roots.

      naked knuckles

all rings removed and

dropped like tears into loose sand

      flicking air and tugging atmosphere

reaching into the earth

tearing off the tops of mountains

      pulling thunderheads behind

      dragged like balloons

in dusty silent carnivals

      nobody laughing

      brush grown thick through sidewalk cracks

      cotton candy booth abandoned

      inhabited by baby birds

itching to fly for their first time

to kiss that cloudless sky

      and falling against gravity

      proud burning friction

      feeling good to be alive

      wings outstretched

reaching into the earth

west.

“West,” said the oldest cowboy,

but it came out more like a cough

or a laugh that got trapped in a smokehouse,

and he closed his eyes,

stroked his horse’s stoic mane

chomped the mushy corpse of a cigar.

The others nodded, half-smiling like all true believers,

   squinting into the sunset,

   night closing in around the sounds

   of flapping ponchos and swirling dust and coyotes

   of heavy sighs and restless wind

   and whistling through canyons

   the light that only grows in dry deserts,

   silhouetting lonesome crows

   and making their young faces glow

   the oranges and pinks of an old man’s America

and they stood in circles and drank beer

kicked dirt on the fire at bedtime

and fell asleep under vast granite skull-piles

   believing their grandfathers

            when they told each other stories

            about which lands the Gods called home

            and their holy Western orientation.

MJ 1/30/2013

like yesterday.

I really do remember it like it was yesterday. A normal December morning in 2008. Woke up, skipped whatever class I had scheduled for the day, got high, and walked across the neighborhood for band practice. The sun was shining and the air was warm, and a breeze blew dried-out, fallen palm fronds through the streets. It was a beautiful day, it really was.

I arrived at the house we jammed in, and our guitarist was waiting there. He was early. He was never early. 

I waved. "Hey man."

He didn't look up at me when he said it. "Dimebag died."

The sensation of a brick wall exploding, of all the air being pulled from my lungs. Completely stunned, I think I may have laughed. "The fuck are you talking about? No."

He finally looked up. He was drunk. Holy shit. Maybe there was an accident, maybe my friend was mistaken - some screw-up with a name, perhaps a victim of shoddy journalism, anything but the truth.

"He got shot. Somebody came onstage and shot him. He's fucking dead."

Suddenly the sunshine and warm weather seemed uglier. It felt like all the birds stopped singing at once.

"No shit."

"No shit."

I sat with him until the rest of our bandmates arrived, and one by one, we broke the news to each other, and every time felt like dropping a cruel, unfair, horrible anvil. I don't mean to make light of 9/11, but for us, and I'm sure for a million others, this was our 9/11. Our lighthouse was swallowed by the darkened seas. Our tower, our symbol of endurance, strength beyond strength, and skyward-stretching talent, fell. We slunk into the rehearsal room, played a terrible cover version of "Revolution Is My Name" for what felt like hours, and then parted ways.

My first experience with Pantera ("Far Beyond Driven") was a straight-up life changer: it was the first real heavy metal I had ever heard (Slayer was but a glimmer in my teenage eye), my first known exposure to pinch harmonics and double bass, my first "Parental Advisory" sticker, and perhaps most importantly, the first thing I ever stole (details withheld). And the moment I pressed play and "Strength Beyond Strength" came tearing out of the speakers, full of more piss and more vinegar than I had ever imagined, I was scared shitless and utterly captivated. I must have listened to that one song ten times before I even got into the rest of the record. 

It was Phil's voice, admittedly, that gave me my first taste, but as my own guitar playing developed and my ear became attuned to the sheets of distortion and shouting, it ended up being Dime who kept me coming back for more. His tone was fucking volcanic. And those pinch harmonics. Those whammy bombs. I'd never heard anything like it. I was hooked. 

Like a high-school girl, I began obsessively seeking out interviews, magazines, music videos, and the like. I bet I had more photos of Dime on my wall than I had photos of bikini-clad women. I saw Dime and Vinnie Paul introduce the video for "Revolution" on MTV, and that single moment solidified them as the coolest motherfuckers on Earth. I mean, nobody can pull off a foolish hat quite like Vinnie. But it was Dime's easy chuckle, his unrestrained enthusiasm, and "brothers-in-arms" vibe made me view him like a cool older brother, one who left his guitar sitting out and, when he caught me dabbling, sat me down and said "Here's what you gotta do, kid. This is what cool sounds like."

He was right. Fuck Guitar Hero and Rock Band - Dime taught me everything I ever needed to know about rock and roll. Drink beer. Smoke weed. Always become a better player. Know your role and own it. Family is king. Do what you love. Cool is cool no matter how you slice it. Having a guitar with lightning bolts on it doesn't hurt either.

