just a spaceman

Zen & the Skateboard: Week One

No one’s ever wanted me on their sports team, besides maybe for comedic relief. I’m just not very coordinated- some would even say I’ve always been a little limp. Whenever I’ve had the opportunity to catch the ball and shine- I’ve closed my eyes and dropped it. People would often stare at me as I stumbled around the basketball court, flailing my arms in an attempt to take flight. Its painful to watch, and most spectators will turn their attention to the cracks in the concrete to avoid my spectacle. My friends just laugh as I trip over myself, asking one another “How’d he make it to twenty-one?”
That’s a good question.

I had never been ashamed of my inability to impress others in these ways. While other children would spend hours running back in forth in the field, catching balls and screaming at each other, I would be turning over rocks and examining beetles, or setting fires in the boys’ bathroom. The adults who supervised us must have thought I was an awfully weird, truly satanic child. I considered it my duty to perpetuate this perception. 

Now I wonder just how much of this clumsiness is real. Surely, it is my nature to fall on my face and scream like a banshee in the name of a knee-slapping chortle. I’ve been doing that for years. But now it seems to me as though my inability to perform these simple tasks has been a blindfold I’ve tied around my own head. I’ve sent myself stumbling into walls for the hell of it, apathetic and unwilling to learn. I suck  because I believe I suck. I know I suck. Its never been a biggie though, I just imagined some things were for certain people, and others were for me.

Skateboarding has always been like that. Something that was for other people, not for Taylor. Friends would cruise around casually while I’d frantically run besides them to keep up. 
Then, just for the hell of it, I figured I’d give skateboarding a shot. A real shot. Beautiful weather and endless hours of unemployment have bred within me a desire to accomplish something small, something tangible. A little bit at a time, a little bit each day, something I’ve never done before. This clumsy clown got on a skateboard and said, “I got this shit.” 
If you decide to try, to dedicate yourself even the teensiest bit, you will see something beautiful unfold right before your eyes. A lotus springing from the muck of countless failures, its petals unfolding to reveal the ability within each and every person.
What can learning to ride a skateboard teach me? What will I learn about my place in the universe from this journey? 
I began to skateboard for the first time with the honest intention of progression just last week. I couldn’t so much ride the board as trip and fall off of it. But this was of no deterrence to me, I would just get back on and ride. I’ve found that the key to success isn’t having the inherent ability to shred silly. I removed my ego from the equation and saw myself as I am, just another human being born on this earth to learn, and grow, and die. Just as countless others have in the past and will continue to in the future, I can ride a skateboard. All that I must do is believe it. 
Criticism hold us back, keeps us locked away from the endless joy all around us. I used to be a critical little asshole, laughing at the 15 year old skaters spending endless summers surfing the streets, and now I am one. 
People got opinions and they hand ‘em out like hotcakes. Cut your hair, get a job, get a car, go to school, get a life. I say, fuck that. I got a board. 
I am the recipient of endless joy, catching rainfall and forever quenching my thirst. 

Skys Wild

how the shades of pink and blue were splashed across the kingdom;

its architecture softer than any pillow that’s had to take the weight of a thinking head.

how it approached the edges of oblivion, encompassing every tiny thing below in its

shadow, blankets of amber outstretched to catch a falling sun.

glowing in this glorious moment above me; shifting from orange, to red, to purple. 

the colors drain, the shapes are swallowed by blackness.

my neck aches from staring in awe. 

a treasured memory to be rendered worthless by silly words on a soiled page.

 one could spend a lifetime replicating this single second,

transcribing a scene on a page destined to deteriorate,

with words written in a language that will die long before it. 

no, I’ve never tried to paint the sky:

I was taught to believe in justice.

