The Real and the Shadow

“For the very first time in the very short life of Joey Crown….he was successful at something….”
-Rod Serling , of the Fictional Character, in The Twilight Zone.


THE REAL AND THE SHADOW
(That was the name of the episode, too)

PLANET TELEX by Radiohead now paints curious graffiti on the inside of my mind- I hope there’s more to come, some sort of metaphysical climax, that’d be nice. I’ve read two different horoscopes for my Libra self today. Not that I believe in that shit, but in a single day, one has to find so many different ways of wasting time. All that it comes down to though, in my wicked little mind is that it’s just a waste of life- this time- this expensive boredom, I used to find it amazing and beautiful to find a smile in the gregarious daydreams I cultivate twenty four hours a day. Now I’m not so sure- maybe these flocks of daydreams are just spiritual manipulators and predators of ambition. Who would have thought that creativity could be such a selfish sin?
All day long, (its 12:39 am now) I’ve been up and down, on the verge of faithless tears and hollow laughter, I’ve been sifting through the ripples of my frontal lobe that makes my right eye lid shutter (I hope that’s not permanent). There is a fantastic weight of unused magic and soul and faith that pulls my reality down under the frantic thoughts and energies that are supplied by all the other lost freightliners of soul that are carrying on in their business suits and Nikes, their Ipods, and their shirts dampened by shameful tears.
We all think we’re the only ones- I do- I did and I have- All day long- I imagined what it’d be like to be the lifeless one in the casket, face pampered with rouge and whitening face paints, the possibility of teary eyed faces with no names that might surround my new found gravesite—But to my specifications- me in jeans and chucks, a t-shirt and maybe Tom Petty, Todd Snider and or Robert Earl Keen playing in the background—possibly a few others- I wouldn’t know. I’d have to construct specific instructions for the passing of me and the final exit party before I could simply “DO IT”. Eh, So- Fuck it, I supposed, it’s a waste of imagination- Sadness, I can bear- but being a restless light in a dead body I can not. It might be fun and enjoyable throwing oneself the perfect bash- whether it be promotion or birthday or whatever- but to throw yourself the perfect funeral—wine, music, cakes, beer and music and art—You’d be the only one to enjoy it and you wouldn’t even get to. Imagine the torturous mind fuck that you’d put everyone else through, Goddamn, that’s messed up. And funny in a morbid sort of way.
I STILL MISS SOMEONE by Johnny Cash just opened up on the old ear horn. That’s always been one of my favorites. The rant about specifications and their funeral just reminded me of a certain someone that asked to be buried shoeless and with coins in his pockets. I love how I cry with hell at my fingertips and heaven on the tip of my tongue about how F U B A R life is- God, What a chaotic mess that we day in and day out pretend to sweep under the rug day in and day out? Why is no one out there in the land of fake smiles and grumpy salutations not breaking down in public and crying out to the mystics of this day and age? Who are we? What do we even know? Where are we going? What’s the point?
I guess though, those that ask the questions have the right to, but no one other than those in the shadows have the answer.
In this Twilight Zone episode, there was a man by the name Joey Crown—I found it odd—I’d rummaged through the TV listings after I returned home from work- I found nothing. And as a young boy, I remembered watching the Twilight Zone- it’s always been one of my favorites, so I settled on it. Eh, Fuck it, I figured, I could surf the net while this played in the background- it hasn’t been as amazing as it was when my imagination was blooming at that age of imagination without limitations.
First it struck me as an interesting knack that it starred Joey, The musician.
Second, it caught the glint in my eye because he wanted to die.
Fuck. So I saddled up on the old ass stool and found a broke musician who sold his—he called it a bugle, but it was really a trumpet, and then danced out into moving traffic- old Joey Crown left his body and found himself in Sheol. That’s limbo for most of ya’ll. Then, after having a nervous breakdown because he couldn’t get anyone to hear, see or acknowledge him, he ran into a fellow in the shadows, backstage, who not only heard him and saw him, but knew his name.
“Hell of a bugle you play, Joey.” He quietly resolved.
Joey was happy to find a new friend.
They exchanged words and Joey shed his guilt, his unhappiness and his confusion in the remarks and confrontation in the fact that someone found him, gave him fuel for living- but the sad thing was, he wasn’t alive. He was an inanimate object lying on the curb under the wails of a screaming woman. Dead, he no longer wanted to be.
The bugle playing stranger, began to wander towards the light, and out of The Shadow he emerged, Joey Called to him, asking for his name because of the new founded confidence his only friend instilled in him.
