Reawakening after a Week in a Marijuana Induced Conscious Coma

I am committed to returning to my daily activities in a sober state of mind, the only state of mind that I can successfully manage my responsibilities, multitask, and fully function. I have come back into my little haven of my world with new ideas, new perspectives, a reenergized drive for coming to some kind of existence that I am proud of rather than my status of just passing through days and having nothing to show for all of my thirty six years. The marijuana can  take you outside of yourself, to show you yourself, to cross boundaries of consciousness, to break up the stagnations that one falls into from time to time, but it has its costs, and will steal large parts of your life if you don't have some control over it. My symbolic death is over for some time. Now I begin my symbolic life. Currently am finishing my essay due today for "Intro to Religious Studies", have to start hustling on my book report on "Curious Incident of the Dog in Night Time" for "Literary Interpretation" due by the end of this week, another essay due by midnight Sunday for "Mythology and Modern Life", and I have various essays due for my "Educational Planning" class I have been putting off. I am also preoccupied with the need to work on my book also. I expect to see a seasonal job that I have worked for in the past hiring again in the paper in the next few weeks. Have to hustle on my assignments and get as much done as I can before I lose forty hours of my life again. You can't escape paying your dues in this life.

My Science to the Means to my Structure of Current Writing Style- 02-25-11

I ingest preferred intoxicant after a day of intense concentration on my college work, long enough to where I get beyond antsy for the preferred intoxicant. I dog walk, not for too long, just to get the blood flowing, but not the hounds on the scent. I record what I think are relatively important ideas in the most succinct nugget of a compact idea, but in whose compactness does not reduce the idea to immobility, it still retains its potential. I come home and work at the task of organizing all of these ideas into their natural groupings determined by the intoxicated/sober, or sober, or sober/sober/sober pattern making ability of the brainstem. I cut and paste, type, cut and paste, type, type, type, type, type, type, cut and paste, etc. I am constantly aware of some form of time coming to an end. The awakenings arise to me, of ideas of some famous men, the terrifying accuracy of Nostradamus, constant reminders of St. John’s Book of Revelations who many would name if they had to come up with a book from the bible, and the recorders of my master, the Lord Jesus Christ, I must accept the blood of Jesus in this book, even if it is only to go to the same afterlife as the people that I know will go to, and other writers who remind us of the coming cataclysms, of some form of idea to attach to the words that combine to mean the “end of the world”. My current style.

An Incomplete Meditation on the Grail of Marijuana- 02-24-11

Today I am empty of ideas that start to percolate on the drive home from the evenings at the girlfriends house to my grandmother apartment where I store my stuff, do my school work, hang out with my preoccupations, keep an eye on the low lifes at my grandmothers apartment, where I can more easily maintain my dreams of stardom in this hell of stagnation, of watching the welfare people, the disabled people, the poor people, the very class of people that I have found myself in all of my life, wanting to run away, having no clue where to go or how to go about it, so I shrank within myself, the only part of myself that I put my energies into increasing was my gut. Perhaps it is because I am hung over, I smoked too much weed last night. The girlfriend worked a night last night, I was left to my own devices.

To a lot of people the use of marijuana is a negative thing, something similar to crack or methamphetamines, the terrible drugs that make a person sell their body, steal from their family members, to become caught in the false rapture that the drug brings to your brain stem.

Marijuana, to me anyway, serves a different purpose other than trying to blot out the outer world so that I can entertain the feelings and sensations of my inner world. In fact it serves several, healthy purposes. The first and most pervading sensation I get from the marijuana, is being able to enjoy a heightened sense of my masculinity. Enjoying this sensation gives me a standard to live by when I am sober, it awakens in me a consciousness to be more masculine, that the estrogen demands its presence and development, even if it doesn’t necessarily search for it in me. It is a way of wanting to be perceived, of improving my role in the interplays of life that come and go, and especially those that remain. Are our friends, our family, the people around us measures of ourselves, of who we are, what we are limited to, what our potential is, the type of person that we naturally attract or repel, our standards, our limitations, our ideals, our prison?

