--(y0lk)-----------------------------------------------------------------------
y0lk #120: "i hide with eternal blackness the unseen eyes of my soul" by kreid
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        hello.  kreid speaking.

        if you're reading this, you're probably a HUGE fan of ME and you have
WAY too much time on your hands.  so, this textfile is probably something you
just might enjoy.  well, probably not.  uhm.

        it's a bunch of textfiles on my writing computer, all written by me,
that i don't really think i will ever end up using.  that's it.  there's a
lot of material in this issue.  i would suggest that you stop reading right
now because you'll probably find all this stuff to be pretty terrible.

        no, you haven't stopped.  you never do.

        lemming.  okay, here you are.  the beef.  it all starts with a story.

--(john the slick motherfucker who decided to take dramamine)-(#1)------------

        8:32 am.  john woke up to the pleasant feeling of his current
girlfriend's lips wrapped around his dick, underneath the blue sheets in his
own bed.  the same sheets, coincidentally, that he had experienced his first
orgasm on, back when he was in sixth grade.  he had learned about
masturbation listening to a late-night radio show about sex, and since then
he had found himself unable to function without some form of sexual relief.
this morning, john was lucky enough to not have to rely on his own fist for
that relief.  in fact, john had not masturbated since he had received his
first blow job in eighth grade.  after being taken to that level, he could
not think of manual stimulation as anything but self-destructive idiocy.

        john had managed to fill up his life with unfulfilling sexual
relationships since the eighth grade, most of which were just barely more
satisfying than his fist.  but this was not something john was too concerned
about.  he wasn't a typical male, of course.  he did not get drunk and fuck
party girls.  he was always a one-woman man, even though he had never really
loved anyone.  but unfortunately, since john had begun the process of
expelling semen from his body on a regular basis, he had relied on it in
order to function.  the purge was not a gift for him anymore.  it was a
necessity.  and on thas morning, the necessity was being taken care of by his
current concubine, at 8:32 am.

        john was not very appreciative of this gesture of wake-up sex, but of
course, he wasn't about to stop the girl.  he just tried to clear out the
mental haze that morning had left him with and concentrated on the sensation.
he pulled off the sheets and tried to look the girl right in the eyes, but of
course, they were closed.  damn it.  the girls always closed their eyes,
during sex of any kind.  why did they have to do that?  but john knew that
sex was just as grotesque for him as it was for all the girls.  it might as
well be impersonal, but once in a while it would be nice to be able to look
right in a girl's eye during sex.  john was still looking for that girl who
would keep her eyes open.  he doubted that one existed.

        there was a polite knock on his bedroom door.  it was john's father.
john was eighteen, a senior in high school, and still lived with his parents.
fortunately, his parents had given up on monitoring his curfew and him coming
home every night, but he was still not allowed to have girls sleep over.
especially not in his bed.  especially not with their lips wrapped around his
dick at 8:32 in the morning.  shit.  john pushed the girl's head down without
removing it from his penis, and whispered for her to stop for a second.  he
pulled the sheets and blanket back on and messed them up so his father
wouldn't notice the lump that the girl's head made underneath.

        pretending to be asleep, john mumbled to the knock at the door:

        "yeah..."

        john's father intrusively turned the handle and walked in.  "hey,
john.  happy easter!"  oh, shit, that's right.  it was easter morning, and
john's loving parents would have an easter basket waiting for him in the
family room.  he heard his mother outside the door watching some stupid
television parade.  "you gonna sleep in all morning or are you gonna come and
get your chocolate rabbits?"

	despite the idiocy that came with adulthood, john thought his father
was pretty cool.  he hated to betray him by having a girl sucking his dick on
easter morning, but of course, john always preferred betrayal when it came
with pleasure, or necessity.  he began to wonder if the girl underneath his
sheets had a father, waiting for her back home with chocolate bunnies and
knit sweaters.

