Here are some quotes from my new e-book, Dreamlands: 3 Fictions, from BlazeVox:
From “Digressions On A Recurring Dream”
Such is the philosophical activism of the adolescent mind—ruled by hormones musk tricks it into perceiving everything in a warm, bruised haze, alienating it from the cross of its upbringing. 10
From “Mid-December 20—”
He’s pushing you now. He’s seeing how far you’ll go. It’s a game to him. He’s in shape for the movies. You’re not. But fuck him. He deserves an expose. You deserve the money and pull that brings. Peace, but fuck him. Telling this same old story’s like climbing up this mountain. I’m Sisyphus, A’s my boulder, my quarry. I’m pushing him up this hill and he’s just showing off. He did this to the corporate executives on Kilimanjaro when he played Tarzan. Befriended by Hemingway, he agreed to lead an excursion in search of the snow leopard. He exhausted them and they abandoned their search. The consumers were unworthy of their quarry. Pray be that situation isn’t applying here. Perhaps you’re being led astray and will be forced once again to provide fiction for your unsuspecting nonfiction readers. We are relativists, after all. Every last one of us. We are thousands of light specks flickering in chaos, moving dots longing for connection, a pointillist’s nightmare. 39
And many things are heading our way, rising from the seafloor, enlightened of their burden. The heavenly light is like a baby farting in a tub. Bubbles of joy rising and bursting as he does it again and again. The lightness is your joy. It has limited itself for your pleasure. It has densified for your feeling. And yet you feel it hiding from you with each passing evolution, each veil that covers it with a new form, and the farting continues but you’re lost in bubbles, milky ways of divine gas, and for a moment it sees itself, you seeing yourself in its translucent luster, infinite possibilities of its seminal trace are invading you, each a delight of discovery. As each bubble bursts a new one emerges, and you look and see yourself reflected upon each one, inside being something rarefied yet common. We can smell it. The bubbles burst, their voids nullified by cosmic plasma—the sea’s bombardment. The cycle of fulfillment goes round and round in the farting sea bubbles. I’m a churning bubble, the same as any other. 43
I hope I have my usual room. You need some sleep before you start tonight. Dreamless sleep. If only you could pray. If there was only a personal god you could believe in. Don’t kid yourself. You can’t. But it would be nice to pray. Nice to hope. You’ll have to live with this the rest of your life. Praying only deludes you, dilutes your pain. Pushes it off on something, someone else. It’s yours. It belongs to you. And you may as well get used to it. You’ll be having this dream for as long as you live. You even saw it coming. You knew you’d let them down. You knew you weren’t man enough to take care of them. The way they required. Not you. No. It would have been an answer to their prayers. That’s not you. You’re a killer. 67
Remember…always remember and never forget the Tibetan pacification of the Mongols. That’s the plan to do it with. Everybody gets a monk’s education. Nobody gets by anymore without being able to exhibit some degree of literary and philosophical creativity. No more skaters. Time to get their priorities straight. They can get started by quitting their jobs and devoting their free time to meditation. When they’re awake they’re to engage in festivals and dances and make traditions of them to pass their time in harmony with God. 72
All goodness has to do with spiritual productivity. Evil has to do with spiritual inefficiency. All obstacles to spiritual growth are evil, and therefore our primary concern is the world of inner experience. 72
Death is a doorway. It can be worse than fatal if you’re unprepared, or heading in the wrong direction. If your inertia’s sending you in the wrong direction, look out. We’re giving you an opportunity to get on track. If you’re attitude is good, and there’s reason to believe it is, I mean, you’re here aren’t you…if you’re attitude is good life has no limits, experience can have no bounds, we can get outside these suits of flesh and see our human existence as a midway transition between fields of infinite pain and pleasure. Your body, E, gives you the freedom and opportunity for spiritual evolution. Human life is necessarily intense. 73
From “counterclockwise”
…The text is the unknown, or ambiguous quantity we’re seeking…The text when combined with its apparent intention (Y) equals “me.” That is, the “me” (usually the reader-writer) engaged with the text defines the text’s intention. Each “me” will likely uncover a different intent from the text when engaging it…From this formula we can also deduce that if one subtracts the text’s intention from the self, all that remains is the text…Therefore (of course), if one subtracts the text from the self what remains is pure intention. What we have here is a formula relating the text and its intention with the identity of the individual engaging with it… 75
