The first thing I have ever built- A bridge!

"Alienation"- (a random narrative) Not biographical.

"Sometimes I feel like I don't really know anyone at all. Not even my father, my best friends, my brothers, my mother. Not really, not truly, not like they know themselves. And in return it's as if they cannot know me either. It's like as human beings we are cut off by the barrier of our bodies. The barrier of human flesh. To me it feels as if the body acts like an unintended, unmovable, wall that hides something, and restrains of from really getting in touch with one another.

Desperate I find myself searching for a way to get around the opaque figures that prevent me from knowing my family and friends as whole, true people. To know them beyond what they choose to tell me, beyond what they look like, beyond what I can judge and observe, but to somehow grasp more then this outside shell, these personalities made of a code of transparent, censored information and obtain a real connection with the individuals I love.

Yet it's as if the skin, the muscle, the bone prevent me from what I am seeking. It's like when you feel so angry and hollow that you turn up your music full blast and yet it's still not loud enough to satisfy. Or when you make love, and though you are united physically, in a position that is the closest you can be with another person, yet the whole act feels superficial. As if you were naively expecting a new degree of closeness to precipitate like a chemical reaction constructed in a lab.

It's as if you can't snuggle close enough to your mother's bosom as a baby, to your cat as a child, or your boyfriend as an adult. No matter how tight you hold them you still have this irritating, discouraging feeling of incompleteness and separateness. Almost of failure. Like you are a lava lamp blob constantly bumping against the other blobs sending you bouncing off in an opposite direction in all your disgruntled fury, never receiving that spiritual moment of joining fully with another that you have been awaiting.

Life, day to day, even with the closest of closest individuals in your life is still unchangeably seperate. There must be something more, I think to myself, as I lie in bed at night. There must be some way to truly connect with people's hidden, whole selves.

As if trying to solve an impossible problem, I review each possibility over and over again in my half asleep mind. Amazed each time by the underwhelming, shortage of viable options to consider. The possibilities appear to me as if I am trying to travel past a massive wall, unmovable, with sides that are never ending. The only options available; under, over, around or through and none comes close to being the answer because there is not a solution to this absurdity.

As a last attempt I lay in bed bewildered and picture a body split in two. As a truly, sane, rational individual I wonder hypothetically if I were to cut someone apart, straight down the middle, if any boundary would be alieveated. But now, in my mind's eye I am frustrated to be faced with more solids. Organs, muscle and bones. It's as if I had expected there to be an empty cavity waiting for me like a treasure chest at the end of a long hunt. A white light, like a star, hovering in the center of the torso. Or a spirit, white and misty, flying out of the split as if escaping through a crack in a genie's magical lamp. Such an obscure image that you might expect it to be quickly sucked up by a Ghost Buster's vacuum cleaner hose.

A light, an escaping spirit, anything to unite me with others. Anything to lead me to the end of this lonely tunnel. To succeed in my search for connectiveness".

Read more >> Options >>

Mushroom Mines- Part 4 "The beginning of the End - Saying Goodbye"

"After three weeks I was tired out. Exhausted really. I called in sick for a few days with a chest cold and then ventured in again. At ten o'clock on my first day back I entered the office and resigned. Before lunch as Mary helped me finish picking my final bed I discretely informed her of the news. Before 10 minutes somehow every one was informed, upstairs and downstairs. At lunch I approached the watering hole where Tyler alone stood sanitizing his bucket. I looked at him in the eye and grinned,

"I'm so happy! This is it!" I cried. He looked at me confused
"what is it? he questioned.
"I'm done fool!" I responded.
"Done what?" He asked still confused.
Now that I was aware the he was clearly out of the loop I replied "Done this job. I quit. You didn't know? I thought everyone knew already." He laughed, neither of us ever knew sarcasm from truth. We looked at each other blankly.
"Are you serious?" He asked.
"Yeah. I quit at ten today." His big, blue eyes widened
"Whyyyy?" he almost whined, detectably disappointed.
I was surprised at this unexpected disappointment, but remained non-chalent and detached. I walked to the waste bin my back turned to him and tossed in my ghost gloves making him wait. Then I walked back to the sinks where was now standing, waiting, watching me.
"Well.. I thought about it a lot and I've decided that this place just isn't' for me.." The same blurb I had given my boss in her office.

We walked into the lunch room where I answered the question of why and "will you be staying for the rest of the day?" many more times, to which I responded to with "of course, I'm finishing the day. I'm not leaving out of rage or something foolish". I was surprised once again that many of the workers, though conditioned to such walk-outs, were saddened to see me go and would miss me. It was an odd feeling quitting a job, some thing I had never experienced before.

Saying goodbye to these people who had actually like me and who had grown on me was sad. Leaving the mushroom mines was liberating, but worrying. I hoped that I hadn't made a terrible mistake that I would regret. In the car there were tears and smiles, for freedom and for loss, while driving the long, curving road home."

Mushroom Mines - Part 3

"I kneel on the uncomfortable grate, my knees still bruising through they are cushioned with green, garden pads.

Charles, an energetic gay man who has worked at the plant for many years sings to 80s songs happily giving life to the room. Mary, an older women close to retirement does a little jig on her stool to his melody. When I started I thought she might be a grandmother type. I turned out to be have right, as she is quite two faced, both a grandmother type and a sergeant like lady. She wore colored tights, duck taped knee pads and a tool belt to hold her knife and marker. She has worked here much of her life and picks massive numbers of mushrooms everyday with lighting fast hands. At break she doesn't bother to remove her hairnet, the first thing I do, and she seldom stays for the whole break.

The rest of us work in silence until we get the call through the grate that it is in fact break time. Break is a somewhat of an oddity, and sort of depressing in a round about way. Often there is silence. Mary drinks tea and Charles reads the paper, while the others go outside to chain smoke. Tyler, a gay my age who is only a week newer then myself sits across the table from me. Tyler has dark hair, big, beautiful, blue eyes and a lip ring. He wears hoodies and smokes occasionally and never brings a lunch. He is starting a new chapter in his life at this job, as he is not going back to school in the fall. I hope that he does not become a prisoner of the mushroom mines permanently. He is a mischievous guy who makes irresponsible choices , though it is evident that he is a smart, good hearted, boy . He has a gorgeous smile and an honest, genuine personality, though I would guess that he would be very different with his buddies then with me. Burning tires, fucking chicks, blasting music and fixing cars.

Workers complain about poor people things; health care, taxes and past worker gossip. Tyler and I stay quiet twisting water caps or peeling of food labels. The workers ask Jacob, a younger, tattooed man if the baby is his. He says he things the girl is faking it. Tyler and I are only slightly shocked by this new subject that we have no background on.

Once at the end of a lunch break while we alone put on our ghost gloves and gathered up our stuff, I asked Tyler is he finds our breaks odd. He said something that has ingrained itself in my mind. " Yeah, the conversation does seem weird... but it's better then silence.. that's really awkward.. It's a weird time, but it's nice to just be picking mushrooms." He's right but it made me ask myself if factory work dulls things, kind of desensitizes you to life.

From room to room we would venture like a pack of dogs. We sanitized our equipment between rooms in a large container of water. As we encircled the basin of chemical I often imagined us as horses drinking from the water trough or antelope at an alligator infested watering hole.

We would work until there were no longer any more room numbers written on the work board and then we would clock out one by one and drive home dirty and tired."