emerald isle

I’m on my way from Brick to Medford to meet with the Zabinskis for our intrusion into the European Union. Meet with the family to make sure I’ve got all I need and skateboard down to Burkes because he’s in town too. We exchange pleasantries and he tells me he’s going on vacation tomorrow too – going to California.When his plane lands he’ll be meeting with his family but for now his home is empty. Sean is on his way over and when he arrives we start rolling up some green. Burke let’s us know that Hoffdaddy is attending this little get together as well. I haven’t seen Kyle in at least a year and bug out when he arrives. By the time he shows up dutch has transformed to blunt and we go outside to burn. After the little reunion, I decide to skateboard around the development. After skating around I decide this is probably the worst time for the zombies to come for me. Making it home brains intact I settle into a lawn chair in my backyard: seventy degrees, no work for a week, freakin’ Ireland. Gazing at the stars I see what looks like some low flying planes and they are flying low! They don’t look or sound like planes and the stars in the distance seem to be flashing different colors. This one plane seems to be creeping lower and lower towards me. I go to my backdoor to let my dogs out but they don’t move – scared beasts! I run inside – can’t abduct me today aliens – maybe next week. Go inside pass out while watching Army of Darkness and dream of the week to come.

Brandon is passed out leaning against the window of our airline. Either I haven’t flown in awhile or continental is a sweet ass airline. Touch screens on the back of every seat with over 50 albums 40 short programs 30 movies and games. My brother is watching The Soloist on one side of me as my dad watches Star Trek on the other. I listen to music as I thumb through the latest copies of Fader and Juxtapoz. The touch screen tells me that we are traveling over 3000 miles. We land in Dublin at around 6am local time.

Eamon Tobin is the name of our taxi driver. He suggests some places for us to go on the way to our new abode for the week. We can’t check in to our room immediately so we ditch our bags and end up in the Temple Bar area. Eamon tells us that the best place to get food is at the public houses. As we walk by the different pubs they all seem to be closed. We buy some coffee from this German clerk at a coffee joint called Vivaldi’s as we wait for the pubs to open. I get a Bailey’s coffee mmm creamy beige.

The temple bar is our first stop and boasts the largest whiskey drinking collection in Ireland with Scottish, Irish, and international whiskies. We order a round of Guinness and get some pub grub. The urinals are just a wall you piss on with a trough at the floor.

We all pass out hard as soon as we get checked in to our “home away from home.” – it’s like a timeshare condo – located on Pearse Street. Rents have the master, bro and I sharing a room, and sis on a fold away in the living area. We wake up around ten pm and are mulling around getting restless. Want a pint! Its Saturday night, downtown Dublin must be poppin’. With some protest from the rents we are out on the street at around midnight trying to find our way to some more populated area. We pass one pub where a younger Irish lad is pumping his fist in the air screaming, “I fuckin’ love it!” We are on the right track.

Go into this alley with a bunch of people drinking everywhere and make it to the end where there’s a bar top on the right hand side. The brosif and I order up two pints. While waiting for that perfect pour I’m people watching Irishmen ordering their drinks. Gin and ice with an airplane bottle of Schweppes, no tip. Man with an arm cast orders a pint of Carlsberg and leaves no tip. Bartender lady hands us our Guinness. Nine euro is the price and I hand her a bill. She wipes her brow as there is a lull in the drink orders. She hands me my change and I ask about tipping. She says Irish people don’t tip but I can tip if I want to. I tip her two euro and the change. When we are out of ear shot of the Irish bartender lady my brother calls me a sucker. We walk across the alley to the other side of the bar and notice bar stools and tables real low to the ground. Some men are drinking pints with guitars and banjos resting on knees obviously done with their set. We place our beers on the bar top just as the bartender yells last call. I notice a myriad of different billfolds from the globe and see some American dollar bills. One says, “With love from Brooklyn.” A fireman’s patch is hung up from Spring Lake, NJ. We leave O’Donoghues and cross over Baggot Street to the bar across the street called Foleys. Order more pints and Jameson shots and take a seat by the window. My back has been hurting the whole trip and as I complain randomly about it Brandon calls me an old man. Some women move away from the bar and get up from some comfy seats. We steal the comfy seats just as two Irishmen are walking up to take the bar stools next to us.

