write a story that starts: "Don't let me ruin the ending but by the time you finish this story I will be dead. Here's the thing, this story isn't about me."

to smile occassionally.
to form opinions, both good and bad.
to feel and to feel good.
to know the touch of another.
to watch the sky at night
and to count the foreign seas of a new moon.
to find a sympathetic ear.
to know passion and to forget it.
to know love and to regret it.
to taste the smoke of another's breath.
to have a familiar place to rest your head
and a strange and swelling world in which that restless head may roam.
to be useful.
to be quiet when needed.
to be weak when necessary.
to know the feel of warm water down the canal of your back.
to be young sometimes.
to grow up.
to see the sun rise before going back to bed
and to know that even the earth perspires.

you can always find a story whenever someone fails.

start an awards show called "The Condemnation Awards." it will be the reverse Nobel. founded in 1889 by Dr. Condaleeza Nation.

I'd like to one day find the relationship and tension that exists between what is possible in the world and what is possible in words.

A Protest against Heavens

Started before Christmas but haven't made any progress since then. Hoping a blog post will encourage me to to work on it some more. Let's at least try to finish this before the Illinois primary election, shall we? VanBuren4Prez 08!

May I present ... something I'm working on:
____________

We had plotted, planned and prepared for months and now, here beneath a brown-paper kind of sky, we had finally arranged it: a protest against heavens. All different kinds of heavens, big, little, tall or short, religious or secular, corporate, cloudy, Christian, corporeal or even childhood fantasy. It didn’t matter to us, we wanted to bring them all down, we wanted to see their fluttering and torn shards ground down into the dust and the dirt.

Everyone walked by, and we mean everyone: mothers with their overdressed daughters, mall mavens and construction workers, nuns and spastic business-suited bullies, skate punks and their dads. Everyone walked by and they all wanted to know. They wanted to know what our deal was. They saw our signs, our banners, saw our leaflets and pamphlets and heard our chants and cries and calls and still they didn’t understand, still they didn’t get it, still they wanted to know just what had made us so irate. So we would go ahead and just tell them flat-out.

“Heavens,” we would say. “Heavens are making our life into a special kind of hell.”

But this didn’t seem to satisfy anyone, not them, not us, especially not the nuns. They would mutter and shake their heads, maybe walk away, maybe take a pamphlet but none of them ever really seemed to understand. None of them really seemed to get it. So we would try harder with the next one, and even harder with the next.

“We are not against religion or faith as such,” we would say. “We are not against moral codes or better ways of living. We are simply against the concept of Heaven, any heaven, all heavens. They have tied our eyes, and bound our hands for too long now. They have made our history into a wasteland of promises!” But again the same reaction, the head shake and the dirty mutter that drifted past us like dust up into the brown and empty air.

The whole thing had been Kay’s idea and she was the first one to admit that it wasn’t working.

“This isn’t working,” she said to Lauren, but everyone heard her and everyone agreed. The people were starting to be less confused and more angry, threatening us with bodily harm. One guy even threatened to prove to PJ that heaven really existed, by sending him there with his shotgun. Craig, tall and lanky and always with that evil smirk, stepped up behind PJ.

“PJ,” he whispered too loudly, keeping his deserted eyes focused on the guy just past PJ’s shoulder. “PJ, tell him that you won’t get to heaven no matter how hard he kills you. As a nonbeliever, it’s hell or nothing for you, buddy.”

PJ started to open to his mouth and we couldn’t tell if he was going to repeat what Craig had said to the guy, even though he obvious heard it already, or if he was going to tell Craig to shut the fuck up. Before a single word slid out between PJ’s teeth, the guy pulled back his fist and punched him right in the mouth. A dozen of us ran up screaming and yelling, holding the guy back and shielding PJ and feeling panicked, excited, good and self-righteous.

“You did it,” we told the guy as he struggled against our hands and arms as they wrapped around him and hauled him away. “You just proved our point. If it hadn’t been for heavens you wouldn’t be angry. If it hasn’t been for heavens you wouldn’t have tried to strike a stranger. If it weren’t for heavens we wouldn’t be hauling you away and stealing your wallet while you can’t do anything about it, sir.” We pulled into an alley and 10 of us beat the shit out of him and took his wallet.

They were only 14 bucks and a library card inside, which we used to get PJ some pain-relievers, an ice-pack and a copy of The Idiot’s Guide to Sex that he would never have to return.

So when Kay finally admitted that “This isn’t working,” we all agreed with her. She scheduled an immediate strategy session in her room early the next day. PJ’s lip was cut and swollen but he hadn’t lost any teeth.

"The Baptism of the Dead"

2008

"It's the end of a fucked-up year. There's another one coming."

-Ian Mackaye, Embrace, 1987.