Eating My Hat

Cain and Abel came upon each other after Abel’s death. They were walking through the desert, and they recognized each other from afar, since both men were very tall. The two brothers sat on the ground, made a fire, and ate. They sat silently, as weary people do when dusk begins to fall. In the sky, a star glittered, though it had not yet been given a name. In the light of the fire, Cain saw that Abel’s forehead bore the mark of the stone, and he dropped the bread he was about to carry to his mouth, and asked his brother to forgive him.

“Was it you that killed me, or did I kill you ?” Abel answered. “I don’t remember any more; here we are, together, like before.”

“Now I know that you have truly forgiven me,” Cain said, “because forgetting is forgiving. I, too, will try to forget.”

“Yes, said Abel slowly. “So long as remorse lasts, guilt lasts”

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Feels Good Man.

quote:
The very first Red Robin was a biker bar in Seattle with a horrible reputation for drugs and violence. This is the original sign that hangs in the door of that first Red Robin. Notice anything different about our red feathered friend?

Dear Livejournal, (and Facebook)
How are you?
What did I do yesterday? So thankful you asked.
I went to see a naturopathic doctor. She had me hold zinc in my mouth to see if I lack zinc. I do!
That's about all. I smoked a few cigarettes and oh--yes, I saw my child Franklin and his charming and lovely mother Julia! We went to the playground. Franklin wanted to climb the spider-man jungle gym so I helped him get to the first level. American Dads: getting American Toddlers to the First Level! That's us, America. Divided yet strongly bonded. Frank is Democrats because he's younger. My ideas are old! I like old things like not getting internet implants. Go back to your BBS, Grandpa! Go back to your livejournal.

It was a funky old mansion that had been converted to a wonderful 5-story natural medicine complex. The doctors have names like Buddha and Dr. Krishna. My doctor has a normal lady name. I'm going to friends-lock this freewriting session, my friends.

Friends-lock! Twitter doesn't seem to have friends lock. You say it to the whole world or you says it to nobody, bub!
Hey, I forgot about Wolverine. You should buy a copy of Stupid Tales of Wolverine, Livejournal! It's an essential part of every library. Check out thorazos.etsy.com to find out how you can purchase a copy. There, advertisement. Now That's Livejournal!(tm)

I'm wearing a fresh sportcoat, livejournal. I feel fresh and fancy free. Thanks for reading.

Oh, if you live in Portland, can you keep an eye out for my wedding ring? I left it at Sequential Art Gallery or next door in a psychogenic fugue state. It eats me up, this lack!

Brodie Kelly,
Your "Friend"(tm) forever
purgatorius.Livejournal.com
c/o Livejournal
My Mom's Houseguest
Incorpoated.
Livejournal

PS, edited to add that I sent an email to sequential art gallery. So I'm not just pawning off my troubles  all the time. Yours in Livejournal, Livejournal Brodie.

 Dear Brodie,
It's been two weeks since you saw your son, three weeks since you saw your wife. You are on a medication which blocks Serotonin, and you are trying to balance that with fish oil. 
  It is okay to think that you are in deep shit. It is not okay to act like a victim, or to go all limp and rag-doll helpless. You are in a transition phase, Brodie, and nobody, not even your own smart(-ass) self can overthink enough to control a fluxpoint like this.
  You can't live with Julia right now. She doesn't want it, and it's best if you still live in Portland and just try to pull the pieces back together. Your life is an unmade bed, and you didn't leave yourself a clear spot to lie back down when you went batshit crazy at artwalk and started making a joke of life.
  Be the Batman, don't be the Joker. 

"Double Batman"
You have been spending time with your brother, whom you have known all his life, and your mother and grandparents who have known you all your life. Your mom's friend Laurie remembers you wearing two Batman t-shirts as a child, pulling away one to reveal the other. "I'm Double Batman"! You exclaimed / revealed. Your secret identity is that you are Really Brodie. Double Brodie. You have the reported capacity to be the most annoying person in the world, or the best person in the world. You really took the "double" part of bipolar disorder and have run with it for 30 years. Stop running. Get a day job and be normal Batman for a while. No need to distrust everything. Yes, it was hugely intense to be in that Hospital (with a capital H) and feel like The Prisoner. You were even in room number six! Number Six. But the chase is over, your life has caught you and you have to turn around and face the world instead of facing yourself.

