Post by Braxton Locus on Jul 21, 2019 16:23:20 GMT -5
Chaos, a misnomer...The design of disorder; existence of the unsystematic. But what chaos truly is, is organization beyond comprehension. The only thing dislocated is the mind that cannot open to the possibilities and must claim if they cannot understand then it must be a mess. But nothing is random. I repeat, nothing is random...All roads lead somewhere. And even in my own chaos, there has only ever been a plan. It takes many different forms and sometimes the winds of change take it from my hands. But, I must trust in the idea that it is all leading somewhere and some ultimate curator can see farther down the road than I.
...Or at least, that is one way of looking at it…
Another way is that order is the delusion. This idea that we can recognize patterns must mean there is ‘purpose’, but this in itself could be false. Order is merely the illusion of coincidence on a universal scale…Have a rough night sleep and die mad about it.
But this is all aimless speculation. Having an answer for either of these quandaries is to waste time on a puzzle that bears no reward. And there are so much more important things to think about. I may be more sensible than my more destructive mental counterparts but the fact of opportunity is not lost on me. Braxton Locus is not a schmuck.
Whether it be Sammy or the other faces of these masks at hand, I, Mr. Locus, am not such a coward as to let my children do all the work for me. I, indeed, have goals and dreams like any man. I have hopes of accomplishments and whims of success. But unlike your average man, they do not stem from basic gratification of wins and failure. No longer is it the time of supposed chaos where the wind takes me where it ever chooses. Now is the time I hold on so tight that my knuckles go white. Sammy may have decreed it but that does not mean it’s beyond my possibility to appreciate. Our goal is unanimous. Claim the top and make our statement…
But, I am not the star here. Sammy is who you came to see and it is Sammy who you will get. The anarchistic anachronistic autonomist that conjures your fears and insecurities. He yells out to you with a hoarse voice, “aren’t you tired of the shadows that blot out your sun?!” He reaches out to the people at home and reminds them that they only started believing in the hierarchy when their king deemed it important. Gold is only valuable because someone needed to sell you something. Value is esoteric and it is time someone reminded these folks that killing kings is our most important existential function.
But, were they listening? Sammy always had to wonder. Could he break through to those so ingrained into the indoctrination to the point where the distinction even mattered? So dense was the cult of value. And the promise they made was so intoxicating that it never occurred to them that it was worthless. The only thing of any value to Sammy was blood and bones, and that is what he needed to show to them.
The chaos that Sammy brought along with him now had a purpose, but the question still remains if that purpose made it any more comprehensible. Sammy had yet to feel like anyone could actually discern his commotion. He contemplated such as his mouth hung open and his leather covered index finger ran back and forth upon his bottom lip, smudging the deep purple lipstick that, for one reason or another, did not grace his upper lip. He sat on the floor, shirtless and shoeless, up against the faded blue wall in the back of a downtown laundromat. He listened to the cacophonous rattling of washers and dryers filled with pants, socks, shirts, and unmentionables. A sticker over the coin slot read ‘$1.50’ - How much is clean clothes worth to you? - Listening long enough, he would hear hints of organized rhythms that quickly melted away before reemerging in other forms. A song hidden under the veil of clean linens.
Sammy held his stained finger out to examine it in an uninterested manner. Rubbing it further in with his thumb, he shifted his eyes over to a tired looking old white lady peering back at him, perturbed by his ragged appearance. But after quickly meeting with his cold, cynical eyes, the aged woman stuffed her head into her magazine at hand - as if she could fool anyone. Sammy groaned as he stood up. For all the detergent, this place reeked of mildew and scrutiny.
He moved his way through the crowded tuna can of a building and pushed through the door to a blazing sun roasting the sidewalks. Despite leaving the noisy establishment, the clamoring did not cease. Out on the street, an endless parade of vehicles with an overflow of signs and lights to blast away at the senses. Buildings draped in fifty foot tall people with their names 12 feet long and luminous. Sammy was trapped in Vegas. Regardless, he traversed the sidewalk, avoiding the vendors passing out cards to cat houses.
