Return to Light

Return to Light

I go through these cycles sometimes where all I can think to do is sort of isolate myself from everyone and everything. I definitely went through that much of this year---starting in March, when life took some unexpected twists and turns.

The thing about these periods is that I lose touch with almost everyone, family, friends, acquaintenances, all those people that life is too short to really let get too far from hand.

Changed careers recently. By changed I mean more or less I got fed up with the old one, and have decided to go a different direction although that direction is unsettled. In the middle of semesters is the most productive time to think about going back to school because you can't. When a new semester is coming is the best time to come up with excuses why you can't. Trust me, I'm 27 and I've got some sort of amalgamation of 2 years worth of college credits but only the technical credits I would need to be a Nuclear Engineer, which does you no good when you want to be a teacher.

I rediscovered bowling and poker. That's about all I do aside from work. See some of my friends here in Auburn but definitely not as much as I would like. Would like to get home to Scottsboro to see it before all the greenery coming down Sand Mountain from Section dies but I hear it's half dead anyways and time is running out. Oh well maybe next year.

As we get older the bad things we never could imagine happening to us or anyone we know start happening more regularly. This is not fun.

I have tried internet dating lately to mixed results. I'm too flighty in real life,and if someone is not in that inner sanctum of my continuously shifting madness, then it is hard for them to keep up or understand. I like most females, and especially if they seem to like me back at all, and then I guess I try and grasp for all the other reasons why it must be right. It's usually not.

There was a girl I've had a crush on for something like 6 months, longer maybe even if I think about the first time I ever saw her which was over a year ago but at the time of course I wouldn't have even THOUGHT about it....but anyways I finally got the courage to ask her out on Friday and she had plans all the way through Friday and gameday Saturday. Said she would call Sunday. Didn't. I called her Monday and she said she would call me this week sometime. My phone is out of minutes now so who knows??? This girl (I say girl but mean woman....I've never grown up in vocabulary) is the same age as me, beautiful in all regards, single, etc etc. Kinda trying for WAY out of my league and in the middle of a job change is probably the worst possible time to tackle that challenge. But who said I ever do anything the easy way??

I don't care that much. I mean, maybe if there is such a thing as "The One" she will pop out of some woodwork or some life-coincidence-meeting or the internet and then it will work. If not I'm sorta getting used to bowling, playing poker, writing, and being alone. Maybe this was what I was made for. Thinking about how I was as a kid and as a teenager, I wasn't much different then, except I played sports I was less good at, and played games that I made no money playing. Now at least I have adjusted to things I can pretend to excell at.

I first played poker for money with Ben Keller, Tutt Rhodes, David Sanders, and several other people back when I was 17. Used to go with BK to Huntsville and play people there too. I was sorta a rounder before I ever knew what it was. We always played draw. If someone would have told me at 17 I could have just grown up to be a poker player and not something important or requiring of a college degree, I would have been on that like crazy. In the Navy we had Friday and Saturday night 7-Card Stud games, and I did well in those too. Then I get out of the Navy and about 2 years later discover that "Texas Hold-em" is all the rage, learn that, and can hang with some pretty good players now. Got destroyed last Saturday night. First major loss in 3 months or more. By major loss I mean I lost $40. That's still not fun. Forty is sorta my limit.

I don't gamble on bowling. It is the only sport I still routinely play that brings back that child-like zeal for life.

Basic Life InCohesion

Basic Life Incohesion

As always the last few days have been interesting and as luck would have it circumstances have conspired to place me in the right place and right frame of mind to record some of the more interesting intersecting of circumstances.

This evening my friend Dinky and I went out to eat after I got off work after a few rather deflating moments with some females of interest. Why is it every time you might start to like someone the VERY NEXT time you see them they talk about some other guy they are dating, if they don't just BRING them with?? Is it just me?

Anyways we end up spending a combined fifty dollars on steak and eggs and pancakes and an appetizer that arrived about half an armful before the main course which is almost exactly enough to make me, the habitual non-complainer (especially in resturants) into the guy waiting for the fat manager to walk around again so that I can vent. But even better---then the guy comes outside while Dinky and I smoke cigarettes waiting for our to-go order for a friend like he's afraid we are gonna walk out on our ticket. And the syrup wasn't even warm. Maybe he should be rubbing his fat titties on the bottles of syrup to warm them up before they bring some colder than room temperature syrup for me to not enjoy. Thanks.

