Mad Scribbling on a Mad Tuesday

Now...

is not about the pulse and fingertips and ooo-yes-my-God that's so nice and everything flowing, connecting, melting together and all over each other.

Now...

is not to jolt as one touch excites the nerve endings somehow miraculously connected on the other side of the body and neglected for far too long and oh-so-thirsty for more.

Now...

is not to feel that hair as it winds once, twice, oh-so-nice and pull!

Now...

is not to see that spark in her eye as she hungers and grins and pushes and pulls and lunges and fights and gives and yes, yes, yes!

Now...

is waves and hums and rushes all over and through.

Now...

is a slight chill and the tingles all over like something fell asleep and infected everything else with a heavy heavy weight.

Now...

is for calm.

Now...

is for relaxation.

And introspection.

And planning.

And people watching.

It's all so trite and derivative

so trite and derivative

so trite and derivative

and I'm such a bad speller and

so trite and derivative

because we couldn't stand it if every day was like this. 
To be on this raw nerve, to live and exist in this place and time. 
Because it holds you full and intense as all fuck and BAM!

Gone.

Such courage and chaos igniting everywhere you look and life always continuous. 
Transcending shape and form and pattern and purpose. 
Rendering definition pointless because it's not about words.
It never was.

In my first self-defense class, I was taught by The Colonel that grabbing the body part of another is a commitment. It means taking responsibility for whatever that body part does while you're holding it. Like mounting a mad bull or bucking bronco. Sometimes holding on for dear life becomes to only option left as well as the worst choice you ever made. Thoughts and words can be like that. Follow an idea too closely, grip it too tightly and you'll find yourself tumbling down, down, down a deep well leading to some very scary places leaving spilled ink and soiled notebook pages in your wake. The trip wasn't something that took much planning. Just time. The bright sunny breezy day was an added bonus. Stevie Ray Schwinn provided as good
a product as I could have hoped for which sat in a bag on my desk for the better part of a fortnight before I did anything with it. In the past, I've mixed mushrooms with noodles, pizza, or even something as unadorned as a slice of bread with peanut butter slapped on it and folded in half. On this particular Tuesday afternoon I simply ate them. Chewing them roughly and awkwardly as if just pulled from the ground in a forest somewhere. Treating them like the rotten fungus they were, keeping them off my tongue as much as possible and chasing with plenty of water and a chocolate chip cookie. This helped me get them down much easier. I only gagged once. I hadn't really eaten much that day so they kicked in much faster and stronger than expected. Much faster. I thought I'd have time to drop by the comic shop for a new book and the ice cream shop next door for a small cone before the world turned upside down. The tremors had already begun as I left the comic shop taking one smooth step after another, but ice cream became an impossible endeavor very quickly. The place was packed wall to wall with screaming children. I was most certainly not prepared to handle so many of them and so much of their noise with a belly full of psilocybin. I'm not sure how to describe the terror that comes at the realization of being so drastically outnumbered by these creepy crawly

fragile creatures known as kids. And they know. Believe me, they know. Get that many of them together in one large room and all bets are off. Your age and experience become kryptonite. Arsenic. You can't hear yourself think, let alone speak. As I frantically attempted to formulate a game plan I witnessed perfectly sober adults dotted throughout the store on the verge of collapse. One gentleman was simply banging his head repeatedly into a table. No one noticed the small pool of blood as it was building right next to his daughter's melted container of Rockin Raspberry. Another couple near the back were shoving a loaded pistol in and out of each other's hands arguing over who got to die first. I decided I didn't need an ice cream cone after all and told the charming young lady behind the counter I just wanted a bottle of water. She was kind enough to let me pay with my card and I vacated the premises as quickly and calmly as humanly possible.

I decided to take myself to the beach to sit and watch whatever there was to see. The walk to the lake held with it a strange tingle and chill throughout my body and a stiff fractured relationship with my jaw. As if I had fastened someone else's throat and mouth onto my skull and was trying to wear them in like a new pair of jeans. It was important to keep moving. Spitting through a crooked grin every few steps and stopping occasionally to marvel at the clouds and trees and sky and their strange new kaleidoscopic quality. The sand and water held similar new abilities. Swirling and sliding in a kind of ebb and flow which I quickly deduced were the unmistakable inhales and exhales of the planet. I can't remember a time in my life when I've been so content to simply sit and feel myself awash in a sea of life. It was in the air, on the tip of each blade of grass, in the concrete benches. Beautifully simple. Simply beautiful.