Marijuana teases out those things that live in your unconscious mind, it brings those primal drives and impulses to the forefront of our consciousness. How can you interact with people, to intergrate within groups, when you are preoccupied with your weight, your looks, your socioeconomic status, your lack of sexual adventure? Weed brings this to the forefront of one’s consciousness, weed is a tool for psychoanalysis. Under the influence I can go out in the world and watch my self act out my own personal value system, of how I meet desires and impulses, what kind of moralities I use to deny myself, to watch others trying to be varieties of energies, watching the new crops and the old crops of people stagger through the motions of going through days lost in the mental dreams that keep them from going over the edge into homicide or suicide.

Marijuana is a thermogenic, a metabolism booster, an easy way to lose weight. Plenty of people spend money on cigarettes for the same effect when marijuana I believe is so much more cheaper. It is discipline one needs though not to overuse, to suck down more than what the body needs to maintain the high. I was so high last night that my eyeballs were as red as werewolf, everyone who saw me must have known. Let it remind you that I am as human, or more so than you are, my soul as dark, my drives just as ravenous, my desperation to suck as much joy and peace out of this life as possible before I die is just as strong, or stronger than yours. I don’t mean harm, unless you are an asshole. But even then, I realize I can be a far worse asshole, and plenty of times in my life I have judged others just to have my superficiality overtly displayed for that social group to see.

Marijuana fills my voids. When a person grows up outside of the natural, nuclear structure of the family, without role models to give a person a solid spectrum of what is or is not acceptable behavior, when there is no voice of reason to answer your voices of emotion, if there is no functioning people to give you an inner sense of direction in this life than the world becomes blind experimentation for what essentially becomes a collection of urges. I was raised like an animal, like a pet. my physical needs were met, food, clothing, shelter, the base standards of living that the government requires, but nothing more. I became abandoned by both my mother and father, coming to live with my maternal grandparents. My grandfather died shortly around the time of my years in Junior High. My mother came and went as her needs required. I was left with my vacant headed, irrational, uneducated, uncerebral grandmother. Essentially I spent my days alone in school, my nights with my toys, then my pursuit of misadventures between television and movies. A growing child neglected from teachings of how to make sense of this world, and abandoned to exploring the extents of his own devices will lead to disaster. I am my own family, my own role model, my own teacher, my own true love. It is what it is until it is no longer.

See you tomorrow.

