i never even considered myself to be a pool shark, but i guess it happens sometimes. maybe the spirits of all the dead long gone pool sharks are hovering over the pool halls and saying to themselves “that guy looks pretty cool. i think i’ll half-assed possess his body for a little.”

and last saturday i was cleaning up sometimes. i was eyeing up direct lines from target to pocket, then from cueball to target. i was focusing on one spot on the ball that needed to be impacted in order for it to travel that direct line that i was eyeing into the pocket. it was all kind of very formulated but i’ll bet everyone else thought it was magic.

i’ll bet they thought i was magic.

at one point i wasn’t even trying and i would poke the cueball and it would bounce against balls and walls and somehow two balls would miraculously sink in a pocket here and a pocket there. we were pretty pumped about it all. just ask emily. weren’t we, emily?

i thought we were. i almost went up to the bar and asked for a blindfold, because that’s how on fire i was. and i was thinking how they probably wouldn’t have anything but sopping wet bar rags, but then one of the bartenders would be looking underneath the bar and find this strip of burlap. and i’d be all “burlap is so rough, but at least it isn’t sopping wet with beer and things.” and so i’d be figuratively on fire at the poolhall with this tough as nails burlap blindfold around my head, sinking targets in pockets like you wouldn’t believe.

i was pretty impressed with myself last saturday at the poolhall.

except on the long shots. i’m not so hot from far off. and when stuff is in the way. i mean like other balls. if they’re between me and the target ball…. forget about it. and if i have to lean over the table too far or something. i need to cue from a nice default position, really. i guess that in reality i wasn’t all that great at pool, but i was better than i usually am, really. i really was.

what i’m doing here is avoiding my filing duties.

there is this friend of mine and he always gets flowers for girls even though sometimes i’ve told him that it seems kind of silly. i think he could see right away how jaded i was.

if he is romantically involved at all then the girl in question is the definition of an angel. and he treats her accordingly. he’s one of those guys. it never pans out for him.

in the last several months he’s become comfortable enough with himself that he isn’t ashamed to browse online personal ads. and put up online personal ads. and respond to online personal ads that he likes.

he’s met some girls who he’s adored. he jumps into the romance and so do they. it all happens really fast. there are a few great days with wonderful conversations and good times and everything and he’s more excited than he’s been in a long time. but then before the week is up and after the sex and before the big planned weekend trip and everything he’s really upset because they just want to be friends. and really they don’t want to be even that much because he never ends up hearing from them again.

it gets more difficult to empathise, each time. “no, don’t listen to the cure.” is what i said this time. “listen to umm.. nirvana.” (a current phase of mine) and we decided the last 10 minutes of Unforgiven might be beneficial. last time it was the black heart procession but he didn’t like them so much.

because as far as i can tell, jaded is the only way for this to go. invest less, lose less. lose faith in all but yourself. love is a sham. you only want sex and romance because you are a slave to your hormones. you are a slave to your own biology. your biology is attracted to the possibility of reproduction. your biology is only thinking of itself. relationships are pointless journeys on the way to stale oblivion. all ambition you may have geared towards social interaction is governed by a mastering biological drive you can’t even notice. [enter some bastardized version of existentialism]

a lot of this was on the learning channel. this past new year’s eve, i think.

these become mantras inside your head. it’s hard to shut them down when you finally find someone who’s worth your time. and that’s the danger of it. the solution now is the problem later. maybe i should warn him of this. but warnings aren’t so natural. not a natural course of events.

i’ve gotten better but i’m not there yet. i’m really trying.

a mouthful of water to dissolve the evil pain. a mouthful of water to dissolve the evil pain. a mouthful of water to dissolve the evil pain. a mouthful of water to dissolve the evil pain. a mouthful of water to dissolve the evil pain. a mouthful of water to dissolve the evil pain. a mouthful of water to dissolve the evil pain. a mouthful of water to dissolve the evil pain.

i can feel cool water pulling out warm diseased fluids from inside these blisters. the blisters on my tongue, mostly, but there are ulcers and interior lesions in spots on the insides of my lips. dabbing with triamcinolone acetonide ointment has brought one lipborne blister to its knees. i saw it in the mirror this morning, closing in on itself.

the tongue is a battlefield. it’s swollen and infected. the teethmarks make patterns on the sores.

this is a curse. on bad days it affects my outlook(s). cuts my ratio. absorbs my vitality. i flatline. harder to breathe, hurts to talk. come across as mumbling and miserable. am miserable. a more ethereal version of hazing. being hazed by gods and demons. to be one of them or their antithesis.

i am headed for big things. i am headed for big, important things. i have a mouthful of water and cannot talk. i am sickly. i am still not used to it.

this has been getting less frequent, but has become more formidable since childhood. back then we could call them gumboils.

my cup is full empty.

