No title for you

Thanks for putting up with me this month. Octobers are rough and I normally feel like dying by the time it gets going good. This month was made ten times worse by a catalyzing spark of a miserable anomoly. Obviously, this involves a woman.

Things are picking up.

They aren't perfect, but they've come around. I don't have much to offer as far as writing at the moment. Sooner or later, I'll find myself inspired and on the Internet at the same time, but I've been burning up some creative resources on a side project.

I'm considering whether or not to undertake a huge endeavor next month. It would fall on the run up to finals and I don't plan on having any time off any time soon, so it may be a doomed proposition. The heavy handed palm-slap of this month has yielded some writing ore that may not be gold, but possible mid-grade native Cu.

While the terrible crash of October is over, I have to warn you that April may not be a happy field of poseys, either. Obviously, a woman is invloved.

Fuck October

October is drawing down, at least a little. Everything is still halfway dead, but at least it snowed this morning. I hope this whole fucking place is socked in this winter.

Went down Cortez way this weekend. Besides weddings, I can't think of anything that turns my frown upside down like a good anniversary party. Especially when it's for some ridiculous number like seventy years together. I made it one thirty-fifth of the way as far as my grandparents have. I suck. Then they had to hug on each other and kiss and smile all the time. I didn't punch them, but only because they are old.

I walk down the street, no gloves again, snow finding its way into my collar, and see all the people who are huddled close with someone special against the cold. I don't punch them, but only because my knuckles get real sore in the cold.

My brother wants me over for dinner. It's not that I don't like him or his wife or his kids, but I hate seeing his perfect little happy family. He has four beautiful children and a wife that's worth keeping. They sit around the dinner table and offer thanks for the food. They talk about work and school and my brother teaches them in the ways of the world. After dinner, he goes downstairs and builds a fire while the kids sit and watch. He tells them stories from when we were little. They soak them up and turn us into something we are not, but something good for them to believe in. Last time I was over, the oldest daughter asked me if I had a girlfriend. I chuckled and told her that I didn't. She informed me that her parents would not allow her to have a boy friend stay over at night. I told her that was probably a good thing, as boys and girls do not have sleep-overs. She asked me why I had girls sleep over at my house. I had no idea what she was talking about, of course. Then she described my "friend" who had slept over once, long ago. The tall, blonde girl that smoked. I didn't punch her, but only because I was too sad.

I lost my driver's license, the physical card, not the priviledge of driving. I lose things when I've just got too damn much on my mind. The lady at the liquor store carded me, of course. It makes sense, I shaved my beard off, so she probably thought I was buying the twelver for my eagle scout troop. When I walked out empty handed, I was pretty upset. I didn't punch her, but only because I was too sober for it to seem like a bad idea.

So, if you wonder why this post sucks, it's because I'm sitting here, with snow down my back and knuckles that the cold causes to hurt from a life that was a little rough, dead sober.

Fuck October.

*****************************
Update: MP3 Player broke, this is bullshit.

A departure from the grimy depression

Buddy Guy just started playing The Devil In Her and I just killed that last glass. On top of that, I remember someone, somewhere trying to define men, but more importantly find out what they want in women. A nice turn of narcissistic speculative metaphysics, there.

Therefore, I'm drinking and Buddy Guy just fired off a swampy, black-hearted song about a lascivous woman. I'm no longer angry or depressed, though I know it's right there, crawling under the door, sniffing for the first sign of fear and weakness. Let it come. I have memories and appetites requiring attention.

What do I want in women?

Teeth on collar bones and hands under the strap of her thong concealed by tasteful clothing, for one. I'm a carnivore with a sweet tooth when it comes to women. Meaty and true and substantial in the soul, I love that, but they have to have some syrupy quality I know will drag me into states of nausea later with sickening sweetness. But goddamn if that clingy and shy smile brings me down. Or up. Depends how I feel about life just then.

Me and this girl were pinned by our own weight into the door of a cheap hotel in a cross town Cortez casino with no one to control us but self-control itself. I had my mouth on her neck and she had her hands under my belt. She was mostly dressed just enough to ruin a guys morals. I'd spent the afternoon and evening at an old fashioned singing, four part harmony and sacred thoughts and feelings shared between me and God and congregation of archaic religion. I sang my part, a little baritone and a little bass, but always low, always in a state of predation after the belief, the mystic that I yearn for in this cold world. After that yearning is gone, there's a girl with some rum in her glass at the blackjack table and her own conscience to kill. We cajoled ourselves into a state of high humanity, me being convincingly the heavy handed hunter and her the rabbit losing all will to run. She shoved me on to my back and followed me down to the floor.

