I wrote to Marisa just now:

Dentro del autobus, hay Ingleses delante de mi y Alemanes atrás! Ha. locos!

But they are not the strangers. I am. Jayson once told me, and actually told everyone around us, aligned with us, groovin’ with us and otherwise accompanying us on the dotted life trek through the universe:

You’re lost and you like it.

They are not the strangers. I am. They giggle like misfits, but laughter among the superficially inane is glue. Camaraderie is a disease that ultimately benefits all with its contagion. Kavus Torabi sings in my ears:

So I’ll drown myself in wine with the only living friends that I can find. If they leave me all adrift on foreign shores, would it be so wrong of me to crash at yours?

Ha. I haven’t actually perused the lyrics of this obra closely, but I enjoy what he is getting at in that, shall we say, chorus.

But still, they are not the strangers. I crash at foreign shores frequently. Or, at least, I used to. I’d say that Michal’s apartment in Praha is one of those shores I have crashed at once upon many times. What’s the irking word in Spanish? He naufragado a menudo en las playas de mis amigos. And why not, really?

I am the stranger.

I’m not claiming that the purpose of friends are to line the shores on which I may crash, but it is certainly convenient when they do so. I’m a fleshy shore-liner, as well, I must admit. Or, at least at times. It is important to remember that we are ALL shore-liners and to certainly visit those who line available shores. They are more than proxies. They are companions that captain encapsulated journeys. Bubbles love to intersect and partially merge. Seemingly, they always separate later. When they DO merge into a larger sphere, they tend to burst before those smaller and less hybridised.

Now I wonder whether breaking open my lager will alert my travelling companions to my intentions of becoming slightly intoxicated en route to Bilbao. I shall find out very soon, and then write about it! Glory be! Fuck um.

Though the beer overflowed onto my fingers and not my keyboard, no-one turned their apparent visual attention on me, though surely the scent of hops radiated out to at minimum one meter. The English bloke in front of me, who I overheard telling an anecdote about a pub (in Logrono?), surely caught it. I recognise a potentially drunken Englishman from a considerable distance. He is not a stranger, but in a strange land, perhaps. I say perhaps, since he may come to La Rioja in his spare time now and again to suck down red wine and fuck goats. It’s a well known English vacation plan.

It occurs to me that my bladder may explode before I reach Bilbao. Regardless, I shall continue sipping my 40 (Loyal would refer to it as that) throughout the journey.

Kavus sings:

Your congregation will die alone. Your congregation will die alone. We’ll build our empire out of their bones. We’ll build our empire out of their bones.

Jayson, the fuckup that told me once You are lost, and you like it, and I discussed how relationships are like books in a personal library. When you spend time with a friend, in depth, you once again open that tome, take out the bookmark, and read. There are paragraphs your go over again and again bearing concentration, and others you simply skim. When beers are drunk, shots shot, cigs littered like a trail of bageta-crumbs, you place the book back on your shelf, bookmark in place, to be resumed at a later date. Or perhaps not. Jayson was fond of this idea. It doesn’t really take into account minglings with groups, though. Cross-referencing encyclopedia after encyclopedia could be exhausting, not to mention the weight to heft all of them in a backpack already splitting at its seams. Christián might suggest to create an app, perhaps with voice analysis, that categorises each human (tome / novel) throughout a night of social density and later allows you to review the myriad cross-references. Jayson would probably be fond of that idea, as well. However, he’s dead. Fuck um.

The bus has paused at an anonymous town full of humans discarding their camaraderie for a time to share the surely pervasive smell of LAGER permeating the autobus. By the time we reach Bilbao, each will crave drink. They’ll flock to watering holes, begin sucking down vodka martinis, sidras, txakolis, snifters of cognac and distilled juices from their own tear ducts. Drying out is not an option, because it means facing the reality of lost camaraderie.

All this being said, it’ll be nice to decapitate Christián and leave his fetid body floating in the fountain in front of the Deutche Oper. Finally, out of fate and familiarity, the flowing water will clog, the fen will become a bog, and his flesh will ferment the liquid into a nectar imbibed by all.

Pestilence.

A facebook friend named Ron Greenough died a few days ago. I don’t know the causes of his demise, but I spent a minute on his timeline and found he posted something (I forget what now) on the 21st. Ron and I never met. Actually, during the last few years, we never exchanged any personal quips.

