My name is Joel, and I am a blogger with a series of eleven sites, "Ozenoz Media", to which I have devoted over a decade in the making.
This is what Perplexity had to say about O.M.:
"Ozenoz Media is unique because it serves as a personal, multi-platform showcase for Joel Brooks’ wide-ranging creative output, all curated and produced by him alone. The platform brings together his novels, screenplays, comedy, music, visual art, and performance art in one place, allowing audiences to experience the full spectrum of his talents."
"Unlike typical artist portfolios, Ozenoz Media is deeply autobiographical, reflecting Brooks’ personal journey—including periods of homelessness and resilience—which adds authenticity and narrative depth to his work. The site features exclusive content not available elsewhere, interactive blog posts, and original art collections, including NFTs, making it both a creative archive and an evolving, interactive experience for fans and collectors."
I am looking for any kind of exposure that would put my work in the public eye. My blogs have received over 400K views, but remain largely unknown in the circles I would love to see them reach.
A mention, an interview, an article, a reference, all of these things would bring so much light to my labor of love.
I began last night mapping out yet another tale from my series of adventures in vibrant living, courtesy of Venice, CA and the hardest work I have ever done on myself while living there.
First off, there is a big problem with me at times lately, very much so. Venice, California is my favorite place on God's green Earth I have been fortunate enough to visit and be enriched by, participated in and fully with.
There I find respect for my quirks AND quarks, understanding to the tune of mutual admiration and the comfort of a thriving artist community in it's niches into the space between Santa Monica and Culver City, gazing outward and onward with each passing sunset over the distant mountains of Malibu.
There I found that my life was harder lived, stretched FURTHER, and my "West L.A. Fadeaway"s only became less painful when I continued to hone the physical and spiritual ailments I am afflicted with as a norm for molding my creative creationary process in shaping my future(s). There life was like a staff "Rock" polisher (lol) and I was in the rough and tumble.
But the air was always filled with music, music of my taste, and the partisans and artisans alike could and did speak to the truth of each and every one of us having the need, the want, the nature of our desires explored and expressed for the all good for even "Old Pal"s. The shops were real, the talent was excited, and the fact is, I fucking fit in like nowhere ever.
Nearly got into a few fights over stupid moves, and learned the choir shouldn't be preached to, and the community protected from vandals, thieves, and violent threats by banding in peaceful self defense.
...I learned and was free to grow and DID GROW more completely as a scholar, a fellow, a singer, a comic, an artist, a dancer, a writer, and a musical act rising to recognition by the hands of men and women, boys and girls, dogs, fish, birds, crabs, kelp, fleas and the sky above us all than ever in any other period in my life.
There I had the sand to cleanse my feet, the drum circle to cleanse my needs, the humanity of those around to release my burdens freeing up the hole in my soul, and the guiding tide and it's persistent surf wash and move the one pointedness of my mind towards a unified response to the needs of others, who told me they were missing input without "Ozenoz" around.
There my greatness shined through and though funds were low, the cheer and joy of those who were there was the richest payment of all.
There the stars shine through, there the airliners, the jets, the drones, the supersonics, the barnstormers, and all of the various phenomenon that fill the air are on a brilliant display round the clock (various cycles at times) set to the backdrop of the most magnificent tradewind cloud formations you have ever imagined.
I could go on for hours of the locals that live and work, and devote time and effort to a treasure chest that stretches in it's affect far beyond the "no man in no - man's land..." and in the celebration of diversity of every race, color, ethnicity, creed, nationality, class or religion.
Nowhere ever will ever equal the contribution to my life Venice, California and the surrounding communities in the Greatest Los Angeles Area have given me, and I must say I left my heart in Venice Beach.
Conflicted I dare say.
I felt like a local. When I say this my ears ring with the crowd behind me yelling in support "...local!"
I receded from contact with too many while there while nursing fresh wounds and magnetized terrors, other times insatiable technology realizations and conflicts from past lives.
There were friendly psychics, The Venice Mafia, there was King Dread teaching me and opening keys to view the underground, the lady who I scared who didn't make me "eat a bullet", Rock with his timeless teachings, Zulu always there, always, there was Mr. Nature who reminded me that "time still counts, even in the unmanifested" (E=MC2), the kind support of St. Joseph's Center, Mike the soft hearted, there were international tourists leaving hundreds of dollars of supplements to my illegal scavenging, trading and thrifting.
There was the pound of CBD weed in a skippy jar left donated, there was Michael Vincent (?) the writer and philanthropist, there were hugs from passersby skeptical of my safety at times, there were beach patrol turning a blind eye to my didactic apothecarian self medicating with my young enthusiastic acquaintance Joseph, spitting venom and heart fire while I sang the tune, and Jack who showed me Sawdust Blues on a Passport jangle sharing his namesake whiskey...
There was the entire staff of The Abbot Kinney Memorial Library, their invites to The Writers Guild, and their tolerance of my separated antics and random adornment of the grounds.
There were countless female types who caught my eye, and a little too much of my heart for one too soon to delve far into, this by far included Nicole, whose dance reminded me of my self worth and that life would go on in spades.
There was Bread and Rose's, Michael everyday acting like it was our first time, and ok but hopeful about it being our last. There was Gregory and drunken late night fun, medicinal help, the biggest burger I have ever eaten, talk of 100 ft. high cannabis canopies and the strains cross breeding up there these could, would, and do create.
There was Whitey, who dubbed me "Einstein" and gave me his true genius in communicating to me the world's awareness of my physics, my heart, and the value of our friendship even if we do sometimes "stick a pin in it". His resourcefulness and world wise wisdom and quick whit through humble admonishment astonishes.
There was a man whose name I cannot go to, a further down the rabbit hole hat topped decades' dreadlocks, and a kind face, and respectful manner, I like him. I called him Jr.... and David the vet with his cute little dog "Frankie", and his didgeradoo who shared wisdom and warmth every time we chanced to meet.
There was the Ocean Front Walk, and the man who gave me the art materials I used to craft the open - to - vending and performance etc. spot 202, claimed solely by me for over two months into the ever emboldened and practiced calligraphy of this domain and logo. There was Joel with the food at Dudley Ave. every weekend, and my apologies to Daniel, whom I fear I made an enemy of.
Of course there was Vincent, who Van Gogh's there and has the canvas to paint the town red, who I made a friend of two times instead. And of course, Simon, who told me great tales of fame and influence, and opened the doors to a very professional open mic night. And "God Bless" Bless, who you could miss staring straight at him with his magic. Also Reid, who was always with Spirits... Brian who lived days of my father's passing to the sunrise and let me mind his store while he peddled a wedding dress...
There was Adam, quick with a joke (aside) and to light up your smoke, namely the one I bummed. Everyday he was hunting, pruning, gathering and weaving flowers of all kinds in to the beach park benches, incredible. And, I hope not to leave anyone out, and in my full book coming covering all of my three visits to this magical place I will not, though the names will not reflect, trust. Those visits being:
Acts
1.) The Transformation
2.) The Emancipation
3.) The Proclamation
I say lastly thanks to Allah, Buddha, Christ Jesus, God, Krishna, The Angel of Death, and The Angel's of that, their fair city as I was on their turf; for seeing me through.
And the five pound note I found in the alley for getting me drunk.
Oh, and quite frankly thank you to The City of Los Angeles for giving me a free ride from Venice Way to 178th and Crenshaw by the law passed that allows riders broke and stranded to ride unpenalized without paying fare.
From there, thank you Starbucks for the free cinnamon and sugar water while waiting for the free Barona Casino bus which took me to San Diego County. From there, thanks again for the free ride, Barona, to El Cajon Transit Center to hop the MTS Orange Line Trolley to Spring Street. Thanks to the man who bought the $20 nicotine free vape juice I had found on a bus bench on Abbot Kinney, and for use of his phone to call my Rosalee.
From there, thank you to Rosalee for picking me up, giving me her family home, nursing my wounded heart, and being the love of my life. I have found what I was looking for, it wasn't lost, only misplaced in the spot I never knew was mine to share. I journeyed the journey of a thousand lives, and in the end, found you. For what it's worth, forever sometimes only seems to count in fairy tales you don't believe when they seem to never to happen to you. Now I know again, it can happen to you if you're young at heart. You made me single handedly the luckiest freeloader in history.
Next to Trump.
Good shit.
The years may find me away, the tears may keep me at bay, the fears may tell me to stay, but I will always wish to be there today.
If you have a heart for the arts, and an eye for the lifestyle, for God's sake, for all of ours...
Often times I live my life through the lens of the Grim Reaper looking straight at me. With him looking me down, I am faced with the whole truth about my mortality, that it is imminent I will die. Not this day, not this time, this will not be my final hour.