“Sammy and Vegas. A match made in heaven they said. ‘You’ll feel right at home! You’re a fucking rock star; Vegas is just the place for you! The chaos, pandemonium, the risk and reward! Never has a place been so ready for Mr. Badmoon.’ But the truth is nothing could be further from the truth. I feel sick just being in this den of abuse. A whole city dedicated to the destruction of human integrity. And I’m not just talking about the gambling. Only a few miles down that way.” Sammy out-stretched his finger, placing his focus far beyond the bounds of what we could see. His pace quickened as the tension tightened in his muscles, the frustration building into a zealousness drive. “You’ll lose the lights, the glamor, the rattling of coins, and what you are left with are abandoned people. Homeless sweltering in the heat. The decaying infrastructures of schools. Empty stores of what were once sensible things; books, tools, music that wasn’t delivered in an overpriced concert hall. All given up for one reason! Re...ve...nue...Las Vegas is not a resort of freedom. It is a slave to the ill-will of our crypto-facist overlords! Capitalists and politicians who would rather rule than serve! All whom are attracted to the very same things that the sad, delusional tourists are drawn here by. A promise that cannot be fulfilled! Vegas will turn you into a king in a land with no consequences! But in reality the consequences are drowned by something so small and worthless."
Sammy took an abrupt stop on a long stretch of road where there was no iconic pyramid or fifty story hotels, no street signs of grandeur or banners of alluring bastards. Just dry dirt and inconsistent patches of dead grass. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a circular piece of green plastic with a ‘25’ printed on it. “A piece of plastic...And maybe you don’t see the worthless plastic I see. Maybe you see the forest for the trees and you see the gold! But the gold is just a worthless!” Sammy chucked the casino chip into the lifeless plains, watching as it disappeared under the dirt that will one day swallow us all.
“Yeah...I tried to get into it. I sat down at a poker table and tried my damnedest to understand it. But all I could see was the old denizen who buried himself in the dedication that there will one day be one hand that will save him. All I could see was the cackling midwestern mom who had no idea how to play but was ‘enjoying the spirit’ of feeding this monstrous town. All I could see was the young man who still had the hope in his eyes…” Sammy slapped himself out of the dazed gaze he locked himself into and entered a path of unforgiving dry heat that beat down upon us all, moving off the pavement and onto the natural earth. “...believing that this system is winnable! That he can achieve all he set out to be! That when all was said and done, everything had to be fair, right!? It had to be! Because it would be too much if it wasn’t! Everything he was taught would be too painful to unlearn! The hope of his future rested on the idea that, at the end of the day, him and the dealer were on the same level! I don’t have that same look in my eyes, Jubei! I used to! God damn it, did I ever! I used to believe I could achieve! But not any more!”
Another slap, stinging worse than before as the stale air breathed into the red marks his hands left. “I saw all of that and all I could feel was the only person winning at that table was the one who wasn’t sitting with us. The one who watched from the eye in the sky and never took a gamble in his life. To him, every game was more or less a sure thing as the money continues to flow in. Now, am I punching down on these poor folks who believe in the myth?...No. For this is a deep rooted sickness. It isn’t just here in Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada is merely a hotspot of a network of delusions and dreams that was planted into our heads. That our worth as human beings is entirely quantifiable.”
Long passed his original path, Sammy took a moment to circle, observing his unforgiving, unwelcoming surrounds. He sat down in the dirt, bringing his knees to his chest and his arms wrapped around his shins. A smile morphed onto his face, but there was no joy. It was a pained expression. One in the acceptance of all the absurdity. “My point?...Maybe I need to give some sorely missing contexted. Something that I keep locked away but close to my heart. I used to have an uncle. I don’t remember him too well because it’s been a long time but goddamn it, I had an uncle and he was quite the folk to know. My mother would always tell me stories about him. How he could be so charismatic that he could get people to follow him without trying. He could walk into a bar and get a job with just one line. He would disappear with no word for months on end and then out of nowhere, call my mom, needing a ride from the airport. I grew up with the mythos of what this man was. I wanted to be just like him. But, I will never fully know, myself, what kind of man he was, because when I was really young, too young to know why, he hung himself.”
