The Sundarbans.  The swampy, dense, southern portion of India and Bangladesh.  Home to the largest single population of Bengal tigers with just over 100 accounted for.  Historically known for people getting jacked by tigers.  So much in fact, that villagers will pray to Dakshin Rai before venturing outwards in hope of preserving themselves.  Who is Dakshin Rai?  The "King of the South."  A tiger.  That's how you know you've royally fucked the psyche of a people.  A crazed, cunning, cunt of a cat that could only be personified by a Genghis Khan type figure.

This jam is one of my top five all time.  Bob Dylan wrote it, but he can go fuck himself outside of that.  It's like a deadbeat dad trying to lay claim to a son that was nurtured by a dude hungrier for your ex-wife's pussy-inspiration than you were.  You gonna lose that court battle homie.  Hendrix murked this song.  There's a reason it'll always be synonymous with himself.  A story that great needs to be slowed down.  It needs those lush sounds and epic rifts behind it.  You can play this shit at any hour of your life; dark or dragging, it enhances.  It vibrates against your rib cage.  If I could ever come close to creating such a slice of Americana...I'd drift off into oblivion happy.

There might not be a way out of here.  Said the ego to it's thief...

Speaking both introspectively and observationally, I know that I've got some fucked views.  An irrational fear of tampons and bags ain't one of them though.  Found this out the other night when my girlfriend was surprised that I was ok taking her tampons out of the grocery bag.  Like it's some sort of testosterone kryptonite.  I picked em' up and rubbed them on my face just to prove a point.  She's acted the same way before when I've offered to hold her bag.  Apparently, most men shun anything having to do with periods and feminine bags.  Doesn't phase me.  I'll buy them shits for her at CVS and not even flinch.  I feel like the clerk can prooooobably gather that I'm not using them.  What the fuck am I going to do with some tampons?  Overreact on a nose bleed?  Supply rodents with pool toys?  Alright, I'll admit that I've bought shit before that shouldn't make me raise an eyebrow, but did.  My brother needed laxatives and stool softeners.  Even if I told the clerk that I shit just fine, she wouldn't believe me.  Whatever, I lived and he shat. 

It's seriously ridiculous though that my girlfriend's exes wouldn't hold her bag.  Buy that bitch a better bag if you're insecure holding it.  Be like yeeeaaah mother fucker, Louis Vuitton.  You wish you had this nice ass bag making you look feminine as fuck.  Then you reach into that bag and start chucking tampons at whatever dude is hating on you.  Watch that testosterone kryptonite work its magic.

While on the topic of my girlfriend, allow me to segue from tampons to cigarettes - wait, no, hear me out.  I'm just jealous of smokers, like, in the most self-absorbed way possible.  If we had the same sort of manipulative hunky dory bullshit 1955 commercials that we did today for tobacco, I'd maybe partake.  But no.  The internet fucked up that iconic image.  We have too much info floating around now.  Only cigarette commercials we have now are of cancer, missing jaws, throat holes and dorky fucking teenage campaigns where kids run around spray painting shit orange, or harassing pedestrians with their pretentious quizzes:

Do YOU know that cigarettes contain the same chemical they use to bleach rat anuses with?

Did YOU know that you could have paid off your shitty Honda with all the money you spend on cigarettes?

Over 53,800 people die a year of second hand smoke.  How bad do YOU feel, sir?!

Yeah, cut that shit out.  It's annoying.  A perk of smoking cigarettes?  You can blow smoke in the little shit heads face right after the second hand smoke statistic.  Hah!  Toodaloo fuckboí.  Talk about low hanging comedic fruit, the shit practically writes itself.  But no.  These commercials are dog shit.  What happened to the Marlboro Man, as my mom would say?  Well, I mean, I'm just being facetious.  We know what happened.  It rhymes with boat dancer.

So yes, I'm jealous of smokers.  My girlfriend smokes.  My mom smokes.  Any person of interest in my work place has generally smoked.  My idols such as Anthony Bourdain, Hunter S. Thompson and Dave Chappelle smoked.  What do they all have in common? 