My Mother's Car is Haunted- 02-23-11

I think my mother’s car is haunted. It does not like being opened on the driver’s side sometimes. My grandmother and I would then go around to the passenger side, stick the key in the lock, unlock it, now all the doors are open. Walk around to the driver’s side, get in, and take off, no further problems. The drivers side door only plays this game every once in a while. Since I am always concerned with wasting energy I choose to fight with the lock when it does this. I’d rather fight than make more steps than I have to. Maybe this says something about me? Last night outside of Wegmans Cicero the car decides to pick a fight again. I respond automatically from two dozen years of compacting madness. I try to turn the key. Nothing, won’t move. I stick it in again. Won’t work. I jab it in a third time, turn it toward the front of the car and it lets me, although turning it in that direction would only lock it. I try twisting it to the right, to the rear of the car. Won’t move. I thrust the key in again. I will do fucking battle with spirits, ghosts, poltergeists, demons, angels, whatever. “Mom, let me the fuck in this car, it’s too cold for this shit”, I utter. I turn the key to the right. The lock acquiesces. Now I can get in the car with no problems, just like I should have, just like it should be. Perhaps it is a sign to pause from time to time, look at yourself and your world, look at the vehicle of life and ask yourself if you are happy. And if not, why not? Don’t you like where life has brought you? Where do you see yourself going? How are you trying to get there? I get in the car and take off to go to my girlfriends house and on the way the light of the radio blinks with some kind of intelligent timing, with a noticible intensity that is almost frightening. I would be afraid of ghosts if I believed that they could actually harm me but in my life the only enemy that I’ve ever had to fear was myself. Although ghosts can not kill you, they might be able to lead you to your death. I note the blinking of the radio, tell myself its some kind of loose electrical connection, ignore it to pay attention to traffic, and the backlight to the digital symbols goes dark, resentful that I don’t get the message it is trying get across. The radio stays dark for the few minutes it takes me to get to the girlfriends driveway. I consciously think of my mother’s car as her sarcophagus with some part of her remaining as we do in the place that we haunt in life, the places where we spend the most time, investing our physical, mental, and spiritual energies. I wonder what my mother thought driving around in her 1998 Toyota Camry LE. “Hope this car doesn’t break down, I’ll have to rely on my drunk and drug addict friends, can’t rely on my son whose only ambition in life was to drive around Central New York all day, smoking pot, getting into trouble, and unbeknownst to me, come to live with me when his grandmother has used up all of her earthly energies, a parasitical deadbeat parasite that I would have been unable to get rid of, unless he got arrested again, which is highly probable”.  I wonder if my mother in her driving ever felt the urges that I do, to talk to myself, sometimes soothing, sometimes quite harshly, yell invented stupidities at other distracted drivers, sing, sometimes sarcastically, sometimes seriously, other times mournfully, screaming the things that I can’t say in real life, the inner narration that festers but can’t ever be mentioned to the people it is directed at, telling myself jokes and barking out loud when they’re funny, endlessly trying to improve my comedic hits to misses and strike outs, relating my inner world into my voice recorder for later transcription, praying that some hidden cop isn’t thinking I’m talking on a cell phone, who will pull me over and to get out of a ticket I will play for him the spillage of insanity that is going unnoticed by most people, that I hope to work into a story line or decorate some narration with it, but whose meaning will be lost on the cop, then will he notice the aroma of illegal vegetation, now I’ve got tickets for distracted driving, driving while under the influence, other various things. Done for today, see you tomorrow.

Spring Semester starts this week.

This week I begin my first semester at Empire State College, towards fufilling my Bachelors in Cultural Studies, then perhaps a Master's in Fine Arts in Literature down the line. As long as I can get student loans and don't have to begin to pay anything back until after graduation, perhaps I should get a Ph.d as well. You only have to go to school part time to keep putting off the student loan, so why not? This semester I am taking Introduction to Religious Studies, Literary Interpretation, Mythology and Modern Life, and Educational Planning. The last course is just meeting with my "mentor" or advisor to plan out how I want my degree to go, and I get four credits for essentially designing my own SUNY degree. Instead of taking courses I don't want to take but have to just to satisfy the requirements of the degree like other SUNY colleges, I get the opportunity to take only those courses that are relevant to me in my desire to be an author. I'm extremely excited at this, perhaps it was always my destiny to be somebody of worth rather than the cheap lackey laborer I was satisfied with being, up until recently. Dreams can come true, you just have to take the incremental steps towards them.

My final and revised "Story Poem", for Poetry Class.

Story Poem

“There is a lot of anger in here which animates the poem. It definitely tells a story and identifies characters, placing them in action. What I like most are the quoted lines (which you should put within quotes). They sound like real conversation, making the story move efficiently even as they characterize the speakers.
When you revise for Module 6, focus on getting rid of excess words and uninteresting phrases. As a poet, edit the actual events--there is no need to recount things exactly as they happened but rather the way they work best in the poem. Also, you have too many line breaks which interfere with the continuity of the story--many of these could be combined for longer lines and shorter stanzas. You actuallly have a fairly long time frame and a long development as you provide a sense of what goes on, then the firing, then the period after being fired while you are still there. Think about compressing each segment so that the language becomes tighter. Finally, work on the ending which seems rather anticlimactic. A sense of the self also should be included, not just the decision to go  back to school. It's also a rather flat line. Still, you did an excellent job at this stage of the poem!”

