Just a few blocks from the glitz and overpriced tourist nature of the strip is lo-fi residential urban wasteland where an slumped over hunchback elderly man in a blue trucker cap, polyester slacks, and industrial engineer work shirt initates a huanting melody of scraped soft metal walker against the well worn unmaintained sidewalk of Sands Ave. The sun has set he is most alone now with nothing but the constant flow of traffic to keep him company as he pushes on like the ant, motivated by something not readily apparant on this human beings face, in fact his face is hidden, possibly focused on the ground in front of him looking for any familiar signs which might indicate close proximity to his dwelling, whatever form it may take, trash dumpster, back alley, hallway, or undersized apartment in the concrete jungle. What propells him on his journey from convenience store to unknown destination. The old man does not look to be conscious of the surrounding reality as if frozen inside his body, his mind, trapped walking like a snail crawls along the sidewalk surface in the dew of the early morning sprinkler runoff. Soon enough he will disappear back into the biovac of working class abodes concentrated so close to the million dollars condos and billion dollar hotels of Las Vegas.
The cooling temperatures of late bring out more people, a group of men are helping a woman jump start her car, one of the guys happens to be an employee at the local dry cleaner/laundrymat, plenty of biovauc residents busy between shifts at the casinos or construction site cleaning clothes for a family of six, I feel like am shopping for towels as one lady stacks about thirty five of them in stacks of seven across a plastic emrald green table. The next generation of uncontrollable heathen kids run around unattended as their older sisters do their best to keep them under control while dad watches television, preoccupied by some other thoughts, the mother busily, frantically tries to keep up with ever increasing load of clothes from the wall of driers behind her, a battle she is sure to lose.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Weekday Transformation
Never the thought the suburbs would invade my favorite bar, but due to more than my recent transient nature of late at this particular establishment, it should be no surprize that management in its post World Cup financial windfall could take a few chances in reinventing the tavern without fear of clearing a profit this fiscal year. First of all, I never really spend too many nights in this place, tends to be during the afternoon or early morning, both times where the 8pm to 12am crowd has already cleared out for the night leaving the counter top vacant for the locals who quietly bide their time waiting for the Karoke singers, trivia participants, and college kids to vacate the premises. Things calm down a bit, the pop music gets turned off and the cool hipster rock replaces it, conversation turns to international football, England, along with the relavtive down turn of the bar itself, as one by one all of our favorite serves leave for other occupations leaving us drunkies in the lurch.
Still, while sitting here in the moment on a barstool watching indistinctive twenty somethings throw darts or gather in small circles commenting on how much they like the Fiona Apple song, another unmemorable karoke singer does their best off key rendition of a muted melody vaguely resembling the original. What is the purpose of these types lip syncing to cds on a terrible tin can mono soundsystem, a resonance that takes me back to the early days of AM radio with spontaneous speaker feedback included to shock the patrons out of their defensive minded protective coma, Pavlovian dogs never had it this hard. My time at this pub is quickly coming to a close. Friday afternoon should be much better. The England national soccer team has a qualifying game for the Euro 2012, which will offer up a crowd with whom I much more familiar with, not this one tonight who just seem deseparte for something to do, as an alternative to watching television, while pretending to have a microcosm of a social life, Vegas might be partially to blame, there are not too many local spots that do not already follow this well practiced formula of karoke, trivia night, mash up dj, and resident cover band who can test the patience of even the most peace loving saint, what?, a charge at the door for this garbage, why not just put the jukebox back on, at least we have a choice on what we want to hear.
Still, while sitting here in the moment on a barstool watching indistinctive twenty somethings throw darts or gather in small circles commenting on how much they like the Fiona Apple song, another unmemorable karoke singer does their best off key rendition of a muted melody vaguely resembling the original. What is the purpose of these types lip syncing to cds on a terrible tin can mono soundsystem, a resonance that takes me back to the early days of AM radio with spontaneous speaker feedback included to shock the patrons out of their defensive minded protective coma, Pavlovian dogs never had it this hard. My time at this pub is quickly coming to a close. Friday afternoon should be much better. The England national soccer team has a qualifying game for the Euro 2012, which will offer up a crowd with whom I much more familiar with, not this one tonight who just seem deseparte for something to do, as an alternative to watching television, while pretending to have a microcosm of a social life, Vegas might be partially to blame, there are not too many local spots that do not already follow this well practiced formula of karoke, trivia night, mash up dj, and resident cover band who can test the patience of even the most peace loving saint, what?, a charge at the door for this garbage, why not just put the jukebox back on, at least we have a choice on what we want to hear.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Numbered Days
As I get older the thing that weighs most on the mind is all the wasted time, the hours watching television shows, hanging out drinking in bars, hallucinating on drugs, and wandering through dangerous streets of foriegn countries looking for something, experience, wisdom, or connection. Not sure this idea, object, or person ever surfaced, the only thing left to do is sort through the catalouge of adventures in an attempt to discover a common thread, a bridge connecting such a wide assortment of pursuits that very few would bother to spend a lifetime undertaking. So here I am 40 years later with all this raw data spread out through twenty years of writing and photography. A countercultural collection of rumors, short hand, and over exposed images, left to become nothing more than a barfly of the 21st century gathering wrinkles, opting for polyester clothing, where alcohol does nothing more than pass the time between the early hours before the rising sun.
