Unsatisfied
An exploration of my heart. Why does it hurt? The feeling of it there, but not fully. The shallow breath, stifled flow, the unknown beat of decadent desire, doubting desolation. I am invested in a dream, and I ignore what could be now. I am drawn to the arc of the covenant, drawn with a whip in my hand. The 
desire for adventure, daring and dynamic. Deny not what dawn brings, the croaking of the toads and the songs of the birds. There is a beetle here with a bright green shell. Each movement sheds reflected light like drops of dew.
I think the heaviness in my heart is a reminder: I am alive. I am alive! There is blood, there is brain, and the left brain keeps thinking and the right brain goes to sleep. The light shed from my computer screen draws the fruit flies, the mosquitoes, and I hunger for human contact. I hunger for touch, for real touch, for touch that is comforting, stimulating, I yearn for the stroke of soft fingers and the strength of a hug.
All the while as I sit here, yearning, the world passes me by. There is a video camera next to me, and it calls with, siren, to create, create, create something to leave behind. This is stream-of-consciousness, it is real, it is thought. But it is, ultimately, effortless. I leave behind any thought of what should be, what could be, and just create. I write words no one need read, words that no one will care about. Tomorrow I will read through my blog for the hundredth time, and I will marvel that I wrote that, I wrote that, and I will feel satisfied, and will write no more.
Until the heaviness of my heart drives me to do something, anything, with my time here.
I go take a picture of a dog.
Refuge Pg 3
The seelie are a High Court now. They parade around in moonsilk and faeweave, showing their tits. They ain’t got a speck of flash showing, they’re nat all through. The tower is their home, the tower, rising like a finger, like a phallus from the center of the City. The tower is the shaft, the slums the balls, the outcasts and unseelie the little hairs and mites. The tower is the phallus of the High Court. You step outta line, you get fucked.
Flash is a good industry these days. You know how to rig a body-bot? A new arm? You can hold the flesh together when it starts to fail, and you’ll keep your own hide just a little longer. Best flashwalla is a beast, little ape with horns and a temper. Flings his shit if he’s had anything to eat, otherwise just makes new eyes and ears, new muscles. It ain’t pretty, but it works.
In the slums, there be one rule, na? You stay alive at all costs. You beat back the sickness, the wasting, the slow death. You keep moving, you keep reaching. Die by the sword or the sizzle and that ain’t a bad way to go. No one wants to sit and wait to fall apart, and anyone you meet will kill to keep it so.
(The attached image is the third page of the comic short Refuge, written by me and illustrated by Christina Beard.)
Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home
The soft white flakes swirl. The earth is cold, cold beneath me. I slumber, bereft of light, bereft of warmth. The long nights take their toll, and I watch the world die around me. Deep into the earth my roots run, seeking, striving. This season, this unending time of frost. When will the sun return?
The shortest days will soon arrive. I remember this, deep in my roots, I remember the hardship of the shortest days. Unending monotony, fearful of falling, of feeding the earth.
I am aware and I am free, but I am not like you. I do not walk the world, I do not decide with great leaps of insight or feral instinct. Where to grow? Where to grow? This is the question, paramount, where and how and when to grow. I am not like you.
Yet I listen, I feel. I know the world around me and I love it. I hate it. I fear it. A fox trots past and I know his footsteps, feel his urine, soak up his scent. I hear the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker resound in the silence of the snow. The little mouse in his den beneath my roots, I feel him stirring in endless sleep.
I witness the great dramas going on around me daily, even as the world dies. The quick death of the sparrow in the owl’s taloned embrace. The slow death of the insects as they succumb to the cold. The romances of the wolves, the great chases and kills. The start of new life.
Refuge Pg 2
Streak is brass, crass. She leans in real close, gets up in its face. The flesh don’t move much, but it opens its eyes. Heartbeat, one-two, one-two. Flesh is a girl, Streak sees. Outsider, but girl, wearing a dress that isn’t Streak’s style. Streak has got a rep to maintain, and the water damage doesn’t help.
