in which we weigh the truths/consequences/chiles
distance
keeps everything everyone
keeps at a
everything everyone
a distance
keeps
every
in which I address all four of my readers:
Dear Reader #1,
Thank you for being, well, #1.
You occupy that special place in my heart, that dark, hidden chamber that still secretly values hierarchies and the special privilege of being designated Number One, Noo-mah-ro Ooo-no, Ichi-Ban, El Mero Primero, First Place, The Loneliest Number, Top of the Heap, etc., etc.
Your dedication, your commitment, your attention to detail. You never settled for second-best.
Reader #1, you earned it.
Dear Reader #2,
I remember that I sent you something in the mail. You sent me a photograph in return, but not through the mail. I received the image later on. It was a non-monetary gift that pixilated the intriguing give-and-take of digital dialogue, rendering further discussion moot and obsolete. Still, there were Photoshop filters that could reassemble the code into a voice message from someone else’s cellular telephone. Your vocal chords were disguised and camouflaged, but eventually I was able to decipher the series of ones and zeroes. Each pair was another clue, one step closer. The logic of the digital. I remember how I believed in shadows back then. Mine outran me every time. Watching it, I always forgot the third and fourth elements involved. The light source grew dim, the surface dissolved.
Dear Reader #3,
Preliminary results of your Teele Inventory of Multiple Intelligences (TIMI) test indicate that almost all of your intelligence can be categorized as either Intrapersonal or Linguistic. I can only hope that this gross imbalance is the real cause of your saying such a mean, fucked up thing, rather than malice, bitterness, resentment, and/or other general violent tendencies.
Dear Reader #4,
Thank you for rounding out my list of readers. Without you, I might have had only three readers.
They say that democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting for a majority on who’ll be for dinner. You, dear fourth reader, are not for dinner, but neither are you a wolf.
That is why I appreciate you so much. You bring a certain balance to the equation. No hierarchy, no shady shadows, no fake democracy, no neurotic jabs. In some cultures, the number four represents death. But you, Reader #4, are the reassurance that my life has not been in vain, that all my efforts have been worth it, that I am not just farting into the wind. In fact, the next time I am standing at the copy machine at Office Depot, inhaling fumes, smudging my fingertips, poking staples into my skin, sneaking copies, and wondering if it is all worth it, I will think of you, Reader #4, and I will say, “Well, fuck, at least there aren’t just three.”
at that moment, zack jumped about 20 feet into the air and I looked around at the crowd of brown faces red stars bandana facemasks surging and suddenly the chemicals kicked in and my perception shifted forever, and already in that moment you were married to some white guy with 2 kids in wyoming or some crazy shit, and already I was, I was, well, I was doing this, but it would take me nearly 20 years to realize it that already 20 years later I’m standing there at the end of your block somehow back at the same spot by coincidence by the gravitational pulls of love and sex by strange redux cycles of wounding/healing/reconciliation looking down the street toward your mom’s house which is still there which she’s still there and already and realizing 20 years already that we at that moment way back then we were we/lifetimes thousands of miles time zones already multiple levels of reality
apart
in which we recognize that gratitude is a good state of mind to carry from moment to moment, each of which brings new facilitations toward perception shifts and evolution, channeled through sometimes the unlikeliest of vessels
We were discussing the matter and we decided that we think that you are the one who should stick out her/his neck. Our reasoning is as follows:
Whereas we have names and reputations to protect, real careers, mortgages, car notes, audiences, etc., you, on the other hand, have carefully crafted a cunning semi-anonymity-slash-invisibility built on mountains of debt, little in the way of real job prospects, and even less in terms of an actual career path. You are therefore perfectly suited to take this particular set of risks, to expose yourself, to channel the frustrations of/for others. After all, what have you got to lose, anyway? Besides, to be totally honest, you’re really not risking all that much in the end, considering how microscopic your readership is.
If a “Chicano” falls in a forest of clever lamp Posts and nobody is around to curate it, does it make a sound like grumbling stomachs, or crumbling dollar bills?
My money is running out.
My computer screen is dead.
All of my rechargeable battery apparatuses are dying.
My messenger workbag is unraveling at the seams.
My tire treads are cracked.
Cup o’ Noodles has become a staple of my diet.
People invite me out to eat or drink, and I feel around my pockets for a few seconds, and then I make up some excuse not to go.
“Why don’t you work, then? Why don’t you make some money? Why don’t you write something that will sell, i.e., not offend those with more power? It’s the era of post-Poverty, man. Don’t you know that being poor went out of style after the Chicano Movement?”