When Dime died that night in Ohio, I could feel the void in my guts. I didn't bother trying to make sense of the thing - there was no sense to be made. I watched the video of the incident, and even now, I can't make some of those images go away. I want to push them out of my head and remember my friend Dime, a man I never met but often dreamed of sharing a bottle of whisky with, a trusted confidant and a respected, larger-than-life creature who shat riffs, stomped suburbs, and would give you a brother's hug at the end of the day - and I do this by listening to his music. 

It's appropriate, in my mind, to note that Dime left this world doing something he loved. Eyewitnesses from the infamous December night say Dime never saw the gunman coming, which gives me some tiny shred of consolation. He was playing his guitar with his friends and his brother and a crowd of strangers who loved him and his skills and his impact on their lives. He died with his boots on - head down, knees locked in that classic Dime power-stance, giving the people what they came for. A true-blue cowboy from hell.

I think a lot about that day on the porch, especially around this time of year. 

But mostly, I think of all the good Dime did for me as a human being. I wouldn't be the guy I am today without "Floods," without "Walk," without "Hellbound." I would probably have long since given up on my guitar, abandoning with it my dream of playing in a band, something I've been blessed enough to do for many years now. Hell, I never had a fucking Crown and Coke until after I saw Zakk Wylde pouring them at Dime's wake. 

I remember thinking "Nothing will ever be the same again." And of course, things remained the same, as they always do. Time marches on. I grew into an adult, where people and trends and millions of intangibles passed in and out of my life, but through it all I felt Dime keeping an eye on me, on all of us who still miss him. He wouldn't want us to be so damned sad. He'd want us to drink to his memory, to the good times, to those whammy bombs. No frowns, no tears, just a bar full of friends. Every year, on his birthday and deathday, I head to my local watering hole for a Crown and Coke, and put "Drag The Waters" on the jukebox, and I will inevitably see some other sad-sack metalhead nursing the same drink, and we'll raise our glasses to the Man Himself. That's Dime's power. 

So, from the bottom of my heart,

thank you for everything, Darrell Abbott. 

Strength beyond strength,

Mike

Harris Pilton and the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Cock.

I hope you guys are ready for some really silly shit, because I am about to fling some your way.

I have two stupid games for you to play, next time you smoke some weed or drink whisky while watching TV:

Game 1: Cocks

Replace the last word of any movie title with the word "cock."

Examples:

Twelve Angry Cocks

The Raiders of the Lost Cock

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Cock

Chitty Chitty Bang Cock

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Cock

that's pretty great, isn't it?

Game 2: Switcheroo

Switch the first syllables of any celebrity's first and last names.

Examples:

Harris Pilton

Hames Jetfield

Ston Jewart

Ciley Myrus

alright, now go: venture forth into the world and have an excellent time with these games.

I'm gonna get back to this here beer.

now I know my enemies: Stray From The Path "Anonymous"

Above: the author, not doing what you tell him.

I fucking LOVE Rage Against the Machine. Their trademark style of big-ass arena riffs, widdly-wah guitar effects, and just-pointed-enough political ranting struck one hell of a chord with my fifteen-year-old self, and it's safe to say that chord never stopped ringing. The oldest shirt I own is a RATM concert tee, and it's barely hanging together these days, but it's still in regular rotation, as are Evil Empire and Battle of Los Angeles, and even that wonky covers collection Renegades.

But this post isn't about Rage. Not completely, anyway.

Enter Stray From The Path, a hardcore outfit hailing from Long Island, who clearly enjoy the works of Rage as much as I do (plus a healthy dose of influence from the likes of Refused, Every Time I Die, Raised Fist, and the occasional dubious nu-metal-ism). I am admittedly unfamiliar with their back catalog (if they even have one - I don't tend to do a lot of research when I write these things), but god damn if this album doesn't totally smoke. 

Angular riffs and whammy pedal manipulation are king on here, and the vocals are reminiscent of Zack de la Rocha's nasal snarl (high register, spitting vitriol). Lyrics like "You can try but I won't go quiet / in the back of a cop car / you are not above the law" hit me right in the goods. This is the album Rage might have made, had they been a gang of East Coast edge kids rather than beach-dwelling dreadlocked Californians. 

But I must avoid the shameless comparisons as much as possible. Stray From The Path have forged an identity within this established sound, and it shows. Breakdowns abound, buttressed by wacky guitar sounds and sloganeering, as do absolutely raging punk parts (some songs even featuring blast beats!). 

I am reminded of Carcass clones (Impaled, General Surgery, Exhumed) and Bodom copycats (Norther, Kalmah, a thousand others whose names I cannot recall) - these bands all set out to imitate their heroes, which is in no way a bad thing. All of them also managed to forge their own niche in a narrow market, which is nothing to sneer at. Stray From The Path are the only ones doing this sound these days, and I admire them for that; it takes balls to reclaim the torch for a style so clearly out of vogue, and Anonymous, to these ears, sounds like a labor of love. They say the classics never go out of style.