I believe I got to know him in 2009, soon after my mandatory exile from the Czech Republic. He was some relation of Justin or other. I’m not sure which. I never bothered to find out since it was utterly unimportant to me. I only vaguely recall that we shared some similar spiritual and humouristic views. This, too, was not very important.

He has perished and people are writing on his timeline asking him to rest in peace as if his corpse could somehow absorb the electricity that distributes these messages. I’ll state the obvious and declare that death is a function that has two arguments, or inputs:

• The deceased (or, to be accurate, the fixin’to be deceased)
• A vector or array of people that know the fixin to be deceased

(defn death [human humans]
  (map (fn [h]
         (affect human h))
       humans))

The non-deceased humans are run through the blender that I give the function name affect. This function filters parts of the fixin to be deceased according to each non-deceased and modifies the latter with them.

Ron’s death affected me enough to spawn this entry in the Martenblog. I guess, in my life, this impetus was Ron’s purpose. To each non-deceased, a differing impetus.

The subject of celebrities dying this year seems a big deal on social media. Take Prince, for example. Non-deceased humans are raving about him! Fixin to be deceased ones possibly not so much. Prince’s impetus has been to forcibly take control of the minds of multitudes and make them gather into mobbish clusters and celebrate. I did not know Prince personally, but I feel he’d probably have approved. I did not mingle with any mobbish mass, but I did listen to three of his albums the other day.

• Purple Rain
• Around the World in a Day
• 1999

I enjoyed my time with these albums and attempted to actively listen as much as possible. Slaving away over the terminal for the sake of patching up a few bugs for James’s peace of mind interfered with my concentration at times, as usual. Purple Rain is very enjoyable. The second album, less so. 1999 could expunge its own second half and I’d not blink my singular, ogling eye.

Needless to say, I did not tear up for either of these two corpses. Other corpses will probably have the impetus to create a flow of tears from my singular, ogling eye. We’ll see. I may or may not let Martenblog know.

Fuck um.

That capsule of condensed filth that calls itself Christián and I were discussing mild philosophy a few minutes ago. He claimed that two things he ponders on consistently are:

• Whatever you are doing now is the meaning of your life.
• Wherever you go, there you are.

I’m a fan of both views of life. In fact, they are intimately entwined, and, as Shambal claims, Intimacy is the flower that blooms from cruelty. Taken from a modern viewpoint, both of these views cruelly elide ideas risen on pedestals by our culture. An obvious one is that our lives are a culmination of the past. Our moments concentrate our past prowess into a sharp focus. What’s more, we are set on paths to fashion us into arrows. Our birth is the twang of a string. We rip through the atmosphere of life, puncturing any obstacle on our course. Our death leaves our shaft thrumming momentarily. Hopefully, we have achieved the centre of the target – unflinching success.

I’’d rather drag through life as a wandering blunt object. I’ll cover more ground. I’ll meet more obstacles. I’ll probably only injure a few of them, and hopefully learn the shape and contour of the rest.

Is it really cruel to the arrow? It’s cruel to the idea of the arrow. Who wants to be honed to something prescribed by a mythical cultural textbook, anyway? Follow in the footsteps of the success of your father, bah! Fuck um. In fact, most want to be honed into that arrow. They are born into it, whether they know it or not. They strive for it. They toil for it. They die for it. They certainly deserve to die for it.

I know they don’t want my pity, but it exudes from my weeping pores for them. Their eye is ever on the thrumming of the shaft after the point is buried into the wooden block of success and of death. At least they could take heed of the flight, of the course as it is in progress! Enjoy life. This does not mean enjoy your evenings at the pub after a day’s toil. This does not mean enjoy the time with your family during weekends and holidays. This does not mean look to days by the lake when you can lie dreaming while your eyes defocus on the sky. These are the rest stops along the course. They are the weigh stations. Stop for a breather. Have a glass of water. Nah, make it Brandy. Make it seven snifters of Brandy. Fuck um. Sit at a table with your compatriots and share complaints about the journey - the toil.

I’m on the road. I enjoy the road. I want to stay on the road. I’ll hang at a weigh station time and again, but I’ll be whipping out my little journal to scratch out some ideas while I’m there. And you won’t hear me bitching about my mornings or my yesterdays or even about my secretary’s dessicated cleft.