Fuck, I am working. I’m writing this thesis. I’m writing this book. I’m writing this other book. I’m writing this digital text. I’m documenting and archiving Important Events. I’m riding my bike, cuz it may take some frijoles, but it don’t take any gas. I’m packing tortas and burritos to sneak for fuel while I write at the public library. I’m thinking about shoplifting (just kidding, shadowy surveillance agents). I’m buying all my clothes at the Salvation Army (hallelujah!). Beans & rice & eggs, beans&rice&eggs. And tortillas. And chiles. And Cup o’ Noodles. Spicy Lime Shrimp Flavor. Cut up some jalapeños and limes, throw it all in with some Tapatio—with some ghetto culinary arts schooled to me by a certain freaky Nica, I’m living large, baby! Fuck salad, these are the Cup o’ Noodle days.
Meanwhile, my friend packs me a “food drive” box of stuff she’s getting rid of as she cleans out her apartment kitchen to move. The box reminds me of standing on line at the church in the 80s with my mom and sisters to get a similar box packed with powder milk, yellow government cheese, a loaf of bread, cereal, canned vegetables, two sticks of butter. A Jesus coloring book.
I mean, fuck, man, you think I’m a stranger to being poor? You think I don’t know how hard it is? But what’s the alternative? Don’t you remember when you met me? I sure wasn’t poor then. Full health care, free parking downtown, retirement funds, a fat paycheck every two weeks automatically deposited straight into a big fat bank account. And the biggest fucking asshole I’d ever known. Lost in a world of confusion, like poor old Joaquin, digitally erased from the scene of my own life by snarky pomo pastiche. Why do you think I was there in the first place?
Obviously, I remembered very well what it feels like to be poor, and I wasn’t having none of that shit.
And now? I know how hard it is. I know they want us all poor, like you said, they’ll keep squeezing tighter and tighter, they want everybody to know what it feels like with their Cup o’ Noodle World Order of cheap life and starved spirit. But deep inside me, in that hungry little pit in my panza, I’m having a hell of a time getting around the feeling that choosing “success” looks like the ultimate failure. Because down there, all packed up in that dense little void, are all my memories of where I came from, all my novels that I will write, all my stories, all my digital texts, all my crazy moments of locura performance and drama and defiance, and I look at Success, and it looks to me like a big soupy vortex mess of cleverly slippery tendrils and high-sodium artificial flavoring packets and dollar bills counterfeited on soggy offwhite Post-Its.
—I am cutting up some chiles, man, I am rubbing the seeds into my lips, my eyes, my tongue, I am burning, I am burning, I am broke as hell, but I am burning—
keeps everything everyone
keeps at a
everything everyone
a distance
keeps
every
in which I address all four of my readers:
Dear Reader #1,
Thank you for being, well, #1.
You occupy that special place in my heart, that dark, hidden chamber that still secretly values hierarchies and the special privilege of being designated Number One, Noo-mah-ro Ooo-no, Ichi-Ban, El Mero Primero, First Place, The Loneliest Number, Top of the Heap, etc., etc.
Your dedication, your commitment, your attention to detail. You never settled for second-best.
Reader #1, you earned it.
Dear Reader #2,
I remember that I sent you something in the mail. You sent me a photograph in return, but not through the mail. I received the image later on. It was a non-monetary gift that pixilated the intriguing give-and-take of digital dialogue, rendering further discussion moot and obsolete. Still, there were Photoshop filters that could reassemble the code into a voice message from someone else’s cellular telephone. Your vocal chords were disguised and camouflaged, but eventually I was able to decipher the series of ones and zeroes. Each pair was another clue, one step closer. The logic of the digital. I remember how I believed in shadows back then. Mine outran me every time. Watching it, I always forgot the third and fourth elements involved. The light source grew dim, the surface dissolved.
Dear Reader #3,
Preliminary results of your Teele Inventory of Multiple Intelligences (TIMI) test indicate that almost all of your intelligence can be categorized as either Intrapersonal or Linguistic. I can only hope that this gross imbalance is the real cause of your saying such a mean, fucked up thing, rather than malice, bitterness, resentment, and/or other general violent tendencies.
Dear Reader #4,
Thank you for rounding out my list of readers. Without you, I might have had only three readers.
They say that democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting for a majority on who’ll be for dinner. You, dear fourth reader, are not for dinner, but neither are you a wolf.
