UNEMPLOYABLE 5

Here goes wordy...PillGirl!

A gig like mine? ahhh an unpopular artist! *(unemployable waste of space, 12 hour sleeping, clueless, unfocused, girl-less, aging, rotting, non-productive, non-professional, non BA holding, Selfish son of a bitch, etc., etc.) I will try to stay positive here, sorry. But my 12 year gravy-train with biscuit wheels rolled right off the tracks, and left me high and dry in Everyoneismarriedwithkidsville. Wondering who I am and if the last 12 years that just went by was anything but a waste of time. A bunch of stones thrown by my friends under my footsteps. The stones behind me have drowned and vanished in the soft sediment of my memory, and me on the last one like a fucking Doh Doh frozen in mid step. A dot on the exclamation point at the end of a big joke on myself.

Yea, your bro is helping out through the hardtimes. I am trying to get my condo back into shape after living like a lunatic for almost 2000 days there, wore that shit out. Putting in floor and drywall and a kitchen and whatever else I have lived without plugging away at dreams that have not matured too much yet. Dae is such a do-it-yourselfer. It is incredible. He has focus. A focus I could only attain with a highly complex daily psychotropic cocktail made by Freud himself.

Fun. It's kinda not on the menu right now for me. Trying to get my shit together. I did watch too many episodes of Californication one night and went to the mall and drank too many jack and cokes at Clyde's. But seriously, since the weather turned rotten I have fallen out of my daily routine of mountain biking which I was surprisingly religious about since April, first time I have really biked since 1995. I made it up to almost 2.5 hours a day and commuting to work. But with every autumn my will dies with the leaves and with the light goes my brighter side.

So we are here in the darkness of winter warm, watching Korean movies in Port Deposit, Maryland. And the Midnight Chef has struck again. We are eating spicy pork thin as paper with sticks. The commercial grade slicer, a streamlined machine age auction piece, glimmering on the kitchen island like some star in the center of Dae and Lori's McMansion universe. It's so nice here.

I guess my job now is get the condo ready for rent or sale. Selling most of my possessions. Beginning a stint as a vagrant. Being smart about my new buying investments. Broadening Modern50.com's selection into vintage mountain bikes, skateboards and other trendy cool things I am learning about. Not sure if that will pay the bills, so here and there am I looking for a non-corporate creative outlet, something I have never imagined. Which should prove to be hard to find, being the spoon fed sissy my easy life has guided me into. I gotta figure out a way to stop ending every sentence with a preposition.

See Ya PillGirl!

UNEMPLOYABLE 4 Spoon Fed Life

Perhaps there is specific division between people. It's black and white, but bear with me here, its only in a certain light. Spoon Feds and Improvisers. This is a separation that is very significant to me because I am a 'spoon fed' and have been my whole life. I was born into this category. I guess now I will have to add it to my various internet profiles. And as a true spoon fed idiot I am back at the old crossroads, been here many times before, and by some major head heating deduction, I can conclude that my life has been going in circles. I am back wondering but how to finish that nasty college BA. Damn. Oh these petty odes of the middle class. My selfish search for productivity and placement. And my endless search for no potential.

Have you ever looked through job postings in the creative sections of the newspapers and craigslist? After one day I am thinking of a NON-creative career. SInce I have been unemployed I have learned how to put a subfloor down in a sub-grade cement floor, change my oil/filter, and get my paypal account restored. Hopefully these useless new talents will serve me well in the future. Then again I don't want to get to optimistic or think that all the things that I do with my life are adding up to something relevant. Because I am far from relevant.

My life will become full of maintenance that will probably bury me beyond the point of ever contemplating anything beyond, career, fame, relevancy again. It is already mounting and I want to solve these problems myself.

FUTURE PROJECTS

give my van a tune-up,

fix drywall,

put in a wood floor,

put in steps,

put in a slate foyer and exitway,

sell all my possessions.

