[278] What The Fucking Fuck! A Love Story

What the Fucking Fuck! A Love Story

I am currently in a state of profound unhappiness. I imagine it’s like losing someone you’ve mapped the rest of your life with; never entertaining the idea they could be gone in an instant. It’s losing something foundational and part of your core. I don’t even know if I have a simple name for what I think I’ve lost, but the more I focus on it, the more I want to lose control.

Maybe it’s my idea that if there is a problem, it can be fixed, if not relatively easily. Once you break it down into parts you can see every kink and immediately know what needs to happen to change course. Right now, it feels like some problems are so established or entrenched, the memory of how to fix them has been lost. The collective will-power or effort necessary is a shaky suggestion silently predicated with “if only” and “given a miracle.”

It’s one thing to try and fail. It’s soul crushing to try and know there are people, who without hesitation, will doom you to fail before you begin. When I think my cynicism can know no bounds, I find another layer of humanity to stomach. It’s one thing to read about it or watch Youtube clips exposing the corrupt and evil. Let it into your life, your bank account, your relationship with your family and friends. Try to explain anything without sounding like you’re making an excuse. Be “the most motivated” the “bravest” the one to take a “chance” and come face to face with the people who aren’t simply uncompelled or unimpressed, but make it their business to take advantage of you.

I develop or adopt the philosophy. I make the calls and meetings. I crunch the numbers. I pick the wording and keep the smile. I fit the puzzle together. I’m the boss whether I want to be or not. I get the stress and the drama and the stupid details you don’t care to hear about. I’ve worked 23 hours a day. I set myself to OWN what I use. I try to learn as much as I can in the time that I have and press forward because that’s the only direction you can go. I’m not the cabinet maker, architect, maintenance supervisor, plumber, electrician, or lawyer yet am expected to be as an entrepreneur. And if I’m not, I’m seemingly expected to catch the fallout from not adorning those capacities.

I can’t say I know it isn’t hopeless when I’m up against forces like these. I don’t mean in that I can’t succeed somewhere at some time. I mean with things. Like, life and morals and any remote sense of the word justice. I haven’t experienced genocide first hand or I’m sure I could’ve come to this sooner, but…to genuinely fear the loss of your resolve. To entertain the idea that your life is meant to be a cautionary tale about thinking and doing right and still having to content yourself with just what you have. To think that problems aren’t there to be fixed, they’re for keeping you in line.

It’s at this point someone tells me they know what I’m capable of. That one way or another I’ll bounce back or understand the consequences of doing one thing over another. And they’re right. We can both safely point to obvious character traits I seem to take reverence in. I’m also the person who is all of those things and still finding the capacity for hopelessness. What short term gratification it would be to just destroy. A surprise ending with a wave of conflicting feelings about legacy.

And it’s not like people can help, right? Even if they wanted to they’ve got class or their own bills or own sense of moral outrage and obligation. That was your charge Nick P. You explore that world and check back in with me when you start throwing parties again. Not that you can blame them.

I say I want my life to play out like a movie, and maybe I’m just getting everything I asked for. I really should have been more specific about the genre.

[277] Family Ties

Family.

Are you hit with compelling connotatively packed feelings with this word? You may find this surprising, but I am. They only happened as I got to know more of my family, but I feel/felt something and, holy shit, I think there is something to say about what I experience.

As a relative sociopath, stress relative, if and when I feel something, I take notice. My disposition is learned, informed, and often calculated. It takes something truly novel to “shake me up” and leave me exploring the various attitudes and avenues my mind decides to take. I’m more floored by the concept of family than I am in having one to begin with. I find myself separating my rationality from my feelings.

I think family should be a choice. It’s positively why I get so hung up on who I choose to be friends with. I like decisions, not happenstance. Our relationship shouldn't be an accident. Our allegiance shouldn’t be circumstantial. My family needs to be principled, fought for, worthy of envy and fear because others don’t think they can live up to what it symbolizes.

