upon our next meal. Some strange land where we were hunters again. Even gatherers. Not just gathering moss, while stoned. Maybe in this bizarre fantasy, we were also foreign to the concept of being entertained. Maybe circus people were more acceptable, even praised? Maybe we were the freaks in our dreams, maybe we were america’s least wanted! Those of us who lived in front of stage, watching, listening, applauding, cheering, eating our throwback dinner theatre fare, one course at a time, one act at a time, frozen solid between the closing and the opening of the curtains, or drinking ourselves into a chablis coma. Boxes of wine on the luggage carousel, circling the wagons made of stone, parked right up under your grill. Cream puff for desert. Aperitifs: at the end.

Maybe the hands of time were touching toes, then can opening counter-clockwise outside of our attention spans. One length short of a blueprint. One donut short of a dozen. One act short of a play. One tab too many, and now the escape key won’t get you out of it. You get the message with the sad face an artistically-declined elementary student could have drawn: kill page… So you do it. You kill it. Like you were told. You stab it with the steely knife. The curtains come down like a fuckin’ guillotine! Sweetheart! See how it snapped?  The dust off the velvet end? Just like that. Just like us. Just short of ye olde wooden floor a thousand Caesars and Oedipis and Hamlets have dragged their sound and fury across, demanding of themselves nothing less than a miracle.

Then, after hours, after blood, after sweat and tears, leaving you and me. Leaving me and you, in our own silence for a second. Our own magnificent silence… the most beautiful, sacred moment of the whole damn affair! The chance nobody knew they were taking. Complete darkness and silence. Envelopes the air. Brings a semblance of peace, to our cream puff war. Before being upended, and lost in applause. Just like us, sometimes. Beautiful, wonderful, delicate. We are. For a moment. We are…before being again upended. And lost. In applause.

people work better when driven (insane) -iv)

No, don’t be scared. Just pay attention, brush your hair out your eyes. Sit up straight. This is the haircut we have been waiting to get you, I mean, the cut you wanted. Listen to your heartbeat for a minute… see? Just talkin’ about it turns us on. Everything changes. You are not who you thought you were. You have been touched! You can’t tell? That’s just because you’re still waking up. Come on, we can urge it on, ourselves! Purchase that fresh electroshock device on tv. DIY brain fry.  Sanctioned by many, legal in a half dozen states, yours included! Just send that self-addressed, self-licked envelope to the Pharmaceutical Brain, Newark, New Jersey. If you postmarked it yesterday, we will send you a bunch more. Paid On Delivery. That’s if the FDA doesn’t intercept it, on its way from our factory on Better Buy Island, never heard of it? A landfill we filled off the west coast of Mexico. Not anywhere near the other one, Narco Domingo.

Wait, if your’e a superuser you can skip all that nonsense! Download the mobile app on your rooted phone. Make sure you pay some dude on craigslist a couple of bucks to root it. Or your favorite tech-savvy son or daughter, of a friend of a friend. Or anyone on a subway under 40 can do it. Probably before you reach your stop. Go ahead! You can super-use someone. It’s not against the law! They might even decide not to bitchslap you with their skateboard. Kids these days. So likable. So unlovable. Figures. Their mentors were people like me, genXers. We taught them well. Everything they haven’t learned from that show I(Almost) got away with it. Props to the discovery channel and subterranean skies. Thanks to the exorbitant cost society pays, to distribute unprofitable PR department lies.

Anyway, about that haircut, the perm. The DIY brain fry, I mean. You just have to agree to the terms. You don’t have to read them, silly. Touch your touchscreen. Swype the bitch. Come on, now, let what’s left of your imagination run wild. Anything goes! Twinkies and Michael Jordan just came out of retirement. Well, Twinkies did. MJ must be next. They didn’t go nowhere. Just waited for folks to miss them enough. Peek-a-boo! We missed you. Okay okay! Yes, I will do it, stop begging. I shouldn’t have told you my age, I suppose. Just be aware, I have boundaries these days. Don’t think I will troubleshoot right out of my clothes.  Story of my life. But I have started a new chapter. Okay, now listen, take your android and bump mine, just do what I say. Otherwise this download’s gonna take you all day. Hey, step back! I don’t need to smell your breath. Just the phones will touch, that’s as close as we’ll get… and Boom! FEEL IT?!? the shock? Works off the same principle as static electricity, I suppose. I’m not a scientist, exactly, not at all. I met a few of them, though, in Evanston sub-basement tech halls.

katya (blue#8)

So now you got you’re app on this icon on your homescreen. 4 whenever you cannot see straight. Hair in your eyes, resentments and lies. Commuting home, next to thighs, legs and thighs. Google it, if you want, there’s no user manual. All i know is this beats your average triple shot machiatto. Here take this gravity brush. Your hair is standing up. Won’t do for the interview. And welcome, sweetie, welcome to the clear full of light. You heard me. I can be trusted. Pro Bono. All right? The clear full of light. Three i-sheets to the wind? Just touch your pretty icon, and then think of me, or someone sweet. Your i-sheets will be reconciled. Virtually, in a moment. Better than a half-litre dry gin, to dissipate a heavy London fog.

