Everything is OK

Rose Park

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:58:58 -0500

Rose Park
Category: Writing and Poetry

INT. FRANK HOUSE-NIGHT

ENTER:The family
FRANK (Male Age 45-55 Anthony Hopkins; Tough as nails, and handsome to boot), his wife CAROLINE (Female Age 40-45 Beautiful lady with a tough Irish tone), their son JIMMY (Male Age 30-35 Brad Pitt; Charming and slightly crazy), SHERRY (Female Age 25-30 Vanity before sanity), and Jimmy’s brother, CHRISTOPHER (Age 30-35 Johnny Depp; Bob Dylan introverted, cool cat)

They all sit at the dinning table after finishing a Sunday spaghetti dinner. Caroline serves wine. Noah pulls at Jimmy’s arm.

NOAH
Dad when do we get to light fireworks?

JIMMY
Later.

NOAH
When dad?

JIMMY
(aggravated)
Later, don’t ask me again alright?

NOAH
OK.

JIMMY
Go play.

A few beats…

CHRISTOPHER
Try one of these dad, you’ll shit.

Christopher shares his cigars with Jimmy and Frank.

FRANK
They’re good?

CHRISTOPHER
(confident)
You tell me.

JIMMY
(To Christopher)
Thanks for the Gar bro.
God can you believe all the crazy shit we used to do around here?

CHRISTOPHER
It’s amazing we’re not dead.

JIMMY
No shit huh bro?

FRANK
We raised two of the toughest god damned kids in Rose Park, didn’t we?

CAROLINE
(Sigh)
Oh…

JIMMY
Remember when we were kids and got beat up by those guys and dad wouldn’t let us come in the house until we went back and beat them up?

CAROLINE
Oh he never did that Jimmy.
Don’t say things like that.

JIMMY
What do you think I’m making it up mom?

CHRISTOPHER
Yea he did mom.

Caroline can’t deny it if Christopher says it’s so. Jimmy feels that somewhere deep inside.

FRANK
Yep I remember that day; I told ‘em “Don’t come around here, because you don’t live here anymore. You’re not my kids; my kids don’t run away from anyone.”

Frank’s lack of shame is shocking.

JIMMY
We went back to school and beat the ever loving shit out of them.

CHRISTOPHER
No, we went back to school, but they already left remember? So we went to their house, went right inside their house and got ‘em good.

JIMMY
Oh yea, yea we sure did go in their house. God were we nuts or what?

They all laugh as they puff away on their cigars.

JIMMY
Bro remember the time we fought all those Mexicans out at Salt Aire pool hall?

CHRISTOPHER
Yea… I Remember that.

JIMMY
And that guy snuck up behind me and was going to take my head off with a crowbar, but Gilbert got him first; hit him over the head with a Whiskey bottle. Remember that fight?

Amused thinking back, Christopher puffs away on his cigar. Talk of violence appalls Caroline
but it excites Frank.

CHRISTOPHER
Yep… Yep, god did we wrecked those poor bastards or what?

JIMMY
(cringes at the memory)
Whew… Wrecked ‘em.

FRANK
Gilbert got him before he got you Jimmy?

JIMMY
Oh yeah dad, cut the guys ear right off with a Whiskey bottle.
He was on the ground, and we were kicking him while he tried to grab it.

FRANK
While he tried to pickup his ear?!

CHRISTOPHER
Yep…

FRANK
God I love it!

They all laugh.

CHRISTOPHER
Ole Gilbert huh Jimmy?

JIMMY
God I miss him bro.

CHRISTOPHER
Me too man.

CAROLINE
He’s always so polite.

FRANK
What the hell is he doing these days?

JIMMY
He’s dead dad.

CAROLINE
Oh he is not Jimmy, your dad and I just saw him.

JIMMY
When?

CAROLINE
At the… oh what’s the name of that damned store uptown Frank.

FRANK
There’s ten thousand god damned stores up town.

CAROLINE
You don’t have to bark at me Frank!

JIMMY
Not where, WHEN Mom. When did you see him?

CAROLINE
Oh…Last year.

JIMMY
Well he was alive last year, but he’s dead now mom.
He died a couple months ago, shot himself.

CAROLINE
Jimmy!

JIMMY
What?

FRANK
Oh Jesus god no?

CHRISTOPHER
Yep, he was the one robbing all those banks uptown.
They had him cornered so he shot
himself.

FRANK
Oh god damn it, don’t tell me that.

The mood falls heavy. On the floor in the adjoining room Mike and Noah play with star wars action figures, complete with explosion sound effects.

CAROLINE
Keep it down you two!

Jimmy glares at Noah and he immediately settles down.

FRANK
Oh, let them be will you Caroline?

Frank turns his attention to Noah and Mike.

FRANK
Who’s ready for some fireworks baby?

Noah looks to Jimmy and he gives the “OK” gesture. Noah and Mike follow Frank outside.

4,3,2,1...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:58:26 -0500

4,3,2,1…
Category: Writing and Poetry

Here’s what’s going to happen, within the next year… year and a half; We’re going to discover another planet with life. I’m betting that some of their transmissions have already been intercepted, with all of the satellite technology in use today.

I’m not sure if this is the “it” that is going to happen but it’s definitely a big part of the future. It will create a shift in perception. The anxiety to communicate and possibly meet with the beings will become humanities obsession.

That obsession will overturn all previous obsessions, including fights for oil and battles for land. Wars will cease as everyone’s attention turns to thinking about what might be. Do they have a cure for cancer? Do they have answers to our oldest questions…

Questions like “Why are we here?” and “Where do we go when we die?” Our curiosity will drive the race to decipher their language, and theirs to ours. We will begin teaching each other and the internet will allow everyone to take part.

How do they perceive the Universe? What is their planet like? Their technology? Suddenly everyone on earth will feel a sense of hope that we never even knew we were missing. This sense of hope will create compassion towards ourselves and others.

If we are in danger then we’ll want to be even more united than ever before, and if we are going to receive help from these unknown beings then… We will lose the desire to fight each other. This is what is coming, this is what we’re all sensing.

A discovery that will make clear once and for all the panic we’ve all been living in believing that we are all lost in the Universe. Possibly why some of the deeper meditation practices are more compassionate… because they may have already sensed this truth in their silence.

I don’t know everything but I did get a glimpse of it… There is so much that we don’t know, and yet so much that we have to offer. That’s all I got a glimpse of, wish I could share more but that’s it.

There is one other thing that is close and that is the technology to see or communicate with the dead. Einstein was either working on or thinking about such a device before he passed.

I have a couple of theories about how we unveil that realm… I believe that taking video of two different points in space and measuring the difference between them, possibly with different frequencies of light and possibly with different sound waves…

But the measurement should consist of examining the difference between two… possibly more, different points. For instance if I focus a camera at ten inches from the lens and then focus a second camera at eleven inches from that same lens, or one inch apart from each other…

Somewhere in that space exists the measurement that our eyes and instruments can not measure. For those of you who have felt the presence of those from another realm, it won’t be as surprising a discovery.

For those who have been unable to experience that realm… Well they’re probably going to shit themselves. Hmmm… I don’t really know what else to say here. Does it give you hope to read this?

Does it change your perception to imagine that humanity is nearing one of the most profound discoveries since the dawn of man… lol Dawn of man… Did you see Dawn of the Dead? That fkn movie “filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.”-Poe

Does it frighten you to think about this, and if so why? Mostly I feel the anxiety of having to wait not only for the discovery but for the questions to be answered as to how we are going to connect with them.

That seems to me like a lot of waiting… Of course maybe it’ll just be as natural as the anxiety I feel waiting for my last day. I always imagine being somewhat relieved when that day arrives; “oh for fucks sake it’s about time already.” You know?

Can you imagine all of humanity anxiously waiting on a care package from another planet… That’s all I’ve got tonight. Hope you enjoyed the read.

Peace Y’all
Dominic Greco

Walkin After Midnight

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:53:39 -0500

I always get a frightened feeling at night. It’s in my belly mostly, I can’t seem to shake it. I can’t even seem to comfort myself… at least not completely, mostly I just endure it until the sun returns.

I can’t really even bring myself to write lately, it’s too scary. I don’t even know why, it’s like I can’t seem to open up. Maybe I should trust that and just hang in there until I feel differently. I Don’t know what to do with myself.

And I especially don’t know what to do with myself when I’m not writing. Writing seems to be the only thing that releases some of that invisible insanity that swirls around my psyche until the wee hours of the night.