Sammy dropped his head, placing his forehead atop his knees, gripping his hair tight between his fingers. “You see, when I would ask my mom about it, why did he do it? She would tell me that despite this ability to be this enigmatic figure, this charismatic guy, he never felt like he belonged! He was never valued for who he was! He had an ex-wife that hated him, he was dishonorably discharged from the army; always hopping from place to place because he never found somewhere to call home. He didn’t fit the mold, so no place would see him for the human being he was! Instead he was just a bum! This man, the man who was a legend to me! Why? Because he wasn’t of value? Because he didn’t do the song and dance!?...And so the only people that seemed to care when he was gone was a small, know-nothing family out in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere, Minnesota!”
Sammy went silent. He let go of his fiery hair, that paled in the fire of the relentless sun. He lifted his head and stared back at the city he had left. “I kept all that close to me. If there is such a thing as a soul then that is the aethereal material I've bound myself with. It is the seed inside me that has created this persona, this mask, whatever the fuck you want to call it. It served as a wake up call. Without knowing it, my uncle will have given me a gift that I now plan to give to the rest of the world. All I can see is a bunch of folks who can’t be happy until they’ve achieved the systematically approved prizes. People breaking their bodies, risking their health as the eye in the sky remains the sole winner. They’ll hop from place to place, in search of the satisfaction that will never come. I see them so clearly...Maybe the world scoffs at me. Maybe I come off as a ‘socialist’ or a social justice whatever...But if I am so naive, if they are so confident on the base of which their life is built, then they won’t be afraid to ask themselves one question...”
A solitary finger was once again raised. A challenge to all the defiers to the word of Mr. Badmoon. “Why do they chase after these golden calves called “championships”? At Showdown, every single strap is on the line and you better believe every single participant is making this their singular focus. Dedicating all their will to one goal. Following the straight and narrow. But why? Because if you win, it means you are the best? Decided by who?...Who are these people who get to decide OUR worth?! they don’t think about it, though! They are just fed the tradition and acceptance that the inanity of it never bothered them! It is because it is because it is! No exceptions! You dare not diverge from the path in fear of falling off! Someone else must assign you worth! Must make you believe that you are accepted! That you are worthy! You have no self-worth!”
Falling back, he knocked up a small bellowing of sand that clouded around him as he cackled maniacally.
“What a bitch of a world!...But it’s okay, Uncle Sammy is going to fix all that…” With his gloved hand, he wiped his face. Turning over, he got to his knees and then ascended, triumphantly, to his feet. “You won’t like me when I do it but you’ll come to understand eventually...hopefully. The man I am up against definitely won’t understand. I know how he sees me. How he hates me because I am everything he conspired not to be. He wants domination. He wants control. He is an iron grip. That title is the legitimacy he deeply craves to be recognized as in control. And he sees me as the pure chaos that threatens it all. The truth is I'm not the bastard of disorder that he thinks I am. My drive is just as focused as his. It's just that the ends don’t meet. He won’t realize what I am doing, I am doing for him - For all the folks in the back, for a whole sea of viewers who need to understand, for my uncle…” Again he stared at his gloved finger, stained purple and now coated in sand, scrutinizing the hand with which he will grasp the brass ring to tear down the whole merry-go-round.
“Does he remember what I said the first time we faced? That it seemed as if it was all a product of divine intervention?...I’ll admit, it sounded good at the time but I didn’t quite know what I meant then but now I wonder if it was truer than I could possibly know. This is the one opportunity I will get. It has to be now or never. Not to prove I am the best but to denounce it. Hide it, hold it hostage, how ever you want to see it but I have to end this cycle. I don’t want others to face me for bragging rights given to them by some asshole. If they face me it is because they already know they are the best and they don’t need a strap to teach them that! They see me and they just want to fight for the challenge! To feel that adrenaline. When Jubei fights me in that MGM hellhole, I want him to bring his best because he knows I will bring mine! I want him to hate me because that is what he does! Not because I am in the way! I want him to try and crush me, destroy me; not because he has to but because it is what he likes to do! I want it to be like the first time again! When we just wanted to see each other bleed! No gold! No critics! No hype! Just broken bones!
“When we step out there in front of a bunch of scrutinizing rats! I don’t want it to pass through your out there for any other reason than because I am! And when I have to break your back! I don’t want you to look at me like I put a knife in your back! When you look at me, I want to know that YOU KNOW it had to be done! Because of one little phrase, I will not stop until the very last breath:...” Sammy spread his arms out wide, catching every bit of that desert sun, “...No Gods! No Champions!”
