“So it comes as no surprise
That he’s left. His home. So young.
Still looking for some kind of Paradise …
Poor fool thought he had to go all the way to Kingdom Come.”
Or more precisely to the crossroads at Helouta for which there are only vague directions.
Headspinning: So little wonder that the thinking produced by
the spun scramble of my superfine brain
looks a lot like pork, in cello-phane.
I work hard at what I think matters and walk the cold blocks to etch the pig postcard or bring you glad tidings about the pumpkin in the creek. There’s no job and the poorly hidden truth is that of course I don’t dare to want one; don’t know if I could even pull off the dumb stunt of being an employee any more at this point; I fear making application because really I don’t want to know, either.
You can say that makes me a coward, that I’m wrong or morally lazy or broken. You can tell me I’m just like the father and point to the mark of Cain I got from him on my forehead. You can shake your head and wag your inner finger and you’ll get no argument from me about any of it. You win and you’re right about all of it, except the parts about the Ukraine, Palestine, voting, democracy, the MIC and the PMC, policing the rest of the world, the deep state, the nature of good and evil, unions, disinformation, censorship, succeeding, obeying, and what makes a man a man.
They don’t have to give you a reason for why when they say no (and neither by the way do I). They don’t even have to have a reason, any more than they do to fire you on the other end–something not quite normal, in the cut of his jib that one–I made them uneasy. I didn’t try to but I did anyway, and they brought down the disfellowshipping banhammer and sent me a form letter to remember them by and I do, still. (I see them now in a haunted dream, all lily white and squeaky clean, never knowing want and never no need–their shit don’t stink and their kids won’t bleed–their kids won’t bleed in their damn little war and we) Can’t make it here.
Any more.
At some point the downward X line of liquid resources available will cross the upward Y line of what is purportedly essential, while on another screen the glowing numbers of subscriber count or views-today will not be rising high enough to cut the steel math, and no more pellet stove, carne asada, or quarter-tank of Fire Chief. Kevin Welch has another song called Too Old To Die Young and he gets it. I chose the live version of Paradise because of the way he fucks it up right in the middle of a song he’s been singing for decades and how could I not empathize with that plus those lyrics?
Look, I’m fucking it up in the middle right now even though I’ve been singing this song for decades, too. No that’s not right and yes it is, too.
They call this day the end of days, but that’s only because they’re talking in terms of the brutal empire fiction they call a Year.
You know and I know, my friend in jesus, that there’s no such thing as a year. There are only chunks of rock in a void; planetary revolutions that paint seasons, and there are tragically few of them no matter what we do about it.
What to do. About the woodland I will go, to see the mullein-stalk clothed in snow. Not even Solomon in all his glory, I know you know.
If I’m good enough and the batteries don’t freeze and I make it back I’ll show you the picture of it right here because the work is all that matters. To me if not to you as well. Everyone has their own axe to bear and cross to grind and shortlist of what to bother reading. Just grind like you mean it and I’ll keep trying to bear the same.