Dragon Headed Research;Notes 11/10/21 – The Graffiti Meditation (A Pacifier for Adults)

Hey, it’s you. Thanks for showing up.

There are a lot of problems I want to see changed. And I think that can change. That may, that will. You’re the same, to be sure.

But there’s something I don’t think really has much room to grow. Something I wouldn’t wouldn’t really bother tackling. It’s got pretty much no chance of evolving.

It’s….artistic vandalism. You know, like graffiti. Of course they also scratch mirrors and set up statues in random places. People want to put messages out there, somewhere, in physical space, however unnecessary seeming.

You ever feel really bad about how….aggression always seems to win?

You can have millions of people try to control themselves,
with all sorts of mythology and media,
but everything just gets bitter and belligerent after a while.

And pro-peace philosophies and kindness-making meditations
just fall flat on their face.
They just fail over and over,
no matter how much they work.
No matter how sincerely they really bend the hearts of anyone.

The fish of belligerence slips out of the hands of sweet, sweet peace.

Even for those of us with lots of self control who really, objectively,
avoid being a bad dude….the desire to take extreme action gnaws at us.

Those urges to defy that which disgusts us.

The need to fight back when barely fought.

The need to act when no crisis calls for it.

The need to correct that which barely displays any disgrace.

We’re burdened by that, at the absolute best.

Allow me….to try and take a little of that off of you.

Let me…..try something new. I promise, this is not something you’ve heard before.

Don’t focus on kindness and interconnectedness and gratitude and beauty and love.

No! Don’t.

For today, for now, just think about graffiti.

How you feel when looking at it on the street.

The way your heart stirs, the way your brain zaps,

that very distant and mysterious passion.

Everybody gets the vibe of graffiti.

Some will tell you it’s one of the most beautiful things you can see every day.

Others will tell you it’s a total waste of space worth sending people to jail over.

But everybody gets the vibe.

Everybody can kind of get in the head of a guy
with a spray can next to a semi-abandoned concrete wall,
shooting out some mildly beautiful letters, colors, and caricatures.

People aren’t so dumb and dopey that they can’t recognize
when someone else is at their most intensely sincere.

When you can see someone’s heart is roaring with a sense of purpose
in the midst of inappropriate behavior,

that is where it’s hard not to take a stance very hard against or very much for

that such person.

Here are the things about graffiti that get us going

1. It’s done on property which doesn’t belong to the artist.
It’s a stepping over of boundaries that are obeyed by most of us.
(witnesses will find this either cathartic against the uptight, or disrespectful and uncivilized)

2. It doesn’t directly damage the ability of a stationary wall to serve its purpose,
since it’s really just coloring of a solid object.
(witnesses will find this endearingly playful or brazenly heinous)

3. It’s usually not particularly gorgeous-looking or intricately crafted
compared to most other artwork, often made of fluffy letters and little else,
heavily rehearsed and premeditated at its best.
(witnesses will say this makes graffiti less valuable, or be charmed by its unrefined quality)

4. Graffiti is somebody trying to prove they were somewhere,
that their work needs attention.
(witnesses will say this makes the art form a great way for nobodies to get exposure, or is a fucked up, desperate way to satisfy the urge to be noticed).

5. And finally, graffiti sets out to transform the space around it like nothing else can.
(witnesses could say this is the highest form of disrespect for all architecture,
or a wonderful appreciation for the potential of physical spaces).

Graffiti may not be something anyone crusades about very much,
but it gets you pumping, gets you longing, gets you wishing.

Stimulates that very judgmental part of you that could hardly be called heroic or vicious.

It’s something between scorn and affection.

It’s the part of you that makes you say
“I am observing people at their most egregious.”

And it’s so apt to fling off so far in the direction of love or hate.

Or leave a person in that mystical kind of state between “despising” and “relating”
which is likely to push them to vengeance,
or the degradation of someone for the things they do which aren’t even mean.

This is my meditation.

Stop yourself from swimming deep into a colorful pool of love

stop yourself from diving far into the murky muck of rage.

Don’t do both, don’t do neither.

Feel your table-turning tail rise with on overwhelming need
to judge, or admire or condemn,

and stop it, not by slamming it down, not by trying to bend it beyond its capability,

not by soaking it with water, even.

but by only feeling this-

“the person doing this extreme thing ACHES FOR A SENSE OF VALUE AS FEROCIOUSLY AS SOMEONE I HOLD IN HIGH REGARD”

….

Do you remember 5Pointz? It was so damn beautiful.

It was illegal but sacred.

It was ghetto but polished.

It was a community without rule.

It was the type of thing you’d dream about!

Even if you hated it, it was awesome and you knew it.

And it sucked when they destroyed it.

Even I can barely see why anyone should take the side of the property owners who just wanted fat stacks of money rather than leave that glorious art space standing!

But although it might hurt your brain to hear this,
it might ache your heart to hear this,

that same burning spirit of the avaricious
is the cousin of the urge of an artist to be known.

The greedy and and cruel, the savage and the untamed,
they’ve still got those rainbows in their heads,
however worthy of disgust, they’ve still got that bewildering glow in their hearts.

That unstoppable sunshine of defying people you know are desperate for a sense of value and purpose, when you yourself have carried the burden of that desire as well.

Hear me now, humanity. If you wish to reduce the amount of despicable actions in this world, there is one thing you should and must do-

learn to pacify yourself properly when you feel the overwhelming cravings of the muscle in you that needs to judge.

You can’t destroy it, nobody will.

You may as well pacify a toddler with water. Use silence as a lullaby.

But if you can recognize yourself, see yourself, know exactly what puts you in that mode of unstoppable fury which doesn’t feel remotely unjust…..you’ll be able to distance yourself even further…..from everybody who makes you upset.

And as they get up in your space,
you’ll have the sheer insight required to work around them at their most intolerable.
without even having to try.

If enough people do this, they’ll shock everyone else from every other place and culture and time who failed at this despite the sincerity of their heritage.

The first subculture to successfully cancel out the awfulness of human interaction shall get the platinum trophy.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some reasonable vandalizing to do,
if we are ever to have something which we can chew.

This website is the bubblegum for rage.




Dragon Headed Research;Notes 11/9/21 – The Thunderous Roar of “Systemic” Attempts to Mend Social Competence

That last post was pretty intense, wasn’t it?

I think I’ll take it down a notch. Sit down and listen.

I’m sure you’ve heard about those “systemic -isms” that have been going on.

Yeah, they’re pretty terrible, no doubt.

And you’ve got to be familiar with the opinions about the word.

Most say it’s either antagonistic or apt.

But I have a lot of affection for it and how hard to tries to bite.

But I also have sorrow for the power it doesn’t have.

The indignation that comes with the use of lingo like “systemic”
isn’t exactly alien to the targets of its ire.

