Me. Haven't Posted Regularly In Years But This Is Me.

My desire is to become better at writing. Why? My sense is that it could lead me to a more fulfilling life. My standard answer to the question, “Why write?” has been that I find it satisfying but it’s more than that. As a human being, my desire is to lead a fulfilling life. In fact, that might be the thing that I want more than anything you care to name. I don’t think it will lead me to anything like financial security though. Financial security is elusive. There is tension there. This world is a bitch to live in like that. Everything is so god damn expensive. This shimmering dream of a world that might really be a nightmare has us all running ragged for a collection of dead Presidents that is just big enough to make it through another day. 

This is gonna sound like bullshit but I also connect my writing to the struggle for justice. Writing is a vehicle for conveying truth. Words can bridge the gap between human beings who are profoundly alienated by the endless chasing of nickels and dimes. People who work jobs that leave them bleary-eyed and bored and angry need to know they aren’t alone. Maybe I can reach out and touch a few who are on the same frequency. Maybe I’m not even qualified to do that but I figure that I’ve got to try. Why the fuck not? 

I get the sense that I’ve got to challenge myself. I gotta try and write something that takes some effort. I was thinking an essay of some kind. I’ve got to give it some thought. I don’t know that I can pull it off and maybe I can’t. I might learn something from trying. 

If this reads like inspiration porn, I apologize. I hate that shit. 

Frank Turner - 1933

‘1933’ is the first track from my new album ‘Be More Kind’ - available to pre-order now on CD, gatefold vinyl, deluxe boxset & digitally: https://FrankTurner...

This song. So god damn much. My god. 

Further thoughts on Alex Vitale's The End of Policing

A few summers back, some cops got killed in Dallas. That summer had hate in the air. The Trumpian demon was waiting in the wings. I remember seeing a friend of a friend on Facebook express anger that the people who protect us were under attack. The idea that the police protect us is an idea almost nobody questions. If we're not questioning it, we're high on something.

Alex Vitale in The End of Policing tells us a bit about the origin of what we know as the police. Sir Robert Peel who started the London Metropolitan Police developed his ideas while he was managing the British colonial occupation of Ireland. That is crucially important to know. The origins of one of the most influential police agencies was in oppression. Peel took what he learned about social control on a foreign shore home with him. This illustrates one of the many troubles with the monster that is imperialism. Let's apply that to the U.S. What we learn about keeping a population down in Fallujah, Iraq comes home and is used in places like Ferguson, Baltimore and Bedford-Stuyvesant. That is the ugly truth of it. It's the truth that we cannot ignore. The U.S. is a society of savage inequality. The police are there as managers of that inequality. They are there to impose the order of the haves on the have-nots. This is true regardless of how many videos go viral with a cop lip synching to a Taylor Swift song or how many photos are shown on the evening news of an officer hugging a black child. I see blatant propaganda like that and it makes me want to fucking puke.

I reflect on the propaganda of my youth and it's enough to make my brain nearly self-destruct. I remember D.A.R.E. A clean-cut, white-skinned officer of the law with a gun visited my school every week. He led the class in an anti-drug cheer. He told us that people who used drugs were losers. I sure as fuck did not want to be a loser so I resolved never to use drugs. I did not touch a drug until I was almost halfway into my 30s. I suppose it is a tough thing to broach with kids but do you know what was absent from Officer Friendly's lectures about drugs? The sociological reasons that fuel pathological drug use. Guess what, children? When the factory that paid a decent wage closed, a bunch of people found solace from their misery in heroin or meth or something else. The shit was bad but it took away the pain. We did not get told about any of that. We got told to choose baseball or ballet instead of a joint and that was the end of it. Do people fuck up their lives? Sure they do, but you cannot overestimate the importance of individual acts or "moral failings." It seems that the political will to address the pain that causes people to fall into drug abuse simply does not exist. What does exist in ample supply is the impulse to throw cops at the problem and to build massive prisons to warehouse the people who have been left behind by the system.