I cut out what I could but tried to leave enough to make it a still understandable story poem. What I try to say in the second “stanza (?)” is that we are led to believe that if you work there long enough, you can become a salesman, and ascend from your lowly status as a warehouse worker, but then suddenly someone new appears, someone with sales experience appears, to take an available position over the warehouse workers who have been there for a decade or more. I don’t think it was effective yet I imagery of the “dirty warehouse worker”. I think it also projects what I believed other people were thinking or saying, showing my insecurity, eventually showing someone who got fired from a place they hated anyway. I tried to combine lines that had similar ideas or seemed to go together, yet keep some things by themselves for emphasis. For instance third stanza, “desperately” by itself, forth stanza “their hostile advice” by itself.  I tried to create a more climatic and visual ending to the poem.

Ode to City Electric (revised)

“This is a great place to work”, they say with a straight face.

“Someday you can become a salesman too”

Making the owner millions, sitting at a comfortable desk

a leisurely working pace.

Then someone appears one day, “to learn the computer system”

To take the comfortable place of one of those

Calm and contented office workers

Sitting at a desk in a room upstairs,

Who shrink in fear of you on the stairwell,

“Dirty warehouse worker, unfit to breathe the same air”,

these words ring in my ear.

“Why are you taking so long?”

I search high and low

desperately

for something not there.

“Are you blind?”

 “Is the prescription on those glasses up to date?”

We by the virtue of being employees

Of the great City Electric

Can get a 15 percent discount at Lens crafters

stupid, sightless fool.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for,

“Search the area nearby where the computer says it should be”,

their hostile advice.

“Develop powers of clairvoyance, remote viewing,

Telepathy, telekinesis”, my mind says there’s no other way

To succeed in this place.

Tell Farnham the boss

when you’re on your lunch break,

All the things you’ve confessed.

In what you foolishly thought

Was their confidence,

From having psychotic fantasies

To hating having to work here.

My coworkers agree

“Joe’s a fucking asshole”

Doesn’t want to listen to the blaring sports report

Doesn’t want to talk shit

Doesn’t want to hear me quote Spaceballs all day

“Let the Swartz be with you”.

Doesn’t want to take Travis’s spot

Putting away shit all day in the warehouse.

One of my coworkers who had been here

for some miserable years.

Dying to escape

From the monotony of the warehouse,

of days, months, years,

running up and down

three flights of stairs,

of the moods

of fat, moody Farnham.

“Send me please to another branch

Put me on the road

Free from this prison

I’ll do anything.

PLEASE!!!”

Hired as a backup driver,

a guy they call “Glue-stick”,

the dispatcher of this place,

some unpronounceable Balkan last name

approaches you in their midst.

“Do you know where such and such place is?”

Before you can form a thought

The others desperately and agitatedly yell,

“Oh, Oh, Oh,

I know where that is”.

When you get in the truck

And disappear

They tell the boss

“he’s a fucking punk”,

Said “you are an asshole

As well”.

Wednesday my favorite day,

the only day they let me drive.

So I make it last

the whole of the day.

Day trip to the Rochester store,

stop at the rest area,

then after the delivery

picking up half of what

you delivered last week

as a return,

tearing off as fast as I can

to stop at the diner

down the street for brunch,

coming back to jealous co-workers

who spent the whole day

running up and down

three flights of stairs.

talking shit about you

behind your back

Terminated after the holidays

for “poor performance”.

But we’re so nice

“We’ll let you work out

your last two weeks”.

Their mistake.

Big mistake.

Now I get paid to lolly gag

more aggressively than before.

Smashing bulbs,

graffiti the place.

Harvesting batteries.

Do you want to buy some back?

I have so many

They’ll go bad before I can ever use them.

