Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It was Buñuel's first film and was initially released in 1929 to a limited showing in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months. The film has no plot in the conventional sense of the word. The chronology of the film is disjointed, jumping from the initial "once upon a time" to "eight years later" without the events or characters changing very much. It uses dream logic in narrative flow that can be described in terms of then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes.

Ladder to Space.

I’m sitting on my bed, packing a bowl that I’ll smoke by myself. I’m okay with that, I hope you know. There’s a boy that I love, but maybe just a little bit. I guess the strange part is that I used to love him a whole lot more, but things change and I try to look at things more realistically now. He has never, and will never love me but that’s okay right now. You know why? Because there are men in this world who are passionate even when they’re not in love. I want (no, need) to be one of them. There are people who write these beautiful, powerful songs about being in love with people they have yet to meet. They are able to because they have hope, because they are okay with being vulnerable. They’re okay with believing they are worth love, and that one day they will live in it. I love someone who doesn’t love me, so I will never again give him my heart. But I refuse to numb myself any longer. I refuse to shut away something as beautiful as love, just because I feel absolutely, horrifically vulnerable in loving. I figured out how to be happy on my own, not because a man put his hands around my heart or pulled the drawstrings at the corners of my mouth into a smile.

Cigarette Smoke Goes Up.

Spent the evening across the border in Juarez, Mexico:

Walking through the Plaza in front of the Cathedral…the sun hot beating down on my pasty skin, eyes full of lusty tension meet and lose contact. Everyday dig a little it takes up the time…jack off phantoms whisper hot into the ear…Shoot your way to freedom. The sun creeps across the sky. Stop for a cold drink…some fruity concoction. Try to find some shade, but it is all taken up by bloated and wrinkled fucks gasping in the heat. The junky sits with needle poised to the message of blood and the con man palpitates the Mark with fingers of rotten ectoplasm…

A beautiful boy of eleven, thick black eyelashes and rosy cheeks sits in front of the fountain admiring the sculpture with an obese pedophile lurking nearby, bloodshot eyes burn behind black shades. He squeezes sad and tiny cock in sexual frustration. I find a hole on the long concrete bench between two old geriatrics and sit under the spreading chestnut tree and light up. Legs crossed, Wonka shades, black cotton button down summer shirt, blue jeans, black Kenneth Cole shoes; I am feeling it. I sit there puffing on my Lucky Strike with American Imperialism. Two young Mexican guys sit opposite me and size me up. I check them out through my Wonkavision and they both are quite the lookers. Poorer class, shabby clothes, dirty shoes, but still hot…who am I to judge? The two buy an ice cream from a vendor and make a show of sucking them so nasty.

The sun swings into midafternoon and the boy parade hits full force. For the entertainment of the turistas, the faux Aztecs have begun their daily show in front of the Cathedral, dancing amid the tribal thumping and drumming of the native muse. Waving away an army of shoeshine boys and candy vendors, this old humpback gash drops her bag between my feet and pulls out a bottle of water. In Spanish, I tell her I don’t want any which then brings her to wave it in my face. “Okay,” I say in Spanish, “How much?” In which she replies one dollar. I explain to her she must be outta her fuckin mind, because I can go into any shop and get a bottle of water for a quarter. She began looking around helplessly and bleating, “No intiendo!” (I don’t understand him!) Some hottie slid up to translate in which the price was negotiated to fifty cents and when I handed the old cunt a ten-peso piece of course the old gash didn’t have change. Withered old bitch. Cunt wobbled off cackling.

Well, said hottie introduces himself as Javier and we chit-chat and he asks obvious why-are-you-here-questions. I see that he has been drinking and invite him for a beer at Bar Buen Tiempo just around the block. This Javier is just my type: Dark copper skin, straight black hair parted down the middle, little pencil moustache, thick lips, amber eyes, thin, his face has those classic Indian features, high cheekbones, hawk like nose…whew!

We entered Bar Buen Tiempo and took a seat at the back of the bar. The cantina was sparsely populated with only three or four fags. The fat lesbo bar attendant gruffly asked for Javier’s identification, “Are you a National Citizen?” She snapped. Javier irritatingly and drunkenly fumbled for his identification in his backpack.

She looked at me and I smiled, “Do you want to see mine? I’m from Planet 10.”