“Gabe.” He responded with snide cantor.
Gabrielle was his full name.
Soon, eventually Joey found himself buying back his trumpet and finding the gall to go on living, musically and waking up with little or no injuries in front of the pawn shop in which he was struck down in front of. Good ole Joey Crown lived to tell the tale of lost life.
Rod Serling had a nice outro and I found it quite amusing that I can daydream about this all over again. The What Ifs? I face mentally, and spiritually.
Then Kris Kristofferson Said, “Egg Head's cousin Red Neck's cussin' hippies for their hair. Others laugh at straights who laugh at freaks who laugh at squares.
Some folks hate the whites who hate the blacks who hate the clan.
Most of us hate anything that we don't understand.”
And at that moment before my new song was over by Kris K., I …..Kind of realized, most of us hate anything we don’t understand… Yeah- I don’t understand life at all—and I never will I don’t guess- and I do hate it-definitely- but what the fuck do I want from myself? Understanding. In you-me-in those schmucks I don’t get—those fuckers I don’t comprehend. Laughable man, I’ll never get it- I’ll only continue to water that seed of anger- Deep breaths and the idea and or belief of understanding is a worthwhile dream I should cultivate. I don’t and or can’t imagine it’d be hard- it’d be more of a mathematical equation than a real roadblock. To think myself into this shadow would mean to think my way out as well. Life is very real and the flutters in my frontal lobe is my wonder tying itself in knots. Its music, interaction and joy filled attempts that straighten out these knots. If it’s not that, then it’s something you figure out when you find yourself thinking in the shadows- the darkness maybe hell but at least it’s quiet and embracing- it warms the loneliness and warns the psyche—I guess self awareness is the ultimate in confronting the exasperated demon of reality and having no control over it. The muse of loneliness usually calls our names one at a time, not knowing what the answer is a hellish exploration of oneself- you will find it but it takes a lot of self mutilated questions to find the answers. It takes a penniless clown and a drunken fool to finally see the possibilities of misfortune.
Townes Van Zandt just rang in with Guy Clark’s words of wisdom,
“Don't let the sunshine fool ya, Don't let the bluebirds tool ya
Don't let the women do ya Put your hand in mine”
I’m not really that sad any more-I recall some spectre of ancient knowledge that helps me feel at ease with myself, I got pain, I got imagination, I got amazing infinite feelings of contradictive loathing reverberating my soul to my frontal lobe, I have amazing characteristics of joy and hell, profanity and spirituality. But I also have the Beach Boys singing, “Wouldn’t it be nice”
Wouldn’t it be nice? Wont it be nice?
“We Love you, We love you a lot.” That’s Reel Big Fish.
Wouldn’t it be nice.
Understanding. Love. God. Love. Hell’s amazing selfishness of Zen? What’s anything worth? What’s the point? We Love you a lot, Because you really understand....”
If God chases you down in dreams, do not be afraid, because he’s probably running a parallel line to the devil- under the influence you may be to both- but what they really want is you to find your own path that skews away from the influence of both- and master your own love, creativity and understanding in this world that knows no boundaries between impeded righteousness and misfortune, love and desire, hell and curiosity…
“Lord, I know I don’t look like much, But I didn’t think you’d mind”
(Johnny Paycheck)
I guess I’ll go on, with my paper cut hands, my dirty knees and my whip lashed spiritual reasoning. I have a lot of right to many things- and most of the time I don’t stand up for myself. Most of the time I just let time and energy fester under my quivering skin, feeling like I have control over reality. But I guess God is reality and reality is God. You can’t control it and you never will, you’ll only be grappled with inhumanity and loveless mothering. To look up to something means discovering you’re nothing more than weak. The discovery of weakness means misunderstanding. Misunderstanding means hatred. To hate is to not care to understand. I hate life cus I cant figure it out. I hate me cus I cant figure out life. Life means nothing to me because I see more in poetic death. Poetic death though, just seems spiritually stubborn. I’m happy being a proud prolific screwhead that is bashed by life and in return bashes the God of the New Age. If anything is fucked up then it sure aint me- life’s already proved to me it’s a fucked up organism, and I just have to cope with the brutality that it concedes on all of us.
There might be a God out there, but what he’s shown me is that I do not have as much responsibility believing in him so much as I do myself. I’m gonna try.
Todd Snider sings to me right, “I just want to live until I die, I know I aint perfect, but God knows I try, I think I’m an alright Guy. . . .”

