the war on terrorism is a lie-right out in the open and seemingly immune to attack. terrorism is not suffering nearly so much as people and freedoms. it is not right that one civillian should die in a counter-terrorist strike, just as the death of a civillian at the hands of a terrorist is reprehensible. the restriction of individual freedoms, likewise, is an atrocity. flight from this country is highly advisable, should present trends continue.

but what’s to worry..? we’re all in good hands. the government exists to protect and provide for us, right? (if you’ve ever been needlessly accosted by police or otherwise ‘looked out for’, you’ll surely agree)

for now the media will seek to disable protest. tune in.

up late, once more, with nothing to do and too much on my mind.

just one shot, but all the jameson memories flashed by… hangovers, candy, jagermeister chasers. temporary disconnections make life more bearable.

… and yet i await being plugged in for another tedious 8-hour work set, to be followed by waiting another three hours (if not more) before anything interesting happens (providing anything interesting *is* to occur).

too many narrative ideas at once… most seem to fade into obscurity before i have time to decide whether or not they’re worth writing about.

“stop playing games long enough to settle the score”

there was no post yesterday as i was temporarily trapped in a strange and ultimately megalomaniacal universe in which i mattered, but was unable to speak or otherwise explain myself to those around me.

and i’m back… with no noticeable differences, other than my ability to post a simple update.

work continues.

“americans are friendly people, but freedom sure does give free reign to the tastless.”

it’s hard to end on truer words than these.

and dawn comes thundering in, shoving aside the last yawning dreams, shattering the placid watershed of thought, stirring up dull aches and throbbing, scaring the quiet owls back into their retreats and ushering in droves of squawking social birds.

not that i slept, or had any intention of doing so. waking up on time isn’t nearly as easy as prolonging the torture of weary consciousness. hopefully time will pass less noticeably at work.

“to be nondescript is the goal of the survivor-a deeply conditioned attitude found in environments in which deviance from one’s surroundings and fellow creatures is viewed as weakness, or, conversely, where superiority may be reacted to (especially in social situations) with rivalry or antagonism.”

i am a nondescript citizen. meaning, foremost, that it’s about time i lay down the material for inclusion on the next album. if only i had something comparable to the quality of the other verbage already gathered..? i am a nondescript citizen-meaning, of course, that i’m not going to impress anyone.

my thoughts for 2001:

(a) life on the street is cold and hard… you will feel the elements, find yourself unsheltered, and the cold will become a part of you.

(b) people are strange… some resemble animals in mannerism and appearance. i saw a lady that reminded me of a precambrian fossil… alive? something you’d find lurking in the marianas trench. i remind myself of a small mammal-but my opinion on this matter varies.

(c) setting one’s expectations high is always a mistake. one should reject the notion of “expectation” and simply deal with events as they develop. nothing is ever really over or finished-it may appear so, but this is an illusion resulting from expectation.

(d) i don’t know why i own a car. i wonder where it is right now? random thoughts like these are annoying, but are useful when maintaining perspective.

(e) in all, another year. hopefully 2002 will show further progress. things work out… despite whatever i thought. i would never have pictured myself in this situation a year ago, try as i might have, and it would seem that the future remains unpredictable (in a slightly optimistic way).

confusion… distorted perspective… smile. confusion. cigarette. stab. choke. smile.

The picture of a madman jabbering in a corner, a smiling clown at the window. Why does he fear the clown? Do we share his madness, if we see it too..?

But in the end there is only acceptance. Denial denies itself after twisting off the circulation of feeling. Guilt gives way to anger before it can truly take root. The wave of anger breaks…

What is there to accept? A universe built upon a single thought? If things really are as simple as they seem, mustn’t looks be a deceptive factor?

Insomnia forty-eight. Forty-eight hours of nothing but cigarettes, walking, coffee, new faces and sights… A job interview, a talk with an Army recruiter. Feeling cold underneath a clear, sun-filled sky. Am I melting, or just readjusting to my liquid form here? Was I ever solid?

And who’s to say this or that is more important than anything else? Nothing to do. Forty-eight hours. Forty-nine in twenty minutes. Would time carry on after I sleep, or will I just get another interrupted blink of sleep before the world demands I face it again?

If I could reason with a higher power, would that power really be higher? Would my reason, which seems to transcend my very physical essence, be of any consequence to a manipulator of realities?

What would be my final plea, the payoff after years of living a life I must have wanted (as I cannot deny it without creating a paradox of lethal desire) that goes on even when I’m not paying attention? Would I ask for an eternal sleep… knowing that eternal sleep would seem just as a blink before I woke again at the beginning of the cycle.

Endless possibilities? What if everything and its opposite is consummated in what I see here, before me. Each statement taken to its extreme seems less extreme, less true in that it could be as commonplace as a question.

