Porcupine Tree - The Incident Disc 2. The Porc Tree gurgles and jams from the tiny speakers of the Blackberry I have named FRENATA after the creature Mustela Frenata that is probably better known as a long tailed weasel.

I need to tape a tail onto Frenata so she appears to most to more resemble a small, cute, furry animal. The construction of this tail would be a chore! I could just lop off Chico’s tail and tape it to Frenata. Or I could purchase a length of string and begin collecting stray hair from around the house. There is plenty, believe me. Ernestine leaves copious mounds in the bathroom. My challenge would be to retrieve it before Yvonne sponges it up and delivers it to the monster’s maw in the laundry room that digests all waste from the house.

When I say digest, what I really mean is mixes together arbitrarily. I don’t want bits of hair intermingled with partial parts of butter or clothes filled or partially filled with menstrual blood for Frenata’s tail. It need be only fur.

FUR!

Now to pour the water, still hot enough, over the bag of black tea which will infuse it with tasty essence. Yeah. I achieved yesterday’s goal of purchasing a new pen. It slides gleefully over this page, peppering it will this stream of consciousness. I did not read further in The Artist’s Way včera, but shall read through this week’s task / lesson / destiny / trial / whatnot after breakfast. It is my first goal.

The reading will provide me with further goals throughout the week. Those shall intermingle with HASKELL and learning how to employ ODESK to my advantage. I really much do the latter eventually or I’ll be ever dependent on outside means for cash.

NO! NO! NO!

It is too limiting to my independence.

The Haskell studies, despite setbacks, left me satisfied. Before falling asleep, I read through descriptions and outlines of Monads, which are, as well as useful, essential to the understanding and wielding of the language as a tool. The problem concerning the first prime below a million that is the sum of the most consecutive primes still plagued me as I tried to drift away. I still don’t completely comprehend the implementiation - that is all.

I’ll take a look at it - the implementiation I was most impressed with on the forum - again after my morning reading. Now to begin the creation of the bagel sandwich.

Now, that hakiu came simply from the desire. I realize that it means very little. To tacitly boast! What a concept! I want it to be never tacitly boast or somesuch, but the syllabic structure sucked the will from me (or was it my Censor?). Let’s see now!

TACIT

1 - expressed or carried on without words or speech.

2 - implied or indicated (as by an actor by silence) byt not actually expressed.

So it does make sense since the bagel did not actually express the boast. It did it with an act! By popping forth from the toaster, it tacitly told me it’d had pleasure from the crusting and singing of its squishy exterior. My tea also, as it has stopped steaming, has tacitly made its thoughts known. Those thoughts are that it wishes no longer to reside in the mug before me, but instead in my innards.

So I shall sip it.

One thing my Censor has been very successful at over the last 10 years is inspriring fear deep within me at the thought of expressing my thoughts as I used to during my 20s. When I was slathering hummus on the bottom half of my toasted bagel, I had the thought to post this tidbit on Facebook for all to see as my status. Now, lately I hae only done such spontaneous gouts of semi extroversion in the throes of drunkeness. But, previously in my existence, I did it frequently (sometimes to the chagrin of others).

I am afraid - trapped!

And this is the main reason my creative output has decreased significantly over the past 10 years. The Censor is a real cunt. It imbues within my gut the fear of what anyone else will think if I simply express myself. Others get past this barrier. It is a fact that criticism will inevitably careen down onto anyone who expresses themselves with abandon. But it is really the only way. This is what an artistic and creative reawakening is concerned with at its core. It goes back to my childhood, surely.

At times, they tolerated my odd behaviour, but mostly I was pushed towards a conservative attitude. My rebellion did not improve matters. As I grew into adolescence, friction was the norm in the household. I was encouraged at some points, but stifled either by the atmosphere of the place in which I was raised or the people therein.

Of course, my parents were firmly religious. They still are. Narrow, even. They call themselves Democrats and I believe it. Presbetarians. Could be worse.

I was blessed with loving parents, at least. That, I must assuage myself with. Though at times I’ve thought it’d have been better for my psyche, growing up with the Metcalfs would’ve been tantamount to nightmare. I love communal structure between friends, but their way seems to tight knit for me and I’d never have been encouraged to use my brain in the ways I was by my parents.

Such contrast!

But there is not just these two points of destiny (one real, one supposed) for you, Bobbus! It is on a line. It is axis thinking, as Eno would say (not to fault him), but there is more than the simple axis between the Sheltons and Metcalfs for the Pine Marten who is the cute little Bobbus.

Much of this movement on the imaginary axis lies in my future. Much of my past may have been a struggle between point S and point M, though perhaps I did not know it at the time.

