Travis Besecker's Blog: Apocalypse Coming, page 26

Sensory Deprivation...

Off the grid. Among the shadows. Under the stairs. Behind the scenes. In the wind.

I haven’t been here. I haven’t been there. I really haven’t been anywhere.

I haven’t unfollowed or forgotten anyone. I’m not pissed or done. I’m just not here. No hearts and no stars. It doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about this place or you. It just means I haven’t been up to the task. It takes a lot to push off of the wall and step out onto the dance floor these days. I’ve been minding the punchbowl at best but more likely sitting in the car with the keys in the ignition trying to decide whether to go into the gym or just drive back home.

I start to post. I start to read. It just seems to0 overwhelming so I stop.

There’s a turning point. Sometimes it’s a climax. Sometimes it’s a tragedy or trauma unlike any other. The death of a loved one, the loss of a close friend, financial upheaval, a life changing mistake, an accident, a near death experience, an addiction, rehab, an intervention, a progressive building or even a slow decent to rock bottom. Once that moment is reached and realized, everything changes. All that was once important becomes meaningless and pointless in turn. It sounds like depression but it’s not. Not exactly.

It’s the moment in the story where the main character discovers that the murder he’s been out to avenge was really an accident caused by his little sister and all of the rage he’s been carrying ready to deliver in blood and violence is suddenly moot. It’s the death of his best friend by his own unknowing innocent hands. It’s that moment when Thomas Jane shoots his own son in the head to find out moments later it was a mistake, that the top secret factions of the military were seconds behind him clearing a path to salvation…

Sensory deprivation. It’s easier to avoid all contact and steer clear of confrontation or interaction than it is to take a deep breath and give it a shot.

I really want one of those chambers. Can you will yourself into a coma?

One last thought… who in their right mind would believe that Ana Steele’s VW “Wanda” was worth $24,000? I mean, seriously. Talk about unrealistic. Totally ruined the whole thing for me.

soon.sorta.

soon.

sorta.

Photo

ARB

ARB

"Damned"

an excerpt by Chuck Palahniuk

      Archer comes to an abrupt stop, and I collide with his legs. Not saying a word, he stands looking down on a grave, the stone carved with a picture of a sleeping lamb, engraved with two dates only a year apart. “My sister,” Archer says. “She must’ve gone to Heaven, because I ain’t ever seen her.”

      Beside the grave a second stone bears the name Archibald Merlin Archer.

      “Me,” says Archer, tapping the second stone with the toe of his boot.

      We stand there, silent. The moon hovers, throwing a weak light over the scene around us, countless headstones spread in every direction. Moonlit grass covers the ground. Uncertain how to respond, I study Archer’s face for clues. The moonlight glows blue in his Mohawk and glints silvery off his safety pin. Finally, I say, “Your name was Archie Archer?”

      Archer says, “Don’t make me punch your lights out.”

      The night after his baby sister was buried, Archer explains how he’d returned to the grave site. That night a storm was rolling in, pushing along thunderclouds, so Archer had hurried to shoplift a spray bottle of herbicide, the aerosol kind used to kill weeds and grass. He’d spritzed his motorcycle boots until the leather was sodden, and then walked to the newly mounded grave. Once there, his boots squishing and squirting poison with every step, Archer had done a primitive shuffle, a rain dance in the last hour before the storm would hit. He’d pirouetted and leaped. His leather jacket flapping, he’d cursed, craning his neck and rolling his eyes. Stomping his toxic feet, Archer had ranted and bellowed, bounding and capering in the growing onslaught of wind. With the storm building, he’d pranced and cavorted and gamboled. He’d raved and howled. As the first raindrops touched his face, Archer had felt the air surrounding him crackle with static electricity. His blue hair had stood to its full, straight-up height, and the safety pin in his cheek had sparked and vibrated.

      A white finger of light had zigzagged down from Heaven, Archer says, and his whole body had cooked around the oversize safety pin. “Right here,” he says, standing beside his sister’s tombstone, on the spot which would become his own grave. He smirks and says, “What a rush.”

      In that swath of mown grass extending over a dozen graves in either direction, that allèe, a ghost of Archer’s dance steps still lingers. There, a new generation of grass, greener, softer, like the first fresh blades grown to cover a battlefield, this new grass traces every toxic footstep Archer left before being struck down by lightning. Everywhere he’d stomped his poisoned boots, he says, the grass had died, and it was only now growing back, reseeded, to erase his late-night choreography.

      There, only days after he’d been rendered a giant heretical, sacrilegious shish kebab skewered around his own red-hot piercing, in time for his own funeral, his final words had already surfaced as poisoned yellow letters clearly legible in the manicured green. Even as the pallbearers bore his casket to the grave, they marched across these last angry dance steps, this shuffling, stumbling path which spelled—in dead-yellow letters too tall for anyone except a deity to read: Fuck Life.

SUSFU

So… I have a couple of books hitting the internet shelves soon.

Children’s Books.

Illustrated Children’s Books.

Totally seemed like a natural progression from what I’ve been doing… ok, maybe not, but it made more sense at the time.

I’m considering them my personal “rehab ashtrays”.

“What are rehab ashtrays?” you ask.

You know, the godawful, pastel painted ceramic keepsakes that most Gen-X’ers turned mainstreamers have sitting on their coffee table outwardly reminding them of the horrible decisions they’ve made yet secretly on display because in truth they’re proud they’ve got stories to tell… “Oh that old thing? I made that in rehab in ‘97 after I got busted buying coke from an undercover narco outside of my daughters preschool during her production of Peter Pan. She was an adorable tree. Those were crazy times.”

Amen.

fingerbangradio:Fingerbang Radio - show 20 for your...

fingerbangradio:

Fingerbang Radio - show 20 for your earholes!

It’s about time we got around to a new show. Let your earholes embrace (and eventually reject) Show 20 of Fingerbang Radio. This time we shoot the shit on life, wine/beer enemas, hoarding hoarders and of course magical guests extraordinaire grace our phone lines. Social media maven @shiraselko joins us to talk about her many projects and @verifieddrunk gets called a twat to his face and likes it. Waste an hour on us. 

…and as always keep on ‘banging!

I was walkin’ down the street when out the corner of my...

I was walkin’ down the street when out the corner of my eye I saw a pretty little thing approaching me. She said, “I never seen a man who looked so all alone who could you use a little company. And if you pay the right price your evening will be nice or you can go and send me on my way.”

I said, “You’re such a sweet young thing, why you do this to yourself?”

She looked at me and this is what she said, “Oh, there ain’t no rest for the wicked. Money don’t grow on trees. I got bills to pay. I got mouths to feed. Ain’t nothing in this world for free. No I can’t slow down, I can’t hold back, though you know I wish I could. No there ain’t no rest for the wicked, until we close our eyes for good.”

Not even 15 minutes later I’m still walkin’ down the street when I saw the shadow of a man creep out of sight and then he swept up from behind. He put a gun up to my head. He made it clear he wasn’t lookin’ for a fight.

He said, “Give me all you got. I want your money not your life, but if you try to make a move I won’t think twice.”

I told him, “You can have my cash but first you know I gotta ask what made you want to live this kind of life?”

He said, “There ain’t no rest for the wicked. Money don’t grow on trees. I got bills to pay. I got mouths to feed. Ain’t nothing in this world for free. No I can’t slow down, I can’t hold back, though you know I wish I could. No there ain’t no rest for the wicked, until we close our eyes for good.”

Well now a couple hours passed and I was sitting in my house the day was winding down and coming to an end. So I turned on TV and flipped it over to the news and what I saw I almost couldn’t comprehend.

I saw a preacher man in cuffs. He’d taken money from the church. He’d stuffed his bank account with righteous dollar bills but even still I can’t say much because I know we’re all the same. Oh yes we all seek out to satisfy those thrills.

long time no see

After my last appointment with my surgeon things went downhill quickly. Really quickly. The last thing I felt like doing was stepping into the abysmal pool of hate called the internet. I entered his office with high hopes and walked out dejected and pissed. On the way to the car I had to cancel physical therapy and try to figure out how I was going to go about the daunting task of “staying off my feet and taking it easy” for the next few weeks. It’s not in my nature to sit and wait or sleep or relax. These are things I know not of. The following day after dealing with more disappointing news I left for a long drive south for a weekend at the Regionals Soccer Tournament leaving my phone on the table. It wasn’t a conscious decision to leave it behind. Not going back to get it however, was of my on volition. Two days and eight games later we missed out on a chance at the finals in Orlando but did win first place in the Regionals tournament for our consolidated bracket. The boys left with medals and I left with a leg that was now more swollen and in worst shape than the tournament the weekend before a day after surgery.

By Monday night the reality kicked in. I had created a Grade 2 Calf Strain being on my feet on/off my crutches coaching the tournament. 3:00am Monday morning I was begging to call 9-1-1. The muscle tears in my calf gave way to spasms and cramping that lasted until Thursday. A cocktail of pain meds, muscle relaxers, anti-inflamatories and Guinness did very little to mask the pain. At its height the pain made me feel so cold that I would horde blankets and just shiver violently. I was given stretching exercises to try and work out the cramp while not damaging the meniscus everyone was so nervous not to disturb. Being unable to bend or straighten the leg because of the ACL surgery and the meniscus trying to bond to my bone where it was sewn into place made the stretching feel more dangerous than effective. Finally, by Friday, I was experiencing a break in the spasms and the pain was gone more than it was present.

This morning I was given permission to start physical therapy and start to ween myself off of the crutches. It’s good to feel like things are improving. I never thought I’d be so excited to start physical therapy either. Add in soccer practice 6 days a week for two teams and let’s just try not to screw anything else up before I can jog around the block.

a not so great review

“Top Ten Worst Books I’ve Read” so I should be thankful it got 2 stars and a “not so great” I guess. Thank god he didn’t finish it. He’d have been really pissed off when he rises up and decapitates “Katherine”…

http://www.amazon.com/review/RJYN2FA61YEN5/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#RJYN2FA61YEN5