#07 - Decelerate to the LCD

decelerate to the "L"owest "C"ommon "D"enominator. my drag chute has been deployed to the lowest common denominator. my unemployment ran out last week... after weekly coverage since june, 2008. and in the U.S. of A, $ equals a voice, and mine has been silenced, as assuredly as a tea-bagger's delight in any obama failure.

i've been staying at my sister shannon's place since monday night while she and her boyfriend have been on vacation in vegas. and officially it's been my last hurrah... before reality kicks in. or, at least, until i allow reality back in. but reality will not be denied, no matter my absolute resolve to the contrary. tonight is my last night of exile-denial, so best make the most of it.

at 7:30 AM on tuesday the 23rd, just minutes after i left shannon and her boyfriend at the MSP airport, a 3-car fatal crash on MN I-494 spared me by inches. a flash of mopar silver caught my eye in the rear-view within seconds of the driver's demise. the shock hit me immediately, but the reality didn't bite until i got home. a soul escaped its mortal shell just feet from me. i'm not used to that. 4 days later and it's still strange.

my problems are but a whisper of the real assault on humanity in its current form. humans at this very moment are drawing their last breath while i drink vodka and lament my situation in a centrally-heated shelter. i feel like i'm a whiny little bitch in the grand scheme of things. yet at the same time i feel robbed of the "American Dream" i was 'promised' so long ago. i think i've been deluded to that "American Dream" I was told of in elementary school... where our worries were, at their worst, a trifle in comparison. we, in 1980, dwelled on who shot "J.R." rather than how "The Dukes of Hazzard" would affect our culture in the long run. I have nephews who're died-in-the-wool 'conservatives' who live to work and work to live. they don't concern themselves with current events. they have survival to worry about instead. 23 and divergent of original thought. what have we become? our focus has been diverted from life to "living."

I just spent the last 12 hours watching "WW2 in HD" on the History Channel. and i've been impacted by the prevailing vein of humanity in it. "Average" Joes in WW2 who gave of themselves but expected nothing in return except the theory of freedom which was projected upon Americans during WW2. I had at least 3 uncles directly affected by WW2. my uncle Stan was a belly-ball-turret gunner on a B-17 and flew over 35 missions over Germany... ubiquitously bombing ancesetors in the meantime, as the Dentingers are/were of German/French ancestry. i never asked Uncle Stan if he thought about the people he and the Americans bombed in WW2, and if he once thought about the possible ancestors he helped bomb. but i DID ask him if he ever shot down a German plane from his belly ball turret. He said 'yes', but refrained from elaborating. i took this as a non-sequiter to any further questions... though now i wish i had asked the questions i had before he died in 2004. life will always be a "what if" scenario...

as i listen to Pink Floyd's "Time" i reminisce back to 1988-1989 in high school. i had an 8th -hour Astronomy class. our teacher, Mr. Heil would allow our class 1 song at the beginning of class. Sean Anderson, thank GOD, chose "Pink Floyd" as the theme music, and "Wish You Were Here" as the soundtrack. My life will NEVER be the same again. Thank You, Brits! I will always love you.

but the bottom line will be, and will always be, to ME, the 'sigfried line.' will you slide your right hand past her 'maginal' line? at this point i just want to blow some motherfuckers to kingdom come. "BOOM!"

yet here i am. alone. yet together in the fight for human decency. i want to FUCK. i want to LOVE. i WANT. that is all.

#06 - What now?

it's 6:28 AM. i'm awake. forgot to take my trazodone. i just applied for a non-existent unemployment payment. i thought i'd have to reapply, but that option wasn't available to me. when i applied for my weekly payment it said i was authorized to receive $0, BUT said i may get the additional $25 a week as usual. sweet. $25/week. am i in 1930 and not aware of it?

i don't feel like typing anymore...

#05 - I can't wait til #9!

number ni-nah... number ni-nah. ahh, the beatles.

so, what's on my mind? why am i here right now? fuck, i don't know. it's a combination of gabapentin and dr. wackyman's homeopathic cure-all herbal remedy. i can't keep a straight thought. i was worked up a minute ago, seemingly, about what, i do not know. and when i got here, i gapped out. this happens quite frequently, and it's not always caused by the meds. i'm getting a glimpse into the world of hunter s. thompson... and i don't fucking care right now. meh. yeah, i give up a lot. but it doesn't usually last long. one time 2 years ago, when i was sick as hell from the oxy and about to be fired, i decided to give up. i mean, REALLY give up. to stop trying to do anything... you have to let go sometimes. it's a 24/7 'battle' against my own body, mind and soul. it's emotionally exhausting, inevitably. so, in order to survive, you have to cut it off. put down your arms and surrender, just for the rest... and sometimes, very seldomly, the thought of giving up 'the ghost' seems like a logical option. i've never seriously considered the actual act of suicide. not yet. but i could see it being an option in the event of a fatal ilness. why waste away in pain and agony while your family goes deeper in debt? to make everyone else's conscience clear? no. not for me. as a wise man once said, "I'm the one who has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to. Yeah." of course, this same wise man also suffocated on his own vomit and died at age 27. getting back to my point about giving up... when i decided to just lay in bed and never get back up. that lasted about 2 hours, when i started sketching out some idea i had for a drawing or design. it's hard-wired into me. i can't escape it. the 'power' or the 'energy' keeps me going, even when i try to give in and give up. is it the survival instinct? if that's the only reason, well, i'll take it. i assume some would suggest that this instinct is 'god'. hmmm. maybe. but i'm still not convinced. i do believe there's an energy that courses through everything in the universe, and that we're all vibrating at certain frequencies which 'attract' one person to another, and like-minded people gather together because of it. 'the laws of attraction,' or something. but, in a nut, good attracts good and bad attracts bad. throw in chaos theory, and there's your grand plan. did you know that the Earth vibrates at between 7-10 hz, which is the same hz. range for alpha brain waves in the human brain? alpha waves are thought to indicate that the brain is in a meditative state and aids in the creativity mindset. we're all connected, people. to the earth, to the sky, to the universe. call it new age bunk or hippie pap. but i see connections.