The more i live, I feel that to live simply and without the weight of ambition is the most enlightened path. Create what you can, but don’t worry too much about the end product. The journey is all the more fulfilling. The process of doing, of living. I want to be on the road of life, not at one of its numerous rest stops. This also fits with both your #1 and #2.

I’m working on a piece of music for the credits of Dani’s production. His film has inspired me to create. I’ve always needed a sort of impetus to begin the creative process. I used to walk around that bleak park in Seminole, stopping at arbitrary benches to scratch out a sentence or two. They weren’t to be used just then or even in the near future, but to serve as impetuses for future writing (or even composing!).

I am doing my best to follow the philosophy described above as I compose my piece. I am proceeding slowly. Very slowly. Why? Because I am enjoying the journey. Well, that is one of the reasons. The other main one is I can reflect on the parts, or themes, and let them soak into my subconscious. My subconscious serves as a plaintive vessel to contemplate even when the rest of that squishy organ encased in my malformed skull is busy with more conventional tasks.

I began writing this thinking I’d describe the parts of the piece that fit together, but I’ve decided not to. I believe I need a few more days of letting it soak in muddy puddles pooled in my mind.

The working title is Let Miners Be Interred. Pretentious pap! Hah! Fuck um. In the end, I’ll probably ask Dani to retitle it. I like the naive way he approaches creativity. It is refreshing.

Like every day lately, earlier in the afternoon, I took my twelve day old bicycle out for spin. I shambled up the incline of a mini-mountain to a disheveled vineyard. The trunks and stalks of barren grape bushes twisted and groped towards me, towards the sky and towards each other. Apparently, it’s not grape season. My ride today was brief and I believe the reason was lethargy. Still, it’s always thrilling to be out in the air, alone in a capsule as I merge with the elements. My awareness is always heightened. It is truly zen.

To a lesser extent, I get the feeling as I travel in a car, as the driver. I am hyper aware. My mind does not drift, even if music threatens to envelop me wholly. The music actually helps my focus. Even Shambal could vouch for that, and he is not a creature to vouch for much.

Exercise, like driving aimlessly, is a release for many, and it is a process without mental focus. It’s purpose is to spend time out of focus. I can’t count on my infinite digits spanning my infinite paws the times my ex-hollow-eyed-wife-waif was a part of a collision. She was one to pursue such drifts. She was also one to take her bicycle out for a spin. I have written about this piece of spite before, as it occurred to me several times during my excursions about Saaremaa on that handsome and ancient three-speed. A relic of another time. I claim it as spite because most of my complaints are rooted in spite. I reach for a time when my complaints are no more, whether in death, sleep, an oceanic stream of fermions, or whilst eating a pomegranate.

Brynn refused to use the gear-changing facilities provided by the machine that carried her. The slope of the landscape was not an issue she whished to face. Somewhere in her muddy mind was the thought that switching to a more reasonable gear on, say, a steep incline was tantamount to failure. I’ll repeat another thought that is always awakened by memories of that chick: I sincerely pity whomever she is with at this moment. Poor bastard.

My bicycle, whom I should name, and perhaps I shall do so in one of the following sentences, is, as I mentioned, twelve days old. Not literally twelve days old, of course, but twelve days in my possession. It’s name is Plellent. Hail, Plellent!! I must remember, even when graced with dust streaming past me on account of my new, metal friend, that complacency is not an option. Items fill my life at times and entertain me. They may even improve my health both mentally and physically. But, in the end, I cannot use them as an excuse to stay put.

I, like that lumpish crone Christián, am a wanderer. A deep sadness will finally take hold if I allow anything resembling superficial roots to take shape, much less grasp any plot of soil. Perhaps part of me longs for a sordid hovel to make my home base of sorts. Surely, that would augment creativity, or at least music composition. Or perhaps that sordid hovel can be achieved wholly in my mind as I shift bodily from place to place. It may serve as a repository for all my needless accomplishments and let me drift like a wraith that brushes up crumbs from every floor I pass over.

Or, as Shambal wafts through my mind, as he always does, I can plant my enormous buttocks onto a bed and cultivate the life of a sessile stalk, branching and flowering to engulf my singular land. In the darkest and most mellifluous of ponderings, I already really do.