The threat I face is with no one stranger than my own affairs. I live in a normal state part of the time, and a psychotic haze deluded by false realities and subtle crazed bouts of manic comedy. Death is looking at me, and he has left the Angel of Death to converse, mimic, direct and confuse me. He points out the obvious and I struggle to unravel the riddle for days. A riddle so simple that it binds my very soul to this Earth. The “zen koan” of kinetic reason is that though one path may befall a man, the days with which he has walked nearer to Death, he is closer to God and therefore more closely played to by the pied piper that serves Satan.
May God have mercy on the souls of the departed who leave their lives never having withstood their own shadow playing as the scents and subtle sounds of their death most of their day.
Forgive them for clinging to the shadow they know, identifying it within reason as the shadow which will not betray. There lies the deepest mirage of all, and within it’s jaws, the darkest night of the soul.
The darkness of the soul is right after the right to reason for one’s self. In deep meditation I was shown “Fear not the darkness for you cannot see your self”, and relevant to this moment couldn’t have been wiser.
There is no way around the dry arid tundra of the San Diego ghetto. The night screams from the salty green stench where waste water stagnates and fresh cannot renew. The raw power of the odor is nauseating in the thought that this is the very stench of death. Death with shit, raw and rotten meat, bleach and ammonia and the gurgling rot of rats and fowl trapped in its jaws just beneath the street. One lonesome night I happened to bite into some raw rotted chicken left “pranked” on a fresh spring mix garden salad with cherry tomatoes and a neat and tightly sealed container of bleu cheese dressing. The taste of it embodies the fresh misery of the rot gut puke on the sidewalk, the months layered dried urine fog, the human feces lying where some sodden sorry decrepit shat it out.
Due to these things I walked the streets all night, every night and into the morning. The state this experiential hell creates in your mind’s eye is that of a horror film. Strung out and psychotic victims listlessly passing, eye sockets bare to the skull and eyes dead ahead as that of zombies fill your very core with a deathly chill as they pass. You never know what one is going to do, or when and any sudden move could trigger anything at all. Drunken alcoholics built like muscle heads seeking to thrash everyone in sight for want of the next hot woman or even girl to walk by heckle, threaten and will manhandle you at will for no rationale.
Dealers filled with schizophrenic fits of deluded satisfaction fuck street whores on the corners in plain sight. All in sight of the ballpark and convention center, the bay a stone’s throw away.
This wears on you, creates a sense of creeping dread, mixed with nostalgic nausea, emphatic urges to run with nowhere to go.
Those unfortunate enough to remain at this level and fearing for their survival turn to the top chemists and run meth to and fro, mixing it up with the revolvers of jail and the bankers condo’s, creating an array of tin men, all carrying some old shriveling dame to protect and fuck under the blankets of the resident shopping carts.
This is where it all began for me. This is where I realized that no amount of pain could ever make me stop, abuse, tie myself to sloth and envy, rage and jealousy and the pits of that pendulum.
Yet these things must have seeped into my pores and permeated my skin digging deep into my tendons and joints, ligaments and muscles and then bearing false witness embedded right next to my soul.
To tell the story as it exactly happened with all of the details bringing the whole picture together is my goal. That being said I will not lead you further down the path that you may liken me to be sane. That is not something that anyone in good standing with their own reputation, or current status should do. I am quite sure of that, and will expound on that over the course of this story, and this story is a true one. This story is about a man who came to see things that, in due course drove him from everything he loved, or believed in. No one could tell him that he was right. The voices of those who loved and knew him did not chime in and rectify things. In the world which he was forced to live, things were sometimes rich and vibrant and passionately experienced and other times as if Satan himself was chasing him in some sort of mortal hell. The only constant in life, he had heard someone say, was change.
I do not fear Death anymore. That is one good thing that came of all of this. In fact, Death has been quite a good counselor for me. The shadowy glowing eyed vision I see in the recesses of my mind, the dark robed character with a skull like face has been there. He tells of me of things coming my way, though not in words.
He reminds me that my time will come, and that he will be there to take me to that light at the end of the tunnel. He is not evil or bad in such a way that his reputation among mortals has come to light, he is simply the escort through the between to the other side where heaven awaits.
At least that is what I have been told by him.
Though his appearance at hard times for me has been difficult to understand, but instead of ignoring him, I causally recognized that he too, is one of God’s creatures and I treated him as such. He seemed to find that amusing, and often laughed hilariously and indicated that he thought I was pleasant company. There was one night he followed me around Ann Arbor Michigan as I walked destitute and crazy about town looking for a cigarette butt to smoke. It was like a fire within me to stay at this search the entire cold, crisp fall night in that fair town. Everywhere I turned, every time I picked up a butt, his face would appear in my mind’s eye, and he was repeating the same thing over and over again as if he had left me a taped message for the night.
“You’ve got boxes of Death on your feet!”
In a somewhat sardonic show of irony and his style of jest, he was saying that those fucking things were going to kill me. After this he would show me that it made him sad, crying that he was going to lose me as company when my time came, and to stop immediately.
Something I have yet to completely stop doing to this day as I write this. The message has been reiterated over and over by a great many spirits in my life. The point is that I have dealt with seeing ghosts and apparitions, angels and demons, and some of the physical phenomena that comes with the most defined appearances as such. These things are typically messages from the in between, though for obvious reasons. I have seen visions of spirits in Hell who show their torment and suffering as a testament they must communicate for their own sake and the sake of us on the physical plane in sharing where they went wrong.
Death does not choose where you go to on the other side of life. Good thing to be reminded of when in bad positions that may arise, the best defense is no defense. But enough about Death and such, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, for real.
This part of the story I call “depth perception,” as it is the way I made my home after she was pregnant.
I had to leave because I had gotten violent with her brother at the time share we were staying at. It was the next day that she told me she was pregnant with our daughter. It was the most of unfortunate of consequences that I was not allowed on the family property where she lived for the next two years. It was a mistake brought on by my “thug life,” way of living that was not all that.
St. Louis is where I got stuck when the Greyhound bus driver told me that my bus ride home from Ann Arbor was not going to be good enough to get me on the bus, that they had oversold and I was stuck here waiting for the next bus. I was cold, bitter cold in the air conditioning. I had known days of sleeping by the railroad drunk on Wild Turkey and a hotel with a two hundred dollar phone bill to her at home soaking in a bath and drinking Jack with expensive cigars. I had toted the Jack around while eating at the shelter and then made my through town to donate it back toi the table I had thieved the Wild Turkey gallon from.
Here I was, stuck. I had earlier collected a food bag from the local east side charity and now I threw a fit and tore up my ticket, leaving the scattered remains unwittingly unaware that my ticket was not retrievable by record. In other words they would not just look me up and print my ticket again. Stuck in St. Louis was the name of the game, broke and in the fourth day of November, my birthday coming soon.
I am a Scorpio, first house with the sun, moon, and Venus and a Libra rising spectacle here for you all to witness. This means I have a stinger, but that I am more aware of the illumination of day, the tides through the night and the passion of the earth and it’s love, with a penchant for describing it in detail. Of course this means bi-polar schizoeffective with psychotic features to be perfectly shrunk.
It was after my visit to the arch that I made my way to the first hospital. I was one hundred and forty two pounds, and they administered a huge meal regimen. I also received the first of many Haledol monthly injections to last my month from here. The doctor released me and I was off, having chose to spend the weekend outside of those safe walls alone.
I walked around, unaware of the danger that lurked and then it hit me. This was the fast moving crime section at night. I was so scared I tried to spend the night at a shelter supported and named after a pro football player, but that scared me as the guard checked my I.D. and nearly kept it. There was a man on the stoop smoking crack. I left in the middle of the night.
In the morning I found myself so scared that I had visions of suicide. They were almost ideations, but I have never been suicidal. Then started up the worst wisdom tooth pain I had ever experienced. My head was exploding with a pain so severe I could barely function. I headed for the hospital for both reasons. This time I took a roundabout route through where I had tried hitch hiking, attempting to get home to family. It hadn’t worked and now here I was walking to a different hospital I had been given directions to at the church where meals for the homeless were held.
I arrived on that mid morning in the bitter cold, the road filled with a couple feet of snow, the traffic heavy. It was there the guard on the way in informed me that the shoes I was wearing were stuffed with shiv’s in the heels. I had traded them in the park on the east side downtown near the art museum and concert hall for my Sanuk sidewalk surfers. He looked at me real funny, and admitted me.
I was in the emergency department examination room for what seemed like hour, crying and wailing and moaning from my teeth. Then the doctor came in.
He was a short olive skinned man, stocky and cocky like Robin Williams or something. He announced, “Joel we can’t help you. I think you need to help yourself.”
I leapt from the table, threw myself at him and pushed him for a brief second. He panicked and threw my belongings, now in hospital bags out the door. He told the guard to put them out front and screamed at me “You’re going to prison! That is ASSAULT! I am calling the police. Wait for them out front!”