And holy shit, "Radio" rips like a gang of motherfuckers.

Stream the album here, and buy it, too. It's out right now.

standing on the shoulders of noble leviathans: drunk dreams of 2013 and beyond

This might well be a really stupid thing to blog about, but damn it, this page belongs to me; Blogger has my personal(ish) information for the remainder of all earthly life, so I may as well use the shit to my heart's content.

When I get too drunk, I dream hard; this effect is often doubled, even tripled, when a 10 mg melatonin is added to the picture. I'm talking balls-deep, LSD-soaked mental puppet shows, devoid of all substance and meaning, serving no purpose other than ruining the following day's productivity due to my obsessive over-analysis of them. I had a dream like this last night, in case you couldn't already tell where this was going.

Pabst Blue Ribbon + Old Grandad whisky

In dream-world, I approached my boss to ask for a day off of work, and she stared me down as though I were a rapist. In fact, the entire office was eyeballing me like I had just shoved all their grandmothers. "What?" I asked. "Did I do something wrong?" My boss (who, at this point, had shapeshifted and no longer resembled my boss at all, but looked more like a Tina Fey version of some Lilith Fair b-side) proceeded to pull out a scroll from her desk drawer and unroll it, directing my attention to the headline: Infractions Committed by Employee: Mike Jollota (2011-2013). There were literally hundreds, ranging from small things (rolling my eyes; stealing a bag of Fritos) to the terrible and violent (dragging an old woman by her hair; punching a man for asking too many questions). I was being read a list of my sins by a woman I had never met, and boy, was she angry with me. "Am I fired?" I asked, now extremely worries. "No," she replied. "This is just your warning." 

"Well, can I still have tomorrow off?"

"Oh sure. Just don't hit anyone today."

Admittedly, this was a mild drunk dream. They often revolve around my workplace, as I'm sure the dreams of many other employable humans do. Of course, my booze-fueled subconscious also playfully grapples with lighter, more digestible scenarios, such as being bludgeoned with a fucking hammer:

5 Gin and Tonics + late-night Red Bull + 2 melatonin pills

This one really fucked with me. I was so freaked out when I finally awoke that I sat catatonic like a PTSD patient for about an hour, not touching my coffee or breakfast, recalling the evening's events, which had played out not unlike a Saw movie: I was being pursued by a man/creature, who had pig-like facial features and moved in a peripheral blur, when not bearing down on me in slow motion. I was running through my old neighborhood in Reseda, seal-rolling over brick walls, cowering in abandoned junkie apartments, always looking over my shoulder and peeking out from behind the blinds. The Pig always found me. It was a game to him, a demented cat-and-mouse, that always ended the same way. I had the sense that I had had this dream before. Early on in the night, the Pig struck my right temple with a massive hammer, shattering the orbital bone and allowing my brain to droop through the jagged hole in my skull. Still, despite the pain and the constant need to clap my hand over my exposed frontal lobe to keep it from spilling onto the sidewalk, I ran. I ran until my thighs burned and my lungs ached. And the Pig always found me. I awoke in the grip of a full-blown panic attack, hyperventilating, grasping at my face and legs to make sure I was all in one piece.

However, not all of my drunk dreams are quite so awful. One, in particular, comes to mind:

Lots of whisky

A storm at sea. Nothing but darkness and the thunderous crash of terrible waves, illuminated briefly by flashes of lightning, just enough visibility to watch the ship being torn apart around me. I stumbled across the deck, reaching out for something to grab onto, but it was no use: the ship groaned and creaked, followed by an awful explosion of splintering wood and snapping ropes. I fell into the black, churning ocean, where I desperately treaded water until the sun rose. I surveyed the devastation: no land in sight, surrounded by the shattered remnants of a formerly proud and unsinkable vessel, sharks hungrily bumping against my kicking legs. I began to resign myself to my fate: here was the place I would surely die, by drowning or exposure or starvation, and my corpse would be reduced to salt-corroded bones. I lay back, prepared myself for the end, when I was startled by the sound of rushing water. On either side of me rose two great humpback whales, and I could see the benevolence in their massive eyes, as if they were encouraging me. I understood immediately, and began lashing the ship's wreckage onto their gigantic shoulders. I built a sort of sled, towed by my two new friends, and climbed aboard, grabbed the reins, and shouted "Forward!" and we were moving toward the rising sun at incredible speeds, off to another adventure.

...to be continued.

nothin' but tombstones and dry bones.

I'll sing you to sleep.

About a year ago, I returned home to California. My visit was not a happy one - my grandmother was dying, and the family had convened from all over the country to come say goodbye. I had a hard time with all of this - in particular, seeing my dad's face the day she finally passed away, a mere two hours before my flight home to Arizona.