It was exceptionally weird being analyzed and videotaped 24 hours a day. At one point, an Englishman Nurse named Tony came up to me and asked, "So what's going on with your marriage, Brodie?" I answered not that I was not a number, but a free man, or that flapjacks are my favorite dish, but that we didn't know either. They spread a serious rumor around, between my wife and the nurse and my psychiatrist that Julia was filing for a divorce. She was not, it was Chinese Whispers as Tony would say. I got a weird stage magician thing going on again, and I'm studying people's patter. The Nurse who told the Doctor who told me that Julia was already filing for divorce while I was in the Psych Ward was affronted that I dared to be angry about it. I thought that springing imaginary distress on somebody while he was "in" for stress related issues was very unprofessional. Which it was. Thank god I set up Google Voice and could call out without asking for special permission from the Nursing Staff (The Team). We want in formation.

  Be the weirdness you want to see on Planet Earth. If you are approaching life as a Visitor, as a Prisoner of reality you will keep having to use Reality's Guest Towels (and leaving your towels at Ravenface's house)
Know where your towel is, but don't make a big deal about it. People hate fundamentalists, even fundamentalist weirdos. Take some time to emulate a normal person and get back to me.



Yours, Mine,
Number Six
aka "Brodie Kelly, aged 30"

Notice: Edited, Filtered to mitigate Self-Absorption

 The mission is to be Franklin's best dad he can possibly have. Everything else is a second or distant third to that main mission. The plan is that I get to see Franklin every day, the plan is that I live in Portland and am close to Julia and Franklin, a co-parent and a helpful presence in Julia's life.

I don't know how to be me sometimes. I try out other personalities and sometimes PTSD from the bus crash and from being brutalized by a police officer stress me out. I thought that the police officer who picked me up ranting in my pyjamas was going to Taser me to death. I was wrong. He was a really nice person, especially for a policeman. I got lucky.

I gave my phone to someone reliable, Danielle. I still have my cell phone. I do not know where the fuck my wedding ring is, and this gnaws at me so I put it in the back of my brain and remember that $400 worth of silver is not impossible to replace. What I need to replace with more effort is Julia's trust in me, and so my trust in myself is in the shop.

What do I trust myself to do? What kind of things does Brodie Kelly do and say? Is he a daring friend-maker, giving backrubs to wonderful and talented cast members of his friend's play? Is Brodie the father, holding Frank so tight, is he the father playing with space ships on the carpet?

That's the Brodie I need to be again, the one taking Franklin to Sesame street. All things, marriage, friends, art, even art must take a backseat. Up front ride me and Franklin, and I just have to be a slave to my fatherhood in the way that's best for him, and I need to stop letting the hellish visit to my past in Seattle that made me crack up, and the night I cracked in half. I need to come back together and stop marveling at my own wreckage. I need to be Brodie, Dammit.

Was thinking Obi-Wan Kenobi (still might try Brodi-Wan) am now thinking "Adventures of Young Gandalf"

Since I read this for Dutch Courage and Slammin Salmon I thought I'd bring it back up for you guys:

  Compendium of Ephemera

Motifery: [stone steps, hallways, amusement park rides, dismantled electronics gathering dust, teacups, casually constructed neologisms, closing doors of public transportation vehicles, bridges, water, fallen trees, fingers, protective eyewear, stifled yawns, faintly detectable eye-back-of-head contact, smoldering love letters, insouciant slouching, voicemails marked by rapidly increasing desperation, sudden realization demonstrated with slight changes in eyelid position, culturally encoded flashing lights, bullet-resistant plastics, dusty books of obsolete medical advice, small green manuals detailing techniques for the transmission of thoughts, flail in lidless cardboard boxes, wordless pursing of lips which substitutes for response, movement of feet which symbolizes discomfort or interest, old-fashioned telephones which stop ringing the second before you can pick up the receiver, the rattle of a pill container, the glint of a razor blade in the bathroom's bare bulb, an eagerly adopted patois, shoelaces smeared with mud by a passing tractor, teeth unconsciously bared in aggression, pointedly clearing his throat from the back of the room, misinterpreted hand gestures made through windows onto the sidewalk, unintelligible bureaucratic forms with "sign here" towards the bottom, gifts ineptly homemade, conflicting convictions, putrid tupperware, reel-to-reel tapes rotating carefully, buckles and clasps being activated and deactivated, improperly adapted technical lingo, telltale signs of unconscious prejudice, delicately savored spoonfuls, entire lives underlined by the automatic grammar check, standard-issue early-eighties Volkswagen steering wheel covers, contextually inappropriate couture, spilled foodstuffs, fiercely streamlined for maximum aerodynamic effect, strangely recurrent sightings of persons unknown, vastly different expectations, declaring which is your favorite day of the week to a van filled with elderly dementia sufferers, contagious facial expressions, florescent garbage, vitamin-fluorescent urine, poorly communicated riddles, casually destroyed fantasies, a lone pubic hair which is inexplicably both straight and blond, handfuls of freebies, esoteric candy bar cravings, warmly welcomed outbreaks, the clatter of dishes, the low moan of a dying fish, neglected desktop baubles, nicotine-tainted cubicle walls in an alleyway, well-organized vermin, their view of a meteor shower disrupted by tears of joy, externally consistent logic, best friends with the mailman for a tumultuous week, a deck of cards spotted with sweat deposits, serial conversation interrupters, defiantly customized misspellings, foam in the corner of a raconteur's mouth, conversation contrived as eavesdropping fodder which accidentally reveals non-platonic interplay, fear as a motivational guru, skidding tightly bound stacks of the Wall Street Journal, an overseer blessed with allergies to certain mythical personages, silence which conceals nothing, high-charting pop ditties with controversial literary allusions, muted raw battlefield footage playing in the background of their card game, his hastily cancelled internship teaching children about weltschmerz, the first State of the Union address with a Spanish accent, snapping before the faces of comatose game show hosts, titanium-enhanced travel mugs bouncing across several lines of evacuation traffic, revelatory experiences with ingredient lists, charred dream journals, polo shirts as inaccurately indicating occupation, faint echoes of previous quests which go unheeded, champagne splashing across waterproof hotel furniture, salaciously enjoyed anecdotes related to skullduggery, sardonic congratulations, fossil evidence indicative of a battle between warring tribes of antediluvian ultimate frisbee champions, misappropriated schadenfreude, robot-infested ruins, robot-infested ruins....]

