Love Teaching Living Devil Science

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Lex Wick

Go along with it:

I hold your hand and you thrilled with conviction you are, so long before I knew that any true urge was basically false or pretend, and I didn’t know then you were pretending, I thought you were magical and amazing and holding your hand was as if I was learning and getting to know something, getting let in on something which really is what we all want and I know now that is what your power is and after all these years I still think you have this power and at any time can come and take my hand again.

The point of living:

There are those of us chosen, born, made to teach (gross, as if there is any way we can actually talk or in any other way effect all these people oh dear god, really! They don’t listen, they all do their own thing and they love ‘their own thing’ and we have to get into their ‘thing’ thing and from the inside turn them over and over and tell them the truth and oh god my god it’s so hard and long and getting worse over time, I mean, these days sure I am still loved but the window is closing and pretty soon I’m going to have to scream “fuck you, kill people, fuck school” in order to have any kind of coherent respect influence) so you have to get your ass equipped like angels to get these morons smarter, right, that’s the goal. So we can’t fake it, we can’t wear the clothes and ‘blend in’ because these kids sniff that shit pile from a mile away…they know more about psychographic marketing then anyone…they could analyse how shit house the latest campaign is top to bottom. They like what they like. Full fucking stop.

Didn’t you know:

The time comes for your body to be put into the ground or burnt and displaced hence forth in verdant fields of green or else in concrete holes, wherever in which you wish to be desecrated/consecrated. That other time when you, so troubled, so selfish, so self-fucking-centred you…you decide you have to do it for yourself, you have to do it from nothing. It is open and clear, there is no reason to do anything, you have to have a reason, you have to make it up, you have to make it up and believe it and then you have to do it and go on doing it as if you actually really believe it and then say “this is who I am” and that voice inside then says “this is bullshit!”, “this is all an act!”, “I am not this thing!”, “I am not this person”…but you have created this person, you are the only one, you are alone and you have created this person and when you look around all you see is yourself reflected in the eyes and minds of others and how they treat you and you hate them as much as you hate yourself for having/letting them see you like this and the bottom of the pit stuff is where you think you can’t get out, escape, change yourself that you hate and so after fifteen fucking years you are, you really are that external thing, that created acting false thing. By god how hard and disgusting is it to keep living like this: alone, alone on the inside with all these smiling faces who ‘know’ you or at least have learned how to know you in the way you have wanted to be known, because what, because it was easier for you to navigate life being this invented digestible version? This handle-able product, this known entity…this…thing that you are, this shell, this approachable malleable, understood, talkative all-round proper clear cohesive unit thing that you are now?

What devils want:

They give you something, its what you want, it’s a certain kind of, I don’t know, power? No too much (because hey look at you, you are still wearing clothes); but it’s the people. The people: Smiling when they meet you, wanting to be around you, wanting you tell that story or do this thing. And of course you aren’t stupid enough to not realise you are being either a clown or an entertainer, but what it gets you is far more than an entertainer or clown would get. You get; people, money, security, trust, sex, desire, tears and so many other human things. It just comes and sits on your lap and you think ‘why is this happening?’ and then you remember. And then it’s ‘oh, fuck…did I make a deal…did I say the word ‘yes’? Did I say it by not saying it? What then now what do I owe, if anything? If I was so flippant to not care then what happens now?’. Stuff like that. You become scared. And then it’s The Oath to Love.

The scientist speaks:

The room was too small, the walls were so close, making it hard to breath in or out. In was fine, he could fill his lungs and hold it, feeling large, and then after holding his breathe for thirty seconds breathe it out and feel empty, feel as though there is a space available. Then again, looking around the walls, there and there and the roof just there again. He isn’t a tall man, isn’t an obese man, he is a small man sitting in a room feeling trapped and finding it very hard or at least finding the only thing he can do is breathe. Deeply in and slowly out. Closing his eyes and doing this over and over. Seeing the stars and the bright fireworks behind those closed eyes and feeling the chest expand and contract. Feeling the human body taking in air and letting out air. Sitting and breathing trapped in the room he lives in. A glass of water with ice next to him. The ice making popping sounds as it changes. He breathes in again because in this world you live in you breathe and live and drink water like life like breathing. He lets it our feeling the lungs like bags empty out, the body emptying and closing. He drinks cold iced water. The ice slinks and makes a life affirming sound as it pushes its way towards his lips and then slinks back down n the glass. His breathe is shorter and the cold water cools his throat and gut and the lungs now take in more air and they fill up. His legs are short, his arms are short, he breathe deeply and holds the breathe again, arches his back to push the lungs to capacity, spits out a little air as he forces the engorged lungs to their limit and spits out the sir bit by bit through his nose and then mouth. Hunching over the expel all of the air the man is not a large man, he is on a holiday. The room is small and has the essence of ;life. The things you must need. An empty fridge he wanted to put food in but of course he has been sitting in this room watching television and breathing. His legs are skinny and his arms are short and his neck hurts a lot and this time he strains his neck back over the bed waiting for it to crack, thrashes his head left and right and opens and closes his jaw full of effort. Tomorrow he has to talk about stem cell research and how we need to create these blastocysts in order to cure cancer and spinal cord injury. He will say things that will be argued against on the newspaper. The bar fridge has three beers, a mini bottle of wine, a bottle of water and a juice. He drinks a beer and writes it down on the card that you write down what you had from the mini bar on. He opens the nuts on the table and writes it down. He stands up straight and tries to touch the ceiling and breathes in hard and hold his breathe reaching up with his toes to try and touch the roof and collapse on the bed exhaling and sore. The beer is cold, he takes out his phone, looks at it, drinks more beer. The presenter takes out his notes and lies them on the bed, looking at the room, a movie, he is a man in a room preparing for a presentation. He is a man in a room who is trying to breathe. He is a man in a room who will drink the mini bar. He is a man in a room who now walks back and forth in only ten steps saying

“Today we discover a truth, a truth we all know but have been unable to voice, I want to voice this now. And I will tell you there is something deep inside of me that comes from, it comes from perhaps my upbringing. And I can tell you that it makes me feel sick, in some ways, to create, to play with these forms, these little forms of a life. I have experimented on rats, lab rats, I have seen them squirm in fear or thrash in pain. I have attached electrodes to the exposed brains of primates, I have dissected dead or dying bodies of every living animal including human. I have seen them twitch, I have seen them react. But today I am talking to you about the ideal subject. The immoral yet moral subject. The unformed human, the small creature we want to get our hands on”

He sips the rest of the beer and throws this draft into the hotel room’s provided small waste paper basket. He lies face down on the bed and pulls his arms up over his body and interlaces the fingers and stretches. There is a space enough to live in, it is paid for by the university. He pulls his socks off and throws them over near his bags. He has to pack it all up in the morning. Tomorrow he will leave and take all his bags and check out and take his bags to a small room annexed to an auditorium and tell all those people what he thinks. What he has been paid to say. He is paid to say what he thinks. He draws in a another long breathe and tries to hold it as long as he can. In his mind the medical reasons, the spiritual reasons, the kind on personal in-the-body sense stuff of self healing. The feeling that making unborn-not-really-babies-yet things to dissect, the feeling that making embryos to extract dna from, the feeling inside that tells him he is wrong, he is evil, he is disgusting. His chest is full of air, quitting smoking three years ago is working, the air coming in pure and full.

Shopping Excursion, bus 120.

