Blackened, yet Brightened

I’ll be honest, this was not an event I was waiting to attend for decades (as, on the other hand, it was with Exploited, seen three weeks earlier), though I am a Black Flag fan since ‘97. Mostly because seeing them live wasn’t something realistic, considering all the key members coming and going and forming other bands and suing each other in between. Thus, seeing the upcoming show ad on the wall invoked more of a “Yeah right must be a joke” reaction out of me and I didn’t buy a ticket for weeks after. But I did buy it, because even 71 years old Greg Ginn with performers at least thrice younger than him is still THE Greg Ginn playing Black Flag songs, so WTF am i really contemplating this for?!?

First impressions of the event were amazing already. A guy with electric violin plopped himself two steps from entry door (right next to me) and went jigging it out. He was very good but i felt like paying him to go away because my ears hated it – too close. Except for a couple teens who dropped coins into his can, nobody cared for the dude’s work. Sorry, pal, but we didn’t come here to see Dropkick Murphys, ok?

Funny enough, the day wasn’t yet done with violins. Upon my entry into the might Starlite Room, the sound guy was playing Mahavishnu Orchestra ‘Birds of Fire” on the PA! Which is an amazing record, hands down, that i was enjoying for decades, but more amazing is that: 1) it is not something you are likely to hear before a punk show (although Black Flag were/are quite experimental); 2) even more nuts is that i was going through the linear notes of that very CD, borrowed recently from the public library, an hour prior to the show! Wow. I didn’t believe my ears! But looking at the sound guy’s monitor i knew i got it right. I’ve briefly talked to his majesty Sound Master right after. We had a good laugh. And then he played Thin Lizzy for half an hour. Then – Cramps, SNFU, and DRI . Nice evolution!

Also, during that first half hour there were over fifty rockers in the room and I was the only longhaired guy. I shared that thought with a couple standing next to me. Fella said “Oh, thats becoming a norm now. Well, Metallica guys all looking shorthaired and respectful now.” Wtf?? Dude must be living in a forest.

Anyway, Black Flag formation 2026 took the stage later than 8pm sharp but totally SLAYED! Besides Gregg looking quite in shape and with a cool transparent plastic body of a guitar, the band was also very pro at what they do and it was absolute pleasure to hear them. The drummer was friggin awesome, and the vocalist Max was totally born to be in this band, even though she is literally decades away from BF heyday (she also revealed she was either born or raised in Edmonton. small fkn world, hey). I hope this line-ip will last, and record, and release something tangible together. We had to our listening pleasure a mind-bogglingly all-inclusive set list and great sound. Audience was nuts and happy, I’ve spotted one case of stage diving and all kinds of moshing, including a circle pit involving the bassist who kept playing(!). I met some new people, which happens rarely. Great night. Thankyou Starlite!

#blackflag #punk #punkmusic #starliteroom #mahavishnuorchestra (haha)

Refreshing It

I keep noticing –
Movies now have less
Cigarette smoking.
That’s good!
Yet booze flows freely…


Through struggles
I know now what booze is –
A liquid lie,
Bent on destroying
Body spirit and mind
Not out of evil spite.
No, we made it ourselves,
To ourselves
And accepted as indenting reality
That we keep it
To brighten our days.


Yet for some of us
That joy is the worst poison.
And to all others – wasn’t it still deadly?
Yet they too take it fondly
And call it refreshments
While it’s anything but!
They keep returning to it,
Not as wildly as I would, granted,
But don’t they seem to
Depend on getting refreshed?

Dear Igor

Guess where I’ve been last Friday night? That place where I saw you for the first time, and took you home from an hour later. That’s a sad place down there. It looked nice and well equipped and all kinds of services seem to run nicely, but the residents looks sad, and hopeful, and more sad. I remember how excited you were when I came to meet you.

And next day I walked through a much happier place, a massive off-leash park with so many dogs running through snow, and I remembered you, and thought you’d love that too.

And I also remembered what day was coming around in connection to you because in four day would be two years since we don’t have you in our lives (which was yesterday). Lots of things to think, to recall.

And you are still with us, in our memories. In the stories that your toys we still keep tell. In the places you lived to go to and play at. In your pictures at our home. In the pictures and videos your mom and I find on our phones and share with one another.

I miss you, master fluffy playing kind kid.

Sit and Wait (While Getting Deaf)

Sitting constant observ in the hospital,

Facing another staff on constant,

While patients sleep on –

It’s nice to have a warm job,

But time runs slow

Just as blood in the veins,

A nourishment of a paycheck 

While you accomplish nothing otherwise.

Sitting on the train,

That is sitting in a tunnel, –

I’m waiting to be released,

Waiting to be let go home,

While the steel snake collects dust,

Waiting to go on.

Time, time, time

An endlessly probing tyne

Stabbing my existence

With questions of “why,

Why still to I sit so still?

And how much longer?

And is there really any benefit to this?