I take deep breaths. Sometimes I wonder if I should just embrace some of the crazy thoughts, maybe not being afraid will comfort me, but that doesn’t seem to work either. It just makes me feel crazier.

I want to cry but I’m too tense to cry. I want to give up but there’s nothing to let go of, and here I am once again. This is me rambling, rattling with uncertainty. I try and watch less TV, more and more I enjoy TV less and less and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t comfort me sometimes… PBS mostly.

So much insanity, so much discomfort. It’s designed that way to keep my attention, addictive… you know… I really think that it is, but more and more it is harder and harder to swallow.

So I reach out, god help us… The lost children. Wondering and wondering though the night. Hoping to find some element of comfort. Most of the things that I fear are things I have seen on TV.

Isn’t that something… Most of the scary shit rattling about in my fucking head is from stuff that I have heard on the nasty ass news or seen on one of the many murderous shows after dark.

Actually they don’t even wait until after dark to start the scary stuff, just after dinner… Maybe not even after dinner. I used to anxiously finish cooking so I could sit in front of the TV and watch Law and Order.

Aware but oddly disconnected from the impact of the stories. So like what is happening to me that I am becoming aware of all of this discomfort? Is this what happens when you get old, because I am getting older…

As I type it and the words reflect back to me I am even more confused as to the reason why I now feel far crazier than I ever did when I was able to comfortably watch shows about murdered men and women while ate my dinner.

I have been off the news for years now. If I could suggest one good thing for you it would be to kick that habit cold turkey. I’ve always been aware of how fucking nasty that shit was… Hmmm… Yea I won’t even go into it because I would have to imitate foul to describe something that need not be described.

I was thinking about how easy it is to condemn an entire system because I only support one of the pillars, and even so that mine is for my survival. It’s not as if I condone what it stands for.

Isn’t that profound. Isn’t that what’s happening these days; the machines no longer need heads to survive. Wow. I wonder about Zombies… Not only how awesome Zombie movies and video games are but…

What they represent, you know like how they represent unreasonable people. An irrational unreasonable force, an unstoppable movement. Zombies are a great metaphor for that sensation I get when I deal with Comcast or Verizon.

As I write I feel the energy lift from my shoulders, I call it fear but I don’t really know what it is. I wonder and wonder and wonder but to no avail. “I go out a walkin, after midnight… Out in the moonlight… Just like we used to do.” Patsy Cline

I have been taking walks lately, it’s the only thing I have found that helps calm my mind. I am unemployed. Life has given me a moment to catch my breath, but I have to trust its direction, and that is the hardest thing for me to do.

So once again there is a Yin and Yang for every thang. You know what… Not Chicken butt, though your ass is dry… Hmmm… I have been accepting all of these scary things because It’s too hard to feel how frightened I am by all of it, so I just swallow it.

It reminds me of a scary dream I once had… Maybe a lot of scary dreams that I have had, just accepting awful stuff because it’s too scary to admit that I am vulnerable. Maybe countless tv programs about brutal violence will comfort my broken spirit.

By broken I mean sensitive, and by comfort I mean… What do I mean by that. I don’t know what I mean, then why the hell did I watch that shit? When I was younger I would stay close to the scary people at recess because I didn’t want them to know I was afraid.

I couldn’t admit to them or even to myself that I was repulsed by them, terrified. Better I keep close to them so I know what they’re up to, than to try and out run them. Surely they’d catch up with me eventually. That’s how I thought.

Not anymore, I steer clear of nasty spirits. Better they strike me down as I walk away the first time than to have to spend another moment with them. Nasty folk you know who you are.

Foul… Foul beings. That made me giggle. Oh thank gods I can find a shard of my humor. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times; My sense of humor is the first thing to go when I am loosing my mind.

I was just called away to comfort someone else and as I spoiled them with back tickles I began to feel comforted myself. That’s when it hit me; I comfort myself by comforting someone else.

What if that’s the whole enchilada of secrets, right there in a nut shell. The big whopper, the Kazoogie Bagoogie. What if that’s it. Of course that’s it… I’m not the first one to discover that am I… Son of a… (Richard Dreyfus angry) Who needs me?

I was going to write about something, a question that was on my mind as to whether or not sick expression is healthy or damaging. Like is it healthy to play a video game where I shoot Zombies in the face, or would it be better to not have any form of expression for my desire to shoot faces?

I don’t quite know the answer to that question, but I do know when I am having a sensory overload of one particular illness and… Well you know. And there was a time when Resident Evil was my only friend. But there was something else that I was going to share with you…

Who needs you? You sit in your world, as I do in mine; afraid of reaching out for fear of being rejected, hurt. All the while denying myself the blessing of being useful, worthwhile, needed. Who needs me?

Surely not the same talent farming jackasses that have tried to harvest me in the past, surely life wouldn’t dream of trying to cram me where I no longer fit. Back into spaces I have long since outgrown.

Ahhh someone once told me that I can no more leave before I am ready than I could stay after I am done. Isn’t that beautiful, doesn’t that comfort your soul. Yes, yes it sure does.
When did we stop sharing ourselves, after being hurt?

Ya, ya that was when. That’s the devils dirty little trick; disabling my ability to heal myself by tricking me into fearing the remedy for what ales me. Man I have had such a difficult time relaxing lately, no job… no obsessions.

Even the desire to write has vanished. I need something bigger than me to help guide me. A bigger part of me, my “Winged self”- Kahlil Gibran. What sort of prayer must I use to summon comfort?

Ahhh surely it is a prayer of great trial and effort, for nothing easy could withstand the storms of… I feel so frightened I could cry. Gods it’s hard to admit that. I used to love staying up late, the calm of the night time was so comforting.

What happened to me… I used to despise the chaotic energy of the day. Everyone hustling to get to work, all of the madness and anxiety… Ehh I still don’t dig that energy, but I sure as shit don’t like feeling so alone.

Not like this, no way. This is just awful. It has been difficult for me to admit that because I don’t have any idea how to comfort myself. My life is so different than it once was, everything is different. Maybe that’s why It took me so long to change. I’m not about to go out walkin after midnight, out in the moonlight… You know?

This is Richmond, not fucking Mayberry… Of course I could take a ride on my bike, I’d at least be a lot harder to hit since I’d be a moving target. Now I’m just being silly, this is a good town. My goodness life is strange, it’s so hard to change. You can quote me on that.

Peace Y’all
Dominic Greco

PS. Write me, I would love to hear from you.

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Oh Life

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:10:25 -0400

I went shopping today. Something about the toy isle makes me feel so awful inside. I want it to make me feel whole and happy, but it does not and it never has. It just makes me feel bad or sad or…

I don’t even know, but it is the polar opposite of what I would expect it to make me feel and I even give myself permission to be a kid again and like all of that childhood stimulating crap. Still nothing. I had just always assumed that it was me, another flaw in my being.

There is something about cheap stuff that makes me feel so deeply say. I imagine my parents being bamboozled by the misleading packaging. Being taken advantage of by a crummy Chinese knock off electronic copy. It all feels so wrong. Give me quality or give me death.

I can’t think about my parents tonight, I just woke up with a tasty migraine. I am waiting for the pills to kick in. These headaches are the only time I take pills. I had been in bed for about four hours semi conscious, tossing and turning while the migraine grew to its full potential.

I prefer to imagine it’s a symptom of a deadly brain tumor. Somewhere this makes more sense to me than trying to imagine it’s nothing at all. That seems much more frightening. I’m betting that facing the worst possible fantasy somehow helps me to release my fear.

I’m not entirely convinced of my medical practice… Maybe I should imagine flowers and happy beams of light radiating into the back of my neck, or out from… Which ever seems more appropriate in healing the energy clog that has me all wound up at this hour.

I am inclined to try and jerk my troubles away, from my wiener you know… I feel a bit tender for that sort of activity. Sex is such a strange thing, it’s often either too hard or too soft for my taste.

My friend performed Reiki on me today. Within minutes I was in tears. I always want to write more about crying, but I never seem to find the flow. It[s such a simple and pure thing, maybe there’s nothing more to write about it than that. I don’t know for sure, but I still want to.

The moment she began her magic I felt the energy begin to rush through me, out of me. I was prepared for it mentally, I had anticipated that it would be painful. Emotionally painful I mean, and it was.

All of the regrets and shame and fears of the past. They all began to flow through me, out of me. Out into the Universe maybe, I don’t quite know. In a moment I remembered how big it all is, and I could hear Micheal Stipe’s beautiful voice “Oh life is bigger, bigger than you.”

