P I

artist: peter wilkinson

Dim the lights. Queue the music. Or queue the silence. Or the noise. Whatever it is you think you're hearing or want to hear. Queue some comfortability. Let me in. Let me scrub your brain a little. Accept me as one human trying to speak with another. The person writing these words has conceded this existence. What is an excuse? I am a reflection of you. There is so much to live through. I think it's about time I try to feed the space that has given me so much. So much expectancy. And it's fine if I fail. My posture will still suck. I've got scoliosis.

One day older and still the same sack of meat, just a little more soggy. I think I'm expected to be exhausted. It's a sign of hard work. My coworkers brag about not getting any sleep. My neighbor told me he worked eighteen hour days while going to school; he would do his homework while he maintained digital billboards. 

My mind is a constrained, questionably and selectively conscious observer; still privileged enough to be selective. My teeth still likes animals but my diet is mainly vegetables and rice because I found out recently we aren't carnivores by design. We're frugivores. Our systems were meant for fruit. But I'm so conditioned and addicted I can't let go of meat altogether. I've got it down to maybe once a week.

Competence is acceptance of vulnerability. When I give into the dissonance of the human sounds around me everything is bad, everything is crazy, everything is small. At the same time, when I breathe and focus on my own clarity, life is larger than I'll ever know and more beautiful than I could ever realize. Either way it can be overwhelming; which is why I still eat meat. All life has weight and value, so I try to respect the meat. Everything has frequency and exists, so I try to respect the leaf. Everything collapses and expands, so I try to accept and respect myself. At the same time, everything is nothing, and zero is more than 1 if you subtract it; so I smoke.

Words mean less to me now then they ever did. I'm attracted to aimless conversations that fulfill the more impulsive notions. I'm eager to dismiss events, people and ideas. These judgements help me feel connected to people in stupid situations. Sometimes I feel stupid a lot.

Since I was a teenager I've wanted to give into my psychosis and fuck the world. Maybe that gave me a head start. I can't imagine in what, but if I'm older than you that means I'm alive.

Eventually I started to ask; 'How can you fuck the world without loving it too?' ... You can't. It's passion either way if you're doing it right. You'll always give something and take something and, most times, I'm not aware of what I really give and take. Life works sideways; it exits in the alleys and byways on the path to goals. Once I get to a goal I'm never the same person who decided on making that journey a goal.

Like, I thought I wanted to be a singer once. But all I really got from that was being accustomed to making myself uncomfortable in front of people.

I thought I was a bad person once but then I made a goal. And it wasn't to be a good person, because there's no such thing. It was just to be happy for a moment doing a thing or feeling a way. Just a decision; just delusion; (dis)agreements; and some substitutions. My path can tell a person a lot about me up until the moment they meet me. But what really dictates the motivation of the moment? My goal with a human being? Maybe staying with one mind helps you see what another might. Like working a muscle.

I was wondering down my street earlier today and one of my other neighbors, a loud gypsy paparazzi from New York, told me his doctor said to quit smoking or he'd die. When he tells me this he looks at me like he wants me to tell him something good about smoking. Like, I smoked for seven years and everytime I felt more like shit; but it was amazing. I just looked at him and said 'yup, smoking's bad but I love it.'

I saw him puffing on a cigarette later that day.

 

artist: GorillaInk

You want to know the secret to life?

There is no secret. Secrets make you paranoid. Whose got time for gossip? Really though, you're too hot for that shit.

The first time I tried meth was at a party. Hector asked me if I wanted a key. I didn't know who Hector was. Or, for that matter, what a key was. A key to happiness? To a car? A new house? Sure. I told him to give me what he had.

He pulls out his car keys, holds out one and sticks it in a bag, pulling out a white rock. Then he set it in a pipe. Smoking it felt amazing. Euphoria.

There are whole city populations chasing this feeling through newer, harder synthetic substances. Addictions are man made, just like law. Hierarchy is societal structure and we have zombies building an infrastructure of corpses. These conditions are purposeful and necessary for our systems. People live in the cold, on the street, not eating, just fiending. These people die in their space but still create money; still add to the economy. They allow drug dealers to be rich and get their kids out of debt. Corpses create the space we think we need to live comfortably. Because we think we are a triangle. I think we're more like an octagon.

