29 December 2015, revisions 27 December 2016

I'll hesitantly admit that Sam's teasing about me stirring soup all the time has gotten a bit annoying. I hesitate because isn't fun to admit to being annoyed. Think about the times you have had to do that.

I was raised by one patient mother and by two perpetually annoyed men, opposites in every other aspect but that.

As we have all grown a little, I have seen these men soften some and I in turn have become my own hybrid of their perpetually annoyed character

Through these experiences I've learned that annoying people usually have something to teach.

I know I force myself into these situations as if on purpose, but it is rarely easy to see it that way.

And sometimes all the jukebox needs is a kick, or sometimes a train hits a little bump and gets off track, or sometimes all the elbow needs is a little grease, or sometimes motivation needs a metaphor, productive or destructive. The lesson tends to have something to do with some kind of size comparison. May as well make a list and pick one at random. I will have to compile this list. I'll have to compile this list of interesting metaphors for motivation and hard work. Maybe someone has already compiled this interesting list of useful metaphors for motivation and hard work.

I came home without having checked my work email for about a week. My house was empty and frigid when I got here, far colder than outside. Everything looked pretty much as I had left it. There were new dishes in the drying rack by the sink, but otherwise it was clean. Clean except for the garbage piled around the can. The can has a fresh bag, but the floor is filthy as usual. It is cold and dirty, just like my soul, and I want to feel good, but it's too cold to masturbate, and I don't have any weed left. Because I forgot to get more.

Do you fear you're full of grotesque traits hiding behind the mirror where you can't detect them? Everyone else sees them.

A nearly comprehensive list of size comparisons being used as metaphors for change could be useful, or at least interesting, if only briefly. Yes, this could be an interesting list. I suppose I'll have to compile this list, this list of interesting metaphors for motivation and hard work.

When I showered earlier, the steam was so dense I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I'm not exaggerating. And just now, I pulled a spoon from the pot I have boiling on the stove and watched the steam emanate directly off of it. I inhaled the vapor containing a familiar combination of rosemary, thyme, vegetables and chicken fat. Do they say the sense of smell is tied to memory? It was between that breath and this moment that I've been thinking about this stuff. The pot is still boiling. I need to check the water level and smell it again.

What is the point of having a muse if you can't recognize and follow their vision?

When I look in the mirror I feel as though I'm being hustled. Do I seem this way to others? Do I come across like a pitchman for my own value?

Like an advertisement for my soul?

What is art?

What is the difference between a bowl and a lens? Isn't a bowl full of liquid similar in structure? I wonder how annoyingly forced I could get some of these analogies. What would piss Sam off?

And what is soup?

And what is the lesson?

I've been scolded at parties a few times by artists I've met out here for not putting any of the work I do out.

"It's time to put that shit out there, man." I'm never forthright about my reasons for hiding it, it's awkward.

So I've been thinking about this transition, which I am not even sure I've yet begun, from slovenly apathy, to curious passion, on to intense drive, then on to dangerous obsession, and it’s subsequent demise.

This path has it's own arc built in, it's a story waiting to be told.

Your life is a story waiting to be lived.

Maybe a great story, maybe a shitty one.

soup soup soup soup soup

tedduardo

September 9, 2013

Earning interest off pennies lent to beggars, then begging they beg beg beg a different way. Words melt Spiders weave Cough suppresses Mind erases Half bad taste. Half lazy intellect. Graphite pipe dreams Don't earn self respect What do you have on? A thong. Wind and solar- Harness the power. Let natural energy guide you. Do what you're told. Work is dope. Honor thy father and thy mother. But don't end up With permanent bad breath. Or a permanent scowl Or a permanent smile. Keep making that face And it will stick forever. Lost my jet black mind Generation five Wrapped in leather Back there waiting Eighty-sixed from the hive.

tedduardo

September 3, 2013

There is a very real abyss Right beneath my consciousness. An emotional vacuum Filled with laughter and cheap booze. My toes wiggle at the precipice The void looks right back My smoldering gut Replaces guilt And pride Replaces shame And hunger Replaces longing And love