Those emotions reminded me how little all the hustle and bustle is, all the financial worry and what not. All that stuff is so small compared to life and death and time and realms and heaven and hell. It’s all just so god damned tiny in comparison, but I have to be careful not to attach too much earthly importance to the energy that flowed.

I am learned in the art of conductivity, through countless hours of crying maybe, but learned nonetheless. My tendency is to assign value, judgment to each and every thought that accompanies the energy. To weigh and assess but…

Time has helped me to see that it’s all just energy. I must return to the present, without judgment of myself. Brave enough to get back on and try again. Once I wrecked on my bike and smacked my face on the ground something fierce.

It took some time before I was willing to climb back on and try again, but I am happy that I finally did. It was worth it. Bikes are my favorite fun activity. My migraine has subsided. What a relief that is. Soon I will be able to sleep again.

As the old stuff flowed through me I contemplated life and death, the pain of losing old friends… The value of love… The fangs of shame. My god it’s difficult to be human, so fucking far beyond difficult it’s not even funny.

Before we began, upon arrival at her house I stumbled upon a monarch butterfly that was fresh from its cocoon. Her wings were still crumbled and folded… still damp. She was stretching and drying them under the sun. So vulnerable.

A couple of times she lost grip of her grass stalk and feel back near the pavement, but she quickly climbed back up out of the shade. Did she miss her parents? Did she grieve her traumatic childhood? Oh that made me laugh, that’s a good thing ain’t it; laughing.

After all of that gigantically painful healing there was a reminder of all the beauty of life that I often miss when I am all clogged up like that. That also made me laugh. Ibuprofen, that’s all I took for the migraine in case you were wondering.

I also thought about relief, my god… I thought about all of the people on earth today who will not find any relief. I wondered how we can carry so much pain and fear. How do we do it?

You know the question is not how fucked up the world is, but how incredible it is that we are even able to function as much as we do while carrying so much stuff. That’s the real question that needs to make headlines. How do we all do it without loosing our shit.

I have no fucking clue, to me that is the magic of humanity and not the idea that we should all be doing so much better and have a perfect health care plan or a feasible national deficit. All that shit is so god damned tiny in light of the fact that we’re all carrying tremendous spiritual baggage.

That sentence also made me laugh. Maybe we’re all not carrying so much, maybe it’s mostly me. A thought that again made me laugh, but I sincerely doubt it. My guess is that all the panic and insanity is just a reflection of our pursuit to find some sort of relief from all the difficulty being human.

Now I kind of just want to jack off. Release myself and then climb into bed and go night night. Today a butterfly flew for the first time. Today I healed my body and mind. Today I remembered the pain of losing an old friend, and the joy of having survived another day.

Peace Y’all
Dominic Greco

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Weeping Willow

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:54:43 -0400

I see differently now, things are changing. I am changing, I have changed. Into what I am not yet sure, but my perception is different than it was in the past. In the past there were moments when I had wept and the grief was too big to bear. It passed through my consciousness like a giant Elephant, my grief that is. Since then I have been afraid to cry, although I cried for years straight. When I began meditating I could not sit still for a moment without bursting into tears. They just flowed out of me, through me… Sometimes painful, sometimes rejuvenating and cleansing, sometimes terrifying. Terrifying because… Hmmm… It was as if in those moments of grief that I became so self aware, so open to myself that my psyche could see too much of myself. Too much for a single moment… Lifetimes too much. I’m certain I told you about the time I fell to my knees sobbing in LAX. My parents said I never cried when I was a kid, I imagine that it all got stuck somewhere inside me and that’s why it all began pouring out once I sat still. I remember my birth, not like a movie that I saw but even stranger. Like a distant sensation in my face. Not my fleshy face that appears in the mirror but my face that has always been. I change my look often. People I know comment about it, they say things like “You look like a different person.” That’s usually after I have shaved or cut my hair. Isn’t that odd? I would imagine that if they knew me at all they might sense when I had truly changed, like on the inside. Much more so than when I just clipped my nails. Once while working with the Scotsman in the canyon, I fell to my knees and wept. He said I was blessed, I think I was just in love… or in pain. I can’t quite remember the difference just yet, I just know that it was beautiful to be alive and dead in the same moment. Today I had a moment when I thought back on how long it has been since I was exhausted depressed, and it was long enough that I couldn’t remember the exact month. I have toiled over that topic for decades, searching for the missing piece of the puzzle. It it really as complex as psychotherapy might suggest? As simple as religion sells? I monitor my food intake, everything down to the very last canned ingredients and the only thing I have changed substantially since my last deep depression is that I have stopped eating gluten. Years ago when I first began to fall apart my parents made a special effort to try and help figure out what was going on with me. My father told me about a show he watched where a kid went totally nuts and they found out he was allergic to wheat. That frightened me that I could be so vulnerable in this realm as to fall victim to something so seemingly harmless as a grain of wheat. I do recall a family member who was allergic to wheat… He stopped growing at a young age and began to have increasing health problems into his early teens. After a trillion dollars in medical tests they discovered he too was allergic to wheat. So today as I connected those two things together in my mind, for a moment I imagined that I had stumbled upon the cure for, or cause of depression. Then I imagined the wealth and praise that would follow. None of it being real in the slightest, but I rode the daydream for a good moment. When I returned to earth I felt embarrassed of myself. Such magical thinking at such an old age. What am I now like three hundred? Maybe not… Tough to calculate. I have searched for a grasp of control on this realm for quite sometime now. Ever since I first caught glimpse of fear of the future. I have been searching for that missing link, the one that everyone is after. The one that manifests dreams into real life. That sort of “Big break” puzzle piece. What is it that some have that others lack, the thing that makes some shine while others seem to squirm in their own skin. Forever I had assumed that this magic piece would be like a universal key. A key that liberates anyone who possessed it. I have recently discovered something spectacular, something that I never before imagined. I will do my best to share my discovery in the following sentences, however… Be aware that this is my perception of my truth. There may in fact be ten thousand different sides to this coin, but this is the side that I see. Like so many others I too had assumed this priceless key to be attainable in this realm. This is why many of us spruce up our game when in the company of famous people; we’re hoping to impress them enough to have them share the secret with us. Give us a clue as to where our key might be hidden. I have wrongly assumed that because they managed to find theirs, they would be able to direct me towards mine or in the least direct me to the man who would be able to see it inside of me. That’s what big shot studio cats do, right? They see gold in people, do they not? Are they the ones who discover the gold in stars, or do the stars discover their own gold and then show it to someone in a position to share them with the entire world? These are so many of my thought patterns back before my discovery, but now… See I had assumed that we all have it, and that we just need the opportunity to meet the right person, then they would see it in us… Wait a minute, I am writing outside my experience. Forgive me, I has assumed that I had it, and they I just needed the opportunity to meet the person in a position of power and they would see it in me. Like that. The idea that we can direct this brilliant discovery is now absurd. American Idol is a kind of false fame, an empty sort of success. Rare are the Robert Plants and David Bowie of this headless movement. This sort of magic can not be recreated in this realm, it must first exist in a hidden realm and then be manifested here… It is not possible in this realm, it is impossible here. This sort of light takes time, maybe even lifetimes to generate. I do not believe that it can be polished out in a few short desperate episodes of fame fueled frenzy. I’m failing here, fuck… I thought that it was in this realm, that opportunity… that gold, that light. I no longer believe that to be true, in fact I now believe that… That I have been wasting an incredible amount of energy. One reason for this desperate search for me was that If I stopped searching then I might not ever get what I want… and I would have to face… my life, myself. Do you see the fatal flaw in this type of thinking… That sort of possessed addiction to a set outcome. This is a gambling type of attitude, the sort of thinking that supports that the world outside has something I am missing. Where as now my perception senses that this outside realm does not contain me, it contains mirrors to help reflect me. This is why certain struggles keep appearing in my life; to help me see myself more clearly. When I do someone wrong, the situation returns to me until I can see how it feels. To me this is why Jesus said “In as much as ye have done it unto the least of my brothers, ye have done it unto me.” Me being my essence, for as I perceive it; Christ is my essence. I believe that this is how he sensed what people were thinking, things like “Why do you harbor evil thoughts.” I do not believe that Christ was the only reflection of my essence, as others after him had also seen their essence as a collective connection to all and every being in the Universe. Sometimes when I write things like that I feel terribly uneasy, I fear that I am as whacked out of my ever loving mind as the rest of the bible preaching nut bars. That topic is just incredibly dangerous. Very well then… Hmmm… My point about all of this insanity, all of this searching, is that so much of it is fueled by and dwells in the realm of discomfort and nonacceptance. What about me shines when my search is led from a place of dis ease. When I seek success out of not being able to accept myself or my life in the moment I currently abide, how might I prevail? “The Dude abides.” -The Big Lebowski. To seek it in this realm is to be off track. I have not discovered myself entirely, or even a substantial truth that I can share here, but to me my discovery of where it is not… Man that’s a huge leap, knowing where not to waste my energy… Hmmm… Again my fear bubbles to the top and cries out “But what about me, what about what I want?!” There is no faith in fear. To me spirituality is not a belief in humanities gods, but instead a sense of the unknown realm. The invisible. To me spirituality is similar to the person who understands from their own experience that even though the electrical wire does not appear to contain incredible power, in fact it does. And although I do agree that this power is… Almighty, I have never agreed with the perception that it asks to be worshiped. I do not sense any insecurity in what I have experienced. I have experienced incredible consequence for my mistakes, but… It appears to me that there was no way for me here but to pass through there. I have done the best that I could. Which leads me to my most recent encounter with… Karma. Hmmm… I wonder if I can share this in words. I wonder if this encounter was for us or just for me. It was quite personal an experience. I was recently hurt by someone close to me. It stirred inside of me, an incredible storm of anger and fear. It took all of my mightiest sails to steady my course and keep from lashing back. I hated the person who had hurt me and for some fucking sick reason I also felt a sting of love for them. This uncontrollable goodness was just enough reason for me to hate them even more; how dare they make me love them. But I did, in between the moments of intense anger. The way I saw the scenario as hand was as follows; That in their fear of authority, I felt they had handed me to the Henchmen and left me to die. Fucking coward! Damn you! I cursed and cursed, but somewhere I sensed something wasn’t quite… revealed. There was something missing and I was betting that it had something to do with me. Then my inner voice shouted “Fuck you, I did not deserve the fate I was handed. I have done nothing wrong!” and It was right, I did not do anything wrong… not this time I didn’t. It was many years ago, when I not only handed someone over to the henchmen, but I even pulled the switch. All because I was too afraid to go against authority. Well since that haunting mistake I have been an avid rebellion against authority, not just a punk kid trying to get my own way but I speak out when things are unfair. I speak out even at the risk of my own neck, but all because of the time that I didn’t speak out, and I had mistakenly expected this person to do the same for me. So I had been blaming this person for having me hanged, hating him… When all along it was that he was a perfect reminder to me of who I once was, the coward. A reflection of my sins. It never really had anything to do with me and him, it was all designed to stir those old feelings to the top. Why? To help me heal? To help me grow? To help me see clearly? Maybe to absorb his mistake as a kind of penance for the things I did in the past. I had been defending myself as not the one to blame, but somehow seeing his position with compassion helped me to realize that there was little he could have done about it. He did the best that he could. Seeing this helped me see that I have been blaming myself for the past, but I too was only capable of so much. It took the pain of my mistakes to further forge me into a better being, strong enough to speak against authority. I continue to attract situation in my life to help me see myself. I feel blessed, by that I mean that I sense something bigger than my own perception and current understanding to be at work here, in being able to see more clearly this time around. Not only am I no longer full of hate and fear, but instead I feel grateful for the experience. Maybe that it why I sensed a sting of love all along; he helped me learn and grow. I do not believe I am a victim, at least not anymore. More and more I sense that all of my experiences are perfectly orchestrated to help me see myself more clearly. I hope my sharing of this experience might help you to see yourself better too. I feel weak now… and lonely. The night is here and I wish I had someone to talk to, someone who speaks a language that I could understand. Company that might help ease my fear of the dark. Peace Y’all Dominic Greco

