gotta get a lil done

What a night of doing not a damn thing. I guess I walked halfway across town to have another uncomfortable dinner with my mom. I wish I had a place to do steelwork in my backyard. Low and behold, I feel more comfortable in a loud cave of grit and fire than just about anywhere. I could lose myself in doing the work I enjoy. Why I have not admitted to this reality of self, I don't know and won't bother trying to figure out. As I was telling a friend, I am me and fuck you world. I don't give a damn about politics, so I'll avoid that useless self discussion. I'm pretty fed up with most everything I know these days and am ready to just move forward in my life. I feel like a number of people my age have been thinking of their life in the future and living in the present. I've about given up on the future since I will never know anything about it.

look how happy he is

That is the car that hit the car that hit my brother's car. The driver's bullshit insurance won't pay the claim on three totaled vehicles because he was delivering food without their knowledge. People are now telling my brother he's got to get an attorney to get the money to fix his car. I thought the whole point of insurance is so we didn't have to get lawyers involved every time their was an accident of typical living. Insurance companies are to me as advertisers were to Bill Hicks. I am not, will never, comparing myself to that genius. I am only comparing the distaste. On to the story.
My brother was hit as he was driving to pick me up so we could go visit with our mother. I walked down to see what he needed and brought along a camera in case I saw a pistol packing tow truck driver's son steer a car in jubilant joy. The momma of the family was there, as well.
It was a touching scene.

It was night and I get uncomfortable taking pictures of people I don't know.

it's all about the energy, man.

o
One thing that is mildly vexing about this modern day of devised efficiency, why do nations starve, why do so many have so little when we should all have plenty/enough. Maybe we evolved realms of the new society take waaay more than our fair share, or we are a grossly dumdass being if we have to work more and have less, or greedy rich-bitch tard sleazefuck-balls are pimping the system for themselves, or some combination of the above.

The past few days have had the weird in them. I would almost describe my life as a psychedelic experience, not in that it has more pretty colors and sounds but people are strange and events are unsettling. We have had floods, earthquakes, the ATM gave me an extra 20 then I run into a person from a diversive past. I guess god is reminding me that it runs my world. Such uncanny energy makes for more tenuous times. That leads me to commenting the obvious in that life is getting expensive. It seems that energy prices have fucked everything else up. I'm glad we've got our prioties straight in Iraq. We sure as hell wouldn't be there if we were answering to god. We should all boycott our cars for a week. Screw the man and his oil.

this is from way back.

It's difficult to read this english up to down but that is the was this goofy stuff works. This is the finale of something mistaken for a novel-in-progress from earlier times. I actually have much of the front end of a big story written but I 'm a lazy puke pile of rancid chicken shit and can't seem to get past myself and find some kind of other motivation to finish it besides just myself struggling to complete one thing in my life. jesus, I am tired of reading my own words. I see it and how much needs changed and become overwhelmed by the mind-fuck(I tried to think of a different modifier but could not, none replicate the force of that word) it can be to choose ideas and images and all that other crap I want one day to end up in a piece of writing that I do.

Epilogue

Calvin sat on the Arkansas bank of the river and looked at the Memphis skyline a half mile across. The pyramid, a few miles north started the jagged line of steel, concrete, and glass that ran down to the trio of bridges a half mile south of Calvin. The thick brown water swirled and gurgled in front of him and he thought of diving in and being dragged under by the legendary Mississippi undertow. Every year someone would get sucked under the river and maybe show up miles downstream.

Calvin jerked the pole back and he could feel the triple hook sink into the fishes jaw. The rod bent over and the drag whined as the fish swam for its life. Calvin knew it was going straight to the bottom where thousands of years of humanity was stuck into the mud. Boats, people, cars, trash, DDT, shells, boots, cans, bottles, planes, bales of cotton, cannons, heroes, cowards, and everything else that made history was being preserved by the deep water. The fish was trying to find some kind of cover to get away from the triple barbs in its mouth among all the refuse of mankind.