This and other time 

I am in temporary service,

And the best metaphor for it 

Is food,

That feeds the gut, 

Then turns to shit, 

Loudly fearing the end of it all.”

How nourishing a thought that is,

Knowing your value,

Driving your brain into scream

Getting deaf, as well,

For while all that rubbish is never to perish

Rolls and whispers,

Noise never ceases, 

And it bounces and screams –

Announcements, advertisements, 

Orders and empty promises,

But mostly – endless chatter

Of whine, of last night’s dine and wine,

Of bullshitting yourself while bullshitting others.

Why still all this, 

Listening to all the unnecessary junk

(and perhaps, subconscious propaganda)

Of consumerism and complacency,

While my sanity’s expiring like a jug of milk in the fridge

And the eardrums surely distressing into jelly –

When I could have been sleeping

And knowing none of this,

Attempting to cheat time.

Sit & wait – 

I think it’s a weapon 

That kills with more efficiency

Than a Smith & Wesson.

walk slow. slower.

There is a hilarious video from about 15 years back: “So we went to Banff and we saw a unicorn. I thought unicorn were so-o-o extinct!” I kept recalling it through the years, and for some reason my latest adventure a month ago reminded me of it.

We didn’t see any extinct species in Kananaskis that weekend, but we did climb 9K to reach the top of the mountain… which is something I haven’t done in 6-7 years, and even then, it wasn’t that high and that steep.

Anyway, besides great sights to behold, I’ve also learned a couple of things. Darren who drove us there and navigated the whole thing, he is highly skilled and very experienced climber of many years. He had several good advices for me to keep walking without walking out on the whole thing.

Walk slow, he said. Slower. Slower than that. You’d want to conserve your energy and still have of energy when it’s time to go back.

I must admit, it was hard for me to walk slow. I think I’m doing a better job walking slow in the last several years due to working in the hospital and moving side by side with patients that have mobility issues. Yet even that was too fast, apparently, for climbing Opal mountain.

I kept walking up the steep slope, thinking of that, trying to breathe steadily, make small steps, and that made me think of making steps and completing the Steps in recovery. My first sponsor Ted G. said, if you go low and slow, you will grow.

About half hour before we reached the summit, Darren said I need to count the steps – to one hundred, and then count over again. He said that as you’d get progressively tired by then time, counting steps would take the mind off the strain. Meditation of sorts? Sure. I was by then focusing on rune mantra for about an hour, but counting steps sounds like a good idea, as well. We read and recite the Steps in AA meetings each time. That way we introduce the newcomers to them, but we also re-introduce ourselves to them at the same time. Twelve Steps lessons are that when dealing with life and frustrations and resentments, to look at them not as “these people! oh if I had it my way in life!” but “where is my part in this situation?” Reading the Steps re-introduces us to how to see it and how to walk with that wisdom and how to apply these skills. We move through life taking a good look at how to move accurately and kindly to everyone involved.

I am still learning all this. There are days I want to take shortcuts. Then some other days I see how shortcuts could have screwed things up, and I am grateful for keeping it steady and as long of a walk as was necessary.

the “Total death of worldly care in the mountainous embrace” and “Even mountains have their own set of steps” images are by me.

allowing teachability, part 2

“You cant hypnotize an alcoholic. They don’t give up control.”

I think it was a Coffee News joke. At any rate, its true. Alcoholics do not give up control and they have a tendency not to learn well, either.

I am the primary example. Still, even in sobriety.

I didn’t give up control when been taught or advised on many things when I was a kid or a teen. To think of it now, I don’t know what I was fighting against. I didn’t know what guns I was sticking to, at least most of the time I didn’t know. Sure, kids do that, but some of them learn after. As for me, though, I was not of sharp mind, making few mistakes. Quite the opposite, actually. So, rejecting help was not exactly smart of me.

Several years back I saw a book in public library that collected graduate students letters to their younger selves: what would they have advised themselves of or against of?

I know from my work experience with drugs and alcohol recovery program that it is encouraged and a part of curriculum in some places to write a letter to yourselves in the future, for encouragement, to remember where you came from and how hard, but important was the change.

Now here was a different idea – it was acknowledgement of what you now know and, perhaps, how you learned it, with an opportunistic twist of going back in time and teaching your younger self of what to do and what not.

I thought of that. What would I write in a letter to my younger self if he/I had a a chance to hear it? What would I advise myself of (without worrying much about Back to the Future principle “change the past – change/endanger the future”? To take some particular opportunity? Talk to that girl in high school? To not talk to that kid? How about not taking any of those drinks?

And then another memory came – of talking to a teen about his issues. I wrote about it years back. In a nutshell – would I in age 14 listen to older me looking like a hippie with a job in a homeless shelter talking to me of how messed up he has got before he got better?

