Existential crisis II

He took his girl into those dark rooms in the back. Hundreds of dollars were blown by the time he came back to find me in a horrifically dark mood at having unlimited drinks on his tab but no other prospects. We were both nearly blacked out as our aggression led us outside of the club. 

After binge drinking through the night and the next morning and afternoon I punched my friend in the face for saying something I found offensive. In shock he received multiple punches landed successively and successfully to the face from my fists. When he finally collected himself away from my abuse he took me down in a chokehold for the kill. I stabbed at his face with my keys as I yelled bloody murder. My thumbs were putting pressure in his eye sockets as a random bystander ran from the parking lot and knocked my friend off of me. With bruises and blood on my friends face we took off in my car for Lincoln to see Waylon Jenning’s son, Shooter, play at the Bourbon.

From the interstate I took the turn off airborne into the divide between the interstate and the pull off ramp. As we hit the grass dirt flew in the air and the car made it back onto asphalt as I pulled up to a gas station to fuel up. At the beginning of the concert my friend got kicked out for walking around with a handle of cheap vodka right in the open. He talked with a bum in the alley way as I listened to Jennings sing, “you couldn’t hit country with a baseball bat” and “if that ain’t country you can kiss my ass.”

Into the tailpipe of the rv went the half stick of dynamite. We were running as the explosion went off. An overwhelming boom drove us into the trees. With urgency we were attempting to climb into a tree. Once into the security of the branches I saw a squad car driving at the top of the hill. As my friend swung up onto the top of the first branch the spotlight of the squad car swept the ground and trunks of the trees beneath us. 

Blood dripping in spots from my head all the way down my body I stood at Memorial park pleading with a group of older guys not to beat me up. A blonde classmate of mine had smashed a wine glass over my head because I had put my shirt over her head while it was still on my back. Then I walked home as my friend watched from across the street.

Theology

 There I was on a roof with the last of my possessions in the darkness. I had got here by climbing a fire escape. My last possession was a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Earlier in the evening I had taken a salamander out of my pocket and let it out near some cattails in ConAgra park. In the dark I walked by moonlight and read passages from my book by artificial light.

Throughout my last two years of high school I had published a zine called Bad Taste and had been the entertainment editor of Omaha Central High Schools last print editions of The Register school newspaper. The zine collected artwork, writings, and interviews of my friends around town. My contribution as entertainment editor included an edition that took half of the paper up with DIY design collage artwork of my friends around towns artwork and interviews with their bands.

I had a guitar, a collection of records from working at the local record store Homers on Saddle Creek. I had a stereo and a vinyl player that I would create mixtapes with. I had a typewriter I would write with. I had a recording device for interviews and Lo-fi music recordings. I had a bicycle to get around town with. I had literature books from Pageturners book store, Dostoyevsky, Fitzgerald, Kerouac and art books and magazines from Borders Books and Gifts. I owned spray cans for graffiti.

I would throw parties that attracted people of all social disciplines. Kids would be smoking on the balcony while others would drink at the dining room table. The new Lil Wayne album, Jimi Hendrix or Yes may be playing from the sound system. An NBA game or the Westside story would be on the 13 inch tv. The place could be crowded with boys and girls before or after they made a round through Memorial park. We would jam on my keyboard and guitar before going to a concert, thrift store or bike ride. At night I may go skateboarding alone or to a friends place for a hangout or hit the streets to go tagging.

That was all gone now as I had divided my most valuable possessions between my two best friends and put the rest of my record, books and other collections into a dumpster. I had moved out of my mothers and outdid myself within a day by moving out of my new place. With the money I had saved from Homer’s record store and having completed high school I abandoned my earthly possessions and was gone to wholeheartedly seek God.

From the rooftop in the Old Market I read Ivan Ilyich’s story about always doing his role and playing his part in society only to feel on his deathbed that that wasn’t where it was at. He looked back with regret that he had never stepped out on his own and taken what he actually wanted for himself. As I got on the Greyhound bus leaving Omaha, NE for New Mexico I did not intend to not go after what I wanted: God.

 

 

My graduation was happening as the bus was driving through desert of southwest America. I had turned my phone off so that when my great grandmother, grandmother and mother tried to call me with their Sunday best on after the ceremony was over I would not be bothered by them. None of them know where I am until a week later when I return.