After getting Javier’s papers in order, we drank two caguamas Carta Blanca’s and got a good buzz going. Javier had one hellava sense of humor and had me rolling with laughter. Deadly aphrodisiac, humor. Javier confided in me that he wasn’t Mexican after all, but was actually from Honduras. He was trying to cross the border to go live with his brother in Dallas, Texas. I also noticed that he kept checking out my ass every time he got up to go take a piss. And I mentioned this. “You have a nice ass, guero.” He smiled running his hand down my back to my ass. He flashes me a smile as I light up a cigarette, “So, what’s the deal?” He asks.

“Well,” I said, taking a long drag, “First we’re gonna finish our beers…then we’re gonna go to my hotel room and you’re gonna show me how many positions you know.”

Glug, glug, glug…that beer went quick. On second thought, I don’t think we finished them. Back through the Plaza, past the pigeon dung covered bronze bust of El Primo Benito Juarez, cut the corner of my street, past the Mexican Communist Headquarters (So ominous looking…so Orwellian.), turn the key lock, slam the door closed. Man, was his body hard and tight. Lips slid over lips, tongues wrestled, hands fumbled to get clothes off and the two of us jumped onto my queen size as Daddy Yankee thumped Rompe from the hi-fi. On top of me, Javier grinded his erection onto me as he bit and licked my shoulders and neck causing me to moan and gasp uncontrollably. I just let loose. My legs wrapped around his waist, I grabbed his head and said to him, “Whatever you want to do to me…my body is yours.” He shoved his tongue back into my mouth while reaching around and fingering my ass. He continued with his hand as he bit up my neck and he was driving me wild. Javier lifted my feet up over his shoulders, spit into his palm and lubed his penis up. Slowly he slid his thick cock into me, slow at first until he had it all the way in. Then he started to fuck me like I haven’t been fucked in some time. We lay on our sides and he got behind me and jabbing it in, Javier held my ribs as he thrust into me, kissing my back. “Aqui! Aqui!”, he gasped. And I felt the hot spurts of semen squirt into me as we both shivered to a climax.

Afterwards, we showered together, kissing under the hot spray. Dressing, Javier and I walked over to Burrito Row and had some burritos and Pepsi, talking of life in the United States and how he wants to get over there. I walked Javier to his bus stop and after shaking hands, said goodbye. I walked back to the Plaza and the night was cool and the stars were out. There was some hip kids sitting by the gazebo with a guitar singing Mexican folk songs, I sat there and listened. A couple of friends of mine showed up, Ignacio and Alfredo, and we strode over to Café Central for coffee and sweet bread and talked of movies, Che Guevara, deodorant, guys, and flying saucers. Yapped it up well past 3am. I really do miss living in Mexico...

Experience.

Writing Tip: Screw with your readers. Start the story in a nice and comfortable format, and then when the story picks up momentum, WRECK the format. Kick it down a flight of stairs. The climax of your story is not comfortable for your characters (it shouldn’t) so make it as uncomfortable for your readers. Make quick-and-fast chapters, give them a different POV. Screw with them. They’ll love it.

The Shit Writes Itself, Mac.

Writing is daunting. With all that’s been happening in my sappy, uneventful yet somehow complain-able life lately, I’ve been writing often. Frequently, I sit at my computer and just let my feelings flow from wherever I feel them to the tips of my fingers, bouncing back and forth between cold keys…and no matter what I write and no matter how much time and thought or effort I put into each tap on each key and every entry as a whole, it’s wrong.

It’s all wrong. And that’s why I’ll never be a writer like I’d secretly love to be. It’s frustrating. Most writers, they go crazy. They have a masterpiece, one just mind blowing novel which does well usually after they pass, which is a problem in and of itself, but this masterpiece, it empties them. After people buy it and read it and engulf themselves in the art that is this person’s past seven or eight years of writing, the author himself is hollow. They write away all their feelings. No matter what the story’s about, they put too much of themselves in it. They spend every waking second on trying to improve it and fix it and they go absolutely basket shit crazy. And that is not something I want for myself.

And yet, that is the path I have chosen. The crazy, mad, sweaty writer glaring at his laptop screen like a psycho typing out raw, peeled prose of filth, poverty, and degradation. Hours spent - no days spent holed up in my dank room pounding out one atrocity after another. And you know what? I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Cold Coffee.

As Enrique gazed out the window, watching the trees sway in the breeze, he couldn’t help but think of him. The years had passed much faster than he had expected and if it hadn’t been for his class distracting him, he would have realized that the four year mark had just passed.