I know that to you, the evolution from “systematic” to “systemic”
seems like a bit of an epic mindfuck.

You’re not just accusing someone of desiring discrimination. You’re accusing them of plotting it when they barely even are.

You see the lines of malicious cooperation where they are at their thinnest.

You see alliances among friends and colleagues and demographics

where they are at their loosest but most noxious.

When “systemic” comes off your tongue, you feel like you’ve got eyes made out of silver.

You feel your frontal lobes constrict with strain.

So then why does the derision for the term “systemic” come so easily?

I think this explains it-

whether or not people are working together toward anything
is a very tricky thing to try and pin down,

considering the flexibility of relationships, of needs, of whims, of opinions and of dreams,

and that everyone, regardless of what categories they fit into, understands that grouping anyone with anyone is not so much a thing that’s justified as it is a means by which everyone fights.

You might see yourself as possessing subatomic insight
into just how intricately passive aggressive
and disgustingly desperate to manipulate others

that some human beings might be.

Trying to expose people steeped in a passive, collective frenzy of mistreatment
feels like a big-hearted connection to justice,

and I wish you’d be the winner, just for that alone.

I’d really like for you to just fix everything already.

I think, to those people around the world who really are
tragically decent at using the power they’ve got,

being aware of how weird it is to lump people in with each other

is just another day at the office.

It’s just what they see everyone else as fully capable of.

I’m not really the “Illuminati” type, despite finding conspiracies pretty exciting, which is why I like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

The anime, while often frustratingly confusing, offers some very interesting storylines and science fiction aesthetics.

The term “stand alone complex” rises within the story to refer to people working together who are not necessarily working together.

Or rather, any phenomenon where things appear to be working as a system when such a system barely exists.

It comes up with one case involving disease-cure-withholding, corporate blackmail, and public terrorism, and another case involving war refugees, suicidal demonstrations, and a computer virus targeting cyborgs mysteriously.

The show really is quite the mindfuck, but I think I’ve codified fairly well what that mindfuckiness is as of late.

Everything there is or can be, is connected and not to some degree. How much praise or blame to give anyone you meet, is always an awkward choice. And people long to be out of place, if they want to fit into place. We are so like hunters, excited by the friction we can feel around us.

We know what it means to be excessive. We know expectations and judgments are loose and wild. We want to feel a good distance from our incompetent younger selves. We are so like dragons, beast who can strategize and civilize despite our burning desires.

Now long before I codified this mindfuckiness, I was very endeared by myself
for being able to intricately resent my very…..let’s say dry, dull, discouraging, unwelcoming social environment as a teenager.

The band Hot Chip has used the words, “the nothing everything caused/the everything nothing caused”. Oh how cathartic they were.

I felt transcendent, having that much scorn for my peers for things they might not have really been intending to do to me. I sometimes felt overjoyed with the glee of claiming that “my misery is what allows the happier people to fucking exist at all”, giving myself an excess of value where is was barely warranted, but felt so very justified.

I felt good comparing myself to someone trapped in an asylum, despite being free. Of course, stories where people outside of a prison are still trapped are pretty relatable.

Even then, especially then perhaps, I had that dragonlike energy in the bones of my feelings.

The pulsating heart that detects the exploitation in the air and wants to make something decent out of it.

And fast forward 15 years or so, I see, this is not such an uncommon feeling.

I would guess that the most socially adept leaders who ever led any march toward any difficult goal,

have a good grip on their own urges to call out people for conspiring with each other,

perhaps very often for the sake of finding compassion for one’s rivals,

and at other times, for the purpose of sabotaging those who barely even teamed up.

Socially skilled people are in touch with the urge, the need, the law, that any one person is always both companion and rival to any other person standing nearby.

I would also guess that those the least vulnerable to being hurt in intimate relationships

possess a good deal of passion for the redrawing of boundaries with other people.

Serial cheaters must feel like world leaders.

There are people who have seen past “mending” social miseries,
and would rather take solace in mastering them.

I think teachers are like this,
who know their students are always resentful,
and are always trying to navigate their own powerful hateability.
Yeah, you can see it on their visages resigned to being loathsome.

But I would prefer we figure out how to make nobody loathable.

If I taught you anything today,

please let it be this:

the word “systemic” is only scratching the surface

of just how severely confident people are

while they’re savoring the social incompetence

of everyone who ever said they weren’t worth a damn,

or didn’t deserving any fucking thing.

The only antidote is to truly get inside the head of everybody else

and deliciously destroy the barriers that keep us from seeing

just how badly we believe in our decency.

You have to reach a level of social competence that blows everything else out of the water,

to the point at which you don’t even get high on using it.

Dragon-Headed Research;Notes 11/8/21 – Egregious Ethical Accusations are as Gratifying as Winning at Space Invaders!

Tell me, stranger. Beautiful stranger.

Have you ever heard of an arcade game called Space Invaders?

I had it on a keychain when I was 10.

They referenced it on Futurama.

You see, the tricky thing about Space Invaders is that you can’t just shoot the aliens where they are. You have to shoot them where they’re going to be.

Your laser is too slow. The UFOs are too swift.

Now, let me ask you this. Would it be completely reasonable to be very proud of oneself for mastering that technique?

Overcoming your enemies by doing something much craftier

than what you started out with when the battle began.

Targeting not them, but the space where they are not yet.

You couldn’t fault anyone for having affection for themselves for discovering that.

Let me ask you another question, stranger, kind stranger.

Does it ever make you mad when people tell you

that you’re not a good person, or on the wrong path,

because of things that have so very little do with actual ill intent?

I’m sure you’ve got a big bag of examples, do I even need to say what they are?

People flipping out on you because you loved this person or held this job or liked this music or wore that kind of clothing.

It’s so irritating, right?

But you don’t exactly not imitate them, right?

You’ve never felt your brain cells well up with scorn over a certain horde of human beings
who were all part of something which wasn’t particularly malicious or even ambitious?

You’ve never turned red over hobbies? Collectors of this, competitors in that, connoisseurs of this, purveyors of that.

You’ve gotten sick to your stomach over people with certain kinds of preferences and interests, and at some point, probably tried to talk them out of it.

You might have even felt a bit guilty, your inner child saying, “why can’t we just try telling people to be nice?”

Well, I’m not here to condemn you for that. I’m just here to tell you that you’ve been playing Space Invaders with the minds of other people.

You honestly believe that the key to making other human beings defy the stereotype of shitty behavior, is by demeaning their own personal joys which you know are not reliable predictors of wickedness and sabotage.

And it’s a game that you can win at. You’ve probably won at it before! Exceedingly so!

People daydream about winning at this game and they succeed! And they rise above any criticism and become truly magnificently human indeed!