Shambal grunted and turned onto his side from a torpid, supine night. He reached over to nastily clutch his she-goat’s porous flesh, but grasped only the rough, tangled blankets. The she-goat wasn’t there. Had he dreamed her all along? But the morning spring in his brain began to wind and he remembered the night before. His niggard had assured him that the she-goat’d be taken to Dunkirk for repairs.

Damn biological failings! he screeched silently to himself.

First thing in the morning, usually, the she-goat sucked him off. Shambal got cranky if he didn’t get his morning suck. Like almost everyone in this late land, he was a creature set in his ways. Nor could he escape from etched routines easily. He fumbled through the nightstand for one of his old wet-rags. He’d have to masturbate. No other means of release existed that moment. Considering superficially as he began to whack, the proposition of a she-goat harem shambled through his mind. Yes. He arched his turgid spine slighly. A harem could bring ease to petty morning problems. The she-goats would flounce about in anticipation of their turn with his skin-tube. He smiled and disgarded the wet-rag.

Who was that Gina Hammond, actually? Was she named after the organ that defined a certain sound of the seventies? I suggest that, were the timelines different, she’d have been named by the progeny of Keith, who is dead. Yes, Christián reminded me that Keith is dead another time today. No, not Keith Teal, but Keith Emerson. You know - the keyboard dude.

Gina Hammond was a Bond fan. I know personally because she loaned me six or seven Bond films in 1986 (or thereabouts). They tooted my muffin, but these days, especially after continuous lectures about the nature of women from Christián, I wonder why such a nubile chick would be obsessed with action movies. Ok, Bond may have always been delectable hunkily by females, but the actual persona of the film would not hold any girl I have known in the last 20 years’s attention for more than a few minutes.

I admit that I used to gawk at her naked thighs and shins as she fanned her parents’ automotive devices with water on summer afternoons. I took walks specifically for this purpose. I memorized her schedule when she was a junior in high school and I, a sophomore, on the day before school ended. I recall walking through the halls will the absurdity burning in my mind that this knowledge will lead to the blank wall of another summer.

I sparred with her boyfriend, Jimmy Wyrick, because he could not accept my passive interest in her. He threatened violence. he showed me his status as an alpha male by revving his shaft shaped gear shift to ascertain over one hundred miles per hour on Río street in flaccid Fort Stockton, Texas. I laughed.

(street)

So I found Jimmy Wyrick on Facebook. I have asked him - Where is Gina?

The last I heard of her was when I was pining over that forlorn piece of property near the University of Texas campus in hopes to share it with Jimmy Miles in a soggy 1989. What was I listening to then? I’d guess Marillion before Hogarth, with pomp and importance. Hawkwind circa Levitation, and not much else that I can think of. At least Levitation has stood the test of time.

Moo

Another one from The Buried Giant:

Those weathered women with their flapping rags were once innocent maidens, some possessing beauty and grace, or at least the freshness that will often serve as well in a man’s eye.

Desperate men lower their standards. That one is a well-worn platitude to be sure. At his current point, Christián will take most any creature with a cunt to compensate his enforced chastity. Hah! Enforced! The purpose of the quote is not to berate Christián’s methods, but to illustrate desperation. The roots of this necessity for a mate, no matter how brief, has its root in fear of solitude. The longing for sexual release is a deeper affliction. And, in many cases, it is eventual mental ruination.

In the novel, Gawain encounters these weathered women on the road to his life-task. At one (or several) point(s), he wanders if one of them is the lass he aided to her vengeful goal ages ago on the same (or similar) road. That lass was an old woman in a nubile girl suit. He should have just done her, slain her and let the memory retreat into the void. The weathered women curse him for never achieving his goal and therefore allowing the breath of forgetfulness freely roam the land. Distributing blame is a womanly hobby, especially distributing blame for events that occur naturally by no force of (especially) any particular man.

Perhaps his task is foolish to begin with? Or maybe meaningless? or pointless? The breath of forgetfulness waxes and wanes but is never snuffed out. All these women know is that they have forgotten the details and thus the importance of their lives. They are left to hurl clumps of mud at a impotent symbol of change. Gawain is an old man, so an impotent, mortal and fading agent of change. As we, as a species, are but a temporary blight on the fertile earth, Gawain is but a temporary irritation to the flux of the breath of forgetfulness.

Enduring those clumps of mud is the curse of a lasting relationship. Culture has marinated our minds in the idea that women should be cared for. Fucking white knight syndrome. To watch them during the last century rise from this oppression brings me almost to a smile. It most likely appears more like a grimace, though. Some have raised themselves above the quivering fright of Victorian hangover, surely, but few have discarded all its benefits.

