Sloth, Maybe?

The 21st century can be a bitch. Even more so than the 20th century, the 21st has all sorts of media that can saturate your eyes, ears, and brain.  Even what you taste, touch and smell is synthesized.  Take for example the microwavable Indian food (which is my weakness) that can seduce two of your senses until you grow bored of the flavor and aroma.  Touch screens do away with those pesky keyboards, though many people of my generation opt for a peripheral keyboard to get the sensation of sitting in front of the electric typewriters we were trained to use in intermediate school.  Nonetheless, the power we have at our fingertips is manufactured. So, what was I talking about?  Oh, yeah.  Meditation and the altered states of consciousness it provides.  One more digression and then I'll get to the heart of the matter. Your favorite music alters your consciousness.  It either mellows you out or it charges you up.  An abrupt change of one state of c...

It's a story you've heard a thousand times in the entertainment industry, but it never gets old. I've seen a lot of rock stars I grew up with in the 90s drop like flies:  Andrew Wood, Kurt Cobain, Shannon Hoon, Layne Staley, Mike Starr, Chris Cornell, and I'm sure many more I can't remember off the top of my head. So now there's a new generation of whipper snappers lazily dubbed "zoomers," who not only see their favorite rappers die, but see them die so early in their lives that they don't even make it to the infamous "27 Club."  I refer to XXX Tentacion, Lil Peep, Mac Miller, and Juice WRLD.  Juice WRLD had a documentary released this year subtitled Into the Abyss.   It is a death march of a man who feels his time is growing short even as he is at the peak of his popularity. The doc opens with Juice summoning lyrics from thin air.  He alternates between those he loves and those unnamed foes that he verbally shits on.  He follows, or more...

Streaming services is what some folk would call a godsend, to which I mostly agree I remember when I first caught Daredevil on Netflix some time ago.   I noticed in the first episode, so much time was granted to exposition and character growth.  For the life me I couldn't figure out why.  At  first. Then the realization hit me:  Daredevil was an hour long drama because it wasn't interrupted by any god damned commercials! As my wife can attest, commercials drive me nuts.  They drove me nuts ever since I watched TV as a kid.  I'm watching a show, say for example Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and for every five minutes of drama it would be abruptly be cut off for what seemed like a commercial break that ran for the same amount of time.  Suze, as many before me, calmly suggested that I simply mute the TV and take a whiz.   What they don't understand is when I feel rage, I am consumed by it.  I preferred to shout at the TV while it bomba...

It began when I was about five.   I was in Mom's room watching the family TV, when over the white noise of the idiot's lantern, I heard a man singing in a voice that hinted at mischief and mockery.  I entered the living room where Mom was playing "Gee, Officer Krupke" from the motion picture soundtrack of West Side Story .  I imagined the singer in a rakish Elizabethan get up:  A garish red jacket ruffled shirt, tight leggings, and an audacious cap with a flamboyant feather as its centerpiece.  I didn't realize how off target I was with the time and place of the story, yet at the same time so close. Not long after, West Side Story was playing on television.  My family was gathered in Mom's bedroom and I saw this world for the first time in my life.  It was New York City - MY city.  An aerial view swept over the blooming skyscrapers and rectlinear streets until it finally settled on the slums of what would one day become Lincoln Center.  My h...

Whenever I've finished a day of meditation, writing, exercising, writing some more, dozing off, and not wanting to write anymore, I will settle down on the couch and pick a film to watch until the missus gets home. And the films are almost always creepy. By creepy films, I don't mean horror classics like Nosferatu , or more recent class acts like The Descent (which came out in 2006 so you can see how far out of the loop I am).  I mean films with plots and characters and a particular atmosphere which mesmerizes me and leads me through a grand tour of the worst people humanity has to offer. I suppose it began in the winter of 1992 when I saw Saló, The 120 Days of Sodom on VHS.  I was a lonely young fellow.  I had no girlfriend.  I took classes in college that had no fungible use in the job market.  I was laid off of every part time job I took on because there were people who were smarter and worked harder than me.  So one day at the local RKO Video store I h...

While we are on the subject of dreams today, I think it’s appropriate if I share a series of nightmares revolving around the same theme:   Crime and the threat of punishment. Stock Image A few years back, I had a very vivid dream where I was an accomplice in a sexual assault.   I didn’t know who the victim was or the prime suspect with whom I was an associate, but I   was pretty damn sure I was guilty of something. I called into a talk radio show much in the Howard Stern vein.   The host asked me some hard hitting questions about being a suspected accomplice.   I made what I believed to be a light hearted, self effacing joke, but the host made it clear that he did not find it funny.   He added that he believed none of his millions of listeners found it funny either.   I was weighed down with dread.   I found myself seated in a car on a Metro North train.   A large man was seated next to me with his face buried in a newspaper.   He turned...

The transition between waking and sleeping was subtle enough.  I was stretched out on the couch and the next thing I knew Susan was leaning over me with what looked like a vintage illustrated hard cover of Herman Melville's iconic novel, Moby Dick . Cover Artwork by Shae Alexander Meyer I rose up and took the book that Susan offered me.  I thanked her and stepped from the living room to my office.  Suddenly it seemed that my eyes had been almost sealed shut.  I could vaguely see through my eyelashes.  I circled around in the center of my lit room, still confident I could find my desk.  Yet I was pestered by my restricted vision.  I asked myself, How in the hell am I supposed to read this book if I can't see? I set Moby Dick down on where my desk should be.  It finally occurred to me to rub my eyes with a tissue.  On cue, a tissue was conjured into my hand.  I rubbed my eyes gently, and what I called "eye snot" as a child fell away....