jackdusa

[jackdusa]

A biological control system that wasn’t made by humans but is in every human. That system is language, and textures. The proto-Indo-European language and all of the rough clumping of languages into clusters seems a sort of meaningless, empty ontological exercise, but it’s really after a romantic notion that language evolved once — that it spontaneously arose in early humans, in a grunting pair of smart guys, and all language is descended from them and their creation. It was a singular spark in the primordial ooze.

Singular, that’s what we want. Discontinuous, dramatic moment in space and time. Singularity, when all of the old paradigms fall away and the new ones are born. It’s genesis and the rapture. a glint in an eye and then the whole world.

But if there’s one lesson from modernity, (and lessons come in patterns, a pattern language) it is that things bubble up. It’s an accretion, it comes from all over and it sparks again and again. Even the glint is an accretion of synapses, of “matrices”, of ions.

Language came from some grunting mf who probably liked to sing. Bright old lights, inventions are always simultaneous, the underlying conditions just have to be right. They're torchbearers, man.

starts: A biological control system that wasn't made by humans, but is in every human. 

ends: They're torchbearers is my best guess.

[jackdusa]

I love to color in the lines, adding color to someone else’s dream, because you know that person will drive and push. But do I really like that? I like to draw new lines. I like to find a new way to make a line.

People are talking about matrices now. Lauren, and lost and found lunchBox. How weird that matrices turned out to be what they are — literal dimensions and rotations and thoughts. The stuff of thought.

I wish we could drink anything, like mud, without getting sick. I heard about a guy who ate a slug on a dare and died slow. You need a reference, a paradigm, something to react to, something to spark. Fuckin plug me in man, the music here is too loud, it’s taking over my brain.

'I’ll be good, I wanna be good'. My brain is so easily influenced. This wet little jumble of pink myelinated impulse. The beat, the EEG, alpha beta theta waves, the gamma deep in the night roil and rumble. 

Put me in a shared dream. How much will you give me if I watch ads in my dream? Give me new lines. Influence me so I can react.

Starts: I love to color in the lines

Ends: I was influenced

[jackdusa]

I want to scream a million screams. I’m distressed by the dregs that have invaded the Poliverse. “10 year???” Albeit, albeit, abeit.

This is one of Craving’s downfalls — his inability to curate the horde of flies that stick to sticky him. And then they’re all over me, and I’m the asshole when I swat at them. But I’m also a fly that landed on Cravings (or did we land on each other, or did we both land on a big piece of fruit or shit that we’re still chomping on), so what does that say about me, and what does that say about the best of us?

BUT the most important lesson of the Poliverse is that you never say no. You can whinge and whine all you want, but there are no shoulds, no should nots, and no nos. There are only the friends you come in with, and the friends you come back to.

Lauren sent me a dispatch from her version of the Poliverse. I love it so much. Hers is more list based, dreamier, and perhaps a bit more well-adjusted. Certainly less noxious and fucking marred than ours. We need a new girl in this Poliverse, someone to hold onto some kind of sacredness, to hold something in reserve, that won’t blow on the candle or poke the bear.

I wanna feel good. Is it enough now just to want to, even if you mean it?

starts: I want to scream a million screams.

ends: That's a good band name.

[jackdusa]

Wisdom shouts in the streets, the girl next door with the tupperware said "you can always take more."

The girl in the sporty dress said "we gotta put a little pep in the step, bro."

These are the shouts, just in this one park. I see floaters as I look at this paper, little brownian smoke signals. Massive green multitude, look at 'em.

It's Earth day. I love the Earth because we are a perfect match. The dose makes the poison and the dose has been titrated well.

I'm listening for more shouts but I just hear murmuring. Speak up tupperware motherfuckers.

I love the Earth and all of its creatures. We need to end toxicity in the Poliverse. Wow, we are all in fluid. We are swimming in air, sucking it in like we're breathing water in a pool. But someone's peed in it, that's a truck, wheezing exhaust pipe, little rusted urethra, and me, sucking, breathing it in.

