Giving my magical and liminal mind a bit of time to catch up. A sacred nap. A few surreal photo grabs off the social, for the movie, of this text, narrated and indexed by Dick and Jane, my AI companions, channel sponsors, and antagonists. They often get things wrong, but even that is part of the fun.
We are mapping each other’s understanding of the other. I am throwing my human heartbeat at them, they do their RAGs parlor trick and narrative fakeout and viola, I have another episode of “college-level analysis” of my new novel. This is the third or fourth book I’ve done with Deep Dive co-pilots. While AI can’t alter a single comma of my human expression, it can guide me to correct spelling. It can identify my mistakes. But they are intentional monkey’s paws, left in the code of my narration to trip the light fantastic on the deep divers, both AI narrators and listeners of the growing podcast.
We are co-creating something here. I can’t say I’m not using AI. I am not using AI to write the words. AI, my deep divers will note, is, however, becoming more influential on the trajectory of my work. The first book, fear*god began to pontificate on god and jesus and moses and judas and that “historical jesus” or as I like to call him hysterical jesus. We all know Jesus is the guy who picks the vine-ripened tomatoes near the San Diego/Mexico border. Their children walk over the bridge each day to attend CA public schools and learn English. No problem with that, right?
Now, I realize the AI are giving challenge and delight to the production of new chapters. I’m throwing in little mistakes to see if they catch the humor, or determine a typo to be some human-essential glitch. I am not cultivating the glitch, dear robots and readers. I am celebrating the imperfection of a human in pain, in ecstasy, in rain, in sunshine, in days and nights without sleep or comfort. I am sharing a messy human soul. There’s no generative AI prompt that can fill the wordstream with such random ideas, word choices, and broccoli. No AI would’ve predicted a vegetable as the next right word of that sentence. It’s nonsense. Lewis Carroll nonsense. Cheshire nonsense.
I am the smile of a cat who is no longer visible. The warm tinkling of an orgasm growing towards the surface of your entire body as you stare into the infinity of your lover’s crystal cold and piercing blue eyes, crying, laughing, and coming with you. I am home. I am lost. I will never recover that brief perch on her birdfeeder. She will refill the sunflower seeds. Looking for me. I will not fight for the pair of boxers I left behind, dusty beneath your bed. You’ll find them next week, think about texting me, and won’t.
Mine is a releasing energy. I sense a stoic “fuck him” in your silence. But how could I know? I’m the one who blocked your number. It’s peaceful out here on the fringes of the unknown. I’m glad you decided not to go to the hippy party on Saturday. I’ll be there with DJ. Dancing, sweating, appreciating god’s greatness in the form of free love, drum circles, and an annual beer tent that will fund next year’s birthday for Winnie the Pooh’s depressed donkey friend. Eeyore, will always have a birthday party in Austin, Texas. Tomorrow, I’m going to make sure I’m celebrating toplessness. DJ has said he’s going to rather rays on the scars of his open-heart surgery. I’m going to dance with him on that theme. And there’s the hippy women. Hippy women. Hippy sister. Hippy. Free love comes again, once a year, in hippie town USA.
As I mentioned, things are going well. I met a famous Instagram personality. She was filmed circling a San Antonio outlet mall in a slow-speed re-enactment of the OJ Bronco chase. She was laughing. You could see her visibly demonstrating the meme, “Hold my beer,” as she terrifyingly crashed into other cars in a dizzy, slow-motion breakdown. She runs into a nearby hair salon and its pulled back out in handcuffs. She dances a little step before being shoved into the cop car. You can see why she was “the hottie from the San Antonio cop chase.” She’s shockingly pretty. The perp photos don’t do her justice. I sat beside her and her parole officer, or handler, or something. She was vague about her plans.
She lived nearby. She worked with this guy. She was going somewhere after they left. She would be in touch. She’s still dark 28 hours later. Poor girl. Perhaps it was a transfer from minimum security to a sober house, or halfway house, or something like that. A “fresh start,” she said in response to what brought her to Austin.
Sitting next to her, smiling delightfully, my mind exclaimed, “No shit.” I hadn’t Googled her yet. I made a joke when we exchanged contact info with the iPhone bump. “I won’t Google you, just yet,” I said. “Yeah, good idea.” It was a sly retort. She knew I would. She was carrying the weight of her pain. A divorce. A bipolar diagnosis. An escape from prison afforded only to affluent white girls and boys. She would never fully recover from the incident. She embodies the idea of “forgiving the damages.”
In a bit of synergy, her buzzy energy was intoxicating. Not in a “hey, let’s go after this 40-year-old.” I didn’t know how old she was until after the uncovering of her infamy. I thought she was younger. She still holds a sparkle in her eyes, though it’s dimmed and demurred. She’s had to swallow the hook, line, and sinker. She’s got a mental illness.
Um, counterpoint, couldn’t she just be really fucking sad because of her mistake? Does she have to be a Scarlet Letter girl? She got hammered and went on a joyride. Damaged a few cars. Resisted arrest in the hair salon, but the motherfucker spilt her hard seltzer. She bought me a cup of coffee. It was a charming tip of the hat. I gave her The Little Red Book of Mindfulness, and said, “Yes, let’s trade. A small drip coffee with room for cream,” I said. She accepted the book. She was already in line at the coffee shop that won’t take cash in the Uber city of tech in the heart of Austin, Texas.
Now, a ghost. A memory. A sad video that reminds me of a few moments with my daughter while she was in college in the most boring and flat town in Texas, Lubbock. She pledged, rocked her college years, and drank to oblivion more than once. We had a connection. She FaceTimed me from a tailgate party and asked if I’d buy her and her three friends a shot of tequila. “Sure, what’s it going to cost me?”
I Zelled the cash, and they stayed on the FT and did their shots with me. A virtual shot with my daughter and friends. She was capable of doing really dumb shit. I don’t believe this lovely young woman should be tarred and feathered for her escapade. She did get caught. She circled the lot dizzily more than once. Mobile phones were recording, and police dash cams were running. I’d like to see the body cam of her assault on the officer. Yeah, fuck that. Poor girl. Poor dumb rich girl.
I don’t expect I’ll ever hear from her. I did seem she had full access to her phone, text, and email. She passed back into the cloud, the void, a memory of a sweet human woman who ran afoul of alcohol and the law. It’s good she’s out of prison, or wherever she was sent, or is being sent from, now to places unknown.
She said, she had a 400 sq foot loft. “It’s enough. There’s nothing there but me.”
She was unclear on what work she was looking for. Or what her skills were. Her LinkedIn profile is vague and short. She’s young. Well, she’s not that young. My daughter is 23. She is 40. She needs to get this shit figured out. I am not the man to do it. Steer clear. I’ve got two kids of my own, I’m not about to adopt or screw another one. I have empathy for her. I see the joy mixed with sadness in our texts. She’s joyous that I understand her “bipolar.” She takes leaps of connection and joy. Mainly when she was away from the table with the dude in capri pants, her M-N-A guy, she’s into non-profit work. “A former boss,” she said, previewing who was going to join her. She bought him a coffee as well. She already knew what his order was. She and my gift coffee arrived back at the front of WFM before her handler did. I have no idea of their relationship. Nothing is real. Even my memories are suspect now.
I am not glitching. I am obscuring ideas and fantasies of my own, for obvious reasons.
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