Habithat w/ Doug 

Anternoon// part two

Pardon me, but I just realized I hadn’t even introduced everyone properly. Awful silly really, that I could forget to mention the green, rolling hills where s/he sat. Masses of grass in great crowds cheered as hoppers and jumpers and climbers and marchers and other limbers of six played their parts perfectly, accentuating with grace each note be it sorrow or rejoice. The sky, oh it was the sky as you’ve seen it, I imagine. Don’t let that denounce its gloriousness, though, for I assure you it was wild…it’s just, well its the same sky all over, you know?
Same wild veil blowing on and on and on.
She’s not listening but I’m sure at least one blade of grass is. s/he’s beating on that drum of hers, the skin of which is my own. Looking at it, thinking about it, it’s making my hide red hot. I rather not bother with that… But the beat, oh that beat! Its the same pattern as always:
bom-da! ba-dom ba-dom-ba!
Her face is looking more like his face again. Invoking the Great Beast is always a burden, she tells me. Her voice a phantom floating through my mind.
Cassette tape hissing; serpentine language superfluous and swift.
“If we want ants,” she says sternly, “we must suffer. To live is to suffer, and to suffer is our gift. If we’re receptive, of course.” 

I had eyed her careful cautious, as I did not believe such things then. I was an idealist.
Detecting my disbelief, she snatched a handful of my buttocks meat and ripped it from my body.
Gosh what a scene that had been! blood dumped out of my ass and I whooped and whollered and swung and spat about violently. Eventually I came down but it took some time and quite a few ants before I tired myself out sobbing. She and I spoke sparsely that evening, after she ripped me up like that, our words curt and distant. I was understandably bitter, and I knew she would not apologize. She probably wanted me to apologize actually, and I wasn’t about to do that.
Maybe I would have apologized eventually, just to get the whole thing over with, but then she said something and I forgot I was mad once I started listening.
 Think of pain merely as model of life itself. A metaphor.
“We are unconscious of our being when it is well,” she coiled, “We accept it as it is. But when we are hurt, we are constantly reminded of the stinging, gnawing, pulsing bloody pain. It is unending, and we seek the means to subdue it, to silence it. Just like pain, we seek to soothe our lives. The realm of death lies beyond this awareness. It is the whole body, it is the healthy body unperturbed by sensation.”
Things have gotten better for us since then. Shadows whirl endlessly in a vacuum somewhere between my ears, and a great cooling comes over me like the first wave of a great flood. This is getting overwhelming.
She’s still banging out the beat, only I think it’s he now.
“What of pleasure?” I had asked her.

Anternoon

She’s sitting indian-style with a mesh purple bag between her legs. Giggling and leaning towards me so that our breath touches. She pulls on my eyelids. She twists my nipples and sticks her tongue in my ear. 

Her skin is sand, her hair is sand. It is rough and unpleasant. Her voice, however, is the wind. Whispers blow into my mind something scandalous. Subtly I smile and relinquish to her will. 

“Say something if you wan’t an Ant,” she says demandingly, so i lower myself before her and bow my head. As I rise she pulls at my eyelid. 
“You were looking for your mirror,” I begin, “but it was dark. Your hand searched diligently throughout the corners of your mind, even back behind the couch. In the dust. You didn’t find the mirror, but you did find something else.”
“What was it?” she said, dreams spinning in her eyes.
“That old glove, the left one. You lost it all those years ago, remember?”
She saw a flash of white, felt a chill up her spine. She saw her breathe and smelt gingerbreads. Her face was white at the mention of it.
“During the snowstorm. Yes, how could I forget?”
She pulled the drawstring and her bag opened up. Her hand slipped into it and gently withdrew from it a tiny, shimmering ant. Clearly my memory satisfied her bubbles. I opened my mouth and closed my eyes as she held the wriggling sacrifice over my head. I could hear it singing the words I had memorized earlier that morning.
Shimmering like a snowflake. Melting on the fingertip of a forgotten glove. 

Rocko by Camie

                                     Put it on your breakfast bagel

                                                                        NOT MY BABY!

                                                    just another fish dad