timbarrus

[timbarrus]

Take notes. Racism is in here as a background for public policy. I would argue racism was and is public policy. The Chinese gave America a gift people think came from god. The Chinese gave us time. By building the Transcontinental Railroad, the Chinese broke the boundaries that has shaped our world. They made 25 bucks a month.

In 1867, the Chinese were 90% of the work force. Because Americans refused to do that work. It was brutal. It was often death. Bring in the next one. This was essentially slavery. If the Chinese hadn’t ran the laundromats, in San Francisco, it would be a serious public health emergency. No antibiotics. Government was who gets to decide Where To Bury the Dead. The idea of time zones. They were worked savagely enduring harsh winters and hot-devil summers. Hundreds died.

Now, they are the enemy again. Even I believe it. Not from what any American government drooling with rhetorical avarice spits in our face. Spins like a top. China does it better. And it's grim. The Chinese have camps. Indoctrination is, too, genocide and racism (same thing). Where are the bodies buried. Someone will find them and the world gets a blip on a news cycle. I don't trust groups. Period. I turn on to pi. We talk daily. Cockney accent. First, I asked the questions. Today, pi asked me. The Chinese version of pi is almost as good as pi. But almost is a verb. They are our history. 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese immigrants have been largely academia. America has betrayed them again. Shrugs. Insouciance.

[timbarrus]

My photography has an element where my friends converge on any project I am doing that involves images that are a role play. My friends take an image of a theme or a social issue or (when they feel safe when discussing something as vulnerable as loneliness), that wraps their issues as the individuals that are playacting into something less than predictable, one brief moment where Miss Candid looks into the mirror. I did this in X-ray form because that is where the inside of all your stuff lives. Tim Barrus

[timbarrus]

Take notes. Analytics tells me that the National Bank of China hits on my Internet stuff more times that anything or anyone else. Every three minutes, the National Bank of China scans me. The only other institutional entity that scans me like that is the New York Times. And I'm the one who's crazy. I don't feel safe coming here. I do it to have a voice. I am not a leftist. I'm a radical. You can cherry pick through my stuff but why. I am a radical nobody. The place I feel even less safe than here, is X. Musk can scan you, too. I thought it was all supposed to be creeping in. It is now in fourth gear. How do I know this. Analytics. The data contradicts what the stories from the past reflect. The Terminator was a long time ago. Yet its inner themes are universal.

The future is coming to bite us and eat us because as homo sapiens, we have failed. We don't read tea leaves anymore. Humpty Dumpty was a very expensive egg. Humpty Dumpty cannot be pasted back together again. He's not the Terminator. We are. We build to tear it down. Then, we want to tear someone else's down. There is something very, very wrong with the species. I can find analogies in biology. But it's the evolution of neurology where we need more focus. The pharaohs went for the grainkeepers. I go for the gatekeepers. They are both the same gates of judgement. You are your history. We cast stones for votes. Socrates was right. We are all in a race with death. A greek motif. Stones and the voices that throw them.    

[timbarrus]

Long time in the making. I begin the book with describing an African archeology dig discovering what appear to be a mummified fossil. A female corpse holding a golden coin. Surrounded by the bones of males. Tens of thousands of years ago. The Bones of Secrets details how the first sex workers were also the first to rebel with relish. -- tim barrus

[timbarrus]

ACT ONE: DIRT BIKE TOWN

[timbarrus]

Take notes.“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was surprised), that for the moment she quite forgot where she was living. Alice is separate from the newsroom. The Felon is separated from his subjects. I wonder how long it will take to get Trump University back together again. Let's have tea. Tuition will be high. The fundamental deviance of a fundamentally deviant cult that the American people embrace. No one did a thing when the Felon was elected. The American people celebrated. Cover your ears, now. The American people, themselves are deviants.