However I did not intend to return ever. One thousand dollars in my pocket and a backpack in New Mexico was my deposit on my future. I had already made a new friend on the bus and got a hotel room with her. In the middle of the night I had already left her behind. In the morning I left behind my backpack, wallet, and clothes.

In the middle of the New Mexican desert walked a six foot tall white brunette male naked and alone. The prickly pear and other spiny and sharp vegetation cut my bare feet. I made a kind of footwear out of a large piece of canvas I found buried in the sand. The rest of the canvas I draped and wrapped around myself in various ways as I continued my pilgrimage.

As I made my way towards the mountain ahead of me, that I felt God, water and food was located upon, a motor sounds in the distance. Someone is motoring towards me. I am not walking along a road but the car is maneuvering through sand and around cactus. When it pulls alongside the driver and I stare at each other with incredulity and bewilderment. 

The driver assumes I am an angel. He tells me he drove out into the desert to kill himself with a machete. He produces the large machete before my eyes. He tells me that I am an archangel sent by God for the deliverance of his life. God was surely saving two birds with one stone.

Men who hold angels captive are very excitable. He tells me why he was going to kill himself and outfits me with new clothes, water and food. As his car runs low on gas he drops me on the highway to return home. I put my thumb out and an old cop car picks me up. I assume I will spend the night in jail but it is a hippy family who thought that the car was ironically cool. They drive me into the mountains.

At a campfire is a bare breasted woman who gives me wine. I drift from camp to camp looking for God. At one point I stand in a prayer circle and the man saying the prayer is naked. At one point I am naked again. Suddenly realizing I am not comfortable being around kids with just my boxer shorts on I find people who give me more clothes. People give me food as I scamper like a stray dog.

Eventually my desire for God is sated and the epiphany is that my only purpose in this life is to be responsible. An older gentleman drives me to my backpack and wallet that I had cached in a storm drain. I catch a bus back home and get my job back at Homers record store and register for classes at community college.

Apocalypse

 

 

This deer is a ghost deer.

This werewolf wants to be a good citizen. This terrestrial plane of twilight enjoins ghost deer and werewolf as equals. At first they frolic, race and touch teeth.

A shadow passes over them.

The mystery of the shadow belongs to a Jurassic bird. Flown out of an underground Jurassic world on accident, the bird was attempting to avoid conflict. The bird returns to the crevice it escaped from just in time for the crevice to close the jurasssic world in on itself forever.

The mystery of the passing shadow made the pair of twilight celestials begin to think.

For time before the werewolf had a mind racked with anxiety, worry and problems of how to be a better citizen as he rushed into the woods to satisfy his desire for fresh prey. The ghost deer had been pushed on by primordial instinct to find his company.

A feeling was in the air that left the future to frolic, running, and touching with teeth until the shadow of the unknown passed over the pair and made them think about what they really desired.

Human flesh.

At that moment a gopher offered them a potato.

Twenty racist whites hunting for raccoons began to sing as they came out of the pines.

Twenty more gophers with potatoes popped out of the ground.

A ring of rocks with lumber in the middle was struck with lightning.

The potatoes were roasted.

Black men sang on the top of pine trees.

The white men ate the gophers and potatoes and then they shot the blacks.

Out of shame the surviving blacks shot each other.

The whites went back to their places in society.

The ghost deer and the werewolf ate the carcasses of the blacks.

There is a black baby.

They decide this black baby is why they are meant to live. They tend to and take care of the black child. In order to not eat the child they promise one another to not eat the child or any other human flesh ever again.

The black child has a gold star as a part of his forehead.

Gloves are on his hands, Nike dunks on his feet, and clothed in white arctic fur.

In the North Pole he evangelized eskimos, traveled the stars looking for extraterrestrials, and read the Greek classics. The Eskimo don’t treat him any different than a living god. They don’t worship him. He drifts in and out of their lives healing and helping and talking of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

The black man is a son of God and can neither go into the city or be satisfied by the country. He lives in the North Pole because it is unsettled.