I know it seems like some kind of fancy new perversion of reality. But reality and virtual, makes some sweet virtuality. To be driven. To tears. Motivated. No fears. Insane, but not crazy. What we would pay for such a fresh way of being? And yet, I hasten to say – we give it all away!  The only thing to do. The only way to be. No impediment. Not anymore. Not like you. Not like me. About time we insourced our own change wrecking crew. Refashioned our images. Pulled out the memory foam and replace it with goose down. Airbrushed our waterlogged decaying fuckin’ attitudes, man. Photoshopped for body parts, hearts, minds, and soul. Took the noise out. No more or less deviation than extreme. Left the ranks of the thundrous wonderbread, of regimented, swing shift disciples. For the graveyard shift.

A federated gang of the driven insane! The formerly motivated, headhunted, cubicled, well paid soldiers of fortune. The Dr Whos-Who of timestamp travel efficiency. Clocking in and out the central artery. Before and after a series of bypass surgeries. Endless summer construction. Parking our asses irreverently, in the very middle of the street. Former pretenders, talking heads, Wall Street cutouts and stitched material. Whatever. Today we don’t think first. We take our shots through farmers market produce. Filtered water, front and back. No hangover necessary. Please and thank you very much. Long the long stretch of endless paper pushing. Short the short life of rigorous dreaming.

Katya Mills 07/13  katyamills.com

like thunder

All my world had puffed up like a blowfish around me,  then blew a massive hole in the ocean. Like those bastards, BP. I came out like Jonah from the belly of the whale. I had found those goddamn roadflares from my truck. The ones I never had when I needed them, stranded with my hazards on halfway down an exit ramp off the great highway. Well, I took advantage of my luck. The moment the clouds gave way to the sky. I struck a match off the heel of my boot, and lit those mothers. Without hesitation. That’s when the whole thing blew wide open. Pretty close to the time the world was supposed to end, again. The impact left ink trails falling all around you and me. Poisoning my ecosystem and  yours, too, for a little while. Until the great ocean diluted and detoxified, and cleaned up my mess. So life could go on again, uninterrupted. I’m sorry. I can tell you I am sorry today and I mean it. I thought about it for a long while. Days upon days, actually. There was hardly nothing to do. I had taken my usefulness out of me. Fell asleep on the couch in the dead heat of the day. My kittens stretched out wishing their fur away. The television was on. The television was off. My hold on reality was tenuous. I lost a cat out there. Just like I lost one a decade earlier. I lost alot more, backsliding and sliding. Everything I tried to communicate seemed to come out all encrypted. The more I plugged in passwords and master passwords, the less safe I felt. Probably no one but my ex-boyfriend really truly wanted me dead. But I guarded what was left of me, with all that I could. The nightmares cascaded, if I fell asleep in the silence. Only the ceiling fan spinning far above us. The Tibetan bell I hung off the light fixture was ringing ever so softly beside a broken ankle bracelet I hung beside it. When I could breathe again. When I could read again. When I could look you in the eyes again. That’s when I noticed. When I no longer wanted light, but got lit anyway. I picked up the kittens and kissed them many times. Their bodies hung limp from the palms of my hands. They trusted me so well, they could drip off my arms and melt into the air. My heart melted inside me, over this. The trust, I mean. What a fucking gift. I carried them and myself down the hall to the bedroom. Many times, every day. My eyes half burned out from so many moons and full suns. I can feel my age. The surface temperature of my skin seems to have elevated, substantially. My head aches, and my belly grows. The infertility is juxtaposed. My imagination was seen as a dove by a merchant marine long out at sea. Coming home. My spirit is the delta. The heat of the day seems to linger all night there. My kittens cannot stand to drape over me for too long. They want to. But my body, their fur, well, it’s all much too warm. All my world had puffed up, you see, an inflammation of my soul. And this wasn’t gonna let up so easy this time. Not this time. I had done alot of damage, now. I had painted over the woodwork. Restoration was a bitch. All those relationships I chose, over the relationship I most needed. Let me tell you, it is good to live alone. I hope to stretch time out into solitude. With a steady stream of social media from which to drink. With a world outside my windows waiting for me, when I cannot think. I lost alot by losing myself all the time like that. This was okay, to be worn out and all. I could remember the past, I could tell you the truth some day. But the conscious bold type is screaming grade A psychotic. Still fresh. I think it only right to be humble and patient, not slough the old skin any faster than it wants to. Not so much, but maybe a little at a time. Maybe a little like now. I am not afraid, but rather listening to my truth all alone like I should. And it’s telling me things. Important things. Nuances. Sometimes painful like hell, sometimes touching me so deep. I am so sensitive. I hurt alot. I suffer, but not always in silence anymore. I cry alot, but without shedding tears. A lot less drama. The explosion was necessary. A spiritual emergency. The difference now is the break. Allowing things to shift a little. So I can safely think. So the ecosystem can take a little ink. So I can go out and buy my rice and pasta and fry up my corn tortillas in olive oil, while the green beans are roasting, Indonesian Sumatra. My life is a blessing. Any way that it goes. My choices fall in succession, in rows after rows . The holy temple of my spirit, was always with me and protected. This was my saving grace.  She almost got ground out with my Newports, under my heels. I often tried to extinguish her. But I have so much to offer, like they say. I could open a fucking restaurant and offer all day. Anyway. The moon, she is waxing, and the darkness fills around her. I can see it, feel it, know it, be it. The substance, the system, the whole damn thing rides on spoke balanced wheels. I roll them twelve miles, as I get to know myself again. I roll those wheels and the flame delivers like magic, between my forefinger and thumb. My sweet kittens, four brown eyes, two on either side, watch in wonder. In wonder. My verse drops my spirit, like thunder. Like thunder.