I did not visit her in the hospital - she was in pain, literally wasting away down to skin and bones, delirious - and I still don't feel good about that. I thought long and hard about the decision to abstain from seeing her, and I think it was the correct choice; the correct choice is usually the hardest one to make, or so I've been told. I choose to remember the good memories, of my grandma laughing, probably at something terribly inappropriate in a public place.

She was a difficult woman to deal with, oh, let's say 90% of the time. My mother and I knew this better than most - we both spent plenty of time with her in her final years, giving her rides to bingo and doing yardwork, making sure she took her insulin, etc. She was something of a mean woman, with an obstinate attitude and some lingering racism, who lived by the idea that nobody would ever tell her what to do, even if failing to follow the advice would ultimately kill her. I have to say, despite how completely stupid and incorrect that mindset was, I respected it then and I still do. I wish she would have fucking listened to the doctors, though.

Anyway, I put on this song the day she died and I cried drunk tears on an airplane. 

We all have people in our lives who will hurt us, that's a given. Sometimes we don't love these people, and sometimes we do. I loved my grandma very much, despite all the crazy bullshit she put us through for most of my life, and when she died, it felt like a skyscraper collapsed in my chest. This was real. This was another injury my grandma dealt me, and her sons, and her grandchildren. We all knew the craziness intimately, but we all also knew that we would miss her forever. 

That was about a year ago - I have forgotten the precise date. I don't memorialize death dates. I do, however, stand by matters of the heart, and my heart still misses my grandma Bev.

Fuck, I'm fucking crying again.

The people you love, make sure they know it. 

-MJ

too much light will blight the plants.

indeed, it has been a shitty morning. my phone is missing in action, nine days before I embark on a two-week tour of the west coast with Hidinginsidevictims. I'm weighing the pros and cons of getting a new one, and the cons are winning. It seems like it would be cheaper to raise carrier pigeons and send smoke signals than to sign up for a phone these days.

Anyway, here's fourteen minutes of cut-up noise grind - after two energy drinks and a hellish morning in the cold looking for fragmented bits of my obsolete cell phone, I am starting to hear the harsh clangs and buzzing riffs in my skull - bouncing around like moths smacking into a window, forever toward the light, forever belly-up.

I would apologize for the mopey, woe-is-me tone of this post, but I'm not going to. I write better when I'm mad and caffeinated, which, as Dean Wormer once said, "is no way to go through life, son." 

fat, drunk, and stupidly yours,

MJ

decode the chrominance.

we'll always have Paris.

grapple 'em, jack.

The little guitar in my hands is a ukulele. It's also my best friend. I love the fucking thing almost as much as I love playing grind, or writing, or eating fried foods. 

Anyway, this is my first video. The song is a cover of "Long Shadow" by Joe Strummer, a song I love nearly as much as the ukulele. Hope you like it!

grandpas guitars for lifes.

oh my god damn.

RECORD REVIEW: Hidinginsidevictims/Suicide State split 7"

Ok, full disclosure: not only are the guys from Hidinginsidevictims old friends of mine, but I was once among their ranks, and will be touring with them across the western U.S. this May. As such, it seemed fitting to kick off my series of record reviews with the HIV/SS split.

This thing is a feral, spitting, crusty goddamned beast.

Hidinginsidevictims (CA) barge right out of the gate with "Above the Microscope," a track that rolls along like tank treads over junkie corpses. Once the song really gets moving into the chorus, we are treated to their signature (?) melodic crust riffs. Tragedy, Wartorn, and From Ashes Rise are not bad reference points here. Jacketed, dreadlocked folk, this is your kind of shit. We then cruise straight into "Graveyard of Empires," which heps and rumbles along before hammering into a push-pull between the vocals and instrumentation, setting up nicely for a nailbomb of a semi-breakdown. Joaquin (drums/vocals) is a monster behind the kit throughout the entire track, and Chris (guitars/vocals) starts to lay down a wiry, battle-scarred solo midway through and keeps it going right up to the end. These cats have a progressive streak running through their tunes, a strange chromatic layered sort of melody, that serves the music well. I'll be hearing those bent notes in my sleep. Get up on it!

On the flip side, we have Suicide State from Holland. These gentlemen are a little more bare-bones in their approach, favoring less layers and more traditional punk/hardcore riffage. The vocals are dry, harsh, not unlike smoking cigars in the desert sun. "No Reason" starts off with a somber populist sound clip before exploding into pure punk rage. D-beats and slams abound on "Reality/Misled." That second song really got me drinking this here beer, and trust me, you want to be moshing when this bad boy starts, The production on SS's half is a little more rough around the edges than H.I.V.'s, but it lends a great "drinking in the garage" sort of vibe to the entire proceedings. All in all, a mighty contribution. I wish I could have seen these guys when the two bands toured together last year.

So there you have it, my first-ever record review of my adult life. I hope it was informative and unbiased, considering the circumstances. Both of these groups are fantastic and deserve a wider audience, so maybe you should stop reading and pick up a copy of this savage little seven inch at one of the shows or at their bandcamp page.

