May 2013
Laying in my bed. Fail in sleep to pass the time. There is a whore red rose wrapping its thorns in my mind. Yeah, my escape from this is the dull drum of an 8 hour work day that any soulless robot could handle. In its defense, my job is a Banksy vandal spraying over my spirit like paychecks are the revolutionaries in this poetry doesn't pay day and age. I wake up at 3 in the morning. I look out my window to find my neighborhood dead asleep face down against a curb underneath a star littered sky. The moon as fool as I was for holding on to my x for so long. She was a roll I couldn't stop, like my brakes were broke in for reckless abandon behind lust’s wheels that fell off by the end of it. The ride, totally worth it. Now I’m searching for “signs” and the only thing I’m finding is “Stop”. Whenever I look outside of me, I seem to get lost faster than I found answers this time around last year. Wondering if I’m ever going to physically hear the voice of God. Again, looking outside from within.
My days have consisted of trying not to get fired, well sort of. My lunch breaks are filled with music made by friends who I don’t get to see much of these days. Practicing poems that I penned for girls I no longer conversate with, let alone love/miss/kiss. Wish I was a better person to all of them. Pissed it all away in just a few moments. Its just the way life is. I read “Have no regrets, at one point in time, everything you did is what you wanted.” Easier said than done with the hallmark remarks. We live and die and sometimes want to change what happens in between. But for the most part, as long as I get out some writing, its all good to me.
My parents are worried. Both have always thought I would drink a bit too much. But it wasn't until I woke up two hours after my family was supposed to take off out of town to see my older brother for his big three oh on a couch of a person I thought I would never speak to ever again, she found me passed out outside the bar where I was surrounded by friends but still alone, that I noticed, hey, maybe its time to take it easy. Hard to admit defeat. Soft gestures speaking the loudest to me. Knowing my physical location on this planet doesn't help me realize where I am. And yet… here I am.
I’m tired of these reruns and I don’t even watch TV I hate knowing what this girl is about to do next because even when I don’t smoke, this life is like watching a skipping DVD changing scenes, back to the beginning of the end of the start of the finish. Catch my riff? I've been playing this song, plucking notes to self from my own heart strings for so long, I don’t even notice when I’m singing along. I pity party hard like no one’s business should matter but mine. Pay attention to the glory hole in my chest like a blessed devil hollow from the Bleach series with a fetish for exes making messes. I’ll probably need some to clean after this. My point being, sobriety is boring, but under extreme circumstances “necessary”. Forgiveness is a gift you can only give yourself and sometimes being selfish is healthy. Wealthy I've never been in the sense of money and personal belongings. But I've had so many second chances at life with grace in the form of family around me, I might as well be a world bank. And if this seems all over the place, that’s because it is. I’m picking up all the pieces as I type this.
-DCR
Growing up, I never knew what I wanted to be. Alive with curiosity, I found such a wide variety of topics interesting, that the concept of specialization, seemed to me to be a betrayal of the vastly connected and amazing world to which I was born. As time went on, much of this curiosity was suppressed in favor of a focus on analysis and ill defined progress, which left me with a degree, and little direction. After college, I felt more lost than ever before, with the added weight of an incomprehensible debt, and a highly skeptical outlook thanks all I had learned about “humanity” through my studies in history. That summer I spent every morning decorating one of my favorite landmarks along route 66, just in time for my words, thoughts, and art to be covered up by the name of the next tourist that wandered through with a two dollar can of spray paint. Strangely enough, I found comfort in this metaphor, and rejoiced in the release and silent conversation that I has having with strangers just passing through.
One of my favorite memories of that place, started off as a hot summer afternoon. Immersed in the paint fumes, and the sound waves penetrating my consciousness I barely noticed when the rain started to fall. Even as it made finishing my piece impossible because of the dripping, I persisted, until every piece of clothing I was wearing was infinitely heavier and I was moments away from iPod induced electro-shock therapy. Sprinting back to the car, I became entranced in the rhythmic patterns the rain made in the mud, and how they corresponded to the beat that was faithfully pulsing through my earbuds. I could have spent hours standing there in the rain, contemplating my existence, and the potentiality of countless plans as they floated through my increasingly anxious mind.
Once in my car, I quickly headed back towards town, and was immediately out of the storm, and was quickly struck by how dry everything was compared to me and all my belongings. As a student of history, learning how quickly everything can change in this world , was for me, something of a right of passage. While some saw larger trends unfolding over decades and centuries, I was constantly fascinated with just how quickly the world we know becomes one that is barely recognizable. No doubt a product of the twentieth century, I, like so many, was never all that comfortable with the concept of change, at least as it directly related to my life. Having misplaced so much of the curiosity that once fueled by younger years, change and progress instead represented something to be feared, not cherished.