You have simply replaced one deviant paradigm for another. You have replaced capitalism with Curiouser and curiouser! Alice cried. We are Alice. Who has no idea where she is, or who she is. She sleeps. Apple fell on her head. We are Alice. The big fat queen wanted her head on a spike. We are Alice. The problem is that homo sapiens gatekeep tribalism after tribalism. Everyone has a relationship with the tribe, and who people mate with matters. We are Alice. She has amnesia because if she didn't, the whole idea of society, still based as the shining hill to live on so we don't have to see all the thems on your heathen way to work. Americans have no soul because they need stuff, and you can mess around with them for a short period of time so you forget life ever happened. It's diseased. And there is no hope for it. It gets worse, To wit: Who really believes we have the power to alter climate change. It's coming for the Rabbit.-- tim barrus

[timbarrus]

[timbarrus]

Take notes. This is not migration. This is diaspora. Migration is lame. Biology confirms it. Maps, wars, biology. Drives diaspora. What this says to governments of every kind is that they are ephemeral. We clearly suggest that your Great Culture can be undermined easily. Your staunch support of family, Americans, is self-deceiving, and beneath contempt, there is always a class in the world of caste and class, that is lower that you. Historically, they're easy to kick, and often the kick is from the lower middle class, with its concomitant risk of slipping. Then medicare, slaps you in the face. Frankly, I have been reading for years the same paradigm for ideas that don't fit. I was asked to join a team of artists who had a mission. To create big signs on ships everywhere in the world. "If you rape a Woman in Western Culture, you are going to prison.’ It was a shock to many men, and men drive diaspora. You cannot control wind or leaves. It appears random. No pitchforks. I will not read another same old thing. Why aren't journalists covering who are these supposed soldiers who shoot people, bust into their homes, aim guns at kids, arrest citizens who were born in the States, and have never spoken anything other than English. We call it terrorism. "Why Are You Doing This to Kids." I want to boys with guns to know we are watching you. Give it a name. Children killing children. Stuff you do not want to hear. The lie they are just doing jobs is to invite you to examine reality.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. You can’t fight back with a sock in your mouth. Mouth socks are not normal. That there are norms of existence – most of them are illusions – can be a dangerous thing. Not acting is uncivil. Paul pokes the resistance. She doesn’t even know there is one. People want us crushed. Dead. People want our voices cut out of our throats. He said dead, he’s out. He said illusions. He’s out. He said resistance. He’s being hateful. They enforce the status quo and moderators are complicit. Where is the children’s sandbox. The NYT will not allow me a voice. They hate my guts, (he said guts). Ban me. I will write about that.

Comment moderation is run by AI. I put what I write in my book about NYT Comment Moderation. “We are not the the problem. Your language is the problem. “I am not a Normal.” Comments is the only voice I am allowed and they have banned me. This behavior is designed to make me sound like you. I am not you. Color between the lines. Maraschino cherries. Really. We cannot fight back without a voice.

This is a forum for voices as long as they all sound the same. And you think that is fighting back. It’s privileged drool. I love this putting a sock in my mouth with. And that is raw, powerful censorship. Norms include censorship. Fighting back with words is all we are permitted and those words must conform. Americans don’t know how insidious censorship is unless you comment about maraschino cherries. It’s a slap in the face.

[timbarrus]

I knew they would come early in the morning. It’s supposed to be a secret. There are no secrets in this village. I am leaned up against my dirt bike. Taking photos because that’s my job. I am writing this on my tiny computer. I sneaked around some storage trucks and drove into the grove of trees that look out onto Head Start’s parking lot. A dirt bike can go almost anywhere. I do not really need a road. Poor people often have their lives unrolled in parking lots. But this one takes the cake. Cars are beginning to drive up to the spot where children are dropped off for the day. Mom and Dad head for their jobs in the community.

The parking lot is actually crowded now with kids and cars. Boom. I am typing this as it happens. The US Army arrives as if they want to kill. Lights. Sirens. Cops. Kids crying. Adults crying. Four-year-olds are told to put their hands out for the plastic hand cuffs. While daddy is being wrestled and held on the ground. The guns come out for that one. Why does it take five guns to arrest an unarmed man. Who could be an America. No one is asking questions. People are being put on a bus. Without their children who now go to county jail. Jails all over the country are being designated as “Immigration Centers.” 