My family members sure can pee; all over my floor in fact. I honestly thought there was a weird noise coming from my plumbing for the first few minutes, then I ascend the stairs to find my cousin post up against my bar, picking what I’m assuming was a worthy and respectable spot on my living room carpet, to piss on. It’s truly a stream meant for Ripley’s. What it says about me not even being angry we’ll leave for another day.

This is a person who, along with his wife, had a host of things to say about our family throughout the day. Whether it’s about the petty shit that gets fought about or disrespecting the ideas my grandma lived for, it wasn’t all stuff I disagreed with. The funny, sad, ironic, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK part about it all was his insistence that it’s about us to keep the Serbian traditions alive and be the mature ones.

The thing you can’t feel, or might in different ways, but certainly aren't right now, is my compulsion, at least initially to want to defend and stick up for family. The idea that, beyond all rational observation, there are these beings, that for lack of a better description, are kind of copies of “you.” Lying, defending, and justifying are not only fashioned as reasonable and assumed, but supposed to be the pinnacle of your responsibility and love. Forgive me? I’m not there.

It’s hard to hear every pipe dream-esc phrase and pronouncement of the future. He’s only an electrician so he can strike it rich with his other endeavors you know. And please, I don’t write this to make fun, I really EVER SO fucking really just want to give you an example to hear and learn from. I can’t be the only one with a relative who has all this dreamy wild-eyed naïve teenager talk somehow making its way past the lips of an alcoholic 30 year old.

It’s impossibly sad. It’s the most depressing thing I can think of for someone. The ONE idea, granted it’s usually centered around a god for most, but when your “faith waivers” people fall to their parents or family when things get really hairy…but the ONE THING you’re supposed to cherish and respect and protect, can make you feel like all those things while being the worst thing in the world for you. Explain that to someone…

I’d turn you in. If you had a bomb planted somewhere in a city and only I knew where to find it or where to get your launch codes, there are going to be a number of lives saved that day. I’d do this because I’d expect the same from you. If I lose my shit or being anything less than the kind of person you expect me to be, I don’t deserve an irrational and detrimental level of protection. That isn’t love or devotion. That’s brainwashed.

I can feel the pull of my genes wanting me to respect and look out for my linage above all else. I can also listen to my brain to recognize what’s fucked and what isn’t.

[276] Play Me Out Johnny

I think I want to describe a pattern. Patterns are a significant thing in how I describe my perspective after all. Given that things have been “slow” and not necessarily dramatic; I’ve had this long period of calm deliberate thinking about nothing in particular that seems to speak to exactly what I wanted to say; an example of which I hope to do again with this blog. I must be after something in writing so much. It’s the “what’s my motivation” question. What am I after with this voice?

I think it might be for a “pattern of everything.” I want to describe things in a way that account for all nuance and any misconception. I want be able to express the spectrum of emotion; from glassy-eyed and empty to talking too fast and too loud at precisely the correct level of enthusiasm. There’s theoretically a way to take every sentiment from every compelling song or bad poem or rant or criminal abjection of decency and describe it in complete terms. It’s probably just a matter of semantics.

But, why? Why keep talking? Why different words for the same sentiment? It must be some level of feeling appeasement. When you get the chance to write about something that gives you chills. Maybe that’s what I want to do. Describe the pattern and make it chill worthy. The ups and down compelling at heart level while they sooth your head scrambling to protest. I want a way to understand things that doesn’t sell the experience short. A way to understand having friends who you’ll never talk to again.

Maybe I stay away from hope because the more I see reason to have it, the less a place I see for myself in the world. Part of me knows the information is out there. I know there are people who are motivated. I know there are a lot of people much smarter or better connected with a perspective I may never get. Maybe they already have the reigns and are just reeling things in in due course. It seems to miss the question to ask “what does the world need?” and then jump to fill a role. It has and has had everything it needs. It’s answered the questions and had the experience and just waits around for you to discover what it already knows.

