Cybernaut Chronicles 5

Ted Bundy was the first. Or at least, the earliest that I recall. The first serial killer whose biography and legend was downloaded into my brain. There are many others in there now. Jeffrey and Ed are playing checkers on a cloud while Leonard Lake records his next vlog a few metres away.

I tell a weird joke from time to time, but I’m not one myself. The most ruinous places are where my heart and mind lead me. To organs stewing in crock pots and bodies decomposing in showers. Cocks in boxes. They are interesting in that they are extreme.

Maybe if somebody had taught me to meditate when I was 5 or something, then the existential stain of me could have been cleaned. We can’t follow that branch of logic though, for it will never. Those thoughts forever blossom out in a limitless flower of possibility, of which naturally, there would be as much suffering as ease.

How old was I back then? 8? 7? It was a typically unusual way to learn about that most nightmarish of human behaviours. Also an interesting way to learn about sex. Dr. James Dobson interviewed him, and later packaged and sold VHS tapes of the death row confessional to his ministry. Another disturbing religious videotape from my childhood was Exorcism in Action, a film by Bob Larson, an American evangelical exorcist. He’s a hoot, and one of my greatest inspirations as an artist. Alright. Now roll those eyes at my pretensions.

Seminary

Nothing I've know prepared me for this

To fall prey to the touch

And still reject for kiss

-Seminary, Cold Showers

There are so many layers to this audio palimpsest. The high hat is the purest Joy Division. For a second or two I’m right there with Ian and the lads. Thatcher era England on a soggy afternoon. Girls are wearing shoulder pads while Ian dances like an insect.

Back to the present, and I’m still writing about the past. The guitar tone in the Seminary song is my kind of punk rock fuzzy, but its wrong for a song that uses so many bold lead runs. So its perfect.

The lyrics pull me back to olden times. Right before smartphones. I felt so close back then. Maybe it was just her.

Picture me. Go ahead. As you read. What do I look like? Masculine? Feminine? Or something in between? Imagine the shape of my lips as I form these words. Notice my teeth. Are they crooked or straight? Do I have an underbite?

The colour of my eyes. They are windows to the soul. If you believe in that sort of thing. I do on occasions, like writing. Details here are significant. My thinking is that if souls are real, there’s a decent chance god is too. Looking deep into a person’s eyes and perceiving every detail is a bit like looking directly at god, I think. So make sure that when you think of me, you think of the colour of my eyes.

If you're going for a realistic mental image, I suggest brown. Its the most common eye colour, I think. Statistically, my eyes are brown.

Other physical details are less important. Go ahead. Just let your mind spin for a while. How many arms? Cleft palette? The combinations are endless.

Her eyes were brown. The person this is about. That too is the only detail that matters to this story. Somehow paints the world in the appropriate colour.

There were so few good things in my life at the time. Of course, thats only my subjective experience. Is you saw me back then, around 2004, you wouldn’t know there was anything the matter. Even now, its just one of those, I guess, Lovecraftian feelings. Words won’t do. My mind is all a-jumble with neural static. Nothing coalesces.

Perhaps noxious is the best word for it. A deep felt disgust at almost everything. The world is repellant. Every day is a scramble.

Brown eyes and eye met at a Seminary. It wasn’t that bad. When I left, part of me died. I guess this is it.

I never really had friends much longer than a year after that. A person could do much worse, and I love them all anyway. There seems to be a lot of people in the world who stay in each other's lives regularly, for extended periods of time. Sometimes until death. It sounds like a tale from a parallel universe. Where in the multiverse are there people to see, who want to see me? That equation is never balanced.

It was her freckles. That's what ties this back to Playlist. That’s what I call her now. She’s from the first Chronicle. Won’t repeat her name here. I just feel shitty using people's real names or any details that could possibly identify them. It feels like shitty office gossip if I do that.

The Sun brought freckles to Playlist’s face. This song is like a piece of paper with a pin poking through it.

That high hat again. The humble crow. It's time to go back to Deathbridge. I wanted to leave that place in the dust. Now this distance between her and I has made my heart grow fond. But it's never the city’s fault. It's never an exterior force.

So long, Brown Eyes. I’ll always remember you as I drift through the warp and weft of space-time.

Its a winter song, Seminary is. Autumn works too. Drink something that will light a fire in your belly. Dance with your partner. If you’re all alone. Dance like...well. I’m no hack.

Fuck your values

Fuck your beliefs

You are merely reflections in the mirror,

Shadows on the wall

Nothing but cattle

But I refuse to walk among sheep

I refuse to serve among slaves

-Fuck Your Values, Fuck Your Beliefs, Avsky

Fuck your values. Also, fuck your beliefs. It ain’t Shakespeare. That’s how I know it’s good. Not a side of me I suppose anybody should see. It hasn’t happened often, but it's enough to drive me away. When it does, I finally see in them what I feel most of the time. They can’t see that we are the same.

Fear. Disgust. Visceral Negativity. Beneath my skin and all across my body. As usual, I have said too much. Always better to not say enough. Thanks Kurt.

They don’t know the half of it. I have been trapped in here with that monster. Forever staring into his hollow eyes.

Cuz girls like her never sleep far from the devil beneath the pale moonlight

Got one hand on the trigger babe, and one hand on the other side

-Cemetery Song, Dorthia Cottrell

Dorothy’s holding my heart while I take a piss in the cemetery. She’s an ethereal wight, sitting on a gravestone in the middle of the night. The valley behind her is filled with the warm sounds of her plucking and strumming. She’s right. This is where forever died.

For Aleppo

Tell it to Aleppo, who has been there for 7000 years. Bodies are blown to bits as screaming alloyed dragons raped the sky until peace returned.