In pain, in powerlessness, Zurisha feels the pitter-patter of tiny little feet. She hears the shouting of giant little lungs. Little fairy on her chest, she still dreaming? Little fairy with metal in her jacket and pink in her hair. Little fairy, little fae.
Brutus the mountain, he comes up close. The pretty little flesh be thin, so thin, he can scoop her up in his arms. Baby, baby, don’t say a word. Daddy’s gonna hunt you a mocking bird. In his mind he sings to her, he knows her name, he gives her light. Streak buzzes around his ears, but he’s lost in the flesh.
High above, near the source of the river, a man in ragged steel plate and chain crouches by a fire. He holds a pale, impaled arm up to the flames. His stomach rumbles. He waits, he waits for his dinner to finish. There is now enough food to go around.
(The attached image is the second page of the comic short Refuge, written by me and illustrated by Christina Beard.)
Refuge Pg 1
Zurisha is bleeding, na? Bleeding from her gut. Lifeblood pumps out, one-two, one-two, her little heart sings. She’s a stranger in the City, and she’s dying in a river of blood.
Streak flaps her gossamer wings faster than Brutus can see. Streak the devil-child, the mischief-maker. Streak moves like a hummingbird, but with cooler hair. She writes in the air, the mist is her paper and pen. She writes with precision, Streak does. She writes, ‘Fuck’, and laughs.
Brutus is a big mother, but he’s careful. He avoids stepping on a flower poking its head out of concrete and rebar. He likes flowers, the yellow ones most of all. His hand blurs as he slaps a jackfly who is biting his neck. His hand comes away red. The familiarity of it saddens him, and he reaches into the river to wash the blood away.
High above, near the glacial source of the river, a small village is still in flames. An infant lies half-dead, quiet in the cold. His head hurts, but his body is numb, and in the flickering shadows he falls asleep.
(The attached image is the first page of the comic short Refuge, written by me and illustrated by Christina Beard.)
The Written Link
Fingers fly over lettered squares. The artificial wind of the fan eases the noise of the outside world. Think, think, think. My brain buzzes fuzzily through synaptic sludge. What is the word? What is the word? The keyboard is dirty, grime from a thousand fingerstrikes, oil and skin and dirt. It is comfortable, this keyboard, I know where things reside.
Yet, comfort creates no link. There is no bond to be found in the quiet stagnation of things being ‘pretty good’. An ocean of emotion, feelings deep brought forth like the waves, warmed by the sun and mixed by the tide. In flux there exists definition, a radical knowledge of Who We Are. Who are we? Are we beings separated by by the fluid boundaries of space, or are we more? Is there a connection here, in the words, in the truths they lay bare? Is there communion?
These questions are real, but perhaps missing the point. Cyberspace is here, it IS, a virtual reality that more and more tries to supercede that which was here before. Yet it is an infant, a babe crying out for fuel, for the milk that is its sustenance, for the people who give it meaning. Meatspace exists, and always will, but she is old and secure in her dominance. She holds the magic of touch, of smell, of taste and of experience. There is more depth in a single insect than can ever be matched by the grasping hands of software barons. She is, perhaps, overconfident.
For ages we have witnessed the toppling of seated giants.
And when our Mother falls? When her importance is lost and she is confined to exile? What then?
My fingers fly, and I am here. I am connected to thousands I have never met. I forge friendships, feel love, lash out in anger.
And I ignore the rain.
Same same
The first thing is the heat. The air is sterile, airport air, but the heat is all-pervasive at 11pm. We stand in line at immigration, I watch the people, glimpse their passports; try to catch sight of their origin. A rainbow of documents amid faces and languages I’ve never before seen. A friendly guard ushers people into cheating at the local-passport lines.