So finally, growing tired of growing
fatigued I became artificial, a drink
overwhelming the world
And disappeared 75-6
As parents and pets we battle, University trained yet vanquished nonetheless, and confused. I can’t find my back pages anymore after achieving too much as a mere word-being there…We descend, circling Main Street in the gloom of too many alleys, overhearing peddlers scheming hopefully, claiming they’ve just gussied up the square. They’re geared to gloriously impound it with a myriad of faithful rites, baptizing it a convenient commercial zone for hard-working consumers…Traffic will bulge and boom, they cackle…Thankfully, I’m as invisible to the peddlers as the ghost of something forever absent, hoarding their unknowable ignorance, the transparent deliria they will no longer deposit. Emerging from the radiance, I cede all but my self. Their senses feel quickly littered. And you feel violated. 77
Here you sense materiality is summer, vis-à-vis oblivion. 78
I personify kinetic stillness vibrating juices with thought. 78
Now, if I lease it, I’ll have more cash, but won’t own my own new car now. I want my own new cash and my own new car. Now I want to own my own new things including my own nice new car, but I also want to keep the cash I got now. I want to own my own nice new things now. But I also want the cash I got. 79
The way between
the same place
she said, among
the tongue, here
where survival or
extinction become
War, the same way
where always
there is
Tao there is
Tongue, then
loss 80
There’s a lake forming at the foot of the river, and I can smell you rising from it. 82
Five of them perch in lawn chairs in the garage, facing me. I can’t get my work done. Their lips stir, but I shall not do their bidding. Pop hoists his tin of ale at me and they all gape at him, tittering consent. My father’s there, but who are the rest of them? I suppose one of them is my mother, but the only thing I know for sure is that the bricks, and my house, yes; this is my driveway and my house, or my mother’s house, I live here, and the garage is filled with ghosts who pass judgment on me as they succeed in distracting me from the simple chore at hand… 89
From “Digressions On A Recurring Dream”
Such is the philosophical activism of the adolescent mind—ruled by hormones musk tricks it into perceiving everything in a warm, bruised haze, alienating it from the cross of its upbringing. 10
From “Mid-December 20—”
He’s pushing you now. He’s seeing how far you’ll go. It’s a game to him. He’s in shape for the movies. You’re not. But fuck him. He deserves an expose. You deserve the money and pull that brings. Peace, but fuck him. Telling this same old story’s like climbing up this mountain. I’m Sisyphus, A’s my boulder, my quarry. I’m pushing him up this hill and he’s just showing off. He did this to the corporate executives on Kilimanjaro when he played Tarzan. Befriended by Hemingway, he agreed to lead an excursion in search of the snow leopard. He exhausted them and they abandoned their search. The consumers were unworthy of their quarry. Pray be that situation isn’t applying here. Perhaps you’re being led astray and will be forced once again to provide fiction for your unsuspecting nonfiction readers. We are relativists, after all. Every last one of us. We are thousands of light specks flickering in chaos, moving dots longing for connection, a pointillist’s nightmare. 39
And many things are heading our way, rising from the seafloor, enlightened of their burden. The heavenly light is like a baby farting in a tub. Bubbles of joy rising and bursting as he does it again and again. The lightness is your joy. It has limited itself for your pleasure. It has densified for your feeling. And yet you feel it hiding from you with each passing evolution, each veil that covers it with a new form, and the farting continues but you’re lost in bubbles, milky ways of divine gas, and for a moment it sees itself, you seeing yourself in its translucent luster, infinite possibilities of its seminal trace are invading you, each a delight of discovery. As each bubble bursts a new one emerges, and you look and see yourself reflected upon each one, inside being something rarefied yet common. We can smell it. The bubbles burst, their voids nullified by cosmic plasma—the sea’s bombardment. The cycle of fulfillment goes round and round in the farting sea bubbles. I’m a churning bubble, the same as any other. 43
