I remember watching “Fight Club” in the theater and the line about how teeth were just “little tiny bones sticking out of your head”.    That line always has stuck with me for some reason.  It makes me think of how oddly amazing we, homo-sapiens, are.   We go through 2 sets of teeth in our life, our hair and nails continue to grow our entire lives ( and for a little while after death I am told)  Our ears and noses is just flesh covered cartilage that also enlarges as we get older.

The real oddity is that this whole assembly… the body…it’s parts…. its logic and its emotion….it’s sole purpose is to cart that 3lb of gray matter situated between our ears around.

Thats it.

Ya know what is even more trippy.  Is that we all have this inevitable unknown expiration date.   That point… when no matter what we do… we shed this mortal coil and return to the dirt.   I’m not gonna get into a religious/spiritual transcendental theology discussion.   We die—and soon as we do our bad bacteria and all the little baddies come to eat us.  True stuff.

So as I sit here in this office and stare at this screen.  I’m writing what will be left of me when I’m gone.  See–we do facebook, instagram, twitter—- pictures, quotes, blurbs, memes.    But what essence of that is truly you?

Am I the sum of all my memes?

Probably not.

I guess my point is that it’s difficult to “be” a person in that medium.  When you write you have to convey something–you have to keep someone wanting to link these words together to develop a “you”.   So if you are familiar with my writing skills ( lack there of is often used) you will know that some days I hit shit so square on the head that your ears ring…. but most of the times I am out here in the dark… with a match… in a windstorm…riding a tornado…trying to see where I’m supposed to be.

So last night I was sitting on my couch rough housing with one of my dogs.  We got a little rough and he ended up coming at me off the top ropes and power-bombed me.  His head hit me square in the cheek..and at that moment a filling and part of my tooth gave up the ghost.

I sat there with that taste in my mouth like I just licked a wood spoon or tested a 9 volt battery.   Then the sudden rationalization that one of my tiny little bones was now floating freely in my mouth.   Being swirled around by the sudden production of saliva as a reactionary response to trauma.   I quickly located the awol piece with my fingers and pulled it free to examine it.     I was thinking to myself ” I’m 44 years old… and a piece of me fell off. ”    But we are conditioned to not take it that seriously.  In comparison– If I was just sitting here and my hand just fell off…I believe there would be more concern…I think I might be quite alarmed if my hand just popped off and left a stump.   But here I am… a piece of me, although minute, was no longer connected to the fatherland.

This spawned another thought.

Why am I so attached to the shit I own when I am barely affected by a piece of me falling off.

( Thats some kind of 32nd level introspective bodhisattva shit right there)

I have stuff. Like a house and polebarn full of stuff….and why? Seriously… what for?  I’ll tell you why “someday”.    Thats right …. SOMEDAY.    Someday I’m gonna finish that bike… Someday I’m gonna play that guitar….. but much like the limited shelf life of—-MY LIFE….Someday will never come.   It’s procrastination by proxy.   I’m going to do it… when I can do it.      Well people go their entire lives by pretending that one day you will have all this time to do these things.   We dont.   So do it now.   Do what you want and fuck the timeline.

I have pieces falling off… of me….but I keep adding tiny bones to my life….. tiny bones belong in a graveyard…..not in a persons life.

 

I find myself having this reoccurring dream. It will plague me for nights at a time and then vanish into the ether just a quick.  I find myself in this very old grocery store.  It’s dark and air is thick with the sent of almost acrid produce.  Much of the layout of the store is like that of my childhood grocery.  Long towering aisles with product descriptions hanging from a board on the ceiling.  The subtle differences are that the color scheme is that of a tri-bar orange and brown of the 60′ and that the place is immense.  The name of the place is Fates Grocery…which although sounding mysterious…it’s not… there is an actual “Fates Grocery” in a town not too far from where I live… maybe a 30 min drive.   Why my mind decided to make a bastardized grocery store in my cortex is beyond me but I thought it poignant to get it down on paper.  Oh..and in my dream… you cant get out of the grocery store…once your in,  you in.

I’ve had this dream for years and each time I venture to the “store” I find myself even more bewildered by it’s existence.   For example, the slush puppy machine.   The slush puppy machine is from the Lake Orion Kmart circa mid-1983.   I know this because my Nana and Pops would get me a cherry slush puppy every time we went to shut my little hyper ass up.   So that machine an I got very acquainted over the years…but here it sits at Fates….not as a reminder of some deep psychosis that I need to resolve…but just because.  Another thing… glass bottles.  All the pop is in those 8 pack glass bottles. Even the Faygo is in those squat tube bottles of the early 80’s.   I keep asking myself why?  Why would someone remember this and keep it locked in your head. But here I am looking around and seeing all the meaningless things occupying my mental hard drive.  Like the fucking nacho cheese bucket.   Kmart used to have this little diner in the back… it was horrible..and there on the stand next to jugs of condiments…was the oozing and bubbling nacho cheese warmer.  Upon opening it up you see that there is a thick crust of cheese that had been left for days.   Why is this in my head?

Why does Fates Grocery exist in my mind?  That is a good question.  I’m pretty good with my dreams..for the most part I have some pretty awesome dreams where I am somewhat keen on whats going on. I am not a total dream-walker-neo- matrix shit…but I know that I’m not in the present reality of boorishness that is my daily life.   So on that note you would think my subconscious is trying to tell me something or maybe my ego or ID is getting a time out.   Over the years I get into that loop where one night…poof… I’m standing near the cheese section…. always the cheese section… this big wheel of cheese on a huge table. It’s always  near Thanksgiving too… cause they have those turkey decorations where you fold out the tail of the turkey like a fan… and they have the cheese all piled up like some wack ass cornucopia spilling out onto crackers.  POOF….there I am. The different smells all wafting into my nostrils all at once….cheese….sweaty moon boots….baked beans….body odor.    And it’s just me…no one else… I’m alone in this huge place and each time I arrive everything is back to the way it was last time.  The closest thing I could figure out is that maybe Fates is like my own private Idaho…my personal emotional purgatory…. my psychotic time out.

But what is going on this time in my life that I need a time out?  I’m finally back to working a decent job…I got a plan…. I’m “adulting” the best I can… and for 3 nights straight I’m back in that fucking store staring at the slush machine waiting for it to give me some prophetic message about my life…and don’t try to get all yogi sensai guru on the mountain about it cause it doesn’t mean anything.   Some people have these super spiritual interactions with their spirit warriors… I got Betty Crocker and Fruity Pebbles in Aisle 3.

FML