As soon as reel slowed down its backwards spin Calvin started to pull and wind the fish in. HE pulled and worked the fish for about half an hour when he could see the water swirl around its sleek brown skin. Then he saw a paddle move the water around and the hook sticking through it. He realized he caught a spoon-bill, a rare breed of catfish. Calvin couldn’t see the rest of the fish but he could tell that it was huge, upwards of sixty pounds. Then he saw the tail pushing water as hard as it could and almost yelled at a the sight of a five foot catfish. Calvin reached for his net when “Snap!” He watched the front foot of his pole fly into the water and swore not at his loss but in sheer amazement of it all. The big fish went down to the bottom of the river, dragging the stick of graphite behind it. Two hooks went through his bill and would take a while to get out. The fish rested in the mud for awhile and then continued its never-ending journey for food. A Volkswagen Beetle sat sunk in the mud to the windows. The fish swam through it and the rod caught the roof, after a brief struggle he had snapped the line that had tangled around the rod and swam only with the two hooks sticking through his mouth and the third hanging below them catching nothing but water, sticks, and a boot. The fish had the boot stuck to its head for almost a week when it got wedged between a rock and the drive shaft of a paddle-wheeler. He struggled to break free but the two hooks in his mouth made the fight almost impossible. With one last shake and flare of his head he ripped his mouth from the steel barbed bait hooks and left the boot for some poor fisherman to catch.

my nonsense existence

That's a whole lot of something I forgot where I was going and that is one bad sign. Writing on the computer is so much more difficult than on paper. It's less transcendent in a modern sense and more in the tactile element of putting letters together to form a concept and not just flashes of one's sentient-animal being.

I must say, every day I have tried to write anything I find it more not good. I have in an odd way grown in my ability to speak and that development of language is reflecting itself in my writing as I try to feel comfortable in this skin.

I have a story partially written that starts with these lines, I like them

“The room smelled like puss, stale piss, and bandages. The only light was an old T.V. flickering on a milk crate (something about tampons and out of business rug stores). A shaky box fan brought sanity into there but it only muffled death’s footsteps a little.”
The rest is written on a scrathpad somewhere in the world. It's not a very happy story. I use to get tired of all the depressed tales I read. I remember challenging a friend to write positive poetry. For some reason, I forgot to listen to mine own advice of yore.

playa, why you hatin

I made this funky shit at work the other day. I thought of making a set of over sized jacks in this style. Allison thought it should be a boot-jack. Someone else said it's a coat rack or a mailbox topper. It's just fucking art.

hey shorty

Jitter Rollins went-a- wandering last Saturday. He had no plan but to get away from his head. Unfortunately, it was with him but it didn't act out too much. He had been having the usual maelstrom of critical living and was clinging to his last hope of sanity by taking himself away from the outside world and into the outside.

I was born this way.

I know my typing is pretty shitty but it's better than my writing. That's some type of preface to whatever I was trying to put down tonight. I've become offput by this feeling that we are so separate from ourselves as people that we have grown to feel that the plastic hallways we are free to roam are the extent of who we are. We have to be told why sleep is good and food is bad. We subsist on little pills of "sanity" and incredibly screwed up images of ourselves. We are living on this planet because that's what we do.
This is a circuitous way of explaining that we live in the world of people and not that of this living planet. I don't trust this society we have built for ourselves. I guess I should because we are an incredibly adaptable species but something ain't right about the time spent in little tubes and boxes, escaping in chemicals, and killing ourselves.
Why, for the love of god, where we given this ability to ask but no one to answer. This sucks. I wish I was a member of some religicult so my answers would be in one book and some wise dude with a cool costume would tell me about it.
Before this stupid idea of separating church and state, we didn't have that problem. I should dig up Martin Luther and straighten his zombie corpse out. Of course, I would probably be hanging in a cage over some sea for my misguided thoughts but at least I would have answers.