What was I thinking?

Stuffing boxes of them

down my pants, behind my belt,

inside my pants,

front and sometimes back.

One on each side of my jacket,

in pockets that welcomed them.

On and off for months

as the weather got cold,

then two or three times a day

after I was “laid off”

How about some flashlights?

So many dumps

I have worked in.

Sweated,

bled,

And cried when I got home.

This lesson before me

for so many years,

unwilling to learn.

The one that finally sunk in.

The only way to escape?

“Get yourself

a Bachelor’s Degree,”

I write all over the warehouse

on my last day,

with my stolen Sharpie.

Ode to City Electric (original)

This is a great place to work,

They say with a straight face.

Someday you can become a salesman too

Making the owner Sandy millions,

sitting at a comfortable desk

working at a leisurely pace.

Then someone appears one day, you’re told

To learn the computer system

To take the comfortable place of one of those

calm, content people

Sitting at a desk in one of those rooms upstairs,

Who shrink in fear of you on the stairwell,

Dirty warehouse worker,

Unfit to breathe the same air.

Why are you taking so long

Filling orders?

Searching high and low

for something not there.

But according to the computer it is,

Are you blind?

Is the prescription on those glasses you wear

Up to date?

We by the virtue of being employees

Of the great City Electric

Can get a 15 percent discount at Lens crafters

You sightless, stupid fool.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for,

Search the area nearby

Where the computer says it should be.

Develop the powers of clairvoyance, remote viewing,

Telepathy, telekinesis.

My coworkers agree

He’s a fucking asshole

Doesn’t want to listen to the blaring sports report

Doesn’t want to talk shit

Doesn’t want to hear me quote

Spaceballs all day

“Let the Swartz be with you”.

Doesn’t want to take Travis’s spot

Putting away shit

all day in the warehouse.

One of my coworkers who had been here

for some miserable years.

Dying to escape

From the monotony of the warehouse,

of days, months, years,

running up and down three flights of stairs,

of the moods of fat, moody Farnham.

Send me please to another branch

Put me on the road

Free from the prison of the warehouse

I’ll do anything. PLEASE!!!

Tell Farnham the boss

when you’re on your lunch break,

All the things you’ve confessed.

In what you foolishly thought

Was their confidence,

From having psychotic fantasies

To hating having to work here.

Hired as a backup driver,

a guy they call “Glue-stick”,

the dispatcher of this place,

his name some unpronounceable

Balkan last name

comes up to you in their midst.

“Do you know where such and such place is?”

Before you can form a thought

The others desperately and agitatedly

yell, “Oh, Oh, Oh, I know where that is”.

Wednesday my favorite day,

the only day they let me drive.

So I make it last the whole of the day.

Day trip to the Rochester store,

stop at the rest area,

then after your delivery

picking up half of what

you delivered last week as a return,

then tearing off as fast as I can

to stop at the diner down the street for brunch,

coming back to jealous co-workers

who spent the whole day

talking shit about you behind your back

as they spent the day

running up and down three flights of stairs.

Terminated after the holidays

for “poor performance”.

But we’re so nice

“We’ll let you work out your last two weeks”.

Their mistake.

Big mistake.

Now I get paid to lolly gag

more aggressively than before.

Smashing bulbs,

graffiti the place.

"Harvesting" batteries.

Do you want to buy some back?

I have so many

They’ll go bad before I can ever use them.

What was I thinking?

Stuffing boxes of them

down my pants, behind my belt,

inside my pants,

front and sometimes back.

One on each side of my jacket,

in pockets that seemed to welcome them.

On and off for months as the weather got cold,

then two or three times a day

after I was told I was “laid off”

How about some flashlights?

So many dumps like this

I have worked in.

Sweated,

Sometimes bled,

And cried when I got home.

This lesson existed before me,

for so many years,

unwilling to learn.

The only way to escape?

The one that finally sunk in.

Go back to school.

