Semiotic Ghost

There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness, for these bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible, but pass by whispering and on tip-toe. But the worst of it is that it is just this contentment that I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain….A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. – Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse

Mediocrity and complacency had gripped me, grabbed me by the wedding finger and tied me to the marriage bed. I had to leave my finger behind, but I’ve broken free. Now I run wild through the streets like a mad man. Starving for intensity, I consume everything that will come near me.

I live off of the highs and lows of life, the raw emotion. I want laughter and sobbing. I want passion and anger. Bipolar is another word for alive. We’ve over medicated ourselves. We take drugs to smooth out the crests and troughs. We lack fervor. We are neither happy nor sad. We are impotent.

Filed under: Patterns,Transmissions
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The immune system must recognize self in some manner in order to react to something foreign. – Immunology: A Synthesis, Edward S. Golub

Before I can fight these diseases that are attacking me, the cancers growing inside of me, I need to identify my self. I’ve stripped the sheets. I’ve taken the things closest to me and set them on fire. Everything must be new and sterile.

Filed under: Transmissions
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I see the world with two minds. I am a dichotomy. I’m torn between male and female, surrounded and alone, rational and crazy. I see the patterns all around me and I can assemble them into equations, break them into logical chunks that can balance across the equal sign. I watch the flux and influx from traffic and work to conversations and emotions. Everything follows a sign wave, moving in and out along a predetermined graph. Solve the equation and follow the patterns and you know where everything is going. Extrapolated futurisms.

At times too many variables come in and tangents form. I try to follow them while keeping the main path in site, but I get overwhelmed and lost. Then, the logical side of me breaks down and exposes raw emotions. These emotions corse through me like fire burning complex carbon chains and explode in boughts of insanity. My family lacks mental health, so I’m predisposed. Must I imbibe these neuroses? Is there a Psychotics Anonymous?

If I appear cold and detached it’s because ice is the only way I’ve found to hold in the burning inside.

Filed under: Lineage,Patterns
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I’m not doing this because I hate you. I’m doing it because I love myself.

P.S. I love the things that let me love.

Filed under: Patterns
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Walking out of work through a billow of smoke past the “smoking corner” on the way to my car, there are two possible figures that may materialize in that unfiltered haze: the rotting chain smoker or the young, sexy smoker. The blue cloud hangs around the smoker like a cloak. Desperately wanting to steal even the slightest glance of the sexy smoker, but frightened of the chain smoker, I have to rely on my other senses to determine whether or not the eye-stinging walk through the cloud is worth it.

The chain smoker moves his robotic arm up down, up down, a desparate craving for nicotine driving the gears in his hinged elbow. The stench of stale tobacco emanates from him and warns of his presence. Up close I can see the cancer on him, splotches covering his face, skin rotting off his ears. If I’m lucky his tar-tinged cough will warn me like a freight horn in the fog.

The sexy smoker embodies the brighter, Phillip-Morris side of smoking. She props her arm out away from her, causing her hips to curve even more, and only brings the cigarette in close for short drags. Her perfume mixes with the additive-free smell of designer tobacco to create a sweet smell. The smoke lingers in her mouth, filling me with lust, and she kisses the air as she blows it across her lips.

A gust of wind rounds the corner and clears the cloud in time for me to see the sexy smoker’s face illuminated by the flare of her cigarette as she takes another drag. I light a cigarette as I walk closer to her. What a filthy habit.

Filed under: Transmissions
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The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity. In a sense, the cyborg has no origin story…
-Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway

Everyone needs a creation story, a myth from which to pull truth.

Filed under: Transmissions
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I woke last night to strange noises outside my window. At first I thought the rasping sound was only the wind rattling my window, but it was a calm night. I laid in bed for a while, too tired to investigate. The noise persisted enough to convince me that it was real and not just a residual sensation from my dream. Annoyed and more awake, I rolled out of bed to put an end to the now increasingly loud noise. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I saw flashes of light, sparks. I thought the light was only the dizziness of sleep and blood rushing to my head, but as I approached the window I realized the sound and the light were one.

Outside my window were balls of light the size of baseballs flying around erratically and slamming into my window. At first they were nothing but a blur, but as I got closer one stopped for a moment and I saw a face. Despite the glow and the haze of sleep in my eyes, the face had sharp features: a pointed nose, high cheekbones, and dark eyes. My eyes met those of the face and then I was knocked back into my bed by a horrific, high-pitched scream. When I woke up again the black spots that were burned into my eyes were now just dark blotches on my pillow case where my ears had bled.

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“I’m not dead yet.”
-Woodie Guthrie

A list of things I want to do before I die.

1. Get a tattoo
2. Jump out of a plane
3. Travel Japan with no money
4. Two girls at once
5. Heroin

I’m sure other things will come along the way, but I hate lists.

Filed under: Prosaic Posts
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Jerking off has come to represent two near-polar opposites in our culture: 1. A pleasurable act performed on oneself in private or in the context of intimacy. 2. Showing disdain by ejaculating onto the shunned object. (An offense worse than spitting or urinating on something, perhaps because it requires more time and effort.)

It is under the second usage that I exercise my disgust for verbal masturbation. Verbal masturbators defines those people who talk incestly, louder and louder, and even repeat themselves until they have brought their eardrums to a reverberating climax with the sound of their own voice.

I hate those fuckers.

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The orange carpet had grown onto the couch, creating an orange and brown plaid that rested like dead vines on an ancient tree. At the far end of the couch, closest to the television and the closeted wet bar, sat Pop, a giant German of a man, in a self-made crater of broken springs and worn-out foam. At the opposite end of the couch, closest to the kitchen and the closeted laundry room, sat Mom, a frail shrunken beauty, in a well-worn soft spot of the cushion. I would sit between them, the first grandson, always in the middle. My cushion made an excellent fort.

An excellent fort by definition requires: every cushion in the room, several blankets, a small and concealed entrance, lookouts, and an important object to center the fort around such as the television, a stash of Pringles and basketball cards, or a hot air vent in the winter. Fort building has only one rule: everything must be put back in place before Pop comes home in the evening.

With Pop home my forts became more compact and concealed: behind the chair, inside the end table, underneath the bed. From my hiding place I would watch and listen in safety.

Filed under: Lineage
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