HAPPIEST MOMENTS OF MY LIFE

driving my 1972 pontiac granville convertible from AOL to my home in between vacations, coming home from trip to CA and then heading out on a year abroad,

telling people I was rich when I was rich,

getting caught fucking (everytime,)

making over 40,000 a year and never having to cook again (until now)

dropping in on a fast head high wave at montara beach with d lloyd

riding a giant wave at happy wanderers pointbreak in durban south africa

leaving portland for the last time

UNEMPLOYABLE 3

So the death of Anna Nicole Smith has me all up in arms today. It's messing with my belief system. It's got me thinking of a Crackhead who quickly rose to fame after saving a kid on Broadway from being hit by a cab. The Crackhead managed to pulls it off with just a broken collar bone.

He starts down the yellow brick road with a stint of appearances on late night shows and it turns out this Crackhead has a hell of a personality. The public is smitten with him, they want more. He quickly surpasses the level of the Geico Caveman and starts gaining somewhat of a life. A life that has the power to fully distracts him from his old daily routine, to transform him. He finally is able to kick his 5034 day binge of crack, vagrancy, complusive masterbation, petty crimes and homelessness. He even gets a small office space way uptown and hires an undergrad dropout to take his calls. Things are good, things are moving, a piano has landed right on his head and he is wearing it like a sombero with style and grace. Rock bottom is well below, he is floating in the ethers, out of the crosshairs. Things are cool in his world. But has anything really changed inside.

Staying positive for what to keep an altitude far above rock bottom. Shit is that negative? Maintaining a speed of life faster than pain can move? Pain is a god, Pain is omniscient, Pain is the mind, Pain is very patient. Its got a name something cool and mythological, but the Crackhead doesn't know it. It is always there loitering around. And after 534 days of the good life things start to slow down for the Crackhead. And he starts thinking about a theory that he has been trying to formulate. A theory of disentanglement. He wonders while he walks his dog Jed through Central Park. How many days of the good life does it take to conquer the gravitational pull of his old one? Is there a ratio of new life over old life that he can exceed to assure himself of victory over a relapse. Money is a savior to the Crackhead. Anyone with money who still can't get up from rock bottom really challenges the Crackhead's base ideology. He knows about Anna Nicole Smith and he is not very happy about it. Then Jed takes a shit and the Crackhead pauses takes a breathe and watches it steam in the cold air. The Crackhead bends down with a plastic bag over his hand and palms the hot stuff and reverses the bag over it and they walk on.

UNEMPLOYABLE 2

Hello little folksieys. I have returned from the nether regions of my mind. To join you once again in this existence. To share recently gathered nonsense given unto me by the most dubious of sources. The great omniscient El Peepeh! The thinker of the thoughtless, the baby momma of the cosmos. Or simply Rodger's pipe. And the idea that pierced the brim of my hat was that all things with a hole are divine. A hole can be an all encompassing entry and exit point. A loophole. The alpha and the omega. The slime that groped its way up the muddy earth on some distant bank of discontent to evolve, to learn, and ultimately to love.

I am on the 46th day of disentanglement after 1994 days of employment. I am a practicing artist once again. Excited and creating. Some might say stuck on the same shit from last year but it feels good nonetheless. My open book life has started on vintage wood panels or canvas. That most personal of journals to you with the most limited of liberties taken has begun. My ejaculate is at present looting the city streets looking to conceive some immaculate man conception. It's always sexual, pointless and wallowing in its potential. Trying to pawn it off as BLING. Thanks for the drink you lost little vixen, call me back! Damn it!

So the question I pose is, "How long must I wear this helmet before it saves me?"