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Lex Wick

I am perhaps forty five or nearly fifty. You know I don’t remember? I know what it is generally but ever since my wife left me about five (eight?) years ago it has never been something I need to keep track of. Funny that. How life is marked by birthdays and father’s days and christmas and children’s birthdays. How they make you acknowledge it, another year, cards that tell you, pictures. I tell you one thing is that in the morning I see a face I know, hair getting wispier and wispier, man, and I smoke cigarettes again, now the god damned bathroom mirror; me and my face, my old whispering hair flying out from my head like a madman. Ha! And that cigarette on my lips man, I feel like a kid again, looking like death though really. God the mornings, the same mornings. Take a shower, iron my clothes, smoke a cigarette, feed the cat, put on my pants and slip my shirt on and do this dip thing to get my shirt into my pants, move around a bit, feeling so alone when I do this though, really, like a dance move, like a little doot da doot to get into my normal attire. Pull the belt closed, adjust the shirt, raise my arms up to pull a bit of the shirt out, look in the mirror to see how its looks and of course it’s the same every time. I fill my pockets up with wallet keys lighter cigarettes handkerchief coins phone and this little piece of coloured paper my daughter made me and she said “dad keep it with you” so I do. Now it’s barely held together, the folds on the corners have been worn away so that when I unfold it there are holes in the places where the corners are but I can still read it and see the picture she drew which, you know, is enough for me. At least for now and for the last three months since I’ve seen her. Yeah I know I know she’ll be around again soon, in a few weeks but man it’s been a while and this little thing, you know, it keeps me going. I know I know. Today, no, recently, though I’ve met this woman and she’s invited me on a shopping junket, it’s on a bus with a whole lot of other people and we’re going to hit all the warehouse sales and factory outlets and stuff for twenty bucks each but really I am going to see her and hang out with her and there’s a lunch in there somewhere so we are going to have lunch at Birkenhead Point which is like a place over the water near Balmain so we are going there with a bunch of her friends to shop and have lunch. It starts at eight am so that’s why, you know, I am getting ready on a Saturday to go out, just get out of my place. I need to put a load of food in my dog’s tray and some in my cat’s tray and put some seed out the back for the birds and half a handful in the dish under my budgie’s tray and there’s enough water there so I can get back later tonight. I’ve been running around so much my emphysema is playing up, man, so I have to stand over the sink and cough cough it out, fuck, breathe in…out…in, you know how it feels? And suck in that air and spit out that lung shit, man, at least I did this before I left and fucking hell why did I run around like that? Stupid really when you’re about to go out on a date, but shit it’s hot out there. I light another cigarette after that because, because, I can do that, I can smoke a cigarette and it helps. Um… that’s what helps because soon I have to walk down to get on the bus. She said eight thirty onParramattaroad. So early! I leave then, closing the door with the click of one lock and then turning the deadlock only my key will close.

Standing on the pavement smoking a cigarette, an old woman who I see almost everyday sitting there. She usually sits as a bus comes, people get in it and it leaves and she sits there. There is no differently destined bus coming, there is no other bus for this stop. I am never sure what she is doing there, perhaps she is hours early for some other pick up and she prefers waiting. Or worse perhaps she has nowhere to go and she sits there, sits there watching the cars and buses whiz by. It’s not a glamorous or lovely piece of road, this bus stop. It is very bad, very polluted, un-picturesque. Still, her in her make up, with her bag, newish clothes, she is there waiting every morning. The bus coming showing it’s purpose not so openly, so partially in fact that even Roe (that’s her name) stands up and take few feeble steps forward towards the edge of the bus shelter.
“Are you going on the shopping trip?” I ask, normally, bending over to appear polite.
“Huh? No no no. I’m off to the city”
“Ok well, this is the shopping bus. We’re…never mind. Not your bus ok?”
“uh, ok” she says, slinking off in a shuffling side step, pulling her dress and bags closer together to get away from me. I step away from her and up the stairs onto the coach, the cold air conditioning immediately confronting. I scan the faces, half faces, people behind their seat and see the half-head of Justine I have known for the last few months. I walk down the aisle as the bus hisses the door closes, lifts and groans off along Parramattaroad. It helps me move down the aisle closer to Justine. “Wow you made it” she says, smiling at me and then to the woman sitting beside her. I feel young straight away, these woman are fat and wearing casual thin cotton clothes, comfort wear, I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-how-I-look wear. Justine too, a thin t-shirt with way too obvious underneath brazier. I am overdressed, shirt and pants, but, it seems they like this, they are all smiling, bad yellow teeth, big cheap prescription glasses, no make up, no pizzazz, just showered fat eternal housewife women wearing the most comfortable clothes they have. “Yep here I am. Good to see you Justine.” She gestures for me to sit down opposite her in the aisle. It means squeezing in next to some other woman who is staring out the window and already clutching a plastic bag full of clothes. She shifts her bag over and continues looking out the window. Justine lets me in with “that’s Margret, she just spent fifty dollars on bras, we were just at the Berlei factory this morning”. “Oh ok” I say, not sure how this makes her rudeness acceptable. “Thanks for coming” she says, leaning over and touching my hand. “No, I look forward to it. There’s men’s stuff coming up right? Not just bags of bras…” and she laughs and we sit there as the bus moves on and on. She talks to her friend and the woman next to me looks out her window.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the third stop on our shopping excursion today, the Slazenger, Bonds andRiofactory outlet, in Sydenham. I’ve got you down for a thirty five minutes stop over so please, if you could alight I’ll be moving on in approximately forty minutes to the next stop in Alexandria. Don’t spend too much ladies it’s along day ahead, alright?”. They all stand up, I get up early to help Justine, she hasn’t bought anything yet so she is ok and turns back to her friends to say something and they laugh. Instantly I regret coming along. I walk slowly down the aisle with the rest of them, all talking and chattering and telling about what they want to buy and for whom. It’s as if their life has no other purpose than to feed and clothe those they are now obliged to care about and me, being basically alone except for seeing my daughter once or twice a month, am some kind of playboy spendthrift tight-ass weirdo (if that make sense) for tagging along or even being here. “Justine” I say, outside of the bus now, waiting for them all to get each other down I think of course that I should be doing that but the driver is and so it must be a part of his day to day, this bus driving shopping trip type of thing; paid for it. “Justine” I say again for no reason, looking about at the twenty or so women mingling around waiting to go in to the outlet. “Go in ladies!” I say, like herding sheep really. The driver says “this is it” and that seems to be enough to get them moving, all wearing individual name tag lanyards written in blue marker. Why would they need to know each others’ names? Inside, the all disperse in their familiar friend groups or two or threes, sizing up clothes, telling stories about who would suit certain things, barely shopping for themselves, instead clothing unknown families and nephews and nieces, each time its another story about who needs what more and how they should’ve talked to so and so to get some clothes hand-me-down but really they do need new ‘x’ or whatever thing they are holding to tell the story in the first place. The sales people are sitting there behind the counter talking too, not caring, this may be the second or third bus of a day of multiple buses they’ll have to process. I wander around, look at the measly men’s section, find a few t-shirts that I may want, decide I don’t need, look over to see Justine talking loudly and laughing with her friends in the bra section. Best to not go over there. Not into the bra and panties section just yet. What am I going to say, that I like something? I’d like her naked, that’s what I can say. That I haven’t seen a woman naked in five years? Hat they don’t want to hear. I am alone, down the aisles, at the end of the rows of men’s is the kids section. I turn away, look back at the reams of men underwear and t-shirts and sports wear. Justine appears and pits her hand on my shoulder with “anything you like?”.
“Uh, no, not really, yet…” and we walk into the kids section, she slips her hand in mine.
“Wow look at this” I say, pulling a small one-piece bodice from the shelf “do you remember?” I ask, holding the small thirty centimetre top to toe thing in on the coat hanger. “What? Do I remember having kids…Ron of course I do” “Yeah, remember how little they were” and I am smiling, probably too much. Justine turns and pulls an even smaller pair or socks from the rack “oooohh those feet, those tiny feet!” “Yeah…wow” and I bring another small piece over with me and we compare sizes, touching the places where our little children’s feet and hands would’ve gone, remembering together what it feels like when they are like that, those little things that we had once. “You know my daughter, she’s, well she’s fourteen now and, I’m going to take her to the gold coast in a few months…she, she wants to go with me. Just her and me. A holiday together after, ha well…it’s going to be great”. “That’s great Ron really, really great for you” “Yeah, I know…and…what I mean is that, it would be ok, I mean, realty great as well if you wanted to come as well, and, you could bring Jeremy too, I mean, they are about the same age and they could, you know, go and have fun and we could just, well, have a holiday and…I don’t know… I was just thinking about it that’s all”. “Ron! Really?! Oh wow, I mean, no really that would be great it’s just that, um, it’s…it’s not that easy to just say ‘ok, I’ll go toQueensland’ or wherever it is, you know. But hey, hey, look at me. Ron, I am going to say yes to you, okay? I am going to say I want to do that with you, ok? So, yes! That would be wonderful!” “Wow ok, really? Wow! OK, um, guess what…I’m going to go and book all that now ok? You don’t have to worry about anything. Consider it booked. Ha-ha! No, seriously, tell me if you don’t want to though ok? But cool. Hey, I’m glad I came on this shopping thing!”

It’s different back on the bus, sitting next to Justine, holding her hand, smelling her perfume, listening to all the other women talking and talking and mentioning name after name of their cousins and children and their children’s friends and children of children…it all fades away into a blur of names and crap and repetitive wishes for marriage. I lean over to Justine and kiss her on the cheek, she turns back smiling and says “what was that for” and I say “nothing” and she smiles, goes back to looking out the window, still has her hand in mine. She is so beautiful, a lost mother broken by her man. I am getting older and have the same problem. We can talk about that but not on this bus. This bus is taking us to three more places where we will all get off and go on shopping and talking and breathing and eating. A bus full of pigs getting pointed at troughs. I don’t tell Justine that, I just get off each stop, smoke a cigarette, find a coffee and go to the toilet. We do this over and over, at least three more times. Later on, after all this in and out and shopping, the bus drops me off near me home, I tell Justine I’ll call her, tell her I’ll see her and her son for lunch like I promised. She smiles, kisses me and says “You should have bought something you tight ass” and I say something bad about spending it on her or similar and slink off the bus, light a cigarette and walk away, hoping that feeling last as long as possible.