The benefit was Dinky and I talked about a composition of some sort that we are gonna co-write about how we used to love the internet when it was simple. All this "progress" (other than Myspace) is really just vamped up consumerism and an attempt to woo mindless zombies away from TV's and to the You(boob)Tube. (considering I hardly ever talk about breasts, it is quite a feat I have mentioned them three times thus far! Chico is rubbing off on me...)

The other new thing going on is that I have been getting ready to relaunch HC-LotDE, inviting new "friends" (readers) to the profile, trying to touch base with the more important artists, etc. When I am inviting people, and considering I am a single heterosexual male, it is no doubt natural that I would tend to pay more attention to the cute girl profiles (which are VERY few and far between in the wells of political activism, counterculturalism, and literary arts that I pull from) and I ran across this one girl whose profile included the following:

..> ..>

About me: i just wanna be somebody's zelda fitzgerald.

Who I'd like to meet: i'm running out of ethnic friends.

..> ..>

General	none, whining, learning big words then forgeting what they mean, attempting to mooch off the government, appearing clingy, keeping warm, commiting suicide, bulking up for winter, being mean.
Music	bad music for bad people.
Movies	the flower that drank the moon.
Television	my super sweet sixteen is the voice of my generation.
Books	animals no one loves and BRAINPOWER

...and who doesn't believe I Love a couple of THOSE things?? Already I've got more in common with this girl than all my wives added together. Unfortunately also her profile included the following information:

Female
90 years old
manhatin', New York
United States

...no help on the age front. Manhatten is awesome but slightly far away. Except when you REALLY think about it, like when you are really drunk and high or run into someone from high school in a totally different state unexpectedly---then you FEEL like the world is REALLY small---when it isn't---it's freaking HUGE!---have you ever walked to the grocery store? And not even the closer grocery store, but the one that is twice as far but half as expensive. Yeah, the world is at least a million times bigger than that! Anyways my bio-mom and sister live near The City (NYC is the only city that can be referred to, from any distance by anyone, as "The City"), and Dinky and I are planning on trying to make it to NYC soon for an art exhibition, so anything is possible.

More of her info:

..> ..>

Status:	Single
Here for:	Networking
Orientation:	Straight
Hometown:	stormville
Body type:	7' 11" / Body builder
Ethnicity:	Black / African descent
Religion:	Agnostic
Zodiac Sign:	Aquarius
Children:	Proud parent
Education:	College graduate
Occupation:	ex lion tamer
Income:	$250,000 and Higher

...obviously mostly bullshit.....

..> ..>

St Francis College Brooklyn, NY Graduated: N/A Degree: In Progress Major: none of yr business!

2006 to Present

...hopefully meaning NOT younger than 18, but unfortunately probably younger than 21, unless, maybe like me, she has procrastinated in college, or maybe taking it a step further, procrastinating in ENROLLING in college, who knows?....

finally here is a picture---not the profile pic but my fav thus far:

Something classic/futuristic at the same time. Neato. (call Guinness, I now have proof I am the last living person outside the state of Idaho using that word)

So anyways, I of course respond to the Zelda remark immediately with the following message accompanying my industrial friend request:

..> ..>

Date:	Sep 27, 2007 12:09 PM
Subject:	Always on the lookout....
Body:	A line I use a lot with my friends is that I am always on the lookout for my Zelda Fitzgerald.... I thought that was cute on your profile..... Who knows, I might be your F.Scott! Michael Bernard

...well, I didn't get a typed response per se, but I recieved a friend request back from her, which meant she probably (like me on this profile) erased the request automatically and then, curiously, checked the profile to see what/who it really was. Usually these fake camera bitches get turned in as spam. I probably will someday also.