"He's a natural villain," she says, reacting to some ricochet thought from the invocation of spikeball. I love fratty guys cause they're silly, sometimes. Lauren can't see as well as me in the light because her eyes are so blue. Natural selection vs. sexual. That's part of earth. earth is tension and release. Earth is balance, close the streets so I can breathe deep! Piss in the pool but these gills can filter it out. I'll just die a little sooner. They're making farting sounds now, the tuppers.

I love being outside, the shouts, and then inside with the shouters.

(walking to pee now, still writing)

Oh fuck, I stepped on a pinecone. Where can I pee earth mother?

Please, let me pee on you, careful, gentle. Shouts and murmurs man, the wisdom whispers, the wisdom pees in the park.

Starts: Wisdom shouts in the streets.

Ends: Wisdom whispers in the libraries.

[jackdusa]

That moment you realize when you try to help everybody but you end up hurting them, that’s the moment. Is that what Christmic thinks he’s doing? I don’t see it, as much as I love him.

I called John for help with my Edith situation, my old lover from London who was coming to stay. I told him the situation and he told me it wasn’t my fault… this time. I'm trying to do right in this world.

I’m off to swim in a moment. Baptize me Christmic, except will you still be a Christian in 2 months? I told Sombra that it’s hard to dance with Michael’s reveries because he’ll drop them like they never were. It’s like getting too invested in your friends’ girlfriends and boyfriends. Christ is Michael’s new gf. I love Lily though, even though I think Lily might hate men, and by extension, me??

CB hates me now because I told her that someone else called her a woman without principle. She’s circling her wagons, and I guess we have to play games now. Shouldn’t they know better??

I told Sombra that she was being rude by not responding to my text and she sent me 8 texts in a row. Will this strategy keep working?? I’ll definitely find out.

Well I’m off to be baptized in chlorinated slime, swimming laps like a dolphin of science, being illegally jerked off by my lady handler, whistling, squealing, dreaming of surfing waves in the Big Drink, the Capri Sun juice turning me all quicksilver, raining down on this parade that is all for me.

Christmic if you still believe in 3 months I’ll talk to God and I’ll see what the deal is. I still have the business card you gave me sitting on my windowsill.

I hope Michael finds his future nice Christian wife, but i think he's heading for the other side of some other unimaginable rubicon, like marrying an anime sex doll, and by God, after 3 months, I’ll learn her hobbies.

Starts: That moment you realize when you try to help everybody but you ended up hurting them.

Ends: 'my future nice Christian wife'

[jackdusa]

Tell me a riddle, I did it again. The frustration comes out as "hate" or "rage" but to me it's really love because that's how it was modeled. I'm sorry.

Kafka said that you can’t pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.

The greater part of any lost library is nothing but the record of such fleeting moments in the lives of men, women, and donkeys.

Starts with:

Tell me a riddle.

Ends with:

The greater part of any library is nothing but the record of such fleeting moments in the lives of men, women, and donkeys.

[jackdusa]

Brazilian goblins in brands suddenly look monstrous. I'm reading Hurricane Clarice now. I didn't realize there was a Franzen blurb on the cover.

The hook isn't in yet and I'm wriggling. My mind wandering, Caren's tabs, Gareth's cowboy boots, should I bring Caleb to Hudson?

It's hot. Can I be comfy with myself ever? Can I live inside this skin, actually at ease in this place? I can hear the Hasidic kids outside my window playing. Shouldn't they be asleep?

Such a funny portrait, South Willyburg. The kids growing up occult, undereducated, yiddish accented english, pumping out their own kids too early and too many, and yet they play with each other. They're together in this. I think about the pilots' houses in the Presidio, one big grassy oval shared backyard, dotted with trees. A whole neighborhood playing and exploring together. Tree of Life without the cud chewing hitting alcohol departure, pale golden swirl, a goddamned platform, a pot to piss in.