We got raped for the price of the taxi, but what we lost in money we made up in convenience. The driver makes a half-spirited attempt to direct us to a ‘cheap’ hotel. His heart didn’t seem in it, and Mark and I made talk like we’d been there before. Show no weakness, still talk about the sights. Where’s the line? A woman (?) lies on a mattress in the back of a truck as we pull through a toll booth, cradling a tv.
Kaosan road is foreigner central, and every single one of them is wasted off their fucking ass. As we wind through, trying to find our hostel, we fight against a tide of faces. Cops are out in force, they walk in groups, watchful. Apparently street vendors are illegal right here, right now. They take it seriously. The first thing I see is a shirt: same same but different.
The recommended hostel is the most opulent place in the area. Chairs that are carved elephants, large internet cafe and restaurant on-site. Not really my style, but at 140 baht each a night, it’s still not bad. We drop our shit, joke about getting separate rooms in case of (supposedly inevitable?) sex. Not with each other, though with us sharing a bed I think the receptionist has other ideas about that.
We move away from the noise: towards the major street. Nothing to see, nothing to see, except parks between lanes, temples at intersections, and a child sleeping under the sloped roof of what was once a tuk-tuk. The road takes us around, back in Partyland, and we stop in a 7-11 for water. Talk about culture shock. 7-11 is one of those places in Taiwan, the unchanging. To see it suddenly different… hardcore.
I come out, Mark is chatting with a guy and a girl. The guy is holding a rose, Charlie is, and they’re sharing a bucket of something that once contained copious amounts of whiskey and red bull. It’s his birthday, he’s a teacher from China, it’s a birthday and we’re on different sides. So we go buy more buckets, sit down and talk about Canada, and the US, and Mark and Charlie share an anonymous reunion. They are legion. Beth and Charlie just met, but it’s a long, internet-related story. Did you know you can rent hookahs? Costs more than a bucket, costs more than our room, but it’s big and phallic and seems strangely fitting. But Mark just walks over and makes friends with some Welsh and Italian and such folk smoking their hookah. I meet Yesting, Steve, Jordan, Roberto, and Stacy. They have awesome accents, but Stacy keeps saying the American accent is better. I laugh, in my US-centered world, we have none.
Roberto was raised Italian Roman Catholic, but he’s given it some thought. There is a god, some guy who through the switch. Everything else? Shit. He promised if he found the meaning of life to email me before he forgot it.
Everyone’s on vacation, this is the spot. Come, get wasted, meet cool people. Fun for a night.
I get emails, lose them, hope the European types send me the pictures we took.
Bed for a night, wake up slightly worse for wear. Check-out in half an hour. Need to go push Mark into movement. Get some food. Cheers.
Imagine I am talking about someone you know.
The following was written in response to a heated comments thread in a politically charged atmosphere. Another commenter was getting flamed for his opinions.
The man has proven articulate, polite, and while staunch in his beliefs, has not tried to force them onto others (unless one counts expressing them to be an act of coercion–in which case we are all guilty). He seems to have genuinely listened to the criticisms made of his earlier arguments and clarified those points which were unclear.
I imagine I (strongly) disagree with him on many–if not most–issues, but he has shown himself to be one of the few people in these comments willing to actually articulate himself intelligently, without falling back on his Categories for support. Why should it matter whether he is Republican or not, Christian or not? Oh, yes, because then one will be able to side with him or against him more readily.
Divisive measures such as this are, I think, largely unconscious in all of us. This does not mean we can’t consciously force ourselves to recognize that people are people, and that no two Republicans, Paulites (what’s the polite term?), Democrats, et cetera, are the same.
Please, please, for the sake of humanity: take a moment to pause, breathe, and look at what you’re responding with. Is it valuable? Does it move your position forward in any way?
Or is it a knee-jerk reaction to defend your ’side’, whatever that might be? Because really, I don’t think this world needs more sides. We’re pretty three-dimensional as it is, wouldn’t you say?
I say: respect those deserving of respect, whatever their beliefs. Those undeserving of respect will likely not be silenced or changed by any hasty words on your part. They might, however, follow an example they can respect.
