Adventures in Craigslist

Problem:

I was bored and feeling inconsolable, and wanted to pick myself up.  My mailbox was empty, both the real and tactile mailbox on my door and the cute little blue screen Gmail made for me.  My shoulder feels like I have termites and I might have a cracked rib or two, so the gym was out.  I had no new comments to play off of on my blog.  Life was sort of sad and listless.  I was gear adrift. 

Solution:

Any productive activity, no matter how slight, generally gives me a boost.  My room mate and I had discussed earlier the presence of mice in the garage and their eventual raiding of the house proper.  the solution that seemed easiest would be to get a cat.  The problem with cats is that they are not fun.  In fact they are worthless pets who do absolutely nothing but eat food for 12 years and die.  I am not a fan of felines.  That is a lie, the genus Felis is alright, it’s the whiny, fat, freeloading specus that hangs out among whiny, fat, freeloading humanity that I detest.  Now, the stringy and flighty barn variety of cat is just fine with me.  I approve of aloof predators.  My dating history is beginning to make more sense now, yes? 

Anyway, I wanted a mouser.  An angry aloof mouser.  One of the cats that would rather bite than cuddle.  So I placed this ad: http://westslope.craigslist.org/pet/621734387.html

I felt a little better.  I felt even better when the (3) emails started pouring in.  While no one had a spare ocelot, many had nice things to say to me.  Two of them thanked me for a laugh they needed that day.  I felt good about that.  I helped out humanity.  This is good news.

Problem:

I was sitting her thinking about dating and why I am terrible at it.  So I says to Mabel, I says, “Mabel? This datin thing.  Ahm TURRIBLE atit.”¹  

She gave me the look that huskies have adopted for particularly stupid owners.  Huskies are really not great pets.  They’re smarter than German Shepherds and have a self sufficient streak.  That means they really don’t understand why you keep babbling at them all the time.  Instead of a big floppy doggy head on your lap, you get an arched eyebrow and sometimes a bared tooth.  They also do not sit or lay down because you decided it was a good idea.  A decidedly unsympathetic animal.

After enough thinking, I really decided I’m terrible at dating because I just don’t care enough all the time.  don’t get me wrong, I am a damn good boyfriend, but I just can’t pretend to want to see most people on a regular basis.  The longest relationship I have ever pulled off² involved a 250 mile drive or an eight hour train ride for any sort of visiting.  It was kind of nice in that I had ample time for homework and drunken shenanigans.  Eventually, like all relationships, it got hard and the bets were pulled, but still.  That was the easiest relationship I have ever been in. (Warning: possible slight bitterness on subject) 

I determined that I should not be worry about one of these “relationships” as of yet.  But, being human, I like having a person share time and small goals and the occasional bottle of wine with me.

Solution:

So, I decided to repeat the above experiment and make another fake ad.  Just like I was not particularly interested in owning a cat, I am really not interested in dating.  However, if I had someone say they had a brighter Monday, I would be plenty happy.  Also, my inbox would not be empty.  So, I posted this tongue in cheek ad (everyone that knows me will notice the age is wrong): http://denver.craigslist.org/m4w/625111651.html

I had some very heartfelt and empathetic responses from women.  I wasn’t planning on believing in humanity in general and females in particular as a side benefit of placing the ad, but it was hard to avoid. 

This was one of my favorites (edited slightly for content and to fit in time allowed):

“Wow,

This ad really blew my mind.
Mainly because it sounded exactly like what I would have written, if I were to bothered to post an ad.
Relationships in general are a pain in the ass, but sometimes, very occasionally you wish to have someone.
But for that rare moment, do I want to invest/share my energy and time to get to know someone?
The answer is apparent.
 
Luckily, it is monday morning, a lot of procrastination to do. Hence the response.
I probably wouldn’t reply to your response promptly either as you can imagine why.
 
Good luck with your search and be safe!
 
Female version of you.”

Tough to be bitter at honestly human people, really.

1. Here I get to make fun of mah turrible accent and play off the name of Mabel with an easily recognized joke. I feel like I should win some sort of prize or something.

2. This not entirely true, but is not exactly a lie. Complicated.

One or 16/16

Whoever said this would take 16 days was full of shit.

Night (15/16)

I will be adding a category called Serious Sunday, because I like resonance as a rhetorical tool.  Anything that’s a real downer will be posted on Sundays, so I can bury them Monday.   

Once again, it was me and a few other people.  One faceless woman and a crowd of extras, some children.

We were driving up on an Interstate rest area out in the cedars, probably around Mack.  There were trailer houses backed into the periphery with their windows covered in OSB shutters, framed and reinfocred.   The squat mobile home pulling tractors had their windshields covered in home made shields, locked with hasps.  The trailers and the trucks had been armored and updated and care had been given to paint them and their added armor in festive Easter colors with little flowers painted on gun placements.  This was a community that was not at home, probably out getting food or supplies.  They had a small utility trailer parked a few hundred yards from one of the entrance with a guard shack built on top of it. 

