Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Alley Ghost "Rock and Roll Moron"

Dead Man's Beer

my theory on life

Some young girl wanted to hire me to shoot pictures of her - i told her $150 - she said she could come up with half that night and half later - I really needed the money too, so I said, "HELL YEAH" We agreed I'd call her around six and we'd shoot around seven thirty - I called her back later and nobody answered - I called her about five times between 6 and 8:30 - she answered on the last call - said she had fallen asleep at her parents and just woke up - said she'd call me right back and when she hadnt thirty five minutes later I called her and she was like sobbing into the phone that her folks took her car away and her dog ran out the front door, in her parents neighborhood, a neighborhood he didnt know, and she's twenty five years old and bought the car herself but they took her car keys (while she was asleep?) and she was really worried about her dog cause she couldnt find him anywhere ... and she said she'd call me back the next day - today!

So I spent my own day in hell and when she didnt call me I called her - she said she was in a much better place today and that she still wanted to have her picture taken but that now she didnt have any money cause her dog got hit by a car and she had to take him to the vet and now he's ok but her money was all gone. When I hung up the phone I was cursing myself cause I guess I should have known right from the start that this is how the whole thing was destined to end - i should have just said,

"OH HELL NO!" I shoulda said,

"This whole phone call's got dog death smeared all the over it!" I shoulda gone,

"Get your fucking dog a tag and call me back when you save up some money again!" But I didnt. I went,

"OH, well sure! O-FUCKING KAY! I'll take your picture and I'll have the $25 accident compensation check post marked and sent off today to fucking Cleveland so they wont take my god damned driver's license away and maybe I'll also buy myself a little food to eat and...! Wont that be fucking good???"

So now I have thirty cents in my pocket and I've got SOME money in my checking account but I have no idea how much, cause that's how everybody in my family has always done it - you write a check then the next day you call the band competer to see how much you've still got in yer account and you wonder how many checks havent actually cleared yet and before you know it your fucking bank account's at like negative hundred and ninty seven dollars!!! So I call every couple of hours now to see if I can write some paper to buy a couple of cans of beans or a dozen eggs and some bread - Shooo-o--o-ooooot! I'm getting hungry just talking about it - I've got about a half a bowl of chili left and about a quarter jar of spagetti sauce - maybe I should have some chili mac tonight!
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I got this theory on life that I believe in whenever I can build up the faith...Let me start by saying that for fifteen years I was a house painter - a distracted house painter - meaning my mind was only ever half into it ,it was just something I did to make money - you kinda got to want to do something to really be any good at it - i worked for yuppies an'shit - had to make mortgage payments - five hundred a month or lose the fucking house that my ex-wife just HAD to have - the house that two months after we'd finally gotten it - she had an affair with some married Black Yuppie. - See, she was always finding some new thing, some new guru, some new diet, some new program, some new fad that was gonna make everything alright and and this time she found this thing called Re-Evaluation Therapy, where all these folks would get together and the leaders would teach the basic structure - you'd partner up with another person in the group and for half the time you'd do a session with them, they'd be the therapist for the first half and then you'd be the therapist for the second half. You could do this with however many different partners you want but always just two at a time - the idea was the more you were able to cry or laugh or something like that, while the other person held you or said things to continue to assist you in crying, the more you'd let out all the negative energy that gets trapped in your body!

So I went with her to this shit and I thought the gal who taught it was kind of cute so I went along too. So some how my ex and I were both doing sessions with this Black guy which is kind of funny cause me and him were each dealing with our feelings about men of the other race - So like I'd be releasing all this stuff about how I felt anger and fear toward Black men and he'd be releasing the same shit about white men and...HE WINDS UP FUCKING MY WIFE BEHIND MY BACK!!!!!! Hee hee, well, i can kind of laugh about it now but it was really fucked up at the time and I wound up throwing her out of the house and I kept it though I had never ever actually actually wanted to be there.

So I maintained my job and housepayments for like ten more years and granted, I had neither the time nor energy to work on it or take care of the yard and such, but I WAS able to hold on to it cause I figured if I lost it then that would prove what a worthless piece of shit I really was and everybody would point and sneer at me, going, "Look at that worthless piece of shit, he lost the fucking house him and his wife bought!" So she went off with this Black guy and I kept going till 1997 when I developed blood clots up and down both legs and almost died. I had hundreds of them. One can kill you if it goes to your heart of your brain so we're talking some serious shit here! So there I was in the hospital lying on this gurney not knonwing if I was going live or die and I made this promise to myself and God that if I did wind up living, i would never again work a regular brain dead day job. I decided I'd rather die in the gutter than do that shit again - I would henceforth make a living using my true God given artistic talents or die. It was the first time in my life that I didnt have a mother of wife or girl friend or some other female power figure in my life telling me what I should or shouldnt do. There's be no one to say I was crazy - I'd become my own mad scientist and my own insane expieriment all rolled into one!

"Follow your bliss!" said Joseph Campbell.

"Follow your heart and the money will come" said Oprah Winfrey.

So I've been rolling along for twelve years now and doing alright. I mean I'm living pretty close to the earth - you know, it's a no frills lifestyle but I've been ok - paying for car shit, getting medical care through the kindness of the state and other strangers... I've kind of developed this theory (remember when I started to tell you about this theory?) and it goes like this- You know how you learn in school about how atoms are created from protons and nuetrons spinning around in these little orbits? They do! and they never go out of their orbits, they just do what they're supposed to do - I'm guessing that unless some other force comes in and does something to change that, to prevent them from doing what they're there to do, it always works out. Well, my theory is that if we can truly tap into what it is that we're supposed to do and dont fuck with it in some way ourslves, (ie drinking too much, doing too many drugs, beating up and or hurting others or god knows what all else people do to fuck up their lives- you're probably gonna be alright. In other words, just dont struggle and you wont get hurt!

Now if you come from a fucked up family, you learned real early that there must be just thousands and thousands of things in life that can fucking destroy you. You have to be ever vigilant or they will! Chances are you have SEEN this shit happen with your own eyes! Nuns and children are raped - baby ducks are stomped into mud with Doc Martins, uncles fuck nieces and nephews leaving the girls to raise bastards alone, storms rip down powerlines and kindly old ladies burn to a crisp in puddles of rain, cigarettes fall from drunken mouths and whole families go homeless. Jobs are lost every day and there's no more money or food! Is it any wonder? How do any of us ever sleep at all???!


Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matt. 6:28-29)

My theory is that as long as we are following our hearts we can not go wrong. Now that doesn't mean it's easy. Most of the time it takes an act of fucking bravery to follow your heart - Especially if you've been raised in the wilds of dysfunction. If everything you've ever known has come out broken and fucked up why in the world would you trust your heart of hearts??!! No, what we're talking about here is an absolute leap of faith in that power higher than yourself. This doesn't mean that bad things wont happen - not at all. What it does mean is that maybe we're not always the best judge of what is and isnt a bad thing to begin with. Somebody once said,

"Every time I've ever learned something new, it's felt like I've also lost something important to me"

There will always be something new to grieve - that's the fucking nature of life! Everything comes to an end -if it doesn't we become lulled into a different kind of death - the death of spirit - we stagnate - shrivel up and die - too much security will kill you - rot your brain and you may never even know - you just roll out of bed one day, land on your face and you cant even feel the thud - you drown in the dog pee in the carpet and never even wake up - I swear, it can happen. It happens every day!