My mind is much more alive after these morning writings. Contentment and a sense of presence of the TODAY swells. Yes, mister (or miss) Censor, I dare say it though you may find it cheese. The spiritual intensity of these pages is great. They are powerful. Just like a magically satisfying defecation.

I am in the midst of reading the first week’s chapter in The Artist’s Way. The topic is commonly held negative beliefs that block people from letting out their creativity. # 4 is I will abandon my friends and family.

Well, actually, the fear I’ve always held, consciously or not, is that my friends and family will abandon me. This is insecurity beaten into me originally by my parents. They were / are so concerned with the reactions of others that any of what they might term as outlandish behaviour was / is not permitted. I recall both of their horror at a poem I wrote in High School that concerned death (if I recall correctly) that found itself somehow into the hands of the school counselor.

Now, a part of this is directly related to the conservativeness and narrow minded nature of the town we lived in. Some of it was just ingrained in them. They, also, after all, grew up in a similar small town. They live in it now. It is called Seminole. Different in location, slightly different in mentality, but on an abstract level once removed, much the same for a confused and creative teenager attempting to find his / her way, I am sure.

My thoughts and expression of them in the past has often been outlandish in some points of view. This never stopped me in my 20s, however, as it blocks me now to sometimes imagine disapproving faces. I must work past this particular clog. It is an especially resistant clog when it comes to people extremely close. I’m writing of the Smaller One. Her disapproval frightens me. It has been an intense beast in the past. I fear to reawaken it. This clog must be dissolved.

Heh… On the same note - # 7 is It will upset my mother / father. # 14 is I will get self-destructive and drink, drug or sex myself to death.

What an amusing fear? I began my alcoholism, which has lasted throughout my 30s, to supplant my creative eruptions. At first, it seemed a stimulant and I’d be able to write for hours (there is that, but making any music or performing actual discursive thought was another thurk altogether), but slowly it took over everything.

Gradually, alcohol created a zombie of the once creative ghoul inside of me. I’d scribble an inane haiku occasionally (even that was better than nothing), but most of the time lackadaisically flop about mentally, fumbling at dreams seemingly just out of reach, but in reality in another universe altogether.

Hah! The bleariness has not yet overtaken me! My success at warding it off is the result of it not being there in the first place. THAT, my persistent reader, is the epitome of effort. Yes!

So, what shall I do today?

• Scheme for 1 1/2 hours.
• Ecology for 1 hour.
• Radiant & Lakife for 2 hours.

Let’s see how it goes, even if my parents try to drag me into the quagmire of their negativity. Their plans and my plans have very few intersections.

That is just the way it is (baby).

I just watched part one of “Until the End of the World”. It is cheesy, backwards looking, thin but very enjoyable. Something about Wim Wender’s work appeals to me. The three negatives leading my description were purposeful, I am sure. True, however - the sheer length of the film is daunting. The weariness clasped to me still makes my mind stagger. This clattering wreck of a paragraph shows it well.

Perhaps it is the fact that I have been fed constantly since returning. I feel the weight press in my hara. I clumsily wander the house. Now I sit up in bed. It is 19.35 and I am considering remaining in the same place for the remainder of the evening.

I think to myself that soon I’ll have the experience of actually missing the feeling of hunger. It never occurs here. I am perpetually sated. Unhealthiness shall follow, for there is no opportunity to exercise. I need escape. Soon.

So, as my mind is muddled, unclear, unsharp - most likely from the same catalysts that begot my physical lackadaisicalness - I shall watch a film. Perhaps it will pull me in. Another world? Another time? Escape. Soon.

I sit up in bed in Seminole, Texas. I’m on the wrong side of the bed. Were I back in Praha, this is where the Smaller One would be whilst the other ‘half’ would belong to me.

I scurried not unlike a rodent from the aeroplane bound for Houston (in which i was misfortunately seated at the back) to a shuttle bus which whisked me, a southern lady muttering obscenities under her breath, and several others to Terminal B. The route it took did not seem to me to be very direct. I had about fifteen minutes to catch my flight to Midland. Terminal B is vast. However, a spritely lady in a cart bearing one other human bade me to hop aboard and careened through the terminal’s labyrinth towards my gate. So the joys of serendipity brought me to the plane.