He likes eskimos because they are his kind of people. They are frontiersmen. This black man is a god of the frontier. When he goes to space nobody knows. There is no one for him to talk Greek with except Santa Claus and a couple high elves. When he speaks of Jesus no one listens. The Eskimo love him for his heroic qualities of generosity, kindness and authority. He is an authority on all Eskimo things. Always helping them improve. 

Some of the Eskimo women begin to believe in Jesus. Among them a particularly attractive lady one day breaks through the ice and has an experience with a Narwhal. With a long horn coming out of her forehead she discovers the depths beneath the ice.

She has sex with the god of the frontier by putting her horn into his gold star.

A real skull fucking.

The process kills them both in 1972.

The substance of her mind goes into his bloody dead skull and like a seahorse a daughter is encompassed in the man's bosom and shoots into the sky like a shooting electron.

A star now exists in another dimension that is populated by civilized narwhals.

The carcass arises with a cavity in its stomach and forehead.

The carcass speaks.

“There comes time when I no longer think about myself as hole. 

Something in life has defeated me and my focus is up. 

I have never been known to mood, if there was ever any. 

Honest in clever picking kind of way that takes the air words to mystery, doubt to faith, reason to unexplainable and disaster to miracle. 

Becoming so detail-oriented, self-obsessed and unworthy that woman labels me creep in public. Other times I am in love without falling. As a preface here I started out with just the type of thing that destroys any bond: a cold analysis. This is a cold analysis of myself.

Do I have the style to be able to speak to you?

Nothing is better for that Hollywood relationship then the style of two people being in love without love.

The falling in love seems to permit the being in love.

I like to think of friendship as love only if it has crossed the line of risk. 

There was a girl and I had a crush on her and she became my friend. Then one night while watching a movie she kissed me on the mouth. 

Then I considered her not only a friend but a friend that I loved a friend loved.

Same with a family that stayed with my family while going through a divorce. I had to be brave for them so I came to love them in a paternal way.

Different kinds of love.

Some women I only trust for.

Sometimes I only want for their company.

What is the difference between love and love and lust and desire?

I tell many lies to women that I want.

I have had this problem of asking myself what for 

did I tell you I was going?

Did I tell you that because I think you are silly?

Instead it was like an opposite that I think you want and I think I am silly.

I think it would make you to be happy if I visit. Any part for any reason. I think it would make me happy to do the same. I think these would give mutual happiness to each other whether we saw each other when I was there or not as well. What would that mean that we are both happy for me to be in the same place as where you are whether together or apart?

I guess it means we like each other.

What else?

There is tragedy in why I told you for. I think it very serious mean for you not to come back. I was in when I wrote that to you and I was not planning on moving back.

If you went when I was not there it would be to much and I would not want to miss it so I would return. Then, this is the bad part, I would not have anything to show you of myself that was a new accomplishment or improvement. I would have no proof that my love for you had changed my life in any real way. Although you were beautiful you had not inspired me to change.

I could not let you in on the fact of just how dense I was.

Also to reveal my cowardice, my whole non chalance toward you while you were here both times was completely contrived and I was constantly on the bare tips of my nerves because I thought you were the most.

I didn’t make a move up, down, sideways. I cannot lose you if I never did.

Though. I don’t think I could not make a come on to you three times in a row.

You are much more desire object if I don’t.

The trouble with thinking of you as an object, although a wonderful object, is humanity. What is it about our humanity that has anything in common?

I like the fact that you are because I like culture, history, geography, sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, politics,etc. With all of that passion I do not have any friends that live. 

It is easy to place my passion in a lens that points towards passionate world like a connection.

It is easy for me to forget about you as well though because I am mostly a nationalist.

I don’t ever want to tell you that I like you, love you, admire you, or want you because that is unfair.

Our friendship stays.

I like it that way. It is magic. It is breathing underwater.

It is flying with wings through mountains. 

What is this about you digging a hole to China?

What is it like?

It is like nothing.

There is nothing between us, never has been and never will be.

It is better to be happy than not.

Those are my needs.To be fully autonomous with some woman, now go make me a sandwich. Extra Mayo.

You have escaped me forever?

This and one more level of self-doubt to collapse this letter into shame.

It is this: what about the needs of a woman?

Inside of that question lies another question relating to apathy.

Is it proper to care about people?”