UNEMPLOYABLE 1

Well I guess somewhere along the line I just let go of the steering wheel. I could pick a time, a death, a decline. When I was caught trying out the new fuck machine I built with the family vacuum cleaner, or maybe a loss, a betrayal. It would definitely be more entertaining. But I have no writer’s memory, I hardly have a memory at all of the past. But somewhere along the way and early on I just gave up fighting and I went along with the currents that surrounded my life. Everything just started to careen out of my imagination and into reality, out of my wishes. Decisions became steppingstones, then alternatives, and then just easy ways. I just refused to accept my narrow definition of life, and with no redefinition in the ass pocket. I just went along as if it wasn’t mine. There were big moments among friends and family; marriages, deaths, fucks of the century, far away places, all of which I cannot account for much of my consciousness being present. And here I stand in the middle of the intersection in front of my suburban condo watching the traffics light switch back and forth between honey ryder way and south ness lake drive. And I want to joke and be lyrical I want to be that guy, Early Chevy, Bill Murray (Anytime but Meatballs,), or Hank Moody. I could write a book of names of these guys I’d rather be, but thats kinda gay. The sad part, neither I nor my father are on that list. I should take that as some kind of yield sign, but like all the others it sweeps by like a blurry disregarded orange pubis. This might define the entire spectrum of my conscious capacity as a human being. But nonetheless, big change is here and it is demanding more. It is upon me.

My only reply now is to grip the threads of my severance, and remnants of my old sedate routine, my old career. It shrouds me like a giant apathetic fur coat I can’t get off. Glued to my skin, ingrown. Something so large and unwieldy, grotesque, ignorant and crass. I aspire to let this foreign cocoon melt from around me, around what I once consider my special unique little soul. To do this would be the most conscious and awe inspiring act I could accomplish thus far, but I just don’t know if I have the stomach for it. Am I hoping to re-emerge like the Encino Man. To come to the aid of some dull community and re-energize the place with my free fucking non-existent spirit, fuckin unlikely.

I spent a lot if time insulating myself in this so called unclaimed life. Even talking to therapists for years trying to accept myself. I should of just been fucking, maybe even the therapist. But I am serious this second skin, this bullshit coat of the past is the very thing that now paralyzes me in every aspect. Joy is dead. I enjoy fucking her corpse. She is a ceramic vase with a latex glove taped over the mouth and the middle finger yanked through it and out a hole in the bottom. All this time it's my time. Obsession after obsession trying to avoid this fork in the road and these fucking traffic lights that I am now facing on all sides represent. A decision I avoid. And yes it will definitely cut like a knife. Its 5 am and the traffic in the burbs is slowly coming to life, a few well disciplined souls driving to the jobs that keep them a sleep in their cocoons of safety. Doing what we were trained to do. Hallalueh, Money! Well even if I am unemployed, at least I can share in some of the more basic forms of life's maintenance. We all have to take responsibility for existing, shitting, and pissing, pants down or not. This precious moment of life, this great random chance that chose us to exist. Unlikey, like so many other things, all the moving parts. All the time moving and ticking, in our bodys, on the highways, in the malls, in our girlfriends. And all I can muster is a petty odes to the heavens, a white collar yodel only heard by the objects that I surround myself with to help define me but jobless only represent all the lost chances and avoidances of a true life I should have been scheming for.

Thank you. The first bird is singing its tune and I am not doubled over with a gut full of Strychnine. Back then my only goal was trying to avoid being spoken to in the midst of a week long street party in Key West. I am long past those times of ignorance and bliss, semi-ignorance and bliss, and then just blatant denial and bliss... Those times where the vigor of my grand rebel(lion) could be spilled on the belly of some willing party that had a fantasy of her own to fucking promote. We would trade flyers and hold each other in hostel showers, on church steps, up against the cinder block walls of a nightclub. Nobodies promoting shit now, Reston is just adding to its padding around its little special unique soul. Recanting over and over again, "I am special." Those times when younger was better, when younger wasn’t so lecherous. On some girl's eighteenth birthday in a far away land. She pulling me into her, behind the white bars in a fearful town so wrought with hatred and me just getting off and then off to the waves in the morning so ignorant and free. So uncaring and selfish, not much has changed, except for the fucking. I have burned through a lifetime of riches thinking only of NOW the moment, my moment, my time. And now looking back at it out from this dead end street, I am just a weird dude sitting in the street, closer to resembling a cracked office worker than a teenager, trying to comb my hair over the bald spot. Where all the dead end streets remain dark and solitary, no more to be awakened with laughter, and friendship, when the shatter bottles beckoned us on to the next dark alley that we could awaken by our youth and our unity. I long for those times but maybe just to not think of now and the new, and the continued and ultimate span of my existence.