So last night I couldn't sleep, and what turns out to almost always be the wrong decision, I decide to turn the computer back on to see what's poppin, and seeing as how it is about 5 am at this time, nothing is poppin in this hemisphere although the parties are just winding down in Thailand which does me no good at all......So I compose the following, poorly concieved, executed, and most certainly, recieved email in the history of internet dating (stalking). (note the reference to how she is running out of ethnic friends under the "who I'd like to meet" thing...)

..> ..>

Date:	Sep 28, 2007 6:49 AM
Subject:	<---sorta ethnic
Body:	I'm sorta ethnic.....Half Argentine, half Irish......My biological mom and sister actually live in W-- NY, and as far as I know, my mom works somewhere in the city. Also I have been told I have brainpower but I don't believe it. I don't have to appear clingy, I actually AM if I'm not careful.... I like to attempt to keep warm and keep my home at -65 degrees. It's a hobby I enjoy. I have a wool sweater that doesn't zip up but is apparently very anti-stylish that I wear constantly. Also a green longjohn shirt I paid way too much for at an American Eagle one time...... I had a friend once tell me things you find, win or steal are way more valuable than anything you buy. I think he was right.....Almost everything I treasure (which isn't too much I'm not into "things" very much) has a really good story behind it..... I read and type at the same time all the time.....I've got to multitask to get everything done I need to in the procrastination-protracted timeframe necessary for basic life incohesion..... I'm not sure if your statement about "My Super-Sweet 16" is sarcastic or not. Usually I say stuff like that with a great deal of sarcasm and latent frustration. I'm an outrage poet. I gotta have something to be outraged about, besides everything else screwed up in the world.....disillusionment poetry also is mixed in there somewhere.... I hate being mean and do almost everything possible to avoid hurting people's feelings (except outrage poetry, as it turns out....). Sorry if I'm bothering the crap out of you---I'll stop but if you would like to continue this 'through-the-void" random conversation feel free. Also, my personal profile is the first of my top friends on this profile, and that contains my most recent blogs and a little more about me....this profile is really 99% professional....I can't remember if/when I have ever conversated as such with a (hopefully future) reader so forgive my unprofessionalism. It's like 5:35am here and I haven't slept in two days out of stress and tonight out of relief. Long story that either paints me in a really cool, outlaw light or marks me as a dangerous counterculturalist. Or both. I like conflicting truths. The Zelda thing got my attention, though....Here, at the Montgomery Museum of Art, there are two paintings by Zelda Fitzgerald that I always stop in and see when I go to the big city. When I was a kid, growing up in MN, I thought I might be the reincarnated F.Scott Fitzgerald. Now I'm pretty sure I'm not although much of my life trajectory has followed suit......Or maybe I am, I don't know...... I'm off-kilter and I'm known for these kind of emails with my friends, not usually with strangers but who knows??? How many Jack Kerouac's are writing you completely random emails this early today morning??? I've got to sleep eventually but I'm either not as crazy as you think or twice as awesome as you suspect. Or both. I'm also old as hell (27) which is a third of your myspace age (90) and maybe almost a half decade higher than your actual age. I'm not sure but anyways....sleep beckons, taunts me from the edge of daylight saying "your hopes of sleeping when it is dark and being productive in the sunlight will have to wait at least one more day". I've heard that one before... Take care and if you like keep in touch! Michael Bernard

.....bad, bad, bad. Like when you wake up the next day and can barely remember the night before, but can remember enough to know you've got a lot of apologies, explanations, and/or people to avoid for a while. Combine that with attempts to pick up random strange girls in different states via Myspace, completely unsolicited other than finding them in the friend list of an artist you closely align with artistically or a political viewpoint you agree with, and that is kinda what I feel like.

Except I spent most of today thinking---"Hey, that might have worked---she might have got that message, and after having seen all my other drastic coolness (via my professional profile), fell madly in love".....I am a hopeless romantic, optimist, and idiot, as it turns out.

So I predictably spend my waking time before work checking my inbox (in both profiles) and my outbox to see if the message had been read yet, almost every five minutes religiously until I absolutely have to leave for work or risk being later than I'm going to be anyways. I get home at nearly midnight and the message had been read, and no response as of this being about twenty four hours since sending the message. And I am left wondering at what point you cross the line into internet stalking. I am trying to ween myself slowly, like only checking my inbox every 10 minutes for a while. Sleeping. Writing this action report was a way to trick myself into doing something else for a few also.

