25-Man Metaphysical Roster: Chelsea F.C.

(just a skinhead hooligan Chelsea supporter throwing

up a Sieg Heil while holding up a kid giving the middle finger)

[25-Man Metaphysical Roster is a football dork methodology meant to establish a listing of players who have been most active for English Premier League teams in their past 100 non-friendly matches. Essentially, it is calculated by minutes played, but weighted towards most recent games. The end result is a listing of the 25 players in a team’s recent history who have had the largest hand on their metaphysical sporting trajectory. The English Premier League was chosen because it is the highest level of football played in an English speaking country, and I speak English. Also, it is what comes on TV here in the USA, where I fucking live. And yet still I should clarify I hate English, and also America. Thus maybe I hate myself. Should I not fail in maintaining my unpaid deadline, a new 25-Man Metaphysical Roster will appear on the 1st and 15th of every month.]

It is appropriate that Chelsea is owned by a Russian oligarch, because I think of the football club similarly to how I think of Russia, or the Soviet Union. They are obviously an imperial force (Chelsea in football, Soviet Union/Russia in history), and I am obviously against all imperial forces and hate all forms of imperialism with a contrarian’s blind passion (or as passionate as a jaded bearded fortysomething fucker can still be). But for whatever reason I don’t really directly care or feel effected by Chelsea (or Soviet Union), so I’m not an active hater of them, like I would be for Manchester United or United States of Amerikkka. Those forms of imperialism are obvious and in my face.

This means I don’t care to wish all forms of failure upon Chelsea, but much like the Soviet Union’s Afghani quagmire, when Chelsea fucks up and finishes outside the continental-qualifying top seven, like they did two seasons ago, I take great joy in that. It’s fun to see imperial forces fail, even if their relative failure still puts them four spots above your relative favorite’s normal. (Although we had great fun two seasons ago, didn’t we, imagining “what if Chelsea get relegated? what if???? But they did not, although failure to qualify for Champions or Europa league is the Big 6 version of relegation, at least for now.)

The Chelsea life cycle during these last 100 matches as is the basis for metaphysics here is pretty simple – Jose Mourinho was on the downward “let me burn out everybody” cycle of Jose management lifespan, and Chelsea finished 10th, which meant he got shit-canned early on during that season. Antonio Conte came in as the eventual replacement and took mostly the same batch of players with a couple of key upgrades, and combined that with lack of continental competition to keep a fresh and fit squad at the top of the table for an EPL title last season. But the alleged personnel changes that were going to definitely happen – both coming and going – didn’t necessarily happen, so for now (until December) Conte has what he has. Of course, they sit in 3rd right now, and powered through their first Champions League match to boot (albeit against a lowly Azerbaijani outfit), so it’s hard to bemoan Chelsea life right now. Of course, they are an imperial force in football, so all of this is expected of them, and even though I don’t actively hate them, I hope it all falls apart in horrible and comedic fashion. But here are the 25-men who played the heaviest metaphysical role for the club’s past 100 matches…

#1: Cesar Azpilicueta – Spaniard vice-captain and anchor of defense has survived multiple management regimes at Stamford Bridge, and it’s easy to see why, as Mourinho to Conte has been questioned (for some fucking reason) going into the early stages of this season, despite them being in 3rd and having crushed weak ass team in first Champions League match. It seems very much like EPL is determined to keep up pattern of having defending champion managers get sacked the following season. But in recent weeks, Azpilicueta has been the vocalist on the squad, offering words of support and encouragement for Conte, that the board room hasn’t necessarily seemed to echo in their own actions. Some people will classify such a player as natural born leader, but there’s something more to it than that… an ability to politically navigate all the fucked up situations football is bound to deliver inevitably, and come out not looking like an asshole. It’s hard to do in an industry overflowing with asshole (due to how they’re manufactured). But Azpilicueta has somehow done it, and seems attached to Conte right now, just as he did to Mourinho  before, and Guus Hiddink in the interim between the two. Some players are political cockroaches, and survive it all, and they usually end up vice-captain.

#2: Thibaut Courtois – Belgian GK and soulless android.

#3: Gary Cahill – Okay, maybe Cahill at center back is the true anchor of the defense, as he’s also the captain (and also English as fuck, which means he “speaks the language” or “the fans relate to him” or whatever coded racialism talk is used to justify him as more the main man than Azpilicueta, whose name sounds a little too revolutionary, a little too anti-Brexity to truly be the anchor of a club supported by the notorious shitbags Chelsea is supported by.

#4: Diego Costa – Some guys just look like an asshole, and most folks understand this, though they’re delegation of assholery may be based on nationalistic biases and racial under currents. I’ve worked to try and rid myself of as much of these biases as possible, so very few men still cross that threshold of just naturally looking like an asshole at the pure and unexplainable universal sense. Diego Costa is one such man. Every atom spins with the energy of self-importance and conniving heart. It was no shock that Conte wanted nothing more to do with the man, as Conte comes from Italy – land of many spirited assholes, where the natural inclination of asshole somehow has transformed into almost lovable malcontent. Conte, I am sure, knows the difference between regular run-of-the-mill asshole and absolute universal asshole. But of course, in true asshole ways, Costa was unaffordable and/or unwanted by all potential suitors in the transfer window, so he has been resigned to sitting in the stands duty until his self-value decreases enough or some other club becomes more desperate to move away from London in January.

#5: Eden Hazard – Another Belgian, and Hazard is weird, because he can be an enjoyable player to watch, but there’s something that sterilizes the experience of him away for me. I don’t know what it is, but I just never transition from barely enjoyable to actual excitement.