That is why I appreciate you so much. You bring a certain balance to the equation. No hierarchy, no shady shadows, no fake democracy, no neurotic jabs. In some cultures, the number four represents death. But you, Reader #4, are the reassurance that my life has not been in vain, that all my efforts have been worth it, that I am not just farting into the wind. In fact, the next time I am standing at the copy machine at Office Depot, inhaling fumes, smudging my fingertips, poking staples into my skin, sneaking copies, and wondering if it is all worth it, I will think of you, Reader #4, and I will say, “Well, fuck, at least there aren’t just three.”
at that moment, zack jumped about 20 feet into the air and I looked around at the crowd of brown faces red stars bandana facemasks surging and suddenly the chemicals kicked in and my perception shifted forever, and already in that moment you were married to some white guy with 2 kids in wyoming or some crazy shit, and already I was, I was, well, I was doing this, but it would take me nearly 20 years to realize it that already 20 years later I’m standing there at the end of your block somehow back at the same spot by coincidence by the gravitational pulls of love and sex by strange redux cycles of wounding/healing/reconciliation looking down the street toward your mom’s house which is still there which she’s still there and already and realizing 20 years already that we at that moment way back then we were we/lifetimes thousands of miles time zones already multiple levels of reality
apart
in which we recognize that gratitude is a good state of mind to carry from moment to moment, each of which brings new facilitations toward perception shifts and evolution, channeled through sometimes the unlikeliest of vessels
We were discussing the matter and we decided that we think that you are the one who should stick out her/his neck. Our reasoning is as follows:
Whereas we have names and reputations to protect, real careers, mortgages, car notes, audiences, etc., you, on the other hand, have carefully crafted a cunning semi-anonymity-slash-invisibility built on mountains of debt, little in the way of real job prospects, and even less in terms of an actual career path. You are therefore perfectly suited to take this particular set of risks, to expose yourself, to channel the frustrations of/for others. After all, what have you got to lose, anyway? Besides, to be totally honest, you’re really not risking all that much in the end, considering how microscopic your readership is.
If a “Chicano” falls in a forest of clever lamp Posts and nobody is around to curate it, does it make a sound like grumbling stomachs, or crumbling dollar bills?
My money is running out.
My computer screen is dead.
All of my rechargeable battery apparatuses are dying.
My messenger workbag is unraveling at the seams.
My tire treads are cracked.
Cup o’ Noodles has become a staple of my diet.
People invite me out to eat or drink, and I feel around my pockets for a few seconds, and then I make up some excuse not to go.
“Why don’t you work, then? Why don’t you make some money? Why don’t you write something that will sell, i.e., not offend those with more power? It’s the era of post-Poverty, man. Don’t you know that being poor went out of style after the Chicano Movement?”
Fuck, I am working. I’m writing this thesis. I’m writing this book. I’m writing this other book. I’m writing this digital text. I’m documenting and archiving Important Events. I’m riding my bike, cuz it may take some frijoles, but it don’t take any gas. I’m packing tortas and burritos to sneak for fuel while I write at the public library. I’m thinking about shoplifting (just kidding, shadowy surveillance agents). I’m buying all my clothes at the Salvation Army (hallelujah!). Beans & rice & eggs, beans&rice&eggs. And tortillas. And chiles. And Cup o’ Noodles. Spicy Lime Shrimp Flavor. Cut up some jalapeños and limes, throw it all in with some Tapatio—with some ghetto culinary arts schooled to me by a certain freaky Nica, I’m living large, baby! Fuck salad, these are the Cup o’ Noodle days.
Meanwhile, my friend packs me a “food drive” box of stuff she’s getting rid of as she cleans out her apartment kitchen to move. The box reminds me of standing on line at the church in the 80s with my mom and sisters to get a similar box packed with powder milk, yellow government cheese, a loaf of bread, cereal, canned vegetables, two sticks of butter. A Jesus coloring book.
I mean, fuck, man, you think I’m a stranger to being poor? You think I don’t know how hard it is? But what’s the alternative? Don’t you remember when you met me? I sure wasn’t poor then. Full health care, free parking downtown, retirement funds, a fat paycheck every two weeks automatically deposited straight into a big fat bank account. And the biggest fucking asshole I’d ever known. Lost in a world of confusion, like poor old Joaquin, digitally erased from the scene of my own life by snarky pomo pastiche. Why do you think I was there in the first place?
Obviously, I remembered very well what it feels like to be poor, and I wasn’t having none of that shit.
And now? I know how hard it is. I know they want us all poor, like you said, they’ll keep squeezing tighter and tighter, they want everybody to know what it feels like with their Cup o’ Noodle World Order of cheap life and starved spirit. But deep inside me, in that hungry little pit in my panza, I’m having a hell of a time getting around the feeling that choosing “success” looks like the ultimate failure. Because down there, all packed up in that dense little void, are all my memories of where I came from, all my novels that I will write, all my stories, all my digital texts, all my crazy moments of locura performance and drama and defiance, and I look at Success, and it looks to me like a big soupy vortex mess of cleverly slippery tendrils and high-sodium artificial flavoring packets and dollar bills counterfeited on soggy offwhite Post-Its.
—I am cutting up some chiles, man, I am rubbing the seeds into my lips, my eyes, my tongue, I am burning, I am burning, I am broke as hell, but I am burning—
posted by kualyque at 01:17
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