I finish a bottle of wine, open another one, drink a new glass. It’s late, I know, I have to work in the morning, Christ why do I do it like this. The day was so lovely. Justine, so lovely, her hair, her face. She actually wants to see me, she wants to go to diner with me and my daughter and her son. Man can you imagine that? I light another cigarette, blow it out in to roof, watch the light swing a little bit under the breathe of the smoke. My daughter isn’t here. I am here. Justine isn’t here, her son is tucked up in bed in her house. She got the house, of course. Like my ex-wife the bitch got the god damned fucking house. And here I sit, dreaming of Justine, in her house, probably fucked some other guy over to get that fucking place, right? Fucking hell man. I pour the rest of the bottle into my glass, it gets almost near the top. Good. Good! Fucking hell man here I am right, no daughter anymore, my beautiful girl, no woman, she’s off in her house she raped from some man. No nobody. Just me and my day and my drink and cigarettes. Oh god damn. I light a cigarette and do the thing I hate. I call her:
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring reing
“Yello?”
“Kate? It’s your dad”
“Dad! Jesus how are you?”
“Kate, come on, Kate. You know how I am”
“What? Dad…are you drunk?”
“Drunk? No. Me? Your dad? Come on….”
“Yeah right, so, you are just, calling me at, what, one in the morning for no reason right”
“No reason! No really Kate, really, the reason is, that, I wanted to invite you for lunch….yes…with my new girlfriend…”
“Really? Wow cool dad, well, yeah sure I’ll go to lunch….you’re paying right,….hahahaa”
“Of course I’m paying what did I say? Lunch, with you and me and my new girlfriend”
“OK dad sure whatever you say. You tell me where to be ok? Love you Dad”
“Yeah ok…love you too darling”

MENTAL HYPERTENSION: IN WHICH YOU ARE YOU AS MUCH AS YOU WANT TO BE YOU OR CAN BE YOU OR ARE ACTUALLY REALLY YOU

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Lex Wick

No one likes You. They like the You you present to them. Hell, even You don’t like you[1].

This is not going to be a depressing diatribe trying to state “no one understands me” or “if only they knew” or anything Sylvia Plath-ish at all. Really what it is is that these days there is a need to create an ‘other’ to deal with the day in day out of life, to handle the horrific falsities, transgressions and incongruence of modern life that would otherwise forbid you (the actual real You) from making any kind if nine to five money at all. These shadow monstrosities are perpetrated by humans (who are also pretending, acting, behaving) along with your own ‘other’ self and then, much more problematically, your ‘other’ self is to then go on and re-perpetrate atrocities onto other (hopefully also pretending) non-human ‘other’ types. The major problem with relying on us all to be on the same page with this terrible falsity is that not everyone is on the same page, some of us are actually really real (Them) humans and they are taking these blows quite personally and doing these horrible acts quite honestly. They are not pretending, this is their real actual self. They really think and feel the things they say out of their mouth and behind their eyes when you see them crushed a little or sad or depressed or worried about their position or the light in their eyes when they are rewarded for a mediocre achievement. All real. Sometimes the ‘you’ that they present is actually their real Them. The problem is that their reality is derived from the expectations of society, from role and behaviour. Yet, and here’s where it gets weird, that even though there are these precepts, and one could say clearly observable, recognisable and understood observable clichés, the majority actually strive to mimic and what’s more become these expected invented paid for humans, and even try hard to achieve the fulfilment of this goal by ticking every box that would make the, admittedly, poor assumption truer and truer as time goes on. Yet they continue in their endeavour to achieve the fulfilment of a ridiculed socio economic version of greatness that in their mind was assigned to them (and that they deserve). Class structure not withstanding, this self-perpetuating phenomena means that if you are within it you cannot see it, and, if you are criticised for being ‘within’ it, your innate sense of protection of it makes you forcibly sink deeper within as if the mere, actual honest helpful observation of the fact could make it worse (an affront/attack). I could say for example “do you really think you should give your four year old coca cola?” and they would say “fuck off cunt” which would actually in some twisted way in their minds confirm that giving coca cola to their kid is good because they would never want their kid to turn into a ‘cunt’ like I am for pointing that out. Here’s the conundrum, do they really think that or are they innately jealous of my schooling and advantages in life and, in being violently aggressive, show that they want their son/daughter to get out of the “shit” life they have?

Conundrum 1: do they think they have a shit life even thought they say all the time “out life is shit”?
Conundrum 2: do they want their child to have better schooling than they did i.e. do they admit that their schooling was bad?
Conundrum 3: do they admit that they do not have the means to raise a child ‘ideally’
Conundrum 4: do children who haven’t been to kindergarten understand ‘cunt’ ‘shit’ ‘fuck’ ‘asshole’?

What we have now is people striving to achieve the fulfilment of the false Them, mainly in order to gain financial rewards or any mix of power, responsibility or control (money basically, let’s face it). Trying to make it work, assembling a demi-god to aspire to, an epitome of what they know (at the start of this process) to be a false version of themselves or that this created person should want to be (outside of their own instinctive and initial values and beliefs, or worse, it then of course becomes their values and beliefs, replaces the original ingénue). Then, of course, judging themselves against this created-for-the-sake-of-getting-SOMETHING ‘straw man’ persona; am I behaving in accordance to the purposed entity I have created, and, how much of my real self, my reflection, my emotional response, is hindering my progression…that is, how much of my humanity (remember before the You you) is willing to die, be left behind or never existed in the first place. Now you may think this whole concept of You is laughable. When, for instance I ask; what about you? The only answer possible can be from the created You.

How do we now go with dualism? Namely: paid persona vs real persona. Mostly it’s fine, no one has a purpose, they post on facebook and twitter and everywhere because they are really the person they say they are, they really are one dimensional normal good proper society based controlled part-of-the-system types. Pejoratively there is a different kind of existent. Sure we are on the networks, sure we have jobs. Sure we are participating (because otherwise oh my god the world would be horrified or scared or curious to the degree that we may be reported for incongruent behaviour or more simply be de-integrated from the system! Luckily there is still a cultivation of admiration for outsiders as interesting or independent…) but the ways in which we do so are careful, sickeningly careful, even straight out false. In noticing the manufacture of a human and their instantaneous willingness to give away all semblance of ‘self’ to a process and procedure with real basic checks and follow ups and stalking and cross-checking, some have become naturally, um, suspicious? Jesus, yes! Suspicious. In the age of hyped schizophrenia and pervasive social media, we have forced well-thought, balance and aware humans to persist with a dual humanism. To create a hated twin. To live as that hated twin for certain times and in certain spaces.

Complete transparency is ok for those who are willing to be entirely, utterly and wholly (tautology aside) one dimensional. The breadth required for a working ‘person’ (remember, not really You) has grown to include all social engagements, all relationships, all family ties, all social movements full stop. Laying it all out, ‘becoming’ we will call it. It is known by many names within the world of laundered professionalism: achieving, progressing, promotion, growing etc[2]. The become the thing you are instructed to be, or, to become the thing that most benefits you financially, is to become a thing you have created, is to become the ideal that you have been paid to be externally. The ideal Person for the Job. Imagine spending hours honing your outwardly available persona in order to maximise the positive flow on effect that colleagues reading this so called ‘truth’ of your actual life just to get paid more or at least get more lee way in your nine to five day. The worse part is when you stop pretending or manipulating your supposed online persona, you start actually really being that. Another type of suicide, paid for this time, but worse than losing a real friend.

[1] It’s in the grammar.

[2] I need now to make it clear this is not some anti-establishment “the illuminati are in control” “banks are evil” or generally Marxist dogmatic fear-based reaction to a clear and obvious philosophical problem.