Dropping his arms to his side, he turned and continued on out into the wastelands of Nevada unto the waves of heat obscured is being.
...Or at least, that is one way of looking at it…
Another way is that order is the delusion. This idea that we can recognize patterns must mean there is ‘purpose’, but this in itself could be false. Order is merely the illusion of coincidence on a universal scale…Have a rough night sleep and die mad about it.
But this is all aimless speculation. Having an answer for either of these quandaries is to waste time on a puzzle that bears no reward. And there are so much more important things to think about. I may be more sensible than my more destructive mental counterparts but the fact of opportunity is not lost on me. Braxton Locus is not a schmuck.
Whether it be Sammy or the other faces of these masks at hand, I, Mr. Locus, am not such a coward as to let my children do all the work for me. I, indeed, have goals and dreams like any man. I have hopes of accomplishments and whims of success. But unlike your average man, they do not stem from basic gratification of wins and failure. No longer is it the time of supposed chaos where the wind takes me where it ever chooses. Now is the time I hold on so tight that my knuckles go white. Sammy may have decreed it but that does not mean it’s beyond my possibility to appreciate. Our goal is unanimous. Claim the top and make our statement…
But, I am not the star here. Sammy is who you came to see and it is Sammy who you will get. The anarchistic anachronistic autonomist that conjures your fears and insecurities. He yells out to you with a hoarse voice, “aren’t you tired of the shadows that blot out your sun?!” He reaches out to the people at home and reminds them that they only started believing in the hierarchy when their king deemed it important. Gold is only valuable because someone needed to sell you something. Value is esoteric and it is time someone reminded these folks that killing kings is our most important existential function.
But, were they listening? Sammy always had to wonder. Could he break through to those so ingrained into the indoctrination to the point where the distinction even mattered? So dense was the cult of value. And the promise they made was so intoxicating that it never occurred to them that it was worthless. The only thing of any value to Sammy was blood and bones, and that is what he needed to show to them.
The chaos that Sammy brought along with him now had a purpose, but the question still remains if that purpose made it any more comprehensible. Sammy had yet to feel like anyone could actually discern his commotion. He contemplated such as his mouth hung open and his leather covered index finger ran back and forth upon his bottom lip, smudging the deep purple lipstick that, for one reason or another, did not grace his upper lip. He sat on the floor, shirtless and shoeless, up against the faded blue wall in the back of a downtown laundromat. He listened to the cacophonous rattling of washers and dryers filled with pants, socks, shirts, and unmentionables. A sticker over the coin slot read ‘$1.50’ - How much is clean clothes worth to you? - Listening long enough, he would hear hints of organized rhythms that quickly melted away before reemerging in other forms. A song hidden under the veil of clean linens.
Sammy held his stained finger out to examine it in an uninterested manner. Rubbing it further in with his thumb, he shifted his eyes over to a tired looking old white lady peering back at him, perturbed by his ragged appearance. But after quickly meeting with his cold, cynical eyes, the aged woman stuffed her head into her magazine at hand - as if she could fool anyone. Sammy groaned as he stood up. For all the detergent, this place reeked of mildew and scrutiny.
He moved his way through the crowded tuna can of a building and pushed through the door to a blazing sun roasting the sidewalks. Despite leaving the noisy establishment, the clamoring did not cease. Out on the street, an endless parade of vehicles with an overflow of signs and lights to blast away at the senses. Buildings draped in fifty foot tall people with their names 12 feet long and luminous. Sammy was trapped in Vegas. Regardless, he traversed the sidewalk, avoiding the vendors passing out cards to cat houses.