That’s what a culture is, isn’t it? A few million people getting together and agreeing on which hobbies and demeanors and preferences are the secret markers of human awfulness.

And those not particularly evil traits have to be struck down with a powerful grin, with hind legs erect, and maybe even a readiness to stampede.

The ferocity of a mythical creature is what you’ve got, and everybody kind of senses that already.

Everyone secretly knows there’s a sincerity to other people that never gets properly articulated, but can be only fought.

I feel like I’m standing in a battlefield. The swords and arrows and fire just keep flying everywhere.

But even I can tell, that everyone fighting doesn’t hate the calm vibes of the stars above.

All you crusaders of whatever it is you’re fighting for out there

possess a keen sense that your enemies are just as shrewd as you.

But you, you are the closer one to real human dignity. That’s what you feel, stranger, isn’t it?

Despite the stereotype of the self-centered, you really believe there is some spark of magical un-awfulness in you that separates you from the really unpleasant people!

I’m not gonna say nobody ever really had overwhelming, raw hatred for anyone else,

but if you take a good long hard look at what the internet-based world’s become, and the rage-fueled threads agreeing on which minor subcultures are somehow true scum, and all the traditions people belligerently force upon their kids, both old and new, and all the family values and social justice campaigns embracing labels as a fucking art form worth getting high on like a drug that’s not even discovered,

you’ll find it’s not really all that ugly.

You’ll see it’s not really all that crude, not really that sickening, nor very hard to blame.

At your core, kind stranger, you’re really just trying to unfuck the world in a very creative and adaptable way that is compatible with the human need to commit to their own actions with joy and confidence.

I could hardly blame all the peaceful and passive forms of ethics that ever existed or failing so consistently to bring peace to every fucking body.

Well, here’s my plan to unfuck the world. Here’s my own attempt.

If you want to know what makes a human interaction morph into unpleasant, it’s usually one dude trying to keep somebody from fucking around with him, by doing something really tricky, really indirect, really unusual, really bold, really risky, really not what you’d expect a person to do to prevent conflict.

It’s those rainbows in your head telling you you’re fighting awful situations through extremely careful and innovative sorts of behavior! Rising above the standards!

It’s all about that fucking Space Invaders moment. That totally forgivable joy for composed aggression, of taking those thunderous screams inside of you hoping to prevent a vulgar situation, and trying to apply them in a way far more interesting than than the younger you ever would have, and couldn’t have, maybe even shouldn’t have.

Oh humanity, you charm the hell out of me, don’t you?

Because despite all this wily shit you’ve been doing,

there’s still somebody muttering,

“if everybody would just stop acting out of line,

everybody would be be so pleasant.

Everybody just be like me, just be like me, just be like MEEEEEEE.”

But you’re not really that paragon of good behavior, are you?

It’s hard not to be a hypocrite.

It’s hard not to hate someone for standing still.

It’s hard not to get mad at someone being complacent.

It’s hard not to want to stop somebody who seems to be as innocent as someone wandering for water to drink.

It’s hard not to feel “this is where I have to step in, for personal dignity’s sake”.

You see the calm and the reasonable going about their day, with their daydreams of their own brand of indulgent civility by their side, and think “no, this is not the solution, I have to fucking change these people, I fucking have to, I fucking have to, I fucking have to do something or else they’ll just fuck things up and I never did anything to prevent it! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! “

So you stop them, you stop them in their tracks, as they step in a direction they feel is justified and beautiful.

As they try to dodge misery.

As they try to find happiness.

And you feel like a fucking rainbow of wonder with a milky heart.

You get in the way and it feels so good. You roar like a dragon after its prey, much more wily than an animal acting only on the instinct to bite.

The sun shines down on you with sexy rainbows,

and the world remains covered in flames,

an appreciation for restraint being the fuel of the engines of peace as well as the burning liquid of human conflict.

You remain the strongest among all the monsters, who only know of enemy and friend, of nice and nasty acts.

Who can’t act with anywhere near that level of depth.

You are the mythic villain. You’re the origin of a need for stories in the first place.

You are the obstacle.

So, will you continue to try and find the real enemy,

or go for a high score by finding a new way to tame yourself?

If you learn what I mean by “dragon-headed”

you’ll come closer to the image of the good person,

or at the very least, learn how to keep your face from getting smashed in by people counting on you stepping out of their way.

Social skills, my sweet adversary, I long to see you in chains.

Dragon-Headed Research;Notes – 11/6/21 – The Desperate Debate over Portability Reveals Human Sneakiness

When I was in the middle of college, I took a class called “Scientific Issues” or something of that sort.

It was centered around tricky questions involving philosophy and science.

We read about arguments like…..what is considered to be “direct observation” of something?

Is there a hard difference between viewing something with your own eyes, versus looking at it through a microscope? How about with glasses or a telescope? Is there any way directly observe anything in the matter-made world?

Is science weakened by our dependence on tools, or perhaps that is part of its beauty?

It all seems very dragon-headed to me.

Let’s use another example to explain what I mean.

One of these classic arguments was about “portability” of an object. Or maybe it’s just what the professor had gone with that day.

It can be very hard to say what is or is not portable.

I mean, just look at portable gaming systems and media devices.

Obviously, the Game Boy is quite portable, if you’ve got batteries and a light source.

But what about a laptop that needs to be plugged in very often?

How comfortably can you play it in public? In which spaces is it even possible?

Can a device that requires sunlight to work be considered portable?

What if it’s just plain unpleasant to use in a public setting?

If somebody thinks the Nintendo Switch is too big and unwieldy and uncomfortable to flip out and start playing out in the open….is their opinion valid?

How much upkeep and carefulness is required before a medical device is considered to be portable or not?

Is the patient’s opinion valid or the doctor’s, if you asked them both if it was portable?

If you could shrink down and sneak into someone’s pocket, would you be portable, if no one was trying to exploit your portability?

Are all people portable if someone, somewhere can pick them up?

Is mobility a form of portability? Do you have to be in something moving to be portable?

Is there Earth a portable piece of the solar system, because the solar system itself is moving?

Such a fun argument, really gets your neurons firing, doesn’t it?

Even though it’s hardly much of a scientific issue.

This matter, to me, seems barely capable of any answer.

At its core, this barely seems driven to determine what “portability”
even is. I want to explain why the hell such a discussion would excite you in the first place.

A good theory is that by coming up with a standard definition for portability, we can communicate better, organize better, and be just a smidge more civilized than before.

But I think that strong and clever feeling in your chest when thinking about the weirdness of portability comes from a deep-seated desire to get around the guile of other people.

Obviously, people have different opinions about what makes any device comfortable to carry with you, or serve its purpose outside of a stable indoor environment.

But nobody’s content with that sort of answer. Because if we were, we wouldn’t be so very keen and crafty social animals.