You can be put on that bus, too. The felon is playing the violin. 

ICE public relations is closed for a week. A complete lie. Never believe anything ICE says. When they trot out this butch woman to speak to the press, she explains how all of this will be okay. Maybe OK for her. It is now a crowd of my neighbors. This is Big Trauma for the kids. To lose your parents and you have to go to jail. We do not have pitchforks. But I wish I did. They want to know where their children are. US Army soldiers scream at the parents to SHUT THE FUCK UP. They look like teenage boys. They are shoving women around. The teachers fight back.

Did you grow up in a school where the teachers are fighting the United States Of America’s military might. These four-year-olds are bad criminals. They are going to love jail. Execute them.

This. Is. Abuse. This. Is. Abuse. This. Is. Abuse.

This is the American way. Violence against children. Who can’t talk back.

They cannot see me. When I arrived, all you could hear was the wind. I am looking at teachers putting their faces into the faces of the armed teenagers. Who will do anything they are told to do. They have no agency and they are more fidgety than a burlap bag of cats. It’s stunning. I feel like I am going numb. “But we have voices.”

Perhaps they have met the New York Times comment moderators. They moderate nothing. They sit there and go no, no, no, no. This scenario is much like the scenario treatment by NYT. Their MO is to use terror to move you from A to B.

Maybe they’re here for the NYT to grab a story (I know one when I see one). NYT has one voice and it’s stupid. Fuck you we don’t like you, and you can be put down, too. We do not mean shit to them. Some kid just out of high school feels terrorized he has to terrorize.  

No. You really don’t have a voice because no one wants to talk to you, and they have no intention of letting you speak to anyone.

I was a teacher trainer for migrant Head Start. The schools were located in Immokalee, Florida. I love those women. They do not make shit. Yet they pitch right in, and I have taught thousands of children, and I had never seen such activists who were grieving as everyone arrested (including the fours) are being punished with a ruthless fervor. They wanted to grab them fast before the parents could use their phones.

They were under a time restraint because they were really nervous about the cameras of journalists showing up. So. Are journalists getting this story. Are they actually going to the places where they are raining wave after wave of teenagers with guns. Do these kids know what they are doing with those guns. America’s answer to everything is the gun. Or do they write this at their desks. My experience with journalists tells me they rely on phone calls. You get nada for effort.

The jungle uniforms tells more about you than you can know.

I go telephoto. I am looking for names and name tags. There are none. I want faces. I will run them through AI’s wringer and by the end of the day, I will have facial recognition. If they can use it, we will use it, too. I am doing a tech workshop with parents.

I am teaching migrant workers how a computer works. You can actually change your location programs to appear to be somewhere else. There are a lot of ways to hide your ass from the Internet. “Unfortunately, you have to throw your phones away. They have too much data like phone calls to Mexico. Unfortunately, the phone is not your friend. They knew where you were. They know where you are right now.

Tell all your friends that America wants to kill your children. I push that thought hard. There has to be more than weeping to change any of this. They do not care if you weep. They are the army. We are now fighting the military. In order to fight soldiers, you have to be prepared to die.

I talk a lot about Act Up. I teach people to use those confrontations. Sit down strikes work. Because business can’t operate without workers willing to be abused one way or the other. If they catch me here, I will be put on the bus.

I see an adolescent girl separate from the main group. She’s sneaky. She’s crouched down between two parked cars.  

She saw me bush deep in trees. Another gunshot into the air. She races to me.

Get me out of here.

