ALL I NEED IS ONE TRUE FRIEND

 

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The rich build monuments to generals—the poor to martyrs.
–Charlie O’Hay

Some of the tropes are familiar, but we haven’t seen this movie before. No one knows how dark things could get, only that, in the Trump era, scenes that seem nightmarish one day come to look almost normal the next.
–Michelle Goldberg

The only principle is power.
–Jon Stewart

Morning.  It’s the first week of summer in America.  I don’t know what the death toll should be or how the Police could go on killing us without our protest but it’s 92 days til Fall.  NPR blathers but under the spinning fan I can’t make out what they say.  It’s overcast but it’s always raining here.  I’m writing this at odds with my workweek, the daygig–I should get a jump on things but sometimes I feel this need, and I know enough to know, you don’t take the muse to the dance she’ll just find another ranch hand.  I don’t know if I’ve buried the lede or if I’m just getting warmed up and holding fast to anti-essay writing and anyway eschewing the rules of journalism until I can come through with my own voice which brings me to point.  Last week’s post was an embarrassment but also–a success.  I wrote about getting on message and devoting these channels to the cause.  But I’ve done little to no research (though I maintain the due diligence of a personal journalist by adding to a Word doc called The Week and to a raft of grudge and smear I swear I’ll get to as soon as I can determine how slagging them will benefit me).  The latter is their names mostly and links to their socials.  Hateful, small (white) people who’re on the record now in a WordPress draft and anyway potential stories, leads and jumping off points for the new news and this–personal journalism.

I’m offering a limited edition broadside letter pressed at the Austin Book Arts Center last summer.  Jet black and cool red ink on white stock.  AMERICAN CENTURY BLUES, from Love&Wages and whose proceeds benefit and support the ACLU in their efforts fighting for our rights. Pictured with link below.  That ought to cover the last 7 days while of course I was working 30 hours for the non-profit and feeding myself, trying to get a pool date and cinch my circle of friends to a tight two, maybe, though I guess one’ll work for the dissolution of the republic in the time of corona.  Otherwise I’m back at it.  Trump’s failed rally and a few days without murder porn have made me reasonable if not well.  I’m still thinking on how to further the cause and besides the broadsides and this column, and my monthly at Into The Void, the boys and I are putting up a wire and should have some stories and media coming through, an offering somewhere between the slough of online coverage and the armchair piss-and-peanut gallery.   I’m taking my own advice, Good Reader, just had to give it a couple times and anyway truly hear it.  I’m re-devoting my energies.  I could get down and twist titty with Lynette the scowling wench from Arkansas City–what would that do though but stoke both our flues and build it up in me to fever pitch a mix of rage and righteousness too big for this small room I spend inside or outside of 21 hours a day in?  Let Lynette live and drag herself for all I care.  Let them all reveal themselves and if they got stones as big as their keyboard fingers we’ll see them on the streets motherfucker.

 

Support the ACLU with your purchase of a limited edition broadside, letter pressed at the Austin Book Arts Center. https://www.jimtrainer.net/shop

JOIN JIM TRAINER IN THE STRUGGLE FOR PERSONAL JOURNALISM.

READ THE COARSE GRIND AT INTO THE VOID MAGAZINE

2031, JIM TRAINER’S SIXTH FULL-LENGTH COLLECTION OF POETRY, IS AVAILABLE NOW THROUGH YELLOW LARK PRESS.

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ARTHUR MILLER WAS WRONG

Ham and egg salad on white bread, keeps me company on nights like this,
a pack of mentholated cigarettes keeps my air nice and thick…
-PRIMUS

Personal Journalism is a hard dollar.  The toughest job I never get paid for.  I trawl my own depths for a bit of your time.  I wrangle my blues, and put it down, 600 words at a time.  They say I’m a writer and I like when they say that.  I don’t slave over the text at least not all at once and I usually only edit it for flow.  I’ll tweak a post though, throughout the week and in this way a blog can get better over time like wine.  One thing’s for sure, I get it down and I feel better always.  Depending on what’s eating me and how deep I’ve gone, re-reading isn’t pleasant unless I nail it.  A good piece is a good piece even if it’s got some flesh in it.  I suppose I cringe the most when I’ve exposed myself and it’s not even good–posts that ramble and confess and anyway champion me and my own ego.  Who the fuck do I think I am?  I ask myself reading over these types of posts, cringing until the window is closed and I can convince myself it’ll all come out in the wash once the book comes out.  The Going For The Throat anthology ought to prune out these…I don’t know what to call them, posts that say too much but not really anything and where I go on and on about me as if I’m important or worth reporting on.  Just know, Good Reader and best believe–I’m only mining for the goods.  …in the coal mines of isolation are diamonds of solitude, or something like that.  That’s from MORE FROM THE TRENCHES, written last May and a particularly cringey Hi my name is Jim Trainer and I’m an alcoholic-type of post.  As a writer I know it had to be written but as a reader I judge the author for flesh-peddling and egomania.