Unquestioned pauses.  The ability to take a slow drag with their faces lit only by the short-lived ember at the end of that fucking awesome-stick.  Then they gotta exhale.  Eye contact at this point is regardless of situation.  These fuckers can look at you, look to the side, look up or down - it doesn't fucking matter.  They've made their point!  They've had their pause.  They've collected their thoughts in a way that's held your attention imprisoned while looking upon the supreme fucking cool that is their habit.  The shit is righteous.  It's like a boxing match where the opponent gets an extra 20 seconds of rest.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Tyson'd right to the dome.  I make a point and I just sound like a spazzy asshole with broken feelings.  Should I dare to take the same pause?  There's a lot of mental focus on that shit.  Am I unprepared?  Do I not have a retort?  How hard are the gears in my head turning?  Leaves too much room for interpretation.  I don't like it, but I'm not hating on them.  Shit, I'm holding out for weed being legal so I can do the same with it.  Every decision will be positive as fuck afterward, but I still get that satisfying pause.  In fact, pass that lighter.  Cheers fuckers.

I'm out.

Yamborghini High.  Livin' ugly.  Know we can't relate.  Bitches, bitches, bitches, bitches.

"It's kind of cold out."

"I know.  It's 2:15.  It gets colder."

We long for detours throughout the days of norm.  When there are yearning eyes peering from side to side for a white rabbit, excuses for risqué behavior tend to accumulate...

...you can't rush expression though.  Let me take this 180° real quick.  What I wanted this next part to be was a play on the concept of shots of alcohol taken straight to the dome in hopes of flipping the game board that is your night over; scattering that top hat, shoe and thimble while jumbling up the cards and phony dollar bills that dictate our existence.  Fuck it all.  Pick your poison.  Find a fellow anarchist to partake in your concentrated libations.  Throw em' back and change the course of your night - or, perhaps expedite the tour.  Get a little weird.

But that idea came and went.  I pondered on it for a few days.  Allowed it to marinate in the back of my head on a few car rides.  Blacked out on it a few nights after work.  Elaborated, then condensed.  Envisioned, forgot, retooled.  Scrapped.  The once promising few paragraphs went down swinging.  Relegated to a position no longer at the forefront of the creative process.  The muse can be a fickle bitch if you don't know how to give her space...

...you can't rush expression though.  Let me keep this 100% real quick.  As soon as you've told yourself that you'll do it tomorrow, you've fucked yourself.  As soon as you've told yourself you'll do it if you get enough sleep, you've fucked yourself.  As soon as you auction off your time and capability to unrealistic compromises, you've only committed yourself to defaulting on your own promises.  Gotten too weird, bring it back.

The majority of my writings are equal parts hopeful optimism, and deprecating criticism.  Should the muse allow it, I hope to stay amusing yet introspective.  Balance the sugar with the anti-freeze.  Over all, I hope to always be my worst critic because no one could ever tear me down like I can.  The ego.  It's that looming influence that you gotta' deny from time to time.  Challenge it, because not all that glitters is gold.  The ego might as well be synonymous with pyrite, I mean, at surface value it's great and it may get you through a few flashy appearances, but...

Bob and weave while keeping one eye on the ropes.  They say to keep both eyes on the prize, but I like to keep one on my demise.  Or better yet, the destination my demise could land me.  Then flee the scene, collect myself and figure it all out again like a kid that shuts off the Xbox when he's losing.  Not to be a sore loser in life, I just want to get things right. 

One of my favorite writers-block detours to date, I think.  Pouring a shot to celebrate.  Poetic reward.

What am I looking for, realistically...lush sounds, or thought-provoking lyrics.  Can't I be my own model of influence?  Can't I redefine a few things here and there?  It's not limited by capability, just by perceived influence.  I mean shit, Jay-Z and Rick Rubin can come together and produce the Holy Grail while making $$$ off of Samsung.  I should at least be able to tell my story for free while garnishing a couple likes...