But why the sudden compulsion to do what so many others in Las Vegas already spending their early evenings formulating into ritual. Is this when it starts? The down slide into death. Am I doing nothing more than priming the body for delivery into the afterlife or just foregoing the sleeping pills to embrace an easier as well as somewhat more social method of getting some rest. All the binging of the past 25 years has finally peaked, not in a sense that the spirit of indulging in such bustle has dissapated, no in fact the strength of personal conviction in regards to living like Jim Morrison only seems to grow. Most 40 year olds do not experience narcotic induced blackouts, my life appears to embrace a few a month and when the xanax flowed freely, more like a few a week. A current relapse into the arms of this particular sedative made me realize how easy it is for my reckless nature to take over the steering wheel and drive the bus with blind fold properly placed over the eyes. Lucky to still be alive, more like lucky to have friends who care enough about me while enjoying my antics to make sure safe passage back to a hotel, friends house or my home has been attained. There have been a few moments of waking up in hotels without recollection of how my arrival had taken place, disgusting acts of instinct subconscious might which if harnesses could potentially be the active agent in conducting mental telepathy amongst human beings. No different than a chain of ants communicating during a ground swell of industrious nature, a living system disassembling organic matter at one end of the chain to arrive at the low end of stream like barges on a river.
The most difficult part is to get over the guilt of waste, of the constant desire to continue dashing away the days as if I had achieved some secret immortality, kept to myself as the acts of self abuse continue to increase with such a level of intentional harm those around would be entirely convinced I had made a pact with the devil over some base desire of achievement that was nothing more than a ruse for my soul, to be tormented day after day inacting animalistic commotions as payment for series of the catstrophes strewn throughout my existence. The hard dollar has arrived, a cash reward that will never be fully earned, just dangled about as an exit, as a tropical oasis, as a means to an end. The ability to wake in the morning with no plans, no commitments, no expectations, to drink, fuck, and do whatever I please, which is kind of what I do now, but with a job mixed in.
I have not found a way to seperate complete rigid dedication to the ebb and flow of living in the work moment, isolated from the bars, restuarants, and any sort of fun. Why, can't there be both? But, allowing the good times to spill over into the job has rapidly declined into an impassible mountain range that only grows in height exponential height with each passing year. Recovery is like voodoo, sometimes it is there, other times it completely abandons you and all hope of ever returning which makes life like one big drug junkie come down, the complex range of emotions in that time has corroded my sanity, drawing the well to a status of emptiness. The super bouts of multi day free for alls have become nothing more than beat downs from invisible aggressors who take pleasure on watching me suffer the long road back to sobriety. Thankfully, there is a insoluable substance inside that keeps me going through all the pain receptors working on overload to break me, a mind fighting, trying to tell me to get straight, kick all this boozing, pill popping, and drug sniffing, at this point the battle is still up in the air.
But why the sudden compulsion to do what so many others in Las Vegas already spending their early evenings formulating into ritual. Is this when it starts? The down slide into death. Am I doing nothing more than priming the body for delivery into the afterlife or just foregoing the sleeping pills to embrace an easier as well as somewhat more social method of getting some rest. All the binging of the past 25 years has finally peaked, not in a sense that the spirit of indulging in such bustle has dissapated, no in fact the strength of personal conviction in regards to living like Jim Morrison only seems to grow. Most 40 year olds do not experience narcotic induced blackouts, my life appears to embrace a few a month and when the xanax flowed freely, more like a few a week. A current relapse into the arms of this particular sedative made me realize how easy it is for my reckless nature to take over the steering wheel and drive the bus with blind fold properly placed over the eyes. Lucky to still be alive, more like lucky to have friends who care enough about me while enjoying my antics to make sure safe passage back to a hotel, friends house or my home has been attained. There have been a few moments of waking up in hotels without recollection of how my arrival had taken place, disgusting acts of instinct subconscious might which if harnesses could potentially be the active agent in conducting mental telepathy amongst human beings. No different than a chain of ants communicating during a ground swell of industrious nature, a living system disassembling organic matter at one end of the chain to arrive at the low end of stream like barges on a river.
