"I wonder if women get tired of being beautiful." "Sure they do." I’m certain we’re both whimsically looking at that stunning petite specimen, charming the bartender for drinks. I manage a growl, or my stomach does, at least. "Why is it I’m more inclined to spend my last five dollars on a good martini and candlelight, than something to eat?" "Because you’re an addict of vibe." he blissfully relates. She’s sparkly from head to toe, and the patrician bartender is elated she’s paying such attention to his scowl. Her drinks were half price, even though she’d left a table of two guys. Fuck it’s easy when you’re beautiful and/or smart I elbow him. Everything we curse to get, and the people who possess it, curse to run from. We high five. If you want half price drinks, take the bus to the queer part of town, for here only scintillating crumpets and/or bad bar loyalists shoot cheap. We pay full fare for our shots, but at least nobody bothers us. "I can watch these freaks to my heart’s content." I resent the remark. I have a fondness for freaks, and probably, most people consider me one of their very rank and file.

In retrospect,
I’d say those five or six yes most certainly six years were the hardest of my life. The level of stress I lived with was unbelievable. Most people would have filed bankruptcy, or simpler yet, have given up. I was attempting to live the way I had before, in the moment, not worried about a future excessively, in the most expensive place on the US west coast. The rents were actually more than New York City, due to the dot-com boom. Although I had little experience and no formal schooling at the craft, I decided to veer into visual art, because writing (and its related publication) had proven itself to be a desperate or hopeless endeavor. I also vowed, just to make things impossible, that I wouldn’t sell out, and produce things I didn’t believe in. That was the clinching line in the rotten track which derailed my train. In the midst of it, I lost a few life’s loves. Compared to my previous life, I became a workaholic, a hermit who seldom ventured from his established neighborhood ruts. I had fabricated more to do than a single person had a wherewithall of moments to properly inhabit. I sat at my desk for fifteen hours a day, hardly ate, and got little exercise, except for shlepping potential art supplies found on rummaged corners, to my disasterous garage.

People respect a shame
for not being smeared with large shiny medals, and honors which grant you the ability to charge excessive amounts to prove you’re valuable. If you can remember innumerable facts and ephemera, you’re an asset. If you can assemble that mess into ‘order’, you’re sought out. If you can synthesize that order to meta-order (also known as 'simplification') you’re a genius, and that commands respect. If you have a misfortunate life which grants you immense wisdom, you’re expected to suffer, so your humility kindly protects you from the pitfalls which glamorous people, and immense intellects fall prey to, like heavy egos' (and thus, the) ability to see opportunities to sell (an inflated vision of) out yourself (with such force others believe it too). "Th’ass a pretty grim assessment of things," my increasingly bleary bar stool neighbor concisely slurs to confide. "I like to think they’ll get their due later, having to break though cracks in concrete as a dandelion next life, only to be stepped on, or poisoned Round-Up or Paraquat." Hmmm. That’s a pleasant thought. "Tell me, does it help when the boss you described earlier who’s related to the chairman botches another contract you could have properly bid, and cashes his paycheck at the same venue you do, but his five times your pittance is for half as much done?" "I see your point. It’s easy to abstract karma, when it’s arm’s reach from you."

This island intersects us.
Do you think that woman feels bad about her free drinks, because she knows where they came from? Do the geniuses feel alone, supported by lesser models, and surrounded by utter stupidity? Those of their ilk, are competition for laurels. How painful it must be to remember what everyone sleepwalks through. I wonder if beautiful women tire of being magnetic? Of course they do. Do people ride the initial high of winning subsequent races? No; it’s the crunching fall they think of, and the indeterminate expectations of the next (and the next) blue river of ribbons they must live up to. Each challenge is met with the fear of failure, not the giddy possibility of taking the prize. It is draining to consider the weight of success, we dream or dare to dream of.

That was some wise-ass shit you dispensed, boy.
The guy was about ten years older than I was, but he’s an indisputable elder—because he has religiously projected himself that way. He has created his position, out of the imaginary field of possible places to inhabit. People can’t easily dupe him; their rules do not apply to his estate. He overwhelms their store-bought philosophies with a rough and dream-ridden real life. They are disarmed, and present their weapons before him. His card of court is warrior-fool. We bring his gaping jaws and related grins to satisfactory consultations with Fate the mad jokester his/her self. "You know that guy," he begins.
Sure.
They all know him.
The one who reads constantly. Night and day. Wears the ski pants in summer. Lugs three shopping bags of random tomes around, doesn’t matter the subject to means, takes all words in, seldom stipulates why. That joker. I know him. He’s so engrossed with his next assignment, rather than taking a meaningful piss, the jolly rat soils his pants. Have you smelt the bugger lately? Jiminy-Christ-! Useta be, he took care of himself, and the doorway he slept in more. Not that it meant much, but a fair-small slide’s a disaster in his lot. Disaster of thin margin, exploiting the fact reading is beneficial, reading's good, he’s learning something, he’s driven, he’s motivated, he’s not drunk. But verily, he’s a mess. He’s working the paradigm, so people plug their noses and trundle by. It is possible he is not comprehending a single word in the context of the sentence before it, yet we laud him for reading instead of just laying there. Functionally, there may be little difference indeed.

That’s good, I thought. Graffiti artist bad, reeking street reader good. Art is subversive, reading is supporting the paradigm, because you’re ingesting, and organizing sanctioned ideas=equal=words. Mass market means it was meant to be published and dispersed. He’s investing in what we’ve created to be true. Well, we’ve created it this way. It’s our big giant canvas to fling struggle against. Some ensure its elegance, with an easy belief the result will be perfect. It may look like hell to others, but they like it. If they enliven it with love, that becomes real. “I suppose it’s the riotous roller coaster of life, where you heartily yell on the downturns, as you pick up speed to the desperate G-force depression at the bottom.” That dream speeds back into my waking consciousness. What … did I just utter? You said … I am woozy for a moment, staggering under the reaction, to the reenactment of that feeling. The roller coaster of pundits defining up, and down, can not agree on the optimal course to take. “That’s not it.” [The roller coaster of ups & downs decrees the fun is preceding the bottoms (& related compressions) we call depression & try to avoid.] In other words, we’re screaming with joy only when and where we are plummeting towards our bottoms, where the emotional G-force crushes us. I was strangely in two worlds at once, both the dream I’d recently left, and the conversation at the bar, with the dubious patron, who looked more like a sprite in coveralls who worked on flying carpets.

It was a weird nitro-powered night blasting flames out of uncapped headers. Just tying it on, my relic laptop got so hot it toasted my leg/crotch. Dude, you’re trippin’. What’s up? “Oh, the usual. Collision of dreams and reality?” You won’t believe this, but I already had this conversation, in a jet cockpit. Why wouldn’t I believe it? I’ve had weirder stuff than that go down. I’m sometimes forced to think my life is completely bizarre. Then I orebit around the fate it’s utterly normal, and everyone goes through this collision with circumstance beyond their control. It’s a roller coaster all right. We’re busy building the track in front of us, for cheaper and better trills. Hammer routes at night, ride to satiate waking hours. The process never-ending, lifetime upon lifetimes of hours fading to centuries at the whims of pumping adrenaline.