so, like, i'm gonna write a book.

but i'm not sure what about.  and i've got this small problem, too:  i'm not sad anymore.  uh, correction---i'm joyful and satisfied and at peace.

remember that scene in The Razor's Edge where he burns all his books to make a fire to keep warm?

dude.  you feel me?  i mean, do you FEEL ME?

maybe i should have written a book back when i was all fucked up and pissed off and self-destructive. 

i gotta figure this out. thotz r welcome.

when you no longer had utility, you were
released.  the parasitic bellies, full. 

and you, Host Organism, exhausted.  i kept

vigil.  i watched.  i listened
to the gaping suck, the insectoid retraction
of proboscis,
claw.  i watched them go. 

and the daily  injections...
poison promises  that placated, pacified,
made you easy to use,
the packaged and repackaged
passion play of
love and devotion, gone with them. 

harvard implicit association test:  HERE

my results:

Your implicit association results, appearing below, are for entertainment and educational purposes only. The tasks that you tried attempts to assess how strongly you associate the concept "Good" with presidential candidates and racial groups. The assumption of the task is that it should be easier to categorize the words and pictures if the two "focal" groups are associated in your memory. A majority of respondents find it easier to categorize Good words and images of White people together compared to categorize Good words and images of Black people. In the domain of political preference, Democrats may find it easier to sort Barack Obama images and Good words together, whereas Republicans might be faster sorting John McCain images and Good words together.

There is considerable speculation about the role of racial attitudes in candidate preferences for this election. Some argue that race may play a subtle role in voting preference, and others suggest that it is not a factor - especially given other pressing concerns such as the economy. We are testing the extent to which racial associations are related to candidate associations. Your scores are reported immediately below. Are they aligned with your conscious beliefs? With this task we hope to learn when these associations will, and will not, correspond with each other. The results of your tests are outlined below:

Your data suggests a slight automatic preference for Black people over White people

Your data suggests a strong automatic preference for Barack Obama over John McCain

Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic associations may be described as 'slight', 'moderate', 'strong', or 'little to no preference or difference in association'. How implicit associations affect our judgments and behaviors is not well understood and may be influenced by a number of variables. As such, the score should serve as an opportunity for self-reflection, not as a definitive assessment of your implicit thoughts or feelings. This and future research will clarify the way in which implicit thinking and feelings affects our perception, judgment, and action.

__________________________________________________________________

considering i was raised in a very vocally racist household, ultra-conservative, republican, white, middle-class, and strongly christian...

i wonder if i haven't, for the last 15 years or so, been subconsciously working extra hard to eliminate, in my own mind, what would otherwise be a preference for my own race and an inclination to associate members of my race with the concept of "good".  and, furthermore, re-associating the concept of "good" with people of races different than my own.  compensation of sorts.

i've mentioned this to vik before...i call it "spring theory".  it's not really a theory...it's more like a hypothesis for why, so often, people who are conditioned in such overbearing ways (as i was) seem to "spring" in the complete opposite direction when they get the chance...the way a spring, forced down, leaps with a force proportionate to the force applied against it when that force is suddenly removed.

i'm still white and i'm still middle-class, but i'm now a firm atheist, libertarian, & vocally anti-racist.  on a light note, i offer myself as possible supporting evidence for my own hypothesis and extend a welcome to parents who wish to attempt to squash the fucking soul out of their progeny by indoctrinating them with hate and prejudice:  go right ahead, you fuckers---your kids will flip it all on its ass when they get old enough and probably pull the plug on you -that- much earlier when you finally stop being able to take care of yourself. 

H.A.N.D.