I hope I have my usual room. You need some sleep before you start tonight. Dreamless sleep. If only you could pray. If there was only a personal god you could believe in. Don’t kid yourself. You can’t. But it would be nice to pray. Nice to hope. You’ll have to live with this the rest of your life. Praying only deludes you, dilutes your pain. Pushes it off on something, someone else. It’s yours. It belongs to you. And you may as well get used to it. You’ll be having this dream for as long as you live. You even saw it coming. You knew you’d let them down. You knew you weren’t man enough to take care of them. The way they required. Not you. No. It would have been an answer to their prayers. That’s not you. You’re a killer. 67
Remember…always remember and never forget the Tibetan pacification of the Mongols. That’s the plan to do it with. Everybody gets a monk’s education. Nobody gets by anymore without being able to exhibit some degree of literary and philosophical creativity. No more skaters. Time to get their priorities straight. They can get started by quitting their jobs and devoting their free time to meditation. When they’re awake they’re to engage in festivals and dances and make traditions of them to pass their time in harmony with God. 72
All goodness has to do with spiritual productivity. Evil has to do with spiritual inefficiency. All obstacles to spiritual growth are evil, and therefore our primary concern is the world of inner experience. 72
Death is a doorway. It can be worse than fatal if you’re unprepared, or heading in the wrong direction. If your inertia’s sending you in the wrong direction, look out. We’re giving you an opportunity to get on track. If you’re attitude is good, and there’s reason to believe it is, I mean, you’re here aren’t you…if you’re attitude is good life has no limits, experience can have no bounds, we can get outside these suits of flesh and see our human existence as a midway transition between fields of infinite pain and pleasure. Your body, E, gives you the freedom and opportunity for spiritual evolution. Human life is necessarily intense. 73
From “counterclockwise”
…The text is the unknown, or ambiguous quantity we’re seeking…The text when combined with its apparent intention (Y) equals “me.” That is, the “me” (usually the reader-writer) engaged with the text defines the text’s intention. Each “me” will likely uncover a different intent from the text when engaging it…From this formula we can also deduce that if one subtracts the text’s intention from the self, all that remains is the text…Therefore (of course), if one subtracts the text from the self what remains is pure intention. What we have here is a formula relating the text and its intention with the identity of the individual engaging with it… 75
So finally, growing tired of growing
fatigued I became artificial, a drink
overwhelming the world
And disappeared 75-6
As parents and pets we battle, University trained yet vanquished nonetheless, and confused. I can’t find my back pages anymore after achieving too much as a mere word-being there…We descend, circling Main Street in the gloom of too many alleys, overhearing peddlers scheming hopefully, claiming they’ve just gussied up the square. They’re geared to gloriously impound it with a myriad of faithful rites, baptizing it a convenient commercial zone for hard-working consumers…Traffic will bulge and boom, they cackle…Thankfully, I’m as invisible to the peddlers as the ghost of something forever absent, hoarding their unknowable ignorance, the transparent deliria they will no longer deposit. Emerging from the radiance, I cede all but my self. Their senses feel quickly littered. And you feel violated. 77
Here you sense materiality is summer, vis-à-vis oblivion. 78
I personify kinetic stillness vibrating juices with thought. 78
Now, if I lease it, I’ll have more cash, but won’t own my own new car now. I want my own new cash and my own new car. Now I want to own my own new things including my own nice new car, but I also want to keep the cash I got now. I want to own my own nice new things now. But I also want the cash I got. 79
The way between
the same place
she said, among
the tongue, here
where survival or
extinction become
War, the same way
where always
there is
Tao there is
Tongue, then
loss 80
There’s a lake forming at the foot of the river, and I can smell you rising from it. 82
Five of them perch in lawn chairs in the garage, facing me. I can’t get my work done. Their lips stir, but I shall not do their bidding. Pop hoists his tin of ale at me and they all gape at him, tittering consent. My father’s there, but who are the rest of them? I suppose one of them is my mother, but the only thing I know for sure is that the bricks, and my house, yes; this is my driveway and my house, or my mother’s house, I live here, and the garage is filled with ghosts who pass judgment on me as they succeed in distracting me from the simple chore at hand… 89
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