Enrique drew his legs to his chest, trying to ignore the ache he felt when he thought of his death. Four years should have been enough time to grieve, yet still he could not stop. He hadn’t even known him for a year when it happened but they had grown so close so fast that it still felt as though he had lost a lifelong friend.

It was these feels that made him so angry towards those who believed someone you only met and talked to on the internet was not a real friend. Enrique would look at them with a harsh look in his eyes and tell them that sometimes internet friends were more real than offline ones. But though Enrique said that, he would then recall that he would never have met him if not for an offline friend.

“Ahh…” He sighed, “Sometimes I’m jealous of him. At least he got to meet him in person.”

And it was because of that friend’s connection with his sister, he thought, that meant they found out about his coma and eventual death.

His thoughts drifted to more positive memories before once again recalling that he had begun to fancy him. Something that had only been realized when his heart skipped a couple beats when he had suggested he come back to Laredo for his birthday and that this time they would actually meet.

Enrique often wondered if that niggling feeling was the reason he still was in partial denial over his death. As every year around this time he would lurk on the sites they had both frequented, in the vain hope that it was all some nasty joke.

He rubbed his eyes, thinking those thoughts was both depressing and exhausting. ‘What if’s’ did not change what had actually happened. The dark had gathered outside as he had stared blankly out into it, lost in thoughts as dark as the outside world had become. But at least, he thought, he had finally stopped crying.

Lolz.

Wants.

I don't just want to be published. I want to be famously published. I want to be known. I want people to read my books and quote them. I want them to become movies. I want them to make an impact on people’s lives. I want fans to write fan fiction about characters they want together. I want a crazy fandom. I want people to cherish my books, to love them. This sounds incredibly selfish, but I need this.

Number 5

I had recently received the first proof of my next novel titled Of Men And Maggots. I will be marking it up, correcting the usual petty mistakes - comma usage, changing a word here, deleting a word there, adding new dialogue and such. 380 pages and I am at chapter three and quite pleased with it.

It is the true story of a seven day trip me and an old lover named Juan Holguin took across the United States from El Paso, TX to San Diego, CA and the mis-adventures and odd-balls we encountered. Unlike my previous work, it is being presented as a work of fiction (though, it is not), I had changed the names: I am John Poston and Juan is now Rocko Tapia.

This has been taking up my time.

Indeed.

down

People who think depression is a choice, take a second to think. How would it feel to wake up and not having the emotional strength to face people? To think that time is just passing by with no real reason? To feel so alone even when you are sitting in a room full of people? To have to put on a face and hide your feelings because in your mind you think no one would care anyway? To lose friends because you can’t find the strength to go out and you can’t physically be ‘happy’? To cry yourself to sleep, hoping you wouldn’t wake up then when you do you are exhausted from the night before, and it all starts again? You try to hide your feelings hoping no one would notice. Now tell me why someone would choose that? Depression is an illness, not a choice.

I Am.

I feel guilty for being. I am human but I feel inhuman, I’ll never function properly. Don’t attempt to comprehend for we are individuals and my thought do not belong to you. I was born broken thus am unable to recuperate. I feel guilty for being, let me decay and rot.

Dark Backward.

I could never kill myself. That would be too kind.

I deserve to be stuck here suffering.

Mental Rambling.

I haven't been feeling well. On a mental level. Quite depressed these last few days. I have so many images racing through my head - millions and millions of images - I do not sleep much at night. I lay there in the dark, coolness of my room and ponder over the most asinine crap.

I am currently in limbo awaiting the proof for my new novel titled OF MEN AND MAGGOTS. It will be my sixth book. Kind of hard to believe that I have been writing straight and non-stop since 2008. I told myself that I was going to finally leave El Paso and take a trip. Meandering across the country until I finally reached my destination of Puerto Rico. I had sketched out another novel, however, I want to begin that once I arrived on the island. I need a break.

But, there lies the conundrum; I am quite comfortable in my digs, but not happy. I want diversion, excitement, the thrill of living against all odds on the road like the old days. El Paso offers none of these things. I can not connect with the indigenous locals. All my old friends have moved away - there really is nothing here that interests me. But, every time I talk with someone here about it, they wind up convincing me to stay. I realize their view - they enjoy stability and structure in their lives. so, do I - to an extent. I am not ready to "settle in", yet.

Juarez was an option, but I am burned out on that mooch infested town, plus I rather not duck and roll from random gunfire every time I step out of my apartment when I want to but a taco.