BANDCAMP REVIEW: Foreskin - selected tracks from "THVG"

The internet is a funny thing. If I ever asked my seventeen-year-old self if I thought I'd be regularly corresponding with a bunch of hella cool Pakistani guys on the subject of grind, I would have probably chuckled. "Ain't no tunes in Pakistan," I might have said. And boy, would I have been a wrong motherfucker.

Foreskin are a gang of seriously furious guys from Lahore, Pakistan. I have been in touch with their vocalist Hassan for probably two years or more, and he has been kind enough to share with me absolutely every new musical thing he has ever done (I have plans to review his other band, Multinational Corporations), and let me tell you, Foreskin kills. From the anime-inspired back-alley violence of the cover art to the vile grindthrash contained within, the whole package is fucking slamming.

The production on this thing is massive. Guitars flow from each speaker like magma, while the drums pulse with a beer-fueled rage that gives this thing a beating heart. "THVG Anthem" chugs and writhes along with a militant skateboard feel, and by the time the guitar solo hits, I am on the half-pipe of the mind. Grooves abound. The spoken-word portion of the song's second half hit me out of left field. Best protect your neck, motherfucker. Then, as announced, Sheraz lets that shit drop. 

"Antikvlt" vaults forward with some crust-inspired melodies, thrashed out until nearly-unrecognizable, until Sheraz motors into his neoclassical legato leads, and now we're fucking moving. Headbang, you fools! We are treated to more solos; Sheraz has got himself some Maiden-level chops. It isn't often I hear a guitar lead so composed, so thought-out. Dude knows his way around that fret board.

It's a shame that we only have two songs so far. I, for one, am pumped as fuck for Foreskin's inaugural EP, and cannot wait to pick up a copy. I have been thoroughly schooled by my Pakistan brothers - they have shown me that great tunes can exist wherever there is a need for them. It's supply and demand. The demand must be very high in Lahore if the supply is so pure and uncut. Head on over to Foreskin's bandcamp page and have several listens, then stay tuned for whatever Sammy Buay and his gang of miscreants have in store for us. 

dictated but not read.

this blog, as you can determine by scrolling down a bit, began as a forum to share songs I like. 

I have since moved on to sharing my scribbles with y'all, but in honor of my newly-repaired laptop's new lease on life, here is the day I've had today, in six songs or less.

Death in June: "Good Mourning Sun"

- A sad song, but then, what DIJ song isn't? I listened to The Rule of Thirds on my bike ride to work this morning. It's bright and warm in northern Arizona these days: spring is in the air, birds are fucking on the ground like common hobos, and above all, the sun is shining in the biggest sky in all of these united states (sorry Montana, but this is a place for real talk). This morning was clear as a bell and rather cool, unlike myself, who was poorly-shaven and slightly hung over. 

Modest Mouse: "The View"

- They say old punks never die, they either grow up or burn out. This is a mantra I've never been fully able to get behind, for reasons including but not limited to the continued existence and vitality of future President Henry Rollins. Perhaps there are exceptions to every rule, or maybe not. Maybe catchphrases and mantras ought to start phasing out in favor of the view; we are long overdue for a focus adjustment. Stop dumbing down and change the setting to "panorama." 

Bouncing Souls: "Hopeless Romantic"

- Ah, fond memories - something I spend the better part of each day dwelling on. Memories of a red Isuzu Trooper, a car full of pizzas I didn't get to eat, and more passengers than the car could accommodate. Call me a dreamer, but at least I'm not John Lennon. 

Dinosaur Jr.: "The Wagon"

- Not a lot to say about this one, just an oldie and a goodie. Somehow this song always seems to find itself playing when I am in a hurry to get somewhere. Today was no exception, but take solace in the fact that I got there nearly on time today.

Severed Head of State: "Shame of the Cross"

-Love, love, LOVE this song. My introduction to crust, straight up. Again, this didn't factor heavily into my thought process for the day, but nothing that embattled my little mind throughout the work day can compete with knowing I'm gonna get some Severed Head as soon as I get home.

for Kim, on greener coasts.

we faced west at Chiriaco Summit

and sat with grandfather dinosaurs, 

admiring their bones,

shouting truth toward the sea, 

bringing horizons nearer.

we shook dust from our prizefighter fists 

and saluted the sky,

like god damned Americans,

and watched the colored lights so far away –

we wondered aloud if that was L.A.

we renamed the world in honor of memory

and hoped with closed mouths for four more years, or five, or fifty.

-m 3/27/2013

sentimental snowy saturday - "rapa nui"

"rapa nui"

there will come a day when air will no longer be a deciding factor

and my lungs will be content to breath the ashes of every business card

to ever bear my name -

and no such thing as awful poetry or guilty pleasure

because who can watch the surf crash in rapa nui

and gulls scream across the salmon-skin dusk

and kick stones down desert roads

and feel guilt?