There were no birds.

Me and my group gathered around our camper and had a decision to make.  These looked like nice people.  Then, over the hills we heard their cars.  The engines were railing and the tires were squalling.  We also heard the screaming.  The screaming that burst over the hills and pulled our breath out of us.  The sound was close.  I ran back to the camper and pulled out my .300 Weatherby and my brother’s old .40 S&W pistol.  I only had the four rounds loaded into the rifle and a brick of pistol rounds.  That was why we needed these people.  We had bayonets manufactured from scrap steel we rigged to our weapons. 

I don’t know what happened to my brother.  I can guess.

I directed my people to defensible positions and prepared.  The children shut themselves in the camper with a couple sawed off shotguns, so they could make a last stand if we failed.  Most of the men and women had guns of the SKS and M-14 variety.  We sat waiting for the sound of engines and screaming, like otherworldly harpy throats being cut, to come over the ridge.  The cedars seemed to shudder at the approaching battle.   I took up position inside the guard shack.  The OSB smelled strong like glue in the heat.  I wedged my knee into the wood and my back leg against the bench to steady myself.  Every shot was important.  I found a perch for the rifle and got my sight picture arranged.  The people I brought with me were lean and strong, arms rippling copper in the sun against the green of the cedar and the red of the earth, their cotton dresses and t-shirts windbeaten and showing through in the sun.  Grass coming up through years neglected asphalt swayed in the breeze. 

The citizens of this moving town were making a good run of it, judging by the sound of their engines.  And they knew what they were doing.  You could hear vehicles attack and race away while the main body convoyed out of the area.  Birds, the only birds you see, were circling over the incoming running battle, diving and darting into the fray, black as coal.  The overall trend of the noise was approaching us, closer to the rest area.  As were the screams following close by.  The sound of claws digging into metal could be heard.  The first of the cars burst out of the treeline on the on-ramp, a dark cloud following. 

And then it all changed. 

A man was on the hood of a driverless car that was racing toward a cliff.  The man had to go over, I don’t know why.  It was for the good of all, so he must have been diseased.  The empty sky, no clouds, no airplanes, no respite from the high desert sun, was brilliant blue over the doomed sick man.  And then there was the wolf.  It jumped on the car and rode, staring at him.  The wolf was not normal.  It was articulate as it spoke and its black coat seemed to pull insanity from the world around to be distilled inside its heart engine.  The wolf spoke and its teeth went around in its mouth like a chain.  Like the mouth of a machine, the teeth flowed in a ring around his mouth while he talked.  He slashed at the man and came away dripping flesh and blood. 

His white features on his face faded away and became clear until his black fur was only a shadow.  His eyes lolled around in his shadowed skull and his invisible teeth rolled around his mouth like a chain.  I could see the rushing cedars behind him through his mouth and eyes.

He said to me, “At least I get my meat. At least I get my meat.  At least I get my meat.”

The wolf jumped away as the man, torn and bleeding and ill went over the cliff.

Then I woke up coughing.

Thinking of fleshing this out, think it has potential?

14/16

Fucking bitches.  This is bullshit.

Except Mabel.  She is most definitely not bullshit.

 Holy sweet fuck, god damn bourbon.  The world is bouncing and the bullshit surrounds.  Out on the desert terraces, ancient beds of riverbed history–gone forever, solid gone–the coyotes yelp and scream out their demon song and Mabel pops tall and stares into the dark.  Over the cliffs, the first silver light of the moon looms and I know. 

My father once told me that when you had the Spirit, you would know that you know that you know.  Here in the dark and cold, I do know that I know, but the edges of the thought are flaking off, like the way a woman leaves the room and takes the light with her. 

And I know that I know.

That justice is not and that the universe proceeds in the darkness on the face of the deep of equity.  Some days I am accessible. 

Others I am drunk.  There is no truth in what words proceed out of the mouth of one person I know.  I wonder if they know that?  But I don’t worry it.  I have bourbon.  And Mabel.

13/16

It’s official at this point, the doc told me to cut back on the physical training.  I told him it was whiskey or running or shooting my fucking self (hyperbole).  The running seems like the healthiest way to scramble my brain for a while.  Unfortunately, like most addictions, it escalates.  I have to have more and more and it helps less and less. 

Four miles yesterday, ran until I puked.   Burned up my body so bad lifting today that I still feel lightheaded.  Anybody got any other ideas outside of drinking and barfighting? 

No one night stands, either.

Update: You could always write Craigslist ads.

Conscientious Objector

I think I got it about figured it out.

I hate to argue here…

Then don’t. Your job is to warn me when I’m doing something stupid, not to have a running commentary on my thought process.  But, like I said, got it figured out.