And so, I am in mental limbo - I was going to purchase more furniture for my apartment the following month, but I think I am going to put it off. I will make, or attempt to make, my final decision when I am done with this current work.

At this moment, what am i going to do? i do not know. I truly do not. And, that is driving me mad.

The Morning After.

There is nothing in the world better than waking up in the arms of a handsome man. In the dim coolness of the cheap hotel - the muffled noise of Ranchero drifting down a lonesome street, church bells echo in the distance - the air is stale (smells of mildew mixed with dust) and he rolls over, checking his torso for bed bug bites in yellowed, stiff sheets.

He looks up, blinking like a drowsy tortoise - smiles and asks how I had slept.

"You hungry?" I answer, using a finger to brush away bits of sleep from the corner of his eye.

He slides up, lays across my chest, plants a small kiss on my lips.

"I don't want to go to California. I'm going to miss you." He sighs.

(Hector had recently acquired his papers and passport to live and work in the United States and will be moving to El Monte, California to stay with his aunt.)

I say nothing and simply lie there - gazing up at the stained water splotches on the gray ceiling - and stroke his lithe back with an idle hand. He twitches, flicking a small cockroach off of his foot. We lay there, silent.

He needs to go. It would better his life. He needs to move on and forget me. I mean, I really don't love him anyway.

Down the Dead End Street

Two drunken faggots as faggots can be drunk - Hector decided he wanted some tacos and then some coke in that order. Ditching those lifeless bitches through dark cobblestone streets of the Old Market - whores, fat and nasty, stand and wait forever sucking on a silver tooth. Black phantoms lurk in the alleys between closed shops - reek of stale urine and vomit - house the quivering junky. We stop for chicken tacos, slop on a plate, down two glass bottled Pepsi - then jet down Avenue Mariscal - furtive glances from pimps as we dodge buses belching air so dirty that it clogs your pores.

Up to Burrito Row. Angelic Beto is working his stall - his fine ass smiles and greets us, Hector and I make small chit-chat. Some of the doormen of the titty bar across the street - Erma's - catches glimpse of my gringo ass and starts the hustle:

"Hey buddy - no cover!"

"Over here! Big pussy!

"Nice lady! Nice lady! Pussy women!"

I wave them on with a poker face, cause I mean business and they sulk away only to pounce on three other American assholes.

Heated conversation between Beto and Hector en Espanola that ends with Hector handing Beto some crumpled pesos, which were placed under the till - a small white packet of wax paper was placed in Hector's hand and we walked out the door - both saying, "Gracias!"

"Orale." Said back.

We cut across Juarez Avenue, past loud and drunk college turistas in hip-hop garb, past taxi drivers on the hustle under the glaring ugly neon of teeny bopper discos catering to the El Paso University crowd. Down the dead end street paved in beer bottle caps to Hotel Bombin - $20 a night trap, pay the haggish lady behind the grill, up the white tiled stairwell, unlock the deadbolt.

A snort or two of the coke offa the dresser - wheeee! - clothes are flung off fall onto the bed naked, clinging to each other, kissing passionately. Fingers, tongues, and cocks are sucked - lying on our sides in the position of 69, giving each other the best of the best. Rolled onto my stomach and lube is applied, Hector slides himself in so long and nasty. Shiiiiiiit! With quick jabs the Mexican pounds my ass for a good haffa hour more or less - bed springs boinging and I squeal and moan like the loud puta I am. His thin muscular brown hips smacking against my smooth and tenders, grinding that cock up into my ass hot and savage he grunts into my ear, "I'm almost there - let me cum in your ass!"

"No!" I groan,"Cum on my face!"

He yanks himself outa me and flips me on to my back - my ass hurt and throbbing. Hector sat on my chest, masturbating wildly, "GODAMGODAM!!"

Creamy! Eyes closed, I feel the hot squirts splatter across my face and chest - hear Hector gasping. He rubs his erection across my lips; my tongue licks the thick tan head. I look up at him - that silly look on his face. Pause. Laughter. "Let me get a towel, guero." Hector retrieves a ragged towel from the bathroom, long skinny cock still hard and glistening - swinging free.

After I clean up, we lie side by side and share a joint. Hector takes it from his mouth and places it in my lips. As a mariachi band plays ghostlike down a dark street, I stare up at the ceiling fan whirling slowly - maybe I should stay off leaving. Rolling stones gather no moss - so they say...