#04 - Fuck!

goddamn it! i'm so fucking sick and tired of forgetting shit! i take part of the blame, but the rest goes to oxy-fucking-contin. OxyContin: the secret scurge of american medicine. it seriously messed me up. and now i'm on Gabapentin, which also affects concentration and causes memory 'blanks'. it seems i can't win. yet.

what started this tirade? i don't remember how to type certain characters used in foreign language. i used to know this shit like the back of my hand. i used to create actual fonts for chris' sake. but i've been finding, ironically, that in the last few years, because of the drugs, a lot of what happened in my life is either a haze or completely gone. i co-host 2 podcasts right now, and when it's time for me to say something, i 'gap out'. it's almost like a hiccup. i open my mouth and nothing happens. and when i DO start speaking, i hesitate in nearly every sentence. my brain shifts into neutral and sticks there. and new clutches are expensive.

i feel a little better now. i focused my rage into typing, and it worked. huh. neat.

#03 - "Feral Artist"

i figured i had better explain my blog name: "The Feral Artist". you see, i've been unemployed for nearly 2 years, but before then, i had worked nearly 14 years in an office environment. now that i've been 'out' i'm not so sure i'd be able to re-adapt to it again. i swear w/o thinking, i make quips that would offend the highly-sensitive, i can't concentrate, my hygiene is, well... anyway, you get the idea. AND, i want to state as clearly as i can this important decree: I am not writing this blog for sympathy of ANY kind, though i know when sharing emotions and thoughts it can seem as if one were soliciting pity or help. I am not.

i HAVE been trying, though. not as much as i could if i put my entire mind to it, but something is better than nothing i guess. it's an uphill battle, though. with the economy as it is it's tough enough, but add on that the print side of design is, as we used to know it, dead. and i have no experience or training in web or interactive, which nearly every job listing requires. to be honest, web is not where my passion lies. at all. i mean, i'd like to gain a good, solid handle on it for myself, but HTML, CSS, etc. gets into tedious programming, which i am too scatter-brained to be as precise as i'd need to be. but i'd love to learn animation, whether it be Flash or otherwise. i doubt my concentration skills... i know i'm not that patient. but maybe i can develop my patience and concentration if i really tried. i just can't find the motivation. i think what i need to do is simply come up with a story idea to animate. one that i'd be passionate about enough to dedicate the time. i better start with sketches and storyboards first. we'll see how that goes.

i'm meeting with the dakota co. vocational rehab services tomorrow to start planning my future. it may be a job, but it'll likely be school. i think i want to study photography and/or video production. photography can't be outsourced nearly as easily as print and web design can be. or so i figure. and i've been very interested in film for years now. 2-3 years in school, with loans and financial aid, should be enough time to see where this economy will go. i was told that i have a free ride through school, so i'd be stupid not to.

finally, here's a poem i wrote last night. it's the first poem i've written and finished in at least 2 years. it's not great, but here it is, anyway:

- no title -

With the flick of my thumb the transformation begins.

The spark ignites, the blossom burns.

My chest inflates, my heart palpitates, my lungs deflate.

Then I wait...

My furrowed brow is melting now.

I feel my face elongate,

from pinched and puckered

to pliable and placid.

The melt continues through my limbs

like a leafless tree on a warm and humid spring day.

I am now a conduit of the vibrations all around me.

Each note, every pluck

like a lightning bolt through my spine.

My being is tuned into the collective vibe,

the ambient sphere of mood.

I am fluid now, free of form in body and mind.

Even free of gravity, ever so modestly.

I feel I'm floating away from the weight of reason.

I succumb to the numb.

The sofa revolution has only just begun.

#02 - 2:19 AM

entry #2. it's 2:19 AM central. my nights are growing longer again... it could be all the nicotine lozenges i've been gnawing on. it could be the caffeine tabs i take for a boost of energy as chronic fatigue is a symptom of CED (Camurati-Engelmann's Disease). the funny thing is, i'm wide awake. so much for chronic fatigue. i wish i could find a 'fix' for my emotional fatigue. FYI: pot works, but only for so long. i also find that it makes me anti-social. both pot and the emotional fatigue. 'fatigue.' every time i see that word i think of bugs bunny's phonetical pronunciation: "Fah-tee-cued".

my current 'joy' is listening to my top-rated songs on shuffle in iTunes. 'nothingness' acoustic version by living colour is playing now. years ago, in my over-dramatic days, i decided that i'd have this song played at my funeral. "Nothingness. All I have to feel is my loneliness. Nothing in the attic 'cept an empty chest, and nothing lasts forever." that was when i went a span of 4-6 months prior to graduating college dreaming and thinking of my possible premature demise. i slept little. lack of sleep can do some crazy-ass things to the human psyche... yet i still stay up late, sometimes all night. i guess that could explain a lot of things about me. i've been working on a campaign logo for a republican cousin of mine. it depresses me when i have a project like this that i can't get excited about. you'd think getting paid would do it, but no. but it's for my cousin, so that will be my motivation... unless she doesn't win the nomination today. hmmm... observation: shuffling your music, especially when cross-genre-ing, can be a strange trip. i went from 'Nothingness' to 'Love Shack'. 1 minute i'm wallowing in sad beauty, the next i'm doing the 'white man's overbite'. eh, such is my life. happy 1 minute, anything but happy the next.

guess i'll try to sleep now. adios, my friends.