Modern Couple

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Lex Wick

She bumps her can of coke into the back of a thin guy getting on to the train. Pushing against the people who are dressed and smell like they are ready to work eight hours, her and him, they don’t look like they are plausibly together, perhaps they think it too but there they are stuck together like that. Bound by an unseen thing, dependencies, clutching at each other for the very simple things that are needs. Is this so different from a successful neat clean union, is this more romantic, is this base need a proper strange strong reason to keep entwined? They smell like cigarettes already, wet clothes and stale cigarettes, the smell of old clothes that already smell like cigarettes and that usual smell of people who just have to smoke the cigarette right down to the butt seconds before getting on pubic transport. The threat of being imprisoned within public transport with its smoking restrictions is so hard to bear that in the outside world they must take every last type of freedom left and get that detested illegal cigarette in and out. When you have nothing these simple freedoms become everything. Your rights, your ability to choose, do what thou whilst. They sit there, staring, just staring at nothing and no one, open mouths. They have a backpack they seem to depend on. The guy goes straight to opening it and pulling out a jumper and reshuffling the contents and says something she doesn’t hear and she says “what” loudly, too loudly, open mouth and leans in and he says it right into her ear and she responds loudly again and he says something else right into her ear and goes back to the back. She says “yeah but that because we needed two fives remember that was the ten we had” and he ignores her and she says “remember?” then goes back to staring at nothing, mouth open. They are on a journey, they are starting a journey, they are together and going somewhere, he is still trying to be a man in control, panicked like a man on a mission, with tasks and responsibilities, she is trying to be damsel in distress with the crutch of a good man. They are lost souls struggling to regain the sentiment of the classic male female role of safety and purpose and life.

Two hours ago they woke up next to each other on a mattress in a corner of a room with two other mattresses one empty, the other with a half naked thin man covered in contusions with shoes on and a bunch of clothes next to his bed. They woke up again at the same time and looked at each other sober and waking up, the pains coming on straight away, the reality of their day flooding back. The child-like innocence of waking lasting only twenty seconds. Get up get dressed get out get money get back to Tom get some H. Get up first. He says something to her this morning that is new, not that he hasn’t said that type of thing every morning, or that she has cried at night saying the same thing but this morning he says it differently, he says “no more” and that’s all he says and he says something else “get dressed we are done. You know. We are done. Ok. Let’s get the fuck out of here” and she may be smiling but she doesn’t know because it hurts in her gut in her arms in her bones in her veins and her head and she may be smiling but she says ‘ok’ but she says it like a scream, like “yes!” but she can’t say that word. He is on his hands and knees pulling things from the floor into a backpack and she is trying to get her clothes on and the thin man with bruises doesn’t move. He goes over to the pile next to the half naked not moving bruised man and goes through his stuff and it is nothing but clothes and underwear and pieces of paper and nothing. “Fuck” he says for no reason or mainly because there is no money there and she is dressed now in jeans and a hoodie and sneakers with no socks and she is smoking half a cigarette she found there next to the bed. That’s all they do they have that and they walk down the stairs and out into the street and it’s daylight, around six in the morning and there are people and life and they are sick and in pain. They stand there a minute and he takes the cigarette from her and takes the last few drags. “Let’s go upstairs” he says and they do go back upstairs and sit back on the mattress. “Ok, let’s do this one last hit and we’ll go ok?” and she has heard it before but she doesn’t hear the promise of the plan, she just wants that shot now in the morning, the fact that they have something to shoot makes her fall in love with this guy straight away, just like that, this man who can manage things like two people. He pours the rest of the H into a blackened spoon (next to the mattress), puts a drop of water from a nearby bottle in and heats it up, drops a small piece of filter from a cigarette in, draws it all up into a fix and gets it ready. She holds his arm tight and he pumps his fist, pricks in the needle and starts injecting the light brown liquid. “Hey hey hey, stop” she says. He does and pulls it out, says “quick” and holds her bicep with his hand, “quick” he says again. She pumps her first twice and pricks the needle in “oh baby yess…come on” and she pulls the plunger back, the flash of blood, pushes it all the way in fast. “Damn baby you’re….haaaa…” and they relax and let it work in their body, no more headache.

They wake up too fast. It’s not enough, or not good enough. It’s all they have and it will do for now. He gets up slowly and kicks her and she rolls over and he says “get up lets go” and she does, after a while, after a few minutes after saying incoherent things and saying she wants a cigarette and a coke and he says “I’ll get you a coke”. Back down the stairs again, a backpack, a cigarette lit, in the street, maybe seven am this time, same types of people, less pain, more people. They are walking, trudging really, sliding their feet together, holding onto one another. Walking it’s called. Walking. “Hey, hold this” he says, giving her the bag. “Where you going?” she yells too loudly, he swings around and says shhhh also too loudly. People look and keep moving, used to it, seen it or even them before. Same two, in the morning, will they ask me for money again? She sits down on the street, opens the bag and gets the cigarettes out, lights one, picks at her face and the black stuff under her nails. Spits. Feels bad about it, feels like she should be in a hole. Feels safe in the hole, starts dreaming about being away in a hole and alone, feels her eyes shutting and her body falling back, resting on the stone wall behind her, a shop front. She open her eyes to hear him yelling and pulling her arm, pulling her onto her feet and swinging the backpack over his shoulder. “Lets go Christ come on man lets get the fuck to the station we gotta go” “huh?” “come on babe I just got money from that newsagent there come on we gotta go come on” and they are running sort of now, he has his arm under her and he is like a hero with his heroine, running and bumping through the people and getting them out of there, getting them away from the police sounds and the yelling and that bad feeling inside. Getting them down the stairs to the train station, being proper and buying tickets, real full priced tickets, getting her under his arm again and down to the train. Standing there and giving her another cigarette and lighting one for each. Smoking and watching and holding each other up and he is telling her to be quiet and all the other people, moral people, working people are looking at them and he is resisting the urge to yell at them like he normally would because his heart is beating fast and she is staring at the train tracks.

No one is following, no one is calling out to stop them. He has about eight hundred bucks in his pocket, a backpack full of clothes, half a packet of cigarettes, no more H and a girl he needs to take care of. He leaves here there and buys two cans of coke from the machine. He opens one for her and she takes it and drinks. They both do. Breakfast. He lets himself breath and relax, drinks a lot more. The train comes at last. The longest two minutes. She has forgotten what she is doing, she has started to think about getting the next fix. She is staring at nothing. He is starting to think about the next fix. Where the hell can you get it from? Immediately the list of places comes in his mind. He wants to kill those places, kill that knowledge. She looks at him and the train pulls up and the workers gather closer to the doors getting their position. The workers pile in, they finish their cigarettes and flick them in between the train carriage onto the tracks, pushing in against the other passengers and make their way downstairs. They sit for a moment not doing anything. The train tries to take them away.

Neverending

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Lex Wick

The days are long and hot and sick and drawn out now. The days are long and dull and hot and sunny so that you have to squint in glasses or take your glasses off and close your eyes for a while and feel that heat, that dry heat on your face, on your eyelids so that when you open your eyes you can feel the heat wrapped up above your eyes in the compressed skin of your eyelids. The days are longer and hotter and your sweat is hot and salty and as annoying as flies so that when the flies do come and hit at your face not wanting to land just hit and tap at your cheek and forehead you wish that all you had were those little drops of sweat. The days are so hot you sit there waiting for that one drop of sweat to roll down and feel all the nerve endings cheer as that drop passes over them and carry that drop down to your chin where you wipe it off. When you wipe it off you look at your hand and then out over the plains, over the fields, over into the next lot where a small family sits, still, as still as you, wiping sweat and swatting flies. Nothing is moving these days; the heat; the death; the three dead cows out in the next field. Sitting under your carport, sitting in the shade while the sun heats up the ground, sitting watching the rest of the earth’s surface baking and dying, sitting watching the three dead cows you own that are dead and the other family watching you watching your cows watching their dog come out from the shade and go back in to the shade. The days are longer than ever, they days now are so long because there is nothing you can do, there is noting anyone can do but sit and watch their cows die or wait until a fly comes or a drop of sweat forms and travels down, tickling your face and neck and being absorbed into the neck of your shirt. There is nothing in this heat but a small family, a husband and wife and two children and their dog, the little boy still alive enough to run around, pick things up and put them down and try to get the dog to move around but they are just like flies moving around. There is nothing but the flies and the heat and sitting there looking at the sun keeping coming and staying and the dust bowls and the dust storms and the yellow grass and the dead livestock and the other livestock not dead yet and something like a heart or a soul urging those claves, silently urging them to get under a tree, go down to the creek and drink. The heat in your joints, under your arms, under your nails, in your hair, as you run the sweat through your hair with your hot nails it’s as if it thins your hair and you look at your fingers to see if any hair is caught in there. The long hot days of death and loose hair and nothing else to help this, this…coming after three months or six months or so a year. The sickness in the throat in the community in the day every day; another dead cow or calf or sheep or whatever animal it is this time. Just the cool night to keep the foxes coming to eat the free flesh of these newly dead meat bags, these unsaleable thin cattle, these leather bags with air and bone, these things that stand there like troopers in the sun, not moving, shallow breathing, eating weeds, prickly weeds that poison them, sickly small white flower buds that the bees don’t touch. The hot days with no pollen and no water and no livestock and no respite, no shade, just under a house, under a half leaved tree roots exposed through the drying dirt, under ground. My youngest boy, now a teenager, has the long drawn face of an old cattle man although he has never drawn cattle or mustered a single beast or killed a calf for food because instead he has dragged a newly dead mutton sheep up from the bottom field and we have skinned it and cooked it. My youngest boy has stopped being a boy because his father told him he must go down and drag that dead sheep up from the paddock and so he went and as he dragged that heavy sixty kilo dead body through the dust, the sound of the dead thing dragging in the dirt, that’s what did it, that’s what did that to this face. My youngest boy dragging a dead body up for us to eat because we couldn’t eat anything else and he knew he had to do it because his father asked him to do it son so he just went and did it and that is how it happens, when you do it like that, when you do it because your father tells you and in your heart it is that you have to do it so you do it and that is how it happens, that type of face. The heart aches to get up and go down and take those young cattle by the nose and lead them down to the creek, the heart doesn’t want to see them, when you are here and they have trodden like that, hard step after hard step, half fumbling like you never want big beasts to do, their stumbling hurts you in the most human way, so that when you get them there you want to see them drink it in, drink something but to have them meander around wondering why you bothered to lead them down this steep incline that used to be a river to nothing, then you can see that they are dead and you put them in a grave they can’t easily walk back out of. What we did was take that old trailer full of half a shed down to the quarry and tip that out into the pit and go back and get the other half but there was more and go and dump that in the quarry and go back and get the rest, fill the rest up into the trailer and have a beer and drive back down to the quarry twenty minutes drive and dump all that there into the pit too and in the end you couldn’t really see what we’d dumped and the birds came anyway, optimistic birds to go through the shed looking for something but there was nothing other than wood and rusted corrugated iron and nails. We drove back and Mike handed me a lit cigarette and I took one puff and let the rest just burn down.