We can feel other people’s jaws clenching with a need to exploit how very unpredictable and wily we can be toward each other.

When making the decision to carry something with you or leave it at home, or use it in public or never do so, or try to figure how to affix it you to keep it from getting swiped out of your hands, we all straddle along the weirdness of the definition of “portable”.

To smuggle any dangerous or disallowed item involves making sacrifices involving raw, physical effort, use of space in objects attached to us, the vulnerability of said item, and especially our ability to manage the actions of anyone wandering into our space.

That making of small sacrifices, and congratulating ourselves for it, lightly, but firmly, makes us feel something more tough and more clever and more interesting than what is normally expected of a human being.

But to me, that sense of being almost otherworldly in your sheer aptitude of being human, is just a part of being an averagely intelligent, developed, considerate, guile-gifted human.

Let me remind you that I do think everyone is much wiser than has been let on.

The debate over portability is only really interesting because it appeals to the ability to grasp the witty wiles of your neighbor.

Even if your mind is blown by your own ability to make accommodations when it comes to how portable something is, and you feel melancholic at the concessions you’ve made when carrying heavy items in a backpack,

at the core is a growling urge to be the sneaky person and not the klutzy oaf.

People are motivated to feel like they are not fools despite their indulgence.

At the center of so much of own sense of wisdom and wit is a seething desire to get around the guile of our friends and enemies and everyone else, and it’s so great, so strong, we’d actually debate whether or not a laptop is considered portable for an entire hour.

And as for the thing about microscope and telescopes and glasses and eyeballs being direct observation devices or not,

it seems like we can’t let the desire to be around the good people, not the bad people escape our scientific discussions.

All of that prattling on very deeply for the sake of feeling like science, somehow,

isn’t as cold and unloving as it might really be.

We still feel that science could be deceptive no matter how many successful experiments happen.

We never seem content to not be trying to work around the sneakiness of someone else.

Even if, and especially if, we love them and they serve us well.

I could hardly blame you, considering how very good we are at applying value to things in a way we know is weird and barely just.

I guess, that desire to be ready to strike back at those closest to us is how we’re trapped,

until we can bottle that passion in the right kind of glass.

Would you help me put this that I’ve described into a flask?

Or are your claws too big and meaty?

Dragon Headed Research;Notes 11/5/21 – Super Awful People Possess Magical Voting Booth Energy

Election day was a few days ago……as usual, I went to vote, despite not having too much passion about the race.

There’s just something really beautiful about it.

It fits perfectly into the paradigm I’ve laid out.

It’s a way to satisfy myself in a way I already understand, though few seem to get.

I’m sure even someone who longs for monarchy or whatever the hell else is supposedly better than democracy……can totally understand the mind and the heart of the voter.

This is how I see it- it’s a very hunter-headed, dragon-hearted thing.

To go into the booth, to cast a ballot,

you feel very small, very useless.

But also very big, very important.

Your heart seems to flutter.

You’re working as part of a team, while doing something quite very alone.

Your mind seems electrified.

You think about what good may or be not come from your side winning the contest.

You feel humbled. But emboldened.

This is an experience that makes you feel deep, tough, civil, and rebellious.

It’s so very rich. Can you savor that, right now?

That sense of being off of what’s expected of a human but also very fucking valuable and decent.

Some words of advice for you.

Something I beg of you.

If you want to get inside the head of someone who makes you feel like your own head is being ripped apart,

for the sake of maintaining your own composure, for the wish that things somehow change for the better for everyone,

(let’s say, a horrible customer, a blatant bully, a crooked boss, a general saboteur of peace)

try this on for size.

Think about how nobody doesn’t get…..the joy of voting.

How nobody has to be taught why it’s beautiful or interesting.

The pumped up feeling in your chest that knows you’re not hot shit but you’ve got stuff to do that’s fucking worth it.

And see how that growling fury must reside within somebody doing something

that gives you anguish, frustration, and woe.

That sense of composed power, of humble contribution,

it exists within a person that you feel is acting their worst.

Hideous public freakouts….

feel like a referendum against what that person sees as despicable demeanor.They feel connected to people they wish had the “bravery” they did.

They feel they might be striking down, partially, but powerfully,

what they see as smug excess in human will.

People want so badly to be the one that slays that festering example of malice despite empathy. They want it so bad that they’ll do some pretty obscene things for it.

They’ll come up with extravagant customs to enforce it.

They’ll go off the rails and make everyone suffer for it.

This may be the difference between a villain on a friendly public television kids’ show

and a villain in a well-weaved epic conflict.

While the bumbling oaf is a like a child desperate for simplistic gain,

the brooding vengeance-maker sees their own self

as a contentious and dangerous piece of the puzzle on the way to the day

in which the real actual worst people get what’s coming to them

and the real actual decent people can be left the fuck alone.

While the obscenity of rage can tear so apart so much kindness, there’s something not purely obscene at the core.

I suppose this is what’s being exploited when someone is talked down for being blatantly out of line inside a grocery store, or a classroom, or a courtroom, or on the street.

People aren’t so goddamn dopey and useless that they aren’t…..cognizant of what it means to act like you’re bigger than others, or that what you’re doing matters more than others, or that they’re dipping into actions that most would find abhorrent.

If socially adjusted adults were really as dumb as you say, as evil as you say, as totally fucking sick as you say, then entire towns and cities couldn’t function the way they do, day after day, day after day.

Day after day after day, people see themselves defying their own idea of what an ugly, cruel, inconsiderate, unhelpful, overall very very very bad person is.

And given no credit for that, they are rather hard to console.

If you can make people think you’re giving them some credit, non-sarcastically for the shit they’re doing even if you hate it, that’s usually enough to make you win against someone at their angriest.

Just as the wistful dreams of the billions at the ballot box

become opportunities for the vain but responsible folks in the lawmaker’s chair,

people long to feel they are

indirectly adjusting whatever it is that makes us truly despicable.

And they’ll succeed at it too.

And be encouraged by how incredibly roundabout actions led to somebody else acting so good.

But never absolutely, no, never, never ever, ever, is any big-brained adult truly satisfied with what they’ve wrought.

Even at the heights of prideful ecstasy, there’s something discontented.

There’s a nagging voice, underneath, saying,

the fish is gonna slip out of your hands.

You haven’t cured anything.

It’s still not fucking worth it.

Asshole behavior lives on.

They’ll undo all you did.

But I still believe, despite all of this,

there is a way to make the project of actually making us decent

a total and complete success.

I believe that it is possible that you can make a reality where people can ask each other to do things for each other, without having to dread whatever happens inside of that exchange.

You just need to get closer, closer, closer, into seeing how others roar with sincerity,

with that magnificent urge to strike down the unpleasant people.