Zar, an Asian looking Irish-accented man, is telling me that I look like Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords. His friend Percy or Sofie smiles and agrees as she hand me a cigarette. Alan and Killian start singing quotes from the show and saying Irish girls love Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords. I am in the packed smoking section of this random night club that our new Irish drinking buddies have taken us to. I’ve lost track of Brandon.

We met Alan, 27, and Killian, 30, at Foleys. They commented on our excellent drink choice, “a drip and a drop.” We got on pretty well telling each other stories, buying drinks until last call. We were looking to have a blast and it was Killian’s last night in town until he moved back to his hometown. Also, it was Alan’s last week until he was basically married – moving in with his girlfriend. They were trying to have a crack, as they said. So, after hitting the cash machine we end up at this night club that they claimed they have never been to. We are goofing on the place as they buy Captain Morgan and orange rounds. Terrible dance music is being played but the place has a pretty rad setup and hot Irish broads – the last we’d see on our trip. Brandon tells me on the way back at half 3 am that he made out with one of the Irish chicks after she found out he wasn’t Irish. Alright, Yanks.

Wake up, eat some eggs and toast and head for the city center. The rest of the family wants to trek about and sightsee while me and bro want to watch the football match. We split up and follow these two guys wearing Man. U. jerseys into this bar called Fitzsimmons. Huge projector screen! Two pints later its halftime: Manchester United 1, Chelsea – nil. During halftime we go out front of this head shop we saw the day before and I see if I can’t score a bag from some dread heads or something. My nose follows me around the back of the shop where one of the shop keepers has just sparked a joint with a couple kids. I hop in rotation and they tell me they only have what they are hitting. They go on to tell me the only shit they have seen floating around south Dublin is dirt. Some glue weed and some hash that’s only like 2% THC. I don’t really believe them but it could be just old stoner paranoia. End up buying this legal high stuff they sell in the shop called Smoke Plus. I go to find brosif sifting through vinyl in the record shop next door not before one of the kids I was smokin’ with tried to sell me some watches from Italy.

I have Guinness all over the front of my white shirt. With some suggestions from the head shop clerk we end up at this bar called J.J.’s pub with a much older crowd and a creepy picture of Thomas Moore staring at us. We arrive in time to catch the end of the match. Man. U. ends up losing in a shoot out and we get back to the condo in enough time to sample this legal cannabinoid mix before we have to meet the rents for dinner. It smells like incense, and taste like shit, but, surprisingly does the trick. End up meeting up at the Porterhouse – a microbrew pub – and two pints of “hop head” later and I’m feeling awesome. Mom is calling Brandon out on being high or drunk or both to which he replies, “Duh”. Get back to the place, smoke another joint of bizarro weed and pass out.

We tackle the Guinness brewery and Jameson distillery in two days. We start losing track of pubs we’ve been to (what we could remember: Temple bar, O’donoghues, Foleys, Night club, Fitsimmons, J.j.’S, Porterhouse, Lord edwards, Brazenhead, O’sheas, Fitzgeralds?, O’neils, O’donoghues, O’connors). Smoking a joint every night – we run out of fake weed by Wednesday. Back pain still persistent – drinking Guinness with every meal. Everyone here drinks Guinness everywhere, all the time – too much Guinness? We took a Viking tour of the city. Sleep schedule is becoming erratic – getting too much or too little. Taking naps from drinking and eating too much. Seeing lots of non-English speaking, heart-breakingly-beautiful, foreign chicks. We take a train to Limerick and a bus to Doolin and Galway to enjoy the lush green countryside. Curiosity killed my blackberry – accidentally deleted all my data. Was inside a really old castle and peered over Gandolf’s cliffs. Plucked some limestone rocks from the western shore. Took train back to Dublin’s Heuston station and bought a bracelet. Found three cool record shops and bought some 45’s.