So, what the hell do we do? The bitch of it all for me is realizing that we simply cannot just manage inequality. That's a bitch to realize because managing inequality is all that the people with power wish to do. We've got to address inequality. That means public housing, education, healthcare. It means the transformation of our society. Something has to give. I truly fear for this country. I believe inequality will grow worse under the regime of Donald Trump and policing will grow more heavy-handed.

The inner-city crack epidemic is now giving birth to the newest horror: a bio-underclass, a generation of physically damaged cocaine babies whose biological inferiority is stamped at birth...[This is] a race of (sub)human drones ... [whose] future is closed to them from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe deprivation ... [T]he dead babies may be the lucky ones.

-Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer in 1989. 

People like to pretend there was a time when the American conservative was sane and not possessed by cruelty and a special kinda crazy.

It’s not a myth. It’s a lie. It’s total bullshit. 

That’s so called respectable (and soon to be deceased) conservative writer/thinker/fantasist/whatever the fuck Charles Krauthammer condemning an entire class of people when they were fetuses back in the much simpler and much more innocent year of 1989. 

Only difference now is there is less sophistication. Less subtlety. 

There were dog whistles before but now the dog whistles are replaced by screams and shrieks. 

You could say something wicked this way comes but you’d be wrong. 

Something wicked was always here and just leveled up the wickedness. Just made it nastier. Just made it harder to look at. Just made it make your ears bleed faster so you plug them and tell yourself it’s all gonna be okay. 

See, we all gotta confront the possibility that it might not be okay. 

Brain feels kinda smooth today. It always feels like it’s not quite firing on all cylinders on a Monday. 

Fuck Mondays. 

Yeah. I said “Fuck Mondays” but I don’t really feel it that viscerally at the moment. Nothing much happened really. Just dealt with minor problems here and there that I was able to fix fairly quickly. I got to spend my idle time at my desk listening to podcasts and reading. I’m about halfway through the book The Great Divide by Matt Taibbi. Maybe I can finish it by the end of the week. Been awhile since I actually finished a book. 

I’m flirting with the idea of cutting back on my gaming, specifically Rocket League. I’ve played Rocket League pretty much every single day since I got it some time last year. It’s a fun game but I think it distracts me too much. Yeah. You are reading about a 35 year old man talking about his need not to game so much. I find myself firing up Rocket League even when I don’t really have a desire to play that much. I guess it fills up time when I have absolutely nothing else that I could be doing. It stimulates my brain when I ain’t got shit else to stimulate it. I guess I want to see what happens if I try stimulating it with something else. 

I put in a call to a therapist I saw some time last year. He hasn’t called me back yet.

This navel gazing is getting old to me. I want to be writing about something else but I have no idea what. 

I’m fucking bored. 

I suppose I’m bound to catch a feeling about something this week. 

I am half-assing right now and not even lying about it. I am phoning this in. I don’t give a shit. 

Sup with you? You good? Did you daydream about sex or murder today? Did you fantasize about being some sorta hero? Did you cry today? Did you do anything to advance a criminal conspiracy today? 

This is a man throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. This is a man sitting cross-legged in a chair and trying to think. 

This feels like a fuckin’ homework assignment.

I don’t feel much of anything right now. 

I just am. I guess that’s okay. I mean, what’s the alternative? 

Been working almost 6 months. I have not held down a job for more than 6 months since 2012. If I make it beyond 6 months and I’m still employed, do I fucking win something? I’ve been thinking about that. What does that mean for me, if anything? 

Fuck. I tried. 

I want to be the boyfriend who makes a woman come so hard that she had to tell all her tumblr followers about it.

Halloween: I Was That Guy That Didn’t Wear a Costume

I get invited to a Halloween party by a fella I used to work with about 4 years back. We were call center slaves once and sorta young. We survived the brutal, terrifying drudgery of that white collar McDonald’s. I can’t speak for him. I emerged as the man writing this. I got wiser, weaker and my eye got keener. Reader, this is me bearing witness. This is the mundane drama that gets us where we need to go, I suppose. 

