really love you

some people showed up long enough to be a memory but want to act like they were in your life every day it seems

some people were there every day

for fifteen minutes at a time

...ten years ago

and ten years ago

hadn't someone been the one to say

they "looked ahead

ten years

and didn't see [me] there"?

being scared isn't helping solve the puzzle

though it keeps me asking "what the hell?"

you were all just kids too

we were all just kids nobody told the truth to

not our time's fault but it'll go on 'til we do

who told you to do the bullshit you do?

kids change as they get older

let them

they might change again

you should be positively changing too, my friend

and if you miss who you thought you loved

just remember what made you feel worthy

that's always still with you

if you can

try to 

be smarter than the psych op

don't forget

I really love you

Saturday Sept. 23, 2023

Feels like I just spent three years fighting for my life just to get 6 months to live

these days [please be patient with me]

I am not so much an open book these days

as a pile of broken filing cabinets

torn apart papers strewn all over an empty abandoned warehouse overgrown with nature

please be patient with me

ordering from the menu of life:

I don't like some dishes.

I won't order them.

But you can order whatever you like.

It's not like you're going to make me eat what you ordered, are you?

I could tell you why I don't like that dish for all these reasons - but it's your dinner.

 what could be more chaotic than chaos being kinda chill actually

not a dream, but a nightmare

some future world where they edited out all the cigarettes from old movies

children grow up never seeing a cigarette

and people develop a strange new mannerism of holding their hands to their lips - often for an extended pause - to give weight to their conversations...not remembering or knowing what the gesture had originally been for

the silly ways we live and don't ever know

the atheist answer to pascal's wager

 the atheist answer to pascal's wager: 

you say to bank on god: if you're wrong, you lose nothing

but if this is my only life, and the truth is nobody knows, I lose if I bank on there being more

*dedicated to the guy that fought with me about it when I was 10

making it real [secular belief]

 there once was an asshole

the biggest asshole in all the world (at the time) 

(there's always a bigger asshole)

and the asshole decided their way was the only best way

so they become ruler because they're the only asshole big enough to make themselves ruler

meanwhile somewhere else

others are playing in a garden

eating snacks and making up fairy tales

some of the gardens are secret

others are not

others still do other things

living out their own life stories

they tell only their friends and family

lives lived on display are too often commandeered for another's purpose (...probably the ruler asshole's...)

dissenters hide or disappear

and the intersection of forgotten, ignored, unwanted, misplaced,

poor,

go hungry

the dissenters needed to come back

the gardens needed to be free and open

the whole world a garden

the ruler needed to be stopped

and transparent power - mutual understanding  - could be the story we share layered into each our own lives

but you would have to value life

human life

the full spectrum and possibility and futures we'd be living if the past had gotten it together...

you have to have that level of belief

even as an atheist 

to dream of it at all

or make it real

please be the cool 88 and not the fascist 88 fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

I'm brave, I'm just pissed off, and I don't want to pop off, so just leave me alone

when they ask me what life was like: everything you ever cared about decided it didn't give a fuck about you and you still loved it anyway

war will kill us all

no blessings be for the state sanctioned murder whether near or far 

in so many ways

the dead will rise again to redeem the timelines taken from them

to avenge the blood debts

back and forth forever -

trauma and trauma's fury, pain, grief, loss

burned memories

- in the most stupid possible way

that's what war is

that's what war does

tell your friends

before we all die:

war will kill us all

grown

their idea of growing up actually meant getting shut down, broken down, held down for a real or imagined (hard to tell) sense of something like security and freedom always mixed in the right amount, in the right place, at the right time

meanwhile there would always be people doing whatever they wanted without question or concern, who would never be held to answer for their lives - and they would always be laughing at the rest of us while circling the globe a thousand times over

I'm just trying to be my own best friend

someone I'd look up to if I knew me

no one knows what the fuck they're doing anyway

***

on being a "real" enough anything:

stop covering up your subliminal social control as if you're defining what a "real" anything is...

saying real girls are always sweet and quiet. obvious bullshit.

real boys are strong and rough all the time. bullshit.

real xyz does...acts...wears...eats...sounds like...looks like...votes for...bullshit.

boring bullshit.

how do you have such a small imagination for all the possibilities of the universe?

real people are diverse variations scattered along intersecting spectrums that blend up through history, evolving into ever-shifting potential futures - deal with it.