A type of social

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Lex Wick

It’s not a nice a place. I don’t believe a single word you say. I see your life. I see you living it. I see you write about it on facebook or on twitter or on your blog. It seems to be your life. It looks like a life. Your family is on it, your friends are on it. You reference things that happen. You reference them with nothing more than a reference. Everything, even the cancer that riddles your loved one’s body, pointed out, you are four squared at the hospital. You are sad. I don’t believe you are sad. I know you know you are supposed to be sad. I know you took a second to post that you are sad. I saw your friends comment on this post saying things that sound like condolences. It made your life seem more real. It made you feel better that your expected emotion and tags were responded to in yet another expected social networking way. Someone liked your post. You didn’t know how to feel about that oh wait yes you did, you thought because they liked that you were visiting your cancer ridden uncle that they were feeling compassion towards you, not that they liked that your uncle had cancer in his lung, kidney and liver and was most probably dying and that instead of calling or talking to you or even bothering to write a facebook message they did the thing where they click once to ‘like’ your “at the hospital visiting my dying uncle” status that meant they had sympathy for you. When he dies you can create a group event for the funeral. You can set the date and time and the text field what are you planning, because of course facebook thinks that all of life is a god damned party right, but this time, no, this time you want to invite people to a fucking funeral but hey, they don’t want this kind of morose shit on there, or else they think this kind of morose shit is best left off facebook, best left off this 600 million whatever people place…we don’t want this kind of “real life” people shit on here. We want parties and sluts and friends and university sluts and stuff right? For Christ sake why are you trying to use this site to organise a god damned funeral? Huh?
Well because you know we are all on here now. My mother is on here…my uncles are on here. We are all fucking on here and I need to tell them that uncle Tom has died and I saw him die and now I need to have everyone who loved him come and pay their respects and I want to tell them about it and I have been on here, sharing photos, sharing my life and now I want to share this and you make me fill out a form that says “what are you planning?”. OK, ok well I’ll fill it out. I’ll tell you what I am planning and it’s a fucking funeral, ok? A wake, ok?
I clicked ok after seeing that. The next thing: Select guests. Guests. Ok. Sure “Guests” it is. Christ.

There is a child that’s born. They call it Sebastian. They love their child, a boy. They take pictures and they make a profile for the boy. It is www.facebook.com/sebastian.fenwick and also www.twitter.com/sebfenwick. They want the rest of the family to see this loved child take his first steps, eat and spit and smile and sleep. They post everything on there. First words, the first time the little thing sits up. Inoculations. They write messages to their son, like “I love you so much my son” and “this is when I played with you in the backyard” and “daddy has to go to work and you didn’t want him to go” and tag all sorts of stuff on photos and videos they took on their phones. There is so much on there. So much love, so much for the grandparents and extended family (some overseas) and friends to see. So many comments and even the godparents are saying things like “hope to see you soon” and “bless you little one” and “wow so good to see you growing up” and the like. The boy grows, they post pictures and love and messages flow through. This boy unaware, growing under the microscope, other friends of friends commenting, the parents feeling that their child is loved and watched over. The boy grows more, in school, a child, learning, alphabet, colours, maths. More pictures, more videos. He is now facebook slash Sebastian. He has been tweeted for for six years. His parents let him tweet a little bit. He just tells the world things he likes. Things he ate. He even comments on photos of people he knows. His parents type for him. There is nothing that the world does not know, will not know about this young boy, growing up in this new world.

Do you have a membership card?
No.
Do you now about the benefits?
No.
Well you get 5% off every purchase after you spend $500 or more.
Ok.
Do you want a membership card?
No.

Oh wow darling wow, I mean wow. You are, like wow. I have seen pretty girls before but wow. You could be, like I mean, come on. OK, wow. Stop where are you going. Haha I know I sound stupid crazy, like lalalalalal crazy hahaha but no…no. Hey, are these your friends, stop wait! Hey! Guess what, I am serious here…but guess what. I want to give you five hundred dollars. Yes! I do. Uh huh yes you. God. This is not some weird ass gross thing. Look where we are! Ok? Calm down. Hey, your parents let you girls come out shopping huh? Good for them because guess what! You, maybe not just you, hey come here sweetheart, you both maybe, yeah, you two ok? And what’s your name? Sophie. Ok Hi Sophie I’m Mark, Anyway ok what we want is a few girls to be the kind of, face, no, just, ok, do you girls want to be on video? Huh? Mac’s makeup that’s who. Come on. Ok for starters, you. are. gorgeous. You know that though right, and I’m not even supposed to say that! What are you fourteen. God! Really? Thirteen ok. Wow. OK. So, we’re cool. You want to do this? Great ok. So, what we need to do is get you three, sorry love not you, you three sitting over there, we’re going to give you a proper New York make over, ha, yeah I know right! Ok sweetie here’s ten bucks go get some juices or food or whatever, you know, here’s twenty, go crazy, go get whatever you want ok, your friends are gonna be a bit busy for an hour, so…yes great um what’s your name? Kate! Ok Kate great what the hell you look almost twenty shit damn ok. So wait, you girls got phones right? What’s that iPhones? Perfect, ok, what we want you to do is start filming, ok? Just now just shoot whatever you want. Me, you, them, the people looking, anything. Whatever, I got to take this call so go crazy.
“Phil yeah no great great…I got like three chicks ready to roll…huh?…oh yeah yeah no worries…hahaha yeah they’re shooting now. Fuck they’re even recoding me talking to you (waving at the girls)……what?…….I’m sorry what?……….yeah of course, of course, what you think this is my first time?……..yeah yeah of course……….well there’s one………yeah I know…….Phil they are doing it right now……..I don’t know, iPhones it looks like……..huh?………yeah yeah, well one is……..ok cool call back in…(looks at watch)…half hour ok?…..ciao”
So girls! We ready to start shooting?