a dream

I’m sitting in a chair positioned in the middle of a room with no doors. It’s a purple leather chair with a tall back. Its legs are made of wood from a tree that is older than me. Scanning around the room everything looks older than me. It seems as if I’m in some sort of trophy room of an antique collector who is two hundred years old or older. My eyes can’t seem to focus on any of the relics. Yet, everything looks old and dusty – judging from the dust alone I may be the first person that has been in this room in quite sometime. There are layers of dust on everything. There seems to be gold everywhere, but it’s not shiny. It is a drab, dull color. The wood floors are creaky and have warped. There is another chair, unoccupied, on a forty five degree angle facing away from me. The chair is smack dab in front of a fire place. As I’m looking around from my position in the middle of the room, I make a move to stand. All of the gold in the room starts to brighten a little. It’s not a shiny twinkling brightness, however. It is a slight glow and the gold in the room seems to be getting more of a warm sepia color. Just then the fire place is lit and there’s a man sitting in the chair facing away from me staring at the crackling fire. The man is portly, old, and mostly bald with some gray hair and sort of looks like my grandfather. He doesn’t look at me and I can’t see his face – just the back of his head, and part of the side of his body. Once again, in a punch-in-the-face-white-flash sort of a way there is another man in the room. This man is older looking than the man sitting faced away from me. He is standing behind the chair with both hands on the back of the chair staring at the fire. He is a deathly skinny looking, lanky man. The skinny man turns away from the fire to look at me. His skin seems to sag off of his bony looking face and he motions with his hand to follow me. He walks toward the wall and a door appears. He opens the door and starts down a hall. I don’t know what to do. I don’t follow the man and stay in the room with the fat man that appears to be my grandfather. When the sounds of footsteps of the skinny man down the hall are barely audible the fat man turns his head around to look at me. He does look like my grandfather but with far more wrinkles in his face. His eyes say more than I can imagine his mouth to say. He looks at me like I’ve just lost my chance at the Holy Grail or something. His look suggests a small amount of disgust and a much larger amount of pain. He looks like he’s biting a bullet during surgery in the 1800’s. For fear of staying with my pseudo-grandfather and that terrifying un-describe-able look he’s giving me and for fear of being trapped in that room I dash out of the door and chase down the hall towards the gaunt, lanky man. The hallway is dimly lit and everything is raw wood besides the barely lit lights every 10 feet or so. Luckily, I catch up with the man and he takes me to a garden. The garden looks pre-historic with massive bulbous pods and flowers everywhere. All the colors are much more intense then the dingy trophy room – neon green and yellow. Some of the larger plants are pussing and the smallest flower pedals are about the size of my head. There were large tulips that a small child could live inside and snow frills that stretched out three feet. The purple and pink plants were low to the ground and their leaves look like arms of a cephalopod with hundreds of little suckers attached. Mustn’t get too close, I thought. However, everything was half wilted and hadn’t been taken care of in awhile. Perhaps this garden used to be much bigger. The first thing that ran through my head is that perhaps the gardener was swallowed up by the same garden he’d been caring for and that’s why these large plants were on their way out. It was an intense experience to be around these mammoth plants but it was making me sad because they were dying. I ventured from the clearing and made my way toward a path that led into the woods. I took one last look back and saw the skinny old man looking at me from a distance. When he saw me going away he bowed his head and turned back towards the house – to wait for another traveler I guess. Or maybe he had waited all those years just to come in contact with me. The path was calming and familiar, like I had traversed its course before. I then made my way to another clearing that was just an empty field. Then I woke up.

xbxrx

he took a step back and realized what he had done.

he didnt believe it.

he didnt believe himself

who could he believe?

them? HA! Why?

after all, he went through with their needs…

maybe i did do it

shivers down his arms to his hands which shake uncontrollably.

crimson stains on his shirt.

blood.

he had done it.

i know now!

we must go back

he took a step forward back into view. he gripped the still warm throttle of the w.a.r.s. machine and pushed it forward backwards seven minutes.

that would give him enough time.

the scenes rewind and watching their destruction he laughs out loud and writhes a little bewildered at his laughter. it was HIS laugh. the harmonic energy disturbed by his echoing laughter, doubles his time, and he wonders where it will leave him.

at least the village is safe

since he isnt there, hopefully things wont occur the same way they did.

bolts of energy blow his hair back and forth until he gently floats upward back and around and finally lands forward in the past.

time travel is hectic he thinks to himself.

