Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.38

Trap Queen.
Fetty Wap.

Thin
Mechanical
A sudden
A sudden
Then thin
Memories of a before
Self-fulfilling
Content
Who are you?
And where have you come from?
And why are you proud of either?

Lyrics.
I don't know, man. Money isn't everything. Sex isn't everything. Drugs aren't everything. Maybe if you have near-equal proportions of all three, you at least approach it? Maybe, Fetty?
I wouldn't know. I haven't ever done any mind-altering substances harder than Caffeine, and I don't like to use that. I've been single for years, now, and I haven't downloaded even one dating app. I took a job as a long-term substitute and I just . . . didn't spend the money I made. Either I'm the most satisfied person in the world, or there's something I keep missing about vice. From the outside, it seems transient. I want something else, I think, something I know I can control, and in infinite supply.

Recently, I've been chasing happiness. I was teaching, and I decided to leave happy every day. If I could accomplish that, I would have done a good job that day. It changed the way I approached a lot of things. Not superficially, though. Essentially everything about teaching was the same, for me, and I was hard on a few kids who disrespected me or others in the classroom (these are a big no thanks for me, and I tend to react [at least] proportionately). But in essentially everything, I was able to find the small moments of pure happiness. At the end of my work experience, I would say that overall, I was at an eight of ten for three straight months without a single really down day.
This is a dramatic departure. If I sleep badly and do nothing I like, I tend to feel roughly depressed about one in every two days.
I'm going to exercise more, eat without worrying too much about the contents, read more books, write more posts, call more friends, and generally avoid unhappiness. If I can end every day happy, I will have accomplished what I'm looking for.

This is not a resolution for the new year, though I am aware it is New Year's Eve. I just wanted to articulate what I liked so much about being so happy all the time.

Stephen Barry.
Is "ratchet" a bad term still, or have the kids robbed it of its piercing power? I had a lot of students proudly claim it as a label (these were mostly white kids, though) and a few who would toss it at their friends as a weapon (these were mostly black kids, though), so I'm not sure if, on the whole, the word is good or bad. Regardless, I can tell you that this song is bad. Not musically, I guess, since it's consistent and grabs me by the ears like a raging schoolteacher. And the lyrics aren't a microwave full of raccoon droppings. And the voice, Fetty Wap's illustrious yawn, well--though there's nothing to commend, I can't find anything to condemn, especially. It's a voice.
So why do I find this song so distasteful, I wonder?

No.

Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.39

Bad Blood
Taylor Swift feat. Kendrick Lamar

Thump
Can something be over-produced?
Foreign
Uncomfortable, like a
Badly-fitted shoe
Schizophrenic
A stranger to itself
Is this what Stephen calls a "banger?"
Big enough
Enough

Lyrics.
I had a coworker with whom I really could not get along. I swear I tried my hardest to be forthright and considerate and give this person as many chances as I could. But there's something perverse about a person who can absorb everything that is given to them, every favor, leniency, and word of praise, and still feel shortchanged. Once, this person went out of their way to help in an early-morning emergency situation (don't you pay no nevermind that seven other people also showed up), and their focus was not how do we fix this or what can I do to help. My illustrious coworker was only concerned that everyone know that they were helping instead of sleeping in or showering or farting into their pillow or whatever they did with their free time. "I work more hours than (insert the number of hours perceived as normal) and I don't take breaks. And you see me out here helping." Others in the group took the bait and lobbed praise out, as though to say "Oh, yes. You are better than us." I don't care if you take a thousand more breaks than me, or none whatsoever. This isn't about your work ethic. This is about how trashy you are sometimes.

That's what bad blood is about, for Taylor Swift. The original song was a petulant squabble between people who should really just be quiet and go to bed. But Kendrick's verses add just enough realism that (with Genius translating), I can see the necessity of venom in his life. He's been hurt, really hurt, by a relationship, and the only way he can conceive of solving his pain is to write the end as an antagonism, as bad blood.
I really don't think he and Taylor are a good match, but he makes the song worth hearing. Thanks, Kendrick.

