Palliativity 101: in medias res
Chronic pain is not merely a physical condition— it's a state of mind.
October, 1998
I wake up to the sound of helicopters. I find myself in bed, lying on my back as my mind aches from what I would later come to know as the morphine/opioid afterburn; where dreams and memories fight the demons of consciousness somewhere behind my throbbing eyes. I turn to find the source of the roaring rotors as the strings and horns join in. "Saigon... it's Miss Saigon," on top of my radiator, a My-First-Sony tapedeck/soundmachine plays on as only analog plastic 90's tech could provide.
I look down to survey the salvage operation performed on my re-located shoulder three-thousand eons ago. The battlefield is quiet and and bandaged. White gauze can be very reassuring sometimes. I drop my head back down as my drawn-and-quartered tendons seem only to remember what pain feels like. I'm in no place to argue with them.
I'm 13 years old and these are the first few minutes of my new life.
0+>
Atonement
Moses prayed on Sinai for 3 months until god forgave his people. Idolatry is hard to avoid as an artist. We craft. We create. We critique. If we are lucky, others see something of themselves projected in front of their eyes. In that moment, we share unspoken intimacy. The object becomes the subject and thus idols are born.
The chorus of sirens outside of my house awaken the reptilian parts of my brain that tell me to run and hide. But by tomorrow I'll forget—
• • •
Someone tried to blow-up my neighborhood this weekend. A well executed FBI sting led to the arrest of a man planting what he thought was a bomb on Clark Street.
The news of this incident still hasn't really shaken me. I've been waiting 9 years for something to happen. We've all been waiting.
"He wanted to transform the city… he wanted to make a statement and he wanted to replace the mayor of Chicago," said FBI special agent Robert Grant. "He was unhappy with the way the city was running [and] with things that were happening in other parts of world." [source]
• • •
Atone. Embrace your idols.
0+>
Hibakusha
![[Nagasaki mon Amore]](http://www.musashimixinq.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/hibakusha_BLOG.jpg "Hibakusha, ©MMX")
Hibakusha, ©MMX
—
In August of 1945, my great-grandparents were still locked away in the Arizona desert while my grandparents continued to scrape out new lives here in Chicago; surviving.
At the same time, my great-uncle in the MIS continued to interrogate Japanese POWs in PNG, hoping that each secret he extracted from the prisoners would help prevent the American invasion of Japanese soil that each US soldier feared since the first "Banzai!" was cried… Homeland: faces of the children he'd yet to bear charging at him with bamboo spears by the thousand.
8.6.1945: two of my grandparents' nieces died on their way to school; midwives to the apocalypse. Their aunt died soon after of leukemia. Those left behind would be known as hibakusha; atomic survivors. No one escapes the fallout…
—
Across the demon-proof bridge stands the Guardian of the Fallout. I can't look at Japan without seeing him. Karma doesn't have a half-life.
0+>
Musashi at Brunei
Musashi at Brunei, ©MMX
The Musashi was a Yamato-class heavy battleship and served as flagship for the Combined Japanese Imperial Navy from 1943-44. With her indomitable spirit, the Musashi terrified all who saw her on the horizon.
A major flaw in Japan's overall naval strategy was that big guns and big ships were not the key to victory. The sinking of the Musashi in October of 1944 was a tremendous blow, in steel and spirit, to the Japanese Empire.
Rising up from the sea, Kusunoki Masashige stands as the symbol of samurai loyalty in the face of annihilation, patron-saint of the Kamikaze.
"I 'm not dying yet; I have quite a few men to kill first." -Yojimbo
0+>
Action!
Action!, ©MMX
The newest piece in the "Occupied" series pits two of my favorite wandering gods of chaos: Yojimbo and Gojira, in a fight to see who gets to keep the rubble.
The price of modernity are the monsters that we birth into existence.
The stronger we narcissistically hold onto the past, we forget those whom we trod on in our pursuit of greatness.
The golden age is the myth of modernity. Modernity is the myth of progress.
Shikata ga nai and pass the ammunition.
0+>