I'm tired of all the bullshit subarbanites writing to the paper to explain why America kicks ass and Freedom is the shit and it smells like steak. The concept of freedom is about as difficult as love or Jesus. At one time I believed the entire evolution of the organic form was the efforts of the life force trying to free itself in the placement of every branch, leaf, or cell. That is tied somehow to my offbeat idea that all physical forms are energy bonded in time. Woo hoo. If it barely makes sense to me and I can't get the words out in a cohesive manner then it is a flawed idea, right.
That mud puddle drains into a mental sewage of questions. Is this freedom like when your parents give you a hundred dollars and send you to the mall. You can go in any store and buy a few shiny things but you can only go to the lame stores in the building and the funky smelling food court. And this is the mall we're blowing up Iraqis for. I get the sense that the American experiment has gone astray and we don't know how to fix it. You have to go to your job and pay taxes and buy gas and talk about sports. The man will come after you if you don't. He'll incarcerate you and call it rehabilitation. This is wrong. How do we live right?

small time art

The first two pieces are ones I made in the past week or so at work. The last one, with my wonderful dog behind it, is from some time ago. I've been thinking of selling stuff like this. I've done some larger work and will post pictures of it soon but I don't have the time to get many coffee tables built. Anyway, if you want something similar to what you see, shout. I don't do anything the same way twice so you are guaranteed to get a one of a kind piece of Danart.

Did you know I never considered myself a creative individual? I'm just realising I might be.

stories are important

I've been working on this and have almost given up on the idea of making it any less bad. I hope you enjoy your time with my tale and let me know what you would change. I put this shit up for you to read and the main way for me to get any better is for someone, anyone to help me out. A writer is no one without a reader.

High thoughts in low times.

by Redmond Wallace

My bedroom’s getting wet, the young woman said.

Fraid that won’t be all, her father replied. He walked back to the truck to get his binoculars, dragging his left leg behind him. A bullet shattered his hip in Kuwait and the operation shortened his left leg an inch.

He looked at the far side of the bloated river. It had rained for a week and the sun was finally coming through.

Looks like Fowley lost his dock,

His daughter watched the water creep up the side of her house. She had tried to get everything but her mind had not been working right since she had left Memphis. She bemoaned the quilt her great-grandmother had given her. I was probably worrying about the damn T.V.

It ain’t easy not knowing. That’s the whole fucking problem with life. You know what you should have done after you didn’t. It’s just dumb luck or the good Lord when you get anything right in this forsaken place.

How you doing Mr. Sykes, Mumps Black asked. He lived in Old Joe and was dry.

I’ve been better.

You’re here and many people ain’t.

I guess I can be thankful I get a chance to rebuild all that shit.

You always hated that house.

They watched the water come up through his daughter’s car.

How’s she doing? That’s a whole lot of living for anyone to bear.

They say its better than dying but we could be wrong. Maybe that’s why ain’t nobody come back from there.

Please don’t be true. They heard Typhus’s daughter cry out.

Pappa, I think.. I can’t remember…I left my photo album on the table. I was grabbing it to make sure it got in your truck and then I forgot cause I was thinking about something or other and I don’t care since those pictures is from when Jalen was a baby. Them were the pictures I look at when I want to… She looked at Mumps. They all knew she left Memphis to get away from drugs and the men who carried them but she could not talk about it with such a decent fellow around. You know what I’m saying Daddy.

The water ain’t that high on your place yet and the rain stopped. We may have something to be thankful for. Besides, you might have put them pictures some place safe. It could have been one of those subconscious things.

Typhus was not much for consoling words. He had stopped drinking whiskey and his insanity of yore had died down but he could never understand his daughter.

Y’all want to come up and stay at my place tonight. We can stay in the garage and June Lynn can sleep inside. I’m sure my wife would welcome the company. You ain’t gonna get nothing done here but watching until that river comes back down. We just went to the store so I got plenty of beer drink and I got some backstraps left from a deer Victoria shot in the fall.

What if some of those fools from town come and try to take folks’ stuff down here like they did down in New Orleans. I aim to shoot them if they do. I ain’t got much left and I’d prefer not to lose it too.

Mumps looked at the boats and tractors scattered around the high ground. The sun burned comfortably in the distance and the washed blue sky made the river sound less angry. Small streams rilled down the stone hills in the gullies worn by the torrents of earlier.