And those pusillanimous white knights perpetuate the madness!

Every nubile wench, if not justifiably hacked to pieces and tossed like chum to fishes, becomes a dessicated hag. They find their clumps of mud within less than satisfactory pasts they can hardly even recall. Vapours from forgotten times taint any immediacy. These parched skin bags inhabit the opposite of Zen, feeding on perfumes afoul with eidolons. These feelings spawn resentment and rage. Who is the target? He is the enduring figure who carried her in his arms through the torment of receding beauty. Poor sap.

Growing old with another brings happiness. Or so another cultural more states. In my experience, I’ve seen bent old men enduring the undeserved wrath of crones. The minutes of pleasure diminish from an encompassing sphere to a singularity. The broken man floats on the outside but the crone remains within. May she suffocate. It’s no wonder so many men are seen pursuing endless projects during the twilight years. They are scrabbling at the thickening atmosphere to punch holes for air. In out in out in out. This time, just breathe.

Someone told me that the oldest profession is prostitution. It’s the only proper profession for a woman. Pools of prostitutes can be assigned to the rich and poor alike. Some politicians pine for a static income for all citizens. Not a bad idea, really, but even better to round up all the wenches, place them in programs to get um off the couch and into shape. Organise them and distribute them in waves, morphing for variety, to the rich and the poor alike. For every man, a cleft can facilitate needed release with no strings attached.

Implement any necessary means to diminish the intelligence of females to a harmless level. Lobotomies are a start. Selected breeding comes next.

We need to get this show on the road.

Fuck um.

Go round and round the wagon, because you’re the mule tethered to the big wheel.

Shambal does as the crone asks. He always does what the crone asks. She’d be dead soon, anyhow, so what did it really matter? And, besides, her cleft is all that tangibly remains of nostalgia that engulfs him hourly. In an extended adolescence, or a dream, he cannot recall which, he imagined himself at his current age. The term that bounced around in his mind was dirty old man. All his compatriots (that’s what they were, really, as opposed to friends) would have swiftly agreed that his destiny was to be a dirty old man.

Indeed, he is a dirty old man. The catch, however, is there are no nubile chicks about for him to exploit. No, there is only the withered cleft.

Again, long ago, that cleft was magic. He turned to it daily for release. At the time, it was not only release, but a sense of empowerment. He was a conqueror, even if he conquered the same treeless valley time and time again. These days, release is the only valid term. He still likes to think of himself as a conquorer. He even traces that word on the slimy walls of his bathing place at times. It reassures him.

Shambal shared his bodily fluids with other clefts back in the day. He was keen on conquering as many as possible and as quickly as possible. He unilaterally refused to take the slightest glance from the point of view of any given conqueree. He may have lost a bit of his sense of empowerment had he done so. Those ripe clefts so full of the juice of life internally referred to him simply as a skin rod.

His conquests never gave him much of a backwards mental glance.

That is, execpt for the cleft he thought once to be eternal but now squirts lubricant into to facilitate his release. He makes the lubricant in his personal studio or workshop. He renders the fat from the clammy worms that crawl round the perimeter of his chosen homestead. Later, he’d think back on even this as the good ol days as he contemplates rendering the fat from his drooping buttocks for an extended whack session. The lubricant keeps well in the patented cold fusion fridge he himself invented during his fecund youth. Before the release sessions, he places it in another unit also powered by his once famous invention for warming.

What is it to be a dirty old man if the objects that assign you to that category no longer exist in your world? Self assignment is natural, sure. Shambal has always been fond of assigning the term genius to himself even as he has lacked any evidence to convince others of this trait. Thankfully, only he and his cleft are left, and that ragged flesh rupture worships him willingly. Gladly. And, given this current context, a genius he surely is.

Dirty Old Man? Uncertain.

Piebald, ghostly figures surround him in his dreams. Their torsos are painstakingly thin. Their breasts burst from whatever skimpy outfit the nightly hallucination has assigned. The bodies never topple from the weight. Aren’t hallucinations great? Each face is interchangeable, though with distinguishing features always pert with whorish smiles and wide eyes. Shambal loves long, dark pelts to spill far beyond milky shoulders. There will be tender bite marks on a few of those shoulders, incised himself in past hallucinations. Legs are always a tad longer than the arched backs. Overall, the chicks have small frames, perfect for almost instantaneous conquest. One by one, and even in duos or trios at times, they fall to his skin rod.