-mj

flying high again.

Last night, I dreamed that I died. I knelt down on an icy patch of granite, tied my own legs together with a wrist-thick piece of rope, and committed seppuku with a bronze-tipped walrus tusk. It really hurt for a moment, and I felt my sleeping body rack with a coughing fit as my dream form seized and keeled over. The dream then continued on as if nothing had happened, leaving my corpse in the snow as my mind soared over the vast chasm between Kilimanjaro and the Transantarctic mountain range. I was somewhere, I was everywhere, and I was stone dead.

I wondered why I had done what I had. I became aware that I was dead in a dream, and for a moment that felt like fourteen years, I was frightened – frightened for my family, for my now-extinct bloodline, for my mortal soul. A rush of latent Christianity flooded my unconscious; the Marianas trench, countless miles below my high-flying mind, suddenly warped into a hellish scene of fire and sulfur and deep undersea screaming. I flew higher to escape the noise.

Up here it was a little quieter. The steady whistle of air in my ears had become a source of comfort until I began to wonder whether or not I even had ears anymore. I felt an urge to reach down and check if my body was still there. Then the fear returned. “Moving” “my” “body” – these words were now such a stream of nonsense, an infinite abstraction – it felt like all the gravity in the known universe had been sucked out, like the worm in the tequila. I wasn’t flying anymore. This was something new, something different, and something old.

They say if you die in a dream, you die in real life. As far as I know, this has not yet happened, and I must therefore still be alive in some form or another. I scan the horizon for clues and find only the usual suspects – monolithic white clouds, incomprehensibly large gas giants, the endlessness of space, and inverse universes. There’s more, I know there is. I flex whatever body I still possess and set my internal controls for top-dead-center. I felt the adrenaline that only light speed can deliver. My heart rate slowed to a crawl, and I felt my sleeping self shuffling our head over to the cold side of the pillow.

Suddenly I stopped, although it might be more appropriate to say something stopped me. I was standing under a great orange sky, and for a moment I thought for certain that I must have broken through to Mars. The soil was rust-colored and strange trees covered in thick hair were silhouetted against the setting sun. All gravity had returned. I felt out of breath and extremely thirsty; my sleeping self smacked our lips and groaned slightly. Unsure what to do, I began walking towards the sunset. “West,” I heard from somewhere. “Go west.”

I walked for ten days, until my feet bled and my calves burned acidic. My retinas were permanently scarred from staring into the sun, and my forehead blistered with third-degree sunburns, but I kept walking because I was sure I would die if I didn’t. I longed to feel the fur of those faraway trees, to be swallowed into the liquid heat of the universe, but what I got was a death march through the chaparral. I felt like I was being watched. “Go west,” I heard again.

I lost track of time. My body was shriveling like a banana left outside, and turning similar shades of gray. My muscles were betraying my grand ambitions and my hair was falling out in patches. I labored on as the gravity increased further – I felt as though I was being pulled into the earth by the root-fingers of some great uncaring beast, just another guy doing his job.

I couldn’t even say how long it took me, but one day I tasted salt and knew I had made it: over space, under time, and west across the desert, to the sea. I collapsed to my knees and grabbed fistfuls of sand. These old stones all fought the same battle, up from the depths and into the Santa Barbara air. I was somewhere again. I had left everywhere behind, gone from macro back to micro, from supermassive, volatile gas giants to little polished grains of inert sand. A sea bird landed in front of me and cawed, but its call sounded strange. Perhaps I had changed in ways I would never understand. It cawed again, a sharp,shrill, buzzing sound –

-and then I woke up. My alarm was jolting, mechanical, finite; I never felt more exhausted. This would be a two-pots-of-coffee sort of day. I got out of bed, rubbed my eyes, shook the sand out of my shoes, and faced the day like a soldier back from war. First thing this soldier wants is breakfast.

-MJ 2/9/2013

fires start on Fridays and burn for twenty years.

snake pit

It was 1:21 in the afternoon when I first began noticing the snakes moving beneath the dangling tassels of my mother’s couch. I was certain I was imagining them at first – after all, how could a fifth-floor apartment suddenly be crawling with serpents, in this miserable urban black hole neighborhood of the Mission, especially on a day like today? It made no sense. It was cold, grey, gloomy, rainy. I had had the foresight to leave all windows open, partially to air out the perpetual cloud of smoke in which I dwell, and partially because I am a strange person who enjoys grim dampness. A layer of condensation, left by the settling fog, was emulsifying with the dirt left from a thousand footprints ago. The tip of my nose and my cheeks flared red. No, this was not a suitable snake climate.