Trent:
I hate you. I hate your face, I hate your friends. I hate seeing you in those fucking disgusting poses. Do you even care about me anymore? You fucking slut. You fucking bitch. I fucking loved you and now look at you. Why the fuck do you tag yourself with all these guys. Just to fuck with me? Just to make me look like fucking idiot. Well guess what! I’m not going to post this stuff anymore, you cunt. I did it. I told everyone that I wanted you back and now I see you running around looking like a fucking slut loser. Who the fuck is Tommy? What the fuck is he doing posting on his wall about you and him getting it on last week? I thought we could work it out but now I know you are just another fucking whore out there looking to get the next idiot to give you all his money and time and stuff. Fuck off.
Sandy:
Stop posting on my wall you loser small dick asshole. You are BANNED from my friends list I thought we could be cool and stuff and still be fb friends but you are such a jealous douche that no way can we do this, I hope you told all your friends you are a drunk tool who can’t even get it up after a few beers which was every time btw so yeah. Fuck off and stop tailing me every where. I can hang out with who ever I want. Get a life. Get a girl but you never will get one as good as me. Oh and fuck your body, your steroid ugly chest is so gross and we all think that. Ha ha peace out x

Footnote:
None of this actually exists. This disgusting hinterworld of fake realities, online selves, masked falsities, creations, imaginary existences created for others to see, judge, assess…comment on and worse, feel a part of. Our real true connections are never there. They are in the holding of a hand, they are in the quivering voice of a friend who just can’t do it anymore, and you say to them I know, I know, I can’t do it anymore either. And you sit on the phone with them, finishing another bottle of wine together and asking each other why can’t we go on, we will not kill ourselves yet will we? No we won’t and we smile at saying that, at finally saying that out loud. The triumph is in saying it. In saying “I drink too much” and hearing their steady, person voice. In talking to your mother or father on the phone and thinking “I don’t see my parents enough”. That deep feeling in the gut where you want to see them more because you remember you felt a strange despair when your grandparents died but you didn’t know why and now you can see how your parents felt. Their mother or father died. They lost their parent. And now you won’t let that happen. But you do. And you update facebook.

MENTAL HYPERTENSION FURTHER EXTENDED; IN WHICH NOTHING SAID IS POSSSIBLE OR IN ANY WAY SURFACE TRUE

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Lex Wick

Take any given sentence at all, given I mean as in gave to you; delivered, directed, offered to ‘convey a message’ (stay with me)[1]. There is always a purpose in someone telling you something, there is always something behind the words. Think of words as ancillary mechanisms that deliver what is already known, expected, understood and is deemed to be acceptable. We encapsulate speech so well now that we have unconsciously made this the raison d’être of language: to package[2] and deliver phrases in terse unequivocal terms that allude to truthfulness, and, in deliberately delivering such undebatable antonyms, we seek to hide a meaning within a message that is supposed to be the real honest one, the reason, the purpose.
Ok, listen to this:
I am aware that you are listening to me so with the next thing I say to you I expect a certain response (because I know you in some ways) BUT NOW, say, I want you to have the response I want (from you, based on knowing who you are and what motivates you etc) so I edit my sentence in order to facilitate the desired response from you and so after delivering that sentence I watch for your reaction and if it is the expected one then, okay, I can go on progressing my story but if it is unexpected then I know that either (a) my telling hasn’t worked or (b) I have misinterpreted or misunderstood you and so I need to factor that into the next sentence if I am to get you BACK on my planned trajectory and feel comfortable enough to appreciate and interpret your responses, whether fictional or otherwise.
And so then now:
Imagine all one-on-one interactions have this undercurrent. You can quickly see how malevolent and insane most simple back and forth’s are, not withstanding the huge political and social economic demographic/psychographic stuff that exists in society, and then how not straightforward life is or worse how those who are presenting to you that it all really is straightforward are pretending to operate on a very basic level, and essentially are insulting you, are whole-heartedly knowing that they are insulting you, and have assumed you are a stage 1 type of person who believes barefacedly that all of this back and forth stuff is true and real and honest and direct and real and in-the-now and that the things that come out of mouths are real and honest and are actually the things that humans who allow these words to escape their lips really believe and think exactly the same way as their clearly practised, written responses suggest.
Not enough, not enough, let’s go:
Keep in mind that every sentence you hear is charged with purpose, is in some (maybe poorly) way designed, invented, brought to life in order to make you think, respond, feel, react or otherwise process in some desired way, and in the format, delivery[3], circumstance, situation, moment is always[4] trying to make you do the next thing, urging, persuading, directing you to do the next thing, and, if you are feeble or uncaring or unaware then you will then, yes, go along and do that next thing that you were directed, told, in most ways, forced or expected, assumed to do, and you will smile and feel good because they will accept that response instantly, welcomingly, and you will have thought that you are individually, honestly and of your own volition done the very thing you are meant to now, what you set out to do. The fact is that you would not have responded as was directed or else you don’t care that you were directed or else you truly were correct and expected and all of this in now meaningless because you have been triggered and your response mechanism is on and true and actually happening because…because…because you trust the person who told you what they presented as actually happening alive and real.
But that’s…that’s not normal, stuff:
I want to tell you something, but I know that if I do it will change everything about our relationship. So I want to (a) make it clear that by telling you I am letting you in on a thing that would make you incredibly more close to me and (b) say that if I tell you this thing it will change how you feel about me because it is so crazy and strange and unimaginably horrible.
In then getting though these words, these words that make sentences that describe events you are being told things, a life, that is coming into existence with all the careful trips and triggers allayed for your benefit. And even though you seek a full and human disclosure, the very purpose of this purported openness is based on a precept of becoming closer, becoming more open and together but this care and love is impossible under this grand scheme of transparency because if it was to be all said and done then there would be a new slant, a slant that would kill your love because you would always and forever be horrified every time you saw their eyes or every time you touched them or every time you saw them crying because you would always think “is it related to that thing they told me that was so horrible” or else you would be smug and think “well, at least what I did was no where near as horrible as what other things happened to them” and the result is that you would be incredibly caring but also incredibly curious as to the pain threshold of this person and the niggling desire to ‘try that stuff’ because your understanding of them now would urge you to at least want to ‘go there’ in order to experience at least what they had already experienced and worse the urge to go further, the urge to be the one who did the ‘most’, who made the mark, who was the one or is the one “on top” of it all.

[1] I get it, okay. I am not for one second being overly analytical because that is gross and intelligent for the sake of intelligence and not really that, it’s dull, unimportant and inconsequential, like analysing animals to see what they do and then simply recording it in a notebook. That is not awareness, that is note taking.

[2] i.e. to make what I am saying acceptable to you, digestible, lovable…able to be swallowed. Can you imagine? That’s how media is presented to us. Swallowable. We feel sick, mostly, when we see it.

[3] Are they touching you, are they looking into your eyes, are they wearing their ‘best clothes’

[4] always

Adam and Eve (no escape)

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Lex Wick

The snake curled it’s tail in a way that it flicked just the tip on her clit and she felt that laser shoot up inside her a little bit and she squirmed back away from it and the snake curled up into a ring and, sleeping, let the sun bathe on its skin. She closed her eyes and laid back, wanting to sleep or just at least dazed off and let her hand come down and gently touch on the hood of the clit and move over the soft flesh there up and down and it felt good and pure and the sun was just like a soft warm blanket that meant she could feel happy there. God killed a lamb and it was horrific, it was screaming and half dead and it’s stomach was open and her and the snake stood up and looked at that fluffy body writhing and crying and they had never seen that before and it wasn’t horrific because they hadn’t seen it before and it was just strange and confusing. The young naked man came back then at this time to see it all and saw the snake and stepped on the snake’s back and the snake flipped around and curled up and extended and bit the man on the leg but the man just watched it happen and looked over at the half-blood half-white wool mess that God had made and pressed down harder on the snake’s back, raising his other foot and really pushing down in a half jumping way on the snake until the snake stopped squirming and the lamb was still and not crying and the woman looked up at the man and saw him changed, different, but the man was as blank as ever, smiling, holding out his hand to her.

In the afternoon he sat in the office kitchen, drinking his coffee, eating a biscuit and she comes in and she is wearing a tight skirt and an even tighter blouse, makes a green tea and looks over at him. He watches her eat the biscuit, watched her lipsticked lips close over the cookie and all but suck off the edge of the biscuit she takes into her mouth and then her closed small lips moving up and down slightly as her small teeth chew the small piece of hard biscuit she’s managed to pry of with those succulent, decorated lips. She almost looks over and he averts his eyes back to the table, finds a magazine there and pulls it closer, flicks it open and almost as quickly looks back at her body, the outline of her figure simplistically available, imagining her naked isn’t hard, her ass and legs, her waist, her breasts and neck and face all stand there and he looks back to the page again, mainly looking at words and reading them over and over. She finishing dipping the tea bag in the hot water, takes it and drops the finished tea bag in the bin, then a smile at him and leaves. He sips his coffee, tastes bad, looks back at the page, reads that line, over and over.