Carcass then descends to Hades

Erupts into a sprouting flame

Ascends as the Phoenix

Incinerate globe

Narwhal puts on a tie and sings to the Phoenix.

“Take a last glance in the mirror and walk across the room to open the door for my lady. She looks amazing and so do I. The taxi is waiting. We are going to the city.

First we eat then we must dance . We have been making so much money. In times like these it is like we dance right from the dance floor into the bed sheets.

I help her father with the farm in the morning. I make business calls in the afternoon. She has been working on her clients website since 6 am. I put on my tie and do it all over again.”

Journey II

In the morning we drive through inner Wyoming like a defensive lineman. We stop by a bar called Bitchs corner bar. Apparently legendary we learn of the locally hated first batch of Wyoming’s own whiskey. This whiskey is now a smooth, rich and expensive whiskey. The first batch was somewhere between petroleum and white lightning apparently. Bitchs is also supposed to be one of the most haunted places in the Union.

Driving through Wind River National park the podcast turns from movie, to movie, to Wind River and I make the connection that my lad had put this podcast on for just such an occasion and that this podcast had come out years ago. Wind River is a movie about domestic violence perpetrated on Native American women. The movie’s director and writer was a white man. Sometimes when I go through places with rich Native American history I feel a sadness and a loss and a great overwhelming peace.

We immediately set in to conversation with the person to find out that she had tended bar all across the United States, was twenty-two and lived with her boyfriend. We settled in amongst ourselves to discuss the fact that we thought they were a them rather than her, possibly a little too loudly. When Ryan went to the restroom the couple guys next to us asked me in a brusque way if “we wanted to go”. I responded immediately that we did “not want to go.” Ryan came back and we headed towards the door and the two guys said, “hey, you don’t have to go.”
During the night the wind howled and whipped through Wind Creek and around the corners of the cabin motel we stayed at.

We made it to Jackson Hole by morning. Driving past the Tetons on the way there the mountains were completely covered by clouds. In Jackson Hole town square we found a farmers market with tamales. 

As we go through the gate into Tetons National Park they let us know that the day is free. What luck? We get into our Colter Bay campsite and it turns out it’s the last night the campground is open. What luck? Campground reserved we go on a hike. Fifteen minutes into our hike we ran into a black bear on the trail. What the duck?

His shoulder tries to shake out of my grip as his eyes look back to the bear to my hand and his shoulder and then to my eyes and in so many words ask, “are you trying to murder me?” My eyes say in so many words, “Ryan, if I wanted to murder you I would be outrunning you right now”.

I looked over my shoulder to our mother friend and once she realized we had tucked, turned and left she took at an extremely aggressive pace away from us.
Out on the beach we found a fox. A fox that didn’t run away from the crowd gathered to watch it. As everyone turns around to give the fox a respectable distance, including two babes, my friend Ryan moves in for what would be a successful social media post.

Up the Big Mountain

More like babe mountain. We are packed as though we could be covered by an avalanche and stuck up there for three days. During the whole trip up and down both of us used about three things from our backpacks.

There is a brunette turbo babe pointing her phone at a blonde woman squatting behind a tree. As soon as I see it I duck my head and turn the corner of the path before the corner of the path. My friend at first confused, comes to attention and follows suit. As we huff and puff up the trail the girls giggle hysterically.

We keep asking every group that we pass if the turn off to the secret Delta Lake is still ahead. Each group continues to tell us that it is just a little further ahead and that the turn off is to the right after a switchback. “Ok. Cool. Thanks.”

“Hey. Do you know if this is the turnoff to Delta Lake?”

“Yeah. Bro. You just follow the path and when you hit the boulders go up.”

“Ok. Cool. Thanks.”

Delta lake is for some reason not a trail that the park promotes. The trail we had gone up is officially a path for Amphitheater and Surprise Lakes that looks over Jenny and Leah lakes. All you have to do to get to this ‘discouraged’ path is “take a right off of a switchback, and you can’t miss it.” If I had just been more interested in the blonde behind the tree that the brunette was pointing her smartphone towards I would have found this turn off but I averted my eyes and acted the gentleman.

We followed a path that seemed more like a deer path. After being alone for an hour we both independently started to understand that we were truly blazing our own trail.

As we gazed down at the turquoise lake from such great heights a sense of wonder and accomplishment settled upon us. All we had to do was find our way down to it.