Every morning as I arrived at cadillac ranch, I would first take a walk around and examine each of the ten cars, searching for a mark that I had been there before. Most often having become fused with the marks of travelers, our combined communication would become the canvas, on which I would attempt to identify and navigate that days questions. Trading a renewed sense of curiosity, and wonder, for my nervous anxiety about the future, I finally came to terms with change while standing running through that muddy field, as the rain pounded out the beat of a song I have long forgot. Finding comfort in the evolution of ideas, and the power of human ingenuity, my vision of the future is now much more optimistic than ever before, and while I recognize the many problems that face the inhabitants of this planet, I refuse to abandon hope.
-Joshua Genius
This article will be the first article of many that I plan to, as Maya Angelo would say: let happen—or write. I woke up today in reflection…I do this more often than regular thinking or forward thinking—I like to call it—I am feeling like I want to discuss a few topics that have been major themes with me this semester—most of them reoccurring. So, I feel that this is the perfect opportunity to discuss some of them and how I fit into them.
Sometimes things get stagnant to a point that movement is the only option, and letting go should be an afterthought. I have been creating clear visions and achieving them under circumstances where I thrive and learn, but there comes a time when I feel like I am overdue. I begin to shift my patterns, and change how I approach what I see as still.
Perception is everything and I keep my sense keen, but most of us do not speak of a skewed reality. I tend to twist my viewpoints to find meaning, but I am beginning to understand things for what they are—much simpler than I attribute them to be. How I look at things is what they will appear to be.
So, my first solution is to set myself free. Back out. Thought first, then I figure a lot of the feelings and ties that I hold otherwise will dissipate too. Rationalizations save us. I think I hold on for too long by choice—subconscious or whatever level deems itself unrecognizable to begin with. I feel that my desire for things to last surpasses their longevity. Either way, I hold on and sometimes I hold on for dear life.
First I want to discuss loss, and death. I think that the human conceptualization of life transformation—or dying and moving on (or not)—is subjective times 8 billion [rough estimate of humans on the Earth]. Therefore, I have the right to my own, my own epistemology—my own truth. AJ Swope’s death at the beginning of this year moved me. I get very sad and withdrawn about death—then angry…like why? Now I feel like, ok we all do and it’s the only thing guaranteed. AJ and I worked on the same floor of the Chase building in Amarillo (tallest building in the city..which isn’t very tall but for us in yellow city is kinda cool)..anyways—We would talk about everything. We would philosophize, bitch, laugh, and discuss various topics from politics to vacations; especially music. I know that he loved Aerosmith and he would tell me the most adventurous stories of him and his wife’s vacations. He inspired me about the love he had for life and the people he held close to him. He had an exciting life, knew what he loved, and he did he was passionate about. I admired and respected Aj for that. When he passed away I was really affected because my feel around the office and beginning of my school semester was not looking so bright. [I have lived my life in semesters—when I was not taking classes I was pregnant and they go in ‘trimesters’; therefore, my relevance of time and space is usually somehow related to Academia] I felt dim for a while, and then I became inspired by him and this re-occurring theme of transformation.
See, I have lost a great deal of very close people in my 27 years of life..so I become sensitive to loss..or I could say transformation here. My cousin Tonya (that has three beautiful daughters) passed away due to a rare form of breast cancer last year around the exact same time. I also suffered child bereavement after my father died when I was four and lost both sets of my grandparents by the time I was 15 years old. So, for some reason I have always felt very close to the other side. Metaphysically, I feel connected to things that we cannot see. I know what I feel—and that is who I am. (foundation of my beliefs—Who feels it knows it Jah). But something happened to me at this time in my life, I am inspired to be a better person by others passing on. I am grateful in a way that I had not experienced before. I was inspired to fine tune my life. To love every second of every day, really dig deep for my passions and exude them through every walk of life, to smile, to laugh, to never hold myself back, to be happy, and to continue to drink whiskey if I shall please--are some of the things that I am inspired by AJ. Cheers.
I think that the most inspiring thing to me is pain. I want to say that it is something good, or positive—but the truth is that whether the pain is mine or someone else’s—it makes me move. Dark side of the Sun. Pain is the most transformational aspect of my life and that is how I make meaning of it—a true existentialist.
Inspiration usually hits me in the face. I am a dream chaser waking up high off of my latest memory. Consumed like Alice, in the pursuit in what is inherent…now discovering that what I have been searching for has always been within me. I have said this before, in many different ways. Now, the meaning has transformed and I understand what I want the most. My biggest desires have to do with things that we do not see and the ‘insides’. I want my human experience to be absolutely abundant with love, great people, and memorable experiences. I want to see my son joyful—whatever that means for him. Hope only survives on hope; I plan to release my fears.
-Sunny H. Alexander
Don't miss the new album from NYC's own Vinyette
available online now!!!