Among the Lost Souls of Planet Earth.

It was about a year away from when things in my head and in my life would go bat shit crazy. I was a freshmen in art class one day, listening to my Walkman as I drew. I was listening to a recording of a record (vinyl? I guess we call them vinyl now) my father often listened to at home, and which I found funny. It was basically two guys doing skits, pretending to be old, backwoods characters.

Derek was across the table from me, and while I recall him mostly talking to some guy beside him, he asked me what I was listening to, and I told him it was comedy. He wanted to listen, so I took the headphones off my head and offered them to him. He put them on for maybe twenty seconds, took them off, placed them on the table and with a dismissive laugh and shrug turned to the other guy and said, “its just two old guys talking,” and then went on talking with the other guy as if I didn’t exist. I was and am and will likely forever be one hypersensitive little shit, so yeah, it embarrassed me a little. Even so, I put back on the headphones and went back to my drawing.

I didn’t even remember it until recently, in the wake of Derek’s initial Facebook messaging. Even so, I don’t think it was his messaging that triggered this memory — not entirely, anyway.

After hearing about Bill Cosby being let out of jail, I couldn’t help but think of the records my father had of his stand-up, and how I used to enjoy listening to them as a kid. His stories about when he was a kid in particular. His story about the chicken heart. His story about lighting his parents’ couch on fire and how his father would shake his head and go, “What’s wrong with that boy?”

And then there was that bit he had that has always confused me as a kid, the one that dealt with his itch to get his hands on Spanish Fly, which I later learned to be a sexual stimulant. It kind of made me sick, thinking about all the shit that pudding-popping, Jello-jiggling, family-man, serial rapist got away with all those years. And so I thought of other records I listened to, and I remembered about Derek listening to it and laughing only at the fact that I could find something funny that he thought to be so lame.

Still, that was the only vaguely negative interaction I ever had with Derek. Granted, it was really the only interaction I can recall having with the guy, but even so, it didn’t make him an asshole, it just made him someone who had different tastes in comedy and might have been a bit insensitive in expressing that fact to a hypersensitive classmate.

I don’t condemn him for it, but he was clearly intent on condemning himself for being the asshole I never recall him being. Not just with respect to me, of course, but I can’t even recall him being an asshole to someone else.

And it did interest me to discover that this memory took place in the high school arm room, particularly given his apparent appreciation for my art and the desire he evideny always had to be an artist himself.

Art was also the topic of the message he sent me around noon on Wednesday, as I was preparing for work.

He said that I was a great artist and that he admired my talent. While he was quick to add that he was poor, he wanted to buy an original piece from me. If he paid for shipping plus whatever I wanted for it, he asked, would I make him something to hang on his wall?

Absolutely, I told him.

I confessed I would be horrible at commissions, but if he could at least give me a ball-park idea of what he was looking for, I’d do my best. He said I should call him, as it was too much to text and he had poor communication skills. I told him I was getting ready for work, but I could call him tomorrow.

Later, at work, he messaged me again, saying that he knew me, and that when it came to art I had the tendency to overdo it, and he wasn’t rich. All he wanted was something simple, like a caricature. I messaged back asking for more details and he again insisted that I just call him.

Goddamn it.

I thought he had been pressing me to call him because he felt that he communicated poorly through writing or it simply wasn’t his preferred means of expression, and I understood that. I’m the exact opposite. When it comes to communicating, I prefer writing and imagery to the spoken word. So I went to take the trash out and, out there by the dumpsters, I lit up a cigarette and finally called him. At least this way I’d have an excuse to get off the phone in a short amount of time.

He didn’t know who I was at first. Even after I said my name. Only when I mentioned we went to high school together did it finally click, and this should’ve been a red flag. It turned out that talking to him verbally made our conversations even more confusing. His thoughts seemed rather disconnected and he repeated himself a few times without even realizing it. His voice was all over the place and sometimes he struggled to say things, like he was placing incredible effort to remain focused and push out the words and string together the sentences. In short, he sounded horrifically drunk, maybe heavily medicated, but most certainly out of it.

I tried desperately to piece together what he was saying.