…

Good. So, what would you say if someone told you they could make you happy and that life would just be overall more pleasant and less of a grinding maw of chained teeth swallowing plague victims?

Oh, you’re having the mechanical wolf dream again?

Focus.  And answer the question.  What if I told you that?  What if you could find life incredibly easy to deal with and the lonely disease of humanity could leave you for a while, you could be on a team, where you both help each other out?

That’s a whole new life.  One shared.  Your happiness is dependant on them.

Ok, I got that far and then I thought…

The Bible says: Be beholden to no man.

Yes! That is exactly what I said to myself.  Or you did, was that you?  No, that was your week to be conscientatin’ that kid in Baja.  How is he doing?

Eh. Fish, swim, bone college students on Spring Break.  I cut him a little slack because he’s never hurt anyone.

Right.  Sorry to be such a burden on your schedule, especially lately.  Have you ever wondered when, exactly, Bible verses will quit being part of our response to every stimulus?  The kid in Mexico, you probably just flash a picture of his mom in his head when he’s about to fuck up, but I get James blathering on about something.  I guess it wouldn’t be temptation if you didn’t have some objection to it in the first place.  Humanity is engineered to fail, since temptation was made right along with us.

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God…Damn, now I’m doing it.

Yeah, I know, that’s the danger of being in my head. It’s even old KJV.  It must be lodged in there from infancy.  I wonder if my mom, in her former piety, was just reading that crap out of the Bible when I was in her gut.  They say that kids can hear shit in the womb. 

I don’t know. Shit, you got these things floating around everywhere.  I’m about ankle deep in “Doest thou’s” and “Hither to’s.”  How do you even think about anything else with all this Middle English floating around?

Meditate daily on the scriptures and all that.

Do you?

God, I wish I could STOP meditating on them. They distract me from too much.  I can’t get anything done.  And my side hurts, I feel like I’m dying.  But, the wages of sin is death.

Yeah, I was out that night, who was standing in?

Wild Turkey.

Oh, Jesus.  It all makes sense, now.  So, you caught a knee in the ribs it looks like.  You got your licks in too, I guess, but I would have told you arms in, legs bent, head down.  Did you just charge in there like a tom turkey?

Indeed. Guess who told me to do that?

I don’t need to guess.  I also would have told you to quit talking all that “mineralogy is the truth of the universe in your ring” crap.  I don’t care how nice his girlfriend’s ring was.  Does that tact ever work for you anyway?  The geology as an analog to human existence thing?

Ah.  It did once, with the hematite to wine thing.  And that memory was right there next to the Turkey goading me on. Besides, the guy was a prick, he had it coming.  It was ordained.

For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.  Damn it!

Indeed.

12/16

Give me a rifle and send me to Iraq.  Please.

Update:  Women. 

Update:  Job at Home Depot.

Discuss.

11/16

That midnight train is winding low.

And in that train rides the last dying gasps of desperation.  There is no conductor, no engineer, no staff.  Just a ship of fools crossing the desert on gleaming rails in the moonlight. 

 Some nights, all you have is a fast two mile run, a glass of cheap bourbon and Hank Williams. 

 That and memories of train rides through the cretaceous heart of Colorado.  But don’t admit that.  Lord knows you can never admit to all those memories, or how you would give away every ounce of freedom to have them back, that would be “disrespecting” some pointless space you did not ask for.  Those memories were beautiful and poignant, and now dead and gone. 

And you miss Her, and her family, and her dogs. 

Things are really not as bad as they sound.  I have some beef ribs searing over a cedar fire and a job in the morning.  The ribs have been slow cooking in the smoke for more than an hour with brown sugar melting with the fat into candy.  I have ice cubes in my glass and the last golden caramel beauty of the universe hanging on for dear existence, smelling of oak and cinnamon.  A poor trade, true, but I love my life over the trains rides for the same reason I love my 1970 Scout.

There’s nicer rides out there–Saabs, Subarus, Lexus Stepford family trash–but I got the free and clear title rolled up in the glove box.  And no one can take it away.

10/16

Ran three miles yesterday, at a little too quick a pace.  I had a hangover to burn off and a mind full of missing someone.  I can see how it is in the extreme unctions of hunger or discomfort people make up all the good philosophies.  Jesus walked hundreds of miles in some rough terrain before he ever preached a sermon.  And when he did, he brought the rain on some folks.  Generally, all the good moral codes are born out of a detachment. 

I spent a few years Buddhist.  It was a nice time, especially since I was of the particular variety that allowed booze and women, just not in excess.  Then I lost it.  One day I just decided that I believed in Jesus.  Now, this is not a conversion story, keep in mind who we’re talking about here.  I don’t think I’m capable of religion, honestly. 