Forty Five Ninety Five South

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:52:00 -0400

Forty five Ninety five South
Category: Writing and Poetry

I grew up on Poseidon Drive, forty five ninety five was the South. When I was twelve or so, somewhere around eighth / ninth grade, there was a murder up the street. I remember hearing “He cut her hands” and that still haunts me so much so that typing that line made my anus cringe. A weird and tingly vulnerable cringe, like a bad dream.

I want to tell you, I need to tell you that the first time I saw weed it was in a tiny round black film case. The lid was grey. All the film case lids that I have seen since are the same pale grey color. I imagine that girls dead hands being that same pale gray color and it makes me want run away.

I was three or so the first time I tried to run away. I can still feel the presence of my poor exhausted mother as she pulled our big 70’s, mostly steel, sedan to the side of the road and pleaded with me to come back home. I’m sure I must have been really upset, but I can’t remember why. I wish I could go back in time and console both of us.

Once at a birthday party the kids put bleach in my cup and tried to get me to drink it. Now If I close my eyes and relax I can smell the scent of bleach as clearly as If a cup of it were directly beneath my nose. I wonder if that is a gift of some sort, though I can’t possibly imagine its use would be.
They played pin the tail on the donkey, but I didn’t get any of the delightful prises from the paper donkey, instead I cut my eye on the finder of our neighbor’s Schwinn bike and ran home screaming with what felt to be a permanent red filter on my vision. Turns out it wasn’t permanent.

Sometimes I feel so frightened by my own existence, that conscious moment when I realize that I am actually here on earth and alive, that I want to jump out of my body. I don’t… I can’t imagine there is any cure insight for such a feeling.

At age eight or so I became terrified by the idea of a baby carriage. A baby carriage and in its center it was softly cradling a single mouse beneath a warm blanket. I became so terrified by that thought that I struggled to will my body up the stairs to my bedroom after dark. It was and to this day still is the single most evil image my mind could fathom.

Getting drunk off wine gives me a similar awful feeling. I once heard that native American’s are allergic to alcohol. I often wonder if that feeling is partly responsible for the devastating effect Alcohol has had on their people.

About three years ago I awoke from a nap after feeling, what I would call a spirit, trying to communicate with me from the other side. It appeared to me as if it were a child crying out for my help. I decided to go back to sleep to see if It would contact me again, maybe show me a sign or hint as to how I could help it.

It did contact me again, and it was neither a child nor anything even remotely resembling a human but rather a monster. It was more of a monster than the name monster itself could ever hope to imply. Because of that experience I am unable to sleep without a light on.

I am embarrassed to admit that I often wonder if I would be good at reasoning with desperate people. You know the kind who climb towers what what not. I often imagine an outdoor setting where I empathize with them so well that they find the strength to return to society. The strength to continue on, even at the expense of having to spend the remainder of their life in prison for whatever they did to make me have to talk them down in the first place. On second thought I think that is a really fucking corny fantasy.

I don’t want to share things like that with you, but I am unable to stop myself out of fear that my time will pass and I will have failed to find out what my purpose is. “I finally found my special purpose!” Steve Martin- The Jerk

When I was around age six I remember sitting at the top of a staircase. I was eves dropping on two frightened girls conversation about the Bundy murders. I was so haunted by what I had heard that I erased the stair case in my mind so that nothing below could possibly reach me, but even that failed to comformt me. What I had heard made me sick with fear. Have you ever been sick with fear? It is like having the flu, but instead of a virus you are fighting a trillion tiny demons off as they attack your physical senses. To this day I regret listening in on their conversation.

Sometimes… Sometimes I see rust, or trash laying on the sidewalk… signs that life is passing, turning, returning, decaying maybe? I don’t really know the word for it, but just signs in general that life has a momentum, a direction it is going, and that nothing I can ever do will stop or even slow its path. that feeling defeats me, it always defeats me.

There are moments in life when I realize that I am inadequate. I often discover these moments during times of intense frustration. Times when it becomes so blatantly obvious that I do not possess whatever skill or strength I need to overcome the obstacle at hand,that I just want to die. In those moments my body feels as if it will vibrate off track.

There are a wide array of feelings so down right awful that having felt them I can understand why and how some people chose to end their own lives through suicide. If heaven is north, I believe hell is here on earth. My guess is that it is either at or near forty five ninety five south.

I should go to sleep soon, but I don’t want to sleep I just want to eat bacon. It may seem is if they have little to do with each other, but they do. They have everything to do with each other. Sleep bad, bacon good.

Last night I felt a billion pounds of darkness fall upon my spirit. It was as if all the good in the entire Universe had vanished in the time span of a single moment . More frightening than the absence of good was the feeling that I had lost the desire to live. I am certain that I can endure any amount of emotional or physical pain, but without the desire to keep going, that delicately precious desire to continue on, I am lost all together. I wept. Today I can’t feel even a trace of that feeling. The morning sun drove that feeling away. It is gone forever.