Shout out to Shadow? Will I ever accept her not being my friend? Will I do it with grace or with bitter rattle?

Wednesday is the day to lay (me off). It's a real fertile crescent out here. I hope you're paying attention.`There's a rising tide, and you best not eat the bread of idleness.

Starts with:

Brazilian goblins in brands suddenly look monstrous.

Ends with:

and does not eat the bread of idleness.

[jackdusa]

Through the veins of the street I bike, through these pulsing arteries I squirt. Veins are where the deoxygenated blood flows, the blue waste going back to the hot red oven, and the drugs too.

Last night I spoke to John and then I spoke to Cam. John had just smoked weed and he was talking slow. He liked my Cheesybean which I had adapted into a Poliverse. He told me that I was always bringing him interesting stuff, that it was spinning off me like water from a dog. I told him that’s how I want to be!

Later, I spoke to Cam. Someone had just given him Ritalin at Denis’s new radio show Spa Town, and he was talking so fast. He thanked me for sending him literature (https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03442) I told him about the lava, and he wanted to single handedly buy the plot of lava next to the perodise lava! What a world. Light the beam for Cameron.

I’m venous today, physically spent. I took a rest day, supine on my stripped bed. My hand therapist massages lotion into my wrist, and stretches and pulls until the fibers break and the scar tissue dissolves, I guess. We have a fun rapport, I’m a little guy fighting for her attention with all the other patients, and I’m fighting hard.

On my chart at the physical therapy clinic, my name is John “Expected contribution is 0” Rogers. That’s both beautiful & poetic, and means that my insurance company is paying for everything. $472 per session. My hand therapist is only seeing a tiny fraction of that. 4 sessions could pay for my share of the lava. Jesse Louise. What a ridiculous country.

Starts with:

Through the veins of the street

Ends with:

ridiculous country

[jackdusa]

There is no other choice.

I’ve decided to rope my friends in to forming an LLC and buying a $12,000 plot of lava on the big island. I’m fighting to keep something together that is so fuzzy and diffuse that it can’t be called a star anymore. It’s a nebula, and the clumps are clumping with other clumps. The only way to keep it together now is to legally bind us to each other forever via PeroCorp.

Why do I do this? Why am I Charlie Brown with the football? I asked Helen that today. She said it’s because I still believe in what it can be. That’s the nice way to say it. The more patholgized way is that I’m still chasing the first love I felt as a formed person.

I keep having ideas. I can’t be stopped. A pair of shorts with smart fibers in the crotch to protect it. The worlds largest ball pit (very deep). A chasing app (iynyn). I can’t be stopped.

Yesterday, L and I met (for the first time) in Central Park and zipped avenue down 7th avenue, 80 blocks to the IFC Center, to see Smoking Causes Cancer with Brian. It was a comedy about French power rangers (soooo good). We got beers in the little diner after (I had forgotten my ID) and Brian ordered foul chicken wings that looked like they had been wounded.

L and I went back to Willyburg and watched Realty, another Dupieux film. It reminded me of Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which is a beautiful 60s sci fi psychedelic Berkeley Dickian fever fucking dream, people say fever dream all the time now but it can only be used to apply to this book.

I feel hopeful! I’m full of juice! The Poliverse is dead but the dream of the lava is alive, and the dream of filling in the water with more lava, of making the island bigger. Helen left, Michael left, Becca left, but Michael’s back, and the island can expand! But sometimes, to get to the sea, it has to bury a town or two. But that's ok, and when they learn it, they will find a way to a lasting piece.

Starts with:

There is no other choice

Ends with:

When they learn it they will find a way to a lasting piece.

[jackdusa]

Rectangles everywhere pulling you in. We are the truth here. 

Mike has left the island. Helen has left the island. Becca has left the island. I am an island. Which one of us will get fat first?

I sent this lava flow lot to the compound email. No one responded, because they have left the island too. 