“Sammy and Vegas. A match made in heaven they said. ‘You’ll feel right at home! You’re a fucking rock star; Vegas is just the place for you! The chaos, pandemonium, the risk and reward! Never has a place been so ready for Mr. Badmoon.’ But the truth is nothing could be further from the truth. I feel sick just being in this den of abuse. A whole city dedicated to the destruction of human integrity. And I’m not just talking about the gambling. Only a few miles down that way.” Sammy out-stretched his finger, placing his focus far beyond the bounds of what we could see. His pace quickened as the tension tightened in his muscles, the frustration building into a zealousness drive. “You’ll lose the lights, the glamor, the rattling of coins, and what you are left with are abandoned people. Homeless sweltering in the heat. The decaying infrastructures of schools. Empty stores of what were once sensible things; books, tools, music that wasn’t delivered in an overpriced concert hall. All given up for one reason! Re...ve...nue...Las Vegas is not a resort of freedom. It is a slave to the ill-will of our crypto-facist overlords! Capitalists and politicians who would rather rule than serve! All whom are attracted to the very same things that the sad, delusional tourists are drawn here by. A promise that cannot be fulfilled! Vegas will turn you into a king in a land with no consequences! But in reality the consequences are drowned by something so small and worthless."
Sammy took an abrupt stop on a long stretch of road where there was no iconic pyramid or fifty story hotels, no street signs of grandeur or banners of alluring bastards. Just dry dirt and inconsistent patches of dead grass. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a circular piece of green plastic with a ‘25’ printed on it. “A piece of plastic...And maybe you don’t see the worthless plastic I see. Maybe you see the forest for the trees and you see the gold! But the gold is just a worthless!” Sammy chucked the casino chip into the lifeless plains, watching as it disappeared under the dirt that will one day swallow us all.
“Yeah...I tried to get into it. I sat down at a poker table and tried my damnedest to understand it. But all I could see was the old denizen who buried himself in the dedication that there will one day be one hand that will save him. All I could see was the cackling midwestern mom who had no idea how to play but was ‘enjoying the spirit’ of feeding this monstrous town. All I could see was the young man who still had the hope in his eyes…” Sammy slapped himself out of the dazed gaze he locked himself into and entered a path of unforgiving dry heat that beat down upon us all, moving off the pavement and onto the natural earth. “...believing that this system is winnable! That he can achieve all he set out to be! That when all was said and done, everything had to be fair, right!? It had to be! Because it would be too much if it wasn’t! Everything he was taught would be too painful to unlearn! The hope of his future rested on the idea that, at the end of the day, him and the dealer were on the same level! I don’t have that same look in my eyes, Jubei! I used to! God damn it, did I ever! I used to believe I could achieve! But not any more!”
Another slap, stinging worse than before as the stale air breathed into the red marks his hands left. “I saw all of that and all I could feel was the only person winning at that table was the one who wasn’t sitting with us. The one who watched from the eye in the sky and never took a gamble in his life. To him, every game was more or less a sure thing as the money continues to flow in. Now, am I punching down on these poor folks who believe in the myth?...No. For this is a deep rooted sickness. It isn’t just here in Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada is merely a hotspot of a network of delusions and dreams that was planted into our heads. That our worth as human beings is entirely quantifiable.”
Long passed his original path, Sammy took a moment to circle, observing his unforgiving, unwelcoming surrounds. He sat down in the dirt, bringing his knees to his chest and his arms wrapped around his shins. A smile morphed onto his face, but there was no joy. It was a pained expression. One in the acceptance of all the absurdity. “My point?...Maybe I need to give some sorely missing contexted. Something that I keep locked away but close to my heart. I used to have an uncle. I don’t remember him too well because it’s been a long time but goddamn it, I had an uncle and he was quite the folk to know. My mother would always tell me stories about him. How he could be so charismatic that he could get people to follow him without trying. He could walk into a bar and get a job with just one line. He would disappear with no word for months on end and then out of nowhere, call my mom, needing a ride from the airport. I grew up with the mythos of what this man was. I wanted to be just like him. But, I will never fully know, myself, what kind of man he was, because when I was really young, too young to know why, he hung himself.”
Sammy dropped his head, placing his forehead atop his knees, gripping his hair tight between his fingers. “You see, when I would ask my mom about it, why did he do it? She would tell me that despite this ability to be this enigmatic figure, this charismatic guy, he never felt like he belonged! He was never valued for who he was! He had an ex-wife that hated him, he was dishonorably discharged from the army; always hopping from place to place because he never found somewhere to call home. He didn’t fit the mold, so no place would see him for the human being he was! Instead he was just a bum! This man, the man who was a legend to me! Why? Because he wasn’t of value? Because he didn’t do the song and dance!?...And so the only people that seemed to care when he was gone was a small, know-nothing family out in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere, Minnesota!”
