Nutrigrammar steambath, back and or forth,

Just remember how big this is, I'm just really torn

We're physical bodies here, for a really long time

You're alone and labeled a "loved one" but,

Read up on the effects of sulphur content on your bones

Knee jerk reactions to life's ups and downs

It can get better, one foot in front of the other

Skin is not kevlar, you're not a minotaur

Exploit all trust, we're happy for you 

Guilty Guilty! Forage on the beach bitch

Get to the top of the mountain when

Everything is stripped away

Hand-to-mouth

It's not you that needs to change, 

it's the world

Heteronymical Mineral Bath

I live with the notion that certain forms of manageable schizophrenias are beneficial, necessary even, for the growth of the human race. Our evolution in the meatspace realm is essentially over, or stunted (beyond the fact that we will all eventually be varying shades of brown). What's the next step for our physical selves apart from merging with technology? Are there any doors left for consciousness to unlock? Are our minds in their springs or winters?

The optimistic part of me (small and afraid like a boxed kitten) prefers positive answers. In all the plants and roots and fungus the West hasn't tasted. In all the altered states of consciousness which the shaman, among his tribe, offers tours. In the cartography of perception and imagination. I'm OPTIMYSTIC.

Shamans actually share many traits with schizophrenics. They have visions, hear voices, speak to spirits. There is some science that shows similar brain deficits (enlarged ventricles, etc.). While the crazies are overprescribed to diminish symptoms, the shamans are seen as the doctors. They willingly enter into states of 'psychosis' and commune with personalities, relaying the pertinent news. What if the symptoms of some forms of schizophrenia are actually harbingers of our mental evolution? Multiple personalities that we can control and enter in/out of at will... the capacity to master numerous arts, trades, and modes... brains able to understand and sympathize with every human point of view.

I'm not talking about some megaliberal wet dream or One Love sovereignty. I'm casting doubt on our perceived capacities, on our diagnoses, on our technological onanism. Yes, it's a bit paleo. A dash pagan. But I have a feeling we've skipped over something crucial in open-armed integration, in altering and improving ourselves via technology. We've given the mind(s) short shrift. We've relegated our prophets to padded cells or pigeon shit park benches. We are trying to outpace evolution, and so shall reap the consequences.

I'm exploring some of this in a novel, bout 3/4 through the first draft.

Review: STUPID BABY by New Juche

Amphetamine Sulphate has released a nicely-stapled piece of street literature here. At only 52 pages, I wasn't expecting as much to chew on as exists within. And as I learned from reading Mountainhead (reviewed here), one may go into a New Juche Joint expecting juicy reprobate shenanigans only to arrive at the frightfully sublime. So when I heard about Stupid Baby I was all in for another dispatch from my favorite Scot in the Far East.

This is basically a tale about an expat and his relationship with an older woman that happens to be a prostitute. If you've read any other New Juche, this isn't surprising in the least. We accompany Juche in first-person, present tense, throughout his adventures in the slums, markets, and bars around where he lives. He lives, by the way, not as your usual philandering sex tourist in Southeast Asia, but as a commoner. He lives with the prostitutes and gangs and crooked cops, on their turf. Amongst the rat shit and crummy, air-conditionless rooms. He seeps himself in the stench of undeveloped squalor.

You get a great sense of it from the beginning. In fact, the first 12 pages of this short work are spent describing the surroundings, orienting the reader with the setting and the petty politics (criminal and otherwise) that govern the slums. There is less poetry than I'm used to, having read some New Juche before, in this opening, which made me worry. It almost felt like an exercise in descriptive/travel writing. That being said, the author excels at it, so who the fuck cares.

After bringing us into his world, we are shown how he lives and navigates his relationship with his old lady. He includes extracts of text-messages before each new scene, showing us the ebb and flow of epithet-filled feelings from two opposing forces that I won't spoil here. Suffice to say it creates an interesting little story of its own.

Mostly, we are with Juche and Goong (lover/girlfriend/prostitute), invited to spectate their most intimate and vulnerable moments. The couple can (as most couples do) go from fighting to fucking to doing cute things like drawing temporary tattoos on each other. Some of the childish love games they play create some of the most tender moments in the book. At one point, Juche draws a mustache on Goong's upper lip, at her request.

...the pen tickled her face and we both kept laughing. She wanted to hoodwink the deity that delivered her dreams into thinking she was a man, so she could burgle the experience of a man's dream. 

Goong is a childlike, and eventually tragic person. I say person instead of character, because I'm assuming all of this is true. During their relationship, she is in her late 40's or early 50's. She is still a prostitute, and she loves New Juche. There are many touching moments where, through Goong's actions, we get glimpses into her wounded soul. She likes to cut out old pictures of herself and combine them with current(ish) pictures of Juche. We get glimpses into her past that are as shitty as you can imagine, but we also see immense amounts of love. There is no pandering or judgement going on here.