You can tame the dragon that it is us, when you see that everyone knows what it means to over-value their own selves in a way that seems to fit snugly into to the coat of human awesomeness.

But for now, if my words confuse you, can you at least feel my teeth clenching with affection, at our poorly used desires?

Dragon-Headed Research;Notes 10/31/21 – a A Spooky Halloween Five-Pack That Will Hopefully Haunt You With Emotional Decency (The Haunted Laptop, The Ultra Rich, The Inner Child, The Trick-or-Treating, and The Garbage Rebels)

The world is cloaked in sweetly bitter civilization….never free from the tooth-rotting ecstasy of that which it takes to make it possible. I see nothing but the heat in our brains that resembles the ferocity of cave-retreating dragons.

I see why people feel so bitingly beautiful and interesting. Like their actions are adorably haunted. Am I the only one who has the antidote?

Am I destined to only dream of something changing? In a moment of desperation, I stir an assortment. Here, five evidences of my theory, on this spooky day.

But first, I reiterate, I ask I beg. Why must things be so unpleasant in a world where we understand our own excessiveness? Why is attacking those who seem to be innocent and useless, so very sweet and justified in oh so many cases?

Why must we act this way when we know our expectations and our blame and praise and even forgiveness and redemption feel so very strange and off what is actually ideal?

Isn’t there some boring, soothing version of peace that we can sustain as people, striving for it?

Why does there seem to be a limit on how we are meant to be? We try hard, as a species, as a collective, to understand, finally see, how it is we’re supposed to shift ourselves and enter a state where we become impervious to human nastiness. There exists an idea in our minds of a well-adjusted person standing on top of a mountain, body straight and free of malice, ready to help everyone be better, breathing unto the skies.

And over and over that type of person fails, degenerates into something very ugly and obscene. At least, a large chunk of the population says so.

While to millions others, that someone hero with a strength above that of any monster.

What a phenomenon worth slaying.

Please forgive me if it seems for too cliche and outdated by now, but this is my goal,

find the spot at the center that makes us see ourselves as very not cruel and ghoulish.

There is hatred and pain inside of everyone, but exciting warm-feeling rainbows floating inside of that fury and disrespect.

Insightful, lovely, interesting sparks of human greatness. You, yes you, feel that way, right? The difference between you and the stereotype of cruelty.

I am a witch who longs to cast a spell to tame THAT once and for all.

That which is not the root of all evil, but the root that keeps it from being washed away.

The desire to be very hauntingly capable of getting around the depravity of others.

I want to exorcise it.

Because someone has to deconstruct and reconstruct what it means to feel above all criticism.

Someone has to bring us above the ceiling of what we call good behavior

I want to exceed that, so we can tumble in the autumn leaves together.

On this gloomy day, I make my attempt.

Read these five poems, if you think me a mere pontificator.

Here’s a few snacks for your bucket- five examples of what I’m talking about.

You at your most beautiful and hazardous,

your most scary and impossible to demean.

That which this fellow seeks to happily restrain.

#1 – The Haunted Laptop Memory Thing

Last year, my MacBook Pro had an issue with its memory.

I kept clearing data, but the remaining space kept running out,

going to just a few measly megabytes.

I couldn’t find help, I couldn’t find the right support.

This type of thing pushes your rage, finding no one to blame.

It stuffs you with some like superstition,

looking for strange solutions,

as well as some kind of catharsis.

When problems can’t be solved, we explode into flames,

feeling far from unjustified.

I would not blame anyone for their anger at tech support’s incompetence,

but I would also like to hold you until you are ready to not cause harm.

Between finding solutions and finding comeuppance,

we growl and grumble oh so very dragonlike.

The convergence of the inventive and the vindictive,

is us at our hardest to soothe.

#2 – The Ultra Rich Exploit Our Spooky Grip

They say that we should tax the rich, or eat the rich, or end the rich,

but from my perspective, we haven’t really corrected what lies within us

that makes wealthy businesspersons powerfully lacking in shame.

It could even cause something as horrifying as…..

that Nestle guy charging people in poor countries for water. Holy fuck.

But despite that horror,

I aspire to see what makes others burn with a sense of dignity.

My answer, that your average person is always, despite their passions for work and generosity, is always subtly wishing “can you give me that for less?”.

The greedy tycoon can sense the tempered desperation in your heart,

and is extracting from it in a way with a longing which just might be called

not particularly stronger than yours.

They can perform magic based upon your longing,

and in most cases, hold themselves back a lot,

and make big risks and tricky maneuvers,

rather than being simply greedy as can be.

We must change before any of us become that kind of monster.

We must see that hoarding riches is very often about

being able to make valuable experiences out of the cunning guile of our neighbor.

#3 – Beware the “Inner Child” Types

If you look far and wide,

if you have enough good luck and bad luck,

you just might become close to someone who likes to profess about

their “inner child”, or engages in some kind of “child like” form of creative expression.

Normally, that type of thing can be pretty cringey,

made by someone who is actually, indeed, very childish in how they are and how they act.

But sometimes, that type of person can become enormously endearing.

We all seem to get somehow, that you can barely say if any dream or desire has its true origins in a child’s desperation for closeness and comfort,

or an adult’s powerful longing for dignity and competence.

I would fault no one for trying to use the “inner child” angle in their artwork.

Even if I accuse them of actually being quite terribly adult,

in how they treat the people who have chosen to become close to them.

Children generally don’t reject others in a state of extreme composure.

They’ll do it in a fit of rage, or they’ll do it nonchalantly.

They generally don’t speak with intricately conjured confidence

in their most brutal of hateless condemnations.

A warning for your, stranger, sweet stranger.

If you feel comfortably distanced from your flaws as a pathetic kid,

and someone close to you still expresses that they might, and very often.

Do yourself a favor and run.

Not away, but sideways, sideways, sideways.

Let the relationship grow uninterestingly.

If you do wish to have that pleasant company.

Do not return compliments and sweetness with even greater niceties of your own.

As that person’s problems grow bigger and bigger,

your only chance is to serve them as a fond acquaintance,

with the courage to deflect their longing for closeness.

Because it’s ready to blow up in your face, like a fat ghoul.

Not many people will do that kind of thing very often- genuinely connect with someone harder and harder in a way they secretly want to destroy.

It’s not within the stereotype of toxic and pushy and manipulative,

but it is within that realm of dragon like behavior.

I could hardly deconstruct it, truly, but I can put a cage around it.

Would you take heed for me?

Make yourself a little more impervious to that awfulness

which might truly lie above all critique,

on the part of someone more interesting than you?

#4 – Trick-or-Treating is Pretty Deep

It’s Halloween, which means that kids are coming for candy.

But I live in an apartment, which is lame.

It feels kind of like Halloween in prison.