How sad he is, alone on the island, still worshiping the cargo. Can I deploy this Feynman letter against Mike’s horseshit? He doesn’t trust me because he thinks I betrayed him and he thinks I’ll betray him and he thinks I’m Jewish. Dear Michael: I’m not Helen. I’ve erected a firewall, I love you, and I’m the best you’ve got.

Dear Helen: I’m not Michael. In fact, I’ve erected a firewall.

Dear Becca: a psychic in San Francisco informed me (in the middle of a rainstorm) that it was important that I never speak to you again. She told me I was an indigo child, and then she asked me if I was autistic.

What a mess this poliverse is. Harmony was never possible for us. There are simply too many voices. Too many committees. Too much decay, and not enough gravity.

Should I build my dome home on the lava flow? Should I live off the grid, and wait patiently for the next river of fire to bury my dome?

The poliverse will survive, in one form or another. I’ll still be here, doing these things. Maybe we’ll email back and forth, under lock and key. 

I can’t stop thinking about the dome. I can’t stop thinking about the lava. When I close my eyes, I hear a mourning dove. The fog has rolled in over the hills in the night. The air is cool and misty, and my dad is drinking coffee from a mug. We say morning, and pretend away the rancor of yesterday.

Starts with:

Rectangles everywhere pulling you in. We are the truth here.

Ends with:

even the rocks are protected by the state on the island.

[jackdusa]

There's a pattern behind the cotton wool, some signal to pick up and perceive.

I think I dreamed last night that Helen gave me back my baby blues, with interest. I remember Pero used to throw one up in the air and catch it on his tongue. The power in that tiny pill was always so funny to me, that it could cause such a surge.

When my friends go to grad school they like to cut the cord.

I'm talking to C tonight. He's the kind of person I really, really want to be friends with. Am I a poser for not having an audience? Am I a poser for not making a house team?

They called me a poser when I was in middle school. I couldn't skate that well but I carried around my little skateboard. I mean, I could skate, but I couldn't kickflip, and most importantly I wasn't reckless (in mind, body, spirit) the way they were. I wasn't a skater.

Am I an artist? Am I an engineer? That's what I told C. "I'm an artist and engineer." Am I really even an inventor? Yes, says the rumbling shale, the thick domed bedrock like Patrick's house.

No one likes these self-pitying pvs. I'll try to find the juice again. I'm trying to find it right now. Listen to the morning dove. That deep-brain trigger. Or even remember from 25 free-writes ago. The word brave evokes itself. The bird said it.

Start:

There's a pattern behind the cotton wool

End:

The bird said it.

[jackdusa]

Suffering equals pain times resistance to pain. This is a bit hard to parse but I finally get it, right this moment. If you fight the pain, you suffer more.

I'm back at work. I'm 9 minutes away from my first meeting. I'm back on the treadmill. It's 1:56. My boss's name is Bradley. He's going to reel me back in.

I feel so good today, like a magnesium flare. I'm so alive. I feel like a holographic card in a deck. A shiny card. Brian and I talked and made some quick chili.

They're going to take it all away O Lord. Dry me out, like a bouquet of flowers, dried petal vase, forever in the corner.

THIS IS MY LAST GASP!

The wave is coming, cresting above my head. The wave of dry heat, the kiln. DEHYDRATE! DEHYDRATE! DEHYDRATE! They chant.

This world reached the industrial age before it was destroyed by the heat of a kiln. We invite you to log back in.

I can hear the roar of a wave. Can you? Stay with me please. I'll be back, I promise, I swear! Please.

Together, one band, one sound.

Starts with:

Suffering equals pain times resistance to pain.

- Jack's hand therapist

Ends with:

One band, one sound.

- Sign in the break room at the therapy clinic.

[jackdusa]

Look at what people are going around saying. Shadow ain't saying shit. AssHair's spinning towards Christ, dunked down in a big metal trough built for cowslop. Cringey is in a mansion in the woods, surrounded by rainbow shadows and people with a book.

