ZSG

Hey there

It's on sunny days that I feel like I know what I'm doing  waiting on the lonely. The luster from the previous night's rainfall gives the grass a white shine, and I can watch my perspiration stagnate in a block of air set upon this suburban nature.

I remember the rejuvenating effect of spring back when I was north of Cancer. How pale turns with warmth into blush.

Then breeze becomes unsteady 

and the temperature dips when a 

cloud pops 

up like she’s left you.

In space, no one can hear you feel it

Under the auspice of a knife straight through the bundled layers of an onion bulb; sulfenic acids stand guard of the sunshine, but it's breakfast

There's that and everything under a couple thin cotton layers wherever you are, the way most people clothe their nakedness, rather symbolically and somewhat practically,

but I find that feet are made of earth, smiles are like the blossoms of the brassica we eat, and we are better off unsheathed as we return to every reason that we 

It’s not every day that one can feel free from all forms of affectation, particularly when it’s hard to be polite about democracy. It seems like a virus these days, more than ever, and the will to implode seems to rage with the determination of a combover upon an ageing megalomaniac, with the strength of a perma-tan from the Floridian sun.

It makes it hard to ignore the inevitable burden of being human, more than a single individual, with a responsibility for the future (one’s own and everyone else’s).

It is what remains after I’m gone, if I can say that I did everything I could. It is what my miserable hands seek to write about from the miserable space that only a poet could occupy: powerless against the terror, but unburdened by consequence.

It is the freedom to say something, to say anything, to speak because I care and I still can.

It won’t be easy.

It might not be alright.

1991—”Kentucky Fried Chicken” officially becomes “KFC”.

1997—”Scholastic Assessment Test” (previously “Scholastic Aptitude Test”) officially becomes “SAT”

2017—”ZSG” remains “ZSG”, but aims to mean something different than before. Officially, this flourish of initialism is a device to tell the story of this blog.

It began as “Zarathustra Smokes Grass”.

I used to smoke quite a bit of pot. I also used to read quite a bit of Nietzsche. I haven’t done too much of either recently, so it does not make sense to call it that anymore.

But, boy was I clever. Let me tell you why.

I had a job in a city called Pasto, which translates to “grass”. Before I’d begun, I knew I’d leave: I was undergoing something bigger in my mind, transforming as I made sense of sudden patterns of enlightenment. The town would be but a stage from which to launch.

But I inhaled too deeply. I was even moved. Twofold, at night I wrote and during the day I created (haphazardly) a kinder existence. Insofar as I kept rolling leaves of grass not just to smoke, but into the fold of my constitution, I became a better man. I worked, I wrote, and, as much as I inhabited an abstracted voice on this blog, I discovered many reasons to break the coldness of my Zarathustra.

Quite literally, what I did was help terminally ill people have a better day as I blogged about art, smoked pot, and created my voice. That is the big secret behind this, the first chapter of my life’s work. I wanted to learn to be a more virtuous person and I thought it was funny to call my ongoing spirit blog “Zarathustra Smokes Grass” and have no one understand why I was so wise to keep everything a secret of sorts.

But now I’ll say: I never wanted anyone to follow in my path: it was unplanned and emergent—a matter I needed to let unfold and discover myself. However, I did want everything I learned to be of service, which is why I wrote impossibly figurative prose and eventually fucking poetry.

I left the town. You might say (in Spanish) “Z se esfumó de Pasto”, which, in good conscience, I was no longer all that excited to do, but it was necessary. I hope to have left a mark other than a faint trail of acrid burn. (I did...it was spectacular.)

Eventually I stopped doing much of what I did before. “Smokes” turned to “smoked” and “grass” turned to yoga, or a greater awareness, or some other matter I had no pre-planned initial for.

Oh, God. Maybe that was it—from “grass” to some sort of everything there’s much less distance than I’d ever figured, if I did read my Whitman correctly (like a motherfucking sensualist atheist).

But I changed more.

That voice I’d found in the space I founded became muted. I’d done enough, clairvoyant as I’d been, and enough people took notice. I told everything the only way I could, in the language I saw fit for my purposes. I was tired and needed to evolve, but I never quite ended ZSG nor what it could mean. Eventually Tumblr tried to fuck me over, but let’s leave that aside. Anyhow... Given how I’ve changed, the original, extended name stopped making sense long ago. This is the reason why I’ve preferred for the blog’s title to remain a set of letters open to interpretation, even after I ceased to write here.

Now, I find myself facing a different world than the one I met when I started ZSG, one where nothing makes sense. I find myself with the need to question everything again. I find it is my duty to be incisive, to evoke the ghost of the voice with which I told of my own spiritual coming of age in order to respond to the new. Half-poetic, but less mad, with a clearer mind and with a duty: this is how I return. ZSG is open, once again.

What will I learn this time?

To be fearless. Until I die.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX_Z1C3BsT0)

A ver. Voy a escribir mejor esta noche.

Cualquier comienzo (concepto profundamente arbitrario, más necesario, que aplica a ciertos momentos en el continuo temporal que marcan un “cambio” [en sí, usualmente la repetición, quizá inesperada, de algo que no se ha visto en mucho, o bien que se recontextualiza con la expectativa de resultados novedosos] o una nueva iteración de algo, como una semilla es el comienzo de una planta, a pesar de que todo proceso seguramente es mejor visto dentro de su circularidad o bien en su rol dentro de un sistema complejo — en el caso de la semilla, el “comienzo” siendo aquello que defecó un pájaro sobre tierra fértil tras haberse tragado el fruto literal del sexo de dos plantas, el cual ocurre de la manera menos sexy imaginable, lo que me hace pensar que la pornografía para las plantas es lo que nosotros consideramos budismo zen, o la observancia de lo que una brisa hace a un grano de polen, y lo que esto, en toda la profundidad del asunto, significa para el sistema que hace posible a la complejidad de la vida sobre la faz de la tierra, que sería el equivalente al pensamiento de un girasol cuando se pajea, y cómo es que esto nos une como seres vivos, y así ven como se complica la cosa) está lleno de esperanza. Pienso que puedo decir algo nuevo, o simplemente es el hecho de ser capaz de decir algo que burbujea en el centro de mi atención, empujando mi imaginación al limite de lo que podría ser dicho, logrando todavía hacer sentido, con alegría.