I did grow up in a good spot for Halloween,

and in fact, I lack a single truly unhappy memory of the day.

Yeah, we had our fun, our candy, our costumes, our dank evenings galore.

When the town transforms, it becomes something special.

I wanted to grow up and be on the other side of the ritual.

When you’re young, getting something for nearly nothing is a thing to be proud of.

When you’re older, giving someone something for nearly nothing is relief against the pains of responsibility.

And both parties seem to appreciate the other for the indulgence.

So it would be nice to be more immersed within the holiday.

But instead, the door opens and shuts so quickly.

There’s no one to blame, really, after all, anyone can live anywhere, right?

What’s a small pleasure or a big one is hard to say.

That is, as I have said, part of the essence of holidays.

Sometimes I think the holiday’s true form is what it might have been in some other time.

Did kids actually threaten to trick others if they didn’t get candy?

Is “pranks as a price for no confection concession” a thing in some few small communities?

I’d like to imagine that being scared NOT to give out candy would add some spookiness to this very holiday.

But of course, in a modern town, any such threats would be truly monstrous.

Do we not blame anyone for opting out, because there are just so many houses here?

You also have the option of going to parties or doing something at your source of employment!

But personally, that feels somehow….corporate? Like you’re putting the soul of Manhattan into my very Brooklyn holiday.

Now, here’s a story for you….a monster that hides inside of porches where no trick or treaters go.

Because it likes the smell of discarded garbage, but not candy.

Every year, it has to only forage in the abstinent from Hallow’s Eve.

And the little freak is discovered,

causing some high level squabbling to take place,

as the anti-hellish-holiday and pro-pumpkin-people have to make compromises to get the vermin away.

It could have a story arc in an apartment building, where it’s hard to tell who’s who.

I mean, I do secretly hope for everybody to lighten up and do American things, regardless of where they come from.

But that is a belligerence I can sacrifice. Even if I still believe, those of us with no strict attachments to our petty-but-not cultural restrictions

are destined to do the most genuine and useful civilizing.

#5 – The Garbageman’s Wrath Breaks My Heart and Inspires Me

I go outside with weary eyes and I can hereby see,

we’re stuck in the mires of attempting desperate harmony.

Men lifting mountains of waste for much of their whole life,

have sought to impose with ferocious wrath a clever kind of strife.

Stinky, festering garbage bags now piling on the street,

dank frustration added to the taste of all your treats.

Vengeance for the wrath of a vaccinating vial,

they’ve chosen to put the medical mandate on a nasty trial.

If a fictional race of dump-dwelling monsters did ever feed on trash,

it’d be an out-of-town sort of Halloween bash.

And I take to the internet and see cries and wails,

of “asshole” and “inconsiderate” and “hope they all fail”.

Now I myself am not overwhelmed with kindness,

and I do not mean they are so justify-ed by this.

But it’s my job at this point to gaze into a heart.

and see why someone feels like not a monster, but like art.

The horde of of rubbish-letters, in their own heads,

feel like the paragon of dignity-led.

Their own chests pumping with power,

they’ve turned this to a battling hour.

They see the need for a vaccine as disgustingly intrusive,

and their mission to leave garbage as lovely and elusive.

They are not oblivious to the extravagant submission,

of imposing all such medicine like it’s a fucking mission.

I want to say to them

“you’re not a moron, you’re not a loon”

“not a villain, nor buffoon”

“but if everyone were like you, throughout our history”

“we’d probably be in a whole lot more fucking misery”

and I’d tell them to overcome their frustration and their fury

that they carry with them day by day as they judge like juries,

which might not work at all until the people on the better side

change themselves to the point at which they properly strive

to break the conservative leaning ecstasy and its damnable feats

by actually finally making it become truly obsolete.

I plea to you with a a set calm and tired eyes,

there is only one way to improve our nation’s lives,

it’s to really tame the dragons in your head

till the source of that respectable belligerence is finally dead.

The burning urges wrapped in restraint

are running out there free and have yet to faint.

There is another level of dignity that you and I can be

and it necessitates a wry appreciation for the strongest wills you see.

If this is never to come and only dreaming,

I’ll wear the philosopher costume for as long as I am breathing.




Dragon-Headed Research;Notes 10/25/21- The Useful, Creepy Vanity of to-do Lists

When I was a lot younger….not that I’m not still kind of young…

I used to write several tasks to do on my calendar.

It was college-y. It was adult-ish.

It was a time when I was changing a lot. Validating things were happening.

I was also kind of in a very strange higher educational muck.

But I would write things to do on my calendar. Stuff to buy, places to go, assignments to finish, people to see.

And I would think of these things like “missions” of sorts, rather than just tasks.

I remember feeling like only my personality of that time would have done such a thing.

That very weird and neat feeling pride in oneself.

Taking profound joy and heart-rich glory over things that would not even have required too much more effort than having my shit together and choosing to do them.

Having stuff do on a list can make it more or less likely that you actually go through with it.

But it always feels nice once it’s checked off.

In this case, I guess you could say, it felt more than nice. Like I was transcending feelings.

I felt like I had something I lacked before.

It probably had to do with who I met and the things I was learning about the ways of the world.

The nasty and wonderful qualities of cultures far and wide being one of them.

I guess you might call what I had,

a dragonlike feeling in the chest.

Genuine warmth in the excesses of self-congratulation. Feeling composed enough to get that you still have things to work on despite that joy. Knowing that even the chores you finished might actually be veering you off the path of success.

You feel encouraged to savor these feelings, because they appeal to the part of you that is….really a fine balance between reckless and careful.

The friction between what something is meant for and should be, how it makes us enticingly shameless.

I am something other than how I was, was how I felt.

Not just getting things done or not and being glad or mad like a typical child.

You being able to feel the contrast with your younger self, more desperate and humble,
and your older self, more determined and discerning….that makes you feel like you’ve got dragon’s muscles in somewhere in your chest cavity.

Such a great, great, great feeling.

Such a famous, awful, unspeakable culprit.

Could you help me….tame the villain of self-improvement?

Of feeling like you’ve become weirdly valuable?

Would you if you had the chance?

Today I feel like I’d throw away all I own

just to constrict our hearts a gentle, proper way.

That gets rid of the need to argue about how to do so.

Because connected to terrifying behavior,

is a very respectable modesty.

Like someone mowing the lawn and staring at their neighbors.

Putting one’s plans in a folder makes them quite a bit creepier, perhaps even innocuous chores. There is a tinge of eerie confidence and of hazardous determination.

Beware, beware….the calm ecstasy of having one’s shit together.

Beware the frenzy of commitment, that believes not in its ugliness.

Dragon-Headed Research;Notes 10/24/21- The Supreme Court Tugs on Your Heart with Delicious Neutrality

You’ve heard of the Supreme Court, right? I mean, every American should know at least.