His own visage vacillates unerringly like two orbits of an electron between his current bent form and the prime of his health. His skin rod displays itself proudly, unchanging, in every scene. After all, that borer of the depths has always been the summation of his personality.

He pushes the spokes of the wheel casually round and round and round. The crunching of machinery below sings to him of their next meal. At times, he wished he were not the mule but actually owned one of the likeable beasts. He’s heard rumours of their continued existence in the outlands. Well, he’d heard of their continued existence what could be several rotations of the second star ago. He loses track of time. At times, he also wishes he could measure time reliably by his releases into the puckered cleft. His mind is still agile enough to recognize that this manner of keeping time would be about as precise as hmeasuring it by his agéd bowel movements.

It occurs to him that if he could subsist without releases for some rotations of the first star, he’d be capable of finding out himself if mules do indeed still exist. He might even be able to procure one.

Hrm, he thinks. Life without the cleft for such an extended time? It’s a contemplation of perdition. The cleft is his soul. He’d not lose it. Little does he know that when the cleft does loose its empty skin bag to the void, he’ll make the journey. Furthermore, he’ll never return. The cleft’s resting place, to be dug by Shambal’s own personal excavation robot, will never be seen again by anything approaching the sentience of a humanoid.

One of the slipping points of a relationship, methinks, is the point a couple reaches at which they simply accept each others’ gush of erroneous data. I see now, in magnificent hindsight, plenty of places in past shindigs I stopped attempting to, as the trollops say, put my mates in their places intellectually. In part, I knew they resented me taking the role of the teacher. EVERY girlfriend / boyfriend / wife / husband / stoat does. Managing the vast, grey area between instruction and kind correction is not a task for the weak of skeletal infrastructure. Therefore, many of my bunghoneys have fallen astray.

It’s easy to note that accepting the flaws of your sack-sloth’s logic can be eventually a binding factor. I say it is a slide into inertia. And inertia is the particular driving force in the majority of gongbashes I have observed during my eternal time in this evaporating universe.

I mention the pivot simply because I reached it in my relationship with Marisa sometime recently. I’d say within the last few months, at most. She rattles out lectures as the teacher she once was and always will be interiorly. Facts are thrown like darts by a blind, drunk bolivian. Sure, some hit a mark, but many are rusted (antiquated) or fractured (simply untrue). I let the projectiles fly. And I shall continue to do so until the final scene and anti-climax of this bopadittle.

I’m sitting in the same place I did yesterday. Today, flames from my right reach their red paws in my direction but never quite fulfill their threat to scorch. The expansive room is empty excepting the crowded furniture. Ha. The furniture is a good analogy of the clutter the agéd accumulate.

Note to self: configure the bluetooth keyboard I am using to type this garbage to create accented characters. Don’t think about it now, Bobbus. Do it later. Push it from your mind.

Note to self: On the readthrough to correct spelling errors, I came upon my note to self and adjusted my settings. All you who nestle with barnacles would approve.

One detrimental thing at a time, you jaw-whore.

Clutter can replace lost lives. Children depart. Relatives snuff out. They can even snuff themselves out. It’s all the same to me. The grand accumulation is inertia itself. To weigh oneself with material bounty is a disease. I’ve been told that each cup, each worn sofa cover, each circular stain on the woodwork and each blackened smudge from the aforementioned flames tell stories. They are the phrases and paragraphs of a novel. The house might be the binding or the cover.

Let the flames claim their ancient words. Let the flames consume the book. Begin anew.

The importance of preservation is baffling. Is it a case of nostalgia? Is it personal? Is it to pass on to progeny? It’s both. The family cannot die! NO NO NO! Many tales of yore spill fears of families being snuffed out.

I am the last of my line!

Let the flames consume. Begin anew.

It’s blood curse. Especially since the dismemberment of the family unit, a process that has eaten away at cohesion decades, the chance of birthright-death has increased. I applaud this procession. MARCH ALONG THE ESPLANADE AND LAY WASTE TO THEIR GUMMY GLUE!! The unravelling leads to a greater cohesion, and one of much more importance than limited genetic pegajosidad. Why do people look at me so strangely when I mention to them that we are all the same species, anyway?