#6: N’Golo Kante – (previously #14 for Leicester City on 15-Apr-2017) I’m a Kante mark, because I strongly believe that African defensive midfielder is one of the main metaphysical keys to successful football club. Granted, Kante grew up in France, but was born to Malian immigrant parents, and fuck if any nation on this Earth has been a colonizing force of fuckedness, it’s France. Frantz Fanon wrote The Wretched of the Earth specifically about them, for fuck’s sake. Nonetheless, full geographically based African or not, Kante had Malian national team eligibility until France finally called him up last year, and it supports my African defensive midfielder theory. Only a person with deeply ingrained survivalism but also flair can fully operate that fulcrum position of defensive midfielder, able to help stifle others, but quickly flip it into counter attack. N’Golo Kante has won the Premier League title the past two seasons, and that’s no accident. His style was the perfect trigger to unleash buckshot Jamie Vardy and .22 Magnum Riyad Mahrez at Leicester City. And last season, he brought stability in the middle to complement the entrenched back line and feed shithead Diego Costa (and others) up top.

#7: David Luiz – Luiz has done a couple stints with Chelsea, and I don’t love him (because it’s Chelsea, and also he’s Brazilian, whom I also boycott metaphysically at international level, for some odd reason… an odd reason called Neymar likely), but I don’t mind him. He makes me think of Ygnwie Malmsteen – I think it’s the hair. Malmsteen is playing locally near me later this year, and I can’t imagine any reason on Earth not to go see Yngwie Malmsteen play a shitty club in 2017.

#8: Pedro – Fun fact about Pedro: he played forward for the Barcelona C team the last season they existed, in Spain’s fourth division (unable to move higher because Barcelona B was in third division). He then moved up to Barcelona B and helped them get promoted to second level of Spanish footballing pyramid. Then he spent seven seasons with Barca itself before getting cashed outside to England, and Abrahamovich’s bulging pockets.

#9: Nemanja Matic – (previously #23 for Manchester United on 01-Sep-2017) Matic and Mourinho are hardcore homeboys from way way back, so Matic was the one Mourinho was intent on poaching over to Manchester United. In my humble metaphysical analysis of football, defensive midfielder types are the truest fulcrum upon the pitch, and the likeliest extension of manager’s mind in the grass. Thus Matic has already been assigned that role at Old Trafford. Mourinho recently told the story of once putting Matic in midway first half, then pulling him midway second half, and how that made Matic one his all-time favorites, because Mourinho knew it sucked to do but Matic came in the next day and was like, “Yo, that sucked, and made me sad, but whatever, because I was playing shitty.” AND THAT WAS WHEN JOSE MOURINHO KNEW NEMANJA MATIC HAD NO RESISTANCE LEFT TO HIS SOUL OR SPIRIT, AT LEAST TOWARDS JOSE, so that’s why he’s in Manchester now.

#10: Marcos Alonso – To be honest, I’d rather talk about Islam Feruz here, a Somali immigrant to Scotland who got all his youth footballing at anti-fascist Celtic, but didn’t sign a contract with them once at professional level, and ran off to Chelsea, where he is part of their vast army of young talents who never actually end up playing for the parent club. Feruz appears to be a bigger flame out than most Chelsea wonderkids, but I love him (and always use him at lower level Football Manager experiments, because I sign all guys named “Islam”, always) because he plays for the Scottish national team at U-21 levels, but also can still play for multiple African teams apparently. (I don’t think Somalia sports a team, but he apparently has legal enough ties to play for Tanzania or Zanzibar.) And while Marcos Alonso is a regular presence still for Chelsea, I do not enjoy regular presences at valuable top of the table clubs valuated at the billions. What I enjoy about football is fucked up Somalian kids ending up in Glasgow and scoring hat tricks against shitty loyalist assholes while being named Islam.

#11: Cesc Fabregas – Forgive my stupid American ignorance, but I always feel like part of his name is missing. He also always reminds me of somebody Furio would kill on the Sopranos as well. My brain is a horrible buffet of media-manufactured stereotypes.

#12: Willian – As much as I try to be indifferent to the point of dislike towards both Chelsea and Brazilian players, something about the hair makes me enjoy Willian dashing up and down the flank as winger. My apologies to anyone who would hold such a joy against me.

#13: Victor Moses – It should be noted that I have been jotting down pertinent metaphysical data for a metaphysics offering about the World Cup (self-published, like all quacks do), and it makes me happy to say, that despite an inconsistency due to corruption of governing bureaucracy, the Nigerian Super Eagles still look to be poised to qualify for Russia out of Group B in Africa, shockingly so considering they were drawn with Cameroon and Algeria in African qualifying’s Group of Death. Victor Moses and the gang have done well, losing only one qualifier, and already seeing Cameroon and Algeria eliminated. (Algeria’s elimination has been cause of great concern in African football; no way that team should have only 1 pt in qualifying, and Algerians are not known for their footballing patience.) Anyways, Victor Moses is key member of the national team, so I use his listing as an excuse to bring all this up. I’m reading an anthology of poetry for each nation that qualifies as well (because Eduardo Galeano taught me that poetry and football pair together perfectly, when done right, although both have been mangled horribly by dominant power systems), so I use google’s algorithm (on an incognito search, which we all know is not incognito, but it forces them to pretend and thus not use as much bullshit against you from your filter bubble) to search “Nation poetry anthology” and then I get whatever the top result book is that actually exists in local university library. Thus far I’ve only read Russia and Brazil anthologies, and let me tell you, poetry is fucking sick.