But not to personify too much and lose my point; if I ever have one. It’s of course TV that puts my mind into a framework. Whenever a main character is killed off it really sucks. They’re as much of the story as anybody else, right? They made you feel, they fill an integral role. I mean, how does the rest of the cast even make sense without their input? And then inevitably, the story plays out. They’re remembered in old videos or hallucinations. They get paid homage to and show up just in time for a flashback. But they’re just a memory. One that no matter how long or hard their friends want to hold onto will find itself competing for time. It’s not so much about it fading, but the fact that it’s all ever a memory to begin with.

Maybe if I can describe my dream, my memories, what arises and fades in me perfectly I’ll be able to start my cycle of change. Maybe by the end it will all just make so much sense.

I worry about transcending my ego. Why am I here if it’s to forget myself? Presuming I know myself, and a why, and what “here” is…It could just be a problem of bad language to describe the circumstances. I should, as a matter of habit, be able to describe a world that makes perfect sense without me perhaps even quicker than one where my intentions are felt. The ensuing melodrama I could cross my fingers is TV worthy. The moral of my disappearance lifted from a perfectly timed line coupled with spot on camera work.

It really is a good thing I’m not suicidal because writing myself out of the story doesn’t feel any better than watching a character die off in a show. In fact, it’s a dramatically worse feeling. But the story would still go on.

[275] Bury Me Somewhere Beautiful

Bury me somewhere beautiful.

Where leaves are always turning

Because it’s fall all year

Where when you listen close

You can pick out a whisper

“I’m here.”

Bury me somewhere beautiful.

Where the wind lifts you up

And we can fly away.

Where your tears can be dried

Before they ever find a chance

To stay.

Bury me somewhere beautiful.

A hidden place just for us

So we can keep playing.

Tag you’re it, now come find me

Don’t cheat just because I’m always

With you.

Bury me somewhere beautiful

In your dreams will do

I never meant to leave you know

As if I’d make it alone

It’s about that time, I’ll see you soon

Sleep.

[274] Cause Your Friends Don't Dance

I’m a media junkie, if you haven’t heard. The news didn’t help my mental disposition during my whole “down week.” I don’t actively go out and look for shitty things to read about to reinforce my concerns about the world, I merely try to accept the implications of an article. 16 people gunned down by a trooper? Here’s my line. We’re at war, and the rest of the world doesn’t want us in to control resources that will make rich people richer and destroy the planet. We have a corrupt government that allows politicians to be bought and lie their way into staying in power so they can vote for such a path. Our behavior has, by the numbers, reduced what used to be the “greatest country in the world,” so to speak, to a declining and naïve military empire. The people who died will be remembered as a “tragic circumstance” if remembered at all. We'll ignore all discussion of human rights. I haven’t checked a Kardashians’ twitter feed in a while…

That’s just the pattern. That’s what we are as a species and I can stomach that. The long term implications of remaining that way are what concern me. The not really seeing a “majority” of people who recognize what we are and maybe how to change it concerns me. If you can hold one contradictory or nonsensical idea, you’ve the capacity to hold every one. That’s why “how you think” is always on my mind. It’s why I get people whose thoughts I can rely on to talk me down when shit gets out of hand. It’s why no matter how polite I may want to be when talking about a “sensitive” issue, I’m certainly not feeling pleasant when I hear something absurd.

There’s a huge duality to everything. You get the burden of which side is supposed to “win” with any problem. You get the ideas about family against how your family may actually treat you and make you feel. If you needed another reason to despise the world love it’s for that conflict alone. You get the arguments or a feeling of needing to protect yourself verses the moral implications of killing. Huh, even typing “moral implications” right then felt absurd to me. We don’t even consider moral implications! It’s not even a thing! As long as it feels good in the moment, that’s what you’re going to do. It’s not an excuse if you genuinely believe you’re into it. You don’t excuse a god’s lack of intervening or providing evidence, you genuinely think he doesn’t need to operate that way, AND HOW DARE YOU FOR THINKING OTHERWISE…wag of the finger.