Stephen Barry.
Things happen in the Bad Blood music video, certainly, but the way the story of the video is set up, it's as though Taylor is rallying all of her favorite actresses as ammunition against Katy Perry (or whoever this topical beef was about), which I think is . . . recklessly shallow? Who cares if faces I recognize stand on one side or the other in an argument about . . . talent? Money? Women's rights? Honestly, I do not care, but Taylor's video feels like she's trying to show how many people like her and are on her side.

Compare this with Swish Swish, Bish, which is is not a very good song and a worse music video. At least, Katy Perry doesn't have a bunch of famous, beautiful people "taking her side."

Worse.

12.31

The first three drafts I've deleted, closed the app, and tossed the phone across the room. I'm now writing here, on paper, and the results aren't much better, but at least they're tactile. At least now, when I can't find the safest words to both express the intensity of my emotion and the fear that my fervent language will drive you away, at least now, when I throw the mangled meaning across the room and pull out a new sheet of stationery to smooth onto the desk, at least now, there is some angry sound of small cuts a great distance away as heard through a poor speaker when my shaking hands take up the pen and tear ink into the paper again (and again --and again).

12.18

Do you ever,
For what could have been,
That cancerous root,
From which there is no reprieve,
A greater galaxy of possible future,
A place and time you'll never taste,
Grieve?

I grieve,
Perhaps uselessly and alone,
For both of us.

12.17

31st May 1956

Dear Mona,

I'm guessing you've never got such an unexpected letter before. I've since moved out to Lubbock, as you know, and the Lone Ranger is doing just rip-roaring out here. I got him some guinea to chase and he forgives me for moving so far away from all his favorite people. Why, just the other day the postman found us for the first time since we moved, and you should have heard the ruckus -- until he realized it wasn't Old Tom after all. Here's another good one: when I first opened up the car door, he took off like a shot, just like always, and he pretty near ran into the fence, thinking the house was that way. You know how he does. He sat there throwing his head back and forth and barking at that chicken wire for a full minute before he realized he could just go around. Now days, it's actually a struggle to keep him sitting still for long enough to scratch behind his ears. There's always some new thing to smell just out past the fence on my neighbor's property, and he's got a half dozen tunnels I can't seem to fill up fast enough.

A little bird told me it was your twenty fifth today. As you can tell from the letter, I'm sorry I couldn't make it. You know just how much the two of us used to like birthdays. I wouldn't have missed it if I could help myself, Mona. You know that.

Anyhow, just a short letter for you, dear. Tell your mother

I'm guessing she'll read this anyway.

Much love,

Frank

31st May 1957

Dear Mona,

It's hard to believe it's been a year and a half, isn't it? It feels like no time at all. Well, Lubbock is treating us just fine. Well, I'm happy, anyway. The Lone Ranger stands at the door and waits. Not sure what for. Other than that, he has free run of the place and treats all the barn cats so bad you wouldn't believe. One day he came back with blood all in his mouth, but he wouldn't let me get a good look at it. I was worried, but he nursed himself like a champ and now when he pants, you can see what happened: he's got four long white lines  running sort of down his tongue. Must have been that a cat caught him right in the mouth. I shouldn't guess he'll be more wary next time. Still feels the same when he licks your hand, though, so nothing busted up about him.

I guess this is your twenty sixth, isn't it? You're as old as I was when I married your mother. Do you remember that? You were very small. It's amazing how long it's been since then. I hope that once you finish nursing training and maybe move out of the old place you do send me your address. I'm pulling for you, Mona. Me and Ranger both.

I hope this letter gets to you. I've heard that time heals all wounds, but your mother was sure wounded deep. We didn't really talk about it with you, not me at least. It's hard to talk to your grown daughter about the trouble, you know? I'm sure you understand, but it's a bitterness that I never got to explain myself to you.