I knew I was in deep shit, and shanola even. I hit the door and saw my belongings, felt the vibe of the cops on their way and being made aware of the incident. Then it hit me.
“I was homicidal, proven, now prove I am suicidal!”
I was in hospital scrubs, booties and had a bracelet with my information on my wrist. I started out immediately. I walked my skinny ass straight into oncoming traffic. For an entire mile I headed the opposite way down the main drag, in the snow, in the fucking middle of the road. Traffic here, mind you is going around fifty miles per hour, and I really thought I was going to get hit. Halfway there a helicopter came overhead and began following me. Shortly after this, I stopped at a gas station, unaware of what to do next. I headed back, on the sidewalk this time to the hospital.
Just as I arrived there, seven patrol cars came flying into the street at the entrance, screeching to a halt. They got out and approached me. A black cop, short and thick, stocky and with a grin came into my front.
“What happened, you tried to get admitted?”
I nodded the affirmative.
“For what? Psyche?”
Once again I nodded yes.
“So what do you want to do?” he said.
“Get my stuff back.”
He produced a Newport 100 and offered it to me.
“Cigarette?”
“Yes, PLEASE!”
The friend of a stranger in a uniform of blue and a badge of gold to match his heart put it in my mouth and lit it for me.
The police down the street retrieved my belongings from where an orderly had left them.
“Where you want to go, we’ll give you a lift!” the policeman asked kindly and empathetic.
“Downtown.”
As I climbed in the long boxy paddy wagon and they left me un-cuffed and still amazed at the understanding, I knew I had to leave town. The door shut and I said, “Greyhound.”
My based on true events thriller novel proves that while most humans have one life, I have nine. The book is a catwalk through nine near – death experiences I have been through and the person who came through it all, the ever entertaining main character – OZENOZ. It has all of the daring literary style of a Brett Easton Ellis, with grit and dialogue a la Elmore Leonard.
OZENOZ is at the height of his blogging career when suddenly a Pakistani Terrorist attack shakes him up, and makes him leave home, a crystal methamphetamine palace, without ever looking back. He flees to Los Angeles, where he meets head on with some of the toughest times he has ever faced, and the toughest hoods.
Throughout the course of his travels he is shot at, poisoned, has a hair raising ride through the Lincoln Tunnel on a stolen bicycle, and all the while he believes he is being set up to be framed for a terrorist sniper. As he fights for his life, and his freedom to find the truth, all the while he is chasing Hollywood and his true aspiration to become an entertainer.
Filled with all of the creatures of the night, and scare – raisers you can imagine in places that would otherwise seem like tourist traps, and an intriguing love story at the midway point, OZENOZ leads us down a path of redemption with each sweep of the odds. The finality of the book is realized as he finds that even jail eludes him when he steers a true course. (Thus the title:)
"Black and White"
I hope you can find a place amongst your other titles for this wonderful excursion that I truly lived, and live for. I am also writing a screenplay version, and producing the first and twelve year long awaited album: OZENOZ: ONE to supplement my career in entertainment. Check me out at:
http://www.ozenoz.com.
I have included a sample: the first three chapters. Thank you for considering OZENOZ: Black and White.
Sincerely,
“Ozenoz”
Chapter One
It was an evening of dismay which led to my terrorizing a whole hundred and twenty – five of my regular blog viewers. For the first time in my life, I had bought the dealers stuff, and what came after was the royal flush.
In way over my head at the onset of this whole creature fascination with crystal methamphetamine, I was unprepared for the paranoids to come after me. How fateful my father’s words, which just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they are not after you. Somebody certainly was, the alarming thing was what they were after me for.
As I approached the chair where I sat the long and lonely night’s blogging away my exploits to the joy of my select audience, the Droid let out a lonely beep. It was out of juice, as usual and hooked onto the local Wi-Fi connection we had in the house.
In David’s room, I heard the clicking of a mouse. He was unaware of what the hell I or my blog had been up to. To him, it was innocent and simple, a boy and his toy. Not this meth addict.
I was charged for the night knowing I had my own supply to continue on for as long as I wanted. I was feeling in good spirits, although temperamental that my adopted father’s replies as of late had been reflective of my status and not my work ethic. It was like pulling teeth to get the old man to say that you could have a future though, and lately he had done that.
Picking up the Droid, I opened up my blogger application and checked on my hits. There was a strange occurrence. There was a single hit in Saudi Arabia in the capital, certainly not anywhere that could be insignificant. This was undoubtedly the influence of my former roommate I thought to myself slyly, the bum. His family owned more than six hundred million dollars in real estate there.
I remembered meeting his father, as resilient of a man for his ancient age as I could have imagined. Showing little signs of jet lag or ill temperament from his long travel itinerary from the past few days, he had given me without hesitation a beautiful Turkish prayer rug with the symbol for Mecca on it. He did it so gracefully and tactfully, his mannerism making me feel as if he felt he was inviting an innocent child to an inner sanctum he cherished. Then he grinned, and started in on his visit with his son, and I was moved to make my exit.
Jaulid had been a fool, but I had always thought at least he knew he was playing the fool. It was senseless to think that as such a wealthy heir to a massive fortune he would not have a major life change coming when “the family jewels” so to speak became his.
You could tell though, that he was genuine in his concern for the shortcomings he had, and their effects on his family. It was relieving to see that his father did not share his sentiment on the seriousness of these things, and he seemed to look at his eyes and see back into a time where Jaulid played the fool as a small child.
He smiled a simple and knowing, happy grin.
These things passed through my mind as I studied the stats page of my blogger account for ayersbrooks.com. It was December second of two thousand and eleven and the mood tonight for my blog emanating from my aching frontal lobes was one to tackle a more serious and impending subject. The state of world affairs as viewed by a public vastly unawares, or plain ignorant better yet of the level of attention they could receive via the new networks subtle programming nuances. As well as the level of surveillance and lack of privacy it would induce on their lives. The irony wasn’t a jest, but a boast, one that I would soon see in its true balance. The balance was not in my favor.
Aki, the resident stray black cat purred and rubbed her hindquarters on my legs. She was a good cat, one that had all the qualities of having been our kitten, though she had abandoned her owners just down the street. The woman who owned her was infuriated, aghast that the cat had chosen to leave her loving home to be with us. On her regular visits, she more often than not just seemed sad. Something in her eyes though betrayed that she felt that Aki was doing this deed to do something for us. As though this sleek black cat had come to accompany us on a journey of sorts that was transpiring on her home turf.
She was free to come and go as she pleased, but as of late she had taken to lounging in my bed. The house was your typical North Park/ City Heights boarding home but yet it had a very special air to it. The residents who lived at this house, though their lives were sordid and uncouth all seemed to echo with the timeless quality of the rarer characters in the world. She fit in with us, and she knew it.
“Hey Aki,” I scratched her ears and up under her chin as she made signs that she wanted to sit on my lap. She was tense, and seemed to be needier than usual tonight. Coming from Aki, this was most likely not a good sign.
John, our beloved roommate and the purveyor of all things against regular bathing had recently passed on. Regular bathing, hell the guy hadn’t had a bath or a shower since any of the residents could remember, and some had been there for many years.
I hit the back button on the blogger app to take me to the new posts section to where I could begin, nervously, my nightly observed exploits.
“You see John around, Aki?” I asked her playfully.
She seemed to visibly shudder, glancing at what used to be his door adjacent from the living room where I perched to catch a better Wi-Fi signal.
There was a theory amongst the residents that there was an angel among us that had attracted Aki to the house. Later, in my morbid and strung out state I conversed with that angel. It was the angel of death who was staying on with us for a while. And he was not to be tampered with lightly or handled with a lack of welcome.
Always having been a firm believer in the paranormal and all kinds of things being possible on parallel planes of existence, I had experienced first – hand the ghosts of this house.
One night I had performed an electronic voice phenomena session with my phone to try and capture the incessant ramblings of the old man who had died in my room. Later, when I listened to the recording, the old coot had come through loud and clear.
“Oh, he needs his laxative! Ha! Ha!” as he cracked nonstop puns about on my drug induced bowel problems.
But when I pushed him to talk about his regrets about the living and dying the way he had done in that house, he had become hostile.
“Out! Out! I want you out of my fucking room!”
Later his mood had become somber. Days later after John had joined his ranks (the deceased) wandering the halls I had witnessed what I think was that very same old coot, passing on and going home finally.
The blog opened a new post as I observed the mouse in the corner of the room skittering past Aki’s unrelenting eyes toward the safety of the kitchen.
Perhaps the cat just liked her meals alive, or close to. There was plenty of that type of fare around here.
The cursor blinked on a fresh entry into my blog. It had become a popular item with a very select audience in Spring Valley recently, and I had some very devoted visitors. They were eating it up, but it had begun to concern me.