The most difficult part is to get over the guilt of waste, of the constant desire to continue dashing away the days as if I had achieved some secret immortality, kept to myself as the acts of self abuse continue to increase with such a level of intentional harm those around would be entirely convinced I had made a pact with the devil over some base desire of achievement that was nothing more than a ruse for my soul, to be tormented day after day inacting animalistic commotions as payment for series of the catstrophes strewn throughout my existence. The hard dollar has arrived, a cash reward that will never be fully earned, just dangled about as an exit, as a tropical oasis, as a means to an end. The ability to wake in the morning with no plans, no commitments, no expectations, to drink, fuck, and do whatever I please, which is kind of what I do now, but with a job mixed in.
I have not found a way to seperate complete rigid dedication to the ebb and flow of living in the work moment, isolated from the bars, restuarants, and any sort of fun. Why, can't there be both? But, allowing the good times to spill over into the job has rapidly declined into an impassible mountain range that only grows in height exponential height with each passing year. Recovery is like voodoo, sometimes it is there, other times it completely abandons you and all hope of ever returning which makes life like one big drug junkie come down, the complex range of emotions in that time has corroded my sanity, drawing the well to a status of emptiness. The super bouts of multi day free for alls have become nothing more than beat downs from invisible aggressors who take pleasure on watching me suffer the long road back to sobriety. Thankfully, there is a insoluable substance inside that keeps me going through all the pain receptors working on overload to break me, a mind fighting, trying to tell me to get straight, kick all this boozing, pill popping, and drug sniffing, at this point the battle is still up in the air.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Sobriety City
Is a lonely place where I never interact with anyone except in the work field where those around me only hint and joke about getting fucked up on the job. At the end of the day it is back to solitary confinement, not the kind to escape getting ass raped by the lifer convicts but to escape the legion of lunatics who want to buy drugs from me, then offer those drugs to me while staying up for days at a time talking about how their life is in a constant state of disarray, yeah, well, of course, you have an extreme set of habits and no deisre to get out from under them. Las Vegas does not help, at any hour I can find a barstool to call my own with no pressure to ever rise up from it during the hours of 12am to 9am and there have been more days than I have toes and fingers to count in this past year, can't entirely blame the World Cup and the time difference between Las Vegas and England, many of the nights freewill took over an overwhelming need to spend the entire night wasted on a variety of substances, some legal, others not, the goal had never been too clear, no females around, no real comraderie, just a strong current toward self annihilation, near heart attacks, and week long hangovers meshed together with insomnia. Those days have ended for the moment as I sit in this comfortable cell, just like country club living as long as the drugs, dependency, and idle moments don't make the sirens call. So far so good, work camp has me distract for the time being, but there are days off inbetween where sitting at a barstool feels like the right thing to do, then calling up a few friends from the super fun time brigade, only to start the cycle over once more, a cycle that feels like will never be broken, some applaude my endeavors concerning this kind of activity and this only exists because they are behind iron bars trapped in their personal middle class hell. It is all hell, if you let it effect you, but for now the effect has subsided, how long it lasts is up to me.
The Neighbor Downstairs
Loves to sit at the entrance of her condo with the door open smoking cigarettes while breathing in fresh oxygen from a collection of tanks inside her living room. My neighbor also spends time letting the pet dog roam the parking lot, waiting for the animal to crap in the street something that is viciously frowned uponby the housing association. A few months ago she told me the housing association was attempting to have her thrown out for some mysteriously unknown reason. The dog crap had to be one of the violations, the housing association has no tolerance for such activity and has erected a series of pet poop plastic bag patrol kiosks for dog walkers to clean up and discard their beloved pet excrement. On any given day there are at least twenty residents sidling up alongside their canine counterparts, either just off of work or heading to it in the immidiate future. How anyone can stand to let a dog linger in condominum for 8 to 10 hours five days a week is beyond me? But by the looks of all the doggie owners no one here seems to have a problem with it. My other neighbor who lives here part time might have been the whistle blower, not sure who he knows, but after short discussion some time ago in regards to the dilapidated state of the brick retaining wall in front our condonminum block as well as a brief dialouge about all the dog crap in front the place, no sooner was the wall repainted and the old lady under siege from the invisible hands of the local association, which is not the regional association who oversees the entire property of condos, apparently some of the condos are not under the jurisdicition of the local association, it is very confusion but as long as they get their checks respectively, I get to live in relative peace and quiet.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
The Wild Roses
The wild roses have shown me human emotion recently and reestablishing connectivity has regenerated feelings, emotions, and empathy that use to be closed off in the past twenty years. This rebirth does not settle all too well with my former robotic like observational directive to feel passion, desire, and personal selfish joy. Television shows, music, and the general public took on different meaning as if formerly unavailable layers of interpetation had just become acessible. These ideas only made me more crazy, sympathy washed over my brain, was this nothing more than the acknowledgement of failure, of death, of giving up on living outside narrow minds of American and global society, my final swan song toward down the eventual road of self delusional goodness, as well as socially accepted cultural traits like practicing religion, belief in family, and the righteousness of the government system alongside my fellow human being? A part of me wants to give up, not break away from the mistakes of the past, but keep on making them, growing older, becoming more and more irrelavant, paralyized, fragmented, numb, and uncaring about anything more than the new culturally hip idea found from the webpages of where such concepts of 21st century cool are currently being cultivated.