I'll always think of you as my daughter, anyway.

Thinking of you fondly,

Frank

31st May 1958

Dear Mona,

First, some news about me and mine: You've no doubt heard about the panic out in Levelland last November? Well, I've been sitting on this for long enough and I think it'll make for a great present, since of course I can't make it.

I live out west of Lubbock, as you know, and last November 2nd seemed like a pretty normal night, all things considered. I was just sitting down with a Burroughs that you gave me way back when all of a sudden the Lone Ranger goes absolutely nuts. He's scratching at the door and whining like the devil got in him, so I stand up to let him out and you wouldn't believe it, just as I get to the door, the lights go out in the house. Well, I opened the door to head to the junction box and the Ranger goes tearing off across the front lawn extra fast. He ran right out into the road and I forgot all about the junction and ran right after him, heart in my throat. If anything were to happen to him, I know you wouldn't forgive me, and I went right across the hedge without stopping to open the gate. I scooped him up and the brightest light I ever did see shot out across the road. I thought we'd both had it and you'd be reading about me in the newspaper when the light shot near straight up into the sky and hovered there. The heat was tremendous, and came all at once, in a flash. Ranger was clawing at me and straining and barking and tore me up pretty good with his claws. Just as fast, it shot away again down the road. Ranger stopped barking, and the night was still again. The lights were on in the house, just everything normal. I went straight to bed. When I woke up, I thought I had dreamed the whole thing because of the Burroughs novel, but I still had Ranger's clawmakrs all over my skin!

Come to find out, it was all over the news, and I wasn't the only one who saw it.

I hope you enjoy that, Mona. You always used to tell such good stories that it's nice to turn the tables on you once in a while. Someday, I hope you can make it down to Lubbock, and maybe we can catch up. It's been an awful long time. You're out of training now, I guess. I hope that new job is treating you well.

If you'd like, I can come up there. I don't know how your mother would feel about that. I hope you can snatch this one out of the box before she gets to it. I hope that she hasn't got you thinking badly of me, now.

You'll always be my Mona,

Frank

1st June 1962

Dear Mona,

I missed a few birthdays there. It gets discouraging to write when you know what will happen next. I'd just as soon throw the letter over a cliff, I guess. Just a short note to let you know I still think of you pretty near every day. You were always a bright spot, and I always loved you, Mona. I wait for letters from you, but I should know by now I'm waiting on nothing so far.

I guess me and the Lone Ranger won't give up on you all.

Love from Lubbock,

Frank

31st May 1963

Dear Mona,

Me and the Lone Ranger are thinking of you. He sits at the door and waits, and I figured it out the other day when I was home sick all day. He goes to the door around two and waits until about five every evening, whether or not I'm here. When I get home, of course, he's waiting, but he barely pays attention to me until after five or so, when he gives up and starts nosing around for some supper.

Anyway, he and I aren't so different. We're both waiting for you to get home from school. It's hard to remember sometimes, that you aren't around anymore.

The other day, a dust storm blew up, nothing like the old days, but I ran to get some wet towels just the same, and I caught myself calling for you to -- well.

I feel like these letters are becoming a confessional. If you find this in the box, I've sent you a letter e v e r y   y e a r I have missed a few. Anyway, I think your mother is finding them and sending them back. If I get a letter from you with a new address, I'll forward them all to you and you can read what your old man thinks of you.

You're still my daughter, Mona. Nothing can change that.

All the best,

Frank

20th September 1963

Dear Mona,

This letter won't be no good, I'm afraid. The Lone Ranger passed away last night. I even had the veterinarian around. He said that the situation was the end, and it would be best to make the old man comfortable and give him the best and wait it out. He had some hamburger, the old style, the way he always used to beg for on the fourth. I know you used to slip him some when I wasn't looking. That was all okay, Mona. Well, he couldn't keep anything much down, but he didn't make a whole lot of noise. I wish you could have been here. He went quiet and without much pain. He was just old, Mona. I'm just repeating myself now, I guess. Anyway, like I said. It was his time.