Friday night Frolics.

The Patio Bar is a juke joint inhabited by revolutionary college students and hippy kids. The decor was much like a Hollywood set depicting a Mexican bar - old posters of the city, dusty piñatas, futbol posters, a row of red Christmas lights over the long oak bar.

Took a table in the back next to the rockola and played Aqualung by Jethro Tull as I downed a cold cerveza Sol. I was accompanied by three new friends along with Hector - Alfredo, Sarah, and the eye candy, a young kid with the strange moniker, Diamond. A bucket of beer was bought and we chilled talking, laughing, joking.

Things really got goofy when this old fart of an American tourist tried to put the make on Sarah - old geezer went as far to inquire where he could score for crack to the appalled girl. We all told Dr. Moreau - cause he looked like Marlon Brando from The Island of Dr. Moreau - to fuck off. He stumbled out muttering.

The bar closed and we staggered to a corner 24hr taco shop - after gobbling some mouthwatering tacos and an obscene amount of several Tequila Sunrises, we stumbled down to The Red Zone for young Diamond was horny and we all agreed to help him alleviate his angst.

After attempting to enter several strip joints - Diamond didn’t have his identification card on him - our night was saved by a charming hustler, who got us entrance into The Mambo Room. Despite the place being empty save for about five bewildered tourists and a gaggle of tired looking hookers - I mean strippers - the dump wasn’t half bad.

As our hustler host seated our group - Hector and I went up to the bar and retrieved a bucket of beer much to the hustler’s dismay.

"Why are you buying beer from the bar?", he bleated, "You´re cheating me out of my commission."

"You've just been fired." I stated flatly.

"What about my tip?"

"Don´t underestimate Americans." I quipped, waitering the bucket to my friends table.

Then of course we were besieged by the homeliest skanks in the place. This insolent, demanding cunt plopped down next to Diamond and ordered a fifteen dollar drink - at which we all refused to pay. So, the twat snatched a beer from the bucket and guzzled it with one hand and pawed Diamond´s throbbing crotch with the other.

Then - oh, joy - at the command of the DJ, she stood to attention, made her way to the stage and jiggled and gyrated obscenely to Woolly Bully. Diamond was fool enough to snap a dollar into her stained thong, so after she had finished shaking her nasties, the bitch slithered back to our table and began to paw at Yours Truly. I politely pushed her away (She smelled like rotten cantaloupe.) wherein, she viciously pinched the back of my neck - drawing blood. About to slap the fuck outta her, but a waiter dragged her off into the murk - the whore stumbling and wasted, cha-cha heels dragging.

Diamond was fucking horny by then and with the help of both the lurking hustler and Alfredo, they disappeared into a back room to get Diamond a bitch and "a massage with a happy ending". It being 5:30am, it was time to cut and Hector and I left for home. Walking down the streets at dusk, three Amazonian Transvestite Hookers blocked our path - soliciting their wares with obscene dramatics.

"Not now, guys!¨I croaked drunk and tired.

"Whacha mean guys?!" honked one and slapped me on the back of the head as we passed. Don't think so, girlfriend! I whirled around and popped her in the chops. At the brink of a major transvestite lucha libre smackdown, a patrol car cruised around the corner.

"Run!", hissed Hector as we bolted around the next corner, jumped in a taxi and sped home.

I really hate transvestites!

Do You Feel Real?

I saw this as I walked downtown today.

Beat.

There is nothing left here. Just the traces of a lost soul. The walls are enclosing, like my mind, forever shrinking unto itself. The days go on and I live just as shallowly as the rest of the world. Wandering in a lost city of broken dreams. The coffee in the morning tastes stale and the flowers by the window are now a gray yellow. Music is dull and ambitions are dying. Photos are no longer pretty and old post-it notes have lost their humor. My feet drag me everywhere and nowhere, unwilling to arrive to a happier place. Conversations feel distant and meaningless. Nightmares have become my fantasies. The things which I once loved the most have lost their splendor. I am just a shell now, counting down the days until my most deserved demise. I’m an outline of my former self, loveless and expired. I am haunted.

Indeed.

amour-espoir

Forget prose. Forget long vocabulary words. Fuck grammar.

When it comes to my feelings, I will use whatever words I want too, how many commas I want too, and the over excessive use of “because it’s like”. Since I feel like people tend to forget that words are meant to express your feelings, the words that get caught in throat when you talk to someone and the words that get locked deep inside of you, dying to come out of its cage.