There are vignettes strewn throughout that show how different Juche is to your average sex tourist or expat. In one, a rich old man with health issues has fallen hopelessly in love with a prostitute that is so obviously using him for money (and hasn't given him sex in years), that it's almost sad. He also seems to assume that Juche is his friend, blinded as he is by his wealth and love sickness.

He has expressed the nauseating belief that they have been together in past lives and therefore their companionship has been preordained and will continue into future lives. This, he explains, makes him feel more comfortable with the limits she imposes on their relationship in this life. He has adopted his own partial conception of the other's belief system as a means of coping with the stress of her deception.

And then, towards the end of the conversation they are having at a bar:

 Why are we here? What are we doing here? He grins smugly through my questions, looking over me. 

New Juche is not a man of classical conscience or moral pedigree. He fucks around with streetwalkers and gets amazingly drunk while Goong pines for his affection. But, then, she too has her job and its necessities. Everyone has to secure sustenance and shelter with the cards they are dealt. And Juche isn't about to get all pious on us.

All in all, I loved this book. It's not as big nor deep as Mountainhead, but it is all class. I would almost consider it a companion piece to that work, or a sort of case study of the protagonist during some of his minor adventures. It definitely sheds some interesting light on his other work. I imagine New Juche probably of considers all of his art to be pieces of a greater whole, and Stupid Baby is an integral part of a messy, unpredictable, disgusting, beautiful thing.

5/5. Buy it HERE and support independent literature.

Robo-readin'

I worked at Borders bookstore for about three years, right up until they closed down. For many months afterword, jobless and nigh-on-homeless, I subsisted on beans, ramen, and stolen Pub Subs. Pub subs are Publix submarine sandwiches. I stole one of these sandwiches up to four or five times a week. I'm not proud of it, but it was so simple. I would just walk in and get them to make me a sub, then walk right back out, sandwich in hand. I was never stopped or questioned, probably stole about a hundred or so throughout those destitute months.

I used to look back on that time as one of the worst stretches of my life. I was living with a girlfriend that was quickly growing sick of my shit. We were over each other completely, but I felt trapped because no $$$ and she was too timid to break it off, I guess. I drank a whole lot of cough syrup and stayed drunk or high pretty much 24/7.

But, looking back, I had something like 300 books. The extent of my personal possessions. These were friends that remained while 'real' friends slunk off into shadows and disappeared. I got to know Kafka, Beckett, Kosinski, Hamsun, Woolf, O'Connor, O'Brien, Ligotti, Mishima, Jackson, Dick, Dunn, Conrad, Camus, Schulz, Ducasse... my intimates, my asylum inmates.

Robitussin and Ginger Ale, 1:1 ratio. Life becomes a cartoon. Within these waking dreams I would copulate with great whites in Maldoror, bother aristocracy on cobblestone streets in Hunger, cry from the beauty of the sun refracting light from The Temple of The Golden Pavilion, stand in terror before The Castle. My friend's became as real as you feel you are. Time became elastic. It was as complete an education in the finer arts as I would ever get.

Memory, though, is obliterated through continual indulgence in volatile substances. Eventually, my new friends disappeared like the rest of 'em. Well, I had to sell almost all my books to help pay first months rent in a shitty apartment after the GF finally got the guts to break it off. Maybe that's why I return to these authors specifically, time and time again. Those brief months where our worlds merged...it's like reading transcripts of half-forgotten dreams. And maybe that is the closest an author and reader can come to achieving the sublime.

PULSE-POUNDING THRILLS are best left to visual mediums

Mrs. Blue's been having heartburn issues again. She wakes up around 3 or 4 the past few mornings and wavers out of bed, back bent, abdomen and tits wrapped in arms as if she's guarding guts from spilling out. No, she's not pregnant. This is a recurring issue and she takes prescribed meds to keep it at bay, but it's been worse lately. She blames it on stress and, specifically, the homemade nachos we ate last night (she made them).

It pains me to see her in pain. Her digestive system is being a dick. It's affecting her work and we're about to go to Thailand for two weeks where spicy food is hard to avoid. I not-so-secretly want us to expatriate to a hidden patch of beach, with a cave or self-built lean-to, eat fish and coconuts, trek up mountains, live out the rest of our short lives doing mushrooms and ayahuasca and mucking it up with the locals.

I will write and and pluck acoustic instruments, she will make pottery and catalogue wild flora, our passions. We're both from Florida, we're meant for the tropics.

Anyways...

I'm convinced lately that terror and action and PULSE-POUNDING THRILLS are best left to visual mediums. You know, the movin' pitchers and vidya games.

I just finished reading an International Bestseller, NPR book of the year, award winning literary thriller. The lazy twist (they were all the same dude, DUDE!) was obvious by chapter 2. I trudged on.  It was mercifully short, thank dog. But one thing that was handled...decently (even though the surprise was ruined), was the dread. The terror. And that's not saying much, for me, anymore.

There were a few years where I read nothing but horror and thriller novels or novellas. King, Ligotti, Graham Jones, Tremblay, Baer, etc. I've read a rhinoceros's shit pile worth of books that try to lay on the terror and dread, and this one did it well. But you know what? You know what does it better? The shittiest low-budget horror movies do it better. Video games do it better. Mimes do it better. Shadow puppets...maybe.