She was washing away the blood between her legs, she hadn’t ever had this happen before and she thought she was dying. For three days she washed away the blood, in the stream and each time he came close she told him to go away. She lay on the grass beside the stream and waiting for more blood to come, closing her eyes and listening to the water to soothe her mind. On the fifth day the blood stopped, she finished washing herself and cried out to God to save her life. God said that now that you have had the pleasure of the flesh, you will now know the changing of the season, and every month you will know this, like the changing of the seasons, you are now unto the Earth. She was happy because she felt closer to the world she loved, the dirt the grass the sun and the animals, she collapsed sighing and feeling all of nature now inside her and without. God became furious, and so condemned her to feel an unnatural pain in childbirth.

Her father comes home, closes the door, hasn’t seen them all sitting there together on the lounge room floor yet, her and her sisters and her mother, playing a card game and they were laughing and playing. They all watch him walk over to the table they have near the door and empty his pockets like he does every night and the mother says “your turn” to her little sister and they all look back at the game and are aware that they are pretending now, not playing like they were but playing now as an exhibition, as a way of telling the father that they are happy and have a life too. He walks over and kisses the mother and they all savour that smell, the smell of their father coming home, like wood and smoke and old clothes, sweat they don’t know about yet but it is his sweat and the three beers he had after work with his co-workers. They try not to stare too long at him kiss their mother’s cheek but they love seeing it and he smiles at them and silently disappears into the kitchen and the younger one throws down a card that matches the one underneath and the mother looks back from her husband and says “Snap!”.

In the beginning Lucifer Morning Star was the first Angel, with the unwitting power of a true God, and as such the ever loving God who created him became scared of his creation and cast him down to the world of the mortals and so then Lucifer taught the mortals fire, life, love and companionship and told them that one day they would be like God himself and when he was finished instructing them God in his anger made Lucifer King of Hell where he was told to punish all those who did not heed The Word and when hell was overwhelmed God came down himself in the flesh of a man named Yeshua and felt the painful sting of humanity and hence forth changed what it was to be saved or condemned and so Lucifer, now righteous, holds his place by Gods side as a saviour of human souls.

Around the table in this meeting we talked about how having these poor sales performance figures was most likely related to how our sales people were getting old and they kept having things happen to them like heart attacks or hip replacements or sick children and how we could directly see their ailments reflected in our figures and we decided really quickly that we needed newer younger sales people and we discussed how that having the younger ones coming in would yeah sure take them a while to catch up to the expertise and capability of the older ones that in the ling run we would as a company be better off by having these fumbling, learning, need-to-be-hand-held new ones come on would actually in the long run be way better to the bottom line because, hell, surely these older ones would get worse and worse, right, I mean, this is symptomatic of having an ageing sales team, I mean like what’s next, you know: cancer, Alzheimer’s, liver failure, you know, what else kinds of old age stuff would we have to deal with, I mean, they need to use a computer at least and Christ like osteoporosis would mean soon we’d need to give them , what, aides and things to help them do their job and we’re not a charity I mean we need to let them go right? A young bright executive discovered a good way we could legally pay them out.

Adam was so in love that he cut off all his hair and, crying, told God that he hated him and thought he was an insane lunatic who didn’t care for anything other than to be blindly worshipped. God asked Adam where he got his ideas from and Adam said “from you, you heartless monster!”. God knew it was the snake who had filled his mind with sick thoughts and so madeEdena horrible place to live which of course only made Adam hate him even more. God was confused and asked Adam after a thousand years why he did not hate the snake instead and Adam replied “what snake?” and God told him the story and Adam knew then it was hopeless: God created the snake.

He had her head in his hands, lying on top of her with both his hands under her head and she was crying and they hadn’t finished making love and he said “what’s wrong?” and she said nothing in that half true way women say it and she had her eyes shut tight from the crying and he let his penis slip out of her, losing the erection anyway. He stayed there like that holding her and kissing her cheek, feeling with his lips how hot her cheeks were and looking at her clenched eyes. He started massaging her hair and kissing her cheeks more but she shook her head to brush him off so he moves off her and lays beside her, both naked and she rolled into a ball and cried harder and harder. “What’s wrong?” he asked but she didn’t say anything, just lay there sobbing. He stood up and put his pants back on, walked into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. His face seemed wrong, not his. He wondered if he had raped that girl or did something wrong. He smiled at himself in the mirror, just to see if his own face was still there. He washed his hands and went back into the room. She had a blanket pulled over her and wasn’t moving.

WHAT DOES THE TRUTH TASTE LIKE? WHAT DOES THE TRUTH FEEL LIKE?

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Lex Wick

It is the hope inside that wants a child, maybe not the birth or the responsibility, but the end that is something grand. The flavour of mud, or sickness or human saliva breath in the morning is truth. What it wants to tell you really are things you will hate instantly. There is no sense but the sun still shines and you all live together.

There is a deep unfulfilled sadness that, through being ignored, manifests (festers) as malice, complacency, indiscretion, blandness, moroseness, suicide, false-happiness, acceptance, malignancy and that thing where you can just go on living and living until you die no matter what happens or what sickness comes or how alone you are or how much you are missing and how removed you are from what you yourself consider life based on your dreams and how you see others your age living those (or even other fantasy now) dreams and your wishing that everything could be different and it’s not actually regret because you never did anything in the first place to deserve or even expect that outcome but it’s more that you never could have had those things you wanted in the first place because now that you are ‘getting on’ it has become clear that you are not one of ‘them’ or are even going to be that thing you imagined ever so now it’s set in that your life is this, just this, no more dreams, no more hope, and now it’s also no more lying to yourself that you can still achieve this.[1]

The ability (propensity?) to behave given any number of social situations that, including any hardcore punk or other such anti-normality types, force us to act in a desired expected manner. Mainly the ‘big ones’ Funerals, Weddings (they can get avant-garde but even then there is a certain ‘respect’ for the bride/groom/widow/children’s wishes…their aesthetic permeates), but also even just waiting on line at the supermarket. We all look forward or around, we shuffle, we look at our groceries, we know how to act/behave/appear. We know what to do at any given social moment. Is the goal of truth then a separation from the norm into a kind of laissez-faire democracy type thing whereby our instantaneous feelings come to bear or is there supposed to be such a thing as deserved communal reverence, respect, appropriateness and all the trappings of the (essentially) class system? Do I want some young idiot wrecking my mother’s funeral with his boom box and his lack of shutting-the-fuck-up-about-how-we-all-gotta-die?[2]

Seeing something that’s wrong (not actually wrong wrong, like evil or unjust or against love or anything) and deliberately not doing anything about it because, in the grand-scheme of things, it is very unimportant (usual) and pointless and basically just seeing the way in which you could fix something that doesn’t actually benefit you but it would, in some respects, make the world a better place or at least resolve this issue at hand and perhaps advance this or that person or company policy or deal or whatever. Now, the next level is telling the truth in this scenario to your personal detriment. What does that feel like, or, what are the reasons anyone does this? Social altruism, for an inner sense of peace (resolution, victim is no longer a victim (and remember, not a real victim, just a made-up work-based life-scenario type of victim), a general want for the right thing (in your assessment) to prevail, a real urge to contribute where you see you can contribute), or perhaps a dream that you will be rewarded (eventually). In place of this, for the majority they play by the rules we created in this western (and eastern too, so) culture where shutting up and doing nothing are lauded in place of controversy, individualism, contesting, questioning. In fact, the better you perfect those abhorrent servile traits to more likely you will succeed. So in this sense any act of dissention or suggestion of personal motif for the ‘right’ is punished in one way or another.

The ability to deliberately hold information, important information no less, in your head, conceptually ‘away’ from someone you actually care about because (a) it would hurt them (simple and honest enough) (b) it would destroy what they think of you for no real-world purpose or reason that needs to be considered for the moment as it were; out of context; theoretically (c) you do not want them to hold this in their head as well, you like seeing them not knowing it whilst you do (perverse but like a serial killer who cherishes the sweet moments of freedom following his murderous act up until they are discovered) (d) there is no conceivable reason to tell them because I has nothing to do with anything yet it bears down on you for not telling it for no other reason than the desire for complete transparent honest i.e. unburdening or the fact that you have tried to build your relationship on the precept of pure honesty (in that as you get older and have many many failed long term serious relationships the prospect of transparent honesty becomes for you the thing that really is the only thing that is important anymore, to the point that saying “I want to fuck someone else” is allowed because it was spoken truthfully out in the open and so then when you do it although it hurts the honesty aspect is revered above this carnal act thing that happened as a result.[3]

Now we’ve cultivated the insane idea of ‘personal truth’…”what’s right for me” etc. This concept allows you to consciously exist inside someone else’s truth and, understanding them as such, where they are in a fantasy that has no real walls, which through using careful analysis and understanding are able to be moved, in and out, their fears heightened, their perceptions sharpened closer to the devils they have invented as inhabitants; the backstabber; the cheat; the false-prophet; the supposed friend etc until of course their own truth (which they think is real don’t forget, really real) is nothing but a fragmented strange and externally incoherent mess of half-truths, phantoms and unstructured feelings based observations made under misinformation that are tentatively held together under the one notion: that because they have created it it must be true. Such a feeble instance of reality, and such a scary prospect for the person trapped inside this prism where any one sentence from an imagined trusted source can dispel and enhance so many other aspects of their ‘truth’.[4]

[1] There was a show on TV today and it was horrific in it’s honesty (people now want to see other people on screen, and, most people aren’t equipped to understand that although, yes, it’s a ‘real’ person, they are acting and behaving in a way fit to be displayed and have learned that ways in which to behave on camera and if that’s not enough have even been told/prompted/directed by trained TV producers who know what they want out of the very expensive and critical shoot they are ‘starring’ in so are guided towards an end but, yes, the viewers are to feel that they are watching someone ‘real’, like them, the closest they get to feeling warmth towards the cold TV they have become used to getting all their emotions from.