It had been a brutal week of pretending I knew what the fuck I was doing at my day job. I had my suspicions I was probably gonna get found out that week. I made it through. 

Let me make one thing perfectly and abundantly clear to you sir or madam or whoever it is that’s reading this. I don’t get out much. I sorta know how real life works from TV but I don’t spend a lot of time out there. I spend a lot of time alone with my stupid thoughts that melt the steel beams of my life every once in awhile. I’ve been in this period of trying to get “right” again recently. I know I’m gonna be too anxious and inept to drive out there so I don’t. I summon a poor soul with the Uber app on my Samsung personal surveillance device to get me out there into the land of pick-up trucks and country music and maybe god damn Trump supporters. 

Yeah. This shindig or whatever the fuck was way the hell out there. The Uber drivers I get when I use this terrible, dystopian service are usually these motor-mouthed go-getters who probably do a lot of Adderall or they tend to be these earnest, polite immigrants just trying to make it in this fucked up, racist, brutal country. I get this gentleman from Eritrea who barely says a word the entire ride. I should note that before I got in the car about 15 minutes before, I had ingested some cannabis infused chocolate. If I’m not mistaken, that put about 10 milligrams of THC into my system. I then pick up on something. 

The driver of this Toyota Prius criss-crossing it’s way through this autumn night is getting worried, he’s getting flustered. He is getting lost. Oh shit. See, I haven’t been in the exact same spot this guy was in but I know what it’s like to feel utterly alone in the night. I know what it’s like to feel sweat collecting on the back of your neck. I know what it is to feel like your body is itching with fear and dread. He starts apologizing to me. Something happens to me. I know what I gotta do. 

“Brother, don’t worry about it,” I say. “Do not worry. Aight. Just go straight and follow the road for a few miles. You don’t gotta turn for a bit.” 

THIS IS FUCKING CRAZY TO ME BECAUSE I’M NOT USED TO BEING THIS CALM CAT THE UNIVERSE PUTS IN PEOPLE’S PATH BUT THAT’S WHAT I’M GONNA DO FOR THIS GUY. 

He thanks me and thanks me and thanks me. 

“Alright. You gotta turn right in a few hundred feet. There we go. See that road sign? Just turn there when it’s safe. Don’t even worry about it, man. Why do you think I ain’t drivin’ myself? I’d get lost out here even worse. This ain’t my hood, man.”

He calmed down. I’m not sure when I started to feel the cannabis. I’m not sure if me being so fucking kind is the cannabis or if that’s just me. It’s just me. Being alive has hurt me in the weirdest ways and as a result, I’m basically a wannabe Mr. Rogers who is angrier and curses a lot. 

I get to the party. I guess it had a circus theme. There was this circus tent. My friend is in a cover band. 

I walk in. I have a brief conversation about the health impact of vaping and I deftly steer the conversation away from whether Trump is really all that bad. The weed was starting to kick in. I was high but I sure as fuck ain’t stupid. I ingested the second piece of cannabis infused chocolate that I had in my coat pocket. I’m starting to feel it. I know I am. 

I’m in uncharted territory. When I’m high, I’m usually alone. Yep. I am the weirdo that gets high and will just let the chips fall where they may. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I just waste time. So, there I was getting higher and higher around a bunch of strangers. 

Some of the things I say that night, 

“Holy shit. Is this what an episode of Miami Vice is like?” 

“See. I feel like I should tell you. What you’re seeing right now is a cat who don’t get out much.” 

“We don’t need secret police. We build the dossiers on ourselves. It’s crazy, man.” 

“I’m too old for this shit.” 

“FREEBIRD!” 

“THATCHER WAS A CUNT AND I’M GLAD SHE’S DEAD!” in a dubious working class English accent. 

At some point I get offered beer. I don’t ever drink. In fact, I will admit that I had never been drunk before. I start drinking and drinking and drinking. I end up stoned as fuck and somewhat drunk on um light beer. I can feel my inhibitions lower. I’m definitely keenly aware of it. I shout things at the top of my lungs. I even dance and don’t really give much of a fuck how it looks. 