The strength of a novel lies in seducing you with inaction. Or very little action. Manufacturing human drama, without fireworks. Because the fireworks look, sound, and feel ten thousand times better when they explode in front of your eyes, not inside your head. Literature's special place is not in the outwardly visceral, it is in the human dread of simple ennui and looming death.

I don't know if I'll ever read a so-called "literary thriller" again. The one I recently finished was touted as the cream of the crop by every major channel. It sold a bajillion. It was not memorable.

I am open to suggestions, though

My phone's camera seems to be developing cataracts. 

Black Swan - Haven't seen it in a long time and it was $4 at McKay's, so woo hoo. I remember a mean mama and some forced cunnilingus. 

Robocop Trilogy - The first two are classics and fun for the whole family. This also includes the third, which I saw at one time and vaguely remember that there are ninjas. Doubt I'll watch it again unless I'm sick on an off day and looking at other shit. 

Blindspotting - Probably my favorite movie from whatever year it came out. Kind of reminds me of Swingers, set in urban L.A. instead of an alternate reality zoot suit L.A. It's a hang out movie for sure, and gets a little political, which is fine since the characters are great. The dude from the hip hop group Clipping is the protagonist. 

A Field In England - Once "Baloo my boy" kicked in I knew this would be something special. I had seen Kill List and Sightseers, which meant that I would wait for anything new from Ben Wheatley with bated breath. AFiE is a departure in tone and scope from those films. It's a low budget, confined, hallucinatory period piece. When I first saw it I thought it might knock Kill List from its top spot in Wheatley's filmography. Then I saw it a 2nd time and though a bit less of it. The third viewing bumped it right back up, though. I guess this means that my mindstate matters when watching AFiE. I find it infinitely fascinating. The language is beautiful, the B&W is gorgeous, and the whole second half is a mushroom trip hellscape borne from experience, which you will either love or loathe. This is one I wish I had seen in a theater with a great sound system, in complete darkness. See it if you haven't!

The Manson Family - Goddamn fucking shit I love this movie. I used to own the 2-disk DVD edition, but lost it somewhere along the way. So glad they re-released it on the Blu, and it even has all the old special features and a few new ones. This is a film made over a decade of blood and sweat and maniacal devotion from the director and crew. Van Bebber even became a sort of bespoke cult leader himself, keeping the cast coming back to the project through marriages, divorces, births, and deaths. The result is probably the closest any of us have to being in spitting distance of the actual Family. Blood orgies, drug orgies, stabby-stabbies, swatikas...it's all here in chaotically low budget gory glory. The most impressive aspect, to me, is that while the movie places us directly in the lives of these damaged youngins, it doesn't glorify them. It's actually pretty neutral, while also being a paean to a bygone era. Watch it and revel in Van Bebber's nightmare. 

Enemy - Another cheap buy at McKay's. I saw this once and remember liking it but not understanding much of what happened. That means it deserves another viewing or three. Also: Giant Spiders!

Every night, while watching whatever with Mrs. Blue, I pick skin off of the pad of my big toe and/or finger tips until there is barely a yellowed layer left. 7 out of 10 times I bleed, and go to the bathroom for a band-aid. Dress the wound to the sound of Mrs. Blue's perfunctory "Babe!" while the Great British Baking Show echoes through the screen door, letting any passers by know that we are Normal People participating in Normal Nightly Brain-Rot, with a couple'a cats to boot.

I've learned to hop on one foot to the bathroom once the bleeding starts, lest I be chastised for the thousandth time for leaving candle-drip stains along the carpet. I have tasted my own blood so many times it has come to be as Ritual as the daily gulp of dill pickle juice. Its flavor is so familiar that I often wonder whether a stranger's gore would shock the palette, or instill the notion that we are all truly One under the sun? I have no interest in drinking anyone else's blood to find out. Makes me think of AIDS or rabies or The Craft. Fairuza Balk's monster mouth. 

I've picked my toes for as long as I can remember. Switching to vaping, and now toying with lowering the nicotine content, has exacerbated the shit out of it. I have to watch out if I wear open-toed shoes in public. If waiting at the DMV, I'm sure to absentmindedly repulse like the basement dweller I could and should have become. Don't bleed on people, people. Don't leave a mess to be mopped.

All this is to say that I need to grow up. I'm 35 and almost married. I tried reading something that well-adjusted, principled, well-meaning people read (The Argonauts) and threw it across the room. I spent $16 on it at a Parnassus Books! Am I supposed to care as much as Nelson does about the cultural and ethical repercussions of every instinct-based decision I make? To be a walking mirror? Is that how the good people live? The wisened ones? It must be exhausting (though I am a cis white male so take all this in brackets and apocryphalia and blarney. Consider me Divine, eating shit).

Sometimes I tear a particularly long piece of calloused big toe skin off with my teeth. It is very satisfying to masticate and swallow.