Point is not every day at the desk is a good one.  I sometimes have to sell parts of my life I’d just as soon not admit and certainly not make public and available to over 70 readers a day.  It is what it is.  I nail it and all is forgiven.  Even now, with a post on personal journalism as plodding and fucking ponderous as this half-over–I am having the time of my life.  Writing and reflecting has sustained me in a way not much else has.  I make communion with myself and you bear witness and it’s perfect.  Call me a writer and it’s love.  I wrote inspired by pain and after 10 years posting here, and 35 besides, I found no better motivator.  I wrote on break–Saturdays or in the middle of the week when I tell ’em I’m on my way in but really my phone is still in bed and I’m getting down to the grainy part of the pot, the light through the blinds is perfect at the desk and it’s flowing molten, neat and fine. Goddamn.  Catch as catch can writing, inspired by what’s wrong with Jimbo, has given me this-ahem-career in the Arts.  It could be better served ain’t it and these days every time I write I feel guilty.  If I don’t write on current events I’m part of the problem and if I do I’m taking up valuable bandwidth.  You know where this is going.  This platform could be better served.  I just need to put in the research and research=time.

I’ve got the time too, Good Reader.  Maybe next week I’ll get right back to roasting crackers and pig Cops, slicing and serving up my enemy because fuck them.  There’s always room here for it but we’re gonna need better fuel.  There’s something deeper than anger that I’m hip to and it’s health and probably a cleaner currency.  Something to help us run on for a long time that doesn’t blind us but helps the world to see.  The way out of the dark, Good Reader, and not some cheap, sugar-high whiteboy armchair outrage either.  Like I said I got the time.  I’m only doing 30 at the non-profit and I’m more than inclined to make kicking against the pricks my vocation full time.

JOIN JIM TRAINER IN THE STRUGGLE FOR PERSONAL JOURNALISM.

2031, JIM TRAINER’S SIXTH FULL-LENGTH COLLECTION OF POETRY, IS AVAILABLE NOW THROUGH YELLOW LARK PRESS.

…into it, brightly with pain…
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Well.

but my mind cuts through it all
Like a wrecking ball…
-Gillian Welch

The long arc of history better fucking bend toward justice.
–Lisa Konigsburg

I’m a misanthrope but also I’m depressed.
-Your Writer

They were like “We’re on your side and we believe in what you’re doing and what you’re  fighting for.”
–Amisha Harding on doing the Macarena with the National Guard

Austin is a really cool place for people that are not aware of the injustices occurring in the world.
–Chas Moore, Founder
The Austin Justice Coalition

Stop treating us like animals and thugs, start treating us with some respect.
-Mike O’Meara, President
New York Association of Police Benevolent Associations

There’s blood on the streets,
the streets are ours…
-The Blitz

I can’t tell you anything man.  Not what you know already and certainly not what you don’t.  The proof is on film.  It’s indisputable.  Medics and pregnant women shot.  Non-protesting citizens maced.  Innocents swung on with skull cracking batons and the rest ran right over with horses.  It’s got me sick.  Anyone reading this column too I reckon and anyway who hasn’t trusted the Police or USGOV since their first rude awakening to the de rigueur brutality and death culture of The America.  Deniers humanize cops but it’s their only trick in the stack.  Similarly they dehumanize victims and frame this as a fight between criminals and citizens.  The fight isn’t against cops but the cops are in our way.  Who they’re serving and protecting is who we’re up against and they forfeited their humanity when they put the badge above it.  Point is this is a war between the rich and poor.  Country simple, black and white.  Facts.  Black Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police than whites while their median income is 20% less (according to the US Census).

The last thing I’d want is to get into a war of words or contest of research, especially if you’ve already made up your mind.   I don’t anticipate any of that from my cherished Readership.  For what it’s worth my record stands as staunchly anti-authoritarian and pro-working class. Sides are drawn and this is a good fight.  I haven’t felt more alive or inclined to take to the streets since marching in Philly for Mumia in ’98.  There’s a cynicism that happens to idealists, Oscar Wilde said it better, but I’ve had the option to hide out and make my way in the underground.  Truth is I owe it all to my heroes for showing me the way and to all of you when I got there.  I’m still getting there.  Personal journalism was my way of crassly staying on brand but also writing here and at Into The Void was and still is my refuge.  Even now, choppers still circling overhead, them banging out some millionaire’s new construction next door, some other millionaire’s kids whining from their jungle gym on the other side and having to throw this Dell on the desk, jump up and just make it to the john to piss blood out my ass–writing is how I’m dealing.