So, I was sitting there one day, as I am prone to do, pondering eternity.  I was of a particular variety of Buddhism that hammers on the impermanence of all things.  If you have breathed in and out for more than twenty years, you have observed that much, so I went along with it pretty easily.  Then I thought about sinning, which is a concept I have trouble with.  I’m not sure how sins work, as it seems the thought of sinning is sin, a debate that goes back at least as far as Peter and Paul (note: if you feel like getting that deep into Christian theology, I’ll send you some reading ideas).  The sin of thinking about sinning inevitably leads you into an argument of Determinism.  And Determinism was a debate Calvin and Luther were famous for.  Both died not having proved their point, though Calvinism got renamed Capitalism and is still around in the bastardized Prosperity Gospel doctrine that makes me want to kick an Armani wearing preacher in the groin.  Then I remembered my original problem with the religion of Christianity:

 It makes no sense.  I mean at all. 

So, I got to reading again.  According to our best dating methods, the only Gospel possibly contemporary of Jesus would be the Gospel of Mark.  So, I started there.  And you know, Jesus was a pretty alright guy, but I would not want to hang out with him.  Have you ever had one of those friends you won’t go to the bar with because you know you’ll end up in a fight?  That is Mark’s Jesus.  Jesus was a badass in most respects, though not a brawler, obviously.  As I read it, I got to like the guy.  He run up one side and down the other on the bullshit temple mongers who remind me a little too much of the warehouse churches I’ve been to.  If Jesus were to show up at the local Fellowship Ministries Ultra Mega Christian Center (with coffee shop and bookstore) he would straight up lose his shit.  Hell yeah, he would. 

And I would love to be there.  That’s a guy I could believe in.  Now, outside of that, there’s the tacked on last few chapters of Mark.  Just leave that crap alone.  I find it interesting that Jesus, at least on reliable record, left absolutely nothing behind as far as a church.  The most he ever did was set up communion.  Outside of that, people were supposed to make their own way with God, not with assoiciate music pastors strumming crappy Bob Dylan songs with Jesus words.  I also find it interesting that Jesus never once mentions abortion, homosexuality, family values, illegal immigration, or any other issue his followers are hung up on.  He only railed against hypocrisy and greed.  In fact, Joseph moved Jesus et. al. into Egypt to escape persecution in Judea.  Jesus was a wetback kid.  Choke on it, Republicans.

Sorry.  What I’m getting at is that the Church you attend has almost no basis in scripture.  Jesus was never once called a Christian.  It was decades before a few travelling people were given the name as an insult.  So, am I a Christian? No.  mostly because I don’t think Paul really had the hard line to God people think he had.  If the guy knew he was writing The Bible, he might have toned it down some, or at least been more specific in some cases.  I will say, though, that I believe in Jesus.  I have no problem with that, keeping in mind that it is impossible to prove or disprove that one carpenter’s kid lived in a dusty backwater of the Roman empire and was executed for political reasons.  I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything on that, the probabilities of corroboration are almost impossibly small either way.

So, like I said, I don’t necessarily know, and would not try and convince you, but I believe that much. 

As I was running, I thought of Her, and it all sort of made sense.  See, the Gospel, and particularly the Passion is a terrible and tragic love story above all else.  If Jesus was who he said he was or not is immaterial to the fact that one man loved humanity enough to give everything he had for it and eventually die his painful death for this group of unsavory animal.  About mile 2.5 of my murder pace, when I smelled like a straight distillery and bile started to tickle my throat and my lungs were on fire, I thought of her, and I suddenly believed all over again in Easter*.  Not because I can prove it, or because I believe in God as understood by most, but because I believe in love.  And love, in at least some way is empathy and loneliness. 

If I had to, I would be beaten and flogged and crucified for Her, as I would any I have truly, madly loved.  Passionate and selfless seem interrelated on a level I don’t understand.  More than he was the Son of a God no one understands, he was a human.  I believe in Jesus because I understand the man.  Up on the cross, his air leaving as his body became lactic, he truly loved.  And I, about mile three trying to sacrifice my body for someone I loved, got it.  Passion, indeed.

Jesus didn’t die for me or you, he died for love, possibly deluded and misplaced, but love all the same, a love that has become real to me in the last month.  I can believe in that.

He loved the way that flesh flays open and the rent fills with blood behind the cutting blade.  Jesus knows what it’s like, heaving in with no air to breathe–crucifixion would kill you by collapsing your lungs.  Jesus, bleeding and asphyxiating for love, truly understands me.

Jesus crucified was choking on the blues.

 **

_______________________________

^{*Not the day, exactly.  Don’t get me started on the actual celebrated calendar day of Easter and the racism involved.
**And I thank you.}

County Lock Up

I am not there, thank God.  Should have been.  Narrowly escaped.  Damn women.

Stupidity abounds, it would seem.