The Foggy Window Pt. II

Three bong rips later…

“I think I’m dying.” said Burt in a soft tone, head between his legs.

“You are not dying;” said The Driver, “pull yourself together, man. Even if you were dying I don’t want that on my conscious, bro. Phil doesn’t need it either – c’mon, you’ve got sixteen more to go.”

“I’m bugging out, man. I mean, I’m freaking out – I need something to drink – oh my god.” Burt said as he opened the car door. The Driver, Phil, and I started giggling to ourselves. Immediately and simultaneously we wondered what Burt was thinking and feeling – how he perceived our current situation. I, myself, was pondering upon the notion that the foggy windows were not unlike the darkness of night – maybe Burt was standing outside thinking the same thing.

“Is that a car, is that someone?” asked Burt with alarm in his voice. However, to the passengers in the car this looked like Burt was just talking to himself and brought The Driver, Phil, and I to again start giggling like school girls. Burt turned to the car and asked again if there was someone out in the darkness but could clearly see his friends laughing inside, paying no attention to him. He looked back again into darkness.

“Maybe not.” He whispered.

“Get back in the fucking car. We are getting out of here.” yelled The Driver.

“Man – ”

“Put on some Primus.” Phil suggested

“No way dude,” said The Driver

“We should have brought Lil’ Jon.” mumbled Burt, still very, very inebriated.

“Why not?” I asked

“If you really want it on;” started The Driver. “But it is my opinion that the Jimi Hendrix Experience album that we are listening to right now is great background music for us to talk and listen to. Now, if we put on Primus we will just be sitting here, stoned as all hell, listening to Primus. No conversation is no good. Plus, you know one of us would bug out and put something else on anyway.”

“Yea, probably Burt.” I said

“Fuck you guys.”

As we started the car and began our course back towards the main road, the foggy windshield intensified.

“Alright, it’s official, I can’t see anything.” said The Driver. “I don’t know what’s wrong with this piece of shit – I’m pulling over. All those bong rips with the windows closed probably didn’t help either.”

The foggy window was so bad that we actually had to stop off on the dirt road and try to fix it. This is the part of our story that would make a good joke, I thought. How many stoners does it take to de-fog a fogged up window? Apparently, we didn’t have enough because we tried everything and still, nothing was working.

That’s when we heard it, coming from the woods to our right. It sounded like a pack of something; crunching branches and leaves and heading toward us.

The Foggy Window Pt. I

“Ah ha!” Burt chirped, as he pulled out a usable tool from the myriad of trinkets, junk, and necessities piled in no discernable order in the backseat.
“I have my clean undies dude, don’t worry,” he said, as he twisted his body back into the front passenger seat, “They’re clean.”
“Yeah, that’ll work.” said The Driver – another good friend of mine.
At this particular time in our journey that night, the glass in the entire piece of shit Dodge Stratus we were driving was fogging the hell up.
“So, you wanna give me them,” said The Driver as he held out his hand, eyes focused straight ahead. “I can’t see a goddamn thing.”
“I got ‘em man – here – I’m wiping the windshield now.” said Burt condescendingly. Burt, being the Boy Scout, easily took the leader role in our adventures. He almost always sat shotgun and was always giving precise directions on where to go. However, on this night, it was Burt’s birthday and we had a grand surprise for our gaunt guru.
“Just pull the car over to the side.”
“What the – to the side?”
“Fuck it. Do it.” said Burt.

“Fuckin’ A.” muttered The Driver. “Let’s celebrate.” he said as he turned the car off and got out. “We got you a great gift!” he yelled over the rain as the door shut and he dashed to the rear of the car to open the trunk.

The rain was cold. On most nights, we would sit outside the car, even if it was freezing. Sitting in a metal box was for the birds. We were free in so many ways and we knew it – we took advantage of it. The middle of nowhere in a forest is a bit unsettling, especially at night, but we soldiered on. This was a spot we had been to before and we were in high spirits.