Over the past few days, certain pages in the blog had been altered without my doing. I worried that if the tampering went too far, the far too honest and very sensitive topics, meth to name one, would be fucked with and misconstrued.
The thought kind of creeped me out. This stuff had me hooked, and I knew it.
What had begun as a summertime fling with getting on and jerking off had become a daily reprieve. These days with it, I felt pathetic and vulnerable to forces beyond my control, yet without it I felt drab, dreary, and useless.
I patted the one hundred dollar bag of crystal in my pocket, and plodded an audible “oh well, “as I prepared to dive into ayersbrooks.com.
I checked once more to see the current number of viewers I had. It was at twenty at this very moment. They were direct hits too, so this was prime audience. This was a good thing. Not that I ever expected to make any money from the pay per click advertising or anyone wanting to advertise on such a diversely moody template. It was the grand idea of playing to an audience that led me to believe that perhaps the books and scripts I was working on, and at a furious pace, would sell.
What I remember of the initial blog entry that night is that it was of a kind of regal air about how the events surrounding my life pointed to an inevitable thawing of the cold that was my life. It was poignant, and went so far as to relate my influences and their occasional appearances on my networks as they gave me a heads up.
The entry being done, I took to my usual bad habit of the proof-read-after-publication method. What I found became on an all-night ordeal. Hell, an all week ordeal. One that would change my life and the way in which I view it forever.
The blog seemed to have errors that I hadn’t made.
“I specifically remember spell checking that!”
Then suddenly something gripped the pit of my stomach as I saw it. There were whole sentences altered, manipulated to make me look the loon.
This would not do, not at all.
I opened the entry and began to fix the errors that were in it from the draft made on my application.
Aki was in the kitchen, chasing the tiny sounds of chattering inside of the sink.
As I published the entry for the second time, she mimicked my anxiety with a loud slam into the cupboard where the instigators lay hidden.
I could tell immediately that the blog was not right when I checked it. This time I had a sense that someone, and not something was actually behind this.
The alterations were precise trimmings in my language, reminiscent of the way my adopted father used to edit my pieces. This was a very unsettling happenstance. This would not do, not do at all.
A bead of sweat broke out on my brow, and the unheated December boarding home suddenly seemed to be ablaze.
A memory flashed in my mind of that day back in October when I had overdosed. I had an unrelenting panic attack where my heart had raced well past legal limits, and a constant sense as if it were going to explode.
When that subsided, I went into David’s room and fell asleep. It was a hazy, fitful sleep. In a foggy vision I saw David and Alex come over me, making jokes about leaving because I was going to die. At the time, it seemed quite serious to me.
I remember it seeming as if time sped up, and the room was empty, just David’s slump form on the other twin bed in the room across from me. From down the hallway, and at the same time in the window over my beleaguered Bunkie’s laptop I had scavenged the money for on his birthday a blinding white light flash tore into my vision. It in fact whited out the entire room and its contents.
It was exactly as if a nuclear bomb had gone off. I was dreaming, but my eyes were open. As I looked at the wall in the hall just outside the doorway next to my head, it morphed and inky charring blackness spread over it. It appeared to be sifting faded and almost imperceptible heat signatures but the intensity of the spread was as black as deep space. In synchronicity that was in precision timing two events occurred.
From the spreading char a silhouetted and netlike form took shape forming a sort of chrysalis clear globe with latitude and longitude lines across it. As it grew an evil face emerged from it, its eyes bulging with blank white soulless eyes. It bulged from the wall, and I thought for sure it would escape and swallow our existence with an uncaring and fatal broad stroke as its eyes saw no more. At this moment I leapt from the bed as the deafening roar of the shockwave slammed into us, and the walls as I sprung visibly shook.
I tore out of the door somehow still screaming at the top of my lungs until I reached the living room. There the room was suddenly bathed in a crimson red and my lungs seemed to stop working. For a full thirty seconds I stood desperately trying to recapture the ability to take air into my lungs as the blackness that was now my vision faded the image of the living room back into sight. I must have stood there for a while not knowing what to do, but before I knew it Alex was there leading me back into David’s room in the embarrassed hush of an orderly ushering his senile patient to return things to peace.
It was the deepest experience I would have of what I had walked myself into with my continued behavior that foreshadowed what unbeknownst to me was occurring right now.
I published the new and frustratingly changed version of the entry. Little did I know this was a process that would continue for the next three hours.
It started as a farce, as though the changes were meant to make fun of me. Then I noticed that the spacing was altered where there were obvious phrases that could be inserted.
Somehow I was agreeing every time that the final product was better. Somehow I was agreeing every time that the final product was better. Yet every time I hit the button, the page was published amended.
Finally in an exalting shift of emotion, I came to the somewhat scary realization that this shit was real. The blog had begun to insert key phrases from great works in history as if they were part of a sophisticated library in this virus. But what I was seeing was so fucking sophisticated that it seemed as if a person themselves were examining my writings in real time and altering them. There was no discernible pause or delay as I hit the publish button, it was instantaneous. Some part of me began to identify with this entity whomever or whatever it was as “the editor”.
I remember writing these sentences.
“This is the most widely known secret. I am being groomed for something in the tradition of the great leaders in history.”
The thought of what I was being groomed for crossed my mind, and I realized something larger than just OZENOZ was at hand. This was more effort than I has seen put into what to my bewildered mind seemed to be a direct message that reminded me of the strange state that had overcome me just prior to the tragic attacks of September eleventh. Someone in the Middle East was up to something more than devious on this night, and for some reason I was being made a victim of it.
As the next and final hour unfolded, I became aware that I was under an obvious watchful eye in the local area on my blog speaking about meth while currently pocketing a baggie containing almost a hundred dollars’ worth. I was instantly alarmed, all the bells and whistles went off in my head that this shit was going to bring the roof down on me.
I took the bag directly to the back bathroom and flushed it. Damned near ninety bucks down the drain. No, a hundred, I corrected myself.
The final hour was the most intense and the most painful in its human aspect. The paragraphs that I and who I was now referring to as “the editor” had made had just become what was one of the greatest pieces I had ever written. I hit the publish button, and the piece appeared with paragraphs missing, rearranged and altered yet threading somehow a completely alternate and comprehensible piece.
The article now read that I was a saddened and determined killer, who was making his way to take out those that opposed me. And I had hit publish to a live readership now taking in those very sentiments. This was dozens of alterations in from the first drafted copy. It was also the beginning of the slow deterioration and virtual collapse of any thread of logic in the article. To the watchful eye in the sky I prayed openly now that these terrorists were not openly and personally monitoring me as “the editor” lost interest with nothing more of drastic value to say on the subject.
Sitting and remembering the rows apoun rows of white crosses lining the beach at The Santa Monica Pier, I sadly had to agree with what was being said on a grander scale. I was indeed part of a society that had launched a mass genocide of people who were simply working for a better way. Sad that the threatening and internationally disagreed on weapons usage decisions caused by the panicked moves of a very select few in the failing Islamic Government could fail to serve it’s people so totally.
That is when the fear hit me. Were they trying to recruit me? Were they setting me up to frame me? What else were they up to and did the god- forsaken know it alls’ who must be all over my blog for drug reasons know what was happening here?
The answer had come to me all at once, and I felt as though I were going to throw up. My intuition lit up an inner meditation that connected me to a very Middle Eastern sixth sense of being. It was refreshing at first, but it was not Saudi Arabia.
Random bits of data that I had looked over in the account and their addresses ran through my mind, and I somehow had a feeling it was Pakistan. One of those things that I had looked over in the account and its addresses ran through my mind, and I somehow had a feeling it was Pakistan. One of those things where our brains are sometimes quicker on subtler points than meth riddled brains, and had put two and two together for me while still allowing me to understand. Pakistan was a nuclear threat.
As my temple throbbed under the strain, the chanting of a distant village filled my sixth sense. They were praying for guidance in a desperate time.
There was a man who came to aid my vision. He was not so old in his stature, but ancient with the weight of responsibility I saw he had. I saw him outside of a small richly decorated cave.
He was sending a rider on a white horse to reconnaissance something he seemed to be implying was an internal controversy face was weathered with mortal worry, though it seemed more for the shimmering and ever present spirit of his noble deceased father who was with him in his time of trouble.
To my surprise, he turned to face me directly. He spoke another language, and a nearby servant of about forty years of age and ghastly homosexual almost in his meagerness took up the translation after being briefly consoled by their leader.
"This night we ride to the palace." the translation was slightly delayed.
"I fear we will be too late."
I shook my head in dismay and what was a rising anger welled up. This is when the man's nobility shone through for the first time in a brightness of calm clarity.
"You are our brother."