I won’t be protected, and I wont be saved, I’ll be the confused guy I’ve always been meant to be. God aint a spiritual insurance policy, it’s leap of faith- I’m not going to take the plunge and I don’t care to take it-
“Sometimes You rise above it, Sometimes you sneak below, sometime in between believing in heaven and facing the Devil you know…(Todd Snider)”
I ranted this entire time with a post thought of thinking I wasted my fucking time rambling on about hell and music. Damned be this never ending cycle of pollutant proverbs- Goddamn- Hell, Who cares, but then again, who won’t? The amazing grace of life is reality- and the inability to control it, God Scoffs at our inability to maintain control. But in the end—aint life a bitch—and fuck me if boredom aint a spiritual splinter- how the hell am I supposed to fall asleep now? I am blessed with damnation, but Gee wiz, aint I proud of my much desired state of hell. If Death winks does Jesus get defensive? Or is the author of thought awarded the badge of cowardice? Death will only let you know, and he only creeps in the shadows, spiritual prosperity will grant you relaxed blessings when you’re finally over the shallow grave that life projects. Life is right now-You better get moving.
The Idea of Turmoil and life’s stormy sea—is just a fictitious act of creative boredom.
“Troublesome waters, I’m fearing no more…(J.Cash)”

“Joey Crown, who got his clue, in the Twilight Zone”
-Rod Serling

The Education of the Misguided

The Dude Abides. I take pleasure in hearin’ him say that, Takin’ it easy for all us sinners.

Like Last night- Tonight- I have no money- I haven’t a burning coal of ambition and I don’t understand why I don’t care if I do or not. I wont have a passion tomorrow, I wont have a plan and I wont have a heart throb angel standing over me in my wrinkled sheets whispering the directions of the lost map of life in my waxy ear, I’ll sleep the sun up just like I’ll drink you down and I’ll sleep the sun’s arch away too- just the way my drinking buddies slouch in their chair. Where I come from, its where Mornin’ comes twice a day or not at all. I feel completely restructured though- Like I’ve been rewired- It’s not a completely bad thing that I am a being that could grow stronger and taller each day if I only did not harvest it each night. I try my best to stray; most folks try their best to network. I like being the only two eyes awake between an open bottle and the shivering moon. It makes me feel alive that I’m the only person that’s rummaging through the attic of memories, falsified emotions and chucking out innate knowledge. I do my best at becoming one cold hard and merciless romantic of cosmic funnies.
Yeah, Money would be nice to have obtained, incubate and use as a lure to trap members of the opposite sex, and disillusion them in my web of green and dead presidents. That’d be the life, it it’d be the life for me. It sure looks fun to drink $100 dollar beer, to woo women and friends in with my wallet and not my mind or my heart. I’d love to be that guy.
But I find myself as a rarity, I don’t have the capability and I don’t have the heart space for it. I think life and existence is far better than just being a grand pawn in the game of money making for the makers of money. That’s the tragedy; the being sucked into the machine- being born to the carriers of the disease of inhumane sprawl—Shit out a few kids, build a few businesses, knock down a block or two of some whimpering creatures homeland and be a distracting savior to those that know no better, to be a militant champion with a suit and tie, coffee stained teeth and finger tips that are callous free. Don’t stop until your empire is built. Instill the barbaric trait in your offspring and so on and so forth. Pretty soon the street you live on has your own name on it and the corner street has your grandmother’s last name. Mission accomplished.
Nobody seems to care or notice, not at this pace of life, that’s why it’s called the Rat Race because we’re a bunch of sick and disgusting creatures that run with ambition but without a thought in our minds. Every thought and desire and ambition was given to us by our sour ancestors and unfortunate predecessors. LETS MAKE THE WORLD BETTER we think, a handful of versatile solutions to everyday living but the choices we choose weather it be diesel or olestra, and we’re only cutting our lives shorter while we plunder away searching for longevity through our worst attributes, our personal collisions between what is real and what is perceived, we’re nothing but wicked astute maniacal consumerist nomads that repeatedly buy our life piece by piece from those that pay us the money to do so, after work, that is.