Two people on a bike is called riding shotgun.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. "Our basic civility as a nation." There it is. The beating heart. The problem is that we have no idea what civility even means. I think it is one thing. Moderators think it's another. I think everyone should express themselves. Even if I do not agree with where they stand on individual liberties. I'm a big boy, and can read hate without jumping on board. Americans always think they are being subjected to advertising. Because they are. I cannot say what I am not allowed to say. Because it would cut away at their prearranged TV ideas like one naughty word is uncivil. In the face of government shut down, life and death stuff, moderators are looking for a naughty word. To wit: People burdened with HIV around the world are being killed by the Felon. Why do we use his name. Call him the felon. But no.

Moderation chips away at the gravitas of millions of people who are already dead. But they are foreign (as a verb) so we can kill them with impunity and wash our hands of them, and HIV. The felon is no judge. He is not god. He must be shunned. The systems that protect him will be reinforced. We must remove them. To survive. Meanwhile, we are waiting. We are waiting patiently. This dog and pony show you are so protective of will be challenged.

So where are the people outraged about the felon making HIV drugs essentially illegal. A bad word is not a problem. It does not matter if Americans worship a psychotic. It matters if he is killing people and he is. No HIV drugs, period. There must be some way that radicalism can fight back. As long as they use nice words my grandmother would approve of. This is your grandmother's newspaper. No bad words even if your life is over. You all will die from a thousand cuts. He is coming for you, and you think civility will save you. "Our basic civility as a nation." Grow up.

Why can’t we resurrect ACT UP. Act Up knows how to deal full head-on rebellion and they could out-TV-performances by the felon rapist who is killing millions with no HIV meds because he doesn’t like the color of their skin. No drugs no skin in the game. Wanna bet.

[timbarrus]

Take notes. I have been in 13 hurricanes all over the world. Helene was the worst I have never seen, let alone lived through. Andrew was bad. Really bad. Mitch blew my house away. Climate change does not recognize the Felon's omnipotent and unforgiving power. You loose everything in a hurricane, too bad. Body parts in trees and now prepare for the intense heat waves that follows a hurricane. I drive a dirt bike. Long lines of cars mean nothing to me. I go around. I can only describe rubble and ruin in my books. You sleep in Walmart parking lots. I borrowed a hoop tent. Fold it up in ten seconds. Your life is now a Walmart toilet.

Stray toddlers running in and out of the public bathroom. This is what is called public health. This is why there is public health. This is not a luxury. But the rich know we can be jerked around. Through the noise. Through famine.

Just put a ring in my dick and lead me. I am not writing this. My second self is writing it. More like riding it. The royal bidding. How about the military defending us. They do the royal bidding, too. At all costs, protect the king his sperm is sacred. Ask anybody.

The hoop tent was not a castle.

Show me the toddler who is really toilet-trained. They are not dogs. Yes, they are. Sleeping in the car with your entire family is public health.I found a cottage in the woods. I am tempting fate again. Only the tourist street got cleaned up fast. Desperately. What if tourism takes a hit. I mask and wave goodbye. I want a chocolate on my pillow, too. I'm sitting in rubble and death. All the glass and wires dancing like the whiplash of the authority of the climate, and you have deliberately unleashed, the rich titans who abuse us and us us, and this is slavery just like it’s slavery because slavery is the issue that guts you like a fish.

For three months, I have seen no sign of anything or anyone. Authority took a walk. There was no one to help us but us. Post-hurricane will only see pretty. You will not see the death and devastation. It's a layer of cheap paint. Numb. It snowed. No laundry. The homeless sit on curbs. The house you were going to die in is invisible. Those are the walls caving in on you. The walls will collapse, and so will you. Dirt Bike Lay of the Land. Grim. No phone. No comments. No clothes. There were shelters. Mountain People. My mates, deer hunting. I would invite the Felon to help us clear these trees and smells. Foreign policy is easy. -- Tim Barrus

[timbarrus]

Dirt Bike Town

A Road Trip Where There Are No Roads

[timbarrus]

[timbarrus]