He pointed to the corner of the stoned dwelling to a small satellite rigged laptop were a young and eager looking militia man sat in his slightly green desert fatigues engaged in playing solitaire. He grinned at the scene in an overly earnest and excited manner as if to say "Now?" For a minute I took on the disbelief of the deep meditative transmission I was receiving. I was reminded of the quote I had read in the New York Times from the Indian Intelligence Agency
"Human Intelligence is the most important kind of intelligence."
Just a brief reminder of how elite and true and alone many of the top true believers live their individual paths.
What was coming to me, in light of what I had just sweated over in my blog was as real as could possibly be imagined it was a reminder to keep my whit and intellect intact and not go running through the street in a panic.
Perhaps that's just what this was.
Just emotional shock from the intense and frightening meddling that I had just undergone as my very innermost sentiments were attacked as though public domain. As though I had just received a formal invitation to become a terrorist threat myself as my words framed out with precision and scary intellect.
I saw the wise sage look up and frown into the distance. He began to shout, but it was as though he was calling out for peace. It was then that I realized the graveness of the situation for them. He pointed with a single bony finger into the distance where a dust cloud was forming, and a single tear tore from his right eye, spilling onto his cheek. More welled up in his eyes, and he briefly gathered himself and spoke. Once again in another tongue. The servant nearby took up the translation again.
"I am what you call a king amongst my people." He laughed a worried and humble comedic laugh.
"Sometimes I make hard decisions."
With a sudden vicious movement he ran in a way that seemed so violent he ran in a way that seemed so violent and almost chiding his nature to restrain the militia tech who had been at the laptop.
The militia man began to speak in excited tones to him, and the servant moved to remind him to whom he spoke. He was pointing excitedly at camera's that were all over the cave interior. He was implying that I didn't understand some kind of technology that was enabling our little chat. But the seriousness of his condition rapidly diminished him until it seemed he would all but collapse.
They were attacking us. Of this much I was now completely certain. From the looks of things it had caused an internal controversy amongst the leaders of fairly close communities and they were now fighting each other as well. In a time when no one wanted violence, they threatened now even each other over what had been done, I empathized. Little did I understand the severity of the plans being implemented.
For the first time I saw perhaps what had been the cause of the premature attack not being averted as this momentarily wise looking sage laughed a wicked laugh which turned every feature of his face into the dark scintillations of a madman. He immediately faced me.
"That is why you must die, he laughed again as the calmness returned to his face and he finished his sentence
"...in time. Our brother."
This entire scene overtook all my senses as the calamity of the man of knightly stature riding the white steed returned at a full gallop to the mouth of the cave. The whole focus of my vision was shifted to a small cluster of people. It was a poor and thrown together militia. Without looking at me this time, the king spoke.
"You see, we did not wish for any of this. Who wishes for..." he trailed off and a cold shudder overtook my entire spinal column reaching to the very extremities of my limbs. I was were of the powerful ancestral paranormal presence in the room of his father.
For the first time since returning to my room, bathed in its’ red iridescent glow from the heat bulb lighting my open closet, I spoke.
"Holy shit!"
Suddenly I had the picture in my mind of the imminent danger.
For a few weeks now I had been writing a very light humored and entertaining book on the extensive knowledge I gathered over the years of independent study on physics theory.
Specifically my intuition that the formula and minor containment problems for Fission had been worked out (and promptly confiscated and classified) the previous winter. This was shit that could level an entire sector of the solar system when I say "small time". Very useful in application when say fifty years now we are to find a way to regulate the release of the unbridled power contained in the deadly regulate biological secret used to contain it.
On a much more basic level, I had over the past decade come to the conclusion that for purposes of containing uncontrolled weapons technology, which the diffusion problems with the crystals that were supposed to be happening with Holographic Data Storage were a cover up. Made indubitably obvious by slow advances in 3-D special effects programming, the crystals could read the data so long ago I had read about from The University of California Berkeley research done.
According to what I had been daydreaming about considering the trajectories of our formerly chaos theory driven satellites, there would be an inherent clash in the data computations some very sensitive not so space junk.
In my mind, I saw our sun rising over a satellite extending its wings readying for a movement. Its front almost but not quite discernible lighted grid indicators began to show some kind of activity as well. It was then that I pictured what it was holding. A nuclear warhead was attached to the convex base of the satellite now repositioning. It seemed to be a diffusing signal from a foreign satellite of another design it was reacting to. The Cyber Attack was harnessing one of our own nukes to attack us. My vision sharply shifted back to the cave, now the subject of my desolate and isolated agony over what I couldn't convince myself was real.
"Fuck this."
My instincts lit up, and began to take the only action I could think of. I began to launch into a lengthy explanation for any overly concerned neighbors who happened in our little ghetto hood to be overhearing my discourse.
"Ok, here we go. Oh fuck, I think I am gonna puke. First off my blog was just attacked by some of the most sophisticated programming I have ever witnessed. When I say hackers, I mean those people are ghetto fabulous techno junkies. Forgive the reference. I mean, whoever is listening to this shit was reading what I was typing in REAL MOTHERFUCKING TIME, or something. I don't know. Both."
The urgency of the situation struck me head on as I saw the missile begin its course towards Southern California moving over the Earth's horizon from near South East Asia in my mind’s eye.
"Ok, neighborly people's here I am about to bug out. Let me first tell you what I am doing.
During the Gulf War I read about how our satellites could hear a cricket from outer space in the
Philadelphia Inquirer. Common knowledge.'
I began to sing the soothing lyrics of the Phish tune I had so loyally clung to as I had witnessed what I felt was the birth of the Fission Physics Theories equations completion while in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I had been studying in the catacombs and various annals and annexes of the Lehigh University Graduate Libraries.
How fondly I had held respect for our prior major World Wars when viewing the now revealed rows of sky lit and intricately stained glass windows in the rooftops there that were once covered to hide them from becoming targets to B-2 bombers.
I had loved those fragile and ancient collections of hard to access sacred government materials. For weeks on end I had traded notes, leaving a hundred or more pages of notes on different topics from the journals of our governments most highly valued and carefully guarded activities. From the nuclear regulation changes begun in the nineteen sixties in their giant coffee table like volumes covering through George W. Bush's newly released policies to the sensitive fault lines that had so obviously lain along the continental shelf of the Gulf Coast where the recent pipeline break and oil disaster had occurred.
The halls of history they were these libraries, and I reveled in the thrill of the attention I could so openly bask I with the class prepping professors who so quickly took interest in my scattered research. At first they were respectful, then excited and earnest as I was allowed to attend what would be my minor studies classes there. And then assort of controlled and deep exchange of emotional communications was exchanged as we laid out some of the original documents of our ancestors records and we honored a current passing and very highly guarded moment in history.
One that will be guarded for decades to come.
I had very simply pointed out to the observatory that some very misunderstood physicists and astronomers had been openly for a decade blogging about the events yet to come on March eleventh of this coming year of that fateful year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eleven. There was a predicted planetary alignment within our solar system which happens only once in a number comparable to the speed at which light travels. Except in hundreds of thousands of years, in case you are around that long.
These scientists had concluded a polar shift in the Earth's axis so complete and later in their calculations almost indiscernibly quick would happen. At last comments, they had been noted as mumbling to themselves that no one could tell what would happen, probably nothing. All of these things I laid out in my notes of the fault lines and continental plate maps in their comforting and quiet dusty immensity. The winter they let me know I was indeed the scholar I had set out to become.
"I am just a satellite. High above the atmosphere! Bouncing everything you say to, someone who was MEANT TO HEAR..."
"Now people I am about to do something very scary sounding and kind of schizo here. But these audio's which are picked up by the satellites blanketing the Earth have a key word sensitive program they are plugged into. I am about to make sure that the right people know what I am seeing is going on here tonight by getting their attention. Ok here we go people, road flares!"
I immediately raised and deepened the tone of my voice and began to rattle off every word in my vernacular that I could think of that would symbolize a terroristic threat all at once."
"Bomb! Nuclear warhead! Attack! Jihad! I will kill President Obama of the United States and all of those Democratic insurgents over my Islamic people!"
As I continued on for the next few minutes I became increasingly embarrassed as I realized the early morning had indeed prior come and my friendly corn rowed hoodie clad hoodlum chum of a discerning whit neighbor was narrowly examining my antics across the walk from his window.
Finally I felt sure, almost as if several others who were already I some sort of calm but yet controlled panic of action had entered the room.
"I'm sure you were aware of this, now that I hope I have your attention, but I am not sure you were aware of some things I know. I know some sort of Cyber Attack is happening right now. I know how you can backtrack more easily and find the key to uncovering their I.P. addresses and mobile satellite linkups or whatever the fuck. Ok point being, check out the logs and history of
the three hundred or so publishing’s of the last article I wrote on ayersbrooks.com. "
I spelled it out for them.