He spoke on how when he went to high school, he just didn’t get it, didn’t pick up on things, and it didn’t prepare him for the so-called real world. Not in the least. He left school thinking we were the only free country, he confessed to me, and that the rest of the world were the poor and oppressed, scrambling just to eat bread and drink water.

He kept bringing up duck and cover, too, as if him and I grew up in the 1950s as opposed to the 1990s. My assumption was that he meant to draw parallels with the education system, which was providing data that we were taught to believe would give us safety and control in the world beyond high school when in fact it was a bullshit sham propagated to give us the illusion of control and safety.

He felt betrayed by the school system, by society at large, and he has continued to feel lost, as if his life has been a waste. In a better world, shit might have been different.

He called himself stupid a few times, and I insisted it may have just been ineffective education and propaganda that were to blame for his ignorance and confusion, not some lack of intelligence. He also made references to being a bad person, though without saying it so blatantly, and I again assured him that I’d seen no evidence that was the case.

He then confessed to me that he had liver cancer, or that his liver was failing, and he may not have a lot of time left. This made me hope he wasn’t drunk. In any case, that’s why he started reaching out, messaging people, apologizing. That was the weight I had sensed in him — he was looking death straight in the eyes and found life to be unfair, and felt guilty over his suspicions that he had been unfair to others in his past.

At some point, after my cigarette had burned down to the filter, we got disconnected. I messaged him. He didn’t message me back until my break, when I was in my truck with Sean, and after I had taken two or three hits off the joint he offered me.

And I thought communication was difficult before.

Though he had spoken little of the art he wanted to purchase from me on the phone, which had been the reason I called, now he was back on the topic. I told him the last person I had sold a piece to, it had been only $25. I asked if that sounded good. He said no, it was too little. I asked him to give me a price, and he said no. I was getting mildly frustrated. The pot did not help matters.

Marajuana, at least when it comes to me, serves as a sort of amplifier for whatever my attention is invested in at the time. If I’m focused on relaxing, it boosts it. If I’m enjoying Cosmos or a nature documentary, I’m drawn in like you wouldn’t believe. Art, music? I’m entirely absorbed. Frustration and concern? Welcome to my personal hell.

Our conversation ended and I went about the rest of my work shift high, frustrated, and socially anxious.

Then I got a text. It referenced me by name, and said that with my permission, they would “post all my stuff.” The text had no name, just a number, but I assumed it was my sister’s father-in-law, who I had sold the aforementioned piece to. I was slightly confused because he had mentioned “stuff,” suggesting the plural, and he had only a single piece, so when I texted back “yes, please do,” I added that I assumed it was from him. The person texted back that I was wrong.

Instant paranoia. Depths of paranoia.

I knew he wouldn’t fuck with me like this, so it couldn’t be my sister’s father-in-law. So naturally my first assumption that someone had hacked into my computer and stolen all my writings, or found my blogs despite my pseudonym, and were going to publish them on the net under my real name and embarrass me and bring shame upon my family and judgement upon me by everyone.

I asked who it was. It took them forever to answer, and they kept fucking with me, and my paranoia deepened, I became self-loathing, and I finally looked up the number on the net. A Florida number. Derek told me he lived in Florida.

I checked Derek’s number. It was him.

Indeed, I was too high. When I texted back, called him by name and asked what he meant by “stuff,” his response was entirely incomprehensible. I didn’t respond and I haven’t heard from him since.

I was more than a bit irritated and emotionally spent by the end of the shift, but after that faded, my sympathy for him remained. He’s feeling guilty and betrayed and afraid and alone as he’s dying and maybe perpetually drunk as shit in Florida.

It feels as though most people are born into our society and they adapt rather quickly, that they can pick things up with ease, and they’re eager for adulthood. I was never that way. I remember when my sister, Eve, and I were attending school and my youngest sister, Linda, was excited about attending school the following year. So excited, in fact, that she filled up a bookbag with random things and hung it on the hooks in the hallway where Eve and I hung up our school things.

Unsurprisingly, she adapted to society just fine. Eve didn’t do too bad, either. Both have done infinitely better than I in this respect.

Maybe Derek, for whatever reason, is just another member of my category. Another one of the lost children of America. Another lost soul spinning in circles on planet earth.

Art, Inspiration & the Push (Part II).