It doesn’t matter how you write it, how you choose to express it, anything written by a person that means every single word of their piece is automatically beautifully written.

Can understand the bad.

I think it is time for me to start looking for a place over in Juarez. I cannot stomach this loneliness I have put myself into. I am comfortable here, but I am not happy. I truly miss the hedonistic life of the Sexual Outlaw that I used to live. For the past two years I tried to live the responsible and sedate life that "everyone" was advising me to live. It is killing me. I can't do it. I won't do it! It's not my bag, you dig?

It's back to the slums and hookers and junkies and drunks, back to the thieves and the desperate and lost. Back to the ones that know how to live because that's all they got, not all they have. I mean, really, why not?

Angel Headed Hipsters.

The word ‘beat’ should really apply only to the original Beats. Sure, they were Beat; they were poor, unpublished, near criminal and antisocial whilst they were forming as a literary group. Cassidy, Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg were pot smokers, benny addicts, junkies, jazz fiends, anti-intellectuals who rejected their status quo as any other group of young people, they merely followed in the footsteps of the young from centuries past. The difference is they had the freedom, and I’d say the courage to strike out and reject what they didn’t want, and more importantly, do what they wanted. They said yes, they said go, they said now. They didn’t say no. They lived freedom, they lived jazz, they were the epitome of a philosophy that allowed for anything, that worshipped the individual, that loved art, that was music, that was drama, that was the country, the land, the coast, the sky, the mountains, the deserts: that was America. That was America as was. Endless. Vast. Never to cease, always to go. And when we read what are basically their autobiographies - On the Road, Kaddish and Howl, Junkie and Queer - we feel, lust for, know, and bleed that freedom, those of us who can accept them that is. Of course, the drudgery they knew was extraordinary, I don’t dispute that. But what is freedom without sacrifice? I think today, in our pre-war world, this is what we all lust after. I think these men hold up the standard for love and happiness, even if they were dirty, sad, lonely, forgotten, drunken and ravished by heroin. What does this matter when today the internet defines us, where our world is already known, when we cannot escape each other and can never be free? (I’m aware of the irony - deliberate - and the paradoxes - unavoidable - in this previous assertion, but just think about it.)

The Beats showed us how to live, how to be free men. It was a hyper-masculine movement; masculine in the sense that it was not afraid, it took risks, it was strong, it was rootless, roaming, unbound by convention, ill defined, effeminate, sensitive and philosophical. It was artistic.

It is sad in my eyes (and I am certainly not one of them) to see that today this group of writers provides inspiration to a group of people who are asinine, self-obsessed, bloated by their own importance, sneering critics; they are not artists: just because their hair is deliberately unkempt, their clothes are flea market chic, their music has been bought from hawkers on the streets, does not make them anywhere near the equal of Jack Kerouac. They don’t believe his philosophy: Go go go, to them no no no, to me yes, yes please let me go go go. I wish I had the courage of Jack Kerouac, I wish I had his beauty, his voice, his poetry. These people are aesthetics, the mundane little Oscar Wilde parodies of today, they have no ‘authenticity’ or ‘originality’ to use their mundane language. It really disgusts me to see them posturing, and I am aware that I sound like a complete hipster saying this, exacerbated by my suburban middle class credentials of course, but then On the Road, which I read over a year ago, has left the longest after burn of any book I’ve read, and still glows with persistent love in my heart, tearing at the cynicism of America’s dark alleys, giving me the strength and the urge to shout and lash out at any of you, and to stand and run. When I went to California, I knew my home for the first time, and I knew that my mind was not of this land. I am a Beat, but I am only a Beat because I believe in myself, not because I subscribe to the looks, thoughts and banality of a pseudo-counterculture that postures its way around Brooklyn and West Texas wearing dark pink leggings and trucker caps. Catholic, lost, in love with an ideal of beauty in a land of richness beyond measure, of railways, roads, endless fields, plains, mountains, the Dharma on earth, obsessed by truth and purity, reeling from sin, aspiring writer. Is that me? Yes.

No, not beat, but only beat in the sense that they could never defeat age, because to be in love with the Beats is to be in love with an ageless quality that is always moving, bopping to the rhythm of long lost nightclubs of Charlie Parker, of the railways of America ripped up and destroyed by oil, to the heavens of the plains of endless road and yellow, always in the aura of vastness, never ending life in the land of America. People can’t see it today. I think I can.