 Hey Livejournal,
That was quite a dramatic last entry, I’ll tell you what!
So this weekend I went up on the bus to Seattle to get a freeshow. Yes, all one word just like the lady’s dog in the joke. Freeshow! Freeshow! Meg and Simon called me up to Seattle to see
STRANGE TALES OF PRESTON STAGGER
and
PICKMAN’S MODEL
Free? Free? Have I ever been known to turn down free? Speaking of free entertainment, my first serious girlfriend (“she to whom my nut was lost” officially speaking) caught up after 9 years of not running into each other and her taking of my intercoursular virginity at my tender, over-medicated age of timid 19. My standard oral virginity having been lost in a bout with a stoner chick some years before.

I say that to say this, Livejournal friends. She sat next to me on the bus and turned me on, excited me, inspired me and we had probably the most fun I’ve had on the bus in a while.

Reclaiming the bus with S.!
Yeah, come on now yeah hah is that an exciting turn of serendipity or what? Oh, I forgot to tell you that she works at a sushi restaurant and gave me two free huge rolls of sushi. I sat at the bar like a man finding his hobo’s paradise, and no matter how dull Meg van Huygen finds the full-moon coincidence, I was waited on and flattered by a (solidly ex-) ex! This, friends and well-wishers, is a milestone.

A human milestone in late-blooming milestoner-y.

Yes, so onto the shows. Pickman was weird, I yakked at the girl working as bartender and... what can you say about a play that faithfully adapts H.P. Lovecraft? Seared Simon (over greens with chevre) is the titular Pickman, a ghoulish slave to Cthlulhu who works his maps of Old Seattle to terrifying purpose. The guys in all white with masks on frightened me, and of course one of them upon closer examination was none other than H.P. Ravenface himself, old Sy Monaster, playing a part like a can of canned ham relishing his every bad line and getting four solid laughs in what is an uncertainly comic horrific adaptation.

Oh Preston Stagger! Oh Strange Tales and visionary wonders! Oh Seattle theater, you break my heart with Pickman and then you slap it back together with the magical combined forces of Earley Dean, Simon Astor, Tyson, Graham (what a chock full jar of talent this wiry kid is) and Ray, oh Ray with my same shoe size, poring over his newspaper and never letting up, oh Preston Stagger and Carter the impish newsboy (just the tip) and Jonah, sweet-faced hornball Jonah as sweet-faced Hornball Hau, Hau pronounce it however you like. It was a stunning voyage into Simon Astor’s mind-brain, a wondrous voyage therein to a world where Erin lilts and the newsboys all come dirt cheap, oh wondrous night of wonders, oh Goblet of Sleeps, oh clove cigarette smell from the bass player, oh giving backrubs in the greenroom, oh getting backrubs and feeling a part of the human scene.