You’ve gotta get out of here and not worry for a few hours. I know you need to get off that bum leg of yours.

It sounds nice.

I’ll go ask Coby and Fran if they’ll keep an eye out. June walked up the road to where a small house overlooked the flooded valley. She was scared of going to town because she knew that all she wanted was clear the pain. The dope dealer would give it to her in the name of kindness when they both knew it was a trick. There were so few people in town and they all knew each other’s story, or at least, thought they did. Going with Mumps would be bad but she could not stop herself

Hi June Lynn.

Hey Mr. Coby. Mumps was trying to stay in town with him but daddy’s all bothered that some dumb kids are gonna come down here and take the only things we got out of that damn house. I was wondering if y’all can make sure nothing foolish happens.

Mr. Coby stepped through his screen door with a cigarette in his mouth, wearing a pair of cut off slacks, holding a revolver. I ain’t letting nobody touch nothing down here that don’t belong to them.

You ain’t going to shoot nobody are you?

That’s up to them.

Well, don’t go hurting someone on account of what I got piled up. Typhus might tell you different but he’s a damned fool.

You go get you some rest and we’ll clean this mess up in a day or so. They say he river’s gonna drop faster than an elephant shit when it comes around to it.

Thank y’all. Thanks Mrs. Fran.

June climbed into the passenger’s side of her dad’s truck without seeing how much further the river had come. There ain’t a drat thing I could do but be more upset, she told herself.

They rode to town, stopping at the store for cigarettes and a book for June Lynn to read. She never read before but since she came back from Memphis and left Jalen in Jonesboro with his aunt and uncle she found she could forget about getting high while she was caught in words. The store had a library that was two bookcases of dusty paperbacks and an Encyclopedia Britannica from the 70s. Most of the pictures were missing from when kids used them for school projects but it housed the greater body of knowledge for Galatia for some time.

After finding a haggard copy of Little Women, they drove down the gray asphalt to a place in a bowl below the top of one of the eroded Ozarks, once mighty now a land of mythical hillbillies and forest dwellers.

Behind the endless nights of rain, an early spring day gusted in. Colors dormant through the long and evil season reappeared. The first down tendrils of green were shooting from the soiled covered rock. June Lynn checked herself in a compact prior to hopping out of the truck to see Mrs.Victoria Black.

I’m sorry to hear about y’all’s place. It always seems like bad luck follows folks that is already trying to get back up.

You look lovely Mrs. Black.

I like your shoes.

I had to change into something besides those muddy boots I was wearing earlier. Everything is all junked up down there.

Three sat in the garage while Mumps busied himself with the grill.

Mrs. Black smoked a long cigarette. Typhus opened another can of beer.

You were right, Mumps, I needed to get out of that place and sit in this nice garage of yours.

It ain’t done yet. I’m hoping to get most of the junk upstairs and move my shop into here. Damn fuel is getting outrageous and it’d be a lot better if I didn’t have to drive 30 miles every time I wanted to get something done. I tell you what, some son of a bitch is making a lot of money while them boys are dying. It ain’t right.

I don’t know if nothing’s right about politics. I stopped voting after I got back from Kuwait. It don’t make a damn what we think. Folks is gonna run as ragged and we can’t do a damn thing about it. I know I’m supposed to stand up for myself but I got a screwed up hip from doing that and I’m tired. It’s enough to worry about how I’m gonna live another day, much less all these rich people problems they got us fighting for.

I’m gonna go for a walk. All this talk of fighting and whatnot ain’t causing me to forget about water in my bedroom.

June Lynn picked up her book and stepped through the door closest to the old house. She had taken to finding a quiet spot in the valley to read her books. The fresh breeze lifting off of the talking river would pass past her as she would sit on a sand pile among a stand of cane. Away from the grim sounds of the city and the cat calling dealers and the glittering stench, she could wrap herself in the comfort of another story and the sounds of a world without people.