This dude Hector, he reminded me of a lot of other broke kids I've met throughout the years; hardworking, honest, kind hearted, uneducated and addicted. He worked a thirteen hours a day in shipping to be able to afford to a place to sleep and get high. I was an addict like Hector, just to things more socially acceptable because I was allowed that privilege as a middle class white kid.

Meth is nice for the first 8 hours. The emptiness and itching for three days after though is different.

artist: rhyn williams

Waking Up
Sometimes when I smile I'm staring at the inside of the back of my head. I was watching a TED Talks recently and they were talking about the difference between a fake smile and a real smile. The difference is in the eyes. I wonder how many people can see the truth in my eyes when I'm mindlessly feeding them their daily sludge. I wonder if it inspires them to treat their job with the same lethargy.
I work a dead end corporate job because all corporate jobs are a dead end. Even at the top you're a slave to the cabinet, to the shareholders. Unless you don't give a fuck about people. But if that were the case, you wouldn't be apart of the machine.
All jobs are a dead end. A job is slavery. It just made sense though, you know, I quit smoking, I quit drinking, I quit drugs. Sobriety makes you relearn everything. And despite them, jobs do provide structure. They also enforce consumerism. I fucking hate it. But it's necessary. I know it is. Because it's all I'm fed. And because I'm starting to dream again. I haven't had a real dream in years. I hear smoking weeds stops dreams. Probably because the pineal gland is activated during it's high so it's almost like a lucid dream. My goal is to find my sober imagination again.
Finding meaning without the aid of numbing the tangental thoughts of a wandering imagination becomes different as well. I'm not writing a fucking journal. Fuck you. --Anyways. It makes you irritable, it makes you understand future and planning. It makes you think about what you want because you're not high.

artist: deadendsoul

back asleep

I grew up in the suburbs of southern California. Born in 86: I'm a pilot season baby of the entertainment industry. My life started off in the basic nuclear family. I was the older brother to a younger sister. My parents were actors/writers/general industry folk. The marriage ended when I was eleven.

It's okay. They yelled at each other a lot and they're better off not feeding into each others toxicity. What a brutal feedback loop that becomes. I'm not sure how they managed to go as long as they did together honestly. Maybe it's that idealistic American notion of death do us part and reproduction.

I'm 28 years on this planet. Not fucking bad. That's pretty fucking old for humans who have cared for their life as little as I have. Or that might be pretty normal. I mean, I do what most normal people in Southern California do. I get headaches, smoke weed, write and enjoy art.

People, rather, relationships scare me because my imagination gets carried away. My impressions of their minds make me anxious; I start thinking about what I think they're thinking about and what they value and it never meshes. Ya know? Weed doesn't help that feeling either.

Like I've got these hobbies that a lot of people have. I enjoy running, jumping, laughing, hugging, fucking, and lazer tag. Maybe I just don't ask enough people out; make time for the one on one. My imagination has already played out the scenario with so and so and it doesn't work out. 

My view of the world is so bleak, it's hopeful. I don't like that I'm a human but I have hope for humanity. Some of my habits and thoughts disgust me and some inspire me; but a lot are just okay. A lot of this life is just okay.

I guess I'm here to tell you a story about being scary and scared, about belonging, finding your way, being a hero, being a villain, etc... Like you all need stories. Maybe you do. Maybe it's what all this art shit is built upon: symbolism and finding meaning within by expressing our slice of the collective imagination.

Artist : Federico Bebber

The Sequitur

There's a certain joy in indulging suicidal tendencies. Just as, I suppose, there is joy to be found in watching people die or watching female cartoon characters get raped by tentacles. Suffering eventually always culminates in peace or orgasm; or maybe it's orgasmic the entire way, you know, in the way that Jesus was stapled to the cross.  Depression, in all its orgasmic futility, builds off the inertia of itself. 


Together, as a culture, we enjoy suffering and communicating that suffering. We're taught to enjoy bearing burdens; to hold 'responsibility' for things. Responsibility is a large measure of success. Depression, I think, is when we let past guilts shape our overall perspective to where our peace of mind rests upon our ability to be dissatisfied with responsibility for the moment. We all suffer different. That doesn't mean were broken, or need fixing. I think it just means we have a consciousness; that we're human. And right now, I think we're depressed, as a whole. Maybe not the rich white males. Maybe they're more pathologically psychotic.