sometimez

sometimes I get sad thinking about other people being alone and sad 

so I just want to wish you good feelings if you've got the blues

use this as an excuse to do whatever you want until you feel better again [don't hurt nobody]

why can't I advocate without being your bad example of everything

listening to: Listen to Drug Use for Grown-Ups by Dr. Carl L. Hart on Audible. https://www.audible.com/pd/0593292944?source_code=ASSOR150021921000R

around chapter 10

thinking:

a grandfather I never met was sentenced to 15 years for heroin

for a drug I've never seen in real life myself - but I used to sell kratom and people shared how much it helped them - many in recovery

he'd had a lifetime of getting in trouble in ways that maybe he wouldn't have if he'd been the same age today

I wonder how much everything would be different if drugs hadn't been taboo at all - no one running towards them because they seemed dangerous, or demonizing them to redeem their own past use as is toooooo common

does this mean I'm probably biologically predisposed to need external sources for dopamine or something?

didn't my mom used to say she drank 10 cups of coffee a day?

and my dad would go through two cases of soda a week. 

is it awesome I live in a time when cannabis is a legal option and it's all I care about personally, even over alcohol? not to act better than anybody - we are all bags of different chemical reactions. 

I don't drink soda, but I need caffiene if my body is going to function.

could someone use that anecdotal evidence to argue that cannabis is useful medicine? at least I'm not stuck on something that will definitely kill me, which is the only legitimate reason to nudge people away from their vices - every other reason ends up wrapped up in some stigmatized historically cruel bullshit - once you know, you know.

I'd say yes. cannabis helps me.

life is so different when you can afford to think there is likely a tomorrow - and you'll be part of it

just don't forget the people still being demonized for stupid shit - even once you get your own sense of freedom

two people

two people graduate from the same college

one becomes CEO of a major thing

the other is constantly on the brink of homelessness

what were their paths?

birth

home parents family memories associations

childhood

friends education health diet injury pain trauma how much time did you ever get to spend feeling safe and happy having fun

teens

levels of freedom jobs dreams available options scholarships rejections not knowing any better

twenties

your resume what you do in your free time who you meet who you impress how you deal with stress the first adult version of yourself you manage to cobble together always learning and unlearning

thirties and beyond

loves heartbreaks debts wounds vendettas enlightenments forgiveness loss open doors mistakes failures giving up (on what?) who gave you another chance and why 

slow death by a thousand cruelties or the feeling of always another tomorrow

strange how they mix

if you played the movie of their lives side-by-side, what could you not help but see?

please stop trying to make me stronger

please stop trying to make me stronger

I am plenty strong

I'm so strong my feelings break my own spine

please stop trying to make me stronger

there wasn't a toll coming out of your mom person's vagina

there wasn't a toll coming out of your mom person's vagina

being alive

existence

should be free

we pay the hospital, the doctor

but a society built in love wouldn't do that

the hospital, the doctor, would be your friend 

your social family

and just like we did for thousands of years

we'd simply help each other

because we care

how isn't it concerning 

if we don't care enough now

unless we get paid?

or that we must demand payment

from each other

to simply survive ourselves?

I'm secular

and that shit still looks cursed

the most beautiful thing [art ever taught me]

if I had studied math

my life might be spent making up formulas and equations

if I had studied war

I might see the world in strategies and tactics

speaking the language of war

acting out wars with every mundane moment

but I studied the arts

and the most beautiful thing art ever taught me:

WAR. IS. FUCKING. BULLSHIT.

if we can avoid killing each other - no matter politics, no matter loyalties, no matter personal feelings - it would be best for all people, everywhere, for the rest of time...

please, just DON'T do it.

freeing myself from your bad ideas

will I live to see the day we stop stigmatizing drugs? stigmatizing poverty? stigmatizing being betrayed, depressed, disempowered, in pain, for caring? will we ever develop new criterias for what a "good" life looks like, feels like, for different people? if we don't, kinda proves the point that nobody with power really gave a fuck about drugs or people, whatever crime or health means this decade - they just wanted an easy way to get what they wanted - controlling your moment to moment experience of existence - lift you up, tear you down, rebuild you the way they want...

we are inevitably dependant creatures. we are flesh bags of chemicals. it is only a cruel exploitation to play on someone's psychology before they could ever know how their own mind and body work or can be manipulated against them. to deliberately fuck with their heads when they're just trying to feel better.

cannabis in particular proved to me that we've suffered from arbitrary prohibition that's only held us back and made everything hurt in ways it never needed to. I don't have a dog in these fights, but the opioid and amphetamine pipelines from hospital to homelessness are still used against people - when you're older and in pain, you will regret what you did to these older unhoused people you claim are "just on drugs"...

they just started an 8am to 8pm camping ban - you enjoy your successful lives and I fear being forced to walk until my body breaks because I didn't dedicate my every moment to getting more money - I thought being alive should be free.

every good thing can be ruined. poorly utilized. weaponized. doesn't mean it wasn't any good. just please don't forget that, at least.