And you brought an apple thinking you might be hungry.

And you brought some books thinking you might be bored.

Forgetting you strapped in for a ride.

Forgetting, thinking with your sober foolish planning ahead mind
That you might actually have attention for anything beyond the

Vibrancy and

People and

Life all around you.

The distractions are oh-so-needed for

Most of us

Most all of the time.
Most of us

Who are never really looking.

And it's all so

Fleeting.

And all so

Beautiful.

And all so

Wasted.

And all swimming together in a big big stew. All the

Money Grubbing

Hate and

Politics and

Power Plays and

Corporate Sponsorship and

Shit-Shit-Shit and

Fuck-Fuck-Fuck and

All of it all together around and around again and again in the same vat with all the

Love and

Simplicity and

Appreciation and

Music and

Poetry and

Time and

Toil

Around and around

Again and again.

It will always continue.

That's all you can really count on.

That's all it does.

After a couple hours of intense unfocused high speed rapid fire thought coupled with a massive vibrating body high and the most gentle swimmy melty visuals I've enjoyed in a good long while, I felt it was time to be moving along. This beach was played out. I had also somehow managed to acquire a new sunburn on my calves. Which made no sense considering I'd been sitting the whole time. At any rate, the next step for the day (whatever that was) awaited and it was time to get a move on. The peak had come and gone and couldn't have happened in a more scenic or pleasing setting. Upon arriving home, it became very important to empty the trash. Not sure why, but it seemed the thing to do. I lined each empty can up in the main room after hauling all the garbage out to the dumpsters in our alley. There were five of them. Five empty trash bins lined up perfectly for two men in a two bedroom apartment. Hell, it's really six if you count the waste basket over by the computer desk. Was this excessive? Were we part of the problem? Doing a disservice to future generations ever hastening the demise of our Earth Mother? As I wrestled with this new frightening thought I noticed the posters on the walls to be swelling and pulsating as much as ever and my new-found guilt over these trashcans to be god-damn fascinating. So, maybe the trip wasn't quite over. But we'd most definitely descended and plateaued. Nothing scary or unexpected around the corner. From here on out things would calmly settle into a nice cozy Tuesday evening.

Relishing in a sensation becomes as easy as focusing one's attention.

But I wasn't ready for calm. I found myself staring intently at the posters and murals melting into themselves only moments ago trying so hard to see it again. To bring back the kaleido-vision with the sheer force of my will. I began watching the most vial porn in my spank bank with double shots of Makers from the bottle and deep dragon bowl hits for chasers. Fighting to get myself as amped, primed, and gassed as I was only two hours ago. Reveling in meaningless selfish decadence as the transcended euphoric raw nerve hyper reality waved mockingly in my general direction. It had become a fading memory. A distant mountain top. Once peaked, though never processed. This happens to me every time. Never with acid, but always with shrooms. It isn't pleasant having to accept that you were simply a visitor to the summit. As an imperfect creature, you can't live there. As an imperfect creature, you won't be returning for some time. And as the journey back down is a psychological crusher, you will grab for any imperfect support available. Junk food is medicine. Booze is medicine. Reading, writing, weed- all medicine. Comic books are fucking medicine. Porn is medicine.

The worst porn.

The most unforgiving

cock slapping

double penetration

lousy boob job

bad dye job

anal intruding

fuck-fest-by-the-barrelful

flicks and pics you can handle.

But it's no use.

Band-aid for a bullet wound.

You don't get to the summit twice in one day. But boy, do you try. You jerk and you lube and you pump and you spit and you stroke with all your might. And right when you finally come into your workout T-shirt from that morning, you feel your eyes rolling back and catch yourself thinking how that was maybe one tenth of what it felt like to stand on that mountain. Where everything was racing with life and color and possibilities and pleasantness and the overwhelming presence of greater forces working all around you all the time. Forces that didn't wait for your permission. Forces you'd do well to surrender to. Feeling in your blood and bones that need for release. Realizing that fighting the rhythm of the world is indeed a foolish fleeting struggle. Knowing deep down where words had no value that releasing control was a perfectly natural thing to do. And it would never stop you from being alive. This kind of trust only comes to the enlightened. Never to the sober.

The evening took a left turn at that point when Alberto, a friend and neighbor started screaming from the street below. Apparently his old lady had kicked him out again. Something about holding a backyard wrestling tournament in the living room. He seemed quite troubled and I didn't want to press him for details. We spent the remainder of the evening swapping war stories from the good old days over brandy, cigars, and pizza delivery. -JN