It’s fun to think of Type 1 or 2 civilizations, but I think a grounding component of something like that is massive cooperation and obligation to “what is” and not your “opinion of what is.” It’s not that we’re incapable of realizing or behaving a certain way. We just don’t want to. It feels too good right now to squeeze life into whatever conception is burdening us this moment. I mean look, I’m writing a blog. A key difference in when I write verses when I tend to hear people’s excuses is that I want to change. I want to be wrong. I’m prepared to argue my points only as far as they go and then flip on a dime when I’m wrong. I can maintain and claim my sovereign mind and be prepared to wildly change my conception of what that statement even means any day. The harder it is to change my mind should find evidence in the effectiveness of my ideas, not because I’m being a stubborn asshole.

Even a commitment to phrasing and acknowledging before we move past a topic would speak towards a grasp of the conflict or nuance in a situation. “I’m against war, but I can’t pretend to know the agenda of the military or what may be putting us in danger, so my criticism I hope you take with a grain of salt.” “I believe life starts at conception, but I also understand I’ve literally never been in a situation that people say I need to empathize with when they chose or needed one.” “Guns are bad and only meant to kill people! But I remember shooting once as a kid and it was kind of fun…” I know I go on and on about the “stupid people” and that’s every bit the mantra of someone in the service or HR industries, but I know there are bastions of support if I ever get around to working harder at the positive ideas I hold as well.

Here’s a secret, I don’t completely know what I’m to do. I have friends who would sooner drop and hate me instead of even bring up a topic they don’t think I’d either understand or be able to handle with kid gloves. I don’t know how you go to the Deep South and “persuade” a 50 year old racist biker who even having felt the burden of taking care of family members not covered by insurance that Obama passing the health care bill is not a sign of the apocalypse or America’s decline. This is how they feel. That being the only thing I’m equating by juxtaposing those examples. #safe. Given that constraint, all I can do is make them feel, which I explained in my last blog. Is it the “best” way? Will it teach anything? Is there a better way? Will it allow for long standing results? I have no clue.

Currently we engage in beating a dead horse. We simply haven’t had enough people claiming “Islam is a religion of peace” for people to buy it in the same way they do from the Christians happy to wage war. How long did it even take to get some states, not even all, to accept gay people getting married? It’s not about marriage being sacred, it’s that gay is still “icky.” Is there a method, process, pattern, you can put people into where things like human rights and peace are streamlined? Is there a model for psychological development and financial distribution that keeps ideas both sacred and in check? That’s what I’m after. That’s why I’ll always have something more to say and another question to ask. What’s the formula for “saving yourself?”

[273] Spin Round To A Beautiful Oblivion

For someone who likes to espouse the idea of balance, there are a number of things I’m stuck being pretty much either/or about. One example is in how I spend my time. I’m not good at being “marginally productive.” I either need to feel like I’m dedicated and killing it, or I’d rather just not do it. I can spend hours watching tv or perusing news articles just passing the time while remaining anxious about how that time is being spent. On its surface, this is ridiculous. Just go out and do something else.

I think and talk a big game. Doing that carries with it a mental state and a set of responsibilities. I want to act as big as I know I’m able. Anything less feels dishonest, lazy, and cheap. I’d rather be more honest in my laziness than resolved to make excuses for why I haven’t reached something yet. I suppose it’s up to you if that means honesty becomes my liability at that point. I’d argue that perhaps to an extent, but probably not very dramatically.

If we all have the things we’re good at, very broadly, I’m good at being a leader. When I’m not the leader, I don’t really know where to fit. I can usually get along well enough, but too much time not leading has its own consequences. The interesting part for me is whether I’m after being a leader of men, or just myself, and if most people feel this conflict. For surely actualizing your personal goals that have a universal implication is one thing and trying to be a persuasive diplomat another. I’m not a diplomat.