The Humans and Brodie Kelly: a Lifetime Original

So what if some rinky dink outfit stripped me out of my life’s story. The wonder of life is in being a nobody, an urban shaman, a dedicated (and rededicated) father, a man worthy of love and full of song. To live like Hydrozoa and Ravenface, to cough in the night, to meet one’s ex girlfriend on the bus, to eat a Wendy’s double stack for 99c.

Check out their frosty. It makes bus drivers like you!

Great work on music and the Old Professor’s house, Salmon ravenface  and Dagmar hydrozoa . Oh precious Preston Stagger, of laughter and pandas, of college football-interrupting She-Ra and Lassie’s adventures in riflery, of being called The Artist and living like the Real Brodie Kelly.

I have an appointment with a Holistic Psychiatrist on Friday. Let’s level back up, Team Brodie.

 Theo = The O

Eyes of the beast are painted on every wall
Underground tavern with a fire pit which is a dimensional rift into a low-burning star

Xavier points at the city of Omicron on the map and begins to describe it. David starts to
Imagine myself actually there. Here. Money, death and commitment joined forces to form a supreme height of fear within me. Buzz-in systems on entrances everywhere... and some security guards wherever you look. Private security becomes the number one occupation but is still not unionized. Seen as a bipartisan victory. At least one man acting as guard from each household. These people live 7 or 9 to a medium-sized house.

Their architecture has created a hybrid aesthetic from Francis Bacon and a salvia trip--everything in those false worlds so textural, so intricate and varied. Whorls and whirling.

There are no young people. They live like pigs here. Xavier talks to them the way he used to talk to street people. A society of cringing refugees.

The Omicron could manifest itself in any doorway by tapping into the townsfolk's individual mental frequencies. For all we knew, The Omicron was a renegade god.

The streets are empty. The people traverse in secret or literally underground, if not through the sewers then by door-to-door carriage.

Horse filth and random loose dogs define the city center. Random grizzled old-timers are the only people who brave the streets, as they have nothing to lose by daring "The O"
There was limited reliable anecdotal information available on The O. It streamed as a cloud of wasps through tight spaces and unguarded windows in some stories. Charmed its way through your front door in others. Deep beneath the surface is their town square, where by dim kinetically generated lights they meet to bear group witness to communal fear. Dank labyrinthine passages clogged with muggy, sweat-pouring subterranean hole dwellers.

The old here exceptionally bitter and fragile. Moreso even than in our own world. The few who aren't second butlers changing channels in rich people's living-rooms are paranoid hermits in hoarder's mansion, rooms devoted to booby traps and food stores in a world where other adults sleep in bunkbeds. Stacks of canned goods are being categorized and thirsted over in upstairs bedrooms all over Omicron City tonight.

Of course it didn't used to be called Omicron city. If it was ever called something else I haven't been able to pick up. Frayed refugees in their own town, they have no way to fight back but I'm not sure if they'd take the opportunity if they had it. We decided to investigate this Omicron, considering its quasi-real behavior could give us further insight on dimensional travel.

GOD IS REAL AND HE HATES YOU

We expected at least a few of the stories they told us to be true... instead, they all were. The Omicron could, indeed, see you wherever you were in the city.

The Omicron's eyes were painted on every wall, and uncertain legend held that He could see you through them. Some were simple graffiti-tag style scrawls, and I get the feeling that these ones are intended as some half-hearted attempt at rebellion.

Scenario: David, Masha and Xavier attend a church ceremony where miracles and visitations by the mentioned evil saints of the Omicron are played out there in front of them.

The Omicron's sentinel was a drowsy-faced fat man whose eyes lit with hatred when he brought his gaze up to meet the congregation. A piercing light blue color, they told of his utter control by The O. As he began the enchanted story, they darted from side to side below his angry-cut bangs and then raced back across, sweeping us like a typewriter carriage being slammed. After about 45 minutes of hate filled rhetoric and updated gossip of the Twelve Chosen, a stage appeared on his chest. It was like that of my special helper Xolotl, but turned to darker purpose.

We saw fleeting images of destruction wrought by the Chosen 12 in neighborhoods of the massive township where the Omicron's will had not been obeyed.

Most of it was archival footage: the "guards" at Omicron Summerfest using advanced martial arts techniques on beer garden crowd that turned on them after a musician's concert was forced to end at the then-new 11pm curfew.

They had their own jobs with which they paid their way in society, but each person in O Town also did secret labors for His gratification. Some were his choremasters, others sang songs in converted tunnels for an audience whose attendance was mandatory.

His portrait peeked out of every gallery window. Different forms and aspects of The Omicron were naturally varied from shop to shop, but each time the scene--even if not specifically focusing on The Omicron or one of his exalted minions.