As we nibbled ourselves like mountain goats or big horn sheep down a cliff side I found my friend on his stomach in the dirt hanging onto roots and myself a little further on jollily leading the way and in that jolliness of “oh gee. It really is quite easy”, almost losing my footing and falling off.

We celebrate at Teton Village. We find a restaurant that is open and smash on good food and cocktails. Somewhere out in that darkness a wind whipped through the Tetons and around corners of the cabin that we were drinking outside of and said, “Swift, Silent, Deep.”

Ryan rolled one and took it.

Then I took it.

Then I dropped it into Yellowstone Lake.

Black Hills

I meant to hold back the urge of asking if

Ryan wanted to make a stop in Devils Tower,

Spearfish, Keystone, Deadwood, Lead, 

Mt Rushmore, Custer State Park, 

Wind Cave National Park but I was unable to.

Existential crisis I

 

Omaha 2018

Woke up in my bed. I walked to my coffee machine and made some coffee. Took a shower in my bathroom. Got dressed and drove my car to Krispy Kreme and got two cream filled donuts. I drove back home and read my bible. While I listened to some music I read some history. I walked down the street to McDonalds for lunch. Walked home and ate McDonalds. I walked to work. Nothing to do at work today except check Snapchat, listen to the radio and go to McDonalds again.

Montana 2019

Woke up ten minutes before work. Hopped in shower and threw on some clothes. Walked up to the office with my shoes untied and clocked in. Walked back and made some coffee and pop tarts. Ate pop tarts on way back to office. 

Work was pretty easy. Simple tasks completed. We went to Yellowstone last week. Probably going to go soak at the hot springs tonight. Need to pick up groceries soon.

Omaha 2020

Woke up real late in the day. I have to save some of my money to make up bills. I have time for a ten mile run before work so I’ll go for it. I work tonight. Should be a breeze. Might read when I get off work.

Joke

So a white working class man walks into a bar that happens to be liberal and orders a drink. He says to the bartender who happens to be black, ‘I think that anyone protesting deserves to die’. The black bartender says to his coworker who happens to be homosexual, “did you here what this f***** just said?” Whereupon the homosexual coworker who happens to be a man texts his Uber driver outside who happens to be a woman, “hold on a minute, things just got hairy in here, can you give me five minutes?” Whereupon the woman became suddenly self-conscious of her hairy legs that she was trying to pull off to be more radical and texts back, “no.”

She drives off and gives the potential customer a negative rating.

Meanwhile inside the bar the potential for a squabble is seemingly at it’s zenith and the homosexual asks the black man, “excuse me? Did you call me a f*****?” Whereupon the white workers mouth drops open and is obviously offended for the homosexual. The black bartender responds to his coworker and tells him, “no I called this man a f*****.” 

“Why did you call this man a f*****?”

“Oh, because he is an Atlanta football fan.”

“Where did you get the idea that his brain couldn’t understand the virtues of civil disobedience from the fact that he liked the Atlanta Falcons?”

“Because I am a Saints fan and Falcons are idiots.”

At this point the working class white tipped two dollars and left the bar and got in his truck. The homosexual man clocked out and got in a second Uber he had ordered and the black bartender began swiping right on his Tinder.

The angry want to be feminist landed a random one hundred dollar tip from her next customer who happened to identify as a woman who complimented her on her legs. Whereupon the female Uber driver used the one hundred dollars that night to buy an expensive shaving kit from amazon.

Literature I

Hellbender the dwarf

After what I’ve seen of life I do not want anymore part of it. I have not smiled since she left

I will not let you kill your self. You are full of life.

If you left this world obviously I could replace you. If you stayed I am sure you could be of better use.

The kids are too young, the streams too polluted, the wars too advanced for me to help anymore. I am now only a nuisance.

Fine. I’ll go on through the ages enacting my will as I always have without you. You may regret it old boy. If you leave this world against my desire I may not help your desire on the other side.

I cannot go on any further without her. Even you know that. Why do you fuss me so? I do not want to fight your battles anymore.

Fuss you so? Such maudlin. I have come to think of you as my own child. There are serious spiritual dangers to suicide. There has to be.

