What long nights will I find from here? Sometimes, I wonder if my body will hold. It’s awfully heavy nowadays, bones weighted by muscles mangled and creaky, like old, wild roots grown too deep, now being ripped up by psychotic lumberjacks. What a rush, though—internal evisceration, that is...
No less, there’s still tons of work to do on the block and time goes fast in this lane—regular sidewalk romps in our makeshift living room, full of milk crates, candles and used blankets. Early yet, still tons of things to do and time goes fast in this lane—regular sidewalk romps in our makeshift living room full of milk crates, candles and used blankets. A misfit pack of strays found home, or as close as any one of us could hope. Take yer drugs ‘round the corner! Don’t put that in yer nose, there’s strangers here! Turn up that goddamn music so I can’t sleep! No fret, no one is sleeping here. Lungs apart and filled by smoke whenever it comes, just enough to take each breath without choking. This is the way it is at 3am on the block, overtones of transitory resolve, with no regard to the random passersby drawn to our curbside haven. Our candle lit of warm compassion is but a hearth, a signal of sanctuary in the weird streets. Stumble in and have a seat, drink a beer and keep yer head low—let’s fight those demons together, man! We can smoke and laugh about it later. Paint your thinkings onto cardboard and hang it on our cabinet. Rip down the branches of ornamental cherry trees and drum on the concrete if that’s what you’re about. This space is Ours and Yours, as long as you prove that you’re solid enough to maintain some semblance of sensible composure. It gets quiet again, for necessary focus and pre-dawn art projects, some time after a collective inspiration hits. Indistinct shouting in the eerie corridors of Old Town doesn’t phase us; we’re too familiar with such shadow-hour machinations to take notice anymore. If bad noise draws too close, we’re prepared to smash it out with baseball bats and heavy sticks, though it rarely comes around to that and for good reason.
Somebody eats shit on a bicycle in the street beside us and screeches an expletive or two, drawing our attention outward for a brief moment. He groans, but won’t say if he’s okay and rides off on a wobbly tire, into the familiar night. As he leaves sight, he becomes the city and we figure that he’ll probably be fine. I’m up for good, but more powder comes my way, just to be sure. Give up yer nostrils! Be clear within your own head—it’s becoming vital now. You’ll need to be hyper-aware of every movement apart from your own, even that down several blocks—yes, even the falling of any leaf which we didn’t invite. This is how you exercise vigilance—even in your downtime—and, how crucial it is. When the Undead come around, keep a close watch, as they have sticky fingers and tend to feel around behind Our backs. Take sleep out of your mind—those yawns are only habit and should not be considered. Cigarettes in excess will do the trick, if it’s your only option, but you should send a friend to Greyhound, if you can. Take care to say "thank you" for free drugs and make sure to smile so that you don’t seem strange. Light the hearth if it’s gone out and stay near its flickering flame until sun-up. Is someone watching the Cat or is he still asleep and oblivious? Let your lover take his leash and send them on a big adventure around the block. The world is so big to him—and, to me, too—so, sniff at trees and crawl under parked cars, because you can. Meow at people you don’t like instead of talking—this will make things easier in the long run. Cover your shit in the gravel, so your friends don’t have to smell it and demand tummy rubs whenever you feel anxious. Be more like your cat, because his shit is figured out. It’s all quite simple, with the right tools—even a cat can do it! His moony eyes trace every visible inch of this block with unflinching scrutiny, the mark of a true Watchman. He and a gentle canine curled up and dozed away from each other. I ate a healthy dose of psilocybin, to level out with them. Daybreak was upon us then, so I threw on my hat and ran off for more cigarettes.