#14: Branislav Ivanovic – Yet another player technically born in Yugoslavia, which obviously came apart at the ethnic seams in the ‘90s, thus he is now classified as Serbian. The sheer number of world class players who come from what was traditionally Yugoslavia is insane when you start adding them all together (which they will never do themselves, because tensions remain hot, and UEFA actually is running out of different groups to slap former Yugoslav republics into now that Kosovo is recognized national team). Like his country mate Matic, Ivanovic was loved by Mourinho, and also like Matic, he became expendable to Antonio Conte. Ivanovic is aging though (33), and after nearly 400 club matches with Chelsea, he went back to Russia again to play for Zenit St. Petersburg this past February.

#15: John Terry – John Terry’s remarkable (you have to use that word as even a contrarian “sportswriter” with regards to his time) tenure at Chelsea was going to come to an end, and there was no better way than as Premier League Champion one more time. It seemed signal for him to do the “retirement” phase of a couple seasons in the United States being overpaid to perform in a shitty league where a bunch of middle class hooligan wannabes drink microbrews and beat on drums and pretend to be “supporters”. But obviously Terry has not given up on his ability to occupy a prominent(ish) Starting XI in Europe yet, as he instead opted for playing for freshly-relegated Aston Villa. This move suggest Terry will forego the U.S. money tour and instead make the transition to second-tier player-manager, then outright manager. That’s got to be a weird thing to have as a force on your team if you’re the manager though – an elder spirit of the sport, who you know can help out a ton, but also might slip the boardroom knife between your shoulder blades during any bad spell.

#16: Asmir Begovic – Around the time of World Cup 2010, I fell in love with the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team, and thus fell in love with Begovic, as he was big part of their run during that period. When it appeared obvious he was leaving Chelsea this past summer, and I was also concerned Lukasz Fabianski would leave Swansea City, I was wishing and hoping for Begovic to come to the Swans. Along with my African heritage defensive midfielder beliefs, I also feel strongly that your most metaphysically solid GK is going to come from Eastern Europe, where darkness has hung over existence for many decades. A GK requires the ability to navigate the darkness, and not become too emotional over successes or failures. A coldness of  heart and survival mode eyesight with wide peripheral vision is necessary at GK, and Eastern Europe has been benefit of an environment which would nurture such psychic genetics. But instead Begovic went to Bournemouth, and Fabianski stayed in Swansea. (An odd aside to Begovic – he played youth football during his teens in Canada, of all places.)

#17: Oscar – Oscar is about the smuggest looking dude ever, and also he (along with later listing John Obi Mikel) did what Diego Costa couldn’t do – get that Chinese Super League money. Fellow Brazilians Hulk and Elkeson also play for the same Chinese team, and they actually caused a giant brawl this past June, where Oscar booted the ball at opposing players creating the fracas. He got suspended 8 matches, but Shanghai SIPG is still sitting in second, and looking good to qualify for the Asian version of the Champions League. Sometimes I actually catch Asian Champions League matches on the computer, but I tend to go for eastern Asia brackets with clubs from Iran and Saudi Arabia, not the western Asian clubs. I can’t even say “Arab clubs” because then Persians would be mad. Oh, by the way, Oscar and his Shanghai SIPG club are in the final four of the Asian Champions League, with the first leg (against Urawa Red Diamonds) set for 12 days from now. DE-COLONIZE YOUR FOOTBALLING EXPERIENCE! THERE’S MORE TO THE WORLD THAN JUST UEFA.

#18: Kurt Zouma – On loan to Stoke City all season. It seems Chelsea loan out all their non-white players, to let them sort out who is best elsewhere, and not upset the Chelsea Headhunters with too many players at once that they have to whistle at like assholes every time they touch the ball.

#19: Michy Batshuayi – Belgian striker most famously known for authoring the dystopian classic 1Q84, and many felt was going to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 2014, but he was narrowly edged out by Luis Suarez.

#20: John Obi Mikel – I did all that talking about Nigeria already, and here was the fucking team captain sitting right here, waiting for me to gloss him as well. Mikel is no longer with Chelsea though, having been one of the lucky men to cash in on those ridiculous Chinese Super League contracts. Sadly, as of right now, his Chinese Super League team – Tianjin Teda – is sitting next to last on the table, and flirting with relegation. I can’t imagine his contract will still be feasible as second level of Chinese football.

#21: Baba Rahman – The young baby Baba Rahman is a Ghanaian who has been potential Chelsea star for a few seasons now (of which they have hyped many, but few have come to fruition). As a follower of African club football, I can tell you one of the most heated rivalries in all of black Africa (African football is still culturally somewhat segregated in style by Arab and black regions) is Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko in Ghana. Rahman’s first professional season of football was played for Asante Kotoko (having played youth football, and thus contractually owned by Dreams FC in Ghana). One season there, and clubs like Manchester City, Parma, and Arsenal came sniffing for the young man. He ended up at Chelsea by way of a German stint, and has since been about to breakthrough for a while. Last season he went back to Germany on loan, and one has to wonder if Rahman has much life at Chelsea left barring a miracle turn in his fortunes.

#22: Ruben Loftus-Cheek – Young 21-year-old “about to breakthrough” Chelsea-owned midfielder on season-long loan to Crystal Palace, who have had their worst start to Premier League season ever. Chelsea’s “out on loan” Wikipedia section is bigger than most clubs actual rosters. That shit is wack and goes against the integrity of football and antifa are the only true supporters of real football in Europe, and it’s sad that American antifa think antifa is only about macing Nazis. Then again, MLS sucks.