What I really think drew us to the pine barons was its hypnotizing orchestra. I loved listening to the choruses of chirps, beeps, and buzzes.

We drove off a main road onto a dirt road after passing an abandoned hunting club, in a town where the trees outnumber the people a thousand to one. The names for the towns around here are typical – Woodsville or Treetown. Our biggest worries would be running into a ranger or a local, or so we thought.
“What is it?” asked Burt.
“It’s a homemade gravity bong, man!” yelled The Driver.
“Oh. Thanks. I thought it was a bomb at first.”
“No, it’s not a – it’s a bong, dude. Ya see, we just cut off the bottom of a 64 oz Gatorade bottle and Phil found this candle snuffer in his house that we drilled a hole in. The snuffer works as a bowl and it fits perfectly!”
“I hope my mom doesn’t ask me where her candle snuffer went.” Phil murmured.
“Shut up man, this is my birthday. Let’s do this.” said Burt.

One Happy Island – Pt. I

I’m wearing wide green plastic sunglasses inside 408B of the “La Cabana” Resort, four stories from the ground. I’m sitting on a hard plastic chair staring at the Caribbean water from our ocean-side room. One could easy slip and fall, maybe even trip, and break through the hard PVC-plastic installed protection device they call a “railing”. If one should so unluckily plunge over the side of one of these flimsy and miserably constructed barriers, manage to land vertically on their head, one would be lucky to be alive without immediate medical attention.

Heck, try to imagine what you would do if you were sipping on your Corona (with lime) in a paradise, hundreds of miles away from any sort of normality that you’re used to, and you happened to slip on the beer you threw on the floor of the hotel room (you didn’t pay for) last night. Even the average man can not begin to know, in the split seconds you have in the act of falling off of a fucking balcony, how to properly land a massively important end or new beginning to your life. Broken and cracked bones; you’d go limp like a rag-doll. Maybe you won’t die but you could end up in a wheelchair.

These are my thoughts in the late hours of Aruba, still all fired up from the fire-water (since we ran out of Corona) they pass off as booze in that country. However, the magnetic brainwork of my meandering thoughts stemmed from a different story, entirely.

untitled

Wheni’malone inmycar driving
Iclosemyeyes.

I extend my arms out my windows
until I can touch the trees
on either side of the road.

While maintaining a reasonable speed,
I grab the trees like they were weeds
and uproot them from their soft soil.
And then I eat the trees. All of them.

I feel satisfied yet my hands start shaking.
They begin to grow until the bones protrude from the stretched skin,
and then they grow some more.

They become as large as the earth itself.
And I wonder if anything will be different
when I open my eyes.

And it’s always the same,
every time.

Iclutchmyhands and checkmyrearview.

bloating bubble boom crack

HOW MUCH CAN A PERSON KNOW BEFORE ACTUALLY KNOWING?
The embodiment of awareness.

Sometimes when I yawn, small tears form in the corners of my eyes. They are usually whiped away and forgotten about. They are nothing that matter to most people.
The other day, I yawned and I started crying. I mean, it started out as a regular yawn. My eyes closed as my mouth opened. That asperate moany type of noise escaped through my throat. In a beautiful sort of state i knew what i was doing. That state is not easily accessable however.

When I realized I was crying I gathered my emotions and composure into a small duffel bag – which i usually keep close, clutched to my chest – and wondered why I was crying. Each question does not have one answer.

In a beautiful sort of state i became pure for a few brief moments. I knew what was wrong with the world and how to fix it. As soon as i snapped back into it….i realized that we were wrong for the world.

I know things are different. This is how I know.

I have a soul. A soul that is dancing in and out of my incarnation. Perhaps the record skipped. The music stopped because I am the only witness to the internal matters of body and soul. I may be but a molecule on the fingernail of the small finger on a human model representing the entirety of consciousness on earth. You may be but a molecule on the big toe of the same human symbol for all things, but all that means is we are still connected.

This worldwide awareness is what breaks us away from monotony. You reading this sentence and me writing this sentence is not separate; it is the same awareness.
We are one.