	"i'll be out in a second."

	john's father lingered around for a while, waiting for him to get out
of bed and start getting dressed.  but seeing as this was not about to
happen, john's father turned around after a while and walked out the door
without closing it.

	god fucking damn it.  john pushed the girl's head aside and crawled
out of bed to close the door.  "sorry.  you're gonna have to leave."  he gave
the girl an enthusiastic hug, and tried to avoid kissing her.  the
combination of his morning breath and her dick-breath seemed too unpleasant
for john.  he opened his window (his bedroom was on the ground floor) and as
the girl quickly got her clothes on, hastily neglecting her bra and panties,
she stepped out of the window and onto his lawn while she struggled with her
shirt.  "i love you," he said.  the girl seemed very happy to hear that.  she
ran off his property and down the street with her shoes in her hands and her
pillowhead hair and tits bouncing all over the place.

	john found his clothes strewn about the floor and put them on.  his
socks were starting to get very foul, so he changed them, but kept all his
other clothes he had been wearing all week and had managed to keep clean.  he
made some attempt at fixing his hair and then walked into the family room
where his mother and father were waiting.

	there was a basket of jellybeans and chocolate on the table in front
of the couch, in front of the television his mother was staring at.  he sat
down on the couch next to his mom and started looking through the contents of
his easter basket.  there was a twenty dollar bill in there.  he took it and
shoved it in his jeans pocket.  in order to not seem ungrateful, he made
small talk with his parents for about ten minutes, said it was a lovely
easter, and then stood up and headed for the bathroom.

	john hastily removed his clothes and entered the shower.  he turned
the hot water knob very greedily and indulged in the water as it flowed onto
him.  it was hot and burning john's skin, but rather than turn the knob to
make it colder, he just forced himself to stand underneath it until he was
accustomed to the burning sensation.  he decided to sit down on the floor of
the shower, since he was so tired from having sex all night and getting up at
8:32 am.  he began to regret not finishing that blow job, realizing that he
would probably be spending the rest of the day without any sense of
conclusion to that matter.  but he was too tired to be thinking about this.
he went to sleep on the shower floor underneath the hot water.

	it was about fifteen minutes later when he woke up.  the water was
still burning his skin, turning his flesh bright red.  he stood up and forced
his face into the water flowing out of the shower head and held it there for
about ten seconds.  he looked down at the soap and decided to ignore it.
john turned off the water and stepped out of the shower.

	john also decided to ignore the towels this morning.  he just put his
same clothes on.  they were already wet from being left on the bathroom
floor, and putting them back on his body was quite difficult.  they kept
sticking to his wet skin.  and the clothes felt heavy after they were on.
they made him sweat a little.  but of course, john was not concerned about
that.  he knew they would dry out soon.  he lifted his shirt up and clumsily
applied a layer of deodorant to his armpits, then unlocked the bathroom door.
his parents were still watching that stupid parade on tv.  so, in order not
to distract them from the television, he silently strolled back into his
room, put his shoes on, then walked right out the door.  "i'm going out.  be
back later."

	he really had no idea what he was going to do that day, but wherever
he ended up was probably preferable to watching easter parades on television
with his parents.  but although he was without destination for the day, he
knew, instinctively, his immediate destination.  his stomach was calling for
sustenance.  immediate destination: the diner, for lunch.

	this thought had hit him just about every weekend morning for many
years now, and he had always, as if magnetically, headed straight for the
diner.  the owners and the waitresses all recognized him there, but none of
them held any more than a formal, businesslike relationship with john.  john
never really built relationships out of recognition.  he just wasn't inviting
enough, and he was no good at small talk.  so, for these reasons, john did
not know any of the waitress's names, and they did not know his.  actually,
john did not even know the name of the diner.

	he came to that realization, not for the first time, as he was
sitting at the diner, slowly devouring a blueberry pancake with no syrup.  he
looked around the diner for its name... it must have been printed somewhere.
he tried to look out the window at the sign posted outside; that had the
diner's name on it... but, no use.  he couldn't stretch his neck far enough
to see the sign.  the name of the diner, incidentally, was printed on the
placemat right in front of him, and he knew that, but there was a plate and a
blueberry pancake blocking that view, and john considered those items too
important to move out of his way.  he would find the name of the diner on his
way out.

	this blur of thoughts carried john through his meal.  by the time he
had made his decision about finding out the diner's name, the plain blueberry
pancake was long gone, and there was five dollars on the table.  he knew the
price by heart, $4.23, because he had been ordering that same meal for
several years.  he considered it a great privelege not to have to wait for a
check.

	and he was out the door and down the street, thinking about other
things which he knew were irrelevant.  he became very self-conscious as he
passed a group of teenagers who he recognized, but did not know, who all
watched him as he walked by.  he kept his mouth shut.  it was at that point
that john realized that he had kept his mouth shut all day.  had he said
anything it all?  oh, yes... "i love you."  he had spoken.  it occured to
john that "i love you" could possibly be the only words he would speak all
day.  and to make this impossible, john spoke to nobody at all.  his lips
cracked when he opened his mouth.

	"eat shit and die," he said, to nobody in particular.  he looked
around to make sure nobody saw him.  he was nervous about other people seeing
him talk to himself, which he did not do often, but once in a while he would
blurt out something impulsively, and he would always feel embarrassed about
it.  but that didn't last too long.  it didn't matter.  there was motion in
everything about him now.  he felt like a train - striding, steadily across
the sidewalk, going nowhere in particular.  something would grab his
attention soon enough.  at least, that was what he was hoping for.

       ...

	no, nothing ever grabbed john's attention.  he kept walking down the
sidewalk, looking at the cracks beneath his feet and the sweeping motion of
passersby, as he walked about three miles deeper into the suburban abyss.
restaurants, ice cream shops, a few gas stations.  none of the stores were
selling anything necessary for living.  just frivolous trinkets and a few
hundred varieties of ice cream.  and at least a dozen families at each stop.
john didn't look up much, but he knew the surroundings, and he knew they
weren't really worth looking up at.

	as john walked on and on, he approached what he decided would be his
destination: the convenience store on the outskirts of his town.  he could
pick something up there.  he tried to figure out what he was looking for as
he walked in the door of the store and gave the clerk a little acknowledging
nod.

	john's eyes went straight to the shelf with the cough syrups and
motion sickness pills.  it was 1:35 pm, and john knew then what he was going
to do with his day.  he grabbed two packages of dramamine, then went to the
back of the store and picked up a lemonade bottle from the refrigerator
section.  drastic decisions were going on in john's head.  he placed his
items in front of the clerk, pulled out another five dollar bill, and handed
it over.  he didn't count the change, just shoved it in his pocket and took
his purchases out the door.  his stride quickened back towards where he came
from, his home, where his parents were probably still watching television.

	"i, john shepard," he stated to no one in particular, "being of
sound body and mind, vow to spend this fine day drugging myself up, going
home, and killing my parents."  he viciously popped off the cap on the first
tube of dramamine pills and poured them all into his mouth at once, then
flushed them down with a swig of lemonade.

	he was serious, too.  john was totally sane, and he was going to kill
his parents, and he knew he could never get himself to do it without being
intoxicated first.  today, something was going to happen.  he quickly choked
down the second tube of dramamine, drank the rest of the lemonade, and threw
the empty bottle and dramamine tubes onto the sidewalk.  24 pills in total,
this would fuck john up good.  he would be lucky if he could remember where
his house was.

	he walked for about 45 minutes, 2/3 of the way home, before feeling
the effects of the dramamine.  but when it kicked in, it really kicked in
hard.  intense gravity.  he could hardly lift his feet off the ground, but he
kept walking on.  he kept seeing people start talking to him, but he knew
these were hallucinations caused by the drug, so he ignored them.  he said
nothing and looked out at nothing as the world became less and less real.

	what happened next, then?  of course john did not end up killing his
parents, although that would have been a far more beautiful story to tell.
no, john's parents never even knew about their son's perverse intentions.
they never found out that he had taken that dramamine, because of course they
didn't test for it when they performed the autopsy.  the determined cause of
death for john was his falling victim to a drunk driver and getting his
brains splattered on the pavement just a few seconds after being knocked off
his feet by a white honda accord.

	incidentally, the man driving the car was actually not drunk at all.
he had one beer for breakfast that morning and was driving down to the
convenience store to get some potato chips for lunch.  perfectly sober,
though.  not much could have been done to avoid hitting a boy who stumbled
over his own two feet and into the middle of a major road.  the cops
obviously had a hard time believing that story, but it was quite true.
the driver, steve corbi, ended up getting his license suspended for a year
and having to pay $100 a week to john's family for two years.  plus the
government pays the family quite a bit more as compensation.  still,
according to john's mother, that would never compensate for the life of her
beautiful boy, god rest his soul.

	john is dead now, regardless of who was at fault.  in two years,
steve corbi wouldn't have to worry about him anymore, and john's mother would
be crying in front of another easter parade on her new 40-inch color tv.
very little sadness resulted from john's death, though, as he didn't have
many friends.  some schoolmates went to his funeral in order to get out of
class, and smoked a joint back behind the funeral home.  they felt sorry for
john, but for all the wrong reasons.  what they felt sorry for was all the
life which young john would never experience.  however, in my opinion, and
i'm sure john would agree, the only tragedy in this story is that it
concluded a few hours too early.  with so little beauty in the world, a
double-murder so closely missed... it's too sad to think about.