My worries are real but few.  I’m fed.  I’ve walls and a bed.  Truth is I’m living down a decades-old trauma, far from recovering though I do make strides.  I’m doing what you do if you can do it–you take your lumps and your savings, take the pay they’re giving and make home, play nice and insulate yourself as much as you humanly can from the people and culture of this country.  They’ve got us fighting them and I don’t mind.  I never cared for bullies.  Truth is our anger is needed elsewhere so I don’t waste too much time on those crackers and uniform fetishists anyway.  I commit personal journalism because it needs to be told at the street level.  I like it in the underground, it’s quiet mostly, but lately living this way has only got me sick.  Maybe I’ve lost you, maybe this post isn’t anything but whiteboy complaint and, so–before I get back to work on the day gig I’d like to go on the record saying I never liked cops.  I never will and I never realized how much the USGOV did for me until it didn’t.  Let’s be clear this is a 20-year old problem and we all know who we are and what we’re doing here.  Sides have been drawn and I’m glad.  It’s never been clearer.  They make me sick and y’all make me so proud.  See you on the streets motherfucker.

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13 12

What if you had the opportunity to take away people from this place?
–Andrew Farnsworth 

How they’re named after the fact of their fast deaths…
–Jihyun Yun

Life is imitating the wrong art.
–Henry Nagle

Felton Pilot, producer of MC Hammer, the lead singer and trombone player told me…You have something.  Never quit show business.  You are going to make it.  
-Kolob Harvest

It’s possible I’m being ironic.  I’m not quite sure anymore.
–Brian Rihlmann

I hope the city doesn’t burn down tonight.
–Don Bajema

Despite the fact that I use patterns and certain color combinations in my artwork, I am not a believer in, or follower of, bullshit.  
–Justin Duerr

He is my President.❤🇺🇸💯
-Stephanie Casey

Blind obedience, congratulations.
-Jason Dikes

PHOTO BY SARAH H. BLOOM

I hate writing so close to deadline.  I’m liable to pop off about how a dead cop is a good start or that if you’re still behind this administration there can’t be any appeals to your sense of reason.  Willfully ignorant is generous though probably dumb as dogshit and racist and anyway unwilling to see the cities burning, the old folks dying, the schools and teachers, first-responders and hourly-wage workers getting razed and ragged on a burning hot spit of the American Dream.  Nothing I can say you’re going to hear or that H.L. Mencken hasn’t said already.  Trump is everything they love about this country.  The police and strongman politics are why I left the suburbs but the city was no better.  What happened in Fishtown last week was just a Monday for them.  They might not have chased black people down the street before George Floyd was murdered but they certainly relished and seized upon the opportunity with the blessing of the Philadelphia F.O.P.

What a field day for the heat, eh Good Rioter?  I’m writing an hour before you’ll read it, in the dead heat of a quiet evening.  The truth is I can’t point fingers because I’m not out there and neither are you or anyone who’s afraid of getting the corona virus.  Consider that those who are out there, risking life and limb and at the mercy of an Army of Pigs, have no other option but to risk catching a deadly disease.  They’re getting killed anyway.   Might as well try and make a change.  I’m a horrible reporter.    A world on fire is what a true reporter lives for, why we’ve had and have great men–like Hunter Thompson and Cornel West and anyone who’s ever carried a camera like a torch.  Their words mean something or they did and who’s writing the new stuff if not some tacky lower-middle class cracker on Twitter under a red and black banner?  Why should I be safe indoors writing as the their bones break and crowds get fired on and gassed?  Why should I let the pigs win another day for The America, the news reels roll on without me trying to affect change or at least maim and hurt horribly the office of law and aggressors of order?

The truth hurts but at least it’s the truth and I’ve done 468 words in service to personal journalism.  It’s hardly worthy duty but a duty nonetheless to go on the record, here, and say–it’s too comfortable for people like me, otherwise I’d be out there swinging on them and bleeding.  What’s more this cause is just and they should come for us all, force our hand to make a stand and look a pig in the eye before we squash and shut this whole system down.

USING YOUR VOICE IS NO SMALL THING.

PERSONAL JOURNALISM, PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY.