What is this pain in my brain that flows through my throat to my chest. Funny, chemical cascades create real pain, so now I know why I need to be chemically numbed, well not me, I’ve never been flying high like all my somatic friends. I can never really believe  that I need a TRIP away from myself. My reality, it is what it is, I don’t want a paradigm shift.

I awake from my pensive slumber, voices are debating, and repeating the same argument. Either it will crystalize or it won’t, but I guess sometimes it does both. I realize now that I don’t care.

Maybe I am lying when I say I don’t need to TRIP, maybe I already escape with this pen. I need more frequent injections!

We are talking about drugs, in this meeting I mean, and this drug in particular it is worth billions. I was told not to say the word drugs around the kids, I should say active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Chuck interrupts my thoughts with I’ll let Meghan speak about the newly formed analytical team. The screen goes dark as the projector resets. Now, wait still dark, okay now the screen appears bright and white with little black markings. Oh those are words. Okay I get it now, it says in bold Analytical Method Development Efforts. I really must pay attention at these meetings, this is my job after all.

That reminds me, my date yesterday told me if she were financially comfortable she wouldn’t do what she does. She would go out and change the world. I was very naive and thought coming to work was something to do, but I guess getting paid is nice.

I could just walk out of this meeting, they know I booked my ticket to escape. I am a free man, 5 more weeks, but till then I am still a prisoner. And even then my escape will end in August when I am shipped off to school.

In the meeting now we are trying to organize who is going to analyze smaples. Beauracracy is so powerful I mean really really powerful. Why should I have to tell anyone other than Yola Mick asks….Haha because the levers of control must be adjusted just right. It is not a fear it is a reality: things will slow down, haha you don’t know it is about control. We must control the process. Everyone and their mother if they are Cc’ed on the email I don’t care just make sure you follow the chain of command.

I just realized the data we are now discussing makes me excited. So perhaps a portion of this vocation does speak to me, tickles my fancy I think they say. There are sadly not enough of these moments in my work day. The data, the results, the slow progress towards making billions of dollars for someone else cannot captivate me the way I want to be captivated. There are too many numb moments in my day, there is too much resignation, there is too much indignation. When I feel an ape, granted a clever one at that, could replace me then I know that I must be heavily sedated in order not to rebel. So I am taking my TRIP and you can’t stop me. I am taking my TRIP, and when I return I will seek the frost on the windows. And do you not know what the Frost on the windows is? It is the moisture frozen on to the glass, well I guess it could also be the morning dew frozen too the crops too. It is whatever I want it to be, a frenzy or a quiet sunrise, or a galactic storm, it could be me under the apple tree.That is what I will seek avocation and vocation enjoined as one. Forgive my plagiarizing heart I am but a tramp with no real creative skill I steal freely from other creativity, and this gives me joy. So when I return from my TRIP I will seek only to fuse together, to enjoin, to enjoy, joy!

Word on the street is pinko’s closing so this is my last post, Duvel is a beer, Willem is a bird, the piedigger is Heidegger and his favorite character is Dasein - which I mistransbliterate, Dehsihn.  The germ-man is Nietzsche, and best read on an empty stomach with ‘Strangers’ by the Kinks playing in the background.

…and slowly learning
to believe that you can’t
listen to DCfC because
AnCo and Yea make much more
well-informed music I
open the piedigger to a
random page and he says
Uncanniness reveals itself
authentically in the basic
state-of-mind of anxiety
and so I begin to wonder
well if I don’t feel
anxious listening to these
affirmative bands am I
then feeling less uncanny,
and thus being less
authentic, and is enjoyment
had at the price of honest
prurience, and is it Duvel,
is it Duvel, is it Duvel

Drivel.  Better to have the
split than be a well-formed
ego.  Better to h-a-l-v-e than to
be.  And so if I enjoy now
and then this is better than
to be, being
always anxious, better
to enjoy half the time and
ignore the rest, better to
enjoy and never rest, better
to be always talking and
listening and do I have the
same shirt as him and
let’s just go out and forget
who we are, forget who we be,
always and again.

But on the page before
the piedigger italicizes
In conscience
Days Inn calls itself.  But
I’m forgetting I’m not going
to remember and so look
at all these dutch about
their days going on call,
calling on one another, topping
up and losing their cells
in the cancer of a late night
and who’s to
say oblivion isn’t good
for the health.  Doctors
on their pagers and on
the same page the piedigger
says The call comes
from me and yet from
beyond me, gosh this is a
good random page, you were
expecting him and yet
you weren’t and then
your pants rumble in
more ways than one and
you perk I mean pick up.
From and from beyond
me I see canals lined
with houseboats and all
the little Willems speckling
the trees, doting on their
feathers, and I sigh.
This book is too goddam
much, I think, as the
lady next to me hangs
up and drags her cig and
I look down to read
Indeed the call is precisely
something which we ourselves
have neither planned nor
prepared for, nor voluntarily
performed; and of course it’s
not cells but the goddam
conscience he’s talking about,
he’s talking about the calling
that comes from me and yet from
beyond me I can see
the billboards for a beer
I recognize but dislike,
Duvel is so much sweeter,
Duvel is so much lighter, he
is mine and no one else
has hardly ever heard of
him I have him any
place I can.

I do not wish to confuse
you but can you not
see.  I am incapable of
sitting still, and the germ-
man says he likes brief
habits and so do I,
and so do you so let’s
go and forget who we do
you really care, does anyone,
it’s all going to shit anyway
so what’s the difference
if we and that one there
yes I like her, don’t
you Duvel, don’t you, get
into me and let’s follow
and maybe something will
happen, forget the goddam
morose piedigger, forget
morose, get verbose, get into
me and let’s follow, she’s
going to the park, they all
go to the park and even
if she’s not I will and
it will be warm there,
sunny and sweet, sweet and
simple as a Days Inn
and I will sleep and
she will come to me and I
won’t have to remember
to forget and get into me
Duvel, get in Duvel, get in, get in . . . .

Hi Pinkos

I have not abandoned you.  I’ve just been in my own hot little world.  I’ll be back in the States in June!  I can’t wait for all your air conditioners and cheese.

I’ve got a first draft of this thing .  I think of it as an Imbriglio-style nonfiction.  I don’t know if it’s interesting, if it’s worth reading, but at least it exists, justifying my year–which I felt like I needed.

much love