Katya Mills, 07/13 @ katyamills.com

people work better when driven (insane) – iii)

No, don’t be scared. Just pay attention, brush your hair out your eyes. We can get you that haircut we have been waiting to get you, I mean, for you to get. Ummm… I promise, things will be better this way. This is life! Hold the tv. I know it sounds strange. Listen to your heartbeat for a minute… see? It’s different this way. Everything changes. You are not who you thought you were. You have been touched! Listen… see what I mean? The arrythmia, stupid! It’s going away. You can’t tell? That’s just because you’re still waking up. Come on, we can urge it on with some of that new spangled electroshock. It’s gotten real popular. I think you can download it on your phone. Just have to agree to the terms. You don’t have to read them, silly. Just touch your touchscreen. Swype the bitch. Come on, now. Twenty-first century? Ding-dong! Twinkies are coming back. They didn’t go nowhere. (Just waited for folks to miss them enough. Like the professional athletes. Come on out of retirement again. Peek-a-boo! We miss you). Okay okay, no, now wait let me finish downloading it, too, because like anything good, it requires a little bit of teamwork. No loners! Groupspeak is in fashion. Spit shine collective. May seem weird at first, but doesn’t everything? Let the relativity kick in, and weird becomes normal. Shit, you gotta know what i mean. Isn’t that how you attracted all your friends. Okay, so now take your android and bump it with my android, and boom! FEEL IT?!? It works off the same principle as static electricity, they say. Google it, if you want. Its won some emmies. Or grammies. Or google playmaker awards. Whatever, man, just do it. Whatever you want to think. All i know is this beats a triple shot machiatto blended irish carbomb, anyday. Feel it? Here take this gravity brush. Your hair is standing up. Won’t do for the interview. Anyway, welcome to the clear full of light. You heard me. The clear full of light. Oh, ya, I said YOUR INTERVIEW. What? Did you think I came by to hangout? See, that’s your problem. You have made up stuff to define stuff to make a life out of nonsense. That’s so fucking GenX, man, what are you looking to do next? Pull the trigger through your toejam? Jesus. You don’t need to reinvent Catcher in the Rye. All the good creative shit, the dreamer shit? Its been dreamed! Its been done. Move your ass out of Pere-LaChaise and back into the real world. Time to get PRODUCTIVE. Fuck the age of aquarius! I don’t care when you were born. The only sign you’re gonna see, is the sign you pencilled in and hung around your neck before you wandered onto Market Street with a deathwish and a papercup! I know it sounds harsh. I know. But listen, No more repititions. Stop asking me why I dragged you out of bed and out here with me into this frigid fucking morning. You think I like it? This is a one time deal for you. No repetition. Think of the bottom line. The BOTTOM LINE. If all was repetition, there would be no bottom line. Like that famous number. Hash tag. Pi. Whatever. 3.141414 to infinity, dumbass.