Xaos: it's awesome to watch me in motion. i can't walk from one end of the house to the other without hurting myself or something else.  bang a knee, stub a toe, fall UP the stairs (routinely), trip INTO the tub (routinely)...step on the cat's tail, walk into the sliding door, drop the noodles...
Mapprehension laughs.
Mapprehension: Film it sometime. I'll pay.
Mapprehension winks.
Xaos: oh yeah.  Klutz Porn.  huge untapped market.
Xaos: we tried to tap it but we broke it.
Mapprehension laughs!
Xaos: see, i want to be around when we actually run out of Weird Crap to Get Horny Over and start combining stuff.  like, for example, "Pteradactyl Abdominal-Inflation Sneeze Porn."
Xaos: or whatever.
Mapprehension: Yeah. I'm right there with you.
Xaos: it'll be like porno mashups.
Xaos: "Intra-anal Latex Balloon Rodent Vomit Porn."
Mapprehension feels himself suddenly stiffening.
Xaos: see?!

love is not an hour portioned out in minutes, there is no start or finish and there is no division into parts.  love does not check in and then out, like a guest at an inn. 

what i learned from loving you is that i had love all along.  before and after the fact of you, there was love.  i learned that love is a sheet of paper upon which is written the names of the loved.  and you were one name, but not the only. 

curled on his chest in the chill of an early winter, the rain soaking the pavement outside and two cats carving out temporary homes on the vast real estate of our bed...i have love.  with my breath i etch his name and he strokes my hair and i am content.  will you stay and grow old with me?  i ask.  i feel his nod.

also, i'm perplexed.  i haven't been this happy since, um, hell...uh...i think when i was five or so?  maybe?  i really can't remember a stretch of...utter contentment...this long since i was a kid.  and that's too far back to really remember anyway.

it's amazing that no amount of drugs and therapy would do it...but having my soul ripped out, slashed open, pissed on and left for dead...that worked.

sort of like...

"hey.  all that happened...and you're still here.  get up.  get over yourself.  go live your life."

i have
never claimed to love
without meaning it.

when i lay
my head on my pillow to sleep,
i sleep soundly.

it's been theorized that

a.) art is the product of emotion, and,

b.) emotion is the euphemistic expression for the various arrangements of endogenous chemicals to which we are all addicted.

what would it mean if art were the product of addiction.

"...your hatred infects.  it penetrates and permeates its host...splits the skin, seeps out---a pestilent juice---and muddies the earth beneath.  yours is a hate that wants to reproduce itself.  it is organized.  it is purposeful.  evolved to stiff algorithms, precise behaviors that have no function other than to see that the hate is carried from one moment into the next.  and the viral seed itself.  the molecular beast. 

your hatred wants me.  it needs my cells, fresh and healthy.  it needs their factories, their line workers, their internal communication network.   your hatred slips along the periphery of my senses, leaves its scent in the hall.  watches, an assassin in a dark window, for me to fill the crosshairs.  it is patient.  it is veteran."

"...in the morning of my day, very unlike your morning and very like it, stilll, i take my ginger tea or my iced coca-cola or, if i am so lucky, my coffee.  i take half of it on the balcony, my toes and fingertips flinching in the too-cold june, and the other half at my desk, ordering the tasks that will fill my day as a blink fills an eye.  in these early hours of my waking life, i am susceptible to memories.  their furtive, curious glances sneak around the edges of my consciousness, mangled from erotic dreams the night before. 

in the kitchen, the first task of my day decided, i wash the stewpot.  i chop the onion, then.  i layer the chicken and potatoes the size of an infant's fist.  i spoon curry powder carefully into the pot, think better of it, and begin dumping it in with abandon.  hot pepper.  cinnamon.  cumin.  salt.  i cube the sweet butter and tuck it in as well.  the cream will go in later.   in six hours this will be thick.  in six hours, a meal.  the kitchen sags under the weight of spice.

it is here, while i am washing down the counters and bagging the trash, that i think of you.  the way you bumble through the house in your morning, a beeline to the coffee pot.  you are gentle.  all the years, not a violent bone to be found in your body and i have searched, oh, i have searched in my freudian way, wanting to be hurt.  you refuse.  you love me, instead.  i think of your body, a furnace between the sheets, thawing the arctic tundra of mine, your warm arm slipped around my waist, my concave to your convex.

at the corner of this moment, a memory of him stands.  shrunken in the cold hall light.  at the top of the stairs, he stands.  i can hear the wind at the window and it whistles through him like a seashell turned in the sand.  empty, forsaken.  i nod softly.  not to him.  i nod to myself.  in the beginning, i wanted him gone.  but i have grown accustomed to his perch, there.  he has shriveled like an apple in the sun, the meat of his meaning curling and rotting out..."