Así me escribo notas a mi mismo (por sea caso nadie las lea), llamando “comienzo” a lo que de repente me abre los ojos y me lleva a sentarme frente a un teclado con algo de urgencia. Si alguien lo leyera, espero que sea compartida la anticipación que se genera en el momento que uno comienza algo, o cuando se encara la incertidumbre posterior.

Y siempre me aburre cuando ya se sabe como proseguir lo comenzado, lo cual verdaderamente es el fin para un diletante, o el comienzo de la impaciencia, o algo así como un clímax anticlimático, después de que no se dijo nada (o, ¿ya se dijo todo?).

¿Quién sabe por qué tomamos?

(¿Acaso los aburriría con un relato de discoteca?)

Pasa el día y de un cajón sale embotellado el espíritu de un grano bien logrado, el que pasa por frío y del que no hay vuelta después de que se ha vertido en un vaso. Y soy yo el que ha fermentado, el que nace verde y se muere tostado, listo para un baño de agua caliente y reposo, finalmente en un depósito de madera, noche tras noche, por si me vuelvo más fuerte y más fino.

Se supone que construyo lo mío a la luz de todos; ¿será que tomamos para ver los silos destruidos? ¿Desvanecidos en humo y confirmando que lo erguido es etéreo, mientras el olvido es eterno, si lo alcanzamos? De un champús vino todo, de un champús al que se le dio tiempo, y a aquel, después de que los días soleados nos hayan bebido, retornamos

y si eso es lo que imagino, cuando, sediento, siento ese fuego travieso, ese anhelo insatisfecho que no se cura pero se ahoga mientras se aviva, que no escucha razón ni la domina, pero es la que mejor entiendo, que dice otro, que dice ‘otro’, que sed de otro

¿para qué remamos, si está revuelto? ¿habrá gaitas al arribo?

Hand goes where it’s not supposed to. Hair is lost.

A Google search. Body focused repetitive behavior. Writing is not enough by itself. My body itches. A back and forth between purpose and tabs. It’s like my scalp creates the occasion for a bad habit. This text is not a reflection of the fullness of my struggle.

I didn’t buy cigarettes on purpose. I’d smoke them if I had them. A cigarette would give my hands something to do for about eight minutes, and that’s better than getting nothing done. Watch that left hand. My right is less impulsive. What does it mean for a hand to have a say?

There are countless bacteria on my body. I should really shower. They proliferate around my nostrils, at the edge of my nose and my face. I remember how I worried that my skin was too greasy, how a pimple turned to accutane. Turns out they smell great.

How will you look at 72?

What if the world went vegetarian?

Should you shave your pubes?

Is ADHD an advantage?

Edits. Insecurities. Imperfections. Perhaps I like attention, but I do not care for norms. Courtship is an art I never mastered. Lying naked, honest and predisposed is more my form. If you want it, you can have it all, here, with no pretension. I be ridding myself of the tension of having either too many or too few thoughts.

But you’d like to be enamoured, lifted like mist shortly after dawn.

It’s too bad it wasn’t my intention. I’m too frail for structure or a conscious undertaking to inform. I do love the anonymity, the thought that this reads like privacy and piracy for none and all. By now it’s clear:

this is not prose.

(What is it for?)

Could you outrun a fart?

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyCn8IC5RpE)

I don’t understand effervescence, the meaning of hope, or the drive to touch a kindred soul with the same tickling warmth that I’m getting at the seat of my being.

Call it Friday night feelings as nothing remains from a Wednesday evening. Beneath the sternum, at the pit of my gut, a sense of expectation awaits its realization, but it need not be justified. It need not be rationalized or deconstructed too much, nor be made out to be composed of anything but the very human fulfilment of potential, that which holds that we can laugh and transcend the yoke of a day’s motions, if only by letting joy bubble up and take form.

There will always be time for seriousness.

But I must abide, tonight, by the fleeting grasp of the absence of dreariness, if only to dream that I will recover once happiness has vacated my thoughts. The antithesis of now will show on my eyes, on my cheeks, on my lips, and in my words. Given the state of the world, I will wonder if a smile needs to be forgiven.

But not now.

With love,

Brian Wilson and George Martin in studio at Brian's home in LA playing with God Only Knows.

George Martin, you will be missed.

I will leave the record intact (for the time being), as long as they leave my records untouched and forgiven (which they have so far).

Who am I to condemn the inner workings of a failing company? Particularly when it seems that kindness could stand the test of time.

Of course I am one of the many who’ve transgressed and made it worthwhile to copy and share, to post and reblog, one of the many who make this internet one worth repeating. So I am entitled, I guess, and free to digress from the system we are all frenemies with.

The truth is there is no place for my awkward gawking at the beloved spectacle that is my Earth than the one I’ve built: there’s art, there’s poetry, there’s living.

And so, on a night when I feel I must be forgiven for the joy I feel to be writing in a voice that is more my own than any I’ve come up with, any I’ve asked to be believed with, I return.