Damn it all. I don’t care. I have no heart left. I have no desire.

Who filled your mind with such stories? Life is not about heart or desire once one loses those things indeed they are gone. You must continue with me in this thing called life. It is the only way.

Maybe you are right. If I have given it another try after I have lost everything before, what makes this time of despair any different? Fuck it. Let’s give it another round you and me. What have you got for me dwarf?

To be honest, not much. No ladies. No love. No passion.

Ok. Thank you dwarf. You know how to encourage a chap. So what? Every time I come back from the edge to our little partnership it does seem worse.

You have to do what I tell you everyday. These pansies, snowflakes, and bullies of this generation are all programmed the same and any antics that come out of them is not personality but errors in the coding.

We must go completely underground and stop writing for today’s audience but for the abandoned children of tomorrow. We must write hope for the unborn.

I have written hope. I have written scripts of virtue. I have lived my life with bravery and courage.

Yet you doubt. You doubt your value. You doubt your legacy. How will you write scripts of hope for the unborn if you doubt?

No. I can’t bear it. I will not be the Father of bastard generations. This is not my burden nor my responsibility.

So your choice is suicide? Your legacy is suicide? Your final act of bravery is suicide?

I have never been brave, dwarf. It has always been you. I have never wanted to be brave, only to be obedient.

Lord have mercy child. A lifetime of brave daring and still a spirit of servility. A coward full of battle scars. A pitiable creature with well-merited laurels.

I have been tired my entire life. Now my dear dwarf. Goodbye.

Ernest Hemingway went to his grave feeling fuller than an unrisen sun. I traveled through the woods, rivers, plains, creeks, mountains, and oceans for a writer that would encourage the world in its dealings when I happened upon Charles Bukowski in California and Hunter S Thompson in Kentucky. Ernest Hemingway was the black sheep boy who could wear the Golden Fleece but Bukowski and Hunter were pure freaks of nature. That was a good thing for they were the last of the literary scene anywhere in all the world for all time.

Hunter come on don’t shoot yourself. All I ask of you is to do one more thing.

Enough! I’ve had it with you dwarf.

Enough of me? I am the dwarf of Hemingway.

Yes. You are Bukowski’s invention of the dwarf of Hemingway. Blah, blah, blah.

I am the inspiration of millions. I am the inventor of masculinity. I am the taking of a woman’s virginity.

Go back to hell. Tricks are for kids.

I left Hunter S Thompson or Hunter S Thompson left me or we eloped into an eternal intimate death napkin, it hardly matters. A little more about me wouldn’t hurt. I am the masculinity of ages. That first time the toddler finds out how to bully another toddler is me. When that bullied toddler learns he can fight back is also me. I am from the oldest school of masculinity. I am an ancient root. I am something always being lost and yet never being replaced.  The men of the ages were all my slaves.

Another case of beer Bukowski. Another woman Bukowski. Another poem Mr Bukowski. Another day at general unskilled labor Bukowski.

Thank you dwarf. You are a gentleman and a scholar.

Another lustful thought about a young girl Bukowski. Another woman not returning your call Bukowski. Another night with no beer, no food and no company Bukowski. Another drunken night in a jail Bukowski.

Ok. Ok. What do you want dwarf?

You seize me whenever I think I have made it, or is it whenever I think I have escaped? Always why can’t I be rid of you? Why must you badger me so?

Why badger you so? Look at that gut Bukowski! Look at your misery Bukowski! Look at your reputation Bukowski! Why you are near complete ruin!

I am a professional. I like my life. I like myself. I do not like you.

You love me. Work harder. Produce more. Fail less. Live fuller.

Oh you are a peach. Give me a hug. I do love you dwarf. For you are mine and I am yours.

For I am you and you are me. Amen.

Now dwarf.

Yes sir.

How are those wives of Norman Mailer and William S Burroughs?

Stabbed and shot sir.

The legacy of Hemingway, Hunter, Mailer and Burroughs?

Annihilated sir.

My legacy dwarf?

You are nothing sir.

Why is that dwarf?

The rise of feminism, illiteracy spreading, inability to think critically, the devaluing of free inquiry and the imminent rise of political correctness.

I think masculinity may have a chance then.

You still believe in me? 

With your last breath?

Yes dwarf.