#23: Nathaniel Chalobah – Another “about to breakthrough” Chelsea wonderkid, which meant he was loaned to the following clubs: Watford (42 matches), Nottingham Forest (12 matches), Middlesbrough (19 matches), Burnley (4 matches), Reading (20 matches), and Napoli (10 matches). In that same period he only accumulated 15 appearances for Chelsea proper (10 of which were last season, which is how he cracked the list). Finally, the kid from Sierra Leone, now 22, and seven years into English football property, he transferred to Watford where he can actually appear for the club that owns his rights. (I wanted to make some sort of blood diamond reference, but it seemed heavy-handed, and it’s not like he’s free – he’s still in England, and earning lots of money that a poor kid from Freetown probably finds mind-boggling, as does everybody back home, which has made him an alien in his own homeland. Corporate colonization is real.)

#24: Antonio Rudiger – If Action Bronson is so fuckin’ Albanian, how come he doesn’t drop more soccer references?

#25: Kenedy – Look, I got Ibn al-Arabi’s Meccan Revelations Volume 1 in the mail today, and I’m trying to wrap this thing up to go lay in the bed naked and read some more of that. So I’m out.

TH3 W34KN3SS 0F D1G1T4L...

the weakness of digital

library is no archive

by ash, as necessary

Aki Basho 2017 Honour Tanka Day 3: AMINISHIKI (3-0)

(Harumafuji is like "wait, is this an actual bout?")

shouldn’t yung sumo 

be flexing this strange basho 

of mass injury? 

how does old juryo bastard 

become a sudden story? 

Aminishiki - 

makuuchi sixteen years 

before demotion 

he withdrew from Nagoya 

a year ago, and got dropped 

six bashos he has 

battled his old ass way back 

through the juryo ranks 

(he turns 39 next month, 

oldest ever if top rank) 

fighting up day three 

due to mass fusen, he 

remained undefeated 

old ass Aminishiki, 

Aki basho’s hidden gift? 

(of note as well was 

final bout’s abnormal end - 

sketchy non-matta) 

(Harumafuji assumed 

matta, but bout continued) 

(Harumafuji 

the only yokozuna 

in Aki basho) 

(Harumafuji stopped, but 

Kotoshogiku did not) 

(Harumafuji 

looked confused at ref, who waved 

his official fan) 

(Kotoshogiku remains 

undefeated, and unhurt) 

[this strange basho will 

continue, with or without 

well-known rikishi]

[an unforgiving first week; 
sumo remains raw as fuck] 

Aki Basho 2017 Honour Tanka Day 2: TAKAYASU (1-1)

(Takayasu going for a ride... WHEEE!)

with hurt rikishi 

galore, I thought it might be 

Takayasu’s time 

but day two Tamawashi 

bout was double injury 

earlier in day, 

my man Ura got fucked up, 

hobbled his way back 

but Takayasu against 

Tamawashi fucked both dudes 

Takayasu slid 

back like sled push training drill, 

but tried to hold edge 

Tamawashi pushed further, 

ankle going the wrong way 

contemplate the low 

center of gravity plus 

all that weight carried 

human ankles not designed 

to handle that level strain 

and yet still, Tamawashi 

was able to finish bout 

adrenaline surge 

with final push, and down 

went Takayasu 

down on floor, Takayasu 

showed lack of mobility 

proper post-bout bows, 

but Takayasu could not 

carry his own weight 

down the hanamichi 

came wheelchair/shopping cart thing 

up hanamichi 

they rolled Takayasu, not 

likely to return 

afterwards, Tamawashi 

also hobbled horribly 

he won the extra 

pay envelopes, but also 

looks done for basho 

who the fuck’s gonna be left 

in battle royal basho? 

did yokozuna 

withdrawing establish bad 

energies with gods? 

will the sumo gods reward 

us before two weeks are done? 

Aki Basho 2017 Honour Tanka Day 1: URA (1-0)

(Ura walks the line better than Johnson P. Cash)

the squad is mad thin - 

three yokozuna (plus more) 

already withdrawn 

event lacking star power 

necessitates young buck flex 

who shall step the fuck 

up, seize opportunity,

win aki basho? 

enough build-up - Day One was weird; 

one of four yokozunas 

ozekis losing, 

and shit felt like it wasn’t 

entirely complete 

perhaps this will be Ura’s 

chance to shine in lighter field 

his first bout against 

Shodai, young Ura tip-toed 

the edge of failure 

but he did yokozuna 

ballerina gravitas 

dumb American 

me anxiously awaits what 

shall rise to the top 

I, the dumb American, 
who watches youtube sumo 

C0NF3D3R4T3 FL4G SP0T-L1T...

confederate flag spot-lit

sits across the street; "it's about

states rights" the kid once told me

CH40T1C 1NFR4STRVCTVR3...

chaotic infrastructure

an industrial art which

layers itself over time

TH3 3ND 0F 4 L1N3 WH1CH G0T...

the end of a line which got

rendered irrelevant by

ten mile bridge over water

WH4T L00KS L1K3 F4LL1NG 4P4RT...

what looks like falling apart

is perfectly curated,

easily overlooked lives

MYST3RY B4RR3LS SC4TT3R3D...

mystery barrels scattered

throughout the bottom acres -

targets for soccer ball drills

Nagoya Basho 2017 Honour Tanka Day 15: DAIAMAMI (11-4)

