Burning Down The House

“Dating is a game,” the cunt was saying.  “You’ve got to play.”
She took the cigarette out of my hand and sucked on it the bitch.
“So how do you win?  And who are the losers?  Where are they tonight?  Who are they with?”

She, as you can tell, was thee absolute fucking worst.  Last I saw, she traded in her minivan for an Acura, got back with her baby daddy and continues to walk around like her shit don’t stink.  Also, she’s been one of the biggest motivators for me to quit drinking and get my shit together.  I was in love with her, or getting close, but I guess I lost the game of dating.  I really don’t mind losing but ultimately I’d rather not play-especially if winning means kissing the ass of a phony cunt who sells medical supplies for a living.

We’ve all got our row to hoe.  It betrays my Buddhist leanings to hate anyone, let alone this much and for this long.  It’s been a long time that I should be far from here.  I’m kicking in my stall, digging up corpses from the past for another round of abuse.  The only reconciliation I can come up with between hating her and having compassion for all things is that after all this time maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about her, let alone rueing how awful she is.  My hatred is distracting me, desire is the root of all suffering, but she is still thee absolute fucking worst.

I’ve met many lovely ladies over the last 5 years living here, and most of them were the same:  self serving and narcissistic, coupled with a diabolical need for constant validation.  I should’ve known better than to try and love any of those broken birds.  The Buddhist angle on it is loving them would be hating me.  Ultimately hating them would also be hating me but not so fast, Mr. Bond, and don’t too wise.  Forgiveness of that scope may have to wait for the next leap of evolution-and hatred will have to end here, with me, the last Trainer.

The truth is I don’t mind burning bridges as much as I don’t mind losing the game of dating.  My only regret about burning the bridge is I can’t ever go back and burn it all down.  That doesn’t sound very Buddhist, does it?  I’m a writer, not an arsonist-but if I can’t come up with at least 600 words every week then I might as well set myself on fire.

I’m nothing if not a hard worker but my inspirations are hardly pure.  Another week has come and gone.  I’ve managed to dodge the bullet and stay the avalanche of self hatred that’s always waiting should I fail this quest and not live up to who I chose to be.  Self hatred is fine fuel, it’s worked for me, though it used to be hatred for:  him and her, my Mother and Father and them and that town.  Now it’s only me and this mountain, 600 words high.  Some weeks I ride the tiger, the words come pouring out and the world, having written, is a better place.  Others I overly personalize, I take you into the inner chamber or I dig up corpses of former adversaries and hang ’em from the poles while we ride silently together down the charred avenues of memory lane.  This post is obviously one of those.  We both know I can do better.

She’s still thee absolute fucking worst.
Ab irato,
Trainer

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A post shared by Jim Trainer (@goingforthethroat) on Apr 3, 2016 at 9:33pm PDT

Another Day in the Life of a Writer

 Posts?  We got ’em.  Out the yin-yang.  I’ve got a post written in thanks to the folks who made it out to the book release last December.  I’ve got one written in thanks to the folks who made it out in June.  I’ve got links, photos, letters and a hulking, 22, 000 word document called “Spungen”-chock full of newsworthy quotes and incredible things I felt I had to document.
The wasted summer shimmers on and I’m still out on the roof, jettisoning any and all progress me and the life coach have made toward writing smoke-free.

Tuesday I was like some rockabilly bowling ball, knocking down strikes of Lonestar beer with Wing, up on the roofdeck at Rattle Inn and listening to Robert Appel kill it.  Life is good but it’s not my own yet.  As much as I swore I’d never be like my old man, and as far down this artists road as I’ve gone, I still can’t shake the karma of his generation.  I go to the office.  I drink coffee and smoke.  I do work.  Then I blow it out drinking beer and shooting my mouth off with a good friend.
Ain’t living long like this.
-Waylon Jennings
Aho I have heard the call.  There’s nothing left for me to do but answer, head back down and live in wisdom for a while before I start up the next peak.  No one told Siddhartha to turn around.  They wouldn’t if they could; or, rather, he would only answer that presence is the continual turning within, that the path winds many ways and for the candle flickers, the flame is never gone.
I have sworn off the oft-penned self-help blog, thank Christ, so there’s nothing really to write or talk about.  There is only the next step.  I’ve already started this journey.  I’ve been called to higher and I’ll never live it down.  The price I pay for my coping mechanisms is too great. This much madness is too much sorrow and my days left here only become less, if not richer and harder to kill.
Throughout my drinking career I’ve tried to forget or somehow not see.  It didn’t work.  I saw everything.  I remember it all too well, and on soaked nights laying in bed it’s like a circus of catastrophe and a Calliope of things I’ve done wrong.  It’s a cheap fix that’s only afforded me temporary blindness to your pain, foolishly thinking I could fortify myself behind a wall of dread&apathy.  I don’t blame myself for wanting to turn it off ( or down ) every day of my adult life.  There’s a lot of pain in the world and there’s a lot of boredom that comes from watching you go through your shit and never get anywhere.
What has changed?  Nothing has changed.  This used to be bad news.  Not anymore.  If nothing has changed then I’ve still got a chance to make things right.  I’ve still got some fight left in me, even if it’s buried under the tar from a pack a day habit and usurped on silly teenage nights in bars with friends.  I’m not admonishing.  I’m not apologizing.  This isn’t a self-help blog, nor is it an apology, thank Christ.  Whether or not I need to be forgiven is a tall order and infinitely more or less difficult than something as stupid as quitting smoking.
Nothing has changed.  I have heard the call.  I’m answering it.  I’m also out here on the roof writing this, smoking and drinking coffee.  Just another day at the office.