Face Abrasion

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:48:00 -0400

Face Abrasion April 16, 2009

It’s tough to keep me quiet. Not because I’m some sort of bad ass, but instead because I am easily hushed. My fire is my only compensation.

I have no other way to stick up for myself, and I feel it… you know? I feel when things are out of balance, but I don’t react as if things are simply out of balance, no…

I react as if my survival is at stake, because it IS. Do you understand? As the employers naturally mature they crave more and more.

This isn’t some sort of affliction that only wealthy people acquire, however much the poor man might try to convince of that, no… this is the natural way of things.

Just as the worker craves more and more help from machines and air conditioners and cushioned seats, things that cost money, so does the employer. We’re all the same.

My alarm begins to sound when the scale tips too far. They are piling too much work on me, I begin to crumble beneath the weight.

Surely it’s nowhere near the weight of the work load that my ancestors endured, facts the employer tries harder to hush the worker with, but this workload is unacceptable for this time.

Not fucking yesterday, today. And not for the hardest worker, for me. I am drowning and I cry out, but to no avail.

Hold on here… This makes me smile to remember; must have been one hundred years ago I sat on the frigid cold concrete step of our garage, while my brother worked on his Camaro.

Such a great kid my brother, awful mechanic bless his poor little heart, but what a sound cat he was. Sometimes, when I was really lucky, he would cram me in the back seat while to ride with him to pick up his girlfriend.

He would traumatize me by blaring haunting Alice Cooper tunes, like Stephen and such. There I am; cold pressed in between his giant wooden Pioneer home speakers and his gym bag full of nasty smelling clothes…

Being tossed too and fro and he aimlessly switched between jamming the gas and brake pedals, all while hearing Alice Cooper’s child like creepy bad dream voice.. Ewwww.

What did that have to do with what I am writing about here… hmmm… Oh and once while he was working on his distributor… (Giggling) he shocked the fuck out of himself.

Oh god I about pissed myself with laughter and he kept trying to figure out why touching what he kept touching kept shocking the fuck out of him.

“Vrooom Vroom.. Yelp! Fucking shit, Jesus, son of a …. Vrooom Vrooom YELP motherfucker!” Over and over and over. Looking back I can only assume he was sacrificing himself for my amusement, told you he was a cool cat.

So anyway, ack to the work stuff… It’s tough to keep shit balanced, employers don’t come to own business by looking out for others needs, they do so by focusing on their own.

Sort of huh… I mean the product or service must be tuned to the consumer, but past that the price is usually as criminal as the law allows.

So the price keeps going up, the pay barely budges, all the while the quality soars lower and lower… Uhmmm… man I really struggle to not lose my cool about this imbalance.

The better job I do, the more work they pile on me. It just keeps coming, that’s how they make money, but…

See, my last rant I was freaking the fuck out about how unbearable the stress at work was becoming, though I couldn’t really figure out what was going on with me.

I am a lot like a electronic machine in that I function according to pressure, where at some point I being to completely lose it, acting irrational and …

If you raise the voltage to the CPU of your computer, at some point the processor will begin to function unpredictably. It just starts doing strange things. I am this way too.

As the pressure rises I… you know I get tense and frustrated and need to vent more and more, until finally my threshold is breached and even I can’t figure out what is going on with me.

I begin looking for any possible explanation. My initial reaction is to dig in my heels to my work load and begin questioning all of managements orders; “Does that really need to be done?”

So much so that I start thinking I am… fucked up, you know? Like there must be something wrong with me, I don’t produce consistently enough, I become difficult. I must be a shitty worker.

Do you do this? I know that you do. I am sitting here typing this and at the very same time I am knowing that you also do this. This is something that you and I do.

Isn’t that cool, we have so much in common, you and I… I dig that, you know. I fucking dig that about us. So where was I?

It can’t all be work, it just cant. Management is there for a reason, we have a lot to learn from them. They perform a crucial task, so we can’t say they are unnecessary, because we need them….

However… they need us too, very much so. Even though they make a considerable amount more than the worker, we are both of equal value.

Isn’t that something… I’m still working on my theory as to why this is that we are both of equal importance but management always earns much more than the worker…

It must be because their job usually lacks fulfillment the way the workers job does. I mean come on; the worker gets to build and create something while management has to do paper work and answer phone calls and try to get more work out of the worker.

Carrying bricks in a wheel barrow is a bastard, but… Imagine that fuckin job? All day inside the office. No wonder they all bang each other the way they do, have to do something to break up the god awful monotony of it all. :O)

Hmmm… So as the work load piles I begin to stress more and more until finally I am completely confused as to what the fuck is going on with me at which point I become un-fucking-bearable.

Oh I stick up for myself, oh fuck yeah I do. Years ago I worked for Pitney Bowes and they nearly drove me insane… I had zero tools to deal with the pressure and they just piled on top of me until there was no tomorrow.

Ask me about how I quit that job sometime… Should I share the mouthpiece story with y’all… Hmmm…

One day I come in to the main building to grab my parts before I head back into the field… I arrive to find all my parts orders have vanished.

I begin asking random people if they have seen my parts. Finally a nice little gal directs me to some guy, who she says has ‘em.

I catch up with him in the hall and introduce myself to him “Hi, I’m Dom and that gal says to see you about my parts…?” To which he responds by curling his finger at me…

The “follow me” finger, which is a little third grade, but… OK, I have a ton of shit to do, but…so long as it leads to my parts…

I follow him into a office and begin looking around only to discover no parts… As I turn back to ask him if I have missed something I can see he is…

I can smell anger, it’s something you learn growing up the way that I did. He wreaks of anger and every sense I have begins to sound the alarms of danger.

He shuts the door behind himself as he walks into the empty office. A sight that makes my blood temp begins to rise. I think to myself “Keep cool Dom, please just keep cool.”

He begins with “Let me tell you somethin… PAL, ” At which point I find it difficult to swallow. “Please Dom… please keep cool.” That’s all I can hear in between his raving monologue.

And I did, I kept cool the entire time he spoke to me. I was about twenty three, twenty four maybe. He was probably thirty five, forty ish…

When he finished I said “I listened to you, now may I speak?” To which he replied “OK.” he seemed a bit cooler after having vented so much.

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before walking right next to him and saying “The next time you talk to me, talk to me like a man.”

Oh man his anger gland flared up like a balloon. He looked like he was going to pop. He began yelling “You get the hell out here, you get the hell out of here right now!”

Now I’m by no means claiming to have not been his equal in jackasss attitude, and I may have deserved his treatment, but the next time I saw him he spoke so kindly to me that I was embarrassed for him.

And here we are… my point about all of that stuff? I have no clue… Just that I was beginning to melt down at work until finally I kept telling the management that I was drowning and hanging on by a thread.

I was desperate and couldn’t figure out what to say to them. Felt so inadequate and messed up, but now I know that… Well since then they have found me a little help.

Since my fit they realized I was going to snap. I’m not saying I handled it the best way, but since my youth my… diplomacy has imporved ten fold.

What can we do to protect ourselves? I’ve worked over 50 jobs to date, and I always do great work, but I’ve never been able to figure out how to protect myself from being used by my employer.

My reward for doing a great job is always to have my voice ignored and be give more work. It’s an exhausting cycle. So this time I somehow managed to survive the onslaught.

I didn’t do it perfectly, but I have made a lot of progress. Hmmm…Face abrasions… Ahhhh… When I was a kid my best friend and I used to have this secret handshake…

Only it wasn’t a handshake so much as it was a warfare tactic where we both gripped each others faces, clenching and kneading the skin with our hands as hard as we possibly could without drawing blood.

“Face Abrasion! Face Abrasion!” We’d shout while curling our finger and snarling at each other, only to meet with mooshed noses and stretched lips and eyebrows till no end.

After what felt like an hour, but was probably only a few minutes, we would be exhausted. Our faces flushed and pulsing with the flow of blood through massaged… abrasioned muscles.

It was like a birth of the face, there was so much life and flow in the face that you would feel brand spanking new. I can’t help but wonder if the workplace could use such a practice every now and then.

