Slow Day At The Office

It had nothing to do with drugs, the F word or being cool, and everything to do with the fact that Thompson never lost his sense of appropriate outrage, never fell into the trap of accepting that moral compromise was somehow a sign of growth and adulthood.
-Matt Taibbi’s Introduction to the 40th Anniversary Edition of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson

Nothing on climate change, nothing on poverty, nothing on ending the war in Afghanistan, nothing on banks, on housing, on education, on campaign finance, health care, racial injustice….
–Jeffrey St Clair on the Presidential Debates on Wednesday 

Welcome back moWelcome back motherfucker.  ‘Tis I, the bitter and grizzled one.  I’m sitting here sipping iced coffee with a bum leg amidst piles of poetry, calendars, lists and Hunter Thompson texts.  I just finished re-reading Generation of Swine and I’m a quarter way through Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72.  I don’t have a damn thing to say about what was going down on just about every TV set in the country last night. To the disappointment and chagrin of every hard working and earnest participant in this thing we call democracy I am not voting on November 8.   One less voice oughtn’t tip the scales, right Brother? The way some of you are carrying on, my silence can only improve the landscape, or at least afford me the peace of mind to get these 600 words written and posted up at Going For The Throat.

The psoas is cranked tight.  11 days on shift as a caregiver has fucked me.  I take hot baths and do what Yoga I can. Sessions with the lovely Cecily coupled with long bouts on my back have been the sum total of my time off.  I stepped out to see Turning Tricks With The Darlings chop a man’s dick off onstage last night at Bedpost Confessions; and with these scant hours before my Third Thursday at House Wine tonight, I’ll try and get to the kernel of it.  The Wisdom, as Dr. Thompson has eloquently referred to it. The reason, the meaning, the gist and the thrust–the why if not the how.
Truth is I can’t tell you nothin, man.  I mean I just spent 296 words telling you how I’m gonna come through with 300 more, and just as I set that up and build enough tension and thrust around the thing, I tell you I’ve got nothing.  That I’m laid up in between gigs and the day job with a bum leg and an anger problem. That I couldn’t give less of a fuck about the dog and pony of Presidential politics, I’m behind deadline on the next book, I should’ve been in Portland by now and without drugs or alcohol and the cigarette I need so fucking bad right now—the only thing I can do is write you.

Oh but what a blessing, eh good Reader?  That what’s wrong with me is what’s right with me.  That anger and anxiety, lust and greed and spiritual poverty is what spins the wheel of dharma round.  That I’m totally gone and halfway to nowhere and I don’t mind standing at the back of the theater, dressed in black and sipping seltzer.  I’m the King of Irish Goodbyes and don’t mind being alone for long swathes of time. I’m a freak and you’re a freak and we’re all freaks in this Circus of Life&Death—except for squares who are far more vested in a rigged game of Presidential Politics than their own mythology.  I feel like I’m going to want be sober for what comes next. Life is the strangest trip and I don’t want to miss a thing. The dark can take its turns, the job can take its pound of flesh, and the TVs can blare blue light into every house and home as Autumn in America rages and we find what little love there is and dare to give it all.

That’s all it is.  This blog. You, me.  This thing we got is a torch.  Thanks for carrying it. See you next Thursday motherfucker.

Trainer, Going For The Throat
Austin TX-Nationwide

Dharma…it has to do with one’s life calling. It seems that many people either get way off-track or come close but no cigar. Few actually hit it right on. I’m not necessarily talking about the ‘dream job’. It’s nice to be able to monetize a passion, but there’s often a compromise that happens there.

It’s bigger than that. It’s the burning desire that drives you… its the process of it, the feeling you get from it, it’s all that good stuff you’d do if money, situation, practicality and laziness were not an obstacle.  All of it.

I feel like you have to persistently and tirelessly head in the direction of your Dharma, always. You might feel depressed and unfulfilled if you don’t. Sometimes that can be suppressed and sometimes you have what I call a “self-correction moment”-a midlife crisis, a Saturn Return, a meltdown, or just a big, bold-as-fuck life changing decision. The decision has to be to move toward your Dharma.   It has to be. 
-Brother Chris, from out on the road somewhere in the Pacific Northwest