The Last Year of Mankind.

On 12-12-12, they're coming. Are you ready?

David Lynch's The Grandmother (1970)

Nobody cares.

I have spent my time frustrated and unfulfilled. Happiness is something found within and I found happiness long ago. I’ve had various beliefs regarding my purpose. I’ve spent time searching for answers. I’ve spent time lamenting. I’ve spent time only surviving. I’ve spent time attempting to improve my capabilities. I’ve pursued hedonism. Sadism. Atheism. Christianity. Buddhism. I’ve acquainted myself with history’s great philosophers. I’ve searched for peace; peace of body and of mind. I’ve pursued social sciences. I’ve searched for understanding. I’ve searched for truth, riches, knowledge, companionship and love. I’ve hunted and been hunted by time. Reputations won and lost. I’ve confronted my fears. I’ve attempted communication with equals and unequal’s. I’ve tried drugs and sobriety. Rituals and prayer. I’ve looked for kindred spirits in literature and speech. I’ve attempted honesty and treachery. I’ve been myth. I’ve been legend. I’ve been invisible to the world and to myself. What I’ve found to be consistent, dependable and unavoidable in this world are violence and fear. They are the ultimate powers that conquer all others. Love being the ultimate power is a rumor. Love is strong and can overcome much adversity, but the blind, incommunicable sweeping force of fear and violence yield to no power. All the love in the world is eschewed and trampled upon in a moment of rage and confusion. I got it now. I’ll figure it out. I accept it. You win. Call me, please. You know where to find me; I’ll be in the light, sans sunglasses, offering you a smile that’s indistinguishable from joy and disappointment, waiting for the ride; or, perhaps, waiting for the ride to stop. I suppose you were right all along and that’s why this occurred. I apologize. Let’s fix this. Finally, inevitably, indubitably yours…

I Don't know Much of anything.

I swear sometimes, we are just so caught up in what we want we forget about what we have. I don’t understand how we as human beings take a breath and don’t see the beauty in this world. We should feel lucky and nonetheless thankful for the music of the ruffling trees and barking dogs. There is only one thing left to do, and it’s to live. Live because there is nothing more spectacular than life itself. And we only have so long before it’s all gone. Before it’s all over and you’re passing stories down from the word of mouth to your grandchildren. Let your skin breathe in the specs of dust and clean air; let your eyes wander to the love in a park bench.

Decay and Doubt.

I’ve nearly lived a third of my time on this Earth, and truths are showing through the fog of life’s uncertainties. As such, it is becoming increasingly clear that I will never be a notable author. No one does, nor will they ever, read my stories with any sort of avidity. I will likely never live up to the image I have always held of myself —an unkempt man spending his days in a dimly lit room, surrounded by dusty books and empty bottles of whiskey, putting fantastic lies to paper and drinking black coffee, with a burnt-out cigarette sagging listlessly on his lip. That dream, I should think, is dead. All dead, even; there’s nothing left to do but go through that dream’s pockets and look for loose change, as Miracle Max might suggest.

Still, that’s no reason to stop.

When delusions of grandeur are all but gone, there’s nothing left to consider but your own sanity. Therefore, each novel I complete will act as a magical Pensive, teeming with what vagaries and nightmares may come; tugged from my brain at the tip of a pen, and affixed to paper for safe-keeping. In this way, my writing will be a way of removing the ghosts from my brain, like Egon Spengler storing the contents of a full trap into the Ecto Containment Unit—when the light is green, my brain is clean.

If I’m truly a writer, being read is just a luxury; an inessential frill. After all, when the piece is written, my work is done. What happens next is between the Gods and the Universe. Let them work it out. In the meantime, I have writing to do.

A Short Film Of Gum Chewing Geniuses.

The Dark Backward.

There is a boy, drunk on the bus, he must be 19, possibly 20, long limbed with a shaved head and large eyes. "ADHD.", one woman murmurs in denial. But, I am so close I can smell it on his breath. His eyes are bright and blue like a cloudless sky. He stands in the aisle, dancing awkwardly to a beat the bus creates by hitting bumps and curves in the road. He shouts out wordlessly and falls and falls. Come here, I say softly and so he does, a small child upon my chest, amongst my arms and soothing voice. Quiet now, shh darling. He is a frightened rabbit and I hold him tight so that nothing will get to him. Settle.