Get yourself

a Bachelor’s Degree.

A Short Story for journalism class. "Swimming Merit Badge"

I was in the Boy Scouts for a few years. Or rather they permitted me to hang out with them for a few years, as worthless as I was. I never bothered to earn merit badges, in fact I used to spend the day hiding and wandering during the two weeks we used to be able spend up at a place in the Adirondacks they used to call the Sabattis Scout Reservation, or what we referred to as “Sabittis”. I miraculously attained the rank of “Tenderfoot” and then remained there for the rest of my time in Boy Scouts, another four years. This was the same as some one enlisting in the army and remaining a “private” for twenty years.

I would wander and hide in the woods by myself, for some reason, rather than do what other boy scouts did like learning archery, hiking, fire building, etc. These were all things that a normal boy would be interested in, what a man should know about, things that would give a person some confidence, and self reliance. For some reason I would rather hide in the woods like a fugitive from the law, alone and bored to death until four P.M., when the lake on the other side of the camp was open for swimming. Perhaps I was evolving in my own direction, hearing the call of the ocean in my DNA.

Every day of the two weeks I did this, both years I went up to “Sabattis”. I would join my friends who had been off somewhere earning merit badges and advancing up in rank in the Boy Scouts, learning useful skills, and bonding with other boys.

Once Dick Johnson (real name), and epitomized by his first name, asked me in front of my family who came up to visit me the first year, “how many merit badges did you earn this year Joe?”

I shamefully answered “none” under my breath as my family laughed, mistaking his beratement of me as some kind of joke. 

The only merit badge I earned was for swimming. I was a fish outside of water. Every day rain or shine I was there at the docks that we could go to, my crew commandeering one every afternoon. We flabby boys from the suburbs would talk shit to one another for a few minutes, jump or dive in the water, then climb up the ladder to missocialize again. We would talk between swatting horseflies and smacking them dead on our bodies. I would have earned a merit badge in that too if it was available. I had the record of most kills among the members of my gang.

My technique that I developed was this. Wait until the horse fly sank its teeth firmly into your skin, what felt like being pinch hard like from someone who wanted to cause you pain and let you know it. I knew then that the horse fly had his teeth deep in the flesh, his mouth suckling it for all the sustenance he could get. Then I would grab it between my thumb and forefinger, and squish it dead in my grasp. I killed several dozen in one day. My associates thought I was insane, a common belief among many people to this day. At least I know I’m an artist in search of my art.  

I even went out despite thunderstorms which sent everyone else scrambling to the shelter of the two man cloth tents that stood year round, atop foot high wooden pallets. I would be the only one at the lake jumping and diving in the water, as rain pelted me and the forest, thunder boomed over our heads, and lighting stabbed the ground in the distance.

One merit badge you could earn was for swimming out in increments of two hundred yards, four hundred, and a around trip of eight hundred yards. If you did all three then you earned one merit badge. For safety reasons you had to swim out with an observer in a rowboat. You could stop and rest in the water, to catch your breath from time to time, by holding onto a rope that was tied to the back of the row boat. When you were ready you started swimming again, you swam and the guy in the rowboat followed alongside you. The guy that was my observer reluctantly asked me if I wanted to do all of the three right here, right now, this afternoon. I took advantage of the opportunity and agreed. I completed the two hundred yard swim with no problem.

I began to get tired during the four hundred yard swim and began to rest, necessitating the guy in the boat to rest with me. I think he even started to get bored with the whole process. Instead of rowing along side me he would pull ahead and row in front of me. When I was completing the return swim for my eight hundred yard swim, I took advantage of the rope that was dangling from the back of the boat, and knowingly or unknowingly, the boy pulled me along for several dozen yards before I had the good sense to let go and not be caught, thus negating my swim and necessitating my having to go through this ordeal again. That was how I earned a merit badge for swimming, the only merit badge I earned in two years of going to Sabattis for two weeks each time.