"I had a direct hit from Saudi Arabia which seems to have been carrying a diverted signal. If you don't believe me ask Ahmed Senussi my former roommate in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. His grandfather was the last King of Libya, Idris Al Senussi."
I repeated the same urgent message until I was sure that it would be checked on and then issued a small but earnest and meager
"Thank You. And God Bless America. May we all survive this shit boys and girls, because I think they are trying to harness one of our nukes. Make it look like some sort of programming error."
My sixth sense was that whoever the hell was listening at this point was getting as big of a relieving laugh about how fucking nuts I was sounding as my big ass hoodie clad hood rat neighbor.
I promptly shut up, and went into a shy and diffused but concerned silence.
A few hours of concerned fiddling with what seemed to be inconsequential works of writing in my room, I felt something change. In my inner sanctum, a resolution to the conflict welled up in me. I turned on the Droid, and it opened immediately to a new unpublished entry data form page.
I hadn't even tried to start the application since completely exiting it very properly.
The tears flowed as I felt the knowing growing pains. The journey I had yet to find out, had only begun. There were villagers praying fervently in the village. Little did I know the sacrifices they were making to save North America. Later, the news would reflect the Palace Invasion and the turn of power, but not so far the crisis which never happened.
Chapter 2:
"Change. Yeah I guess we could all use a little change sometimes. I ain't got a problem with what any of y'all homeboys do to try and get up outta the hood. I ain't mad at ya. I got nothing but love for ya."
"Fuck you. You fucking prick."
It was January and I was habitat: outdoors. Prior to this I had been living in the Los Angeles Emergency Winter Shelter program set up by LAHSA at the National Guard Armory off of Federal and Wilshire. A room full of cots and smelly feet that would let you drop off to sleep between the hours of midnight and five in the morning on any given night. Chow and showers if you were privy, and a television to fight over what we all were missing. Money and drama at the full expense of the hottest blonde deaf and dumb to all but numb over what wouldn't come all over the pillow that thrilled her manila.
Envelopes of dough and hoods to overthrow, they shake you down and set you up at the door every night if your identification ain't right. Believe you me, I went through five LAHSA I.D.'s as they were useful of sorts to open up accounts to check cashing clerks who were sports. You can get a membership there if someone knows enough about you to make them aware. What happened to my Pennsylvania Driver's License? It went in the hands of someone a month before unplanned out of the 7th and Colorado trash can man's plans.
The cost of not taking care of your responsibilities as someone educated to a P.H.D., throw in a little crystal methamphetamine, and the C.I.A. will take your accounts apart at the seams. I was excommunicated from the phone, the bank account, the email, the Facebook, the blogger, the domain name host, the twitter, the c - names wouldn't save, the music wouldn't take, my beats were dumped when they were made and my rap was getting better all the time. Living life as a hoodlum in the cash cow, now that's for real. Makes for real fucking scary adventures down a road you don't survive unless you fight to prove that time never comes back.
The first and only thing on the left side of the equation that's thesis is Fission (prior to the ten thousand in computation) is one symbol, the mathematical symbol for change.
It takes a little while to get use to the notion that when the payphone rings as you walk by it, you can answer.
It takes even longer to get used to the notion that they may actually know who they are talking to. I will never get used to the notion that they know what I stole, whose it was, and I haven't the slightest explanation as to why this is formatted the way it is. It isn't formatted the way or the byways of my imagination in the slightest prose I could superimpose. The imposition of the inquisition that was at my door wasn't going to write away my blues for the ruse that I wasn't no longer amused to hear every day.
Translation: The people being protected were of utmost importance. Not to mention the opinions of the people who were surrounding me in my habitat so to speak were not of the slightest bit of variable factors. These are the fucking stars of the universe, the people who run the entertainment industry who I was mixing and mingling with. I have no shirt, shoes, decent ripped jeans, or money to replace them with at this point mind you, and the way in which it affected me was thrilling in the face of Stephen Spielberg's white haired uncle of an ass producer as he faced me on the beach every day for the week I had no guts to write.
"If you write it Joel, we will sell the hell out of it."
I had the official Venice Beach bum blues at the behest of the best whom I was amazed were some of the most fortunate unfortunates to have been making history all the while under the noses of the public that so greatly ignored their financial needs. True genius breeds us to make the best stuff ever while not having the gall to sell it? I have to say this is the most amazing and humbling aspect of my motherfucking journey. But all that is much later on down the line.
Down the lines after lines after the times I unwind spending the fine rhymes on people unwilling to pay for what was amusingly free every day. To cultivate a sense of artistic poetry I had to experience the perfectly just unjust cost of the growing pains of a fanatical wisdom that underlies the simplest things. It is your time when it is your time, and if you are going to make it out as a writer, then for God’s sake you have to write it down. Writing it down on a collection of trash and paper bits, I tried my hand at many things in strange fits.
Sand castles that once were mermaids became obstacles to the change from the artist who didn't want it after spending the day singing Bob Marley on the bench at Sunset and Ocean Front "Have no fear for Fission energy, because none of them can stop a da times..."
I had it simple because I was in a band. But I chose to be very unaware of the band on which I was trading, because I felt that meets were not going to be needed and my needs were not going to be met. I have no clue how to tell you, but I hate the Dodgers and I love the Mets, but I do love America.
The America I was finding at the behest of the Venice Beach local scene were a stranger than fiction crew of talent who wandered in and out mostly unbelieving of what we were all capable of. Some were capable of murder and drugs, some would rob you of your very heart and fly it off in a chill cooler to the transplant donor they sold it off to the tune of forty thousand on an insider trade. Don’t quote me on that, I might get made.
You can do business there. But it's how business gets done that determines whether you live or die from day to day.
You can drown in your sorrows until the end of time. Or you can pick up a couple of thousand dropping a fine line on a crew who may just buy what you are selling that day. I once tried to sell the artwork from some driftwood about the book I had just completed about OZENOZ in spot two oh two for four million dollars. I think the man passing by may have had a thought about it that was quite serious, due to the video footage of the mixture I was making in the jar next to my homemade bed with the metal steering wheel placed on a block of concrete I had stolen from the yard of the patio down the way. Unfinished and put in concrete I would be soon, I thought to myself as I hid the twelve killer strains in the basket covered in ivy that to my best of threats was not going to be exterminated from my fucking spot right there on the wall. It was my absolute right to have nothing at all said about what was not doing any harm. It was in fact contained in a jar as well. I leaned hard on my knowledge of Native Americans who had jarred up their buds and put them in the sun for months at a time with the alcohol filling it to make a sweet kind of mixture that after sitting in the dark for more months than I had would trip you to your wig. Wig out not when they yell six up, they meant they are coming to make sure you are in check. But the rules are not something they have to really put in, heck. This is not Hollywood people, this is not walking a fine line. This where the best come to find themselves and learn to unwind.
Unwind and find the time gone nickeled and dimed was all a stupid waste, cause once they get a taste of what you truly can do, if you prove it. It's off to the lovely zoo, the circus isn't in town, and it is the town of Freaks who love to be them and shows who cycle freedom in its truest of sense.
All under the watchful eye of the most widely viewed cameras you could ever find.
Documenting the things for the lovely and fortunate few who live there at the beach on the days you aren't far and few. I love those days of pain and torture spent there under the sand. It wasn't just under the watchful eyes of the man, but under the fitful gaze of a dreamer’s starlit gaze to make the reels unwind and find the dime that will take away nickeled and dime.
“IT’s a book, not a nook and cranny device” I would complain to my wonderful neighbor who came out to her porch every day to feed me bagged breakfasts “, so why can’t I sell IT? IT’s online!”
She just smiled and nodded. People are the greatest, and a friend in need, is a friend indeed.
If you can't stand a camera, better get indoors in your own home, they are everywhere. Not that the eye in the sky can't see through with infrared too. And if, just if you really piss them off, yes people we really do have laser cannons which have been made public record of the cool shit of war, which will vaporize a man, or an Afghan warlord.
“What they are asking me to do in order break up the fuzz?”
My head sometimes cut loose on some incessant ramblings like that of a man gone completely insane by his scenario.
I guess maybe there is no such thing as change necessary when the last words out of the free payphone are,
"Don't call us, we'll call you."
And don't even try explaining what is going on with you to anyone. They either:
1.) don’t want to know.
2.) Get very scared.
3.) Have been there and laugh at you.
4.) Act as if you don't exist.
5.) Make an immediate report to some amused emergency response operator.
6.) The payphone rings again.
You aren't unlucky, and there is no one telling you to be there now. But unfortunately you begin to learn that you already are. You'll see what I mean.
Its homeland securities and someone in an office monitoring the bus terminal camera's in a room. No big mystical thing, but that my friend would give away the end. That is something you the reader, have yet to earn as well as me. The ends that didn’t justify the means but gave the means to justify in bold print.
