Wild Thing Muzzled

Lovers find a way, as addicts do
Huddled in dark corners, tapping up clean blood
Whispering secrets in lunatic voices
Rambling of their joy and the moment

They grow bold and grab a fix
In a car
In a parking lot
And when caught with hands full of dirt
They sneer
At angels with fresh faces

Me, I blow my crime away on the wind.
From a car,
In a parking lot.

I wanted to write something fictional, but I suppose I should bring things to reality first. I'm sitting on the floor of my apartment right now. It's empty except for me, the computer, the vacuum, the broom, and my painting. I finished it the day before we emptied the place, and am experiencing a rare warm glow from actually liking my work. I have no camera so no pictures, yet. Aric's family came through and with eight pairs of hands we stripped the place like a tornado locked in a box. All our things have been packed into storage, and I can see the indents in the carpet where the fish tank used to be.

Last Wednesday morning, at about seven o'clock, Aric came home from work with his paycheck. He's installing cable, subcontracting through a company I won't name. Several weeks earlier, and something which I had completely forgotten about, he had accidentally put his foot through a woman's ceiling while in her attic. Shit happens. So the company tells him they'll have it fixed and charge him, and it'll probably end up being a couple hundred bucks. No big deal. He never heard about it again, until the paycheck, where it showed them charging him ten times that. Having worked construction since he was a kid, Aric knows what it takes to replace a piece of sheetrock the size of a foot. So we decided, fuck it, we'll move to Austin. And we did. Or are. If everything goes to plan. Which for us, it never ever ever does.

There was the time when he went to Louisiana to put blue tarps on roofs. He never got paid. That time he went to install locks in hotels we ended up in the most desolate street of Oklahoma I can picture, with nowhere to go on a cold grey morning, and no work. Now Aric's in Austin, staying in the little blue caravan.

He had a job lined up by Wednesday afternoon, and with the rumors of money to be made and good work, we were thrilled. I've been wanting to leave Houston since I stepped off the plane nearly nine years ago, a sixteen year old girl with a shaved head and a fucked up accent. I still can't believe I've been here this long. Never thought it would happen to me. I thought the three year average would hold up for life. I would naturally just migrate around the globe and never ask questions. We just got stuck. Trying to get money. Not a lot of money. Just enough to get by. So that we can paint, and one day design and make furniture. Raise our son, write a little. But it seems the only way to get by these days is the twelve hour days, and six day work weeks.

Right now, John-Malachy and I are staying with Aric's family, in one of the coolest and most bizarre houses in Texas City. There's no internet though, and that's why I'm curled up like a snail on the apartment floor, and leaning on my elbows to type. My lease is up in three days, so I might have the chance to get back online, but who knows. I really should clean up. Sweep the kitchen, vacuum and all. I don't know. It's quite comfy here. And so quiet. There are two adults, four teenagers, three kids, a toddler, and a dog at the house. Maybe I'll take a nap.

The poorer you are, the less noise you can make in your house. Sleeping spots are crawled into at dark, from the outer edges of the room inwards. In the morning a woman will wake and creak as she stretches her spine, wetting her face from the fractured bowl beside her. She takes four weary steps, and can't open the stove for heat without waking the baby that sleeps beside it. When the baby cries the children whine, fighting waking. Some poke each other and pull at shirt sleeves, fighting for a matted teddy bear. She will try to hush them up, but the man's already awake, on his back on the floor in the shadow, watching the dust swirl in the bright white morning light of the window above. She sees his face, catches the expression, and asks him.

The deal is this:

I have one 8x4 foot canvas to paint, and can't make up my mind. My original plan was this:



and then I sat down and worked some things out and decided I quite liked this:



and after that I combined the two and came up with this:



Now I don't know which one looks better, especially considering it's gigantic propotions. I don't know if it'll show up in the pictures here, but the top and bottom of each one has a half foot white border. Anything white in this painting is going to be clean canvas, untouched. Also, there are no curves. Only straight lines and angles. That was the assignment (I gave...myself. Is there something wrong with me, I wonder). Any votes?

