suggested feeding & shingles shots

Cell phone: distraction savior & charismatic apocalyptist conveniently contained in one handy device as a necessary frenemy.

Platform: marketplace of projected characterizations.  

Suggested feeds: zombie dodgeball.

Concentration: already-difficult trait made obsolete by technological progress. 

	There seem to be variants of insurgent feeds — capricious veins that swell up in black hole dimensions of lost thought, universally veg-searching for some algorithmic-trigger reason to be obsessively unproductive. 

Honestly, I just wanna saunter the network & get out socially clean. Unsolicited advice exists to solicit — I have enough other things in my life to avoid. I don’t want to be communally hit-on as well — I’m busy procrastinating. I exist to escape — escape my chosen avoidances. 

Sometimes there are animal-themed recommendations or popups of various musician-doing-a-riff clips. I’m not looking for trouble, but they interrupt my daze like those uncomfortable moments when you randomly run into that person you don’t want to in a supermarket aisle, then see them again in another aisle you need to cruise, but don’t, because Shit, there they are again, & you end up checking out less a few provisions due to ill-timed coincidence. 

Fightless flight. Scavenger survival. 

	I was talking with someone who said their meta-suggestions were caught in a wave of cat feeds — not just domestic cats in general, but seemingly mutant house cat breeds captured in some amusing act. As for myself, those particular kind of images leave an unsure mark on my psyche, but, full-disclosure, I’m also uneasy with the creatures from The Dark Crystal. I just have a standard regulation cat — standard as in it entertainingly destroys my possessions & regulates my sleeping hours.

I told this someone that my current feed cycle seems to be stuck on disaster footage: a cruise ship taking out a harbor structure with people either running away while waving their arms or pausing to document their demise — or aerial footage of jack-knifing semis as if a rogue drone was hovering & waiting for something viral-worthy to randomly arise. 

Step Right Up

This conversation reminded me of thrift store art I found years ago while on tour. Touring was, fundamentally, a way to cast a wider thrift net via the excuse of public performances. 

On this occasion, I found a series of recreational disasters painted on wooden shingles — another one of those stops when I probably should’ve bought them, but didn’t because, at the time, thought What the hell am I going to do with these? Usually, in such instances, I merely take a phone pic so I have something new to regret later. 

A little change can be refreshing.

	I’ve custom-titled the below above-mentioned passed-over pieces & followed up with a personalizing tangent to generously share within our small world:

Avalanche with Matching Tuque

In high school, I joined the ski club. I’d never skied, but learned they were yellow-bussing for a weekend trip to an all-night ski-a-thon. A gym teacher chaperoned. I rented gear at the slopes. When I turned it all in the next day, one of the poles was shaped like the letter L. I haven’t skied since — at least, not on purpose. 

set to “Come Sail Away” by Styx

Thirty years ago or so, a fishy alcoholic offered me & a friend use of a small dinghy. We took it out, neither of us knowing how a sail worked. We started drifting towards open water. While outwardly denying panic, we accidentally veered back just close enough to the beach to jump out, walk it in & tie-up somewhere. Saved by a fluke. Insert sundry metaphor of life here.

Incident at Boat Fence

When I was a kid, I was taken along on a few duck hunting trips with a waddle of beering patriarchs. We’d have to get up at 4am, drive to a flooded ricefield & lift the boat motor over submerged barbed wire farm fences. They supplied me a Jr .410 shotgun. My uncle made the shells in his garage. I only shot it a few times at duckless water & usually just fell asleep in the bow under a tarp until drunken laughing or shooting started. 

Afterwards, we’d go to a diner for eggs & coffee so they could soberly deflate. It was the only part I liked. 

	Escape. Survive. Repeat.