Grim Jim Rides Again

If you are eating, stop; if you are having a drink, stop; if you are sleeping, wake up. Wake up your neighbors, in all the provinces, all the cities, all the villages — rise up as one and take control of the street.
–Lt. Kelly Ondo Obiang

If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles, then this is the year
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year…
-Martín Espada

…How’d we ever stay together love?
-Lou Barlow

When anger coexists with compassion, truth unfolds.
-Jenny Hughes Eaton

Welcome.  This is the life you always wanted, or settled for and anyway the life you have.  The fact you have one at all could glean you some gratitude, depending on where you are on the misery wheel, so let me just say I’m glad and leave that thought for later, if at all.  I’m a dreamer.  The usefulness of my dreams is in their intention.  When I was young I dreamt as a way of being.  I was innocent until I wasn’t.  Then I started dreaming to escape.  I’m probably about halfway between these two, I mean, you can’t ever go back, at least not all the way, but if you dream long enough and shake the dust you’ll find your dreams are not that far off and you can shape your life and your reality with their manifestation.  Or not.  The other end is that we’re just coping, white-knuckling it through the bare minimum until we can make it back to the cocoon, the liquor, the pill and porn.  Like I said I’m about halfway back to innocent, but would hate to find out I’m deluded.  I’d rather live in truth than with comfort and I know that hasn’t made me easy to be around.  I’ve had a hard enough time hanging with myself so I can only imagine.  I hated myself for decades and I hated you even more.  I was insufferable and not fun and I smoked and drank and raged obtusely and bit the wind down the bright avenues of youth until I hit a dead end.  Christ I’ve gone off the rails already, 283 words in–oh well, I like to circle before I land, and I throw these words down from the heart which means write first and understand later, if at all.

I’ll do any number of things before I write.  Without walls I wouldn’t write at all so I’ve at least bought in that much.  I live in a garage.  My rent is all bills.  It’s quiet as a tomb here in the afternoon and in the daytime there’s a wash of traffic out there always streaming by.  I find both to be conducive and necessary.  My fight against American comfort is well documented.  As is my impulse toward sloth due to the emotional drain of a world I seek refuge from.  It’s between these poles, Good Reader, I strive to maintain by writing every day, but hope to break out of, get off day labor or at least get out there more.  I just ended a months-long relationship with an enchanted woman.  She sees me as unparalleled, or, actualized and anyway–everything I dream up for myself is real, in her eyes.  She knows I should be breaking through and out there and part of the world as a performer and speaker, storyteller and troubadour, self-publisher, personal journalist and actor–and you know what?  She’s absolutely right.  I spent too much time hiding from the world when we were together, which sadly meant, at times, I was hiding from her.  Such is the blues and much is the damage.  Of course it’s a balance and all the other pithy adages I’d do wise as a columnist to use and wrap this awful screed on writing and depression.  But I’m not going to.  I hate being cute and if you’re like me you hate being told, so–what the Hell?

I’ve seen the light, Good Reader, and me and Lindsey are never going back again.  I don’t know how to succinctly explain it–it’s the difference between seeing and having vision.  Know what I mean?  For years my heroes have shown me that depression could be like a channel on the TV of the mind.  I’m not saying that depression is a choice.  I’m saying I am better able to discern now and at least more willing.  Simply feeling tired on Friday can result in a cheap and slovenly fast forward to Tuesday, if I give in.  That’s how it goes living under the spell and sway of darkness.  I’m inspired by my dreams now though, like never before.  My dreams have flown me down below the Tropic of Cancer, to sell books and perform.  My dreams will put me under the hot lights this month, doing a piece called Love&Wages for Frontera Fest.  It’s great work if you can find it.  For the fallow times, well, I don’t have to be militant against comfort but I know that feeling tired is a feeling, dig me?  The more naps I take, the longer I’ll be punching a clock and I won’t be getting out there, in the territory, or at least seeing about getting out there–with emails and letters, grant apps and gigs.  This is it.  The life I always dreamed of.  It’s here.  I must resist the life I’ve settled for and had to, at times–let’s be honest.  It behooved me being a jerkoff and the village idiot for a while, but I’m too old for the usual nonsense that comes from feeble minds and shitheeled bosses who settled and gave up, themselves.  You’ve spoken, you called out and you need me out there, in the hungry land with a valise full of volumes and a wild mouth full of reverie and woe.  ’19 is it, Jack.  Send me your address and I’ll write you and come to your town and see you on your street, motherfucker.

Ab irato,

Jim Trainer
P.O. Box 49921
Austin TX 78765