I would say to Rachel: "COME ON, cross over! Let's make an alliance! I'll look out for you, and you look out for me! Let's make a miracle! Let's reclaim our sight; let's combine and spread our vision."

Like the Invisible Man. Is he talking about Bledsoe, the house slaves, the ones who support the masters and obey them, even when expected to act unjustly towards other slaves? The smaller dealers, Sly, etc.? Why does she give it up for the "oily, smooth scoundrel", while choosing to punk me? Does she like them better, is she more sexually excited, satisfied by them? Does she enjoy punking me? --I was reading Coltrane's notes to Alice McCleod when he was "pursuing" her: I will look it up again but from memory--he talks about sleeping, at peace, at night; he writes about staying just, fair. Nothing Rachel is attracted to...

I would try to argue with her how taking Coltrane as a role model has the potential to make her happier than she is now, but she seems to have already made her decision.

I would rather listen to Trane and Bran and Cole, etc., and pursue their happiness, than participate in hers. Or maybe I'm just not cool enough to participate in hers. So be it--maybe Black Sunshine in the CD can become my next muse.

---

Coltrane's poems to Alice McCleod (from "A Love Supreme" by Ashley Kahn, pages 78, 79):

How kind you are to me--to give--the universe revealed I see / Yes now I'll go to sleep--it's right, sweet--I rest in peace / At night--

1-6-64
Good morning my Dear
Another new day. Another new chance to share in God's great story. {To be to give.} Don't forget to be kind--to be forgiving. And to be helpful--to be strong and just and to always be fair. Pray and give thanks. You are born again. Work and love. You are born anew.

In a cheap motel room on Aurora Ave:

She recites at great length (in a loud voice, is it disturbing the neighbors?) her childhood: on her own at 13, living with her teenage homeless friends in the city park, doing lots of drugs, stealing food...

I am lying on the far side of the bed, arm covering my eyes. I am becoming aware just how different she is from me. She is beautiful, she has always been able to trade off her looks. There are some superficial similarities ("I used to be afraid to speak up in class, even when I knew the answer and no one else did, I was too scared to say it out loud, then the teacher would give the answer and it was what I was thinking"), but she never, I think, descended to the same depths I did, because she always got approval because of her beauty, because she was a girl...

She finishes, there is silence. Maybe she said something about boring me, I don't remember...I do remember saying "You're giving me lots of material for my research."

And that set her off.

Suddenly her tone changes, and I am subjected to a stream of pure anger and condemnation, from one who knows they hold power over their interlocutor. She couldn't believe I would put her story online. With her real name! And her connection to "that band" - how could I be so stupid? Irrational, I was thinking, why is she so upset? Why doesn't she give me reasons, instead of heaping anger upon me? I am submissive, non-responsive; but I still have some fight in me at that point and ask her "What are you going to do, sue me?" She laughs scornfully, she has friends, she can do better than sue me, she will get online herself and publicly humiliate me, expose my life for what it is. I welcome that I tell her, that is what the internet is for, please do that! But she can do more. She has resources, her friends will fuck me up. Again, no logic to her anger, I am thinking. There is no reasoning with her in this state. And I begin to think that she is just using this online thing as an excuse for her to get angry with me, to show me she's boss, that I have to submit to her will no matter what the subject or the logic of her whims. It reminds me of other interactions I have had with females, with Tracie, and how much I hate that. She is no different! In fact worse, because she is so much more attractive than I, and knows it, and doesn't even like me as much as Tracie did...

It continues. I am out of arguments, have no desire to talk to her. She has made me extremely nervous. I want to be away from there. I'm almost out of crack, I will go get some more, to get away. I get up, load my last hit. She is out apparently. Did she construct this whole situation to make me go get more?

I blow the hit out. It is not a good hit, it does not take me very high, I am still nervous, my voice shakes:

"You know Kurt's journals just sold for $4 million..."

She is silent. I pack up my kit, reach for my coat to put it away in a pocket. I am thinking how unsatisfying the hit was.

"Crack is not the answer, I know that...Kurt should have practiced more...I should practice more. That was Coltrane's answer. He used to practice in the bathroom between sets, they say. His answer was in his horn...I'll find my answer...I'm not ready yet..."

Silence. Do I sense approval?

---

Several hours later, sitting in my car on 2nd and Virginia, waiting for her to leave me:

"W w w dot slashdot dot o r g, blue trane's diary. T r a n e. It's a Coltrane song."

"I know." A little too quickly...does she really know the song? The tune (I think I have it right) starts playing through my head.

"Coltrane wouldn't have done what you did."

I think of the junkie Trane, the one Miles Davis describes as "pathetic" in his autobiography, wearing the same clothes for days, picking his nose during others' solos, what about that Trane? But the impulse to tell her about that fades, she's probably right, after all:

"I know I'm not as good...great...as Coltrane...He's a...model...idol...I can only study him, and try to learn..."

She puts her hand on my knee briefly, then turns to go.

Because she loves all, including the slaves, she feels unhappy at their lot and the way most whites treat them.

But it is her attitude towards death that interests me...

"I am not nervous, I am not low-spirited. If it were not for you, papa, and my friends, I should be perfectly happy. I want to go, --I long to go!" (Chapter 24).

For her, death is a gateway to eternal rapture:

"Dear papa," said the child, laying her burning cheek against his, "how I wish we could go together!"
"Where, dearest?" said St. Clare.
"To our Saviour's home; it's so sweet and peaceful there -- it is all so loving there!" (Chapter 24)

Throughout her illness, she maintains honesty with herself and with others regarding her condition; she refuses to let others pretend to her that she is getting better.

Before dying she calls all her father's slaves together to bid them adieu, and they all cry and mourn for her because she is loved by all.

When death comes, she is ready:

A bright, a glorious smile passed over her face, and she said, brokenly, -"O! love, -joy, -peace!" gave one sigh, and passed from death unto life! (Chapter 26)

Eva lives in a world where the injustice of slavery is a daily affront to her sense of right and wrong. She cannot be a hypocrite, nor acceptingly cynical (like her father); she won't do or say anything to hide the fact that she considers blacks equally worthy as whites.

Because she is so purely good, she feels she has no place in the world, I think (I have no quotations here to support this (yet), but I think it is implicit in the text). She does not want to live in a world where unfairness and injustice reign. So her illness is not a shock to her, or a disappointment. She looks forward to death, welcomes it, because it is a place more just than the world she is leaving...

Well, I agree. Even if death isn't the Christian death (angels and gates of pearl, etc.), it is likely a place that is more fair and just than here. (Especially if death is nothingness, because that guarantees absolute equality for everything...) So I feel like Eva: I want to die, too, because of the widespread injustice I see all around me; and because of my inability to do anything to change that injustice...

(The difference between Eva and me is that I am not a beautiful girl and well-loved by all. Also I don't rely on scripture for my proofs of what is unjust in this world.)

I like Eva's attitude: she wants to die, she longs to die! She only regrets the effect her death will have on her family and friends. So she tries to prepare them, explain to them that she is happy to die, that she welcomes death. She tries to get them to see it is not a sad thing but a good thing. (Only Uncle Tom, I think, sees her point.)

In the same way, I am trying to show you, dear reader, how my death is not to be lamented or considered a waste or sad or whatever. Those are all just hypocritical platitudes that try to paper over the truth (which is: since I cannot lie or be hypocritical, and am not so talented or beautiful that I can get away with telling the truth when I see injustice, I will never be happy in this world).

Best would be to have legal suicide centers! Make your decision, let your family/friends know if you want, let them have their say to try to dissuade you. If they don't change your resolve, go in, at your leisure choose the method and time and place of your death. Make it a well-planned, peaceful, fear-free event (if that is to your liking). No need to tweak on correct dosages, whether someone will find you before you're done, what your family will think when they find out, etc. Of course you would be able to change your mind right up to the final moment...

What arguments, other than emotional, are there against this view?

I bet Eva would agree with me. (Actually probably not, because she is so Christian. St. Clare would agree with me though!)

• I won't mistreat her

   

• I have some money

   

• I can help her, if she wants, to stablize

   

• I am interesting, intelligent

   

• With the right woman, I could go right to the top

   

• I can show her how to enjoy her highs more: Managed use. Don't tweak as much. Go where you don't constantly have to watch your back.

   

• I am free, not a robot. Freedom has greater rewards.

   

- I am a worthless, spineless, embarrassing piece of shit

- no one downtown likes me

- everyone sees me as easy to take advantage of, gullible

- I can't protect her - physically cowardly

• I don't have enough money to make it worthwhile

   

• I am ugly and stick out like a sore thumb

   

• I am geeky and make her nervous

   

• I probably couldn't fuck her like she likes

   

• There are hundreds (thousands? millions? billions?) of guys richer, better looking, more self-confident

   

• I suck as a hustler

   

• I am spastic

   

I had a dream last night that raquel has left me: I mean, that she's found someone (the old bearded guy she's supposed to have been hanging with lately?) and the chances of us ever getting together have ceased to exist.

I don't know if it's true, i just record it because that thought came to me over the psychic continuum, so I wanted to record it.

Makes me want to work more on ai, to build a replacement for her...

I've been reading The Hobbit, for the first time. It was always too "popular" or well-known before for me to pick it up, I harbored a suspicion against it due to its having been read by so many. But having the time now, and being in the library so much, I decided my geek credentials could use some shoring up.