Again, I still I wasn’t listening to anyone about life, with about the same dedication that i gave into running with ADHD wolf in regards to my academic studies. Nobody tried to hypnotize me though. Who knows, I might have had agreed to that, for the morbid fun of it. But would I listen to me? Would I care to read that letter? Somehow, I think not.

I now have got two decades of sobriety under my belt, but I am certainly not a wise person. I maybe a better student, though. I started learning of many things when I joined AA. That is one school I had to put a lot of my attention and work into, in order to quit drinking and stay sober, and positive at that. I really wanted that. And it worked, in some ways better than I ever expected.

the image was copied from https://www.google.com/imgres?q=hypnotize%20funny&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbs.dreamstime.com%2Fb%2Fhypnotist-39836.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dreamstime.com%2Fillustration%2Fman-hypnotize.html&docid=MOlalCKiRZEMTM&tbnid=P7CI7r1F_NX3zM&vet=12ahUKEwixvsK07_SNAxVrFTQIHYG3H6AQM3oECFoQAA..i&w=800&h=564&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwixvsK07_SNAxVrFTQIHYG3H6AQM3oECFoQAA. thankyou.

c0de br0wn

I heard this hilarious one-liner at a meeting once: when someone is throwing crap at you, it doesn’t mean you have to catch it and throw it back.

Hilarious though it is, it is so true…

… because I had it happen to me and my coworkers in a hospital where one much mentally unwell patient used to throw his crap at us, and we surely behaved professionally…

… but speaking metaphorically, I still have a hard time successfully applying the “don’t throw crap back” principle to my life. I still throw the proverbial crap back when it is thrown at me. Anger, frustration, fear of being ridiculed farther, who knows what else…

Sometimes I can stop myself. In other times I can stop myself half way. And then… there are times I it appears the thrown crap hits the fan and throws it all all back at me in ways I didn’t expect was possible. And what do I do about that if not lash out in all might?

Ask for help from above works. Breathing deeply and slowly also helps. Learning experiences, I guess.

the image was copied from https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/no-poop thankyou.

paresthesian walk

is my pain real?

is it really pain?

do i walk weird?

i sure feel strange

i know it’s natural

i’ve caused this by lack of care

but i still feel i dont belong in your ranks.

i know it will pass but right now i feel messed up and..

i like it.

maybe that’s how… or maybe not… they walked on the Moon.

for several seconds, i’m in a different world.

i like it there.

i needed that break from the mundane. It

i had no happiness,

just satisfied existence no vivacious ride,

but knowing that it’s a life on universes terms

and it outweighs your input,

no matter how great.

in the land where great violence looms,

in my mind’s eye music and hopeful songs

sometimes uninvitedly come into greater view

and out-shadow anxiety and deeply missing sanity.

this walk of light treading and caring not

is easier to breathe through.

the image was copied from https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/how-long-would-it-take-an-astronaut-to-walk-around-the-moon thankyou.

Igorized

Words… there aren’t much…

What do they matter

In the space of emotions,

Where loss is prevalent

And helplessness is overpowering?

In times of giddy green,

We joined you running

And squirrel-watching.

In frozen months.

We followed your tireless mice hunting

And in-snow rolling, smiling widely.

And in the midst of all, at home, –

Toy-playing and fabric-tearing

Licking dish so ferociously,

I thought you’d eat it.

Claws scratching stone floor,

Us knowing you’re coming over.

Shaking while you sleep,

Chasing dream rabbits.

Your presence and all these character traits

Made it even more that –

Home.

Then a year ago,

It all went sad and silent for an ever

Where no phrase sounded right

Unless muffled in tears.

There was some laughter,

Of us sharing memories of your goofiness

And there was more still air

Of our recalling your kindness,

Forever Igorized.

Your little sister in spirit is much like you,

And yet so different.

I cherish memories of how you were,

As I brush her hair and look into her eyes

Seeming so wise,

Perhaps knowing things

I started so slowly learning from you,

And now studying with her.

Thankyou for all your joy,

And patience, and effort

To help me feel air and earth,

And in between.

I’m in debt to your enjoying living

And sharing it with us.

Remembering you,

Igor the Fluffy Torpedo.

Miss you a lot.

to be a tree

How often I heard people say they wish they were birds, and be free, and go away. Nice… I guess, but it would be a constant struggle for survival and being safe.

I look at my life lately and I wish I was a tree. Yeah, roots, and trunk, and bark, and branches, and leaves. Standing in a yard, or garden, with no fingers to show. No paperwork. No standing in line or waiting for anything. No aspirations or dreams, but that’s a nice break from that, too. So, just life and feeling all of it. Not caring for what other species do.

To be a tree. No time-sensitive anything. Enjoy warmth during day, cold at night. Ok, I don’t like cold, and there is a lot of it now, since it’s winter… but maybe as a tree I wouldn’t really have thoughts about not liking cold.

And… I’d prefer to grow in a forest, away from human activity. Constant life cycle and interconnection of species. Feeding young and those in need through my roots system, those by my side, and those half forest away.