Yesterday was the first full day with my parents. An immediate observation is that they have a problem with silence. On our drive to Hobbs to secure me a new social security card, they filled the silence with repeated observations of the surrounding landscape and its owners, uses, history, etc. I feel my father is very uncomfortable when no communication is present between him and people surrounding him. He also does his best to greet and meet anyone in the vicinity during visits to shops, the post office, and en-route from his vehicle to any location. Perhaps it is the requisite ‘West Texan Friendliness’ I was raised with to reject. Perhaps that is extreme, but I find the whole idea superficial. He, on our short drive to Wal Mart yesterday morning to purchase a wireless router, even came out and said it explicitly. The blacks call it ‘Jive Talk’ and the white locals call it ‘Bullshit’. Small talk is the common term. Locals do it with a casual vigor. Certainly it is not an inherited trait. Small town culture suffuses folk. As usual, I shall not partake. I hope my directness does not confuse or irritate any of my parents’ friends, but though I am a much more accepting and tolerant person than in my ‘youth’, I shall not let my brain grow torpid.

Aranis plays on last.fm radio. I wonder if they will remind me of these transitional times.

Laptop battery low! I shall seek breakfast now.

My buttocks ache against the padded seat whilst Eliza, or at least the curved part of her, presses to the dingy wall. Shittypie, my only constant friend, sucks power from the socket in the wall like a parasite. It is needed energy for us both. Boredom on the two and a half hour flight from Atlanta to Houston is the enemy.

Depending on delays that have so far plagued my journey incessantly, I may have something sucked from ME after my arrival. That thing being money. I shall have to stay the night in that dreaded city - in an overly expensive hotel near the aeroport, surely (going into the city would be asinine) - if I miss the connection to Midland. Perhaps it would be fitting for my first night in the dreaded homeland after a thirty-nine month absence, almost to the day. Whichever happens, I shall be sure to record it here to be stored away in the entries table of the polaris database on the stoat-shittypie.

Boarding will begin soon.

The Smaller One lies in bed, most likely sleeping. As I wandered the terminal approximately an hour ago and whilst I ate a feeble crispy chicken sandwich at an unnamed fast food joint, I felt displaced as I have not since surely the atrocious six months I spent in this country during the first half of 2003. I felt frightened of being in bed in Seminole and attempting to sleep. The dread faded as it was gradually supplanted by weariness. The latter is winning. I count it a blessing.

I am thinking of her. Our shibboleth chants its mantras in my mind.

Boarding has begun.

The film was fantastic. It is one I’ll see many times in my life, finding arousing details each subsequent watch. I’m not sure how far we have progressed on our flight. Static in a chair, I feel as if I never left Praha at all.

I am not sure how I’ll feel when I reach ground zero. I want to be in transit forever. Perhaps I am the happiest when I am on the move, when the ending is uncertain, or when the ending is so far away that I’ll never see it in my lifetime.

I am talking about a personal ending, of course, and not a universal one.

There is no difference between men and women. They are all the same - so long as they carry a light deep inside them.

I shall not begin the film yet, but instead watch the most recent episode of Lost, saving Wim Wenders for after the meal.

A glare threatens to wash out shittypie’s contrast.

I sit on an aeroplane bound for Atlanta from Praha, sweet Praha. When shall I see Praha again? Well, I am banished for two years, so the minimum sentence of exile is at least obvious. My only connection is this small shittypie which accompanies me. The Smaller One was left dry eyed at the aeroport, receding as my footsteps took me towards gate B8. She worried for me. I was locked up as a result of my last attempt to fly from the country to my dreaded “homeland”.

As I listen to the voices (mostly the accents) sneak in between two tunes by The Church, I cringe psychologically. I am going back.

I spoke to her on the telephone mere minutes before departure. I sat in this slowly warming seat. I am still displaced in space, however. I attempt not to think of her return to the flat in Hůrka and the disturbing presence of ghosts she will feel throughout the next weeks, possibly longer. It is remindful of the insanity of Melanie leaving me in Austin in a flat filled with items we routinely shared. I recall doing my best to uncork the blackness and let it flood over me with intention that doing so might quench it. I don’t recall my results and the journal which holds them is long lost in a basement near Muenchen.

She’ll stare at the empty space in front of the range, imagining wisps of me coalescing and then fragmenting into swirls of smoke from the pan slightly charring topinky. I’ll be in two places at once. She’ll reach in her sleep with her paw to the space warmed strangely by the continuousness of my presence over the months but cooling ever so slightly evening after evening. Whether she awakes with the lack of touch or not, there will be a penetrating sting.

She’ll awake with longing.

And wherever I am, I’ll do much the same, but to cold sheets holding a vanished phantasm from a dream.

If there is a greater force which occasionally tests me, I’m all for it to do so as often as possible. It’s good for me. It deletes lethargy. It drums up positive emotions. I’m up for the challenge. Let’s go for it.