”In your face like a can of Mace, baby
Old Dirty BastardBrookly Zoo
Is it burning? Well, fuck it, now you're learning
This is not a manual.
This is a set of teeth. (crick—crack—CRUNCH.)
This is instruction smashed with a brick and read aloud by a drunk church organ.
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The net vomits tidy rules. plink—plink. Measure, measure, measure. TICK—tick—tick. The pamphlets sing like vending machines: push coin, take hope. whirr.
We throw the coins into a gutter and light them on fire. FWOOSH.
You clutch a packet of small detonations. (ptthhh—ptthhh). Tiny hearts that cough old dirt into the future. They are little jukeboxes of rage. They are DNA with bad manners. They are laughing—ha—HA—HA. They want dirt like a bed. They want rot like a lullaby. squish.
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CUT. SLIDE. REPEAT.
We will hand you single pages like splinters. One idea, one badge, one bruise—then disappear until the next goddamn relapse. Each post: a page torn from a bible that smells like mildew. Each image: a map of how to lose your marbles and find a forest.
Sound: shk-krk—blorp—blap.
Taste: iron and diesel and candle wax.
Smell: rubber, old fruit, the secret breath of compost. hmmm—hiss.
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Listen. The plant speaks in garbage. It coughs up vowels. gurr—gurr. It tells you secrets by dying. You answer by getting dirty. You answer by breaking things. Snap a stem like snapping a lie. (SNAP—snnk.) You perform mercy with a blade that smells of nickel and shame. You whisper apologies to a pile of leaves. sssss—murmur.
This is not precision. This is assault with affection.
This is the hymn of knuckles digging in. thud—thud—glub.
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Vials. Vials where you store small futures. Glass knees clicking in the dark. plink—plink—plink. You name them with bad poetry. You hide them where late-night trains go dead. You cradle them like contraband and listen to the tick-tick of possible revolutions. tick—tick—TICK.
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We will teach you how to read a severed laugh.
We will show you how to feed a plant a scandal.
We will teach you the grammar of compost: noun—rot—verb—rise. urp—urp—umph.
No spreadsheets. No Sunday-park calendars. No neat boxes beside smiling suns. (slide—sss—THUMP.)
Calendars are for those who fear the noise. We want static, we want pop, we want the whole goddamn jukebox thrown off the pier. CRASH.
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REPEAT MOTIF: failure is a sacrament.
Failure is a sacrament; failure is a jazz riff; failure is a junky’s grin at dawn. bleep—bloop—BLARE.
Failure teaches with the bluntness of a brick and the tenderness of a moth’s wing. flit—flap.
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Cut-sentences. Broken images.
You will learn by fucking up.
You will learn by listening.
You will learn when the houseplants start to talk back in tongues and curses. (skreee—ARGH—mew.)
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The guide will not pat your head.
The guide will jam your hand into wet soil and make you count the worms. squish—squirm—squish.
The guide will spit and laugh and slap you awake. PAH—ha.
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Download it if you want the whole thing now — the uncut, the raw, the PDF that smells faintly of ash and bad decisions. No forms. No polite permission. No newsletter leash. Just the paper and the shove.
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This is not a manual.
This is a confession scratched into plywood at 3 a.m.
This is a postcard from the apocalypse mailed with a stamp that reads: “Do it wrong.” pst—pst—POP.
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SOUNDS: drip-drip, plink-plonk, CRACK-POP, gurgle, hiss, whirr, snap, snnk, blorp, ptthhh, shhh, clack, rattle, wooOOO, thunk.
MOTIFS: seeds as grenades; soil as cathedral; failure as sacrament; mercy as a blade; vials as knees; laughter as diagnosis.
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If you want it more shredded—more page-cut, more motif-repeat, more visual bloodletting—I will cut the hell out of it: /// /// /// —turn the manifesto into a blender of phrases, repeat the chorus until it’s a chant, let the onomatopoeia howl until your ears bleed ink.
Now: go. Break something. Break it into music. Break it into compost. Break it and name the pieces. RrRRRrrr—THUD—silence—then bloom.