It took some time for her to become a point of focus — and there are levels to it. For one thing, she has transformed into a rather alluring goth over the years, a feel and look that has always inspired my passion with respect to women, at least when it’s authentic, and in her case, it most certainly is — hence Gerty’s insight so long ago that she was right up my alley.

Physically, to state the obvious, she’s hot as fuck. I have cast her in the starring role of countless kinky fantasies of mine over the years. She is also someone who, as seems clear to me from her Facebook posts, actually thinks for herself — a depressing rarity among the human population, it seems to me — and she is a rather rebellious soul in general, which only increases her attractiveness as far as I’m concerned.

And artistically, to get to the point, she’s fucking amazing. One day recently, as I was bored at work, I was scrolling down my Facebook feed when I discovered she had dumped a load of her artwork online. I scrolled through it and was truly amazed. Alongside her darkness and beauty, she has astounding artistic talent. I’d known this for awhile, and at some point even confessed to her online how I envied her ability to draw the female figure, and draw it so expertly, but had never seen so much of her artwork at once.

It gave my brain a boner. I should have bought her a drink, danced with her, got caught in her web. If a girl cam give both your brain and body a boner, after all, that’s something you should embrace.

Another life lesson, hopefully learned.

In any case, that helped inspire me out of my artistic slumber to some degree, at least with respect to,the underlying and fueling urge, but it also made me feel as though my own talents utterly paled in comparison.

Which again, we shall come to later.

Other inspiration came from a place closer to home, however. This inspiration shit has really covered the spectrum.

Some time ago my mother, sisters, and some old friends began attending these classes at a winery. As far as I’m aware, it essentially deals with sipping wine and being taught how to paint in a hands-on fashion.

Then, likely inspired by this, one of my sister’s friends — Mickey, who is Gerty’s older sister — started holding parties where everyone would watch an episode of Bob Ross and paint along with him. I believe I was invited at least once to one of them, but predictably, I never attended. I’m rather antisocial, for one thing, and producing art in front of others strikes me as rather nervewracking.

Three cheers for introversion and anxiety.

Eve, the eldest of my two younger sisters, has always been very talented musically, a form of art I’ve at best dabbled in through gutair and piano but certainly never taken the time to discipline and develop. Similarly, she never really pursued the visual arts that much.

Until recently, that is.

I’m sure the winery thing and the Bob Ross parties got the ball rolling, but she’s been going through a tough breakup with her exboyfriend, with whom she shares a house, and has found a new outlet in drinking wine and exploring painting. On that note, I’m incredibly happy for her — I know creative expression serves not only as catharsis, but as a transformative force; a sort of psychological and spiritual form of alchemy.

She needs this.

And as has been revealed through her posting her work on Facebook, her talents are improving with nearly every piece.

Rock on, my sis.

Yet like a selfish, sensitive little child, however, I began to feel this envy and jealousy creep up. Like with squeaks. Like with the luscious and seductive Maria Cox. Given this familiar, childish reaction, I feared a pattern I’ve begun to identify in myself was doomed to play itself out.

Someone shows me up, or at least I feel they show me up, and rather than use it to motivate myself to do better or at least try harder I break down, accept defeat, and run away like a weak, pathetic coward. Rather than perceive them as an inspiration, I perceive them as better and accept defeat.

Not exactly what one would call a winning strategy.

It didn’t used to be like this with me, either. When I was a child, even a teenager in high school, I could appreciate the creative talents of others without judging myself against them. After all, it isn’t supposed to be about winning a goddamn conpetition, its supposed to be about working to perfect your own art and feeling that intrinsic satisfaction in the process and, in the best case scenario, feel that life-is-worth-living sense of satisfaction in the result as well.

So we come to my last weekend.

For some time I’ve wanted to take up the practice of oil painting, as I haven’t painted much at all since I was a kid and the stories about painting along with old Bob Ross episodes sounded fucking wonderful to me. While I’ve enjoyed my chalk pastel works, I find I’ve grown bored with them. Everything looks the same and it simply doesn’t inspire the passion and produce that sense of satisfaction it once did.

So for about a week or two now I’ve been amassing a folder on YouTube dedicated to art, hoping it might not only inspire me to produce more art, but also inspire me explore media and techniques I either haven’t explored in eons or perhaps never explored before.