No one knows how it ends-no one knows how it began. But we’re here, aren’t we?

It was a long walk, but somewhere along the way a moth flew into my open palm as I swung my arms in synchronous motion with my feet.

I let it go, it flew away. Unlike T*****.

In a paroxysm of birth and suicide, T***** killed his insect effigy with a single slumbering arm haphazardly placed.

T*****’s death, however irrelevant to T***** at the time, was nonetheless a bit of a tragedy.

I went downstairs, saw the garbage can marked “NO MEAT” in a bloody red print, and came back upstairs. Quickly.

Was the psychotic hitchhiker (seemingly a cliche, yet no less a danger for that) still out there, or had he gotten in by now?

What would he do when confronted with us, brandishing machetes like wine goblets… and what would flow from our soured victory celebration?

Not that we had won yet. Survival was still an issue too great to be fully laughed-off.

The chemical feast continued long after our brains had begun to wretch and choke.

I came across a rat which had been run over by a car. It was still fresh, pink, and some of the bones were protruding from the corpse. I could not tell whether or not the rat had felt much pain in its death, as the head was too badly mangled to interpret.

This much was clear: a rat had been hit by a car; pieces of the rat had been distributed across a nice portion of the pavement. Perhaps I had stepped in some of the rat’s entrails.

I wasn’t quite disgusted, as I was too tired to register any real emotion at the sight of the rat. Pointless. I was not willing to waste much time thinking about the rat or its demise.

My own avoidance of the topic rather lead me to consider the topic more closely. How was I like this rat? What could possibly blind-side me, what could leave me dead in the street with passersby too uncaring to give me a proper burial?

Would they just leave me there to rot, as that rat surely would? Would my bones and vital organs just be left there in the sun, evaporating until there was nothing more than a nasty stain on the road and a multitude of bones encrusted with filth?

I really hope that the rat doesn’t know what condition its corporeal form is in at this moment, and if it does… may it not take offense at the fact that no one cares. May it not mourn its own death, as that kind of existence is surely the most painful afterlife.

That would, most likely, be my idea of hell. I would be dead, lying in a place where anyone who bothered looking would see me. People might bother to look. Perhaps some would just run over the corpse, accentuating my unresponsive state. How much more hellish would it be to be able to feel the maggots working their way through my flesh?

Even the decay of body cannot match the pain of the decay of ego which would surely accompany it. I, seeing my body, would have to understand that I was not my body. I was something else entirely. My body, as useful as it had been, was not that which I was composed of. Sickening would be the realizations, then. Watching my body corrode as I, too curious to do otherwise, viewed in horror.

Yes, a world much less pleasant than the one I currently enjoy. Death is such a mystery, but in seeing what it does to the body… Is there any hope for us, if we are more than what we seem?

I, an insomniac, am compelled to refuse many things.

I refuse to live in this intolerable mess of a world.

I refuse to die, as I would be giving in to myself and my nature.

I refuse to love others, knowing that they will inevitably disappoint me.

I refuse to hate others, seeing this as a kind of bigotry that must not be allowed to control me.

I refuse to go on - I am not up to this task of unending maintenance and cyclical thinking - I am worn out.

I refuse to refrain from going on, as it would please too many of those I wish to displease - I will tap out a message of unrest indefinitely.

I will contradict myself always.

My refusal to sleep is perhaps the most frustrating issue at hand. I have found myself caught up (again) in a strange state of excitement, both anxious and anticipatory.

If I close my eyes, I will wake in a few hours and the stress of enduring the coming minutes will seem as nothing… and the temptation to simply remain conscious is a hard thing to ignore, as I cannot bear to think that I might oversleep and be deprived of the minor triumph over nature that is waking before dawn.

Would it be a greater triumph to circumvent the notion of sleep and exist in a constant stream of conscious thought? Other refusals seem pertinent.

I refuse to participate in the self-absorption of others, as this is a pastime both distressing and completely unfulfilling on my part.

I refuse to condone self-depreciation, even though I fully intend to continue depreciating myself. (My favorite game to play, being a self-absorbed megalomaniacal narcissist)

I refuse to be wrong, even if this means contradicting myself. I am at conflict with myself here, attempting to portray both the starving artist and the decadent consumer in one misshapen package.

My refusal is not to be taken seriously. I believe in what I perceive only half-heartedly. I am a reluctant skeptic.

I refuse to excuse myself from this dualistic little rant on the basis that I need sleep.

I refuse to now deny the truth of what I have said, even if I should later recant upon it.

I refuse to continue writing this, as I have almost undoubtedly proven myself to be a fool by allowing my angst to be expressed - even if this is catharsis.