He loved you very much, Mona.

Your mother put all the pictures we took of him in the post to me after the divorce. I went back, just today, and I don't think you have any left. He was always more your dog than mine, but your mother was just resentful that we had something together that she couldn't seem to. Anyway, I've had him for all these years and you've had nothing left. That's not right, so I'm posting most of them to you. I'm sorry, Mona. I'm so sorry.

From the two old men,

Frank

31st May 1977

Dear Mona,

I'm just sure you don't live at this address anymore, but I don't know how to get hold of you otherwise. I turned seventy this year. I don't get around very good anymore, so I'm moving in with my younger brother and his wife in Tulsa. I figured if we were going to be in the same town, we should at least try to see each other.

I know you might hate me for what happened with your mother, and I got no place to ask for anything else. She just kicked me out one day, Mona. I never left. I would have never left you, I hope you know that. The judge gave custody to your mother, of course. You were better off with her, anyway, but it just stung that they wouldn't let me visit you. Your mother must have asked for it that way, Mona. She was your mother, after all, and I wasn't your father. I w a s n I'll always be your old man, though.

Your mother and I grew apart for a few years. You were very smart; you must have seen that. You probably never knew why, though, and I wish I could shed some light on it for you. She just got colder and colder, and seemed to close down and die a little more each day. She quit that job at the phone company, she quit the school board, she quit the 4H club sponsorship. I guess she was just searching for the thing that was making her msierable and event ually she figured she'd quit everything else and there was just one thing left, so she quit me. It weren't personal, I think. But the way she tore up our lives and threw out the leavings didn't give the two of us much time to adjust. She made the decision for all of us. I'd love to talk to you more about all this, but I don't know how to get a hold of you. I called all the hospitals in town because maybe you'd be working there, and they didn't know your name. Maybe you've decided to go by Marie.

I always like Mona more, but it's your name. You get to choose who you are.

I'll always love you.

Keep safe,

Frank

June 17 1977

Dad—

after I never got any letters, I assumed

but that doesn’t matter now. What’s your new address?

Love,
Mona

12.16

[Thank you to Jacob, the only poet in America brave enough to give me a good idea. Secret: there are three poems here.]

12.15

A student today let me read a poem in half-draft, a mind spilled out stasis-wise, piece-meal. It reflected itself and read differently the more you looked at it, and I wanted to climb inside and see how its elbows felt when they moved. I wanted to be its author, and I suppose that's a high praise for anything from anybody, but it felt pretty low coming from me.
Still, I'm going to try it someday when I'm not so envious, and I have more time to be proud.

12.14

I've seen happiness work its way through a population like a disease. I've spent enough time chasing tranquility that somehow I've achieved near-invulnerability to the disastrous things that happen outside my immediate bubble. But you, "Cat Person" poet, nearly got me. I will admit that for the duration of my time reading your ungorgeous description of two people using each other I was disgusted and pushed into profound disquiet. I will admit that you got me then, and unbidden pictures of your horrific work has sprung unbidden to my mind. I will admit that the writing was excellent and evocative and I could not have done as well. But I know that sadness is as powerful a contagion as happiness, and my incessant inoculation is all that saved me. What will you say to the millions who can't remember the last time they smiled? I doubt you'll have an answer for the multitudes who don't feel happiness as an inveterate habit. You're responsible for sadness, my dear, misguided fool. And when the time comes, what else will there be for you to plead but for the effect you had? Because there is truly nothing else to commend your work.

12.13

I'm going to buy a gross of donuts, six dozen at a time.
I'm going to grab life by the horns, five fingers at a time.
I'm going to hold someone, two arms at a time.
I'm going to climb to the highest point in California, one step at a time.
I'm going to laugh, and I'm not going to count. Sometimes, things are worth chasing for chasing's sake.