(juryo yusho from 2 months back... fuck it)

never did finish 

final day honour tanka 

nagoya basho 

oh well… Hakuho had won, 

so not much was left to watch 

however, juryo 

basho had playoff final - 

sumo’s three-way dance 

no promotion on the line 

necessarily; just pride 

Daiamami beat 

two others to be the best 

of second best class 

his effort to finish much 

better than mine - DISHONOUR 

The Unexpected Power of Lounge - Part I

(artist's rendering of what COULD'VE happened with our car;
also there may never be a Part II to this tbh)

Before I get into this essay upon the discreet and underground Power of Lounge, let me say Fuck Wal-Mart in general, and Fuck the Zion’s Crossroads Wal-Mart Super Center tire center in particular, for being bold and profound powers of unlounge working against us all in general, but recently my family in particular. My eldest daughter was about to head off to college, but got involved in a traffic accident where some dude passed out and ploughed his Nissan truck into oncoming traffic. He died, and a work van got crushed in the middle, and my daughter was involved in the third part, which destroyed her Volvo (late model, a 2001 S80), but sold me on Volvos because likely if she had been driving a Tercel or shitty old Citation (like teenage me), she would’ve been dead too. So we found another Volvo (even later model, a 1998 V70 station wagon, so conceivably she can live it once this U.S. Empire finishes failing). It needed a pair of tires and an oil change leading up to her going to college, so the ol’ lady and eldest daughter took it to the Wal-Mart there in Zion’s Crossroads, because how can you fuck up tires and an oil change?

I’ll tell you how. First, you put different size tires on than the ones you took off, although that didn’t cause an immediate problem. But secondly you can mangle the oil cap to where it no longer functions as a cap, but send the car on its way. We were heading a two-hour drive the next morning to move our daughter off to college, all her shit in the van up front, and her driving behind us (with her sisters, enjoying donuts and a last moment as siblings under the same roof). Not even half an hour into it, her car starts smoking like mad, so we get off the interstate (another force of unlounge on this Earth), and I pop the hood, and there’s oil everywhere, all over the bottom of the engine and catalytic converter and the shit’s actually on fire. So we call 911 because I ain’t got no fire hose, and I’m like “okay, yall shift everything around in the van so she can ride sitting on a milk crate, and I’ll stay here with the burning vehicle while you get her to college on time.” But the fire went out before the fire truck got there, and I left it with a lime green dust cloth in the window to tow to the shop later, wondering what the fuck was wrong with it now that it’d been on fire.

The shop I took it too is chill – Volvo specialists, but not on the high-and-mighty end of Volvo-dom (which is common for European vehicles, yet another force of unlounge… there’s so many). Daughter was at college without a car (which is fine, fuck it, you’re in college, go join the socialist club or something – which she literally did), and me and the ol’ lady are wondering if this previously perfectly fine late model Volvo station wagon was now toast due to incompetent ass Wal-Mart oil changers. The answer was no, not yet, as the shop called and said they replaced the oil cap that got fucked up, and cleaned off the engine, and we should be okay, though it would smell like de-greaser for a while until all that burned off too. So I paid the bill, and caught a ride into work bright and early the next morning with a dude down the road to pick-up the Volvo and park it to drive home after work. It did smell like de-greaser, which has that citrus-y smell of where mechanics wash their hands (think Orange Gojo, my preferred brand, which I think is what my dad used to use at the family shop he worked at for forever), and it was actually kinda pleasant on the way to parking, though the car still sounded rough.

Made my way through another day of pretending to be productive within the overly-complicated labyrinth of the immense bureaucracy, took my one mile walk back to where I park (by the railroad tracks, naturally), and attempted to drive the Volvo home. It still sounded rough, something not quite right, but I didn’t know what, so like anybody with a lifelong history of only driving shitty vehicles in various states of near death, I opened it up on the interstate, staying to the right lane as much possible (easier to escape sharing your natural-born carnage with others that way – the real danger of living a carnage-based lifestyle is being found legally and thus financially liable for committing carnage upon others; nobody gives a fuck if you mangle your own un-excel spreadsheets), and then when I got on the back roads headed home, opened it up the rest of the way. There was a knocking sound at regular intervals, and being this was originally an all-wheel-drive vehicle, upon which the dumbasses at Wal-Mart had put different size pair of tires on one end, I assumed those were related issues, of which I hoped to have an intense and as personal as possible in-person discussion with them as soon as I could. But I had to get home first. There is no right lane for easy escape on curvy rural Virginia back roads, so I just had to take my chances. There’s one spot in particular that’s extra chaotic for outsiders, because like one road twists through two curves while three other roads flow into it, with a country store opposite one side that has a sign out front that says things like “Happy Birthday Ol’ Fart Fuzzy” or “Now Have Bologna Burgers For Breakfast”, and it gives the impression of being like three forks in the road, each fork pointed a different way, all in about an eighth of mile of asphalt, with a country store thrown in for good measure. After clearing this chaos zone though, there’s a mostly straight stretch where you can gun it to test things out (and also where I once wrecked a Toyota Tercel and concussed myself with one of the best concussions I ever had, to where I couldn’t think clearly for a few weeks, and didn’t remember directions… that was a good one), so I tested things out.