Tension
Tension
Tension it's all that I know
I got tension in my classroom
I got tension in my courtroom
I got tension and it's everywhere that I go

And If you’re not all liquored up from the new dream from Uncle Sam, and you do in fact, live off of the grid, where does the happiness come from? Chances are you’re nothing but the ghost of someone’s pre-loved ambitions and ideas. So this is it- You’re a failure to the creator, and a failure to those that created you.
So imagine this, you’re on a dirty color-less street, wandering around, with no direction, your fists clench in your empty pockets as you squint against the dusty wind- you’re skipping the cracks in the sidewalk, so you’re basically walking in the brown, dead grass.
Scott Lucas bellows, “It’s no fucking Fun” in your eardrums. And you love it.
Your presence is to others is a distraction from their work, money and bills, you’re an open tent freak show they don’t have to shell out the ten cents to, the migrant freak show that has been left behind in mind body and spirit. Does that mean he’s confused, sad, angry and or violent? No, not necessarily- early on in the days when Amerika was still wet behind the ears, you would be called a rambler, or a tramp, possibly even a HOBO, meaning more than just a vagrant- but HOmeward BOund- the lives of the American civil war soldiers in the mid 19th century, those that were retired or free to leave, they were homeward bound, but many had no home to retreat to- they had their American issued HOMEWARD BOUND patches, and when they were not hassled or reprimanded for their parasitic gaze, so they had conversations like the whimpers of whipped dogs and they gazed out onto the landscape that was sculpting the lives and dreams of those that were fortunate enough not to have to fight in a war against neighbors, cousins and friends. The birth of freedom for so many was also the birthright of so many more, to live a life of self hatred, mental collapse, silent integrity and rich prophecies with calloused hands and dirty knees, in a sense, the trial between solitary confinement amidst freedom; and the age old yet newborn wisdom of sad individualism. The civil war is over and has long since been, but for some that gene has been passed on, it’s not the land and property we’re at war over, it is simply ourselves. The war is quite the struggle, though it does not exist around me, it exists only inside me. The fight between the ideas inserted through the contraception of advertisement, the struggle of finding myself in a refurbished society of Gods and day old literature. A sucker is born every minute, or so they say. But so is God and his new Glam-image.
The country is young, in a weird mathematical factor, yeah, definitely young factor, and at the state of it, we’re probably leading each other to a nameless grave the way we poison each other with greed and constitutional distrust, we all should know by now, life makes no sense, we should abandon the lives of the sprawling maleficent fire breathers, and learn from the penniless hobos of salvation. You may step on us, you might not care how we’re doing, or what we love, but your ambition may soon aspire to tip your hat to the mutant knowledge we pass out every day scribbled on cardboard trash with the coals of dead cigarettes. I am redefining the term of ‘Hobo’. I am homeward bound—I’ll run myself into the ground with zen and peace and all that shit before I go down in flames from the catastrophe of the shallow burning oil wells from the etiquette of today’s modern chimpanzee in his three piece suit grappling the concrete jungle that opens at 6 am every morning and closes at 11 pm every night. I’ll be that Hobo that constructs marvelous humanity in each sip of coffee and imagination, I’ll be the lonesome hero that dies every night I lay my head on that railroad bed, I’ll be that scalawag in dirty jeans whistling at the bus stop, and I’ll not be the ghoul that was built in reconstruction of the average Amkerikan male- my bones were not built in this body to give shape to the soul that delivers the forthright appearance of modern art, monotone and monotheistic.
I am a Hobo of belief, spirituality and imagination- and the beauty of it all is that I still have no fucking clue.