I am angry not because it’s the first step in any program but because no one is honest about who they are. Not one of us. The pandemic has made this clear.
After all of the drivel about finding oneself in the quiet of the lockdown – talk which lasted all of three days – the only thing that anyone did was consume and bitch and consume and consume and consume.
Worth saving? Why? We are fucked. And good riddance to us. Btw, I have a book about that, called Anori. It’s about leaving this planet so we go fuck up another one.
I did get back to it today. And a scene from Baller was expunged.
INT. INSIDE MAX’S ROOM – NIGHT. Dark room, dim light through a gap in the curtains. A gecko clings to the stalk of a mangled plant. Max lies under clothes and covers in the corner of what used to be a water bed. Baz walks in the doorway. BAZ Hey, Max. We got to go. The light turns on. The gecko scurries to the bottom of the plant. BAZ pulls the blanket off the ruined bed, revealing Max lying against the wall in his boxers. BAZ You can sleep in the car. (Pause) We got to go. Baz leaves the room. There is a long pause. The gecko peeks over the planter edge and then vanishes as Graham’s voice comes down the hall. GRAHAM Max! Max moans, his arms draped over his face. Graham stands over him, arms crossed, and then raises his hand, holding a Roman Candle firework. GRAHAM Last warning, Max. (Lighting a match) Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Max opens his eyes and peeks around, almost like the gecko. The Roman Candle firework flares to life. Graham points it at Max, and a fire ball launches just above his head. Graham aims the tiny fireballs, one after the other, at Max. The sheet begins to smoke. MAX (Scurrying off the bed) Are you crazy!? A pile of papers catches fire. Baz appears with a bent pail of water and douses the room and bed. Max jumps away, knocking over the plant. GRAHAM (Jamming the Roman Candle into the pail) Let’s go, Max! Graham and Baz leave. Max, still gasping, stands still for a moment and then picks up his pants and goes after them. It is silent for a moment and then the gecko finally crawls out of the planter and perches atop the mangled plant.
I was all set to have a big writing day. I was going to do a 2-3 hour final draft of Baller, my tree-planting script, and get it ready to submit . And then, after an inspiring workout, I would hammer out 4-5 hours of Fuck Pedagogy, getting out all the nasty details of the year-long arbitration with a former school.
But it was not to be. I didn’t get into the work until late and then realized the opening to Baller needed serious work which stalled everything. From there it was a bad house of cards, finishing up bits of cheese from the fridge and moving plants to more ideal locations on the windowsill.
And then I decided to write this blog and see if that got me on my merry way. I’ll let you know. (Odds are against.)
Life is best lived raw. And watching people live like that, like we’re ions or isotopes and watching our molecules merge. Or at least that’s what I use as my opening line.
It is a moment. It might be connected to birth or akin to that. It isn’t complicated. It’s just moving forward and dreaming the next thing to come.
After spending a strange fifteen months applying to schools – 100+ rejections in the end – and a temporary contract online, I’m back in the classroom. It’s a good place to be, not only for me but for my book, Fuck Pedagogy.
As I have mentioned previously, the book is my autobiographical take on education, how many in the industry have no idea what they are doing or if they do, not giving a shit about the students.
I’m not a pedagogical person – “listen to the students and offer what I know” sums up my practice neatly – and I have had my issues with the powers that be. That’s what I’m working on now – the drama of my three dismissals – so that I can focus on what the book is really supposed to mean.
I don’t have a clue who I am, where I am going or what I’ve done. It’s a meandering thing that goes out the door and comes back in. I know something about nothing and that is about all. I am fascinated for a time. People too. There is a moment. And then not. I know it is about nothing, nothing and nothing again and almost take solace in that. Not quite.
The fact is that I hate the look-at-me dissolution of our world, the babies that never grew and think people cares about their childish discoveries. That is where we have lost everything. While the barbarians culled these ones, we’ve decided to let them run the show.
There is nothing like coming into the city on the train. It’s all here, inside and out, the buildings thick with cranes, the roads with trucks and plastic, the river wide and dark.
We have forgotten what we never had. We have looked back blind. We have let loose with a broken yarn. We are here, magnanimous and incompetent. Yes, yes, yes. Wait. That is the answer, that sound. It will come again. When we are gone.
The boy across from me eats salted cauliflower sticks, one by one, wiping his fingers on his drooping mask, intent on the next page of The Magician. He pokes his fingers inside again, licking off the last grains, crumples the bag, and holds the book up high, a better filter against the pandemic that anyone knew. The couple beside hold hands, the young man clinging, desperately asking her what she thinks through his tight mask. The girls at the front of the train explode hilariously, talking over one another in a spew, “I felt it touch my lips. That was it. I love weed. I was going to put it into the Pringles. I don’t remember a black bag. I will Venmo you right now. You look so good.”
I think of her, still think that we could make it work. I know it is not real, that she would wander away or lie or deny what she did and said, but still it is the idea of her, the magic of that streaming in, with her in a remarkable circumstance, sucking on her great left breast, marvelous in mass, supple and goose-pimpled, believing in everything, stuck in that, even when she laughs and her friend tells her to turn to the camera for the Tik Tok video.
And then it becomes something else, more wide, more clear, held, the way you might hold a piece of nothing like it was god or truth or love and really believe that. And so yeah, seven dollars for two shots and a mega-can of beer. Fuck me. That’s what it’s all about.
My head of marketing has this idea about how to spread word about my work:
Dude, you just kill me with ur love for pleasuring yourself. How many times per day u are able to pamper ur dongle? You are like an Olympic champion. You look like a mature person. What happens to u? A psycho-trauma?
I copied all your contacts from your email and I am about to share ur habit with your family. 1141USD, Bitcoin 1KZqsAvshQs7VcFkDLqeU7qRAe4raTx3bC, in 48 hours as soon as you read this notice you send my reward and I will sweep off the dirt I have got on you. If you defy me, within ninety six hours ur home movie is gonna be distributed on the net.
It might work, although $1,141 does seem a lot to pay.
Writing is a spew of the subconscious, or at least a myriad of that, mostly the id. That’s where the core is of what I refuse to realize I am, that fear and pain and stupidity that make me so unique and nothing at all.
It doesn’t mean much of anything. I am alone in this. Except when I write it down here.
I realize that I am the same chunky fellow when I was a kid. The same. That’s what I am thinking about or more about not going anywhere, of staying, doing something else, just not what I’m doing, not this, because that is what’s expected of me.
There is someone at my shoulder. I don’t know here. I ask, “Who are you?” She says something about understanding. It goes on until I finally lose it, “I don’t want to know who you are or wake up next to you, right? I just want to say goodbye. That work?”