Sammy went silent. He let go of his fiery hair, that paled in the fire of the relentless sun. He lifted his head and stared back at the city he had left. “I kept all that close to me. If there is such a thing as a soul then that is the aethereal material I've bound myself with. It is the seed inside me that has created this persona, this mask, whatever the fuck you want to call it. It served as a wake up call. Without knowing it, my uncle will have given me a gift that I now plan to give to the rest of the world. All I can see is a bunch of folks who can’t be happy until they’ve achieved the systematically approved prizes. People breaking their bodies, risking their health as the eye in the sky remains the sole winner. They’ll hop from place to place, in search of the satisfaction that will never come. I see them so clearly...Maybe the world scoffs at me. Maybe I come off as a ‘socialist’ or a social justice whatever...But if I am so naive, if they are so confident on the base of which their life is built, then they won’t be afraid to ask themselves one question...”
A solitary finger was once again raised. A challenge to all the defiers to the word of Mr. Badmoon. “Why do they chase after these golden calves called “championships”? At Showdown, every single strap is on the line and you better believe every single participant is making this their singular focus. Dedicating all their will to one goal. Following the straight and narrow. But why? Because if you win, it means you are the best? Decided by who?...Who are these people who get to decide OUR worth?! they don’t think about it, though! They are just fed the tradition and acceptance that the inanity of it never bothered them! It is because it is because it is! No exceptions! You dare not diverge from the path in fear of falling off! Someone else must assign you worth! Must make you believe that you are accepted! That you are worthy! You have no self-worth!”
Falling back, he knocked up a small bellowing of sand that clouded around him as he cackled maniacally.
“What a bitch of a world!...But it’s okay, Uncle Sammy is going to fix all that…” With his gloved hand, he wiped his face. Turning over, he got to his knees and then ascended, triumphantly, to his feet. “You won’t like me when I do it but you’ll come to understand eventually...hopefully. The man I am up against definitely won’t understand. I know how he sees me. How he hates me because I am everything he conspired not to be. He wants domination. He wants control. He is an iron grip. That title is the legitimacy he deeply craves to be recognized as in control. And he sees me as the pure chaos that threatens it all. The truth is I'm not the bastard of disorder that he thinks I am. My drive is just as focused as his. It's just that the ends don’t meet. He won’t realize what I am doing, I am doing for him - For all the folks in the back, for a whole sea of viewers who need to understand, for my uncle…” Again he stared at his gloved finger, stained purple and now coated in sand, scrutinizing the hand with which he will grasp the brass ring to tear down the whole merry-go-round.
“Does he remember what I said the first time we faced? That it seemed as if it was all a product of divine intervention?...I’ll admit, it sounded good at the time but I didn’t quite know what I meant then but now I wonder if it was truer than I could possibly know. This is the one opportunity I will get. It has to be now or never. Not to prove I am the best but to denounce it. Hide it, hold it hostage, how ever you want to see it but I have to end this cycle. I don’t want others to face me for bragging rights given to them by some asshole. If they face me it is because they already know they are the best and they don’t need a strap to teach them that! They see me and they just want to fight for the challenge! To feel that adrenaline. When Jubei fights me in that MGM hellhole, I want him to bring his best because he knows I will bring mine! I want him to hate me because that is what he does! Not because I am in the way! I want him to try and crush me, destroy me; not because he has to but because it is what he likes to do! I want it to be like the first time again! When we just wanted to see each other bleed! No gold! No critics! No hype! Just broken bones!
“When we step out there in front of a bunch of scrutinizing rats! I don’t want it to pass through your out there for any other reason than because I am! And when I have to break your back! I don’t want you to look at me like I put a knife in your back! When you look at me, I want to know that YOU KNOW it had to be done! Because of one little phrase, I will not stop until the very last breath:...” Sammy spread his arms out wide, catching every bit of that desert sun, “...No Gods! No Champions!”
Dropping his arms to his side, he turned and continued on out into the wastelands of Nevada unto the waves of heat obscured is being.