Nine very, very important people, dealing with matters where laws…..start to fuck up very, very intricately.

When the cards fall just right, matters within the 50 states are allowed to escalate, and become federal….or something like that.

While I can’t speak on the specifics of their day-to-day matters, I do know this, the choices they make for specific situations often set a powerful precedent.

State governments often must change their tune because of what this team lawmasters happened to say.

They put out a certain fire with the water and dirt of their own……..and all must thereby imitate.

No matter who they are, or where they’re from.

Did you know flag burning is legal? Yeah, that’s a fire put out by leaving it on. I mean, we do need pilot lights. I wouldn’t have anyone arrested for such a brute form of protest, but I wouldn’t want punishment for it either.

Anyway, the supreme court is pretty dragon-brained, wouldn’t you say?

I look at their faces, with a certain lack of stress and a long and dreamy gaze, and I think these people are thinking, “I am very humbly keeping things from being less terrible in general”.

For the most part, I agree. Any not-self-congratulating liberal-leaning person should appreciate the hell out of them.

With all the lettering legislators and enforcing executives, you need a third thing. You need someone to able to look at existing practices and say “hold up a minute, we can change the rules right here and now”.

It makes me proud to be an American. Even if the nomination process is pretty freaky, and the justices may have agendas of their own, that can be called somewhat insincere.

Because what I see from the likes of those folks in robes, especially when it comes to expanding the rights of people, is someone truly cognizant of the weight of their actions.

They know exactly how much credit to give themselves, because few really can do so much for so long with so little.

They live their oldest days being the umpires of human dignity….and it doesn’t look like they’ve done too terribly so far.

But here’s my point….my wish….I wish people could discern….just how they feel when thinking about the super-judges on the bench.

It’s kind of an ache that lacks belligerence and admiration. I think you could call it envy. Like a dragon looking at a much bigger and more elegant dragon.

Like an urge to crawl around and hope that somehow, you’ll be able to roar as loud as they do. Like you could just shove people out of your way.

Have people respect your excess. Have people irritated by your mistakes, but somehow, benefit from them.

People dream of making others defy what they thought their humanity was supposed to be, and become, somehow, tougher but more dignified at the same time.

And that unfortunately is what you see in the heads of everyone if you just peer into them hard enough.

You want to take one unpleasant situation and use it to make other situations more pleasant. You want to be able to vote for how people should act, and have others be inspired to do the same thing.

You want…to be able to tell the world…”hey look, buddy, I see where you’re both coming from, but I’ve got to make a decision, and I’ve got to make some people sheepish and regretful and others…let’s say, giddy to be on the right path in the first place”.

The problem with complaining about people being judgmental is that we are better at understanding how badly other people want to see themselves as not bad people than we actually say we are.

The informing of rights before one’s arrest is a great example of something nobody would do if it wasn’t explicitly conjured up as response to other bad situations.

But it also embodies a lot of what makes someone so terribly hard to criticize.

People almost always give some room to their opposition. They almost always give them a chance to conform to their idea of what “being nice” is. They at the very least daydream of their enemies never doing what must have made them worth fighting in the first place.

People are sly and crafty judges with a decent sense of what makes someone else feel like they’re knowingly defying their own ideas about how to be a decent human being.

And that’s the essence of cultural stalemates. The thin line of bold rebellion versus crude defiance.

When the justices strike their gavel…or…read their decision or whatever the hell it is, they know it’s weird to be in such a position, that’s very tempting to have that power.

I admire that I live in a time when so many people aspire this much to be so very reasonable and just, even without such responsibility.

And feel sad we have yet to really invalidate those cruelest among us who feel like agents of proper and heartfelt excess.

So much rage is made of trying to find justice against those who knowingly try to constrict the will of others through indirect actions they know are worthy of that rage. I can’t feel hatred for those people anymore since I know how brightly they burn with a desire to be not the stereotypes of righteous justice.

That cognizance of hoping one situation becomes somehow, another better one, is somewhat wonderfully foolish, but glues society together.

So for now, we go on, very civilized, very keen, very havoc-making, very conflict-laden, until that time comes when we can find a way to diffuse all fury that feels very not actually dangerous.

Perhaps it will come some strange involuntary way, without the help of the insightful and powerless like yours truly.

Just as justices do something as grandiose as shifting the flow of history, in a way that practically inspired time travel, most of us ache for that largeness of yield of effort.

We envy those who can do a lot with very little, but very careful actions, who know their place, though have a very nice place.

We look longingly at they who are trying to prove that they’re the ones who really have a good grip on the dragon’s snout. Like they’re got the fire that somehow doesn’t burn.

Like they’re in a big chair, despite knowing all chairs are only so big.

I still believe that very profound ache, that very plain zeal which can hardly be called moral, which comes ugly or gorgeous quite easily,

is the key to us coming closer to what we think a really nice human being could ever be.

We should envy the kinder future and despite all, follow the very active urge to feel more worthy of ourselves.

We shouldn’t denigrate the part of ourselves that feels one trillion ways humble and one trillion ways powerful, just shape it into something superior.

For the goal of justice may be: emotional alignment good enough to deter any such need for the unjustifiable.

Dragon-Headed Research;Notes 10/21/21 – How True Badasses Pick Things Up Off The Ground!

I can’t remember how long ago it was, but at one point in my life

I decided that whenever I was going to pick up an object off the ground that I had dropped,

I was going to look around me to make sure nobody was right next to me.

I honestly don’t think anybody had ever pounded my head in while trying to tie my shoes or fetch a coin.

It might have been inspired by that thing in basketball when people say “heads up”,
and you decided to put your head down so you don’t get bopped on the nose.

As a form of safety as well as revenge against others’ recklessness. It might have been an extension of that thing where somebody pokes your right side, from behind,

and appears on your left, as a friendly form of teasing, though potentially for crueler activities.

I check around me before picking up my baseball cap before it falls off. You never know who’s watching.

You do egregious things with a low potential for value. for the high reward of potential use.

This time was different, however. I was in a street with cars. Not many, any accidents unlikely, but still, it’s a street with some speeders from the freeways.

So when I decided to pick up the cap, I thought, I shouldn’t do it slowly. But I shouldn’t put all of my energy into it either.

I should do it with a wide range of vision. I should make my movement flexible.

I should do something outrageously complicated for a simple action. I should do something tremendously small for a complicated maneuver.

What I did was, spin somewhat like a breakdancer, or like Super Mario doing some kind of Spin Jump or the Super Jump Punch.

How very excessive and not excessive. How self-congratulatory and yet not. How amused I was to have gone through with it. How practical and impractical.

How self-perservationy. How self-expressiony. How novel. How not.