And how would the bastards have entered? The thought of ten thousand diamondback rattlesnakes creeping on their bellies all the way from a desert in Mexico, across highways and through forests and into this particular building in this particular neighborhood, up five flights of stairs because the elevator doesn’t work – or, God forbid, slithering right up the side of the goddamned building – just to find themselves all inexplicably trapped within the confines of the spaces between my wall and the piece of furniture that holds my TV and movies, hell-bent on retribution – no, that’s irrational. Things like this don’t just happen.

The idea of the legless poison-tubers coiling up just under the couch, mere feet from my feet, glowering up at my body heat and mouths agape in twisted, primordial anticipation, made me feel ill. I began to see diamond patterns sliding across the walls, and the carpet took on a scaled texture, writhing and rubbing in a sea of blunted daggers that snagged my jacket, dragged it across the floor, and tore it to shreds. And oh, the sound of it all – a demented, angular hiss that floated across my senses on any and every unseen layer of space, an abyss of white noise punctuated by the death rattles of fallen civilizations and every hiker unlucky enough to plant a foot in the brush and receive a fangful of dynamite cocktail for his trouble. My mouth tasted like sand and rot – I feared I might puke.

Why? Why would such a thing happen to me? I stayed on the couch for a period of time that I could not determine, imagining my death. The snakes will bite me all over, I thought, on my Achilles tendon first, and my legs. I’ll fall to the floor, maybe my hands will instinctively try to stop my fall and be bitten as well; my chest, my arms, my god damned face, all over. I’ll be lying in a pool of sweat and puke and terror, feeling the neurotoxins seeping through my veins, being fully conscious as the venom begins to break down tissue, collapsing into a vegetable world of deadly, unstoppable hallucinations as my brain cells are dissolved, finally sinking into a putrid, half-liquefied toxic waste puddle-

No! I forced myself to remain calm – what would happen in the animal kingdom? Panic is a thing for desperate mice who fear death – this is my home. I will not be driven away by snakes! I laugh aloud, assuring myself that this has all been some kind of delusion brought on by the drugs, and think for a long, dangerous minute about where to place my bare foot on the carpet. It looks like carpet again, though I can still vaguely hear a hiss. Do I? I’m not even sure. My feet have not moved. I am paralyzed with fear. Move your foot, you coward. Think hard – have I actually seen a snake for sure? I’ve seen patterns and scales and heard sounds and can feel them crawling through the couch cushions and I’m seeing the fucking carpet move, but have I actually seen anything?

I light up a cigarette and wait. The time is now 1:54 in the afternoon. It will be dark in about three hours, maybe a little longer. With the windows open and the weather like it is, the bastards will freeze in the evening chill. I’ll just wrap myself up in this blanket and wait. I’ve got all night, fuckers. This is a good idea. Wait. Fuck. I put out my cigarette and stand up on the couch. Fuck this. This is stupid.

I’m going to step off of this couch and prove to myself that there is nothing in this apartment.

There’s nothing on the floor. I’m just being mental.

Put your god damned foot on the god damned floor.

Snakes cannot crawl up the side of a building. Verticality is an impossibility for them; God has cursed them to the ground and the ground only. There are no cottonmouths in my couch. There are no rattlers behind the TV. The walls aren’t slithering and vibrating at me. I’m sick. I might need help in a hell of a lot of ways, but I sure don’t need it getting away from imaginary reptiles.

Put your god damned foot on the god damned floor.

I can’t bring myself to step off the couch. I had always envisioned myself perishing violently in a traffic accident, or perhaps overdosing quietly on a noseful of some crushed-up medication, tucked warmly into my bed with Kind of Blue on the turntable, or, if I had been feeling frisky, perhaps some Herbie Hancock – not like this, not bloated and swollen with filthy, corrosive poison, a quivering heap of biotoxic gelatin found soaking into his mother’s old couch. The weather would stay the same and I would slowly decay in the moist, cool air – it would probably take a few days. God, the smell would probably be so bad. The crime scene forensics team would arrive and suck up little pieces of me with eyedroppers and put thin slices of what used to be my body into sterile evidence bags. Those investigators with weaker constitutions would probably vomit, and nobody would know what to make of this. Police would speculate that I had committed suicide on an overdose of something and gone long undiscovered, or perhaps that I had been murdered in a drug deal gone wrong with some small-time Filipino gangster with access to strange poisons. My murder would never be solved because the snakes will have gone, slunk back to Mexico or wherever, or crept across time and space and physics to claim yet another unsuspecting victim, and nobody will ever know what happened. I will be buried next to my mother, and my cause of death will be listed as “Turned to Slime by Toxins Unknown.”

No fucking way. That’s not how I’m going to die.