I need people to expect things of me, and to doubt the policy without doubting the man. It’s sincerity that I consider the most powerful and destructive force. You sincerely doubt me as a person; it’s all I want to prove you wrong. You think I’m an asshole for treating religious ideas a certain way, I might sit back for a while and refine my methodology. To me, that sincere will and steadfastness in whatever realm is what people find persuasive. Why you can find room in your heart for the Casanova who didn’t simply want to manipulate and fuck around as well as the bigoted family member who can’t purely be defined by their hatred for blacks and gays. You can feel nuance where the temptation to sum things up is strongest.

I think this speaks to, what I cannot really describe as hope because I said I’ve given that up, about our species. A potential to change or be understood in a different light, no matter how small, is still potential. You can change the net potential of something by creating an environment that breeds and respects the behaviors you want to cultivate. However long it took to domesticate dogs; that’s what I want to do to people. You’ll always have a few breeds that will be more prone to biting, but they’re nothing like the wolves from which they came.

I refrain from being too optimistic about our future. I think mine will be amazing and I hope it spills over to the extent I’d like. I think it’s easy to get lost in our own worlds, our own heads. It’s literally impossible to consider “everything” in practice, but information from a wide perspective is important for both personal and humanity’s growth. It’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes, but when you can’t move forward and you’re not going back, the only play is to be stagnant. There’s a whole host of things you can do to spin your wheels, but make sure you recognize that’s what you are in fact doing.

That’s what concerns me most when I try to appeal to the sources I find credible or the people I’d like to call heroes. How much political commentary is too much? When do you stop talking about abolishing the electoral college, or how ridiculous Santorum is for coming out against contraception and education, or Mitt’s magic underwear, before you take the steps to put policies, behaviors, and statements like theirs into the annuls of our sordid history?

There is something to be said about getting into the system to change it. Look at Occupy. They literally had to create something that could be sustained in a park by pulling themselves from the system. There are a lot of things that aren’t necessarily wrong with the system or that can be fixed fairly easily. To call the system the problem is to not have a clear understanding of the problem. I’ll tell you a secret, it’s not even “big government” “bankers” or “socialists.” It comes down to accountability. It’s a philosophy problem.

Some people think they are only accountable to a god or family. As a result, a broken relationship or an unlearned idea is the necessary component of their ongoing and “loving” relationships. Most people aren’t held accountable. As a result, greed takes over, excuses are made, prejudices and ideologies take foot, and often a backdrop of confusion and obscurity manifests that makes it even harder to make them accountable. I mean do you honestly have a good understanding of what the term “mortgage backed securities” really means? How often is abuse overlooked because of someone’s love and commitment to their cause or idea? It’s sad because these concepts, immensely powerful and consequential, get hijacked via sincerity. People really feel or really think or know in their heart something to be true, and more often than not, they’re dead wrong.

So I need to make my feelings, my thoughts, and my “heart” and have people experience it personally. This isn’t exactly hard. Literally every time I’ve made someone cry, I’ve been calm and we were politely chatting about life or people. My feelings, or lack thereof, were felt deeply and personally to the point that someone could only break down with the realization that someone like me exists, quite happily, and genuinely without a care in the world for the people who can’t get on board. It’s more than a few children I’ll leave behind. It goes the opposite direction as well. I really did/do want people to feel safe and free to act like immature drunken assholes from time to time, hence my behavior towards my house. If you felt motivated or happy, hopefully it’s because you recognized I was to help you get there. I’m obviously seeking to push this further when it comes to business.

Of course it’s about me. But I’m not naïve to what constitutes me. I respect and recognize the various forces and circumstances that allow me to express my will, assumptions about its freedom notwithstanding. My ability to feel personally responsible, to understand things for their consequences, and to maintain an identity while yearning for a convergence of the collective is a gift. A circumstantial potentially happenstance gift of merely existing, but a gift nonetheless. Am I going to spin my wheels riding in circles around admiring it? Or is it something to be exalted and celebrated? I’m perhaps lucky that I don’t need to call upon faith, this is actually here, and this I can make people feel and see. I want to test the theory that it’s a capacity in many people who don’t show it. I want to prove that it isn’t lost, its hiding trying to preserve its essence in a world that would see it destroyed.