It seems like everyone lives at a different level of anger. Mine has always been disproportionate to my life and my likings, whichever way you look at it. I wanted to be angry enough for Biohazard, but at age ten could only muster up the rage for Cypress Hill. I played that tape until it warped. At twelve I discovered a Bob Marley cd and gave in. I wanted to be hard and mean, but I wasn't. I pretended, and eventually convinced myself I was bad, and my life was tough. I tried to hate, creating a ball of chaos and screams in my belly, but couldn't force it out. It simmered and festered and burnt the backs of my eyeballs. I was mean because there was no reason to be angry. I was given a life of good fortune. I knew no dead people, besides the ones I'd never known. Every couple years we had a new kid and a bigger house in a nicer area. We took plane trips and rode horses. We had the only pool in town. We were always foreigners, and people find those interesting. My parents were together. None of my sisters had ever gotten sick, or even wore glasses. My flat feet were the biggest problem for a while, until Sam came along with her asthma, and the short lived drama of Katie's enlarged liver. Every couple years, nicer cars, softer furniture, thicker carpets. New school, new country sometimes. With nothing to hate I was forced to make up reasons, but I couldn't make them stick. I wanted to be miserable, but legitimately. If only we could lose everything. Go back to Dublin and live on the wrong side of the river. Pick up the street dialect and fit in. If someone would beat me on a regular basis at least that would give me some credibility. I tried to run away but it didn't work. I just felt like a fool. With nothing to be angry about I was doomed. All the greats at everything had had hard lives, and I'd be destined for the mediocrity of those that live on pillows. There's no great story here. There never was. But I wanted there to be. And in my head I would one day have no home. That would give me reasons. But the five bedrooms with the formals and the hot tub and the giant fridge with an ice maker right there on the door, they pissed me off. I was miserable. Finally truely miserable.

How embarrassing.

Dead roach corpses are almost as common these days, as live ones that crawl. I open the cupboards and they fall on my head and my arms from the ledge and you know what? I don't even flinch, I don't even care. I'm the coolest chick on the block.
Laying on the floor under the coffee table, a little drunk, watching dead television, one in a hurry distracts my eye, and one that's done obstructs the corner of my view.
Nuclear holocaust will fry us all. But not the roaches. You can't kill them. I've tried. Everything. If only I could get the smell of money in here. The only way to get rid of them. I've given up.
When they die its like their insides evaporate. All you find is the exoskeleton. What's so interesting about that?

And there's a man asleep on my couch. His spine and his shoulder blades are wrapped around the couch back. Every night by ten. By five in the morning he'll be missing from my bed. Eighty hours a week on the job. It's a killer. There's little left inside him. What's so interesting about that?

There’s something about a shell that makes me think of the inside of the earth. Pooped out, and slipped to the top of the pile, like a ceiling tile. We’re roof dwellers, scourging the surface for roots. Kicking our toes into the mud and digging with our fingers, ripping plants from the soil and disturbing just the thinnest slip of the outer crust. One of our first discovered the shell, and found it made a shovel. Now we dig faster, and keep our hands clean. We work and eat and kill that way. Only love is dirty.

It’s freeing to find it’s OK to have a favourite form of punctuation, and to worry about the time between exclamations. To realize most live between them, in commas and disorderly paragraphs, and long run-on sentences, is harder to accept. There are no editors to criticize the climax, dramatize the build up, and pick apart the pacing. An end doesn’t always wrap it up neatly, bound and categorized. It is what it is and it flows and stammers, according to no rule. A biography is not a life. It is not a thought, and it is not a swallow. It doesn’t recognize the itch or the midnight craving, or the pretended aggravation at the phone again ringing, the silent disappointment when it’s a wrong number. A life is so much better, and so much worse.

I love Lucy but there's a hole in the wall
Turns out Fred and Ethel aren't voyeurs at all
Never wanted to know Ricky's dick was so small
There's a culprit among us about three feet tall
Little Ricky behave or you'll stunt that eyeball

Tell or make a fortune
It makes no difference
We're all dead

No sacrifice no story
Pale and white and dusty
In an ashen box

It's all pretend
And overacted
Reacted
Impacted
For a short while

No history no glory
Statues and memorials
They're all dead

Ebony and ivory
Hard as rocks both

Tree in Night Sky
Originally uploaded by Alcatone.

VoxTonic is a blog started by my lovely and talented friend Kerry, and I'm thrilled to have made my first contribution. The idea is that every two weeks a new theme is introduced, and we post our impressions through words and images. See for yourself.