Peace Y’all
Dominic Greco

Seven Day Sesshin

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:03:11 -0400

Years ago I went on sabbatical at a Zen center, where they quickly capitalized on my electron skills and put me to work. It was a Seven day sesshin…

“A sesshin (接心, 摂心, 攝心), literally “gathering the mind”, is a period of intensive meditation (zazen) in a Zen monastery. While the daily routine in the monastery requires the monks to meditate several hours a day, during a sesshin they devote themselves almost exclusively to zazen practice. The numerous 30- to 50-minute-long meditation periods are interleaved with short rest breaks, meals, and sometimes short periods of work (Japanese: samu) all performed with the same mindfulness; nightly sleep is kept to a minimum, at seven hours or less. During the sesshin period, the meditation practice is occasionally interrupted by the master giving public talks (teisho) and individual direction in private meetings (which may be called dokusan, daisan, or sanzen) with a Zen Master.”

Thank you Wikipedi you Anarchist gangster mofo you! I call Wikipedia anarchist because they’re giving out free information to the people. Educating the masses.

Gather around people, the info is free and priceless. I’m kind of taking this a little too far, might be too many Raisins making my blood sugar soar.

When I quit smoking I kept Raisins by my side at all times, too keep my blood sugar high…

Before we continue here uhm… I ask the questions OK? I went out tonight, which seems social but that doesn’t give anyone the right to ask me questions. Tell me something, that’s alright…

But don’t ask me questions. You don’t have the right to do that, I barely know you if’n we just met. I try and answer questions with clever answers, but when they go unnoticed I just feel awkward.

So again tell me things about you or what you’re doing, just tell me one of your current favorite thoughts, but again don’t ask me questions.

“Say something smart or fucking go away.” I first met the Scotsman at that sesshin. He once told me that years ago in a Glasgow bar a hot girl sat next to him and he said that to her…

“Say something smart or fucking go away.”…”Come on Scotsman, you didn’t really say that…did you?” I asked.

His remembering eyes bouncing up and down with his “I sure did, sure the fuck did” head nod. “What did she do?” I asked. “Oh she fuckin went away.” he replied

I always thought that was such a cool regret of his. Maybe he never regretted it, I don’t know. I just assumed that he had from the embarrassed look on his face…could have been pride huh… could have been.

I always assume that other people navigate their days away with someone else there beside them. I don’t really even mean their friends or family, or even their love but more like…

I assume they more have some… I assume that there is more than just them navigating their way, and in assuming that I always assume that other people are somehow less lonely than myself when they are alone.

I don’t mind it so much as I write about it, in fact I prefer it to spending time with anyone who annoys my quiet time… uhhh I’m going to move right along…

I grew up on Suicidal Tendencies, SOD, and Anthrax. My parents listened to some really funky soul music along with a decent mixture of 70’s rock…

Somehow I ended up loving country music. I felt my just lose a couple of readers with that sentence, good fucking riddance to ya cunts! I spoke that last line in my best Scotsman accent.

It may not be true but I believe that I am the only one who enjoys country music, or at least the only skinny guy who doesn’t drive a pickup truck. God damn it, I just can’t seem to keep in a straight line tonight.

Get it; tonight… get it, like as if I’ve ever been able to. I was going to tell you about the first time I saw someone die… maybe the only time I saw someone die… yeah that was the only time I saw someone die.

It was a hot summer day and this kid got hit by a van. I’m not going to tell you anymore about that…why did I bring that up in the first place… Oh yeah, yeah there it is…

OK, so my friend had this really drunk father who was almost never around, but when he was he was…flammable, fucking flammable. You know the kind of drunk that seems to be drifting through the room in an invisible wavy pool.

I remember him chasing us through their house… Apartment, it was an apartment but to me back then it was the same as a house. It was where they lived, you know? Not much difference, but…

He caught us and breathed on us, mumbling stuff into our faces. Jumbled words and slurred sounds and stuff. He caught us and sat my friend and I on the stove and then turned on the burner.

I knew it was a joke, my friend knew it was a joke, even his drunk dad knew it was just a joke, but it scared one of us…maybe him. I can’t quite remember, but one of us started crying.

For some reason I don’t think it was me… Anyways he started crying and then everything got really weird. His father started trying to console him or make him laugh or something.

I don’t really know what any of this has to do with anything, but… Years later me and that same friend used to drag State street in his Gremlin… I screwed a girl on his balcony…

A girl we met on State Street. Years late I screwed another girl, a totally different girl on his couch while his mother was in the other room. She used to buy us beer. I loved that girl I screwed…

The second girl, I loved her. I didn’t know how to… I didn’t know what to do so I just acted weird and didn’t know what to say to her and it never really… It always hurt and still kind of does.

There was something I wanted to write about and it keeps popping into my mind and then disappearing before I finish the sentence I am typing. Maybe i should stop for a second and…

He used to write “Disco sucks!” on things. I didn’t really understand why he wrote that all over the place, but I thought he was tough for writing about how it sucked.

Years later when I finally realized what disco actually was I understood less why he wrote that. Maybe because it wasn’t tough music, maybe? I think his dad wanted him to be tough, you know…

It weird how people want their kids to be tough so they won’t end up like them, all tormented and distraught, and yet trying to make kids tough is in itself traumatic and crippling. Hmmm…

Man I wish I could remember what the fuck I was going to write about here… Life throws you lemons make lemon aid. Did you know that?… (Disappointed face)

Well I never made it the whole seven days, at the sesshin I mean. Nope, I lasted like four days, and by the afternoon of that fourth day I felt like I was on drugs, which scared me really bad so I left.

Oh god damn it I just got it, the little Indian guy… lol, so we’re working on this kitchen. The Zen master’s kitchen, the Scotsman and I are doing the remodel.

And I am banging around the ceiling running a wire to the range and I keep saying “Sweaty coked up nigger!” and then laughing my ass off.

I was mocking something I heard this grouchy old man say, not that it makes my behavior OK, but… So finally after about three hours of my nonsense the Scotsman begins to laugh.

From that moment on he and I were friends. I miss him tons…wait a minute, that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you about at all. Crud buckets!

So we’re working with this Indian cat named Jaun… Fucking Jaun, what kind of god damned Indian name is Jaun? Can he sue me for using his real name?

Doesn’t matter because I’m not talking about him anyway, I am talking about this other guy named Jaun, so…

He listens to me run my big mouth for hours, without so much as a peep. Finally he walks over to me and says “You should marry a Capricorn, if you want to be happy.”

The room gets quiet and the Scotsman and I just look at each other. That was a little out of place but… About as fucking out of place as an Indian guy named Jaun.

So I bite and say “No shit man, right on.” and he says “Yes marry a capricorn, if you want to be happy. If you no want to be happy don’t marry a Capricorn, mary someone else.”

Then he giggles, walks away, and returns to his work. The Scotsman used to say that Jaun worked on the Twin Towers in New York. He said that Jaun did a lot of the plaster work in those buildings.

I don’t know if that was just the Scotsman making inside jokes and being mean or if Jaun actually did do some of the plaster work on the towers. Hmmm…

Sometimes I wish I could go back to certain moments, not change the outcome but instead to ask someone what they meant.

I have a entire brain lobe dedicated to all the things I remember people saying that I didn’t totally understand. Those kinds of things bug me.

The same as when someone mumbles something and my brain has to keep replaying it until it can decypher the exact words and their meaning. The process is similar to an algorythm or something.

No way I spelled that right on the first try, no fucking way. Hmmm… One time that friend and I were popping wheelies on our bikes and his dad said “There’s one thing he beats you at.”

That always hurt me so bad, not because he was better at ridding wheelies than me, I could give two shits less who rode the best wheelie. In fact I was happy he rode them good…

But knowing that his dad cared about that sort of thing just broke by heart for him. How could he ever care for my wonderful friend if he didn’t even understand something so simple.

Childhood’s fucking brutal, and I remember everything. Not all of it sucked, just the parts where I didn’t have a car. That made me laugh.

There’s so much more I want to share with you, we could form a single file line and all hold hands while we walk through the memories. They’re not all incredible, just incredibly vivid.

I think you would enjoy the tour, so many emotions so many places… My god where have they all gone to. It’s as if…

I have this new theory on time, or at least the direction of time; in working with my antigravity machine (not working) in my mind, I discovered that magnetic waves must travel in a kind of corkscrew motion.

This reminded me of how I often have prophetic dreams, or dreams in which I see the future. It is always the same time line; three days. I can see clearly three days into the future.

What if time has a corkscrew path and three days is the lengh of time it takes to return to the wake of the path… Similar to the way memories return at odd intervals, maybe this moment is the perfect view to those past moments.

And in this corkscrew motion, spinning and turning, rotating and swirrling, we are also spinning around in a bigger corkscrew. I imagine that old crabby man (Sweaty coked up…) saying “You’re a screwball, you’re a corkscrew.”