She got the Devil in her, I guess.

I don't want any more meaning in life, I don't want a mission, I don't want no Goddamned home made vegetable soup, unless any of that shit's got a metaphorical meaning that needs my attention. Don't get me wrong, I love long conversations and the way a phone makes my ear feel after a few too many hours on it, but right now, right here in the Fall sun with my blood full of brackish rocket fuel, I want something less worthy of philosophical talk, but more profound. Fuck a conversation that stoops to the stodgy level of breath blowing past a box full of muscular fiber in our throats. I want to hear breath so ragged it misses any mechanism for intelligent communication.

I met a girl at the airport, once. Some crazy airline bullshit had lost my guitar and my clothes, but I left the nice lady at the counter telling me she was going to find it when this girl, this apparition, walked into the terminal. Without a care that I own very little and most of it was lost, me and her turned into annoying mall teenagers right there, in front of God, the Devil and everybody. Mouths and hands were exploring new and unknown galaxies. The clothes became a non-issue shortly after walking into her home after the long, painful drive from the terminal. Our bodies were unearthed mysteries and salvation for grinding carnality.

She got the Devil in her, I guess.

It's a beautiful day. I have a phone number and some spare time before work. It may be a beautiful night, but if all goes well, I won't see it to care.

God may still live in Lewis, Colorado, there to stay with four part harmony and dinner on the ground, but right now I hope like hell there's a devil. I just may need his assistance tonight.

My phone just rang. It must be the cold, Autumn sun.

She got the Devil in her, I guess. And she says, with the way she won't take no for an answer and with the catch in her voice, but not in her words, she feels like doing something wrong.

A letter

Friend,

You picked a tough row to hoe, and I'm sorry that this is what you have to go through. Today's going to be tough, but then again, so is the rest of the year. Know that I care about you and that I'm here to talk to. We may have been growing apart for a while, but that doesn't mean we've speciated that far away from who we used to be. The people we were when we could talk for hours on the phone about pretty much nothing. Obviously, some of our old subject matter is off limits.

I'm not jealous of what you're going through now, but those couple of months of domesticated bliss must have been great, and I felt a twinge of envy. I remember playing house with you, and you make a fine living companion.

You should know that when he comes back, and there's no reason to suspect he won't, he'll have a hard time. The adjustment to living with a woman is not easy for a guy returning from an environment such as that. He'll still love you, even when he wants to be alone, and even when he just wants to hang out with somebody, anybody who knows where he's been and it won't be you. You'll catch him leaving your room and your continent in middle of a conversation and you'll know he's off, away from you, away from TV and Denny's and the predatory used car lots (E1 and up financing!) and used, stripjoint harlots that sit right outside the gate. After an initial rush of joy, he'll hate the country he went to serve for a while.

It doesn't happen to all of them, but understand when he has to hide his eyes from you or pretend something's in them when the colors are paraded or a filmaker utilizes pandering, patriotic bullshit that catches him in places he has reserved for deep and personal tears.

You'll both be changed. If you stick to your goals, and enslave yourself to the treadmill the way you plan, you'll be frighteningly independent. On the other hand, that slavery will lead to your unearthed "sexiest mama." Your wording of those goals is adorable by the way. You'll be the kind of woman makes a man stop, throw back his head and howl; smooth, red lips and liquid hips, seems more than the law would allow, in the words of the Ray Wylie Hubbard song you liked so well.

Be true to him. If you are not, you may not lose him, but you will lose me as a friend. I would never talk to you again. I know you're not Her, but to me, when I'm being honest, all of the women with a man somewhere else, fighting, are Her, at least a little. You're stronger and don't have the same habits, but temptation will be there. Never from me. Never, ever, till this Earth is swallowed by the forces of an exploding sun, will I ever be a threat to that virtue. You already know that, but you might let him know when the twinges of jealousy that turn into pangs of fear grab him while he's so far away.

He's doing his job and his duty. And when he comes home hating October, just let it go.

I'm holding a little piece of myself here, away from the hate and the depression and the alcohol, for you. For what you need me to be. My phone's always open, and I'm strong enough for you to weigh me down. Come to me, tell me your anguish, lay your burden on me, I can take it. I'm a pretty stout individual.