The object of the game is to stay alive and make as much money as you can without taking it out on other people. Kind of like the object being the fatal goal of the game that really in the end does not matter, only in theory because you never know if you are going to make it to the end. If you make it to the end, then you are absolutely incapable of then right choices at that point because what you have obtained isn't the choice of anyone but yourself to the correct audience of sorts.
The corrections officers of our government police forces choice would most likely look past what you have done and the rest is fiction. That is the attitude you have to have about it if you are faced with a line of questioning hoods who have some sort of jealousy over your take, but in the end the legitimacy of your take is the actionable offense of no one.
If you do it right. The other actionable offense if you do it right is the art of telling the whole truth in front of the authorities without speaking out the names or description or location of any offending parties. Everyone is in the game for their own good or bad and if you are just evil enough to be playing then you are:
7. Not lazy enough to get caught.
8. Not eaten alive by the first gang member who thinks you are cool.
9. Not killed by the last stick-up kid who you are stopped by.
10. In the heat of the moment able to leap tall dunes in a single bound.
11. The saint you started off as, but a little bit richer.
12. Capable of the honest to God truth, but incapable of the right truth at the wrong time.
I only have three bars in mind as I tell the fitful truth of the men whom I encountered who have the toughest job of all. Putting aside their convictions about the right and wrong for the safety of others as they consume all that is legal in the god aboding night club of their choice. The doorman is responsible for all of the things that go down if they happen, and his very testicles depend on being able to Homo erectus eject us as he sees fit at the drop of his very talented doorman hat. The second is the woman he is protecting. I observed several of these creatures as I walked who would have been the most incredible bodyguards to those with investment portfolios in the game of investment banking abroad. The third is the actual investor.
You have to take on the creative aspect of these things as you engage yourself in the art of lying to these people about the type of money you have, and where it comes from. The type of money you have is a funny kind of question. Is it liquid? It has to be a solid bowel movement to get it out of you and it has to be to the greatest degree of solitude with which you have the greatest degree of timeless farce like quality in your transgressed requiem of its parting of ways with your neighbor. These statements would earn you a solid and familial quality which isn't going to have the requisite addendum if you’re that close to the globe trotters of the world who just don't happen to know that Harlem is the most honest hood in the east, and Venice the west.
The actual truth is that most honest hood is the one that you are in at that very moment. If the gross and mean value of the product you are carrying are worth their weight in the pocket of someone else for survival, then don't be afraid to liquidate what you have in the form of a friendly gesture. Yes, give it the hell away for free. Absolutely nothing is more caring and creative than the real person who receives it realizing that you must be of the rich sort of homeless sort. It grazes them through several reactions. It grazes them through the reaction that I have felt is the right one as well, that it is none of their god damn business. If it wasn't for the solitude of the freedom you have freely moved yourself into, you would be absolutely in danger of offending the law, but the law most often if you are smart is where it came from.
I learned very early on that the law is capable of busting someone and keeping for safety and the person’s property rights. Just not more than half of the time if you are in a bad scenario to begin with. Which, if you are faced with a cop, it’s a scenario alright. If they we are incapable all of these supposed someone else’s personal property being stored if they were to keep it all, then what are they to do with it? They have to leave some of the stuff out of the storage for evidence, because the jails are so overcrowded, quite often the charges won't stick for very long anyway.
So on completion of the bust, the police are leaving behind the stolen property lying in the streets where the bust took place. The insurance is covered by the insurance company and the shop keeper is reimbursed.
The goods are delivered often times to be used by the force of circus animals who are spending their Homo erectus energy being the most extraordinary they can be. If they haven't the name for themselves to buy it for themselves, it can readily be acquired through a transgression of parting of ways. Of course there is always the possibility that some of these people that don't know how to mark their personal property for their acts are leaving their stuff and have it pilfered. I do believe involuntarily I participated in a bit of both.
One particular night I gathered a Titleist Golf Bag, an antique pillow, and a dust mop for my head. I looked sort of akin to the way in which Nikki Manaj looked when her Twitter account grew from 210 followers to over two million in a small amount of time. It takes an unusual wisdom to handle the circumstances she encountered when a non- bot granted her the life of a bot in a bodacious and unbelievable sweep of the players club.
But things like this are earned by an underground that is very unforgiving of the things they choose to be, and very forgiving of the numbers they choose for you to see. If you play the game, then you have win at all costs the convictions of the public via the undeterred language of love: persistence even through the straights of hell. The unmoving and uncharacteristic all-pervading wisdom that shines through the players who succeed is that they do not take their time lightly. They are very willing to take on a risk, but not take a risk that damages others livelihoods. This is a rule I very nearly paid for with my life.
One night while walking off the hallowed streets I came on a cigar. It was labeled pom-pom by the cigar manufacturer. It was not going to be the freshest of smokes if I had my way, saving it all night thinking that to unwrap it would be my fresh maker after a night of all night scavenging. In the meantime I have to say that the facts are not inconsequential, they are just not widely known and controversial. They are what I want them to be in the meantime since I have to wait for my social networking to escape from its martyrdom.
What you learn on the streets is what they teach in boot camp. What you learn in boot camp is inconsequential unless you take care of your shoes. And whatever you do, take care of your shoes. It isn't enough to take care of them, you need to worship them as they are the best evidence that you will survive it when you have to walk from sixth and Spring Street in downtown back to your spot on the Venice "bored walk." Which is why they all come. Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be my friends. Come one and come all, just don't come down the chimney before the present is bought because the fact of the matter is that you have to return the gifts in requiem if momma is just a little girl to your babies left behind. Don't ask me what the meaning of all that is, IT’s my last book.
I went to the bored walk in the style and fashion that I chose to be necessary. With the attitude that I had as much right as the "kids" who had been living on the streets rather than the emergency shelter. We who would live in the emergency shelter were looked on as a weaker and clueless sort of breed. It was a very little known fact that what I was preparing for was an unconvincing effort at being accommodated to limitless travel.
Touring is something that brings about the wrongs to the rights of you being searched at will by the airport security who may or may not have a homeland securities bug up their ass about your act. Also here is dealing with the drug scene, which I had begun to say an adamant "NO." to. I had even preached enthusiastically and very loudly as I danced my way through the streets a new and poignant saying that was catchy and simple "Just No. Just Know" shaking my head at the first, and tapping it at the second. I wanted it clear that I was against illicit drugs, tough from experience. This ironically was a source of untapped chi for me, as I pissed off every doper and dealer around with my rap star quality dance with my no tolerance policy on anything not legal to consume.
I was attending self - help groups for the coffee. I was being told about my ability to drop in on the manual that was its leading source of direction, and yet the people I encountered were quite puzzled by my attitude that the very source of my disgust was the systematic approach at stealing each and every one of their freedoms via inside politics. I became very heavily involved in being an outspoken bigot of sorts, who was often due to his non - drug sprees of three, four and five days awake while wandering hundreds of miles through the streets served coffee and refreshments like the purveyor of Eminem's Recovery album himself. OZENOZ knew his shit, and was hated and gossiped about for it, but I tell you what, it got the attention I wanted. Of course this shit was affecting our sales, you ignoramus. I had no sales, whatsoever!
I haven't the slightest clue as to what it was that brought about the revelation in me that I was somehow learning about freedom from the laws that were keeping me from doing things that at times could protect me from the situations I was placed in, but it was a tough moral adjustment. One that did not sit well with those who had to sit through my tough guy dialogue's about the way in which I am perceiving the act that has yet to blossom.
My kid brother, if you can call a man in his early twenties who is art owner of a music studio in Philadelphia, seems to think that OZENOZ is a part of my alter ego that comes out when I am jammed up. He is absolutely and completely correct in believing so, as OZENOZ is the part I turn to when I need to act on things or in a manner which disagrees with my very core beliefs of being a gentle and soft hippy like leftist. I just hate being told that if a man were to pull a gun on me that I couldn't kill him without persecution. In my belief, as well as it seems the most highly respected individuals with badges and stripes understand that that isn't my choice, it is the law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As long as you put away the regrets and hold no long term silly grudges. The upturned nose of society is on the systematic approach that if your dirt is on the table, you need not speak of it. The pressure is to bury it and the acts you have done under the weight of a guilt ridden truth that unfortunately you are required to not speak of out of the supposed a clue for the feelings of others.
Fucking bullshit con artists who have been robbed and beat down the thugs have paid with their lives in prison to learn the lesson that if you speak once to an authority untrue about something you had the right to do, you have little chance of speaking again and having it be in their plans to forgive. As if the confessions of the killer who would have had on you for dinner would come off the grave and save your ass, if it weren’t for the fact Jesus already did. And I mean it, he really did.