How very unlike what I’d expect a person to or be….is what I would say….if I didn’t know what it meant to feel so very fabulously dragonish.

Every moment in the spin, I didn’t lose speed. If a car came my way I could have probably dodged it.

It was a taste of what gymnasts feel when they balance.

Of dancers when they sway.

And even of heroes when they take risks.

……How hard is it to tell someone their sick behavior is far from interesting or beautiful or special or useful? How hard is it to condemn something that really disgusts you in someone else’s choices?

It’s as hard as convincing someone they’re “dumb” or “mean” or “pathetic” for doing things they already knew were kind of silly and out of place.

As hard as invalidating the part of someone that hesitates a lot before a plunge.

As hard as telling someone they’re a nuisance when they were taking major risks.

As hard as making someone think there’s no value

in defying what seems like common decency,

to prevent anyone else’s malice or foolishness to, potentially, bring them disgrace.

Most of the people you call assholes barking hatred feel like dragons with their wings spread out, ready to beat them in case arrows come their way.

Aware such flapping of wings is a nasty trait made for intimidation and locomotion, and only loosely, for defense.

To move through society is to be egregious. And you will, without fail, find much of that egregiousness very powerfully endearing, and much of it very sickeningly loathsome.

I want to wear how in touch I am with that upon my body like armor made of that which has been slain.

The key to changing our behavior, to criticizing that which can’t is knowing what makes someone feel like they’re finding new ways to evade the sneering eyes that resemble our own, in a way not fully baked in hatred.

But I do say, anyone tempted to make a joke out of someone crawling for a lost trinket, my slapping their face in concrete,

but totally defy that, and aspire to negate that,

is part of what makes us very civil, and makes me smile despite how shitty we can be.

Which is good, because when someone with a bad spine drops a quarter, I rarely look behind me.

Perhaps numbed by a sense of purpose, or the fact that, in that moment, we’re a team, cooperating.

We need to have each other’s backs. As most of us city folk really do, and wish we could.

Dragon-Headed Research;Notes 10/19/21 – Writing is a Dragon, Flying in a Circle, Bold and Vulnerable

Goooood afternoon ladies and gentlemen.

I can confidently say that I have written about anything as deep or valuable as I possibly could on my blog.

However….I’m taking viability into account. I’m taking cultural osmosis into account.

You know, I still want to live the fantasy of people reading this and gaining from it.

I’ve still got my dream. And I do like writing, you know that.

So, let’s add another season.

I won’t call it the Hunterian Opiate for now.

For those of you truly wise and eager, go back and read Season 5.

If you want to know my real voice, go back and read season 5.

If you want something that stands up to literature, go back and read Season 5.

But for the impatient and curious, welcome to Season 6.

I’ll boil it down yet again, to make things more fun and more likely to spread across the waters.

Now, what I’m gonna tell you here is that people are like dragons.

Which may sound a bit like a boring sort of hypothesis.

After all, where else would you get the personality of a mythical creature, from,

but our own species, warped somehow?

Let me try to explain in as few moves as possible.

While stories and media featuring dragons are really quite diverse in their style and their purposes, dragons are portrayed as disgusting or truly worthy of contempt or even significant anger.

They exist in that middle ground of “earning righteous fury” versus “earning sincere admiration.

And that’s a lot how people act when they’re at their most un-critcizably fercious, isn’t it?

Dragons have the intelligence to understand that their very existence and behaviors are in essence, quite excessive and a nuisance.

And that’s the demeanor of people behaving their most outrageously indignant, would you agree?

And dragons, despite their frequent large size, despite their brutish power, are aware of the cunning that surrounds them, and know it will take more than burning breath to guarantee a victory over any such proud slayer.

And that such defiance of the witty and desperate lies at the heart of a person trying to see themselves as a good person despite all, doesn’t it?

And, most importantly I use the dragon allegory for explaining this- that warm feeling in your chest that tells you

“there’s something different about me even though I know I’m just a human”

and that also tells you to have some degree of friction

between your idea of “humanity” and what you’ve really got to act like to be somebody nobody could justifiably despise.

Yes, there indeed is a draconic fire deep within you.

And to some, that may sound like something preachy and optimistic.

But I do see that this world of ours is on fire, despite our civilizing enhancements.

I see it in all the stuff we fail to describe adequately, and becomes the stuff of “social skills”.

I believe we are like dragons trying to tame ourselves,

trying to wipe away what we feel is that deep and mysterious nastiness within other people.

And it leads to so much that you love, powerfully, like friendship,

so much that you hate, decently, like public conflicts,

so much that you love, humbly, like a fresh clean building,

and so much that you hate, tepidly, like the vibes of internet forums.

Do not ever call me a person who who said “people are all good” or “everything is fucked”.

Call me the person who said “everyone is foaming at the mouth at what they see as sick behavior”,

“and are exhausted and encouraged by their own ability

to close their mouths to avoid the stench,

and shoot fire out of such mouths at the right time”.

Restraint and excess, indulgence and volition, style and instinct,

you combine those things together well enough and you get a writer, who tries harder than anyone to tame the battling.

To fight fire with fire the right way. To have the mouth closed often and well. To dodge the arrows and even maybe trick the hunters into fighting your fight.

Clawing, like dragons weak to each other’ by their nature of their scales,

and know the might of the maws of the other that walk about the plains.

And that’s the main tragedy behind trying to change people.

You’re always fighting something that is like what you at some point fought in yourself

to make yourself less of a pathetic creature.

You are doing that very dragon like taming of such dragons.

With the only part oblivious being just how much everyone has that such wild feature.

This is an affectionate condemnation of the uselessness of all writing.

Because I can see that behind everyone smiling at the rants and raves,

we all sense that we are, by and large,

encouraging that behavior which really disgusts us the most.

But I do not feel that grip of mediocrity in my efforts

I believe that I can tame the dragons,

because I am in touch with the draconic heart of writing.

It says, “I know my presence is excessive,

“I know my actions are faulty,

but I am doing what must be done to reign in what others have wrought.

I am the balance of defiant mud-slinger and kind defender

I am very not the stereotype of pushy excess”.

Writers know, that very deep down, the people that hurt them the most with what they do, are overflowing with cunning sincerity and savage serenity that makes such talking quite useless no matter how much it changes anyone.

But I don’t intend on being another lobster in the pot, climbing away from “acting badly”.

I will fight fire with fire, successfully.

Enough of this. I’m done elaborating.

Now, I’ll show you some shining examples of dragon-headed people.

I’ll defy that circular vibe given off by writers,

and give you a piece of slang to see your fellow humans at their most extreme,

and get ready to dodge and counter those infernos.

And if it works out my way, we’ll have the belligerent stared and down soothed rather than satirized with swords that break.

It’ll be like magic.