I will be praying to a guy I don't believe in much for you. For you, I'll pretend to have faith.

I miss you, and when I'm drunk on cider at sunrise and don't need a teleological definition of the word, I love you. I'm here for you. And him. Tell him I'm buying the next round when he gets home. Dawg.

More joy

Alright, so I decided to make some concerted effort to take down the specific gravity of my little site here for a few days, but it isn't working. Any effort I have ever made with that goal in mind came off as pretty lame, anyway. So, for reasons that might be clear later, let's just assume anything I write in October will be hateful and crazy. That's just the way it is.

I hate October. I hate it with a passion I usually reserve for hating commercial radio and Toyotas. The sense of impending doom and gloom drags me down into a deep seated fear of another year going away. October is the month of loss without hope of renewal. October is when the niceties of summer give way to the cold and dark nights of winter. I didn't used to mind winter, but I usually had some form of accompaniment to keep the chill out. I shouldn't say usually, since that has been a singular unlikelihood in my adult life. Whether it was the nasty Chicago winter when I was twenty or the long, cold winter down RimPac way, I knew they were going to be miserable by the fact that they kicked off in the godforsaken month of stupid people dressing up as morons.

A quick tour of the bad things I have dealt with during the winter over the last few years:

10/05. Transitioning out. Go ahead and think it's easy.

10/04. Going somewhere for the Holidays? Sure you are. CVN 72, bitch. Merry Christmas! How about Happy New Year '05 down in the death smelling waters of Indonesia littered with corpses!

10/03. Have fun being assigned duty as a prison guard, try not to get attatched to a bunch of guys who are getting their lives fucked by a bunch of elitist prick officers. Make sure someone you love comes down with an incomprehensible disease. Then have your Toyota have a design flaw blow chunks of expensive, foreign parts out of the engine block. Make sure the cost of repair is five months pay.

10/02. Goodbye, wifey. Hello Connie. USS Constellation, that is. While you're at it, throw in a war. And your best friend dying.

10/01. OK, this one was alright. Except the part where they told us we were deploying two weeks after we got home. Fucking Osama.

10/00. Bootcamp.

10/99. Broncos go 6-10.

Octobers have held particular angst for me over the last four years for obvious reasons.

Some nights I can't sleep and I don't know why. I've lost twenty pounds since the first of the month and I don't carry that much extra. I blame it all on the cold and on women and on money, but it comes down to the simple fact that I'm in the wrong place. I miss my guys. Milf, Coleburg, Frank, Bart, Little Bart, Crispy, Flower, Gunner, Chief, all of them. They're not doing any better than I am, I know it. I can feel it. The old friends I stay in touch with are having the same problems. We all feel like part of us missing and we need to find it. A call has went out through the haze of oil fire and jet noise.

I know where it is. It's sitting out there in the sand and fire. My body came home from that fucking bullshit, but my soul still belongs there, in the action.

She sat on the porch to our small home with tears running down her pretty face and cried through the cigarette smoke and the California haze, "You changed. All you fuckers changed. It's like you never came home from...that shit."

I didn't accuse, but asked, "Are you sure it was us who left a part of us out in the Gulf? What did you go through while I was gone?"

It was terrible on her. She never answered, but the tracks and hollowed eyes told me what I needed to know.

Years later, we were supposed to be preserving life for a change. The aftermath of the Connie had run its course and I had no one to go home to this time. I looked over the rail into the prairie fire sunset. When I first saw the families float by, bloated and devoid of the golden shine that they would have had, down there by Thailand, it reminded me that some people are lucky enough to leave everything in the waters of the world ocean to be consumed by the engines of life. Some of us only leave half of ourselves out in the blue.

Proofreading saves a lot of trouble

Yeah...uh...sorry about that.

See, every six months or so, I have a one man holiday called "Crazy Veteran's Day."

I should have seen it coming. I've spent a lot of time out hiking and dammit if my camo field jacket isn't pretty damn comfy. Oh, and my hair has been getting shorter and shorter. Sorry to subject you all to such a rant. I'm better now, I just had to get all of that out of me.

I better news, I found my old stash of pictures from the last couple of years. I enjoy photography when I can afford it, so some of them are decent. Sharing photos is the only real marketable value of the medium. Therefore, expect a few to be popping up shortly.

Once again, sorry.

I meant this to be short and happy

This might be a little too long or a little too short. I'm not working off an outline, here, just being honest. At the moment, I'm thinking it likely there won't be too many more posts here.