The issue is that I’ve been watching countless YouTube videos — Bob Ross mostly, but more recently videos regarding techniques, supplies, tricks, and things to avoid — but I’ve been doing nothing with it. Just trying to store up data in my head. I kept telling myself: just fucking do it. If it sucks, and I expect that at the very least it initially will, no one has to see it. Then try again. Showing off isn’t the objective here. I had already made the decision not to post any artwork on social media for awhile, as I don’t want the influence, be it likes or the lack thereof. What I want, what I need, is the satisfaction of creative expression, art for the sake of art, at least predominantly.

This last Friday and Saturday, my days off of work, I felt very low. It seemed as though I was on the brink of depression but never quite slipped into it and instead remained locked in this neutral, indifferent state where nothing seemed to move me at all, nothing really maintained my interest or fired up my passions. I drank Friday and then refused to allow myself to do so on Saturday, instead just drinking coffee and smoking a bit of weed.

On Saturday, I felt as if I had to really push myself to do anything. I watched Joker, which was incredibly depressing, though an excellent film — not unlike Requiem for a Dream in that respect. Later, I had the supplies laid out on my counter nearby my laptop — paper, paint, cups of water, a small canvas board — but did nothing with it for what seemed like forever. I went back to watching the art videos.

Finally, I got enough caffeine and cannabis in my system and mentally pushed myself to play. I was soon to discover that some of the paints were really old. When I squeezed the tubes of those elder acrylics the result was an ejaculation of clear goo sprinkled sparsely with particles of the relevant color. Thankfully the new ones, save for the brown for some reason, were still good. Its just that there were only five of them, which was not a wide selection.

I had some oil paint, which is what I really wanted to try (Bob Ross inspired my interest here quite directly), but I didn’t have any paint thinner for the brushes, I didn’t have any liquid white, and I had to be very careful with my money until I got my check. So I did the best with what I had, at least to the extent that my inner numbness would allow, and that involved playing with acrylics.

As predicted, I produced nothing of value, but I got more of a feel for the brushes and paints on the canvas, so I saw the activity as valuable nonetheless. Afraid that my attempt at using acrylics and the sad result might discourage me and turn me further away from art, after I was done with the paint I decided to try some other form of art. I remembered I had some Sculpey and tried molding a face as I simultaneously watched Djangu on my Roku. Then I dug out some charcoal pencils, took out my sketchbook and tried drawing.

Again, nothing I physically produced was great, not in the least, but I felt better knowing I was sort of pushing myself at gunpoint to do something artistic. Even if I wasn’t inspired.

I’ve drifted too far from this world of art, its been too long, and I need to find my way back and push myself to evolve this time. I need to keep writing, too, but it’s just not enough anymore.

Art, Inspiration & the Push (Part I).

For some time, I’ve missed the kind of focus I used to have with respect to producing art. Its not that I dislike writing, which I’ve invested more time and energy in over recent years, its just that it doesn’t produce the same kind of satisfaction, scratch the same kind of itches in the same places that art always did for me. And I’m itching like a flea-infested fuck wearing a sweater straightjacket coverall.

And as for all my enduring focus on writing, has it really improved my writing as a result? I still screw up tenses. Fuck up spelling. I fear a lot of my writing fails to have adequate focus and structure. I can’t write fiction worth a damn. And my attempts at writing a book about my strange, seemingly paranormal experiences?

That’s all clearly gone to shit.

To make matters worse, I’ve failed even more at further developing my art, and I can’t seem to get over this hump. Or perhaps “climb this mountain” is more adequate. And this, this despite my inspiration lately: inspiration that, if I manage it the right way, might light a fire under my ass and get me pouring my soul through imagery again in new and different ways.

This inspiration has come from at least three sources.

One is Squeaks, a young girl I work with. She has a dark, bitter, judgmental part of her, but she conveys it in this giddy, childlike way that amuses me. Her voice frequently gets painfully high-pitched, however, at least to my hypersentive ears, hence the name I’ve given her.

She is yet another child of abusive, otherwise negligent parents that clearly should not have been parents, though thankfully she lives with her boyfriend — who I call Count on account of the legitimate, natural fangs that motherfucker has — who seems like a good kid that truly cares for her. Unfortunately his home life isn’t the greatest, either.