On a side note the female friend I made recently that I hung out with once and then missed her coming to visit because I didn't know she was coming and went with Chico that afternoon for some errands has not really been in touch with me recently. But as with almost any female I find myself dating or wanting to date, the complications and intricacies of the situation make both likelihoods (that it is just everything else in life distracting her and not me) [or] (that it is me, that I am a weirdo barely able to function in normal society and definitely not a candidate for whatever it is you get when you find someone like you but the other sex) equally possible.

It might be natural at this point to say "Maybe I should tailor the way I do things to be a little less over the top". You know, like not ambush a girl right out of the gate like that. Like maybe introduce her to my insanity and constantly shifting madness at a slow pace. Like maybe even pretend to be normal until at least the Antogonist Movement Event and then maybe reveal it after if it turns out she likes me enough to not just run away. But, like Dostoyevsky, I say, "have I not done her a better service, and myself also, perhaps saving years of misery for us both?". Or like Sexy Rexy Grossman, I say, "Fuck it, I'm throwing it downfield!".

Because, if anything, if I've learned anything from the millions of platitudes your friends tell you when you end up back on the open market, "just be yourself" being the king of all these platitudes (and how I hate platitudes!), it's that if I am as I am (nuts), then I need to embrace it. I need to be just as confident as Sexy Rexy and know that when I fling this insanity out into the wind as I do, that the ball will at the very least look beautiful as it spirals and arcs so gracefully, no matter who catches it. (The defenders wouldn't get so many interceptions if the balls weren't so perfectly thrown in the first place, such tight spirals...). Every pass play should be a touchdown or a pick-6. This isn't golf. Life is fucking football. I don't have time, patience, or willpower left to do the whole sociopathic "mold yourself into someone who might be worthy of companionship" method I so embraced and ran into the ground for the last 27 years. What was I thinking? I mean, just because I'm all screwed up doesn't mean I can't find someone who is attracted to it. Truely, living your life as a series of compromises made to build yourself into a respectable human being, contributing member of society, and law abiding citizen is for jerks. The kid gloves are off, like my current anti-hero, I'm laying it all out there every play. The endzone isn't in the flats, the endzone is at the end of the field, and all those short passes are for pansies. I go for touchdowns.

Construda

Construda

My hobby of collecting obscure music in droves took a new twenty-first century leap thanks to my friend Daniel, who has worked with me the last two days teaching this non-technology inclined moron how to download entire discographies at one time. Dinky's computer just informed me that I have just now finished downloading all 23 Halo's of the Nine Inch Nails discography. In just a short amount of time I will be able to recover most all of the music I remember I have ever owned, and not only this, but quickly accumulate all the new stuff I get addicted to every other time I turn around.

I had spoke with Daniel a few weeks back regarding plans for creative endeavors, and as it turns out, his musical interests and my own are very similar. Not only this but I am slowly learning the language of this musical taste I have had for so long but was unable to define. Apparently it has roots in "Acid Jazz", "Trance Techno", and "World Music". I had clues that was the track I was on for a while, but never knew for sure what someone (such as Daniel) that really knew about this stuff would call it. Now the present goal is to find a drummer and a singer for this project of Daniel's so he can go forth. I am very excited about the possibilities here!

In our most recent discussions Daniel exposed me to some of his musical influences, and I have to say, they are terrific. Shpongle and Hallucineogen are apparently trance groups fronted by the same guy and that specialize in different aspects of trance music. Supposedly trance is going out of style in favor of "House", and still I don't understand the distinctions of the different genres of techno (in my head techno has always had to fight for it's area of legitimacy to start with, much less deserving of other subgenres---like present day "Metal"---even though I have been a fan of Lords of Acid and God Lives Underwater for a decade or more, and whole-heartedly believe the "Deconstructed" album by Bush to be the most underrated album of all time). I don't care about the subgenre's. I know what I like when I hear it. That goes for all types of music. Mediski Martin and Wood is an "Acid Jazz" band that I have downloaded extensively in the last couple of days, and I look forward to chilling out to the double-set live concert I downloaded where they cover Jimi Hendrix songs entirely. This will be a treat! I also stumbled across a song by Fedde Le Grand called "Put You Hands up For Detroit", and the Shprongle song I'm listening to right now just seemed to bust into the same bass/drum groove (heavily chopped and altered) in the song that is playing now on my turntables ("A New Way To Say Horray"). Awesome since I was going to next talk about this song anyways. Oh, and I also downloaded the entire discography of Nirvana and Beastie Boys in the last twenty-four hours. I'll be occupied for months now.....