I have never in my life, which has hardly been a gilded path, had so many bad days in a row. I don't know what's going on with all this. I keep having a string of disappointments gang up on me and beat me down. The challenges may seem minor to all of you, but I don't deal well with interpersonal drama. You need me to run three miles on a broken toe, no big deal. You need me to kill a bunch of conscripts and civilians and sleep at night, I can do it, mostly. You need me to beat the holy living fuck out of someone or have the holy living fuck beat out of me, I been there before. What I can't do is deal with ordinary people in an ordinary disappointment for more than a day at a time. I hate it.

I can blame it on a lot, this little inability of mine, but I place it mostly on the last six years. What I did for the last six years was different from a terrorist in manner and sponsorship only. I still have dreams where we're all just glowing white hot spots against cold black sand in a FLIR pod, give it a flash of what I was very fucking good at, and then we're just white blobs of moist heat, draining a stream of white into that same sand. I gave my life over to it, the job, but what I didn't realize is that I was giving over was my conscience. I hate it. I respect human life more than anything, and I want to devote my life, what's left of it, to preservation of life and keep it from mindless destruction.

Then I get drunk, usually with another pretender to humanity like myself (same haircut, anyway), and I feel the rush. The rush a person accepts and lives when they are on the number one team in the sport where you don't lose points or games. You lose lives. And I was among the star-players in the televised event. Here and there, a rifle may take a life or a grenade dismember someone, but thousands of pounds of matrix delivered by systems that just don't miss is what wins the game. What won the game.

I high-fived and cheered watching the after-action assessments and making our estimates of how many actual and collateral lives had been lost and establishing financial cost of equipment destroyed. We were out there doing Iraq before doing Iraq was cool. There was no war on terror and September 11, we were just fucking up a bunch of unwitting combatants for no Goddamn reason. Came back next year and they called it a war. CNN was watching us work. Letters poured out of the cities of America, England, Australia, Singapore telling us they were proud to get to know us.

Let's be brutally honest here, killing people is fun. The conscientious aftermath is not, but the act, the team scoring the ultimate touchdown, is invigorating and fulfilling. When I watch football and see the faces of those around me aligning themselves with some team of people they've never met, I see it all over again. If they took away the rules and gave John Elway an M4 and the Raiders AK's, and Jason Elam a carrier air wing of his own, the fields would change from friendly green to bloody red and hazy, but the faces of the spectators wouldn't change. Your team is winning.

I don't have party to the death of anyone anymore. I've been home long enough, I quit having to hear that I'm a hero. I have my old medals lined up along my desk with the ribbons growing dusty and the copper and brass getting tarnished. My old red shirt that meant everything to me not too long ago is collecting dust on a rusty nail. My old wedding ring sits in a dish I reserve for spare change, sits on top of a Dinar and some mystery coin with Asian characters. My trophies of a life that cost me my own small family, and the ability to deal with all these fucking civilians and their fucking bullshit sit about eye level from my chair in front of my computer; Armed Forces Expeditionary, with three clusters, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Good Conduct, Sea Service, three clusters, GWOT Expeditionary, GWOT, Homeland Defense, Joint Defense, one cluster, Humanitarian Service, Military Unit Commendation, Naval Unit Commendation, Expert Rifle, Expert Pistol, achievements here, commendations there, citations sitting in a tupperware bin in my closet; In the words of Paul, I have nothing.

The other day, a girl stuffed full of a margherita pizza I had made and some wine I didn't want to open, happened by my desk.

"Those are pretty."

When I get asked why I did everything I'm only proud of when no one is looking, I usually give them some bullshit answer about college money or travel. So now, being honest, the truth is more complicated. I let my innocence and respect for life, I let my ability to be optimistic about humanity's plight dwindle and die, for a bunch of reasons. I did it for you guys.

Please don't thank me. I think I was duped.

Sorry for the Crazy

You'll notice over the next couple weeks that I won't update. There is no need to worry. More than likely I am not dead, though in two or three weeks who knows what can go down.

Basically, I have some shit I need to do. The biggest of it is to get my head back into the game. The real life game, not the Internet and cell phone bullshit game. In fact, I am going on a little bit of a fast. These are important in my raising beliefs. Anytime you felt you had slipped out of touch with God, or you had a general foreboding about the future, or you heard knocks that I won't even bother explaining, you went on a fast. Or when times got tight and you needed the assistance of the Divine. While I don't really believe in God, and don't plan to start, I think the idea is sound. So, I don't believe in that God, don't intend to start, but I'm going on a fast; you may think that is wierd. I assure you, it is not.