It fact, the books that detail the progression of our species are fundamentally flawed. They focus on clumps of our species divided. Factions warring. The trappings of illusory cohesion are tantamount in western education. Like the chunks of debris in my mind, closer examination could always reveal the slender threads binding seemingly separate masses.

Fighting the gravitational forces of said masses is a lifelong struggle. To form oneself into a binding element can be near suicide and is rarely beneficial to the individual. I’ll leave it at that before I go off on a parallel tangent concerning the merits and demerits of different types of pegajosidad. And then I’d be forced onto an orthogonal path with respect to obsession with pure forms and black / white. Gurgle.

The strength of family pegajosidad is very apparent to me in Spain. It could be I’ve simply stumbled on a hellishly insular group of humans and it is not, as the apes say, the norm. As the mollusks say, the deep end submerges me. I resist, as I always have, but the liquid’s need to subsume will ultimately have an opposite effect.

Let the flames consume. Begin anew.

I sat at this table last year writing. I believe also the year before. It is long and wooden. It can seat twenty or more humans. It those cases, I wonder about those crowded out and their feelings of exclusion. I, for one, am crowded out even when six or seven sit at the table. I’m only on the inside when I am the only one. Like now.

Repeating conversations about the drudgery of working life fill my ears. Not exactly at this moment, I say, but at many others during my existence in Spain. I understand the sentiment. I, too, have lived a life of drudgery, but only intermittently and only for short periods of those intermissions. I was trained up as a child to enter a life of drudgery. It was to be my destiny. I avoided it. How did I do that, exactly?

I achieved an unspoken goal by being a fuckup.

Being a fuckup is, unlike the waves of words preached at me during youth, quite productive. I recommend it to all. I’d never force someone into it, though. It is a state that must be approached in sheer solitude. My parents are certainly not proud. Especially my father.

My connotation of fuckup is perhaps not along the lines a upstanding human might recognise. Such upstanding humans at times look down with scorn or pity on those they deem losers. Ah, the downtrodden! Their long noses bead on their points. They are beads of acrimony.

As Scott Hazle said once, as recorded in the Three Subject Quotebook, I like to lose. And Matt Stapp: I’m not a winner. I’m a loser. Shut up. I once aspired to write a long form piece (that is, a concept album) entitled Nobody Loves a Winner. I no longer have aspirations. Well, not in the usual sense. Any reader of these entries would certainly know that by now. Either that, or they’d be pummeled to death by their significant other by now. Pummeled?? But, why? Because by reading my scintillating script, they’d be infected by fuckupedness. Moreover, they’d watch the infection bloom and cultivate it to reap the bounty of discarding a life of drudgery. Up until the point they are pummeled to death. Significant others in search of security unilaterally shun any fuckupedness leaking into their relationship.

I say fuck um.

At times, I admit that I must remind myself to appreciate how different my life is from most. Christian should do the same, and though he probably wouldn’t immediately classify himself as a fuckup, he’d with time grow affectionate of the term. He has also kicked a life of routine into the ditch. He’s left it far behind. I have a feeling it may have been what his father also wanted for me, but certainly not the life that his father, himself, ever led.

So I have dedicated these days to appreciating my life as a fuckup. My days in Spain progress as surely as they come to a close. I’ve passed the peak, as it were, and am descending. I am still content, but even unconsciously forge my own path time and again. I tire more rapidly of hours I feel wasted with useless chatter. I am more apt to unseat myself from said table and create obvious exclusion.

I have things to read. I have things to create. I have music to listen to. I even just have things to think about. I dislike missing chances to analyse the spaces between chunks of debris in my mind. When I look close enough, I always find the slender threads binding them.

Spending time with others is not always a waste. Though these words infer it, It has not been my intention in writing them. However, the obligation to remain in a conversation beyond the period of fecundity out of mere civility is absurd. I suppose I don’t like to just shoot the shit. Fuck um.

I am frightened by how humans shrink into worlds smaller and smaller as they grow older. Marisa did mention to me in the car during our drive to Fresneda that she’ll be one to have projects large small and everywhere inbetween rolling along until the day she looses her empty bag of flesh to the void. I appreciate this attitude. I am exactly like that. So is Christian. In this way, we are fuckups. (Christian and I to a much greater degree, however.) We are not satisfied by oozing away hours, days, months, eons and millenia in what I usually term as vacuum time.