A moment I have wished for for at least a week happened today when a couple friend-girls challenged me to whip it out in front of them so that they could rank me amongst whatever it is girls judge them against. I mean I know what they are judging it against but it's like a test you take on friday and find out if you passed on Monday. This is a test as far as I know I have never really failed, but a passing grade in this case is not binding obviously since neither female is really available as far as I know, or in my league necessarily.....The reason I had been wishing for this moment (more than the usual tendency for a red blooded american male to desire to whip it out often) in particular because of a snippet of conversation I heard about a week ago where some girls were talking and comparing the size of various guys they knew. I wanted to be included in the National Title Conversation. I think I got the goods to go the distance, or at least, to deserve to be in the hunt.......The problem for me was that I was so ready to ablige I didn't have a second to stall and work up a semi or anything so it was basically in it's "sleeping" form (although not George Constanza "post-pool" crippled). Oh well now that I don't have that going through my head anymore I may proceed to newer, higher level obsessions, such as the meaning of life, love, and everything else...........

[......or as I just discovered in the restroom, probably haunted by the feeling every time I see it for the next week I'm going to think "why couldn't you have been that big at that crucial moment last saturday"....]...

A word that fellow half-ass Minnesotean Laurence "Kool Aide" Maroney (inadvertantly I believe) and I are trying to MeMe into the cultural conciousness right now is "Construda", which is basically a modern adaption of the late-90's word "Quan".

Do you remember the movie "Jerry McGuire"? For years I had been perplexed by the very obvious guy anti-bias to this movie and the almost universal female adoration of it. It was not until tonight while pontificating that it became clear to me----Jerry McGuire is a chick-flick disquised as a sport's movie. How obvious! How did I not see it before? Probably because I am a hard-core american male who is secure with his sexuality and who supremely loves the odd and rare chick flick (don't get me started on "While You Were Sleeping"). Sometimes I will take my chick flicks heavily disguised ("Meet Joe Black") or super violent ("The Long Kiss Goodnight".........."What?!?", you may ask, "didn't The Long Kiss Goodnight feature more Samuel L Jackson bleeding than almost any other Samuel L Jackson movie ever made, which is a highly impressive and bloody feat for ANY movie to aspire to?"...........the undeniable truth here is any movie that has a female as the main protagonist is automatically a chick flick.....I'm a sexist, so what?.......Even that movie where Demi Moore shaves her head to become a Marine [and technically any movie where a woman shaves her head]is very clearly lesbian soft-porn......the closest a female protagonist has ever come to not being the star of a chick flick was Meg Ryan in "Courage Under Fire" and maybe "Domino" since I haven't seen it yet.....). Even comic book movies about girls being badasses are really chick flicks (even my almost favorite movie in the world, "Tank Girl"). So what? Are you secure in your manlihood? Does it frighten you that "Resident Evil" is a chick flick? I don't care, you don't need to watch that stupid bullshit anyways.

But see because I had never gone through the process of realizing this Truth, it had never occured to me why my metaphores relating to "Jerry McGuire", especially to other guys, were falling flat. So let me start with "Quan", then I will do my best to describe what Kool Aide Maroney ("bout time we got some construda in dis mothafucka") has been too unintelligible to describe clearly for the American Public.

Quan is the idea that success is a combination of many different elements of your life that need to be in harmony to make the greater whole worthwhile. One of the plot angles of Jerry McGuire was that we need to align our personal character strengths and flaws to better atune ourselves to the harmony of the Quan we might already have, or to better achieve the Quan we want.