I hope one day you find yourself wailing away at nothing.  Fracturing fists out of frustration while the past factitiously manifests itself as the future, foregoing anything you know you've fucking forged.  You built yourself up and put in the work, but others steal it away.  I hope you feel robbed of everything you thought you deserved.  As the curtain closes, narrowing you down to desperate tunnel vision, I hope you isolate yourself from anyone that could apply a Band-Aid.  I hope you bounce back and forth between wanting to build, or destroy.  I hope you realize that everything you feel is self-inflicted.  I hope you come out of this better.  This is your Kingdom, after all.

I've learned that being incensed over a memory long enough is a sign that you haven't really addressed it.  So allow me to air one out:

Vince said I wasn't funny.  I took that personal.  Where he felt comfortable tearing me down in front of coworkers, I grew as an individual.  In fact, he helped me build myself up.  I can't take the sympathy route, because adversity is necessary to rising above bullshit.  He asked me, empty-hearted as possible, what I wanted to do.  I said to write and be a stand-up comic.  He said I had never made him laugh.  In a much more dickish way than I care to elaborate on.  Well.  That hurt.  I'm writing about it, after all.  Eventually, I made him laugh.  Eventually, I surpassed his shifts.  Eventually, he needed my help in life.  Eventually, I lost contact with him because of his failures.  There are some moments in life where you stare at the keyboard as your fingers write the narrative.  Vince was, and might still be a dick.  His negatives jump started one of my positives.  - = + ? . . .I hope he is doing ok...and I wouldn't mind talking to him about the Sun's season.

pour up...

drink...

What does it really mean to go one step forward and two back?  A loss of traction.  A calling for reflection.  A change in direction.  A newfound recollection, if you're lucky...

Déjà Vu, feeling like you've repeated some memorable shit in your life.  Might just be wishful thinking that you either figured out the results at one point, or just hope everything was ok before and will be ok now.  Now that I think about it, I suppose either alternative is the same coin, just different sides.  Faith and understanding are tricky things, especially once ignorance manipulates imagination.  This is neither here nor there.

I've always been more of an observer than a participant.  I like to know what I'm dealing with before I make a decision.  It's the same reason that I'll always elect for the back corner seat wherever I am - minus cars; I had to take public transportation for too long and awkwardly ask for too many rides where you gotta' ride the equivalent of "bitch."  You know what I'm talking about if you've done it; there's three of you in a coupe and you were the one picked up last.  You gotta' wait for the front passenger to pull the seat back so you can squeeze your sorry ass in the back and hope that by sitting right in the middle, disobeying all seatbelt laws, that you'll still be included in the conversation.  Fuck safety when the alternative is essentially solitary confinement.  Plus, you have no space for your legs and best believe it's hot as fuck in the back due to that Arizona weather and your homies AC not being worth shit.  Fuck that, I drive now.  Thank you very much.  I digress.

I lounge in that back corner seat, because it gives me room to gauge my surroundings.  Room to adjust.  Again, I want to know what the scenario is.  Listen.  Build a thesis.  What makes the room tick?  Who has their paws on the arms of the clock, manipulating the crowd and clinging on loudly for attention.  Who are the silent bystanders that don't want to be there anymore than you do.  Who are the fuck heads in the middle that have no where to be, nothing to add, but everything to say at the wrong times.  I gotta' know.  Get my cerebellum a lil' wet.  Let the world add up on its own.  My mind works as a constant scale; weighing distant past, more recent, and futuristic possibilities in an effort to just fucking understand.  An imperfect, sometimes poorly articulated yet conscious algorithm that lets me organize my thoughts.  Listening.  Pattern recognition.  Critical thinking.  Three components that allow self examination and should I allow it, the breakdown of the ego.  Because simply existing is confusing enough without all the white noise static.

You don't ever hear stories about a lackadaisical tiger caught slippin' laid out in the short grass.  Doesn't happen.  Ancestral blueprints don't allow for it.  Born as innocent as a predestined killer could be - for about all of a few days, then the adjustments happen.  Tigers of the Sundarbans are especially aggressive and have developed a taste for human, where other members of the species around the world try to avoid man.  The swampier land makes hunting for animal prey difficult and the water levels constantly wash away their territorial scent markers.  A lack of densely populated settlements have lead to a lack of fear of man that other tigers have had woven into their ancestral genetic memories.  The craziest theory to me?  Their water is predominately salt water.  Drinking the salt water only agitates them. 