I leap from the couch, springing from the left-hand side seat a full six or seven feet across the room, landing on the tile in the kitchen, slipping on the damp floor and landing on my side with a terrible pain in my ankle. I’m absolutely, positively, 100% certain that I have been bitten, but I am not going to fall to my knees and let myself be swarmed by cobras and asps. The poison pumps deeper into each extremity with every heartbeat - I grab the big meat knife from the knife set and a can of WD-40. I ransack my own apartment, stabbing wildly into the fluff of the couch cushions, tearing the carpet from the floor, kicking over the piece of furniture that hold my TV and movies and putting a foot through the glass coffee table. I trip over the bong and am absolutely, positively sure that it was a six-foot solid muscle Reticulated Python, and in a blind, poisoned rage, I kick back at it. The blown glass explodes against the wall, splattering my pant leg with blood and bong sludge. I look down at my leg and see nothing but decay. I am being eaten away at record speeds. I beat my chest and bellow like Sasquatch.

I flip over the couch and throw my body on top of it, trapping the snakes beneath. Giggling, I soak the fabric on the back with the aerosol and set it ablaze with my cigarette lighter. I suffer some minor burns, but nothing compared to the violence wreaked on my endocrine system. My heart hurts. My eyes are on fire and so is the couch – and now the curtains, now the carpet. My skin is beginning to turn the color of a really old dollar bill, and I have lost a lot of blood, and there is probably ten thousand milliliters of assorted venoms coursing through my body, but the snakes are dead, all of ‘em dead. Smoke erupts out the window, blackening the skies over the Mission. The time is now 2:11 in the afternoon.

I collapse on the floor just as the firefighters break down the front door; I guess I had pretty bad smoke inhalation, which didn’t help considering the drugs, but the doctors managed to save all my tissue. They found no bite marks and no signs that any snakes had been in my apartment, but I nearly died from all the rattler venom in my veins. They say any other person would have had limbs atrophying off and hallucinations hippies would kill for. The first doctor crossed himself and recommended I thank Christ that I still had any hands at all. I’m now a medical anomaly. My case is required reading in first-year medical textbooks, right next to the man with the screws in his heart and the Immaculate Conception of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

the skull of our beloved Mr. Creek

“It’s named after a real guy,” insisted Pat. 
“How do you know?” I asked. “You don’t have the internet. Who told you this?”
“It’s just something I know, pal. You’re just going to have to trust me on it.”

I really had no reason to doubt poor Pat. I felt as though I owed him my trust – after all, it had been no fewer than five minutes prior that I had been convinced of his intent to poison me. But here I stood beneath the Goodwin Street Bridge, very much alive and surrounded by swooping bats, desperately trying to believe what this man was telling me: that Granite Creek, the two-mile stretch of green belt than runs through downtown Prescott, was named after a real person – a person named Granite Creek.

“He came into town like a hundred years ago, and set up his business. The townspeople loved him and he did good work for the community, so they named the creek after him. He even built this bridge.” He passed me the joint. Moments earlier, I had been sure it was loaded with PCP or animal tranquilizers. I was now more concerned with being infected with whatever spit-borne mental illness Pat carried with him, but I hit it anyway. Medical science is advancing quickly, I thought. I’ll be all right.

“What did he do for the community? Anything I might know about?”
“Well, come on. How am I supposed to know that? I just got into town. Probably built the courthouse or some shit.”

Pat had arrived in Prescott (possibly) only days earlier. He had (possibly) come for a final visit with a dying relative – who was, according to Pat’s explanation, some vague combination of his father, his grandfather, and nobody at all – and possibly also to find work and enjoy the mountain weather. He had (possibly) come from an undisclosed location in Florida, and had made the trip in a mere three months – possibly on foot. His shoes were immaculate. The rubber on the soles was very white – I wondered if I had indeed been tricked into smoking foul hallucinogenic chemicals. 

“How long did it take you?” I asked.
“What?” Pat swatted bats away from his face. They were growing bolder.
“To get here. Did you take a bus at all? Trains?” 
“Three months, about. Nobody rides trains anymore. It’s a dead technology. They’ll start tearing up the rails any day now.”
“So you walked?”
“No, I had a bike. I walked some, though, when I got tired.”
“Did the dog walk too?” A white pit bull, her feet wrapped in little bundles of canvas and leather, huddled beside me, growling at the bats. 
“No, I carried her in my backpack.” 
“Ah. That makes sense.”

Nothing was said for several minutes, until I finally stood up, crushed out my cigarette, and said goodbye. Pat lunged toward me and vigorously shook my hand.
“Hey, man, good settin’ with you! If you ever need to find me, just look around by the square – you can’t miss me. I’m the guy with the bike!”
“Don’t forget the dog. Not many dogs in town with shoes,” I laughed.
Pat looked at me as though I had condoned rape. He turned and left wordlessly, snapping his fingers to summon the dog, who sighed as she got to her feet and gave me a quick glance as if to say “Well, I thought that was a little funny.”
I never saw Pat again, but I did see his dog once not long after the encounter at Granite Creek. She didn’t seem to remember me.

-MJ