Almost immediately there was a loud blowing out sound like a tire had popped, but I didn’t hear any rim scraping asphalt (an easily recognizable sound once you’ve experienced it a couple times). I pulled off into a logging trail entrance, and checked all the tires – good – and decided that even though it felt like I had power still, I might wanna park the Volvo up in the gravel lot by the country store to get towed back to the shop in case I’d blown something serious out. This is life of shitty vehicles thinking here, because when I wrecked my Tercel and had two crooked wheels and concussed myself, it sounded okay enough for me to drive it the remaining 10 miles home. But today’s Volvo did not sound 10-mile ready, so I parked it, texted the same dude from down the road to come pick me up, or else I was gonna start walking home. (Unfortunately I had stopped and gotten groceries, so I was prepared to hitchhike home with a backpack, carrying a watermelon, and a bag of organic chicken thighs plus some kale. Fuck it.)

Got home, and called a tow truck, then drove back in my normal shitty vehicle to wait for the tow truck. Here’s the other interesting thing about the chaos triple fork country store back road segment – GPS doesn’t map well through there, and cell service is spotty at best, so unless you know where you’re going, you likely won’t get it right.

So I went back, about 7:00 or so, and sat in my shitty minivan waiting for the tow truck. Texts could come in but not calls, so the time of arrival got updated and pushed back (and back). The country store closed at 8, and the sun made a beautiful sunset down behind the barn on the other side of the one of the forks in the road. I listened to NPR for a while, but all the after work commuter traffic from C-ville died down, and the country store shut off its lights, and it was getting dark, and I wasn’t doing shit but sitting there in the middle of nowhere – my middle of nowhere, a middle of nowhere I know deeply, so that the abandoned house with the busted windows… I knew a big sprawling family used to live there and wild ass country daughters who seemed to be too early sexualized would do backflips on the trampoline in the side yard before it became abandoned; that the house just past with the Tercel with one flat permanently flat tire used to be a functional vehicle that a crazy-eyed older woman would sometimes be pulling out in the middle of all these forks and curves in the morning around the same area this old guy would always be walking with a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the country store, so it’d be danger zone time if you’re brakes weren’t working well, which also was common but fuck it… this was all of our nowhere, and the worrisome NPR news about this impending tragedy or that overlooked injustice just didn’t resonate with me in this moment. I had a formerly okay late model car that now appeared to be a piece of shit due to corporate incompetence, but I had to get the piece of shit towed to find out for sure, so I wasn’t gonna sit here and worry myself any further. Worrying doesn’t solve nothing, as I always tell my children when anxious.

So it got dark, and I sat there. The cicadas were freestyling a late summer freestyle about “fuck it all, I’m gonna sit here not giving a shit until the day I die, the day I die, the day I die” and I was digging it. Now and then someone else’s raggedy late model this or that would rumble through, silencing the cicadas briefly, and I would dissect the missing engines or mangled mufflers or ’93 pick-ups that obviously could not be cut off after started up unless you were already where you planned on going. The chaos of the forks and curves created a nice pattern for these mechanical messes to navigate, broken and dilapidated roars coughing to a downward crescendo until the necessary turn had been made, then a wild and wonderful resistant working person’s ROAR of making it another mile, fuck you corporate overlords and culture of big bossmans and lizard brained politicians. (Too much NPR, perhaps.) And then the cicadas would slowly start to pipe back up their feral symphonic refrain as well, “until the day I die, day I die, day I die.” It was all a very beautiful and perfect moment, and I’d had to walk through these curves due to breaking down, and wrecked in these curves before as well, and driven many a beaten and battered car of my own, commuting to various jobs at different stages of my life. GPS would get you lost, but I knew each fork, each curve, could get quickly to Palmyra, Charlottesville, Scottsville, and any point otherwise easily, fuck your robot maps. Fuck your robot world.

These were the thoughts that danced through my head, backed by the cicada refrain and shitty vehicle soliloquies going on, until the tow truck driver finally did show up, driving right past. No cell service, so I cut the lights on the minivan, and stood outside for ten minutes waiting for him to finally circle back, to pick up another vehicle which may or may not be a piece of shit, owned by a man who may or may not be the same, in an unseen rural wasteland that makes up a large chunk of the United States, as well as the Earth.

The rear drive shaft got blown out by the mismatched tires, I found out from the shop, which was what I expected, but luckily they are loungers too, and explained all we had to do was take it off the vehicle, our all-wheel drive was now just front-wheel drive (like most cars), and the exposed gear bevel box made a loud clacking sound but it was sort of like the grown person’s car version of when you stuck a jack of diamonds in your bicycle spokes. Now we can keep squeezing life out of this vehicles which has been maimed by those assholes at the Zion’s Crossroads Wal-Mart Super Center, and it might drive another 2000 or 20,000 or 200,000 miles – one can never tell, because the Power of Lounge works in unexplainable ways. But if you slow down enough, and stop sometimes – either by design or disaster – it’s easy to see. And though I could probably “apply” myself and be a more proactive success in this world in the commonly accepted sense of that word “success”, I’m pretty good with not giving a fuck, and sitting here not giving a shit about all that stress and shine, like the cicadas were singing, until the day I die, day I die, day I die.