Half-dead construction workers yawn at 5:30 and cats go after birds. An apple gives me decent sustenance now and I realize that I might be fashionably late to whatever arrangements I’ve made today, in exchange for hot coffee. I rode on the high and magnificent waves of new morning sun showers and lifted my arms in the street, giving rise to every beautiful vibration that echoed from my core. Let it pour out through your fingertips, like electric lava—so hot that it feels like ice to first touch. These are the sensations that remind you you’re still alive and give fulfillment to your every breath. Don’t forget this—carry it with you on your travels and seek it out at every corner. Smoke coffee and drink cigarettes while you still understand what the fuck that means. Be late to everything because it gives you the odd appearance of someone who knows. If you allow punctuality to be your burden, you’ve lost sight of what it means to be present. Have no doubt that what you’re doing is intimately meaningful to yourself, your loved ones and all of the random smilers that get a kick out of Our display. Cry every time that you need a break, because this is your time, so you’d better use it before we all stop turning. Find an old refused cabinet on the curb to make into a part of your home and love it with all your might. Protect yo friends! Find any goddamn thing that you can use as a drum and play it as arhythmically as your heart decrees and own it—people will start to notice this and recognize that you are, at least, capable of producing a jive upon which most decent-hearted folk can feel out a common ground, if nothing else. Voice yourself boldly and without forgiveness to anyone who cares to listen. Call your mom unless you can’t or shouldn’t and let her know that you’ve consumed at least two-thousand calories today. Waste a police officer’s time, if you haven’t already, at least once a day—call in and report something wildly absurd, such as that you’ve just witnessed Officer Sanders and Oliphant brutalizing an elderly woman in Elephant Park for shits and giggles. Raise dramaticized terror in your tone and have a friend mimic the sounds of screaming in the background, to give the dispatch operator a proper jolt. Do this as many times per day as is feasible, and from encrypted phone servers or local payphones. Give away your lucky cigarette, because luck probably doesn’t exist in any tangible form and may not be worth relying on anyway. Accept your losses and honor their memory fondly and frequently—this step is crucial for moving forward. Turmoil will find you at almost every turn, so keep your tongue sharp and be prepared to use it in the way of a hidden dagger. Imagine the infinite crescendos that humanity could reach if only everyone shared Our sentiments of righteous autonomy, casual sodomy and unyielding comradery. With no warning at all, the general public would dismiss themselves from their slave jobs for good, gathering en masse to set flames on Babylonian Territory and erect newfound coteries upon the rubble of once-venerated government properties. Police officers and such other federal accessories would throw their silly costumes over the bridges and atone for their atrocities by loading up on fantastic quantities of mind-bending doses of this and that, dancing nude in the rain with funny hats and tambourines, chanting and whooping incoherently at stars and big fires, sleeping for twenty hours a day—eating, fucking and making art for the rest. We were born primed to govern our own—each of us a born king, to no one but ourselves—to live as though we’d never worn neckties, that we’d never been nameless tools to the putrid cogwheel of oppression. No longer will mankind allow such transgressions to plague our right to survive. Alas, my friend. It’s about high time to kill the fucking cop that lives in your head.
Ah, what peculiar cycles of dissonance that frequent me! It seems to happen this way as clockwork—periods of explosive thought come in high octane sweeps, where my hand becomes motorized and generates prose on pace with whatever I’m wrapped up in...and then, it dies. This part feels much like plummeting over the initial drop of a roller coaster, but descending instead into a cold purgatory of subconscious shutdown, where those pesky synapses backfire on themselves and send seering shocks to your spine that demand you to write, but nothing sensical enough to suffice will come to mind.
To avoid such afflictions, you may wish to ventilate your brain, so that the steam won’t build up and swell your skull. A healing doctor might prescribe you with a handful of cyanescens and send you to get lost in a desert somewhere. You’ll need plenty of rest, hydration and fine literature to last you through the journey, but it should set your head straight enough to feign some new inspiration, if only for a moment. If you need a more short-term approach, you’re always welcome to stick with ol’ faithful—heavy substance abuse, total ignorance of the time and no sleep for at least three or four nights. If you’re the type that can handle this sort of thing, you’ll find that it proves unquestionably effective and awards corporeal results, but often time at a cost too high and treacherous for some to grapple. Though what a mighty venture it will be! Gauge your threshold very carefully before embarking on this fabled quest—folks with weak fortitude tend to spin out somewhere near the 37th hour, but don’t realize it until they’ve already entered the stratosphere and gotten lost in an antithetical gravity. The idea of pushing your limits is romantic and all, but I know too well to fuck with it. Anyone who is set on living this way should come close to catastrophic recess of the Ego at least once, if not just to feel the pure sadistic vertigo of collapse, then certainly for the sake of instilling a sense of stark existential terror deep within themselves. Reaching this point will etch an everlasting mark at your grandest peak of substance-induced inebriation, to establish an easily discernible boundary within your own cognition that sounds the emergency alarms whenever you come too close. Find a reliable "panic tether"—some familiar mantric totem that frequents your waking thoughts—and attach it to yourself firmly so that you may reel yourself back in when things get too heavy. These sort of subconscious defense systems are more than just good practice—they’re essential for anyone who still possesses an inclination to avoid total brain failure. If this doesn’t apply to you, then good luck, man! Enjoy eternal catharsis, you beautiful martyr! We’ll make you into a cautionary tale and hang graffitied Missing Person posters of your face under the streetlamps of desolate bridges, with a random telephone number, if for no other reason than to throw those nosy goons off the trail, whenever they inevitably call in to say that you’ve been spotted arguing with pigeons on Burnside. This will be no fun for anyone, I assure you. But if you do end up losing yourself to those dumb pigeons, tell me what they say—I’ve been wondering for some time now.
Words, oh words—have you failed me yet? No illusion of grander weighs me as this, such that falls onto my shoulders with each turn of a page. Those lines yet written mock me still, like the dying stories of dreams whispered to none but the wind. Somewhere beneath the trembling apprehension of this pen, I unknowingly nurture a strange magnetism to which my ink follows those same lost whispers. The beauty in such a concept lies beneath the waves, upon a shifting sand of which the murmuring epitaphs of dreamt realities have long since been scribed with sacred impermanence—that my fingertips trace the liquid currents of ephemeral guidances wild as fire, not much different than borrowing inspiration from a cloud in flight. If this pen maneuvers itself to the rhythm of some subliminal influence yet unveiled, then who is actually authoring these profligate tales? Hardly could I claim these words as mine, if even the very breath of men is stolen from the land.