12.12

Still thinking about Gal Gadot so here are some better comic book villains for cheap but not free.

Grintlebix, the Slaverer: A monster covered in mouths, and when he eats his victims, their mouths appear on his body. When his victims scream, the mouths that cover him scream in unison with them.
Orphed IV: A haunted song that kills whoever hears its final movement.
Astra Plaudit: An extradimensional traveler who can pass cleanly between second, third, and fourth dimensional space, and from the fourth can see an immense amount of the third dimension and touch the interiors of objects (and people) without being touched.
Fortune: A villain that cannot manipulate probability, but can innately sense the most likely outcome of any scenario. Interesting combatants include Scarlet Witch and Gambit. He essentially nullifies many of their powers' more cerebral effects.
Torque: An alien from a planet much more massive than our own who is capable of feats of enormous physical strength and yet completely incapable of grokking even simple human ideas.
Pustular: A central nervous system disease that gains intelligence as a collective the more neurons it infects. Eventually, it crowd-sources an incredible amount of brainpower and begins to enact increasingly complex plans for total pandemic.
Cherenkov: A scientist who creates unspeakably complex gadgets, like knives so sharp they effortlessly and exactly cut atoms' nuclei.

Anyway, all of these would be better than another dude with a sword or a gun. No offense to Ronin and Steppenwulf and all the beefy boys who hit each other with large, unseemly thuds. No offense to Stan Lee. I'm sure some of these have been done before, anyway. Not Grintlebix, but. You know what I mean.

12.11

Ideas for villain objectives better than glowing cubes of poorly-defined energy (Transformers, Avengers, Justice League).

Enemy learns that if his biological material is ingested by an Earth creature, it becomes him. He starts breaking himself into pieces and feeding himself to Earth.

Enemy is trying to drain Earth's core of its thermal energy to power her spaceship. She's using magnetic resistance to rob the core of rotational inertia.

Enemy is obsessed with platonic solids and is found in the desert, compacting sand into cubes and spheres and such.  Enemy sees a plane fly overhead and follows it to Cairo or something and starts compacting all structures and immobile objects, then people, then the heroes show up.

Enemy has lost his ability to feel pain, and suffers an emotional loss that he can't feel, so he starts destroying things, looking for someone who can hurt him enough in retribution that he'll remember and be able to mourn.

Enemy wants to create macabre works of art, and uses people's conscientiousness as a medium. She pulls minds from skulls and sculpts, paints, composes with them.

Those aren't free, Hollywood, but they're extraordinarily cheap. Hit me up in my DMs.

12.10

I rode on the flat, at ten miles an hour, for a half a mile, and I could feel the muscles in my legs begin to burn. Whatever I had is gone now. Whatever I was is dead.

12.9b

I used to live outside every day. When I see the stars or the light through the clouds or a sunset on hills, I pause for a breath so short I choke on it, and say I used to live outside every day I look around at the untold stories of vaprous morning airs drifting through long pines and with the world I exhale the aching truth of my past, when I used to live outside every day the house creeps in on me in closing circles of anthropogenic wood and rock, an obscene reminder of the fact that I used to live outside every day the soft chant of the weather tapped its methodic rhythm on the outside of my skull to communicate in the only way it knew how of the permanency of my position in the world and the immediacy of my knowledge of it and the brevity of my time in which it was true that I used to live outside every day the pattern of my life appears more set, more foreign to that time when the night air was my window to God and the sound of urgency was an incomprehensible tongue that spoke only in terms that I could understand because I used to live outside every day. I am circumscribed by this, I am losing words to it, I am trumcated, and the truth is: I used to live.