If I sit her long enough I will have to exchange uncomfortable glances across the street to the two neighbors that will be standing at the bus stop waiting to be driven to their time killing jobs of importance and meaning. Of esteem building and rationality. Of manufacturing self-worth. Of exercising their passions. A passion that I am sort of dissing. I don’t mean to. I am merely chosing to melt my thick coat of apathy. The one that has encased me for so long I cannot remember. I love my life and all it has been and all who I have shared it with. It’s the future that I fear and I always have and see as something dark and unyielding. It makes me feel powerless and angry. Angry at the past, at my failed relationships and the newest unwilling partners, I asphyxiate them in small compartments of my mind. Refusing to see the infinite possibilities in life. And I am banishing myself from all that I have built up to this point, it has just become a shoulder piece that enslaves me. The change that I had longed to gradiate through my daily routine, when I was employed, has darkened my color to a shade so paralytic it has rendered me unemployable.

The parking lot is empty outside my bedroom window, everyone is gone for the day. Its now 11 am, and even my creepy hairdresser neighbor is off to the Hair Cuttery, Bubbles or the Daily Dye Job. I hate seeing her on the sidewalk. I think I make her small head hurt, my existence disproves some vital building block in her creationist theory. She wanted to help me when she and her husband first moved into the building but now we’re grinding along the backside of hello. Once she mentioned she had someone in mind for me and I told her I would rather have a drink with her, and that just about did it. And of course I did not mean it, it just came out wrong, I really just wanted to hang out and become friends without the pressure of a blind date. Well a few months later I get a knock on my door and I am working in the studio shirtless and sweaty. I open the door to this young townie looking meth-head candidate from Sterling, a slim and sprite little skinny with long straight light brown hair. Her feet planted a bit wider than a mormon boy, prepared to discuss something more visceral than religion, a fucking judo chop? It was quick though nothing more than, “Oh I am sorry. I musta got the wrong place.” I assumed the goods did not meet her approval. I was preoccupied and let the door slam in her face and continued some inane act of tightening something here or loosening something there on some vintage mountain bike. Lame. This little social vignette might also encompass the entirety of my 5 year participation in this community in which I am deemed on the bulletin board flyer as a, “co-owner.” Whatever, back in my 1994 days of employment these things didn’t matter. It was the second time around in the old AOL job. I learned more about the swing, the technique. I experimented more socially with the idea of the job, and how I could push those boundaries. How to live freely among the world of the un-confrontational. I became a corporate vampire. The job become my patron and my only output is this weight that I can no longer carry. Don’t give me too much credit it was of course a mismanaged bloated pig spitting out money, this is a common practice among the employed.

I had taken quite a bit of money away with me on my first tour of AOL, but have since blown it. But hey there's no shame in returning, even a guy that took away 10 million came back with his tail between his legs to collect the easiest 100 grand in town. However despite this corporate generosity, one by one I watched my friends all move away to various cities for more fulfilling and exciting lives. I am beginning to understand why. To me it was just the final stone in a long series of stones that were laid out in front of my shoes, by friends. And those stones in the not so distant past sinking below the surface into the soft sediment of my memory, and me here alone in the middle. The dot of the exclamation at the end of a big joke on myself. And the traffic lights seem to switch more often when I stand in the middle here and smoke.