a note to anyone who needs it

Work. Two kinds of work: work-work and creative work. Those are how you get through. They are also how you process everything. Work gives life definition.

Do creative work. Do mixed media. Write. Paint or draw. Cook. Feed family, feed yourself. Play guitar. Play your songs on guitar.

If work-work is most of your life, do you live a full life? If you create always, are you making an honest living? What if you produce little to nothing?

 

Questions like that get processed in work, too.

Your mind does not need to constantly reflect on itself with those kinds of questions. Instead, keep moving. What’s in front of you. No matter how dumb.

Stop wanting peace of mind. Try to ignore the compulsivity and anxiety.

Looking for things outside yourself to define your life will leave you feeling empty and angry.

 

I need to stop wanting peace of mind. I think the thing to do is accept this life and live. It's the life we're living, and we're running out of time.

about visions of the mad

A madman and sleeper, seer of a thousand impossible visions, who sees when he imagines. The demon who comes in the first moments of sleep and remains long after waking; the demon he saw, heard, and answers.

 

about buying a customized poem

A young man, his long, damp-brown hair pulled behind his ears, sat curled over a spiral notebook at a little TV table set up along a high-foot-traffic area. I passed him on my walk to the drug store. He had posted a handmade sign: "custom poems."

 

But he is gathering his things when I pass him again on my way back. "Is it too late to get a poem?"

 

"No, it's not too late," he says, pausing, resetting the table. "What do you want the poem to be about?"

I look down. "How about—when you're about to see old friends after not having seen them in a long time."

 

"Ah. How long has it been?"

 

"At least 10 years."

 

"That's a long time. Okay." He sits down and goes to work. He should take his time, alone.

 

I step away and watch a family take pictures by the city's 20-foot Christmas tree, in front of its white lights' bright confidence in a January evening willing to forget that New Years happen and ever come.

 

Some 5 minutes later he stands, holding a page ripped from his notebook.

 

"Read it and let me know if it makes sense." I read. It's a poem written by a young man. "Does it make sense? Do you like it?"

 

"Yeah. It's good."

"Good. I'm glad you like it."

 

I hand him $10 and thank him. He appreciates it, he says.

 

I should have told him how I really feel about seeing old friends, how conflicted I am. But it's a poem by a young man.

 

a scene from a story about me and Sadie

She said, “They remember you. They can’t have you around.”

“Am I in their mind? Are they screaming?”

Quantum memory attacks by throwing weapons or weapons-generated debris or explosions but memory is now entirely a machine-based phenomenon. Virus-aligned implants man the machine weapon.

I opened the door with force. “Did you know I was in here?,” she asked.

“I knew someone was. I hoped it was you.”

My legs started moving but it was too late. Purple shrapnel tears apart my body, and tearing righteously even once is me physically throwing power away. This sentence recreates an act of absolute public murder. So close to dead but not close enough—or too dead to me now to go on. But a man shape, still.

In her mind she was three different serial killers, one of which is still nameless, famous, and free.