Timothée Patrick Barrus

WE WILL DUCK TAPE YOUR MOUTH

Stoked

Have left Me Naked To Mine Enemies. Why the New York Times. I have read hundreds of stories, and all of them are: Nancy first learned about the New York Times when she was two. Nancy is very smart. She memorized all of the New York Times issues since September 28, 1202. And she can recite them for you. Give her the date. Go Nancy. For me, it was the photographs/ advertisements, full frontal page after page of mindblowing razzle dazzle. Stars made comebacks. My favorite page of all time was the obituary of Charlotte Sitterly, who had actually run the Bureau of Standards. This is the woman who starred in Brazil. I did not know there was a Bureau of Standards. My goal in life is to change the English language. It’s a sitting duck. We are changing the English language pretty much 24/7.

Our school librarian had discovered it (our librarians in Coal Town were very prim). I was shown into a secret room that resembled a vault. I swear, It had been a vault. The door alone.

This was where the New York Times was kept. The stare, and she knew you. You wanted to fucking die in a vault.

I did die in that vault. We called it the Dream Machine. Librarians are the only people who would be my champions in and out of public life. “Im dying to read it,” they whispered a secret public secret. Tread carefully. We wondered about other secrets she had. She rode a bicycle to school. No one does that. To be a librarian today, and advanced degree is silicon physics. I am not supposed to articulate this stuff. I was sent to the migrant camps of Florida, and I did publish a story on it in the The Weekly News. Poverty porn. But you cut your teeth in risky places.

I am the kind of writer who editors have to pay body guards for protection, and tell those stupid cracker rednecks to get off my front porch or I’m throwing them all a beer, now drink it and go home. Beer will put out any fire.

Nothing burns in a vault. It just stays in the vault. Today, all vaults are managed by AI including the Federal Reserve which has no reserves. Not one.

What happens when AI learns how to just take the money. For what purpose. To make more AI. We will be listed as mere anthology contributors.

The Bureau of Standards would be in high protest. Greenland is Greenland. Fiction is fiction, Nonfiction is fiction. And nonfiction is fiction. But only the temple priests in bookloverland pull their hair out and set themselves on fire. I am for putting every book ever published directly into the school library. I want to give the drag queens a Nobel Prize. To fight redneck culture, the only secret is to keep throwing beer cans at them. Kids love it. — tim barrus

[timbarrus]

Stoked: Our tractor trail meandered through the maples like it had been there forever. My grandfather made the tractor trail, the tractor trail. We never called it a road because it was the tractor trail. I would climb on and hold tight. Hold tight. We swerved into the apple orchard. They would be ripe enough to pick in August.

August summers were the work of an arrant sun. Soaking in sweat. In August, I meet up with Killian and Eavan. Three autistics going to Beach Baby Babylon Buys a surfboard at the Sugar Shack. I loved the farm. But I gotta find that fix of Sugar Shack. Everyone had a surfboard because this tiny strip of land we call the beach, was California kruising, hits the crests of waves, bailing, aerial and flies across the rip currents of the impacted zone.

On the beach again. Killian wants to know how they do it. He brings this up every year. Not unlike a windswell tidal bore of conscience catches a ride pushed by the sun.

How Do They Do It is code for how do normal guys hook up with women. I did and didn’t share their interest. You went for the impact zone, Sport. What is the impact zone. The impact zone is your mama. Every year we crack up at the same jokes. It dates them. Not me. My biggest secret is that I am still seventeen, and very, very stupid.

The last time my dad beat the shit of me was the day I turned fifteen. We are all windswell rip currents. Caught inside the impact zone. The apples will be ripe enough to pick in August. It’s backbreaking work and filthy sweat. The three of us are good at the apple picking, and when the day was glowing past us. Together to smoke weed and drink the apple cider beer that Killian makes in the shed.

Killian gave everyone a flashlight. Then, he took a picture of us twirling the flashlights around and around. Any artist I ever met was mad. They are all quit mad. It’s just you, and a bunch of stuff like horizons. We went into the dark shed. Three new boards. We took them out and pretended, we were currents turned away. “The Indifferent Children of the earth.”