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There comes a point in every man’s life where he begins to question his sanity.  Or maybe it’s just me.  Some days I’ll look at myself in the mirror and think “look at that handsome devil,” and other days I want to murder the image like Dorian Grey.  Some days I look at where I am in my life or look at what I have written and think I’m a sober genius and other days a complete drunken idiot.  The point is I can’t relax.  Sometimes it seems I am unable to relax for long periods of time so that it becomes extremely stressful and all consuming.  A man comes up to me for change.  He is clearly homeless.  I give him 51₵ and tell him that it’s all I can spare, that I’m currently unemployed, myself, too.  He walks away and I look back, part of me sorry that I didn’t give more, part of me split and part of me lied.  I could spare more (we all could). It’s an obnoxious, obvious white lie coming from another niggardly white man, myself.  I should not have said anything.  Part of me really does want to help, while another seemingly stronger part of me just wants to help myself.  It makes me wonder if every act of charity I’ve ever committed is an act to get on the God of the all-seeing-eye’s good side like Santa Claus this Christmas, like if I feel sorry enough and act sorry enough I won’t have to feel or act sorry anymore (because I’ll finally get what I’ve been giving, bullshit).  Mental health is a funny thing and like most funny things, we laugh for lack of a better solution, the laughter of the high-minded insane.  Perhaps laughter is the best cure we’ve got.  Maybe I’m just scared.  Every dream of mine seems to be a nightmare.  My Dad thinks I have a screw loose and I’m sure I have lost the whole nut.

               I often think that if I were crazier, that would be my best solution.  I want to act crazier, but my righteous discipline withholds all outward expressions that love endures and makes me silent and reserved.  I have reservations for just about everything, all the way to food, sleep, shelter, and friends, to name the basics that I believe the majority would agree are certain rights afforded even to the lowliest few.  How is it then that I second guess my own health and nutrition, my own schedule, the place where I live, and the relationships that I choose to keep on a second-to-second basis?  It’s maddening really, and it’s all I can do to just ignore it and keep muddling along.  My animal nature would do well to be more self-serving.  How is it that I martyr luxury for the sake of fulfillment?  Meaning, I decline every favor for fear of not being able to accept it graciously enough.  Every grace afforded me I take as a mark against myself, and I feel pity for myself for my inability to properly return the favor as if I’m losing some kind of ongoing competition of celestial etiquette.  It’s ridiculous, I know, but as the grinning Pumpkins say, cleanliness is godliness and god is empty, just like me (as I should be).

               There’s part of me that responds to my ongoing patriotic duty to the United States to explore every united state, not just in physical location, but also within the DSM concerned states of mind that are united somehow within my psychologically observable being made manifest by splitting my labile personality.

Whether such personal abstraction and social detribalization be a “good thing” is not for any individual to determine.  But a recognition of the process may disembarrass the matter of the miasmal moral fogs that now invest it…The hero has become a split man as he moves towards the possession of an individual ego…translating all aspects of our world into the language of one sense only…the words the reader sees are not the words that he will hear…the inward monition, or the sudden unaccountable feeling of power, or the sudden unaccountable loss of judgement, is the germ out of which the divine machinery developed…tactility was a kind of synesthesia or interplay among the senses, and as such, was the core of the richest art effects…”since Cezanne,” to paint as if you held, rather than as if you saw, objects…Hypnosis depends on the same principle of isolating one sense in order to anesthetize the others…we cannot think of sounds without thinking of letters; we believe letters have sounds. ~McLuhan

 Is there a quick fix to the eroding scenery?  I don’t want a quick fix mind!  (I believe we have been hypnotized!)  I want a quiet utopian villa on the steppes of some forest abounding with plenty where I may live in harmony with the land if I were to be so pleased, where die gedanken sind frei meets Walden meets “Gladiator”.

               Manifest error, city-boy, you have nothing without the State.  The State, the state of states, the ruling state of the ruling party who has decided to make an inch our standard metric.  The State, like some biblical allusion to a dead system, the federal system of rule that oversees our 1984 thoughtspeech.  Well, in a state where thoughts are free, as protected by the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States of America, what is there to fear regarding self-expression?  (Cops ruin everything, save Serpico) The way that antiquated Puritan ideals condemn the wicked, injustice is a dish best served cold and in the Northern States where the atmosphere is also frigid.  Icy ice ices the glazed brὓleė, torched dessert Puritan Peruvian Portuguese Satanic taste contingent.  What is wrong with bad math?  Blood runs bile black.  Judgment interrupted rule of symbols, pictures, statues, statutes, and icons.  Northern cold discomfort, lost without friends, brrr... 

If it is not the whole room, then it is the grinder, the mouth, the tooth, the talking sharp, the disjointed bark of some dental drill sergeant manning masochism and depersonalizing peons by taking away any sense of self identity that everyone else seems to hold onto for the sake of sanity.  I play the orphan in a crowd of family members come to old sport.  Thanks Gatsby, thanks Rilo Kiley – The Good That Won’t Come Out.  The good that won’t come out sits in silence and refuses to be identified.  It’s not like anyone would believe anyway…so cynical, acting the know-it-all, one hand to the finger to the jugular pulse taking time, the other hand to the finger in the butt-hole taking temperature, gauging the overall health like a digital doctor and laughing at the self-involved spectacle Hibbert.  What good is the internet if we’re all passively plugged in watching and nobody shares?  (Star-shaped Seuss Sneeches go out of style…)  Pretty soon somebody will be telling us everything that is and should be entertaining, and we’ll believe them with a mind impassive to alternatives.  Pretty soon we’ll all be as slaves to our own social media, making think that socializing is such a chore, like me, an effort a breath, emphysemamnesiac, Weezer – Only In Dreams.