The lowered inhibitions start to concern me. I lean in close to my friend. I say in his ear, “When you get a minute, I need to talk to you.” He nods. See, I ain’t used to alcohol. It’s the weirdest thing. I’m very accustomed to being very high on marijuana and I’ve lived to tell about a few intense trips on psilocybin mushrooms. Alcohol just isn’t something I have a lot of practice with. In fact, being out ain’t something I have a ton of practice with. 

I become intensely concerned about what I might do while under the influence. I worry I might become Brett Kavanaugh. I’m terrified I might flip out and kill someone. I nod to my friend’s friend. He’s dressed like The Driver from Drive and has this weird kinda charisma. I see something in him. I see a kindness. I see a light in that man. I ask him if he’ll step outside with me. In fact, I’m pretty sure I say something like, “Forgive me if this is weird but will you step outside with me for a second?” He doesn’t even question it. We step outside and I lay it all out. 

“Like I said. I don’t get out much. I don’t get fucked up with other people around so this is a new experience. Do you ever worry about what you might do under the influence and does that scare you?” 

I actually start crying. I don’t even recall what he says now. I just recall that he listened to me. He told me it was okay. I remember telling him that something told me I could come to him with that. I told him that even as a complete stranger, I could sense the goodness in him. I told him he was a good man. 

Yeah. So, I got to be the shepherd and the shepherded that night. 

I spend some time just chilling outside in the dark. I get to talking more to the dude who was dressed as The Driver. As I write this, I am sober but everything is slow. I feel sluggish. In retrospect, I say too much. I guess that it might be kind of a bad idea to get all cross-faded like that. That’s a young man’s game and I ain’t so young any more. I say too much. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t get out much and you’re drunk and high, you start sharing the thoughts that terrorize when you’re alone in a dark room. 

I spill about my upbringing. My overprotective mother that wouldn’t let me out of her sight and wouldn’t let me grow up. I talk about how I BS my way through like half my day job. Driver tells me how badass that is. I feel the need to keep mentioning I don’t get out much. He tells me, “You’re an astronaut, dude. Exploring new worlds.” I say, “I know what you’re saying but that’s a little too dramatic.” 

I spill about the heroic mushroom trip. I talk about how dreamlike everything was. I talk about how I had only messed with shrooms a time or two before but the last time, I suddenly found myself drowning in a psychedelic ocean. I tell him about coming to grips with how weird and terrifying that could get. I look over at him with a straight face, I say, 

“This is the part where you tell me about Jesus.” 

I was kidding. He says, 

“Do you wanna pray with me?” 

“What? Are you fucking with me?” 

“No man.” 

I size him up. “You’re being sincere.” 

“Yeah man.”

“I did not see that coming. I don’t know how to respond.” 

“You think mushrooms are amazing. Wait til you commune with the creator of the universe.” 

God damn it. This is a hell of a plot twist. 

“Do you want to pray with me?” 

“No offense but I don’t feel led to do that.” 

“That’s cool, man. I’ll pray for you though.” 

“Aight. I just wanna say though, if you are only talking to me to get a convert, you can fuck all the way off. That’s not comic exaggeration. That is not me playing a character. Fuck all the way off if that’s what you’re doing.” 

“I’m not doing that, man. Don’t worry.” 

“Okay. I’m just gonna be chill. It’s outta my system.” 

I had more intense, way too intimate conversations that night. I don’t feel the need to recount any more of them. 

I get home somehow. I don’t sleep much. I only sleep about four hours or so. I have a lazy Saturday. I don’t feel quite normal all day. I feel tired and need to take a nap at some point. 

My soul changed. A little. Maybe. 

How I Learned to Love the Lord

What follows will be the most honest attempt to date to explore a particular period in my religious history, specifically the period of time where I could be described as an Evangelical Christian.

At the current time, I am a sincere agnostic. I have no idea whether God or any gods or goddesses or supernatural beings exist. Like many people do, when the chips are down and shit is looking bad, I might beseech whatever gods may be out of desperation. I do however have a lingering suspicion that our ultimate reality is spiritual rather than material.

