this is the gloaming.

back in january, on a quiet winter evening. yeah. must've been about 6:30. npr's marketplace was on. lying on my stomach feeling hopeless, but not any more so than the typical individual thrashing about in our post-american century. things to get done, but i'm so damn comfortable. maybe i'll take a power-nap and hop to in half an hour? not that tired though. close your eyes anyway darlin.

here comes the weird.

shut my eyes, still conscious, just resting them. and the vision begins.

i'm on my hands and knees, in a lush forest, high noon sun splintering through the dense canopy overhead. every thing is in high resolution, hyperrealistic. the greenest, most luxuriant grass i've ever encountered. foot-high blades swaying, leaves fluttering, i can feel the coolness of the ground-level current on my face.

but i hear nothing, and as i acknowledge in my mind that i hear nothing, it instantly becomes clear, as though whispered to me by some unseen guide: i've breached the death interface.

but there's no real sorrow, no pain, no horror. this is peaceful, kind of exciting, like i've snuck into studio 54 and gotten away with it, all wide-eyed and giddy.

eyes open.

dow breaks the 12,000 point mark. a record. overhyped though. DJIA's only about 30 stocks anyway.

wow. that was fucked up.

now keep in mind that this was long before i began experimenting with dxm (though the visual aesthetic of this spirit-vision resembled my closed-eye, dxm-induced visuals rather uncannily). i was totally sober during the minute or so i was in that forest. and of course, trying to grasp at that interface once i'd risen from my bed only pushed the sensation of it farther away. no use chasing it any farther down the hole. might as well get to the homework then, put on some radiohead.

admittedly, there are times when i appreciate such a heightened level of consciousness, honest there are. but there are certainly other occasions when it is the bane of my existence.

wouldn't it be nice, i wonder, to be but a lamb, grazing mindlessly as each day gives way to another?

maybe not.

Christ Punchers, LLC

Recently I posted on Craig's List, in regards to looking for new people to "jam" with, as the people who had previously fulfilled this role had fallen by the wayside. the song went a little something like this.

"looking for a new creative outlet. i've been playing bass for a year now, and i'm just looking for fun-loving, chill people who don't suck to play along with. not exactly looking to form/join a band, but I wouldn't oppose those things either, to be perfectly honest.


influences and activities include: London City, existentialism, blaxploitation, raging out, the Rolling Stones, 1968, writing fiction, funk, fighting, Hunter S. Thompson, volcanoes, bourbon, reading (unlike most Americans), Sun Ra, H.L. Mencken, getting thrown out of places, The Opium Wars, Lennon, Lenin, Sid Vicious, Burning Spear, painting, porn, Radiohead, bars, bashing people's musical tastes (a staggering number of people just listen to shit and don't seem to have a problem with it), the Marlboro Man, filmmaking, shock and awe, Air, experimentation, Godzilla, etc., etc."

Not two sunrises after posting this casual missive, i received a response from a single, lonely man out in cyberspace. let's call him mark ayers. his response read as follows:

"You want fun loving, chill people who don’t suck to play with but your influences and activities (blaxploitation, bashing other’s music, shock and awe, the Marlboro Man, etc; what the hell?) make you sound like a nut. Try this again when your 31 and have had time to mature." - note the improper usage of "your." haha, just sayin.

Before heading to my doctor's appointment in Towson (a small suburb of Baltimore), I decided to check my email, only to find this. it certainly brightened my day. I mean, unbeknownst to mr. ayers, i've been called worse things than "nut." and as far as waiting ten years, when i've "had time to mature," truthfully, though my license says 21, i think, act, and feel much more like 67, like some kind of hellbent, sex-addicted bukowski-esque miser on the skids. thus, it's not worth the energy to ball up a fuck you and hurl it in mark ayers' direction. no siree bobbit. i've got a week of binging ahead of me and a new year's bombing run to plan, and quite frankly, his response affirms what I and a lot of those lonely souls closest to me are already sure of: 98% of the American population are fucking nerds. Vive le cirque!