There's a place between good and bad, where the tide turns.
It is the centre of the oceans, and every wave that licks the sand and cools your feet is born there.

It is the entrance to Earth's womb, from where we all came.
We rode out on our choices and scattered up onto land, aiming for the mountains as we died in the trenches.

I half expect the phone to ring, but it never really does. A horn beeps outside, or a car pulls up and I check. It's the neighbours, or whoever's sleeping on their couch. They're always coming and going down there. I enjoy the quiet, though. The light through open windows and white curtains. The sound of the cars can easily be just like the sea, coming by in waves.

Leaves keep falling on my porch, and staying for a while. They hang around me and it turns them sour, and dry. But there's more up there, swaying the ocean mist for me. They come down when they're bitter (I've wasted their lives), like retired performers to mope on my couch.

Something's wrong with this, once again. And I'm so tunnel visioned on the little details, that I can't tell what it is, once again. Are the eyes pointing in the wrong direction, or too far apart maybe? Ignore the simple textures and colours. That's fun for later.

And why does it keep trying to get all up in my sidebar? I don't know that either.

There's a spot between my toes, where wild greens grow
And crawl up round my ankle to flower
At my knees
Yellow petals stretch along my skin and
Vines tickle as they advance upon
My thighs and rising still
Strong flexible limbs veiling
My fingers, wrist, to shoulder
Twining and tightening
Across my abdomen and around my lungs
Shrouding my chest and up my back
Entangling itself into a braid
A snare to clutch my neck.

Britney Spears won a Grammy, and David Hasselhoff is Guinness World Records' "most watched TV star." He has also made at least 12 albums. Rosie O'Donnell had a talkshow, and Goodfellas lost an Oscar to Dances With Wolves. Robert Van Winkle scored with Madonna, and Tom Cruise procreated. Michael Jackson was the King of Pop, and Anna Nicole Smith is still alive.

Survival of the fittest, right? Sure, but sometimes the lame get lucky. For those of us that dwell in between, there is hope yet.

Imagine if humans had the same hygiene routine as dogs. You'd be strolling down the street with your buddy, chatting and sniffing and then,

"Whoa, hold on a sec. I gotta pee on this."

It would probably be more casual than that though, since humans aren't often attached to leashes. A leash is the only thing that stops a dog from huffing the history of every patch of grass and crack in the concrete, and all that grows out of them. Yank.

"I talked to Bob the other day," aim, tinkle tinkle, catch up.
"He got that promotion he was looking for."

"Oh yeah?" tinkle, shake, "Good man."

There'd be no more need for pants.

I have a feeling I should understand, but really I don't understand
When do we bow and cross the wood floor out the door and laughing
at our pantomime pedantics when all that would be over
and there's a party up the street?

Our truck's 37 years old. It's body has taken minor reckless beatings but it's made of solid steel, I think. It gives up every now and then, but always ends up running better than before, somehow.
The coffee table and entertainment centre in our livingroom are innovative and smooth, and illusions in design. I saw them come from scraps, somehow.
We have illegal cable. It's a great bartering tool with the neighbours. I try to walk a seven foot radius around the television, though. We always end up with it, somehow.
I have an apple, I have a child, I have an aquarium on the second floor.

The old man spoke slowly now. He sat on the brim of a hill, a little boy by his side. The dipping sun warmed their backs. "They say it's been this way for well over a hundred years. The only thing that's changed is the weapons." The boy looked curiously into the wrinkled face, and kept quiet as they watched the scene below. A bamboo box the size of a house, with no windows and only one door, half hid under the palms. It was guarded by a pack of soldiers, circling like armored dogs, whose black semi-automatic rifles were fed by chains and chains of ammo.

"Tell me what you know about Kili Waro," he requested of the boy, who turned to face the sun, and pointed with his whole arm. Rising from the horizon, a dark silhouette amid coral blue, was another island.

"It's over there," he said.

"And what else?"

"They're horrible, and killers, and they're our enemies. And if you see one you should run away, quickly. But you never see one," he added, relieved, and looked back at the little fortress. "And that right there's where we keep all the guns and stuff. That protect us. From the Waros."

"Haven't you ever wondered how all this started? Because it wasn't always like this, you know."