I was raised to be a Catholic. I’ve been to confession. I’ve taken communion. I often got tapped to read from the scriptures at Mass because my voice was clear and deep. I was never confirmed though. On paper, I’m still Catholic. I went through school with largely the same group of kids from kindergarten through about the 9th grade. See, in the 9th grade, shit got a little crazy. I did something I should not have done. To this very day, I don’t really know why the fuck I did it. The best answer I can give you is boredom. You also don’t think too deeply about the consequences of your actions when you’re a teenager. I mean, how the hell can you? I’m told the brain is still developing at that age. Anyway, I wrote up a few bomb threats and emailed them to various students and the principal of the school. I got in a world of trouble. I was suspended and then basically expelled from my school and my teenaged ass ended up getting charged with a Class B felony. This was back in 1999. This pretty much ruined my freshman year of high school. No Catholic institution would let me enroll because of this incident. They did not want to take the chance that I was the next school shooter. You also have to keep in mind that the infamous Columbine High School massacre occurred while my case was making its way through the juvenile court system.

So, there I was. I was a scrawny 16 year old kid who had just been exiled from everyone I’d pretty much ever known. It felt like my fucking world had ended. I was pretty sure I had ruined my fucking life forever because I was a dumb teenage kid who had no perspective. When the time came for my parents to stick me in another school, they found me a small, private school that was run by a local Baptist church. I wanted no part of it. I had seen TBN. I had a pretty good idea of what went on there. This type of religion seemed utterly brain dead to me.

I went. I barely fit in. This was a strange place, man. Nobody ever used profanity. There was no social dancing. Every single textbook was published by a company called Abeka which meant theology snuck into pretty much every subject. The theory of evolution was an Anti-Christian hoax inspired by Satan and man clung to it out of sinful pride. When other regions of the world were discussed, it had to be spelled out in black and white that the dominant religions there were false if that religion happened to be anything other than so-called biblical Christianity. There was also a really right-wing bent to the history we studied. Nelson Mandela was a terrorist and a communist. The Great Depression was greatly exaggerated by communist propagandists like John Steinbeck. It was like going to school in an alternate universe.

I looked around and it seemed like there was a lot of genuine love between people. These people seemed to care about one another.

I’d been in Catholic school my entire life and I saw so much cruelty there. I didn’t see much of that at all among these people. They had something and I wanted it. Holy shit. This seems like the narration for an episode of The 700 Club where a former stripper is about to convert but it’s accurate.

I was a kid. I had made the biggest mistake of my life. It was a mistake that had sent me away from every friend I’d ever made. I hated myself. It was easy for me to accept that there was a darkness inside of me that had driven my actions. Maybe it was my sinful nature. Yeah, it was my sinful nature. I gradually came to believe that Jesus Christ was the answer.

I can recall getting on my knees one night in my bedroom. I asked God for forgiveness and accepted Jesus. I can remember feeling my eyeballs heat up and being aware of a really bright light. I can also recall my ears buzzing. It scared me shitless. I believed I had been saved.

Skip forward in time to today. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect upon what happened. My conversion happened during a personal crisis. The thing about crises is that they eventually pass. What “saves” you in a crisis might not be what you need after it’s all over. Truths that seem iron clad in a crisis might not be so iron clad when you have time to catch your breath and think a little.

One day 

I can awaken from the dream

and I’ll be a YouTube star. 

My idiosyncrasies will be viral 

and my soul will be trademarked. 

Maybe I can buy myself a seat 

on The Muskrat’s space boat to Mars 

and I can suffocate 

with the richest 

and the sexiest 

while the people left behind watch 

while the minds that coded all the killer apps 

die well-dressed. 

Maybe I’ll upload 

in some time, some place 

that’s warm 

and that ain’t so cruel 

and that’s broken in some way 

that’s easier to fix. 

Maybe one day 

I can awaken from the dream 

as a man 

who sorta knows what to do 

sorta knows the truth 

sorta knows how to love.