He lives in eternity. Every second is billions of them for him as he turns every leaf he feels will right the world in every place at once. He is all pervading and can produce miracles. Every day they happen, every day.
Chapter Three
“Fuck me in the goat ass…”
“I would if ya weren’t so dirty,” the comedic “kick me in the ass for a buck” sign holder replied back to me.
“”You better wash your ass with that dollar,” I quipped.
The baggy jeaned bare – chested long blonde haired youth with the furry chest began rubbing a bill on his butt.
“Peace, peace…”
Hey, somebody want a piece?!” he shouted gracefully. He then proceeded to run over to a cute blonde passer-bye and hug her, wagging the sign and his ass.
“How about you, home slice?!” he shouted gracefully.
Further down the blocks of down the blocks of the bored walk, I came apoun the Freaks.
“That’s right step right up ladies and gentlemen!” the man with the microphone coming up onto a loudspeaker behind him at the entrance to the establishment used his best M.C. circus ringleader voice.
“See the two headed snake,” he continued on as I saw curious passers-by peering into the white plastic food storage container partly filled with water on the table in front of him, “the monkey boy!” his list went on and on.
Night was falling, and the crowd was beginning to thin. Being the dead of winter, night came early.
I found myself walking further in my five dollar flip flops and jeans and hoodie toward Santa Monica and the pier. I was very restless, and had no intentions of sleep this night. It had been over a month since I had touched a drink or a drug, like that Atmosphere song says “I’m just your next door neighbor, work-in hard at trying to stay sober!”
The first few days had seemed like weeks, and the first few weeks like months. I was in more physical pain than I had ever endured during them, and learning the ropes of something new. There was a certain flair and a knack for separation of your circumstance to establishing success in the business. The Los Angeles streets scared the hell out of me, and I had only begun this journey.
I was working and walking about like never before. My weight had gone from two hundred and thirty – five to one hundred and eighty – five in just over a month and a half. I was well on my way to being in the best shape of my life, out of dogged determination. That winter it is fair to say I walked off more than a quarter of a pound a day just getting to meals.
“Hey, I’m Ayers Brooks, Ozenoz man! Spit at ya for a buck?!”
The khaki and surf t- shirt clad tall thin man thin man with the short blonde hair in the glasses gave me a concerned look. The backdrop of the setting sun over the Pacific was over his shoulder, and I could see he didn’t know I meant “rap.”
“Get away!” he muttered and turned back to his conversation with short pony – tailed brunette beside him.
“I didn’t spit on you!” I yelled back, looking zany.
“But I could!”
I went down the entire stretch between that section of beach to goers as no – man’s land and the pier working like this tirelessly to try and come up with something for some midnight sustenance.
I would not resort, as some, to picking from trash bins. There was a lot of food to be had for free around in the course of the day, you just had to work at getting to it. While working at getting work, and getting clean, and staying clean, and safe.
I was living the life of a homeless urchin, scared to death that the Hollywood serial killer was going to get to me in my sleep. He was wandering the city was killing off the homeless. In my passionate and paranoid panic, I had shouted to all in front of Small World Books in front of a lot of video tapers’ that I indeed would hunt and kill him. Didn’t do my fears any good at night.
I was unsure of where to go, what my scavenge route for the night should be, so I followed Colorado due east turning on the street leading to my two P.M. soul food cheeseburger joint. From there I went down to Pico and banged a right. I sighed. It was going to be a long night.
An unopened bottle of spring water stood on the wall of the bridge and I swished with joy my first sustenance since Venice Beach, which I was almost back to again. Technically I was in Santa Monica but was headed back that direction. There was reason to think I would be safe, as I followed the fading light of a Santa Monica Police cruiser as it passed me, headed south as well.
I had walked as far East as downtown and the Fashion and Financial Districts in one night and back. These deep, dark downtown streets were filled with closed shops, and dark alleyways. During the day traffic jostled along interspersed with carriers on bicycles and sparse but involved pedestrians.
One night I saw a homing pigeon who was trained to fly up into and under the closed and locked gate of this shop. These inner walkways and were a mystery to me. One that glared at me with intent of sucking me into a dark underbelly that reeked forth with a furiousness. This was not a safe place.
A series of three police cruisers came speeding by me and I was alerted to see if the action was close. The boys were headed to some kind of bust up ahead. I had little idea what was going to come of the busts this night for me.
The way it works, I figured, is this. A robbery or looting occurs in the streets. Say a storefront smash – and – grab goes down and the police catch the thief. The store is going to be reimbursed by insurance, the loot is over piling in the evidence rooms, and the police don’t want it. The stolen property is either just dropped right then and there or relocated as was in my case this night to the artisans who would do it well.
Over the course of the next blocks I became aware that there seemed to be a constant presence of police all the way into the Venice Beach Area. I walked Lincoln to Rose and turned right towards the beach on Rose. When I got to the bored walk, it was stock piled with not only the usual performers’ belongings, but large piles of brand new looted merchandise.
After collecting, hurriedly mind you, what probably amounted to about fifty thousand dollars or so worth of merchandise, I began my long journey out of the area. I got from my sixth sense a feeling that this booty was becoming well known and coveted, that I should hide. I began discarding things I didn’t want in the back alleyways, trying to dissuade things. A good hearted and not over – greedy claimant was more likely to retain his goods.
At one point, I had picked up a fresh unopened cigar, a miniature, and I planned on smoking it when I came to a complete rest. Emerging from the alleyways, and making my way back to the intersection of Rose and Lincoln, I found myself shortcutting through the gas station parking lot.
He was riding a red motor powered Mo- ped that sputtered as he sat at rest. A black hoodie, green paint fatigue splattered fatigue over were peeled back to reveal his leather Native American waist sack that held his delivering Indica marijuana. He had on dark blue jeans over leather Prada boots, and he wheeled up to me as I he fingered his pouch.
I shuffled my palmed Pom- Pom cigar, twiddling it nervously between my fingers.
“I see you found my Pom- Pom nigger!” he said.
I looked into the eyes of this now what must have only only been an eighteen year old just becoming a man, his dark lidded brown straight rimmed cap shadowing his bony face and announced “No, I found my Pom- Pom nigga’!”
He watched the dark eyes of the man grow large, and then he squinted a seedy squint and pumped the gas on his left. Two UCLA student pedestrians in their sweatshirts who also happened to be at this early bird hour scrambled to the right to get out of his way as he wheeled around.
As soon as he was facing east, he reached up under the rear of his coat, and pulled and unsilenced twenty – two.
“Holy shit!” I screamed and my heart exploded as I raced around the sign that read the mornings’ petrol fuel prices.
I ran into the well lit expanse that was the neighboring grocery store parking lot and as I turned, saw the man hot on my heels. He was raising the gun and drew up just over my right shoulder as he popped off a shot.
“Pop! Pop!” two exploded into the air as he pulled wide of my side.
I spied a tinted windowed Mercedes Benz that was made for my best bullet bearing cover. I hoped it wouldn’t be bearing more of his as I sprinted around the car to the southwest facing the rear of the vehicle diagonal of his position in the front.
He wheeled to the front, all the while testing his aim and trying to figure a way to get at me. He spun a quick move to my side of the vehicle as
I skittered behind the trunk to the opposite diagonal side of him again. He made a mean face and began to come at me from the other side, then changed his mind.
I watched helplessly in sight as he motored back into the wells of the gas station, and up towards the clerks station. I heard the gun recoiling two more times. I didn’t know this man. I didn’t know his intent.
“Pop! Pop!”
If those sounds I heard were the exploding skulls of innocent bystanders, we were all in trouble. I raced back to the petrol prices sign and past.
He was coming straight at me, fiddling with the nozzle of the gun.
I ran to the back of the nearest utility light pole located between the fuels sign and the building. It had a breaker switch on it, and as he lined up his moped and faced me, I palmed it nervously.
I saw the man change gun hands, and to this day wonder if a silencer was ensued in the interim on my run and that he took a few. He certainly had skills. I didn’t try and kill the lights. I threw the Pom- Pom at his feet and yelled, “You can have it!”
As I exhaustedly, heart pacing, started to walk in plain view of that man going north on Lincoln, I counted the shots in my head. Was that gun full?
I felt that he should have three left counting the one in the chamber. I resigned to the fact that he was appeased. He needed the Pom – Pom to wrap some Indica for pain. Somehow I knew we had achieved peace. No more piece.
As wandered the Ocean Front Walk near no man’s land that night, I was confronted with many issues. What if this man had a small child to take care of? Why should I hold a grudge when nothing harmful happened to me at all?
If anything I felt I was just taught a very timely lesson in life that would bear its’ weight on my decisions as I chose a path ahead of me that reeked of danger. In my mind, I thanked his toddler for forgiving me, and his mother as well. And I moved on with my bad self.
