Or Give Me Death

Freedom.
Freedom is ambiguous, but has one defining concept; the lack of total control, the openness and wherewithal to greet each day with the knowledge that what may come can never be know, but the mindset, experience, and wisdom to handle any situation.

As you might guess, I recently moved out into my own apartment. I pay my own bills, and rent, have a bit of fun, but responsibly. I go to my job on time because my freedom depends on my job. It's a tricky balance, and one I am lucky enough to be able to support. I know a lot of people my age are still struggling to make rent, or stuck at home, or in a bad situation. I treasure each decision I have the freedom to make because of what I have.

I missed being able to go out with no plan in mind, or to have a last minute change of heart and head somewhere other than my intended destination, or finding an event that interests me and being able to plan a specific night to go. One such occasion the other day resulted in three new friendships that were exactly what I was looking for in this crazy neighborhood. A fun night was had, and numbers exchanged, and for the first time in almost four years I feel like myself again, dressing how I used to when I experienced social freedom for the first time. Slipping back into a trench coat and hat, or a snazzy all black outfit accessorized with hints of red feels just like coming back in line with the parts of myself that know how to have fun. Tempered of course this time with a few more years of wisdom, lessons, and responsibility.

Here's to 2015, and a new year, a new beginning of many choices, plans, alternatives, and the freedom to do what I choose.

Pandering to the Lowest Common Denominator

The New York Post, owned by that almost messianic conservative figure, Rupert Murdoch, is a constant sight in my job's break room. No wonder, right? It bills itself as " a tabloid newspaper on the island of Manhattan that is widely considered to be the golden standard of journalistic ethics, writing and sophistication."

Bull. Shit.

Every time I open the paper, there is another sensationalist headline meant to shock and rouse god-fearing americans into action.

"WAR ON COPS"
"PIED DIVIDERS"
"TERROR TEENS SLAY HERO COP"

The writers at the Post must live in some sort of self delusional action movie universe. Their daily caricature of the President has devolved to something resembling a toxic waste mutant, by this point. Every day, every headline is either mudslinging the president, the mayor, exploiting tragedy, or at worst, rabblerousing. How else can you explain such rhetoric as "BAIL-FAIL JUDGE STRIKES AGAIN; FREES COP PUNCHER JUST LIKE THREAT THUG"

The Post would have you believe that President Obama is wiping his ass with the constitution while sad eyed heroic policemen are being cut down in the streets by wild eyed proto simian "thugs". They may claim that's not the case, but reading this drivel? Sure sounds like it. There's good and bad on both sides. It's gotten out of hand, but only long simmering resentment and distrust breeds this kind of explosive protest. People are fed up. The country is fed up. The youth are fed up, and I'm fed up, especially with bullshit newspapers, networks, and sock puppets paraded around on mainstream media.

Fuck you, New York Post.

Horizon Burning

After a day of working at my job in downtown New York, I came home to find my facebook page lit up with news about the Michael Brown verdict. I'm betting hundreds of people are/have already written about this, but the sense of trepidation and guilt I feel is burning me on the inside.

It's unjust, and a portion of me expected the not guilty verdict. The police in this country have steadily been overmilitarized to the point of parody, given deadly military surplus weapons that they themselves are not trained on. They are police. Not soldiers, no matter how badly they want to be soldiers. This is how fascist death squads operate, people. A gun should never be your first tactic. The police carry nonlethal measures that are just as effective at dropping a violent suspect without needless loss of life.

The stories have been there, buried in headlines or floating on the internet. It's a symptom of the mountain of oozing corruption and pseudopatriotic pus that we were spoonfed since 9/11.
The time of "your government will protect you" is fucking over. The people have spoken, and cities are burning.

Is that enough of a message?

Attn: Executive Staff

Dangerous radicals threaten our country. Their insidious methods and unstoppable rhetoric are a serious danger to the natural order of things. If they continue to spread their lies and propaganda...

Then people will listen.

And by god we can't have that! If they listen they might think. And if they think, then they might vote! And when they finally figure out that voting does fuck all to stop the flood of oozy corruption and money that pumps through our veins instead of blood then we'll really be fucked.

Release headlines! Call up the celebrities! Get another fifty tons of cocaine delivered to Hollywood, stat, and make sure those goddamn hoodlums in the ghettos are listening to the latest plastic bullshit we cooked up in the boardroom yesterday. Wave your hands in the air, don't care. Get cash get money. Get drugs get honeys. And if by some absolute fucking miracle you do make enough to be a threat it won't matter. We've already got our poison in your brains, and now you're just like us. Those morals you swore you'd never give up aren't shit compared to the power of playing with lives and livelihood.