All the colors lie
and I’m an only man
the lies hurt my mind so I think you understand,
color driven madness was all I used to see.
Living in the black and white
breathing in the black and white
being what there is to be.
-Henry Rollins, Black&White

“Up on the rooftop,
they won’t know if you jumped or you fell off!”
-9353

Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo

About the only good thing to come out of being raised Catholic was that it gave me all the reason I needed to hate myself.  Guilt, ablution, shame-these are great motivators if you want to be a career alcoholic.  You can hate yourself for not being godly or perfect and then punish yourself by drinking&smoking way too much.  Feeling like shit the next day is a perfect way for shame to infiltrate your entire being and the whole thing can start all over again.  It’s perfect.

I think I held onto religion allot longer than my atheist and iconoclastic friends out of respect for my mother.  When I was on my own, and after I read The Stranger for the first time, I realized that God didn’t need me to believe in him.  I could make that choice.  It’s been a dark fucking 15 years without God.  It’s been fun, too, depending on your definition of  fun.  I enjoyed doing the thing that they said could not be done.  I enjoyed burning it all down.  But I never escaped the guilt, the shame.

When my father died I met Bass Player X.  His name was Doug Kirchner and he was a sick upright bass player.  His name, Kirchner, betrays that he was a total East-Coast Pisan.  A real gangster, the kind of wiseguy you only find in the northeast.  I was looking for a teacher.  Doug told me that he had chanted for my father.  It really struck me that someone would pray for the dead.  I never considered that the dead would need our prayers and that my upright bass teacher would do that for my dad, completely unbidden, was just as remarkable.  Doug not only taught me upright bass, he began teaching me about Buddhism. 

Here is a religion that you are perfect for.  All you need is to step into it.  There is nothing to be done about the past and the future begins now.  The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra is that the future actually began in the past until it became the present.  And so it goes.  I know this blog will probably cause my iconoclastic friends to chuckle.  I’m not concerned with that right now.

I guess this is one way that I can thank the light and love that I have been a part of with all of you, and for all those who are no longer with us.  Being a drunk, while providing me with a surplus of material to write from over the years, just isn’t fun anymore.  The toxicity of my mind and body now only amounts to torture.  I don’t need these coping mechanisms or a crutch, and it’s simply because it’s not total War all the time anymore. 

We are survivors.  That’s why we’ve found each other, that’s where my love and respect for you lies.  We have survived.  I don’t want to exclude anyone; while well-adjusted, happy go getters used to be the bane of my existence, without War I’m learning to experience their Wisdom, too.  The fact that most of the beautiful people don’t want to look on the dirty side of life isn’t really a point of contention with me anymore.  I’m happy for my dark.  I’m happy that I survived.  I was living like I would be dead at 30 and it was because I would have preferred death over being that old.  Now I’m 35.  There comes a gratitude.  And a feeling that I want to give back, now.  I want to respect what the universe has done for me.  All those years that I felt like I blew it are behind me.  In fact, I can make the choice whether to blow it or not, now, and only now.  After all that War.  After all that burning down. 

I believe we can be set free.  I’m starting with these toxic chains.  It’s fucking ridiculous to be learning this lesson again.  After all the proof, all the suffering this lifestyle has only perpetuated.  But it is what it is.  I needed to learn that lesson as many times as I did and only until I was sure of the answer.

May we live in light.  May we embrace the dark, remembering those who live and have died there.