Reasons for this are numerous, but one of the most urgent is the need to deal with my own reliance on anything or anyone but myself. I have slowly but surely let the World creep into my life like ivy under a poorly fitted door, creeping across the carpet and around my ankles, far too long. Also, I don't know why, but when I figured out some pretty major symbolism in my odd dreams I speak of in the posts titled Preternothing, I decided never to finish that group of posts.

Anyway, the fast is really just an experiment in fighting a sickness we all have with a remedy handed down from generation to generation in my line. Feel free to use alcohol or other chemistry experiments when you deal with yours.

So, to sum it all up, food is not on the menu for a while. I could stand to lose a few, anyway. The other aspect of the fast is media.

I will be away from any form of electronic communication for a while, save the half hour I have allotted myself for returning calls and checking email (nothing important gets to me in a steel mail box, so this is necessary) every other day. I will commence this at 2100 today and keep it going until I feel like stopping. I may throw in a quick update at the end of a week or so if its still going, just to check in. I will be, for the most part, off the grid unless you email me and I have time to get to it. I'm also limiting personal visits and social gatherings. TV is out, though I never watch anything but PBS anyway, and music not produced in my vicinity by fingers on strings is not going to be listened to. In other words, I'll be my own company for the next little bit. I feel scared about this. It's a little like going around the dark side of the moon.


Which is exactly why I'm doing it.

*****************************

I have to admit now, at the 25 minutes till phase that I'm questioning the whole thing. Since I have no answers to those questions and no one to call within the next 24 minutes to ask, I'll open them up. That, and it's one last gasp of the self-involvement I am going to have to lose to survive this.

Questions for eventual discussion:

23a. Is Casey really social enough anyway to need a break?
23b. What will keep him alive for the next week?
23c. What implied behaviors are also going to be cut?
23d. What about beer?
23e. Why would a person need to know what they're alike when no one else is around?
23f. Does this have anything to do with being born in a desert?
23g. Are there just no good deserts to walk out in for a while?
23h. Fuck, what if I'm Elijah? Can I handle that responsibility?

Prinipia Methodologican Petronity

Or: Spritual Geology

I, Cassius, son of Locomotus Truckae, Son of The Most Mightiest, have been visted by the angel Cassiterite, who smelled of sulfur and had impressive dual octagonal and mackeled breasts. After noticing my vector of eye, she smite me for looking at her twins. She hath given one or several revealed manifestations that may or may not be secret until the end of the Age Suburbia. This is important, or it may not be. As it were, all spelling mistakes are property of her mackel breasted self.

Manifestation Unit of Truthicality I:

We are all mostly oxygen, with some other stuff, too. Or not.

A. This is important, though may not be, because oxygen has an atomic number of eight. Originally, there were eight aliens who made it off the "Ark" and started making whiskey in Turkey. These aliens were part of a "Homestedd reelokashun" plan, as you should already know from your learning institutions.

B. Oxygen, when combined with the principle building blocks of this earth makes them sort of flaky. In fact, this is also a race of aliens. I know Flaky people. They obviously are alien Homestedders. They should make whiskey, but do not. They used to, when they immigrated to the Southeast and they interbred until, even today, they are still at least a little Flaky. Though sometimes they are not.

C. The earth is principly formed up Eyerun. When thrown together with Flakies, it produces Fe₂O₃. When The Green Cactus Monster taketh away the Flakies and the Eyerun, it leaves but ₂ and ₃. The last days approach when 23 holy cows are, or won't be, abducted by these new Homestedders, as they will mistake the cows for your average caucasion at that point in history.

That is the word of Cassiterite. Or it may be not.

Note: So, at the reccomendation of Anaglyph, I decided to check out Discordia because of the truly disturbing frequency of "23" in my life as of late. And I figured since Australians invented cheese, they can't be all bad. My tireless research, exclusively in Wikipedia while I ate Doritos, led me to the Principia Discordia. I had to quit reading about the point they mention baptizing the dead to redeem them to the Green Cactus Monster. I am in a library, after all. That is when Austin Nichols shew himself to me and introduced Cassiterite. Her boobs were pointy and vaguely botryoidal. Feel free to introduce this new belief system into the Big W.