[in response to this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/09/health/seniors-substance-abuse.html?fbclid=IwAR0puMKIupD_SuNAl65JWD-Bef3CDoGs8ev7ycSEs57ebs3CnA8k5Wi8DQ4]

[poem]

a rung bell

still ringing

an echo of pain

still justified

of a dream

still deferred

but how many

too many

wanted to forget why

before they even knew why

now they don't have to hear anything they don't like

and still it echoes

empty weight [my concept of money]

my concept of money:

$30 is a lot of money 

$100 is a lot of money

$100,000 is a tremendous amount of money

$1,000,000 forget about it

and at the same time I know in the scheme of the world

$1,000,000 is nothing

this is how I am crushed

by the empty weight of an inflatable dollar

That's it

A catholic, a christian, a witch, a buddhist, a hindu, a jew, a muslim, a zoroastrian, an animist, an atheist, a nihilist, a sincere satirist, and a time traveller from a future planet all watch a sunset

They all say: awww, wow, that's pretty

as they describe it to their blind friend

That's it

That's god

choosing the voltaverse

I am not trying to hurt you

but please consider at least once

how differently you would understand life

if you believed people

- always people - 

flawed, fucked, beautiful, cruel, kind, talented, varied, programmable, reprogrammable, full spectrum and multidimensional

people

are behind everything that ever happened or happens or will happen

how would you understand everything that felt like way more than a coincidence?

horrors written off as part of a larger plan?

so called serendipity that left you broken beyond explanation?

there's no way it all feels so much like bullshit and at least some part of it isn't -

- enough to care because it would change how you lived, how we all lived, how we would have lived if the past had changed it, how the future could live if we change it -

if you had just believed as much in yourselves, each other, me

as you did in the idea that this is how it's supposed to be

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words."

Ursula K. Le Guin 

may 4th [story]

 here's a little story for you:

there once was a person who lived on top of a mountain

they were born on top of the mountain

and had known nothing else

they could see a village below

and they liked sending rocks and mud down the mountain

the villagers never seemed to know why this would happen

so the jerk on the mountain thought the villagers must be dumb or else they themselves were some kind of god - or both - but for some reason, not neither...

anyway, it took a very long time for someone to finally go up the mountain and tell the jerk to fuck off

the first couple times, it was so much nicer on top of the mountain that the angry villager would stay instead

when someone eventually got up there who was willing to tell them all off

they tried to push them back down the mountain

moral of the story:

this is part of why

the world as we know it today

sucks

Inspired [temporary]

 7 to the fuckin' 11

someday I will create a drag persona

named Burning Bush

and they'll remember to hate Georgie 

because everyone else forgot

If I am not the tree of smoke

I don't know what to tell you

l.i.t.e.r.a.l.l.y.

https://youtu.be/g74hE7BcSC4

https://youtu.be/yVyxRNc_gTs

https://youtu.be/fJ-IrmJSFRk

* just want to make an official statement because I feel strongly about it: we should not seek to segregate as a solution to our co-existence on this planet or in this universe. 

"On a long enough timeline" segregation/partition - whatever you call it in the moment - will only continue to divide people. When we don't know each other - when we can't know each other - we kill/hurt/exploit/don't care about each other.

That's my opinion, take, view, vote.

If we can keep a safe distance while we actively try to keep knowing each other - that makes some kind of sense - but it doesn't feel like freedom. If you know that's what you're giving a sense of freedom up for, it feels better. 

It depends on what someone is telling themselves about the story of their own life. It always does. There's so many things we should have learned from COVID - should be on our minds to sort out and discuss with each other. We need to get on the same page somehow - stories within stories, but what story holds us all?

The truth will be found at the intersection of all things.

***

I don't hate anyone

I want you all to figure out who got you all to do this

That's what would really change the world

never giving up

there's lots of songs about leaving

but hardly any that say "I've arrived!"

so that's why I'm always singing

the same tune all the time

only I swear I'm happier than when I sang it

last, alright?