Even though that’s not really something he would say. So maybe seeing into the future or the past just depends on which peak or valley we are looking from. Hmmm… seems like there’s a lot more to write about that and yet…

Don’t you fucking hate overdrawn theories? Like I either get it or I don’t. I liked the movie Duces Wild for that reason, it didn’t draw me a picture or spell it out. Just gave me a fun little story about some tough kids in the earl 50’s.

It took me some time to become comfortable with time. When I first arrived on earth it was just the most uncomfortable feeling ever. Everything is moving and slipping further and further away.

While at the same time things are moving closer and closer towards me, all this is going on and I have absolutely no control over any of it. Terrible terrible feeling.

I don’t know if that sense of time becomes numb over time or if I just got used to it, because it’s nowhere near as uncomfortale as it used to feel.

I think when I was a kid my mind was so empty that it had space to comprehend and be conscious of all those incredible movements, now I just…

Go out in public and feel awkward. That’s about the extent of my existence, well that and waiting for the day that I can quit my job and go on another strange adventure.

It’s weird because uhmm… we don’t really… Society isn’t really set up to talk about the after life. Like I didn’t even feel like religion, as much as it appears to focus on that, barely even scratched the surface.

Somewhere I really wanted to hear someone else say “Holy fucking shit balls this is intense. Does anyone else like… comprehend the magnitude of being alive here…”

“Like the very fact that I am conscious of being alive here, that very fact implies that there is another place that I am not. Is it somewhere I was before? Somewhere I’m going to after I leave here.”

You know like… stoned talk, except less use of the word dude and more… scarier. Yes, way more fucking scary. I think pot and religion take the terror out of the ride, which I think is so necessary, but…

I uhm… I think the terror is a really fantastic element of this ride. Being alive has always felt like…scary. Being in this realm makes me body feel like it is growing icicles inwards, deep into me… Piercing whatever it is that I am, the me inside my body.

It’s the most uncomfortable feeling ever, a feeling I know most people spend their entire life trying to escape, but… It’s just really fucking scary. That’s all.

I don’t think that I can support any group that isn’t interested in acknowlegding that truth of how fucking scary this all is…sometimes.

Then again maybe that’s just me, maybe l am the only one who listens to country music. The only one who feels alone, and the only one who feels afraid of being alive even though I still enjoy my adventure here.

OK, on a lighter note… here’s something cool I noticed; I feel like a fucking outlaw when I am difficult at work.

Like my mind is so… buried in that… dynamic, that I take it so seriously that to be difficult and drag my feet on some of my duties… makes me feel like I am really really bad kid.

Isn’t that something? I have been getting off on being such a outlaw for not doing my very best at work. That totally makes me giggle. Like I’m not taking a shit on the boss desk or lighting things on fire or stealing from the company or anything like that…

Just not working as hard as I possibly can. I’m a motherfuckin “outlaw, outlaw.”- Me against the world. Hmmm.. Anything you want to tell me about your life or your thoughts?

Peace Y’all
Dominic Greco

So you know this is just a picture of a Sesshin, I do not advocate this sort of demanding spiritual awakening by means of willfull spiritual bullying. I think peace is something better stumbled upon while doing a mediocre job at work, than it is leaped to through a day long, week long, month long, year long, meditation retreat. Again four days freaked me the fuck out, so you know.

The Ghost of Tommy Cloward

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:54:00 -0400

It’s hard to write about my struggles, especially when I am consumed by them. I want so badly to share my shameless optimism, just my highs… you know.

It’s hard to be real and let you know that I still struggle, that’s hard for me still. I am waiting for things to happen. God waiting is brutal. I try and escape this moment, but it just makes the wait even that much worse.

Life either moves too fast or too slow for me. I am either anxiously waiting for the next moment to arrive or dreading how fast life is moving. It’s rare that I ever feel in tune with time.

Sometimes when I write outdoors I sync up for a little while, but I don’t write outdoors much anymore. I used to do that a lot, but not so much these day.

If I share my feelings on paper, that’s it and it’s forgotten. I am not the personality type to take the time to transfer it to the computer. A dreadfully inefficient task.

Logically I understand that not embracing this moment doesn’t make any sense, but I’m no master. I have a sense, a deep down sort of sense that alerts to me things…

It often warns me, with shocking accurate wisdom, what will work for me and what will not. How could it know that sort of information without having tried it first? It doesn’t make any sense, but it does in fact know.

I have spent a major portion of my life denying it, especially because it warns me. I am ashamed to admit that I considered it a kind of parental voice to which I rejected by rebelling against it.

Don’t fucking tell me what I can and can’t do. Isn’t that weird… It feels weird to me to be so damned rebellious in nature, but I am in fact that way… Sadly even if it means rebelling against my own inner wisdom.

The sense is quiet and calm. It just knows things… or maybe it knows me well enough to know what will fit with me and what will not. It frightens me to think that I am capable of being so fucking stupid as to ignore something so valuable, but again I am guilty of doing exactly that.

It often and recently warns me not to confront certain problems or certain people about certain problems, but I ignore it to prove that I’m not afraid and I’m not backing down.

I overcompensate like this in an effort to make up for the past times when I was completely powerless and didn’t fight injustice but instead kept quiet to try and keep safe.

I was going to write “To try and keep the peace.” But I couldn’t because keeping quiet never brought me peace… or did it. See I have second guessed my reactions to certain life changing events in the past, but…

God what if I did make the right choice, even though it haunted me all these years. What if I have forgotten how important it is to survive, so much more important than looking tough or cool.

I’m still here, where as so many of my friends, who were a fuck ton cooler than me, are all dead or locked up. So… Damn… That voice pipes up when I think of doing certain things.

Like when I get restless or tired of a certain situation and I decide to take action to try and change things. That voice is so often there to make me feel uneasy about some of my considerations.

But again I mostly just ignore it because I thought that voice was a big coward. It was the same voice sense that decided it was the best option to just keep quiet and survive being raped.

There’s a lot about being raped that I never get into. A lot of disturbing elements that I just avoid all together, and that I would prefer to continue to avoid for ever if possible.

And yet somehow the topic has risen up out of the blue, begging to be articulated. Things like… wanting attention. I wanted attention, so much so that…

I wanted to be desired. That turned me on. I’m not going to go into all of the details that repulsed me, especially the details that consist of my own secret desires. I’m not going to go into those elements.

I could have told. I was in danger, but I still could have told. I didn’t, I didn’t tell. Are you following me here… There are a lot of details about being raped that I have conveniently been avoiding.

Avoiding because I want to play the role of victim, I don’t want to play the role of perverted kid. Which I was to some extent. I could never admit to that… Or did I just… Yea I think I may have.

What was done to me could never compare to what I did to myself. I am not saying a crime wasn’t committed against me, but… Hmmm… there is so much more to it than just that.

So much more that… fucked me up. Being what I couldn’t allow myself to be… Sick. I didn’t want to be sick, I didn’t want to partly enjoy the fucked upness of the event, but I did. Part of me did.

I have since wanted to escape myself, which probably reflects in my anxiety to escape the moment. The moment is really me, it is my connection to consciousness and that is what I have been trying to escape.

Oddly enough I knew that drugs and alcohol would not help me, but would instead make things worse. My hate for myself was greater than that for the person who fucked me.

I mean how could I hate them, they were just…pathetic. Couldn’t even contain their own desires… Which made me feel desirable. I wanted that, I wanted to feel desirable, even if it meant being desired in such a wrong way.

Hmmm… How did we get here? How many years of turmoil did it take for me to be able to admit to all of this… They never even seemed to know any better, I did. I knew better, even though I was younger, I fucking knew better, but they were just…

Pathetic. You know? Yea, pathetic. What does that make me; enjoying being fucked by a mess of a person. That makes me as foul a human as ha ever walked the earth. And that is how I felt afterwards, time and time again.

I didn’t compltely enjoy it, but the power of it consumed me. It filled me with fire, and turned me on until I came. Ugghhh god that’s just not the type of thing a kid can handle emotionally.

Again this is the other half, this is the other side of the story. I am not saying this is the entire perspective of what happened, but it is difinitely the part that I have not yet told.

The other parts that I told were also true, the ones that painted me as a torturned child who hung onto sanity for dear life, those stories are true too, but this is the piece of the puzzle that I always felt guilty for not sharing.

There it is, now maybe I can move on…. Forward. I don’t feel any better, but I do feel a little bit of calm having shared all of that. Maybe it will grow as the days pass.