Construda is the word we are going to use for this for now on. The reasons are simple. One, no red-blooded american male (namely me) can relate lessons and insights from the movie Jerry McGuire (even if we are both closeted fans of the movie, Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr, or even god-forbid Renee Zellweger) to one another without crossing what is a very well-defined guy boundry.

Sure, we might have watched the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes" with our mom and loved it, but we can't say that to another guy without possibly invoking the Mercy Killing Rule. It's like "Dacing with the Stars", or anything on MTV in the last most of the decade. I mean, I can and sometimes apparently do (like right now), because while I am aware of this boundry, I was not informed on how far the vast woman-wing conspiracy was willing to go to take this shit over. This is why I am just getting used to (and excited about) the fact our next president is Hillary. I hope she is. Do you remember growing up in the Clinton Utopia? I do, and I want it back. All my reservations of being under the power of a woman be damned.

So I've been thinking about my Construda. What I've got; not a whole lot of possessions and absolutely the opposite of any sort of status symbol at all at this point (despite there being credible eye-witness testimony available that I used to have such things in abundance), but a whole shitload of really cool ass friends, a life-time of awesome experiences from which to draw wisdom (even more important wisdom than figuring out how the mass media is slowly castrating us with a rigamarole of feminist and homosexual brainwashing), street cred (big time), a car (sometimes), money (less and less frequently), the possibility (although abstract at this point) of one day being in love or having sex and maybe even both together at the same time or in that order even is cool with me, being on my way to achieving lifegoals that are almost as old as me......What more could someone want? I mean, other than a blue-water sailboat, a porsche (again), a badass condo or impressive place to live (again), a bigscreen tv bigger than rhode island (again), money in the bank (a distant memory, but again), and impressive wardrobe of clothes and in fact the daily dressing ritual of Peter Dragon (was up to watches last time)............and then look at it----do you see it??, is it coming through to you now?----The posessions we desire due to social, marketing, or experience conditioning, even in their absense the desire and idea of ownership and possession causes us to be owned BY THEM, not to mention the responsibility and anxiety (and possibily the deflating dissatisfaction) of the reality of actually having such things to maintain and protect..................how many times have you gotten exactly what you wanted just to be let down?.......................so I think instead about the stuff that would REALLY make me any happier than I am now, not inconsequential material goals that either vicariously replace the spiritual completeness of a fulfilled life or distract us from our God-guided quest for upper level self-actualization.....so I think tonight about things I would REALLY like for myself...... a hot girl to lay in bed with at night, Brain Greise getting his ass lit up tomorrow and Rex Grossman coming in to beautifully blow the game for the Bears, the Vikings maybe winning, having even just a hottie being interested in me more than any other guy in particular and vice versa, maybe even miraculously the Falcons winning, seeing the Pacific Ocean one day, being full-size or real close when I whip it out for a girl for the first time next time, going significantly west of the Mississippi River, seeing long-seperated family and friends again, travelling the world and being a semi-piss-poor represenative of straight-edge American culture but a very very awesome example of underground counterculturalism and being a seeker of the Divine Moments of Truth. My Construda will never have to be checked at the Airport Baggage Claim. Hurricanes won't destroy it (although could threaten the immediate comfort of that night in bed with Mrs. Future). It cannot be stolen or taxed. It is a currency that is unique to us all individually, while we share in it with all of each other forever. My wealth is in my relations with other people and the experiences we have shared, and will share together in the future.

Hickory on Donahue

Hickory on Donahue

Hickory on Donahue, Editors Choice Award, International Library of Poetry, 2007.

How many times I must have passed
below your outstretched arms and leaves
in life and dreams
hickory tree reaching over this sea
fifty years or more of history
and thousands of versions each of me
as we travel to downtown and the lights
or in return to our beds and high on revelry
leprous stringy bark, coarse to the touch
grown bonzai shaped to avoid
our relentless restless human progress
another half century we shall remain
as ghosts or memories.


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Wu-Tang Forever

Wu-Tang Forever


Last night I stayed up late
going through old music
and I remembered how I
had forgotten the crisp casio
keyboard logic of Wu-Tang
Clan, NYC rolling bass
and Worldview
I stayed up an extra hour
collecting every song and
instrumental I could find