I'm enjoying it of course. I think what I like best is that there are no women (two-thirds of the way through) and sex is not a factor. Even when they're feasting, the dwarves and hobbit among themselves or with elves or Beorn or men, no women are described...

It's also interesting to see how Mr. Baggins gradually loses his innocence, starting with Gollum in the Goblin caves, whom he lies to or at least withholds information about the found ring of invisibility from, then continuing his concealment with the dwarves and Gandalf. I think the point of no return is where he kills - the giant spiders. Then in the Wood-elves' caves he steals food and devises tricks, and finally we read, after the escape from the Wood-elves (p. 199):

"He no longer thought twice about picking up a supper uninvited if he got the chance, he had been obliged to do it for so long, and he knew now only too well what it was to be really hungry, not merely politely interested in the dainties of a well-filled larder."

He's "broken", of his innocence at least, by this point, I think.

It reminds me of raquel and the other crackheads I knew. Raquel once said to me (in the Ho-Jo after our first fuck where I actually came) - "just like I snapped you, and that's a fact" - while talking about how her supposed broken leg had happened. (I think it was all lies, I think she actually was in the hospital for a bleeding abcess, but somehow was compelled to lie to me that she had been hit and broke her leg.) She - and all of them - take great pleasure in "breaking" people, they view it as an accomplishment, something to brag about - how many people they've fucked with, broken, how many "jugs" they've cracked. But did she "snap" me? Depends on what you measure it by I guess - if she means that I now have no money, no job, no friends, etc. then I suppose she's right. But then again money, job, friends have never been very important to me, and I have spent most of my life without any of those...I think she meant that she had made me, or had put me in a position where I would soon be, like her and her friends: criminals, hustlers, liars, snitches, cheats, performing sexual favors for their crack, etc. Making me abandon my principles so that I no longer would think twice about stealing, like Bilbo Baggins - those were the real stakes, that was what she and them really meant when they talked of "breaking", "snapping" me...and on that account, they failed; for I do not steal, even when I've been given the opportunity. I haven't progressed as far as Bilbo Baggins, I still think twice about "picking up a supper uninvited" or crack uninvited or whatever, and I don't do it. Raquel failed to break me. Hah!

* DEEP SEX

The sky opens its irresistible arms
saying, You will remember me
as deeper than sleep. The beginning,
for there is one, is always simple:
a prairie edged with trees that close
like a door behind you.
The path rises and falls like the body
of a woman, a man, then suddenly branches.
Stay calm, the sky counsels,
there is no need to choose,
you can follow them all at the same time
and here there is no such word as lost.
Soon you are so deep
reason disappears like a bird into thick foliage,
daily life stalls,
your son's face blurs
although you swore you would never forget him.
Is this the time to mention the man
nearly double your weight
who travels inside your body,
the exchange of breath,
or the tremors that mock the branch
where the flown bird lit?
If you care to look, you will see nothing,
but this you already know
as you know his eyes have deepened
to a certain shade of green you willingly enter
as if it were a place.
You feel there is no end to this:
you feel it as a violet sky
burning down the edges of the Earth,
you feel it pathless, rolling like prairie
past the shallow islands of the clouds,
out past every undiscovered planet,
you feel it as a failure of language,
as absence, deep space
that offers the eye no place to stop.

* TOURNAMENT OF DESTRUCTION
Kuro-queue Speedway

No one's here for the polite processional
and so we cheer the sudden end of protocol
when drivers rev their souped-up engines
in a look-at-me strut,
firing as unpredictably as love.
slowly the red sky darkens.
Lights go up around the oval track
like the circuitry of sexual excitement
waking the nerves. When the serious music
of speed begins, thousands
of cubic inches of adulterated power
vibrate the wooden bleachers
and every paying customer
tracks its course up his spine,
up and around the thrilled muscle
of his heart. Crazily
the cars blur sideways into the first curve,
pitching fist-sized chunks of clay
off the track, and obligingly
you lean into me. That, too, addresses my heart
like your absence when you lean away
as you must at the next curve,
the warm rub of shoulder to shoulder
gone suddenly cool. The cars circle
in dust so thick we eat it, take it in
to veil the eye, torment the inner ear,
and I think how we, too, repeat
our ceremony of injury.

Little wonder this place speaks to you,
you who are never anywhere except in motion,
you who cannot get enough of speed,
you with your habit of anarchy --
no sleep, bad food, the reckless
disarray you call home, no wonder
you understand the object
is not catch and hold but chase and pass
after the brief neck and neck of parallels
as again one car slips up against another
and they touch down the full length
of their bodies and race that way at breakneck speed
until metal tears like paper
calling into question an old idea of safety
and one of them pulls free
with only the track ahead,
blank as the sky, unbridled.