She walked up the driveway and turned left, away from town. She knew the road well for the McKenzies lived down the way and Carlton went to school with her. His mobile home appeared through the naked trees and she could tell that Carlton was no different from when she last saw him. The same cars were in the same state of disembowelment.

Get in here you dumb shit. Momma Mckenzie yelled at an old pit-bull mix that yelped when smacked it with the backside of her hand.

June could smell the sick and alluring smell of cyrstal cooking in the shed.

You think June’s gonna be all right out there. That damn MckNezie boy ain’t up to no good and she looks awful wore down.

I don’t know Mumps. She’s got her mother’s strength but I ain’t sure if the drugs is stronger’n that or not. I won’t lie. I’m worried but she’s a grown woman and she’s got to face this on her own. I’ve got, or did, a place for her to stay but that’s about all I can do.

June Lynn stepped behind a thick trunked Chestnut and eyed the comings of goings of the house she knew well. Carlton was in a fit, darting from the shed, searching through heaps of alternators, wheels, bolts, grills, bikes, junk and more junk for whatever it was to attack his newest problem.

He had always been a tinkerer but when he was hopped, jacked, and twisted he hell bent on diabolique invention of useless proportion. He made match-fired boats, smoke proof pipes, magnificently efficient can holders. He would someday make the machine that would save humanity, he swore.

Muttering and scowling, he pulled bits of wire out of the part pile.

She had little sense that this was going on. A hung-over smog of chemical need was pressing in upon her world. All she wanted was to feel right.

She turned and sat down. The ground was soft of moss and mud. A car roared in the distance and birds twittled around. She sat and thought how much she wanted to flick a lighter and feel herself evaporate.

And the world proceeded with its boring talk of tequila and basketball. The news of lives under duress was not anything worth a damn to the people avoiding a world falling apart. What should they care in a time with doomsday devices and explosive plagues? They lost themselves in a digitized space with stories of happiness and fictional depravity.

A family on vacation from Kansas City drove to the original house of Gallatia on its open purchase well above the river bounding through the trailers. The son pulled out his new camera, feeling something for the hillbillies’ homes but mostly he was a spectator in the dramatics of Nature.

You could get a boat for real cheap of you wanted to go swimming.

I bet you could just wait down river and catch one.

We have a boat, Carl, what would we do with someone else’s. Besides, they look like they use theirs more than we ever do.

The tired man sat with the husband and wife, chewing his food.

That’s a damn fine piece if meat. I wish you hadn’t wasted it on me.

The Lord has blessed us through the kindness of others and I only hope to return the favor.

Well, I appreciate it and I’m sure June will be thrilled at her plate whenever she gets back. I hope it ain’t too long from now. I’m tired.

I don’t imagine you slept much last night.

I tried to lay down for a minute but that rain kept banging away on the roof, reminding me it was coming for me. I just went ahead and made a pot of coffee and did the best I could. I think June slept okay but she’s been doing a lot of that since she got back.

You’re supposed to rest when your sick and she had a spiritual ailment. I’m worried. Should we go look for her?

She’s a grown woman and I told her that I think me and her momma did a pretty good job raising her. She should know how to make a few good choices now and again. If she don’t… then maybe I wasn’t the father I should have been.

She could taste the glass, feel the smoke, hear the burn as she watched the blue sky drain to red. Flickering shadows swung over the street, bats dancing in the darkness. The tree frogs set to clamoring and she watched a possum scample down the embankment on the near side of the asphalt that turned blue in the light of a new night.

How sad and funny you are.

Her voice startled her. With so much going on in her head, she forgot that she lived in the world with the possum, the Mckenzies, and her father. The possum stopped at her voice, looked up, and scooted a few yards until it found a chicken bone. It sniffed and picked at the decaying animal, hoping that it was still edible.

June admired the efficiency of the animal and its rich coat as it cracked the bone in bits. Her stomach ached at the sound of food.

I wonder if they ate all the deer. She asked the marsupial.

June stood up, frightening the animal to run down the road with half the bone between its teeth, brushed the dirt from her jeans, and walked back to find her father snoring and a wrapped plate in the refrigerator.