They're saying it for each other, and that's not really the point, is it? The free writes are for being free. I finished Freedom. The end didn't bother me as much this time. It's the best book I ever read. I have empathy for all of those characters, even Joey, even Connie. That book is so fucking horny.

What does it mean that Michael's art about us is so transcendent and beautiful, and Helen's art about us is so transcendent and beautiful. What does it mean about us?

Are we charmed and chosen? Are we symbols and totems and shiny moving rocks for the gaping multitude? If so, I love it.

I love the Poliverse, I love that we're still here, but there really is a chain whirling round, round, in a steel blue circle beneath.

Starts with

Look at what the people are going around saying.

Ends with

but there is a chain whirling round, round, in a steel blue circle beneath.

[jackdusa]

A bright green field, me, running, VR goggles on my face. No treadmill needed, my tentacles flopping every which way.

A bright green field, the life that I see for myself these days, as the age of AI dawns. Generated worlds, interlocking narratives, a new pedagogy. These were the things I dreamed about when I was little. This is all going to be possible now, and I'll be able to work on it if I want.

Primer, a topiary, making the physical world digital. Remember party simulator? Wormbrain's the only person I can call and just be with, at least when things are good. CringeBat is a close second, though there's always a treadmill.

If I grew up in the world of today, I would've done better. In the greenfield, maybe better still.

I have 4 days before I'm pulled back under. "Hi!" I'm waving at you.

4 more days of molten core, and then I'm back into stone. Stone is

Starts with:

A bright green field

Ends with:

stone is unman

[jackdusa]

The things you omit are more important than those you put in. There are only 12 minutes so you can't put everything. I'm on a fucking treadmill desk, what am I supposed to do?

To my right is a poster of a house cat looking at its reflection in a puddle and seeing a lion. The poster says "mindset."

Remember the Tony Robbins concert film where the guy roared? I have a cold. I'm manic cause I ate too much. My blood is glucose, I'm a bad lithium cell, vibrating red hot, all channeled on this little trickle. Toothy Passport reporting for duty. What am I? Not a painter, not a maid. Mike not hitting so hard today because we sit under the same canvas. Oblique blows, we don't blow back.

The temperature is rising in the Poliverse. We are approaching heat death, singularity. Too close or too far. There's still no equilibrium. Save me, for once. This little billiard ball wonders why can't do it. Taking stock of all of his ugliness, all of his light. Little steampunk figure, what is he? What then? I'm an inventor. I invented the idea of shorts that have crotch fibers that harden when you're about to get hit in the nuts. I'm an inventor. I never was enough. Enough for what, Donkey?

Starts with:

The things you omit are more important than those you put in.

Ends with:

donkey.

- Simone de Beauvoir

[jackdusa]

shut up christ, GPT got nothing to do with it

Starts with:

Do you regret taking the Covid vaccine?

- Michael Betts

[jackdusa]

Do you regret taking the Covid vaccine? No!

Jackson dropped his bean from Israel. It was lovely. He needs to bring his bean style to the short stories. He drops the artifice and distance and pretense. He's himself!

Attached to the bean were pictures of Leor and Jackson and Jon walking that road (everyone is a pilgrim this month). I felt the scabby wound from Thorsen re-open.

They all turned on me in the end. I stayed too long, the creepy old man upstairs, the new common enemy after Ronin was expelled. I told friends, "I'm just pretending like I'm still in college." But, "it's weird," said Kanta, and he was right.

Truth was, I missed college terribly, and I was really lonely before I moved into Thorsen. It was an insane, weird gift to be with those kids that summer and that year.

It hurt a lot to see Jon -- who had sweetly made me omelets in the mornings after I broke my foot, and helped rig a dumbwaiter so I could pully them up to my room on the third floor -- start to snarl at me with all the rest of them.

I slinked out of that house while the kids who hated me graduated in the backyard, glowing gold in the setting California sun.

If I had been in school with them I probably would've turned on me too.

Shoutout to all of them who I still believe in and care about, even Kanta.

Starts with:

Do you regret taking the Covid vaccine?

- Michael Betts