tedduardo

My father's golf clubs

Are these it? Sticks and balls? These are it I think. This is all there is. These are what he has for us. We criticize him openly quite often for his lack of productive passion, forgetting about his love for that game. When addicts, or those with otherwise compulsively repetitive tendencies, love something passionately it's different than the rest of love. Maybe love isn't even the right word. And I wouldn't really know enough to draw the distinction further because I'm too deep in the dark of it. Maybe addict isn't the right word either. It probably isn't. When a scumbag finds something to love what oozes forth is generally grotesque, especially to loved ones and those uninitiated in scumbaggery. Literature, however, is full of scumbags and modern literature in particular has a rich history of imbuing these figures with all kinds of transcendent virtues. Such is the lens through which I've been forced, having no other option but the hatred I've found futile to bear, to see my father. Steve drove a couple different jeep eagles over the years; all dented, worn hand-me-downs from his former in-laws, our mother's folks. You could usually only get in on one side and if you failed to call shotgun and sat in the back, you sat flat, knees by your ears because of all the junk: un-paid bills, beer cans, coupon books, jackets, empty cigarette packs, and golf stuff. So much fucking golf stuff. We'd go cat'n around, which meant running errands. Cat'n around felt so cool. Undiagnosed, the man has about every nervous personality disorder in the textbook. Waiting in line at the bank he'd do one of two things, hit on any surrounding women or hold his hands together, point them down, straighten his arms, wiggle his posterior, practicing his putt on his omnipresent invisible green with the focus and precision of a Jedi. "Sir, may I help you?" Back to flirting. The us open is on Father's Day. It always is. It's the only thing he enjoys on that day, which always made that day easy: feed him drinks and leave him be. I've never been a father so I don't know, but I've known enough such souls to intuit that part of what a dad goes through at some point is the concept of legacy. What am I passing down? They may ask. Andy and I each crack a beer and light a smoke and then we each pull on the one white glove. We agree the smell and feeling of these actions fill us with nostalgia for a time we only experienced by proximity to this smelly fat man's obsession. Years after we left the church, after she calmed down about it considerably, our mom told us if she could wish nothing else for us it would be that we find love and that we travel the world. Our father values those things, I think, on some abstract level, but what I now know is that what he really wants for us is that we don't hate each other and that we enjoy a little golf together from time to time.

tedduardo

12 May 2016

8:54

It would have been better to have started work on this back around 3am, when I woke up.

I think maybe, on this day, I have begun to hang loose. Or today my looseness is hung. Or I realize I've been hanging loose all along, but only now I realize the cost, or I'm beginning to notice. No, I've always known that, seen it, sensed it. Yes, I'm saying I've felt the holy ghost's breath on my sack as it hung loose in the stale breeze.

What's happened is I've become aware this morning, in a twilight haze of chemical confusion, of certain nuances having to do with the trajectory on which I've found myself, and don't say or lack there of, ok? And can we please not talk about the cost, not yet at least?

I've hung loose. Yes, this looseness hangs, dude. Dude, it hangs fucking hard. It took two years to sit down and write about this topic without having to resist the urge to etymologically dissect this phrase and that's all I'll say about my resistance to approaching the subject directly. Well, I may say a few more things, but none of them have to do with what has happened in those two years. Please don't make me go there. For your sake.

Let's see.

The phrase doesn't mean a fucking thing. It doesn't do a fucking thing. It's disposable. It describes garbage. It is garbage. Or refuse. Excrement works too.

Cowabunga. Cool-a-mundo. Cool your jets. California. That shit cray.

Garbage can mean everything to someone who has nothing and the discovery of human feces in an unexpected place isn't that different than a crystal ball. You might turn the sidewalk into a palate and your office into a canvas, if you're lucky, and would that be any different than what I'm doing now with language in empty space?

By way of grounding analogies, you can shove your dark matter and your black hole comparisons up your ass. Go smell your own fart in the bathroom you fucking pig. Fucking clown. Don't even try to get on our level. Don't even ask yourself what we mean. Go play in the sun. Go to a fucking festival, you walking punchline.

Excuse me, as I was saying: we're already dead. We're past waiting at the gallows. We're all hung loose, some looser than others, some loose as a god damned goose. I'm going to take a break to check on my cracked skin, to clean and dress it.

tedduardo

24 September 2015

Let's together try and measure the absolute limits of unchecked benevolent obsession, shall we?

Is it something other than love?

Is it tangible?

How does it occur naturally?

Think, what are the consequences of sustained, unrequited desire?

Each natural desire maintained and unfulfilled carries potentialities, eventualities, and drama with the power to save or destroy.

Each of us know this inside yet typically exist in a perpetual state of denial.

What thoughts occupy your brain right before you fall asleep at night?

I refer, of course, to the times you've eaten dinner (or maybe just a snack), brushed your teeth, perhaps bathed, changed into pajamas, just turned off the light, and finally made contact, skull to pillow, with the intention of falling asleep and didn't just happen upon sleep out of exhaustion or inebriation, as is so often the case with me these days. Usually inebriation.

Is there a pattern, a motif, a cognitive standard running through those twilight moments that sandwich your slumber?

Is there another you in there?

Do we harbor hostage identities?

How many?

Which lies hold your prisoner most secure?

You're deeply in love with those pretty little prisoners and can feel it in your groin.

When I black out I often scream profanities in my sleep.

This frightens those close to me,

I'm only aware of this habit through the context of their fear.

I'll wake sweaty and twisted, spine and fingers in pain.

Beautiful tingly wet nerve pain first informed me what it really means to love alcohol.

Ponder upon your dirty little mind, my friend.