I go through phases fazed, raised on razed, burn myself down like breathing’s easier through flames and brick by brick build up again, thick with premises rearranged, ideas about myself that aren’t fully false but aren’t really real, either.

I’ve all sorts of books on meditation. Rarely do I sit. I’m a thinker! Not a not doer! An I! Not an absence! for clearly there is something that enjoys dissatisfaction. Distraction from whatever it is I’m missing.

I can say this with distance. That tells something. Right.

Searching for videos on mediation I come across Jon Kabat-Zinn talking to Google people about the Now and I lol myself happysick into the dishwater I try to be intentional about so Thich Nhat Hanh will like me, but am not, really, I am divided, watching my laptop cracking up that Jon Kabat-Zinn is talking about the now… then. “Every moment is” was “now” then—this is only a recording, an audience I wasn’t in. The books I read are decades, centuries old but timeless because there is no time? no, because I’m boring holes through the universe, constructs of mind? no, I’m predictable. I’ve always been here before. Was now was, cuz. The story I write in the present tense happened in the past, and this post was future dated. What have you to say about that?

Everybody needs something. Temporary. Temporarily. Temper tantric tantrum. Tempering tampered thought.

Did I ever tell you Eckhart Tolle was my bus driver? In Vancouver, where he in fact lives, I am not making this up. He was carting sleepy kids to UBC. I was going to the library. I don’t remember what he said or what I said that got us talking, but allah sudden we engaged in The Now. He told me about his life like it wasn’t him living it, like he was another person and probably he was, why would Eckhart Tolle drive a city bus? but it looked like him so much, why wouldn’t Eckhart Tolle drive a city bus? I said yeah yeah I know about you him me but not fully, not like I read your book or wrote one or anything, but I do try to be present—persistent without insistence—not interested to wake the snake that wraps around my spine but wanting to know her name if I ever need to shriek it.

I will own my inattention when the stick comes to whack me but won’t be accused of ignorance without a broken fist. “I can say this with distance.” Doesn’t mean I do it.

Hands sunk in the sink, halfway through the video my memory triggers oh wow, aw hell I’d seen Jon Kabat-Zinn speak in person years ago at the U of M—a lecture on a lark, long before I pretended to be interested in mindfulness. I’d forgotten. Completely. Now was now. This post is late.

Processing what this means, the personal policies of forgetting, tension of now pretension of power presence inner peace, I miss the point, and break a plate.

The result of $4 in photocopies at Office Max, smashed against the Xerox glass. Oh. I bring it. Class, crass, brass sass and way too many teeth.

Have a good one.

Tracking down supplies around town this afternoon (no gutty zombie this year… sorry folks), I was shocked to discover that Target doesn’t carry fake blood. Doubleyouteeeff?! How are you supposed to pull off your zombie deathlady vampire homicidal maniac ghoul without proper gore? On a happier note, K-Mart carries an animatronic ghost that dances to The Way I Are.

This pretty much makes up for everything, for all time.

As for Halloween proper, my favorite idea so far is Viper Violet, Airship Pilot. I usually go for something scary, but I found the baddest-ass airship pilot pants and vest, so, you know. Besides, the best fun had isn’t in putting on a costume, but becoming a character. …And she has a past.

Have a happy month, y’all. I hope to share some pics as they present themselves.

And I hain’t sayin just ‘cause I left it. The city of glass and its hazy reflection, its Olympian construction built to blast any doubt Vancouver is supreme. This perfect view, this perfect path, this paradise ride, the seawall doesn’t get you where you’re going. It reminds you what you’re borrowing. Opulence and blueprint beauty on loan.

The greenway is overgrown with a danger and a wildness, a realness and a roughness, a forgotten world I never left the center of.

Not really.

BC friends want to know, is Minneapolis really that wonderful?

No. Just me.
It’s just me. Mixed up.

The further I move into the future, the farther I am from the moments felt fleeting, deepsicks! perfect for the telling, give the tubes something to talk about, number ones and zeros something to digest. The further I move closer to the past, the more terror and timing serrate my heart. That wasn’t part of my plan, however tightly I abide. Move to the city. Make some money. Check.

Serrate is an interesting verb, see. It doesn’t mean cut, it means to make cutting, jag that shit up, give it teeth and a taste for the vicious. Viscous. It’s easy to mix those words up, too, easy not to notice. Easy to get away with, though either way, you pay.

I’m told my accent is an awesome Frankenstein of Fargo and West Coast Canada. I don’t notice. I don’t mind. In Vancouver I was exotic. Now I’m incomprehensible. Not the words that come out my mouth, just that I’m here, at all.

Minneapolis is old and new in ways I am too, and I’ve been seeking and exploring parts unfamiliar. Pubs and approaches, bike routes and catalpas. My windows face the back sides of other buildings, oil stains and pressure-washed graffiti apparitions. I’m close to Eat Street and its dozen Asian grocers, so I feel at home, whatever the hell that means. Food is crazy cheap, internet breaks the bank and more people ride bike than I remember.

Fargo had some thunderstorms, new strip malls, mortgage crisis say what? they can’t build houses fast enough. I saw where the flood went. The lush lowlands were outta control green, skinny trees all fuck yeah we stood here the whole time and I know it’s no lie, but it’s hard to believe. They put a dorm downtown. The new library gleams.

A bright, bad day, I went to where the Pits were. Thought the things I felt, felt the things I threw awayfinding overgrown trails trees forgotten youth totems, concrete mountains, rebar debris and the dirty little river, lumps in ghost throats, brain fevers and shivers, my school of the hardest knock on these woods. Hit escape, hit delete. Cross yourself and spin and spit and curse then leave yeah right I broke the seal op’t the box swallowed the key.

I still ride the back of the devil that dreams me.

Ugh and guh are anagrams, at least that makes me smile.

Hey, if you don’t know already, you should click on the pictures below because them’s just cropped thumbnails. You don’t want to miss things, do you?