Sorry, I know i’m being critical, but i am keeping it real for you. Real is not always nice. Dummy. Hey, it’s not like i don’t tell myself the same in the morning in the mirror. With my gravity brush. Three i-shocks to the wind. But guess what? At the end of the day, I can say: at the beginning of the day, all the way to the end of the day, I am one driven dude. DRIVEN. MOTIVATED. The only way to be. No impediment. No speed lumps, bumps, undulations, or tables going on here. Not anymore. Not like you. I fuckin’ outsourced a wrecking crew, man! Reshaped my image. Airbrushed my waterlogged fuckin decaying attitude, man! Photoshopped the noise out. Pulled the pillow up off my suffocated orifice. My heart murmur. One more analogy and we’re all through. But atleast I got my point across. This ain’t no backbeat boyz. This is the original tom-tom thundrous wonderbread of the regimented swing shift disciples. Yes, its a gang. In the best sense of the word. A gang of motivated, resume padded, headhunted, cubicled, well paid soldiers of fortune. The Dr Whos-Who of timestamp travel efficiency. Clocking in and out the central artery. Parking our asses irreverently in the very middle of the street. Pretenders, Talking Heads. Wall Street. Whatever. We take our shots through farmers market produce. Please and thank you very much. Long the long stretch of endless paper pushing. Short the short life of rigorous dreaming. You not only need to walk the walk, you also need to talk the talk. Stop trying so hard to assert your individualism. That’s just some raggedy-ass abstract for a special order. Well, I got news for you. The world is leaning McDonalds over Burger King. And you will have it like everyone else gets it. No special treatment. Remember the bottom line! We can’t fuck up the bottom line, if we have a prayer’s chance in atheism of competing with China.

Life! hold the tv. You’re the one! You’re the one who signed up. So what if it was after the last dollar was spent at the dollar store, and the recruiters glistened in the parking lot tarfill? So what if tv. hold the life. Held out the promise of the driven? Anything to sign you out of that funk and back on the railroad. Don’t be scared. Look alive! What you need is something altogether different — what you need is this. A haircut. A bigger box. A mentor. An outfit. And a permit to enter your own kitchen, soldier. Because you know you’re mouth has been watering for some time for a little of this.Hello! Knock knock? Who is it? Reality! Corporate world. Business class. Identical non pinstripe suits. Ladies, no open-toed shoes. Life is not a beach. Gentleman, no windsor knots in those ties. This isn’t England. We don’t have time for that shit. Every second off the timestamp is deducted from your paycheck. Ok? Let’s get into the mentality here. It’s a simple kinda program, a simple way of life. Leave your dreams at home. Put your unpublished novels in the shredder. There’s no glory in your personal story of desecrated ennui. You owe yourself and your country some restitution for all that rest. Bipolar? Autistic? Schizoaffective? Come one, come all! Let us coach you out your self-actualized mental illnesses. You wanna work like that? Like what? Work your way into a straight jacketed institution? Work your will away at some fanciful creative endeavor? Please. You just need some motivation, son. Let us know you better than you know yourself. We know how you tick, we have studied homo sapiens and cognitive behaviors for the better part of our wonderful miserable lives within cubicles. Heroes! That’s what we call ourselves. Because heroes are real!

Wake up, sunshine! Heroes are real. They don’t need to dream. They’re out saving the world, not cracking nuts in some blue diamond almond factory down the street in the day. Not throwing paint chips at some glue-dipped armchair and passing it off for high art at some oakland first friday telegraph avenue meet bourbon street doused in whiskeytown rotgut penniless parade! All the drunken prairie dogs. Come up off their skateboards to see some lost vision. High art my ass! Bottle bands and road flares lit up for applause. Kids hooked on ropes, bouncing off buildings. Calling it dance? There’s solid proof of wasted time and effort squeezing dreams dry. No, I’m not angry. No, no, i’m not jealous! Can I continue, I was working up to something good, I think…And all the teenage angsters and the oakland gangsters having their out of body experiences over that fucking couch sprayed with paint chips, yelling Hey! Look! A masterpiece! What does that almond farm factory sweatshop sucker call this thing? Barber Shop? Barber shop! I get it. No way! Dude, your girlfriend looks so dope passed out on that thing. Her ass hangin’ out. Loveseat for one. Maybe she’ll get a haircut. Hey, man! Someone give that bitch a haircut! This is Oakland. This is the East Bay. This is experiential learning.