12.9

"He's going to reveal to her that he's her father, and then he's going to die." They're setting up this relationship so that he can find absolution. He's been our villain for three films; they won't let him go without it.
A half hour later, she falls past him and he grabs her hand.
"It's now, mom." The actress looks at him meaningfully. "He's going to die, soon." Thirty seconds later, she knows that he's her father and he falls to his death. I spread my arms expansively, but honestly all I feel is rage that I could have written a better film than this, but nobody gives me any money.

12.8

"Frikin gorgeous."
"Yeah."
"And you know, she's about my age. That's what gets me really annoyed."
"Hm."
"Well, she's a few years younger, anyway."
"You know, this photo looks really touched up, anyway."
Both women lean over the newspaper.
"Augh, just look at her! So beautiful."
"Yeah."
There's a long moment of silence.
"She's probably lonely, though."
"Yeah . . ." but it's noncommittal. "What really annoys me, though, above all of it, is: she can sing."
They toss the paper down.

12.7

I have one more week with these students, man. They're all thinking about next semester without me. In a way, it's very gratifying, their horror. I just wish I had better served the actual teacher. I hope they like her as much or more than they like me.
I've had four losses, or rather, four seasons of loss.

And now I won't even have Fujifilm 100C to picture it. I used to take pictures of my sixth graders with it. I loved that film. It has now joined dodos and dinosaurs, and I can't quite fathom my life without it. Declining sales, they said. Profit margins, they cited. Well, I would pay twice what they were charging, and I still bought twenty packs of ten. So I don't know who's dropping the ball, because I certainly did my part.

Goodbye, past. I'll miss you forever.

12.6

"I'm trying to find ripe fruit in the produce section when I see, out of the corner of my eye, a man fall down. I feel more than hear his shriek as he topples into the oranges, scattering the display across the linoleum. It's more than I can bear to admit it, but the plum I had been holding I juiced instead. So that's why I'm here."
"Even so, sir, I really don't know if I can allow you to buy . . . uh, pulp, I guess. I'm not sure how I would ring it up."
"Ok. I'll just . . . I guess I'll just leave this here with you, then?"
"Please don't."

12.5

Mom died in a very off-the cuff way. It wasn't a big thing, for some reason. Or maybePhilip and I didn't make a thing out of it. Regardless, I told him the news and he, shuffle-wise, stepped to do his duty. We had already dug one hule i the yard that day; what was a nother?

He started the trench for th grave off-kilter to the house and property, more at a thirtydegree angle slightly more east-west than north-sout, oriented from the southwest corner near the creek-crossing to the telephone pole. He put itsouth and west of the pergola and the bird tree, in the open spae between trees in the flat. I thought of all the symbolic ways I could prepare her body to besent off into the great hereafter. Put a copy of the eye of horus in her mouth and call it a horcrux? Sure. That sounds about as stupid as anything I could come up with awake. I didn't do it.
Dad wasn't really upset, either. Katy wasn't there.

Tonight, I buried my mother.
December 4 five actually at four vivety five am ugh spelling is hard

12.3

There is no majesty in the taste of your blood, my dear friend. I never intended to hit you. But now that I have (or rather, now that you've thrust yourself directly into the force of me, destroying yourself in the process), I find a rather grim positivity. Your legs, splayed and frightening as you violated gravity, contained a puissant beauty. The soft morning air discovered you and the sound of your bones, an unbelievable symphony of one. And from a life of forgotten anonymity, friend, I have plucked you permanently. I will never forget my first kill.
Live forever, victim--perpetual friend.

12.1

[So, I wrote a poem about two people who don't know each other having sex, and I'm very proud of it and it's technically proficient and mildly interesting. Too bad for you that you'll never read it.]

So, once the fire of you had leached out every liquid contained in my hot sack of self, I began to wish that by drinking you in I could sate the thirst my nervous sweat had thrown out with wild abandon. Sadly, I'm going to die, now. When your magnificent haircut hides the single tear you'll shed at my wholly unexpected funeral, I hope for the universe's sake that karma guides the droplet to my yawning grave.