You’re personally responsible for…
the entire strip…to be washed away….
cleansed…as if gallons of, um, rubbing alcohol
flowed through the strip and were set on fire

-k.c.

the whole great big world
i couldn’t find the air
the big blue world
i sank in and sang out
all outside we’re killing ourselves
we’ll kill ourselves
maybe subtle
i swallow air i’ll pretend to find
the most beautiful set of words
i’ll pretend the corners of
skyscrapers are dropping in heaps
hear them crashing into the sidewalk behind me
pretend the crushed concrete ///

i just want to be there when mad beats start dropping, is all.

when you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve made as many copies as i have, then you’ve probably mastered staple-removers.

(is that the official term?

i like “mini staple shark” or i guess “staple-removing minishark” would be more correct)

where you take the tool between your thumb and forefinger, turn over to the backside of the fastened pages, and chomp at the curled-over ends of the staple.

once you have those loose, it’s a simple matter of turning to the front of the stack and clamping through the staple, and pulling it away, so you can do your copying.

but there are bastard staples which may have been applied by electronic staplers or copier machine automatic staplers, and the ends on those are always so so tight, and the minishark teeth can hardly ever get underneath them. you have to chomp at them endlessly to get them loose and usually end up shredding up the corner of the stack of papers too.

but when you’ve done it as much as i have, then you develop certain techniques. and the staple-removing minishark is as one with your hand. nothing gets in our way.

i guess i just wanted to let you know, because i’m bored with removing staples, and copying invoices, and transferring data via pen and paper. compiling it in more user-friendly pieces.

and all that office kind of stuff. yeah, bye.

we tried to sit up straight but after awhile you just forget. and so we were slouching again. childhood is the time for adjusting posture. it’s too late now, i think.

maybe i’m just spring-loading my spine and ribcage. you don’t know.

you can only guess.

does it have anything to do with the annual school physical where the doctor would watch your naked back as you tried to touch your toes?

at least i hope that happened in other schools too.

have fun today,
-tim.

the california experience has nothing to do with urban sprawl or cluttered freeways or angry, empty dot com shells. no, what california means is something far more obtuse and unnerving. the welcome of endless bounty masking savage appetites that swallow whole those who do not pay homage. i’ve lived, sucking off the beastly mother, for two years now, and it is only beginning to reveal itself to me. it is a dangerous dance, one which we cannot lead, or we will lose the partner and with it, our souls. the california experience is not to be found on bridges. it’s the fault lines that matter. you start to hear california when you are alone in its vastness. millions upon millions of people, and it becomes so easy to fall alone in it. it smells blood at 1 am when you’re tearing down highway 5 at 90 mph, fleeing the immediacy of one failure and rueing the distance of another. even banshees lose their nerve. it haunts and teases with beauty and romance of incredible light, but then the darkness falls. it leaves you breathless, and then it leaves you nauseous. yet all of this comes not with violence or terror or evil, but as a gentle reminder that you are just a number on the wheel. there now, be on your way. share in this, but remember it does not belong to any of you. the shallows, the glams, the gone gentlys, they’re just numbers too, but they have different colors. i don’t know if they lost it or they found it, but they’re very different from me. it was lost from them and found by them in a different california, with a different experience from the one i here describe. if they try to find mine, i loathe them for it. it’s so hard, sometimes. i still find it impossible to forgive them for it. perhaps someday i will, when their lips are sealed with this frostbitten madness. haunted? yes, probably, by ghosts of experience wrong. you race down that highway–1, 5, it doesn’t matter–and you lose. you always lose.
-by my friend adam

the song asked me to stand
told me to say but didn’t care to listen
i didntcare to stand but i heard everything
sounded like folding in on itself
like collapsing
and i wanted to slow my heart beat
to cold slow impossible
because now it’s so fast
i can hear the chattering metal
and the shredding plastic pieces
with every pulse
i put two fingers to my neck
i memorize the frequency
and move them
between the sun and my dilated eyes
and it almost hurts.