Suck it dry. All for us, none for you. The ups and downs of the economy are mere distraction. Our towers of glass and steel shield us from the common man while the future of this country rips itself in two with but a handshake across a shiny wood table. That's the bottom line, and god bless America.

Long live the dollar! Long live greed! Long live ignorance! These give us our power!

AND THE BEST PART IS, NO ONE WILL READ THIS! NO ONE WILL SEE! AND THOSE WHO DO, WELL....

These dangerous radicals threaten our country.

Vaporized

I get home at about 1 am on days when I work my 3-11 shift. The commute isn't too bad, as I can usually sleep on the hour long train ride home, then get into my house with enough energy to burn an hour or two on the computer. One thing I never expected to see at that late hour, when everyone is sleeping, is a huge plume of smoke as I drive down the road.

Panic sets in, and the inevitable foot pressure on the gas pedal, until I advance far enough down the street to see my own home untouched ( with all the lights on). The fire is coming from our next door neighbor's house. His family is huddled across the street, staring at the front of their house, the only hint something is wrong from that end is the smoke issuing from the windows, and a glimpse of orange through the open door. Then I turn the corner, and the back of their house is a chaotic curtain of flame, tongues of evil lashing across the siding, their roof, and their lives. It consumes everything, and the cop cordons off the area while I stand outside with my family, awestruck and selfishly relieved, but still worried. The fire might spread.

It didn't. But the threat was there and so was the fleeting panic. I can only imagine how my neighbor and his family must feel right now. Watching a fire take the material possessions of another is a harrowing experience even if your own life was not touched by the flames. I can't help but feel odd, pity and empathy mixed with relief and a twisted, ugly interest. Everyone loves a spectacle, or so the media would have you believe.

Physiologically, the mix of burning rubber, insulation, shingles, propane, and memories catches in my throat. My mother is coughing up a storm, but me and my brother don't cough. We;ve been tempered in the construction field of New York, and have built up a resistance from three years of breathing in dust and other airborne detritus. I still feel the effects of the flames as I sit here writing this. My body feels tight, and my head is swimming like I've smoked too many cigarettes. I've no doubt i'll wake up tomorrow lethargic and sore. The last sounds I'll hear before I go to sleep are the hum of the remaining fire engine and the low radio buzz of their announcements and direction.

The last thing I'll see will be that sky high plume of heat touching clouds of smoke above the air, and the river of smoking water flooding the street.

Streamline, Don't Add

The great machine spins its rusty cogwheels. Flecks of rust and dirt crumble into the air and float down into the fine layer of detritus that surrounds the solid base. The springs are rusted, providing no stability. Yet still the mechanical energy grinds along, for if it stops who can start it again?

The engineer is far too old. His hardhat is cracked and stained with oil. His machine has out-evolved him, a paradoxical mashup of ancient history, modern technology, and future prototypes. He cannot hope to understand how it works now. He can only bang its exposed parts with a wrench or tighten a loose bolt. The knowledge he had once made this gleaming steel juggernaut hum with efficiency. Now it is rusty and patchy, chugging along at half capacity at best, but with the continued assurance of "perpetual motion" that only the men in the research lab are faithful in. Amalgam of technology, built on the past yet crosswired and reprogrammed for a future that does not seem bright to the old man dutifully pressing buttons he is told to. Once he could take this machine apart, tell you what each part did, then reassemble it and run it at 110%. Now the sickly green glow from the beast's center dizzies him, and the extraneous lasers that shine out of rusty screw holes do not belong there.

The engineer does not know what his job is anymore.

Burrows, Gin, and Gangster Guns

Noise. Light. And a hollow metal tube speeding screaming through a dark in-between. Pay to see the tigers, museum. Members free, but the exhibits are caged.

Motionless, a candy cane sickness sleeps in the corner. Round corners of a cornered round, one last round to put the loud ones over the edge. I have to move my bag for Grandma Pelvis. A cloud of choking dust settles on the seat and a clown with the face of the day asks what time it is. What time for who? You or me?

It doesn't matter. The chewy fruit youth stumbles into our mobile galaxy, bringing a somber mood and the raw passioned plea for acknowledgement. He wants an honest dollar. No one looks. I give him ten but refuses his wares politely. Charity seems empty for some reason and the loss of money hurts less than this unknown sadness. More suited to losing their words in my ears, and now the shame of past phantoms has caught up with me.

The empty station has such pretty lights. Glimpsed through plexiglas for seconds at a time. Like galaxies in an Italian telescope. Feeling like a junky without the junk. I burrow through the words of past prophets and wonder if their nicotine screams mean anything. A rose of plant and dairy wanders past and spreads her petals lewdly. I travel every day but go nowhere. Like a subatomic hitchiker, leaping from A to B and making no real progress.

Time to go.