-(10/14/98)-(#2)-------------------------------------------------------------

        thank god, i've done it again.  i have slipped into a new state of
mind.

        i am apologizing in advance for a possibly reduced quality in my
writing.  in the past few days all i've written has had a tone of confusion to
it, and at first i was pissed off at myself for having fucked up my own ability
to write, but, just recently, in the last few hours, i realized what had
happened.  like so many other times in my life, i have, somewhat abruptly,
changed my whole mindframe.  right now what i'm dealing with, which makes it
a bit hard to write, is a completely new way of thinking about things... as if
my entire mind has just been re-tooled.

        all day today i've been thinking, even completely against my will.  i
haven't even been giving myself time to think as i sometimes do: i kept the
music loud, or i watched a movie or read a book.  but i kept getting distracted
by my own mind.  now i'm not going to bother reading anymore tonight.  the
next week or so is going to be a time for me to learn from myself, not from my
friends the poets & authors.

        so, anyway, i decided to write this little journal entry for myself so
that i could look at it later as i occasionally do.  maybe someday after i die
my publishers will look through this old laptop and find all the shit i write
on it & never show anybody, and they'll embarrass me posthumously by giving all
this shit out for my fans to read and find out what an idiot i really am.  but
anyway, it's not often when i just decide to write something like this.  i'm
really not a diary-type of person.

        er, anyway, i don't really know how to articulate myself.  i don't know
where to begin with things.  i'm really just providing myself with a little
note to let the memories come rushing back someday.  uh, so, what else to say?
the note today that started it all, the trigger-thought that hit my mind, was:
learn to overpower the impossibility of truth.  like anything i've ever known,
the horrible knowledge of futility must be abandoned, *even though i know it is
most certainly true.*  e was just the stuff i needed to get me over the
paralysis i was experiencing.  as an "artist," i need to keep pushing on,
and exploring things, or else i am a failure because my "art" will have no hope
inside of it.  and people, or at least people like myself who learn through
art, need hope in order to keep educating themselves.

        so, yeah, it sounds stupid, but learning to master the suspension of
doubt is the next phase in my journey towards transcendence.  a week ago, i had
completely mastered my own mind, and i was starting to become very frustrated
and bored with it.  so, naturally, i have changed.  now i am merely a novice
with my own thoughts.  cool, though.  i'm always happy when this happens.

        of course, my mind is not all that simple that it can be explained as
briefly as i just did.  i've been thinking all day, you know, it's more
complicated than that.

        it kind of sucks that i can't even concentrate on writing right now.
this, as i knew, is not coming out well.  i'm just going to stop so i can think
to myself.

        bye

--("A Reflection of Agony," I called it.  Pretentious kreid.)-(#3)------------

        Have you ever felt a change so powerful in your life that you couldn't
determine whether it was good or not?  Have you ever had that feeling, like
something's not quite in place, but you're not sure if you want to replace it?
It gets you right inside your bones.  You feel like you have to move and you
can't stop rearranging your body parts... crossing, uncrossing, folding,
opening, closing.  It's like you've forgotten how to sit or stand and your
muscles just keep refusing to settle no matter where you go.  And you know it's
all bottled up in your head but you can't force your body to understand that,
so you just keep crossing, uncrossing, folding, opening, closing, until you're
so tired you'd rather take the pain than move any more.  Have you ever had
that feeling.

        I used to get it back when I smoked two packs of cigarettes every day.
Yeah, it's like a nic fit.  But this time i don't know what to take to fix me.

        Fuck.

        You know, I brought it on myself.  I've relied on change my whole life.
I look back on my life and I see a totally different person every few months.
I was in a learning process, like a child.  I never let the child inside me
die... I always thought I was so great for that.  But really what it boils down
to is that I'm just still a fucking dumbass.  I still touch things, pick them
up, put them in my mouth... I always try to experience the world on a primal
level.  I always try to think of language as secondary when I communicate with
people.  But it's never been like this before.  This is the change I've been
talking about.  I've become an empath.

        I've always experienced this on some level.  I've always felt sick
around people that are sad.  When a guy gets kicked in the stomach, I've always
felt it inside.  And the only thing that's ever made me laugh is the laughter
of other people.  But now I feel that on a level far too extreme.  I don't know
what's happening to me.  I've always known myself to stray from sanity, but now
I'm really starting to scare myself.  And as I'm sitting here on this
streetside bench in this terribly cold weather, trying to act cool, I can see
the pain inside every one of us and it feels like nails being driven into my
skull.  What is happening to me?