I always feel a certain sense of sickness inside myself, it’s a mixture of fear and anger. I can’t for the life of me seem to seperate them. It just lingers and… haunts me. It gets easier…

Today is one million miles from my childhood. The difference between a nightmare and… A sore lump. One is hell and the other is just…scary. These days I just feel afraid and angry a whole lot.

The anger is tough to deal with, anger for me is tied to those events. I turned my anger inward to… Survive I guess, yea. I didn’t know what else to do with it. I knew if I let it out…Ehh… That wouldn’t have been good.

I did let it out sometimes, and to this day I still regret those times dearly. But I’ve told you this before, I’m getting a little lost here. I am embaressed to admit that I still struggle to feel my anger.

As soon as I feel angry I just turn it inward and beat on myself. I want to learn to understand it enough to change the direction of it, but anger is fucking hard to feel.

It wants action, in fact it is painful and hot enough that it demans action. It is as if… as if my anger is the Earths anger. That it rises from the core of the earth and then through my core.

It tells me when something is not right. I feel it that deeply, we all do, right? But I don’t know what to do about it. I mean I can’t change what people do or don’t do. I don’t have any control over other people…

Jesus, did it really take me that long to write that sentence. I don’t have any control over other people… How did I now comprehend that simple fact for all these years. Sometimes it frightens me how little I understand.

All I can do is honor my anger by adjusting my actions… Hey, what if that is all that the earth expects of me. What if that is all that is needed. What if I am not inadequate or crazy.

I so often feel crazy. I have never told you that before. I always pretend to be perfectly comfortable with my madness, but I fear I am crazy when I feel overwhelmed with anger. It rises like a fire and consumes me.

I have no fucking clue how to deal with it. I am remembering someone saying that life reflects to us who we are, so what if the things that make me angry as signs of what I am like.

What if people do to me what I do to people, and that is how I change the world. See I always feel pressured to not be a fucking dormat and do something about injustices that happen to me, especially the things that make me feel angry.

But even when I stand strong and state my case, I am more than often unsuccessful… At least when my gut voice tells me that I need to be careful. If i ignore that and be strong and brave and throw myself at problems without regard to my gut warnings…

Then I always regret it. I don’t quite understand when life throws me a obvious unfair ball and then my gut tells me not to do anything. Like what the fuck? I’m supposed to just swallow the injustice, even when my deepest sense knows that it is unfair.

Wow, what if it’s not telling me to refrain because it’s not unfair, but instead because it will take care of it. Hmmm… Could be huh. I could really delve into the details of this for too long, I often continue too long.

Until it hurts. I’ll see if I can do any better this time… I had a good friend Tommy Cloward. I think that Legally I can use his name now that he is dead. I think he would like that.

We met at the pool hall, he was an instant friend. He had light in him, he was tough on the outside but I could see the light inside. He was ruthlessly tough. I saw him fight and it wasn’t pretty.

He never bragged about being so tough, I admire that. When everyone else would sleep in after anight of partying, Tommy Cloward would wake up and accompany me to the University Library, where I would study self help books.

I could write and read for hours, well I could read for a short time but I could fucking write endlessly and he could complain endlessly as well. “Bro pleaseeeeeeee.”

“Pleaseeeeee bro, god I am so fucking bored. Can we pleaseeeeee go, pleaseeeeee.” He would beg and plead, and I would just laugh. “Please bro, please don’t make me stay he any longer. I’m going to go fucking crazy down here!” he would threaten.

I sensed that he was just venting to amuse me. He was good that way… Finally I started bringing him porn magazines to read while I went about my studies. Not surprisingly that didn’t work to calm him any.

Soon he was begging me to help him find a place to jerk his loaf. “Cloward, listen to me alright…” I would look him in the eyes with my best parental stare. “You can’t whack off in here. This is a state building, they’ll lock you up and throw away the key. Alright?”

He knew I had to tell him that so that if he got caught we could both tell the police the same story, with the upmost certainty that I had nothing to do with it. And off he would go…

He never failed to make me laugh, like the time he told me about how his step father bought him a rock for his birthday. “A rock? Like a rock tape?” I asked

“No, a fucking rock like a rock that you find on the ground.” He ranted. “Come on Cloward, why would he buy you a rock for your birthday?” to which he replied “He didn’t buy it bro, he fucking found a rock on the ground and gave it to me for my birthday.”

“He wrapped a rock and …” He quickly interrupted “He didn’t wrap it bro, he just set it on the table. It was my present.” Hmmm…. “He told you; here this is for you?”

“Yea.” he swore. “Did he actually say; here this is for you. This rock is your birthday present?” I’m struggling to get him to admit that he misread the situation.

“He sat me down and told me the rock was my birthday present.”…. Something doesn’t quite add up, but I’d never known him to be a liar “He painted it silver.” He added. “Oh well now you tell me.” It’s all starting to make sense now…???

By this time my insides were tickling with the Tommy Cloward giggle. A special feature only his close friends shared in and soon I was laughing. “What did you do?” I asked desperately.

“I threw it though his fucking windshield!” He so certainly shouted and then I pissed myself with laughter for the next coupe of hours. I was a shit back then and took full advantage of the insanity of the story and callously shared it with everyone who would listen. He was a good sport for not socking me.

“The stabbin wagon.” That’s what he called my little Subaru Wagon that I picked him up at the bar in, wait I am getting ahead of myself here.

So Tommy and I hang out in the same crew, but as time passes he does enough crazy shit to land himself in jail. Soon the years are swallowded up and I see very little of Tommy Cloward because he is usually locked up.

One day Mikey Russo, who is also unable to sue me for using his real name… God rest his soul, informs me that Tommy Cloward is dead, that he was murdered. I was… That fucked me up.

I mean I hadn’t seen him much in all the years passed, but he was still right there where we left off in my heart. I didn’t smile for a long time afgter hearing that. That hurt a lot.

One day in my late twenties I am sitting at home and I get a call from “The Playhouse” bar.
It is family and they tell me to come down to the bar. “You’ll never guess who’s here bro.” They say.

“Who?” I ask. “Cloward.” They tell me. “Cloward who?” I ask. “Cloward Cloward. There’s only one Cloward.” They say. “Dead Cloward, because that’s the only One Cloward that I know.” I bark back in a kind of “Don’t fuck with me, I’m not in the mood” tone.

We bark back and forth and finally I grab my keys and head down to see for myself. Sure enough it’s Tommy Cloward, right there in the flesh. “You must be a ghost because Cloward died.”

He smiled and said “Yea I heard, fucking Russo man.” “I don’t fucking believe my eyes.” There he was, the impossble. We shook hands and hugged. He immediately said something that made me laugh. It was really him…Hmmm…

There’s a weird feeling when you see…when I saw my friend whom I believed to be dead… I had the weirdest feeling of hope fill my spirit. It was as if in that moment my mind suddenly fahomed that anything could be possible here. That sense of hope was short lived.

Tommy had just been released from prison that day. So we hung out and drove around in the Stabbin Wagon. He called that old piece of shit Subaru that in reference to poking a girl wiht a weiner; stabbin. Terrible I know, but what can you expect from a jail byrd like Tommy Cloward.

I had the car because at that time I was buying and selling cars I bought from the state impound auction. I am not a salesman, the end.

I warned him to not do anyhting stupid while he was out because I couldn’t bear loosing him again. We laughed at my emotinal honesty. Within hours he had violated his probabtion. He stayed a few nights at my place, but something was different.

He told me a story about a fight in prison with a gang member where he broke a jaw and was subsuquently beaten with a sock full of pad locks in retribution. As usualy he made me laugh at the most innapropriate times, a gift only Tommy had with me.

It wasn’t long after that when I got news of his death. I still miss him. I always hoped that I could make something of myself, enoughh so that I could afford him the best help and maybe a job at my company or something silly like that.

I wanted to keep him, save him from himself for myself. He made me laugh, he never judged me. I still feel him close to me. Sometimes I miss him until I cry, but only for a short moment and then I just feel blue.

Sometimes I hope that my words will help someone in pain to find some peace, at least enough to keep them from giving up on themselves. I hope this will save someone who is their friend from having to lose them, like I have… you know. I always felt safe around him because I knew he would die before he would ever let anyone hurt me.

Why don’t people like him know what they’re worth… Why can’t they find a way to calm their anxiety. I have a really hrad time making friends and I miss him a lot. I know that he would help calm my anxiety even if it meant laughing about the pain of getting a silver rock for his birthday.

Peace Y’all
Dominic Greco

Here’s a picture I think he would like. Tommy if you’re reading this; this ones for you brother. Remember the old stabbing wagon?