[2] The problem here really is one of acceptance. We are so careful to accept others yet so self aware of external judgment. The problem is that in order to ‘improve’ ourselves we need to become more accepting, but, in becoming more accepting, we are better able to ignore, I guess, all the transgressions of others who aren’t so ‘improved’. Yet, by becoming more accepting, that is, working hard at achieving this, we are to then accept others who don’t bother to do the work of becoming accepting, thereby negating, basically, the whole endeavour to become understanding and accepting and what people would call ‘enlightened’. So what s the point of seeking such enlightenment anyway, if the goal of this is to accept all anyway (that is, the base unenlightened). Do we condescend to help them or be so perfectly attuned that we understand and accept?

[3] And of course the confusion in thinking “if we didn’t instigate this honest policy, perhaps we would have curtailed or otherwise managed our base instinctual urges and not simply blurted it all out to each other in order to get away with fucking right in front of our eyes and then sort of feel as though we love them each other more because we have this true true honest one to one bond thing.”

[4] What if you didn’t actually care about people’s unique truths? What would the truth look like to you? Well, it would appear as an ether cloud, a fake thing, a huge mess of versions and beliefs and ‘grasps’ and perceptions and up-to-the-minute understandings. Worse is, because you don’t care, these gasps of life, although spoken in all earnestness by others, were incomplete, funny, strange, pitiful, unaware and basically full of thousands of holes and gaps because through these gaps, you see, form a regular ‘complete’ honest person. Someone who believes, who strives for an ideal, someone who actually thinks they are what they are, really. And though the ways in which you treat them by, say, pointing out a massive inconsistency in their Themness has absolutely no impact on them whatsoever, because it is not within their power or desire to either update or fundamentally change their Themness, their own unique truths that gives them the real stamina to persest, to believe in something, to go after something, to go on, although subconsciously pretending to themselves and the word that what they are is 100% real and solid. This insane destructiveness is what permeates all facets of the human condition, this bold, seeking triumph essence to be something, to choose as it were against all the available knowledge, to stop and stay and be that thing. To just say “I know what you are trying to do but stop it”.

Goldilocks and the three Bears

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Lex Wick

Her parents didn’t believe in schooling, proper schooling, because they knew that all those teachers and priests were rapist sodomites and when they read and reread those passages in Ezekiel they got so angry and started yelling at their eight year old child about how they wanted to put their penis in her asshole she got scared and cried and so during the day they told her to go out and live, and learn from the world, from nature and they let her run off and they went back into their field and toiled to make vegetables and feed cattle to slaughter.
She ran through the forest, testing what hurts her skin or tastes bad, poking sticks into dead poisoned fox carcasses and shitting into holes and wiping her ass with leaves and running along and drinking from creeks. This day she ran over a large hill and down into a valley and saw a house she’d never seen before and approached it like a curious dog, circling this way and that to see if anything was moving before inching closer, the learning her parents wanted taking hold, the natural curiosity and fear of anyone other than her parents.
She eventually made it to the window and looked in, no one inside, just a small house sitting there so still and empty. She tried the door but it was locked, she tried a window but it was locked and in her rampant enthusiasm took a rock and smashed in a window pane, opened the latch and climbed in. The house was empty except for a large chest of drawers, a dining table and a few wooden chairs arranged in a semi circle around a large metal pot. She smelt burnt hair and burnt wood, and looked around but saw nothing but for a pot sitting on the ground behind the chairs. She walked over, quietly, and peered into the pot, seeing a thick grey mash in there. She dipped her finger in and tasted the mixture, a warm if not too hot porridge that tasted like sugar and grain, the kind she has for breakfast but with a strong acidic aftertaste. She thought it was wonderful but needed to wait until it cooled a bit so she looked in the drawers first, thinking because of the hot food that whoever lives there must have just left and won’t be back for a while.
In the first drawer were a load of papers and candles, nothing in order just stacked in there, so she opened the second drawer and it was full of knives and tools and bits of rubber and leather and stuff like that. The third drawer had baby clothes and bonnets and little containers of powder and soaps and she stuffed some soap into her pocket and closed the drawer, not wanting to open the fourth one. She walked around the house, getting used to the dead smell of hair and wood and opened the door connected to these living areas to see a room with three single beds in it. She jumped onto the first one but it was as though it’s just a blanket covering wood panels and then the second one was like a pile of feathers lumped under a thin sheet but the last bed felt like her own so she ran back into the main room, piled a load of the grey meal into a bowl and took it back into the bedroom with her, eating it with her fingers and letting her body relax on the bed, trying to imagine what the people who live here look like or if she has seen them before in town and remembering how strange all the people in town look and how strange it would be to know any of them at all and the thoughts like this and eating the thick porridge and praying to god to bless her mother and father and keep her safe in his arms like she’s been taught sent her to sleep.

She woke to the sound of a door slamming shut, remembering where she was and that she was alone in someone’s house. She sat straight up in the bed and pulled the blankets up, panicking.

“Someone’s smashed in the window!” Mr Bear yells out.

“Someone’s had their gut full from the lunch pot” cries Mrs Bear.

“Someone gone and got in our house Pa” says kid Bear, going over his chest and flinging it open to see what’s missing. “They ain’t taken any of my stuff Pa!”

“Ma! Go check the bedroom will ya. I’m gonna get me rifle, go on now”

Goldilocks hears them moving about, hears what they say and hides herself under the bed, seeing there’s no windows in the room and the only way out is the door she came in. The door to the bedroom swings open and she hears the feet coming across the room.

“Pa! Someone’s been messin’ with Junior’s bed, look” and the Bears all pile into the room, walking over to the bed she was sleeping in. Pa Bear puts his hand on the mattress and feels it’s warm.

“Go damn there’s been someone in this bed” and his face appears under the bed, looking Goldilocks straight in the face.

“Well well, look at what we have here” and she squirms away but Ma Bear is on her, pulling her out from under the bed by her thin wrist and dragging her over into the corner of the room.

“What you doin’ in here little girl?” asks Pa Bear

“Nothing, I..I…I was just, exploring, ’cause, my mumma says, to…to, go out and…”

“You exploring in our house cutie pie?” says Ma Bear.

“I saw, that…no one was in her so I”

“You busted by damn wind-a that’s what” says Pa bear, resting the rifle on his hip.

“She’s pretty” says Junior, walking over to her.

“Now. Don’t you go touching her son, that there’s a devil woman” says Pa Bear, holding his son by the arm “see, we gotta get that devil outta her”

“Oh no Pa, nah we ain’t. She just a little thing with, look at her Pa, that golden hair, like, like an angel”

“Ain’t no angel son, you’ll see. Ma, pick her up”

And Ma Bear picks the girl up and places her on the bed, Pa Bear takes his pants off and moves over to her, Goldilocks stares at the man, stares at the boy and waits, terrified.

“See son, she just a lil rabbit, ain’t cha?” and Pa moves closer, gets to her, pulls her shorts down and opens her legs. Goldilocks, crying, thrashing, Ma holding her wrists down, Junior tugging at his father undershirt to let her go, crying too but Pa heaves into her and Ma laughs revealing her teeth and Pa grunting like a bear; “urgh urgh urgh eee-urgh” and Junior crying now and Goldilocks screaming out but soon Junior comes and puts his hand over Goldilocks’ mouth saying “sssshhhhh” and trying to get her to relax, soothing back her hair and she locks her eyes onto his and he says softly “it’s ok…it’s ok” and they stay like that her moving in that jolting way as Junior looks into her eyes and keeps saying “it’s okay it’s okay” and when it’s done they put her dress back on and she is crying and running into the forest hearing their laughter getting softer and softer.

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