If I drink salt water, I'll only continue to get more and more thirsty before inevitably dying because our biology only allows for a certain salt to water ratio.  I assume their ability to consume this slow-drip, asshole toxin, is the equivalent of slipping into insanity as a person.  Dictated by an environment it could have never fathomed.  Given the ability to survive off salt water, but at what cost?  There wasn't a whole lot of sanity to go around to begin with.  May not have been compelled to chase you, but you ran.  Cat to a ball of yarn, thirsty observer to an everyday social experiment in personality liquidity.  Salt water.  Society.  Slow-drip, asshole toxins.

Intelligence.  A swirling sphere of everything that has been and anything that will come to be.  Beams of knowledge jet out in every angular fashion possible, bouncing off one another in an infinite sequence of redirection.  And what the fuck are directions in the infinite?  Up, down, left, or right.  Pin your ideology to either direction.  Even if you miss your turn, it'll inevitably lead to it sometime again.  Mind fuck on a hundred, thousand, trillion.

If you haven't ever contemplated suicide, you've been a little too detached from life.  Life is hard.  It's a constant struggle between what's easy and what you hate doing - but what's beneficial to you both physically, and mentally, is the hard road.  The last and first venture.  That bullshit that you can do without.  Is it not hard for a reason?  Does it not drain from you?  Does it not hurt you?  Is there not the guilt of knowledge stitched into every thread that you've learned to sow?  Was this all for nothing you may ask.  Yeah, maybe.  Life is hard.  A slow, rhythmic exit as the curtains close and the vibrations lessen....

Oh Saigon,

Machine gun...

Really, all sounds the same.

Metal decaaaay, ain't afraid.

You didn't even cause the pain...

I relish in being the speaker for those that aren't loud. It's one of the few times I'll willingly choose to be a participant.  I love it because I am the same, but with one small detail - I'm righteous.  Young, and sensitive to injustice.  Incapable of shutting the fuck up, or knowing better.  I'll stand for a cause out of principle.  Out of necessity.  Shit, out of stubbornness.  It's one of the reasons why I even started this blog.  Expression of myself is huge for me, but expression of others?  Much more meaningful.  There's a section titled Vox Populi, after the name of this little project.  Means voice of the people, loosely.  There aren't any articles under it yet, because they'll be the most important to me and the most time consuming, but the most fulfilling.  It's a work in progress.  I'll admit to being a work in progress, because a first draft always requires a bit of editing.  But, I'm the only one that's in control of the pen. 

Lost and, beat up...

FML\fml

I been \

fEELIN /

/l0st__b0und)_

2 wild

and I need you now...

Children enter the world nearly universally fearful of monsters.  Now I feel that we can all look around at one another and agree that our popular depictions of monsters just...don't, exist.  There isn't some sort of behind the closet door presence akin to that of "Monster's Inc."  The boogie man isn't under your bed no matter how many times you check and you should be more fearful of getting jacked than of getting your blood drained and waking up to eternal walking damnation at the hands of a vampire.  Actual wolves are much more a threat than werewolves.  Zombies are just a state of mind, honestly.

I think in all honesty, our loose yet vivid memories passed down through the generations should be looked at in the more metaphorical sense.  Who's to say that tigers aren't possessed demons from the depths of Hell?  If you lived in the Sundarbans, it wouldn't be that big of a stretch.  Again, perception.  Deer are perceived to be delicate angels of the woods, but a short trip down YouTube lane will show you that they'll gobble up birds out of convenience.  Life gets nasty and sometimes we get lost in the sauce; pissed that if we had zigged, we never would have had to zag. 

The ego demands form over function.  Take any holy scripture and I guarantee that once you trim the fat from it, you'll end up with a nugget of intellectual enigma disguised as a story, presented to you as law, but are ultimately just life lessons for the kiddies.  I use to always ask why people have to dress shit up so much.  It's because we're all too numb to take in anything less than gold.