It’s vacuum time again, Pumpkin! Get thee in front of that television before I thrash your behind with this cinder block!

Most of these projects and / or hobbies never arrive at a concrete objective, though an objective or two may have been in mind initially. If objectives are important, then the point is missed and one should rather impale oneself on the engorged cock of self-importance. Yes, I’ll write it once again: The journey is always more important than the destination.

I’ll raise a crusted cup clutched in my withered claw to that, jaw-whore.

Sergio sent a simple, mostly repeating electric piano motif to the Whatsapp group GOLD GUNNERS. I am a part of this group because I have been helping (I use this term very loosely) Dani on a film project to be submitted to somesuch contest later this year. I am an actor and a proofreader so far. A chance that some of my music will be included in the final product is also possible.

Sergio sent a simple, mostly repeating electric piano motif to the Whatsapp group GOLD GUNNERS yesterday afternoon. After years, I began using Pocket Band again. It’s ancient title is ULoops. I began composition of a piece sitting on Soundcloud at this moment in 2011. Pocket Band is basically a loop editor. They loops can be arbitrarily complex, but they are firmly bordered from one another. No overlaps are allowed, as far as I can tell. In the aforementioned composition, this limitation is particularly obvious. No matter.

I took Sergio’s motif, extracted a small part, and had Pocket Band repeat it nine times. Each set of three were plastered with different effects. Beneath rumbled and buzzed a sound generator with far too much LFO. This morning, I used Audacity on Galictis-vittata to overdub minimal guitar picking and scraping.

The GOLD GUNNERS applauded the result. Christian even muttered something positive under his breath with enough force for it to splatter spittle on the keyboard, sending me a message with blessings.

How long has it been since I’ve actually sat down and composed something? I reckon January of 2014. That’s over two full years, you lazy cunt. And I still feel excitement, joy and a fantastic wetness in my knickers. This morning saw me go through eight or nine pairs of undergarments.

Sergio sent two other rather crude acoustic guitar meanderings today. I plan to pick and scrape over one of the two tomorrow morning. The objective, however, as always, is to NEVER do the obvious. Therefore, firstly, anything resembling soling is right out. Repeating patterns of atmospheric pattering.

That’s where’s it’s AT, jaw-whore.

Shambal was in the kitchen that day. He’d peeled seven rutabagas. The discarded rind scattered itself around his bare feet. In ancient times, those times when he could actually see his feet, he enjoyed tactile sensations. One could say he had a foot fetish. One could also say that he just loved roughly hewn stone floors touching his soles.

Times did come, however, when a sliver of rock loosed itself. Usually this happened hear the narrow gaps between stones were mortar had compacted itself, retreating further into the flooring. He loved to howl in three precise tones when one a sliver jammed into his bare skin. The tones, translated to notes, were e, f and gis. Upon many occasions, and especially when a slice of stone was jammed into the sole of his foot, he considered writing a ditty, or even a quartet or symphony, using the three tones as a basis. A wealth of chord sequences including them played in his mind time and again.

Now that he is sessile in his bed, drained of filth by tubes to nether places of his land, he can precisely complete this pagan desire. Why doesn’t he, then? Because he is a jaw-whore. That is the sole reason.

Rutabagas were always one one Shambal’s favourite fruits. As a youth, he plucked them from low bushes and from hedges along rock walls separating his pig-land from one of the neighbouring. He’d stash most in his capacious waist-pack, but since they were fresh, he’d reserve one for immediate gobbling. The sensation of juice trickling from his lips, down his chin and neck, along his forested chest and pooling in his navel always soiled his knickers a bit.

As the hardened fruit boiled in this favourite pot atop the plasma-stove, he considered his earlier actions

He had flayed the skin from the feet, buttocks and head of his true love, a Bolivian chick he’d grown tired of during the past months. She had been a squeal in bed, and that had enticed him initially. He’d never been one to think too much before taking the plunge, so to speak. His vast satisfaction in disfiguring her in the wee hours, however, proved once and for all that the bad had profoundly outweighed the good.

The corpse was in the walk-in fridge. It’d keep for days and his supply of lubricant would allow for necro-shagging until he had the gumption and prowess to lure another tart into his lair.

Good luck, Shambal!! We’re with ya!