At the very least, they have each other, though, and I think they make a good team.

Whenever she works in back drive thru I catch her doodling on a sheet of paper or a napkin — though calling them doodles doesn’t seem to convey the degree of skill she has. I’ve also seen her sketchbook — but again, to call them mere sketches…

She draws these spectacular cartoons. She often starts with lines and shapes and then starts building on the details as they always teach in art courses. I should probably do more of that. They are high-grade cartoons, for sure, and the way she colors them, often but not always using the computer, makes them look professional as fuck as well.

It makes me happy that it brings so much joy to her despite the endless onslaught of pain in her life, too, and though she has no interest in pursuing it through college or a career, I hope she eventually changes her mind and decides to invest her undeniable talent in some way that brings satisfaction to her. And perhaps even brings joy and inspiration to others in the process.

After all, as I believe I’ve made clear by this point: her artistic talents have clearly brought joy and inspiration to me…

Though admittedly, also envy and jealousy. Which well come back to. But there are, as I said, still other sources of inspiration.

There is, for instance, this girl I know from high school; she was a grade or two behind me. I’ll call her Maria Cox. I knew her brother, Johnny Cox, who was in my class. I also knew her close friend, Gerty, who was an anxious girl with a rapid-fire mind with whom I got along pretty well. I never got to know Maria too well, however, and despite affectionately calling her “Little Cox” whenever I got the chance, I don’t think she was too amused by it. Nor do I feel subsequent interactions made her perspective on me any better. Still, I always liked her — though, at least consciously, not to the degree that I do presently.

I remember little of her in high school save for the school dances I attended. While each dance held its own particular flavor of drama, a rather consistent element was that Maria would always end up along the wall, in the darkness of the gym, crying. Typically, or at least I always assumed, some ass-hat of guy she had come with had ditched her or in some way broke her heart.

I always felt bad for her. I always felt the urge to comfort her.

Even so, I never got to know her too well. I saw her now and then after graduation, but for the most part, only in passing.

I bumped into her once in a nearby town and she asked to borrow fifty bucks; I lent it to her. This was back when I was far more naive than I am today and still tried to trust and believe in people. She promised to repay me, and it was some time before I saw her again.

When I did, I was hanging out in a booth in a fast food restaraunt, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and writing in my notebook, as I often did. She came in the door, walked right passed me without so much as a glance, and sat a few booths behind me with one or two other people. They said something to her I couldn’t quite hear, but her response?

That I overheard.

It was essentially that “his” parents were rich, that “he” didn’t need the money, both of which are untrue, and so on — essentially providing a list of excuses to the others as to why she need not pay me back. That I found more than a bit douche-like and it soured me towards her for some time.

I can be a bitter, grudge-holding douche.

The next time I saw her was a good time later, and it stands as the last time I saw her as of the time of this writing.

I found myself at a bar with some friends and found out that one of the guys I went to school with was the lead singer in a metal band. We talked for awhile on the porch and then I meandered back inside. That’s where I saw this sexy, darkly-dressed girl expertly, seductively slow-dancing with some guy. It took me a moment to realize it was Maria.

In retrospect, I recall her looking good. Really fucking good.

Shortly thereafter she approached me and asked if I wanted to buy her a drink; I confessed I had no money (which I believe was true) and left it at that. Ever since, I’ve regretted not taking her up on her offer.

At some point after I got on Facebook years upon years ago she came to be on my friends list. Though I can’t recall at what point she became insatiable to me, it must have been some time after that. I remember seeing Gerty at some point after joining the Book of Faces and she said with confidence she knew who I thought was hot, she knew who I wanted to fuck. I asked her who, and when she mentioned Maria, I flatly denied it.

Gerty’s response conveyed that she thought this impossible. Not unlikely, mind you, but downright bloody impossible. Every guy wanted to fuck Maria, she seemed to believe, and on top of that Gerty knew she was right up my alley — evidently before I was able to consciously acknowledge it myself.

Maybe I still held a grudge at some level over what I overheard her say that day in the restaurant and denied my intense attraction towards her to myself, burying it far from consciousness.

It did not remain there, however.

Art, Writing, & Other Release Valves.