        My friends used to call me a stoic.  One year ago today I wouldn't
even recognize the emotions I'm feeling now.  I felt nothing for years upon
years, because all I knew in the world was pain.  And back when I was a lot
smaller, like in fifth grade, I would take the pain and let it breed inside
me. I used to bang my head against my locker when I got kicked out of class
every day.  Those were some of the worst days of my life.  But then, one day,
after screaming at myself in my room with the door closed and banging my fist
through the drywall, I decided that it had to stop.  It was time for a change.
There would be no more pain.

        And I changed, just like that.  It was painless.  I just shifted my
mental state and I was a different person.  And as I was saying, I became a
stoic.  Nothing could hurt me anymore.  But unfortunately, nothing could make
me feel good, or feel anything, anymore.  I felt this way for a long time.  I
made other changes with my life, but this state of mind always remained.  I
always felt it was the safest way to go.  But a little less than one year ago,
that changed.  I made some really good friends.  We had good times, late
nights, and for brief periods I actually remembered what it was like to feel.
It really confused me.  I found something almost worth living for, and
suddenly, the pains started to hit me again.  Instead of wallowing in my
apathetic existence, I got to taking the pain and soaking up all the fleeting
moments of good feeling.

        I wanted to bang my head against the wall again.  But this time I went
and counterattacked the pain.  I went out and lived.  And when I couldn't do
that, I took four showers a day.  I was growing more and more psychotic with
each day, as the extremes grew more and more intense.  And then, something
really fucked up happened.  I fell in love.

        I used to say that love didn't exist.  I used to say it was a
distraction and a delusion.  But then, somehow, it got to me.  I fell in love
with a girl.

        It wasn't similarity or dissimilarity or sex or conversation that drew
us together.  We fell in love.  I don't know any other way to describe it,
because back then it was as alien to me as sanity is now.

--(something i wrote in hiding)-(#4)------------------------------------------

        it's another black night in my white town.  my breath and music are the
only noises in town now.  that's why i love these hours.  nobody bothers me.
the distractions are few enough for me now to be able to concentrate and relax
at the same time.

        today, my family had guests over for dinner.  they arrived at 5:00 and
remained in the house until 10:00.  i spent this entire time in my unlit room
with the door locked, reading by the fading light of the setting sun outside my
window.  i know it's wrong of me to avoid my family and friends, but i'm
afraid.  i really am afraid to interact with people now.

        don't ever let yourself become independent.  it is an absolutely
horrible thing.  you convince yourself that you don't need other people, and
make yourself so comfortable alone that you never want to leave.

        never give advice.  you will end up sounding like an idiot every time.

--(drunk on irc, for emily) (#5)---------------------------------------------

ωνω Starting logfile IrcLog
IRC log started Mon Dec  7 00:16:40 1998
ωνω Value of LOG set to ON
<kreid> read a book by sigmund freud and find a way to deny everything he says
<kreid> from that day forward, your life will be one big fight against
        insistent blowjobs and vacant stares
<kreid> look at yourself in the mirror, right in the eyes, until you are
	absolutely certain that you are looking at something so insane that
	it can never be controlled
<kreid> read every book by charles bukowski. become an alcoholic. connect
	to irc. start talking.
<kreid> you should become aware of the fact that the human mind possesses
	no genius.
<kreid> all the great art produced by mankind is the expressions of
	intoxicating substances
<kreid> there are two kinds of artists: drunks and dorks
<kreid> the dorks are never taken seriously, and the drunks deserve no credit
	because they are the vessels of chemical gospel expressing itself
<kreid> the physical dimensions of the words in this channel pleasantly
	distorted enough that i think you all might be saying something
<kreid> REVOLUTION
<kreid> new england bedamned
<kreid> my soul & my coffee is black
<kreid> that's about it
<kreid> mogel, y0lk is mecca and h0e is kansas city
<kreid> you guys are my best friends!@!@$@!4
<kreid> well
<kreid> you can see i have some sort of strange satisfaction in life
<kreid> it's granted by this sort of miracle
<kreid> kind people who succumb to my strangeness
<kreid> and say their bottoms are tingling
<kreid> ego loss, a reply to my charisma
<kreid> mesmerized
<kreid> but of course it's faked to satisfy the needs of my deranged psyche
<kreid> i still love it
<kreid> thank you, emily
<kreid> i'll always love you
<kreid> goodnight
<kreid> and this drunken monologue
<kreid> is dedicated to you + nobody else
<kreid> the end.