The boy thought about it, and realized he really didn't have an answer. "It wasn't?"

"No." He shook his head. "Before the time that Ulukala was chief, we were the best of friends. We traded, and celebrated together, and made alliances. Our sons and daughters married their sons and daughters. The ocean between us was an open road." The old man straightened his leg and took out a knife, with which he sliced the mango that sat in his large palm. The juice ran down his hand, and he shook it off.

"So, what happened then?"

"Well, let's see. Ulukala was a fat man, with a love of all things excessive and unnecessary. When a white man landed on our beach one day, Ulukala was seduced by his loud, heavy musket. He had to have it for himself, so he traded for it. Showing off it's powers became his new favorite game. It wasn't long before he had a collection of them, and put them in the hands of the strongest men on the island. He instructed them on his front lawn, applying whatever he could from western books concerning armies and warfare. They marched like a pack of rats back then. Ulukala must have felt very brave, with all that gunpowder under his backside, for he soon wanted to try out his new weapons." He handed the boy a dripping yellow-orange hunk of fruit.

"What did he do?" asked the boy eagerly, licking between his fingers.

"Let me see if I remember," he said, looking at the boy, whose bright, excited eyes spurred him on. "One night a man and his wife came to Ulukala for help. Their daughter had run away to Kili Waro, with a man they had not approved of. Normally, such things would have been resolved with a meeting and some agreement. You know, a compromise, with a peaceful solution. This time, though, Ulukala jumped up and ordered his army to bring the girl back. They landed on the beach and stormed houses in the night. They yelled of kidnapping and shot their rifles at the stars. The Waros were terrified, and the island turned into a screaming chaos." They turned back to the west, and looked out at the silent, dark figure, now blocking the sun. The boy imagined the explosions of muskets lighting up the night sky.

"The young couple, fearing for their lives, tried to escape, but one of the soldiers spotted them. He panicked, as they ran faster than he could with his heavy rifle, and shot at them, once. They fell to the ground right there and then, both dead from the same bullet."

"Dead?" The boy's eyes popped open.

"Dead as can be. Ulukala's ragged army was as scared as everyone else, and they cowered home. The Kili Waros buried the young man, sent the girl's body home to her parents, and proceeded to stockpile every weapon they could lay their hands on. The ones Ulukala didn't get first, that is. We've been enemies ever since. As leadership of the islands has been passed from son to son, so has this war. We have such fantastical weapons now," he pointed down, towards the enormous safe, "that there aren't even any battles anymore. We'd all be blown to pieces. Some say that, in the beginning, we swam up onto shore and grew legs. We're still no wiser for it."

The boy thought for a while. "You mean they're just like us then?"

"Who?"

"The Waros. They're people like us, and not like monsters at all?"

"They're just the same as you and me. I bet there's a tired old man over there, telling this very story, probably to someone like you. Only they have a better sunset."

There's a space between my eyes, where everything swells and melts, dripping down my face with the arrogance of ice cream over the cone. Flavored milk too proud for plain wafer, it rolls away to waste. The sweetest suicide. I hold it there in sleep, but sunlight wakens clarity, and I can not fight with truth. It's heavy and it's cruel and it churns the stomach, like sour milk.

I can't quite hold a tune, with the way the bit keeps catching me, stretching my smile back all the way to my wisdom teeth. Spit catches and I swim in words, let them dribble down my chin, gurgles unheard.

Everything's still being worked on, but here it is rendered without a "shader". Which one's better? I personally prefer the other one.

My character study has led me down a completely different path today, after two days of frustration. I wanted to try something a bit fresher, so here we are. Is this perhaps a better look for Janey Mac?

I haven't been around much lately, as I have been working on something. I need your opinion. I've had this project in my head for a long time, and it involves creating a cute little girl character in LightWave. The problem is that, when you work for a long time creating the little details, it's so difficult to see the overall picture. I've rendered a couple images, but please pay no attention to surface and lighting qualities. She obviously has no ears or eyebrows yet, and her hair will probably change drastically. I just need to know if she's scary or cute. I can't tell anymore, since for some reason every face I make in LighWave looks like this, and it's freaking me out a bit. Help me out, wouldya? I'd ask Aric, but he's putting blue tarps on roofs in Louisiana for a while.