Back in high school, I’d stay after school and, alone in the art room, I’d do my pen drawings or, more often, engage in my chalk pastel works. I’d do this at home in my bedroom, too.

This was my psychic bloodletting.

After I took apart my old art desk for some reason and could not, for the life of me, put it back together, I’d use the wall behind my door. I’d place a huge piece of paper there, masking tape at the edges and the sides, and then I’d put a CD in my old boom box. Usually, I’d listen to Tool’s Aenema album, or at least that’s how I remember it. I’d grab my chalk pastels and just let my emotions guide my hands, sometimes caught in some insane frenzy, intensely drawing and smearing the colors.

High on the catharsis. Empowered and actively nurturing the connection I had with some deep, dark, utterly alien part of me.

I always felt cleansed at the end, exorcised, often satisfied with the end product and quite proud of it. I just needed to get the seemingly endless within me out of me, expel it meaningfully, trap it in amber upon the page like an insect, take a Kodak moment of my soul.

Parting with my pieces, selling my shit, it wasn’t a concern, even a thought. These were pieces of my fucking soul, after all. This was my personal art therapy, and that’s what mattered most.

I’ve gone through periods where I felt like that channel between me and Me was constipated, of course. Where the art I produced wasn’t nearly as satisfying, where all the shit looked the same and lacked soul. There are always those dry periods.

And then there were periods in which I just fell out of it, as has happened again — though its slowly working its way back in.

Usually when this happens, nearly always, I find my focus has merely shifted. My avenue of exorcism had changed. My catharsis found an alternative outlet: writing.

And it wasn’t always an either/or kind of circumstance, either.

I would let my fingers tap madly on the keyboard, let them hunt and peck at high speed until they ached and I feared they might bleed. Driven by emotion, I was like a stenographer for my spontaneous thoughts. Not to share, not to impress people, not to post it on social media to get likes that would deliver a fucking dopamine hit, but because I had to get this out, and some parts of myself could be better expressed through writing than artwork.

And I remember constantly thinking back then that I needed yet another outlet, and my constant interest was music. I wanted to sing. To play guitar. I needed another way to scratch the itch. I needed another release valve.

I never pursued music, not really. I took piano lessons at school for awhile, though that was earlier, during middle school, I think, and I didn’t follow through for too long. I was asked to be the lead singer for a developing band, but I was too nervous about singing, which I had never tried. Even earlier, when I was a teen, I took gutair lessons, but the class, despite me squeezing it for all it was worth, kind of sucked. I used my mother’s acoustic for awhile, then a twelve-string I borrowed from a friend, and eventually a series of electric gutairs.

Presently, I have an electric tuner. A little, glitchy amp. Plenty of books from those lessons long ago and ones I’ve collected since I was a teen. Tabliture for Metallica songs, Creedence Clearwater Revival sings.

Those books remain in my large, walk-in closet as my electric guitar collects dust in a corner in my apartment.

Maybe if I survive another two decades or so. Maybe if I manage to make money off my artwork and writing I’ll be able to quit my shit job, and I’ll feel I have the time to develop this new outlet.

I’m not holding my breath, though. I’ve just started drawing again, after all.

Currently, writing is my major outlet. I write on my phone here and there throughout the workday. When I get home, if I’m drinking — which, let’s face it, is usually the fucking case — I’ll write a bit of prose, perhaps, but once I have some cannabis on top of that and I suddenly shift into poetry mode. So much so, in fact, that I ultimately decided to make a separate blog dedicated to it.

What has been lacking as of late is my artwork, and its pathetic how often I plan to do it and fail. Afterwards, I almost always feel so cleansed and charged. This last weekend, I spent some time doodling in my sketchbook while mildly high, and I’m slowly falling into the groove again. I certainly don’t wish to quit writing, but I need the visual arts as well. I need both release valves.

Sometimes I wish I could just go hide somewhere for awhile, somewhere that was my own and where I had minimal human contact, and focus on art and writing exclusively. I’d live in a sort of vaccum and nurture my only avenues towards true liberty in life without distraction.

That’s not likely to happen, of course, so I really need to find the motivation to make use of what time I have to pursue my passions. To spill my fucking soul through imagery bled onto the page.

I’ve got to pull out of this rut. Its not like getting laid, after all — I can do this on my own. What the hell is the problem?