I had to turn my back on these rediscovered feeling, mental states, and memories because they hold nothing for me now, not in this cold digital metropolis.
I had to turn my back on these rediscovered feeling, mental states, and memories because they hold nothing for me now, not in this cold digital metropolis.
Obscured by Thought
It has been a month since I have last written anything and in this time there has only been work alongside of leisure generating a wayward station of stagnation, doubt, and the reconition of how finite my future is in this world. None these thing typcally bring joy, they only tend to bring a negative malaise that fits me like a second skin. In the days of long hangovers, little productivity, and a tightrope of wondering when my heart will give out; I can only lay in bed like some terminal patient following the arch of the sun across the horizon, on the sunny days at least and for the clouded days, twenty four hours sports channels and streaming movie sights bide my time, to destroy thought, contemplaton, analysis, and a journey down a path that only seems to run into more and more forks, circular turns, and dead ends. Grey hair on my head marks the sands of time, running thin, forming a vaccum that only increases in speed, a credit junkie, bound in chains, the latest prison sentence, ten years, everyday marked on a calender, think I am up to 70 days since the door was closed for the first time. No one person or being is keeping me under control and am free to leave at anytime, back to the streets, to the bars, to the women and binge like behavior of consuming.
This city has control over everyone in it, locked down till death to their part in keeping this monolith alive, this ragged corpse whose bones we scavenge to barely keep us fed, in constant competition for a prize that is never awarded unless you consider suicide some sort of positive affirmation. The only thing left is to go the workout yard during exercise hours, then either back to the cell or hopefully off to some state sponsored work, such as pleasing tourists, assisting the empty minded or developing new material for people like myself to watch in their cells during time off. The cell is all I know now, there use to be the world, a form of escape, a channel of hope to turn off my well engrained western cultural tendencies to buy t-shirts, drink excessively, and sponser leeches who have no intentions of ever returning my gracious generiosity, which is more than naive for my part, why think in a land of sharks, inhuman beasts, and weasel like sneaks that there would be anyone that contained strength, determination, and virtue to stand up again the metallic towers of the strips though possibly in defeat, to stand up nonetheless with shaking fists yelling " You will suck me into your dark cloud of 21st century slavery." My new goal is to not die here, die here before my time, from the excessive drugs to the inadequate sleep, seeing the sunrise, whether off to work or off to bed has been the fast track to insanity and the lunacy has been winning out lately, no more though, this is a death march through blood, bones, and the corpses of the captured, gates lay ahead and even as they appear to move farther away by the looks of my eyes, my heart knows soon enough I will scale those heights and leave everything about this city behind.
This city has control over everyone in it, locked down till death to their part in keeping this monolith alive, this ragged corpse whose bones we scavenge to barely keep us fed, in constant competition for a prize that is never awarded unless you consider suicide some sort of positive affirmation. The only thing left is to go the workout yard during exercise hours, then either back to the cell or hopefully off to some state sponsored work, such as pleasing tourists, assisting the empty minded or developing new material for people like myself to watch in their cells during time off. The cell is all I know now, there use to be the world, a form of escape, a channel of hope to turn off my well engrained western cultural tendencies to buy t-shirts, drink excessively, and sponser leeches who have no intentions of ever returning my gracious generiosity, which is more than naive for my part, why think in a land of sharks, inhuman beasts, and weasel like sneaks that there would be anyone that contained strength, determination, and virtue to stand up again the metallic towers of the strips though possibly in defeat, to stand up nonetheless with shaking fists yelling " You will suck me into your dark cloud of 21st century slavery." My new goal is to not die here, die here before my time, from the excessive drugs to the inadequate sleep, seeing the sunrise, whether off to work or off to bed has been the fast track to insanity and the lunacy has been winning out lately, no more though, this is a death march through blood, bones, and the corpses of the captured, gates lay ahead and even as they appear to move farther away by the looks of my eyes, my heart knows soon enough I will scale those heights and leave everything about this city behind.
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