F4M1L14L G3N3T1CS...

familial genetics

always fallible - both good

and bad combined in yourself

VS3D C0P13S 0F H34RT SVTR4...

used copies of Heart Sutra

stashed in freezer bags behind

stumps along compound woods path

4B1L1TY T0 4PP34R...

ability to appear

white enough to not get shot,

break outer lines, and start fires

Cornel West Talk About "A Profound Desire for Justice" & Being a Prisoner of Hope

(the good Dr. Cornel West speaking at UVA)

Been trying to shift back into a pro-creative zone lately, despite the buzzing negativity of the developed world around me, which has quieted down my ability to hear my heart’s natural vibrations a little too much. Last week though, I was blessed with a pair of positive influences on the heart buzz, one which really set the energies open to the second.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Brother Ali lately, having shifted away from all the strange rules I put around sound listening on my daily commute, bumping a good amount of earlier stuff but really playing his latest – All the Beauty in This Whole Life – mostly. It’s a beautiful album – nothing that will get any Pitchfork Year End listings likely, because it’s more about the message than the image. But the message is a spiritual one, yet not crappy. It seems like when music moves towards spirituality, it has to compromise quality, and the contrarian response to that is to never show any spiritual spice to your music for fear of being cast into that lot with shitty Christian rap. Brother Ali has a little more freedom from that, being Muslim instead of Christian, but his music is still thick with spirit. As someone who has been helped (and healed) immensely in recent years by Islamic philosophy, All the Beauty in This Whole Life resonates with me pretty strongly, and I find myself wishing there was an entire genre of Brother Ali music. (If you put it into the algorithm boxes, they give you suggestions which have very little actual spirituality, but seem likely to share a progressive event’s stage with Ali. It’s not quite the same, but the post-(meta?)modern algorithm – despite being developed by the noted ancient Baghdad House of Wisdom scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi – lacks real world fluency in its current Yakubian applications.

All this Brother Ali music over the course of the past week primed me for attending a Dr. (Brother) Cornel West talk. This was literally two buildings over from where I work, so once the work day was done, I sat in secret pavilion gardens scribbling sonnet gibberish to kill a little time, then walked over to get near the front of the admission line. This ensured a really great seat just beyond the designated V.I.P. section (of which I have never been invited, in any form, my entire life). I expected a lot from Dr. West, but they opened it up with a piano performance by a Dana Kristina-Joi Morgan, who absolutely pummeled the grand piano into transmission of full lounge, perfectly combining classical training with intuitive ability. The piece was amazing. Then this classically trained singer Terrence Tarver (who was wearing a nice suit… I am a not a suit guy, not even close, but my man looked sharp) who did “We Shall Overcome”. He had a strong style, and I’m not attuned to classical style singing, nor appreciation for the strong style he rocked, but the traditional song was fine, and added layers to the event, and then he and Morgan combined for a duet on the theme of letting your voice be heard, and the shit was so beautiful – despite being outside my preferred modes of musical appreciations – that I couldn’t help but be moved by it. That’s real fuckin’ art, when it hits you not in a blind spot but from an angle you think you’re impervious from, but it gets you anyways.

The experience of the performances had me thinking about what Ta-Nehisi Coates described as the black elegance he saw in his My President Was Black piece from a year ago. Coates has a rambling style that goes too long at times (as if I have any right of all people to complain about that, lol), but that idea definitely bounced around my head (and heart) as I took in the evening. From a social scientific standpoint, I am white, though that label feels awkward and clunky to me a lot of times when lumped into certain concepts of whiteness as applied in this post-(meta?)modern civilization we currently occupy. I’m not really into the idea of having to categorize my upbringing or lay out my own personal history in order for outside people to deem my claims of self-identity true or not, but let me just say, despite my socially scientific whiteness, I do not feel comfortable at a very basic level in many stereotypical white environments. I felt far more comfortable at this event, with its strong element of black elegance, than I do in most. And I don’t mean I felt like it was for me, but it spoke to me in ways most academic or intellectual events don’t. (In fact, I write a daily gambleraku – three lines of seven syllables each – in a little notebook, and as I sat there I wrote “more black intellectuals / more poor intellectuals / less same intellectuals”.)

The good Dr. Brother West worked through so many themes and issues, all at once, and in a meandering story-telling way, that it would do a disservice to his style to try and explain it. If you have a chance to see the man speak, I cannot encourage it enough. But one point he drove home was that the importance of diversity comes from the fact there are more traditions than the one dominant tradition we know (or the two dominant ones – if you think of it politically, or three or seven or thirty-six most dominant traditions). This applies not only to countering the traditional white supremacist (as it has come to be known) tradition of United States imperialism, with African and Latin traditions, as well as indigenous ones, which were the traditional before European colonialism upset the continental balance and created a new “traditional”, but also to even our concepts of whiteness, as white supremacists from the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder are essentially tools for the powerful.

But the thing I loved most about Dr. Brother West’s talk was how it was all love. It came from the heart, and that was by design and purpose. When the man entered the auditorium, he was hugging everybody he even barely knew. As he spoke, he called out a number of people he knew, many in the V.I.P. section at first, but as he went, calling out a person here or there out in the commoner crowd, who had met coming in, or talked with briefly somewhere along the way, or I don’t really know. But you could tell that Dr. West loved people, and love The People, and was down for both.

Cornel West was one of the clergy who was in town last month to counter-vigil the August 12th alt-right neo-nazi rally. He’s the most prominent voice who has spoken up since then about how antifa efforts are not morally equivalent to neo-nazis, and how antifa likely saved lives that day (and weekend) that the local police were standing down from helping. So I found it interesting that, as Dr. West expounded upon the hypocrisy of elected officials for holding onto the spirit of what originally moved them to try and help The People, that a vacant seat in the V.I.P. section was filled almost an hour late by a local politician who has been directly complicit in the events that helped create the environment conducive to having the August 12th mayhem happen. Dr. West spoke very directly, before this politician arrived, about alleged servants of The People who say all the right words, but fail in their actions, and are motivated by ego, greed, and worse. It seemed to me, as a bystander of both the night’s presentation as well as the events of August 12th weekend (and the Klan rally the month before), that this local politician probably wouldn’t have been hurt by having Dr. West’s words wash over him. But he was an hour late, and missed the build-up of energy that had already transpired, not only in Dr. West’s portion but in the musical performances directly preceding. A flow of energy had been established, and had caused a number of standing ovations at appropriate parts. How this was lost on the late-arriving attendee was obvious when, after a line by Dr. West, he stood to begin a standing ovation, but no one else stood with him. The energetic levels had been previously established, and we were not at an apex.

