Several Reasons to Adore Conciousness or Get Off the Pot
  • When I worked at the mortuary, I picked up 3 people who had met their end while making poopy. One was a young military cat, in his early twenties. He was powerful looking, and his body was heavily armored with cyclopean musculature. He had ruptured something in his brain while struggling with his morning ritual. The other two people had met their end the same way, and with one of them, the evidence was all there. A pristine container of Vaseline, save for a single finger scoop carved out of it was on the bathroom counter with its top off. When her body had slumped over, she died staring at the bottle.

    Were it my brain that suddenly became oxygen starved and spiraling toward that infinite sleep, I can imagine what would have gone through my head as my eyes blurred on the bottle. "This stuff didn't help me with shit." But I want you to imagine how debilitating it has been for me, this having picked people up on the crapper. It runs through my mind every time I grace the porcelain with my beautiful, sweet, candy-brown ass. (Oh no you DIDN'T just roll your eyes at me! Dis is MAH house! Dis is MAH journal. I say what I wahn!") So anyhow. Every time I go I think about how this could be it.

    This could be the end. Oh, god, I'm so young. Let me just get through this.

    But I make it through every time. I'm sure I almost died once. In the before-days, when I didn't know how easy it was to snap this mortal coil. Now that I'm in the know, I'm safe. Because knowing is half the battle! So I impart this knowledge to you, because no one else will ever tell you this.
    You should remember that the basic rule for getting through this ritual is the same as the basic rule to getting through life.

    Relax.

  • A Martian named Valentine Michael Smith taught me how to kiss. He's not actually a Martian by genotype. He only expresses Martian characteristics by culture. He was born and raised on Mars by Martians, then allowed to come to Earth through the inaction of the Martian elders. Mr. Smith is the foremost character in Robert Heinlein's book Stranger in a Strange Land. He gives some nice details on how to kiss (not vocally), and I think that, just like "Relax", his advice could be applied to everything else we do while on this great fat, beautiful Gaiatian Earth and learning Human.

    It went sorta like this:

    "Mike gives a kiss his whole attention." -Anne

    She (Dorcas) walked up to him, stood on tiptoes, and held up her arms. "Kiss me, Mike."
    Mike did. For some seconds they "grew closer."
    Dorcas fainted."

    My first kiss was on March 16th, 1984. I had had a mechanical experience resembling sex much earlier than that on several occasions. Not sex that counted, mind you. But I was 9 and she was 13. Now, before you start waving your arms around, it was the simplest most innocent thing to do at that moment, running wild through the streets of Trinidad until finally our childish souls alighted in the dark recesses of an abandoned house. We didn't understand what we were doing (though I think she must have). So I suppose in that regard, it simply wasn't sex. Not for me. Allowing myself to be distracted a moment, there was another time with another girl. Her name was Anastasia.
    I was four and she was four. Her mother was single and lived across the street. She worked as an exotic dancer. (I don't see what's so exotic about it. These days it would be more exotic if the dancers kept their clothes on and danced to something other than Def Leppard, Aero Smith and Stained.)
    My parents invited her to dinner, and Anastasia and I went upstairs to play when we were done. I remember clearly that we emptied my toy box, which was a wooden chest the Navy had given my father, and climbed inside. I had written "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1" on the box in black crayon. It was my rocket ship, and I'm sure some of the numbers were missing. I remember seeing it later when I was older. So I suppose I wanted her to get into my rocket ship with me.

    When we were too quiet, my parents came upstairs to see what we were doing, found us naked, and she was sitting on my stomach swinging her shirt around, going "wooo! wooo! wooo!" Her mother was so embarrassed she took Anastasia home immediately and never came back over. Apparently Anastasia had seen her doing this with her partners. I'm sure my parents didn't think it was anything to be ashamed of, but you know, pride and shame blind us so. My dad still tells the story. I only remember parts of it. I've met a couple of Anastasias since, and I always ask..."did you live in Northern California as a little girl?"
    In high school, my first kiss with my high school sweetheart, and basically, my first loving kiss from another girl, didn't come until after she'd rejected me. I'd gone in for a kiss, and she turned her head away. I walked home that night looking at the cracks in the sidewalk and kicking rocks. I would later find out she had only rejected me because she thought her breath was bad. I remember she immediately began sucking on some candy after I'd tried to kiss her, but you know...pride and shame blind us so. I didn't try again that night.

    But-I want to be a little more like Valentine Michael Smith. Sometimes I forget how amazing every little interaction is. My mind is hardly ever in the same room as my body. Now, a kiss is not just a kiss, but is overburdened with meaning and expectations. On March 16th, 1984, Tammy and I had a kiss. Some say that kids should be prevented from smooching at that age. I say grow the hell up. It was just a kiss. Tammy's lips touched mine, and our bodies were liberated from the fear which had put us there on the playground. I was conscious of every tingling nerve in my body. My pores stood out, and the hairs on my arms and my neck raised themselves up proudly like tiny patriots of the human spirit. This is the stuff, man! Our lips our touching!

    I want to do that again. I'm sure my girlfriend won't mind. From now on, so long as I am still conscious of the memory of writing this post, I will kiss like a little boy (or just a Martian).



  • Yesterday, a few hours after saying "I love my pinky toe", I walked out of my bedroom and caught my pinky toe on a shoe and nearly snapped it in halves. In the back of my mind, my imagination's dreadfully bitter homunculus was dancing in his pointy toed shoes. Last week I spent an hour and a half explaining to my friend that if I really wanted to be honest with myself, there is some schizophrenic side of me which is watching my daily activities and noting the patterns of pain and heartbreak. It is rather paranoidly shouting to my other mental processes "CONSPIRACY!!! TREASON!!!"
    That is, somewhere deep down in side, I think the world is out to get me. Every moment of personal tragedy is too perfectly timed and seems carefully selected, as though some spiritual DJ in a plane of existence I do not remember is selecting singles for the house party of the millennium.

    Perhaps we all ascribe meaning to events which hurt us, or, better put, I know it's not just me. There is a good side though. The single most powerful homuncular drone in my life is the knowledge of how terribly lucky I am to be here living the kind of existence that I do. So if you ever hear me complain, take note that even if I am broken inside, there is always a sense of humor and always a sense of objectivity. Bad stuff is so temporary, but misery is forever.

    • -j.olivo