Is asking Jesus to save me selfish?  Jesus, save my friends, save me enemies, save even those I am indifferent to, but please, Jesus, save everyone besides me.  I am but chafe for the chattel, a massive irritant, a social boil.

               Who could guess what I would become, and what the Hell happened to me?  Why the Hell would the Hell happen to me?  What sets me apart?  What makes me unknowable?  What makes me a mystery?  What is obscuring me?  What is making me opaque?  Let me be clear.  Let me be forward.  I am a problem-solver who sees no problems, who sees nothing wrong with anyone else, yet through mirror blankets of surreality, what the Hell is wrong with me (self involved son of perdition)?  I only desire to change the game. 

The universe:
big bang period point,
streaming ray verse
phonetic infinity
what I see is fixed and
what I visualize, mandala,
intricate art work washed away,
medium made clean
flowing down the river and
through the sands of time
no reason why
why should there be a reason why?
There is no why.
Intricately colored circles
fetter funny little men
lost in an idea, stuck on a thought,
hung-up in a net strung from the clouds
or floating in internet satellite space
where no one can hear you scream (Alien™),
only furiously text a temporal segment of the universe
converted into some silent rant
to be Kindle®d into dancing flames or
a single meandering e-reading bonFire.
The be all and end all…
don’t you want it?

“According to the psychologist David Fontana, its symbolic nature can help one ‘to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises.’” ~Wikimandala.  The metaphysical reality presupposed our ideas of objects superimposed on a plane of our own manifold imaginings, thus bring forth and into light that which spontaneously creates and dissolves before our very unseeing eyes, normally quite unconscious to the inherent mystery that undulates therein.  Imagine a sheet.  Upon this sheet, anything imaginable could be imagined, from Love to Cheeseburger (“I ὠ Huckabees”).  Our ideas and the inherent implications that these ideas attest and assert is inherently the constitution of our very being and a window to our very soul.  Daren Dugan’s cheeseburger is of a much different character than the cheeseburger of a vegan, an ex-McDonald’s employee, or a starvin’ Marvin.  The vegan may find that ‘cheeseburger’ fills full of disgust, a wise former employee may have reached a fat saturation of ‘cheeseburger,’ while Marvin’s mouth may water at the thought of sweet, succulent beef.  Even Daren Dugan’s cheeseburger may change in relation to Daren’s last meal, last cheeseburger, or a whole slew of factors and variables that will determine how Daren responds to his next cheeseburger, cheeseburger of the future.  Shall we canonize the cheeseburger?  Shall we worship the glorious beef of the ground?  Shall we take a picture (Canon® eyes) to keep that ideal burger at hand closer to memory?  Nay, for it is indiscreet to worship false idols, be it golden calf, golden arch, or cheesy burger.  It is for us and ours to accept the gift in good graces, to hold it for awhile, and to let it dissolve into salivary units, (lest we become craven slaves to our cravings, feeding a dank dark drink hole fizzing full of Coca-Cola® in middle somewhere, America while the rest of the world forgets our precious lump of gall).

               Boo to those Satanists of us who pay undue credence to many a holy unholy idea all the universe over.  Are some ideas more dangerous, or more terrifying than others? (Terror, terror, tear roar, tear, ROAR! Fire up the books!  Burn the Bibles!  Cook the Korans! Torture! Behead the Infidel!)  Certainly some are more insidiously poisonous, some are detrimental for fixation, and there are some that utterly torture and crucify for the sake of salvation.  I was locked up, and when I looked up, salvation was at hand, “Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins.”  Making a condition or situation dutifully desirable comes within the scope and skill of salesmen who themselves must be dutifully convinced of the inherent worth of hulking family jewels, an unshakable pride, and a commitment to an inherently desirable affliction like big aching ball scratch (eager to be mound).  Verily, verily, when the walls dissolve as often most often do, the object itself seems to demarcate itself, as it should, a thing apart.  When the highest ideals low like cattle in rosy rumination, I find empathy shading in anticipation of storms and mulling rest time cud.  When Thunk thanked, a Neanderthal remembered and a bull shat!

 Action speaks louder than words unless the action itself happens to be speaking words at great volume.  A man of action calls to attention that which is in need of another, quieter type, teaming up, resorting to subliminal extremes to facilitate necessity, waving paper currency for a favor.  (Laws were intrinsically written for heavily salivating slave types, Blazing Mongo.)  Brim having been reached, a bartender works the tap, quelling the flow and stemming the tides of derivative change, volume per metric unit over time, arriving at an answer of providing decimal pints per second to a mob of patrons thirsty to death for the liquid ferment of fomentation, social lubrication, and whiskey Richards (who steel themselves to the wilt).  Whaow!  Suds are overflowing my cup!