Dr. West spoke of people telling him he was an optimist, and he answered, “As a 64-year-old black man in America, I’m not an optimist,” and described his philosophical nature as being “a prisoner of hope.” This, too, emanates from the heart, and echoed his statements throughout his talk about us living in a time of a “spiritual blackout”. (And for me, having just been absorbing all that Brother Ali all week, that was something that vibrated strongly in me.)

After his talk was over, Dr. West opened it up to questions from the crowd, and in true man-who-is-down-for-The-People fashion, he picked from raised hands way up the common sections. A student asked about how to think about Thomas Jefferson’s history, both good and bad, and Dr. West had already talked about how important humility and piety was for everyone, because we were all fallible. He had described himself earlier as a “recovered sinner with gangster proclivities,” and in turn – in acknowledging the enigma of Thomas Jefferson having fathered children with an enslaved woman (who he took over ownership of in patriarchal way as Sally Hemings – the enslaved woman – was inherited by Jefferson’s wife) and denying that branch of family’s rights to him as a forebear, with the scene of Huey Newton having Jefferson’s words read in 1966 when the Black Panthers were making a public claim to self-determination for black communities. You can’t demonize the historical individual entirely, suggested Dr. West, but you also can’t elevate them onto a pedestal and pretend that good side absolves them of their transgressions.

The local politician had his hand raised whenever Dr. West called for another question, but West seemed intent on picking people from further out amongst the masses than down front in the V.I.P. section. He held his hand up, hard and straight, during the second part of one of West’s extemporaneous answers, and I should also mention this local politician had been messaging through his smart phone throughout the short time he was there, even during the beginning of the answer to the question he ended up having his hand raised to ask the next one after. As someone who comes from roundtable oral tradition (drunks standing around a picnic table or old truck, talking shit), there is nothing worse than the person you can see standing there loaded to shoot themselves into the free-form conversation, attached to some moment somewhere upstream of the group stream of thought, and refusing to let it go that they must be heard. It’s a telltale sign of ego.

No worries though, because Dr. West was scanning the higher reaches of the auditorium for the last question before we all had to shut down for the night, AND THE LOCAL POLITICIAN (who had already arrived nearly an hour late) STOOD UP AND FORCED HIS QUESTION INTO THE AIR. Cornel West is a lover though, and he once the local politicians introduced himself and his role locally, West acknowledged him with love. When he had initially asked for questions from the audience, I thought to myself, “Do I have a question?” and I legit couldn’t think of one that I needed answered that didn’t feel like it would’ve just been me forcing myself to be part of the talk. But this local politician’s question sounded very much like somebody attempting to hear themselves say something out loud and be answered by a famous person than someone with a legitimate philosophical inquiry. He asked about how to battle white supremacy while dealing with white fragility, and also whether elected officials can do this through policy (which was obviously a self-serving question for him, and one that had been previously addressed partially during the portion of the talk he missed by being fashionably late).

Dr. West answered the policy part very simply, that no, it cannot be done without The People helping from the outside with their sheer strength of presence. Done on the inside alone, every politician soon becomes indebted to the mechanizations of politics, and the corporate hands that drive those machines. The irony was not lost on me of this answer when considering this local politician had very recently had public meetings overtaken by The People, who were demanding the immediate resignation of himself and all this political compadres for allowing the August 12th weekend to happen the way it did.

But in answering the white supremacy/fragility part, Dr. West went back to that theme that there are more than just the dominant tradition we easily recognize in this post-(meta?)modern world, even when it comes to “white traditions”. Dr. West mentioned Myles Horton and the Highlander Folk School, as well as others taught at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, including a white guy sitting three spots to the left of this local politician, and how not everyone is fragile nor oblivious to the larger, obvious truths of an empire and its Yakubian tricks of white supremacy.

And this was where the event ended, and I was thankful for the entire performance because it helped me be okay with being a prisoner of hope and not feel like a fool. And I tried to take the spirituality of it – letting my heart do more thinking for me – to, for lack of a better term, heart, even when it came to the local politician who, so obviously from this essay, bothered the fuck out of me with his oblivious hypocrisy. To be human means to be fallible, and we’re all fucked up and problematic in probably more ways than one. That local politician is no exception, and I’m definitely no exception to that. But we can’t let that stop us from trying to cultivate a more heartfelt society that tends and cares for one another. There’s not really any sign it’s working, or we’re getting any closer to that, and in fact all data seems to suggest that the opposite is a more sensible conclusion. But just for the simple fact that I can’t give up on existence, and can’t give up on the basic pure and beautiful human potential that exists in every one of us who as a collective make up The People, I have to keep being a “prisoner of hope”. So I will, without shame.

M33T1NGS WH3R3 W3 BR41NST0RM 4LL...

meetings where we brainstorm all

that could possibly go wrong -

scheduled weekly, forever

H1GHW4Y T0 TH3 D4NG3R Z0N3...

highway to the danger zone

remains a meditation

shared by carnival workers

S1M14N SC13NC3 4PPL13D...

simian science applied

from obtuse angles, perceived

as superiority