[351] Free For All

In a world of extremes, I think I crave a middle ground. The problem is, I'm not certain there's a solid definition of that middle ground.

I preoccupy my thoughts with ideas about evil. Whether I'm watching what we've done in the Middle East or reading a history on the Holocaust or in having just seen a documentary on old school gangsters bragging and re-enacting their methods, the same banality arises from the people talking about it. It's never a secret that what they've done or witnessed is “bad” or at least makes them feel bad. It's that no amount of witnessing or engaging really provokes the intention of doing anything differently.

Sure, after the fact, you might get a soldier or warlord to eek out a modest admission regarding some sliver of responsibility they hold to the situation. You might get a glimpse at the emotions they haven't dealt with etched into their face for a moment. But then you learn of the ones who claim to be proud of what they've done. The conveniently, in time and place, born psychopaths. You get to hear the infinite justifications and watch the grueling dance.

To pause and think seems to mean nothing. If anything it only fuels, what one gangster referred to as his “conscience.” It also seems like helplessness fueling helplessness. Whether you feel obligated to follow orders or are simply trapped under the violent regime. The banal, bored, and boring edicts from the top cause incalculable death and destruction for money and control. For nothing. Daily horrors don't really register with us. We're busy getting educated and watching TV. Is that a form of extreme indifference? Is it us patting ourselves on the back, assured that we could never and will always try to do better? Or are we just helplessly compelled to our own kind of cages as well?

There are violent protests all over as social safety nets and ideas regarding democracy erode. It's no longer possible to conceive of yourself on an “adult” path with a secure job where you'll be able to respectably enjoy the luxuries you've worked hard to earn. People are finally outraged about the exploitation of labor and the impacts of greed and inequality. It'd be at their front door if they could afford a house. They'd want to teach their kids about it, if there was an adequate school to send them to.

When it takes such a degree of mass suffering, and not even just that, mass personal suffering to evoke change you really have to step back and marvel at the world. Law? Oversight? Data? HA! LET'S TAKE IT TO THE FUCKING STREETS! God knows drum circles and Molotov cocktails worked just as well then as we need them to now. But what should we ask of protesters, of ourselves? Be aware? Just learn more? Step back and let my take on power do the heavy lifting? As far as they know, this is the worthy fight, this is where they need to be, not the jungle protesting machetes. You have your tragedy, I have mine.

If you can't put a mark on someone, it won't feel like their responsibility. They explicitly don't feel it. It doesn't become real. And people are rarely willing to mark themselves. I'd bet there are a number of mass deaths I've never heard of that are just as terrible and impact worthy as the ones I have. Plenty of personal tragedies have turned victims into heroes and voices. Are they better than you? Is there a difference in their will, their intention, that trumps whatever you've devoted your time to? Are they any happier or better-off than you would be snug as a bug behind any kind of Western tradition?

Calling Gweneth Paltrow "evil" for spending each day indulging in non-essential rich cliches equates to saying the same about a murder squad leader in only a singular way. It's someone behaving with reckless abandon to the consequences of their actions. We go to war under the auspices of spreading democracy and saving lives, but we do it in the human tradition that ignores what it means to our psyches and credibility when we murder civilians indiscriminately. We find it in us to “respect” some peoples' ridiculous cultures and barbaric behaviors because we instinctively know we've already cut off our own legs. Shoot up a school as a mental patient, your name may live in infamy. Blow up a school or wedding party with a drone, it's another day at the office.

How do you persuade that what they say and do really matters? It's not enough to be a millionaire and claim you've won. It's not enough to jump into a fight and say "well we thought it was the right thing" or "we were just following orders." The ones who try to argue a ton of historical and environmental context at this point only seem to obscure the real point. We've, maybe irreparably, scarred ourselves.

For the ones who care. For the ones who are stuck trying regardless. I want to believe they'll “win,” but I don't. I don't think the reasonable, empathetic, and desperate-to-change-our-paths people will ever be loud enough. And if they ever do, what of our human natures has shown we can do it without, if only eventually, a return to violence?

[350] Bad Title For A Bad Blog

I wish it didn't, but age matters. Not the mere fact of the number, but the total amount of experiences that have rounded out your character. As a lover of house parties, I'm still aware that a scene where the median age is 20 is not really where I'm trying to be. You just get people who are at different places. They want to force conversation or, much like a child, say “hi” even when they don't know or care who it's to. It's not the same thing as nodding to a person you walk past at the park, it's like a cry out for acknowledgment. It's...unsettling.

It's worse when you go into a setting where everyone is supposed to “fend for themselves.” Sure, I can strike up a few random conversations. But it's with 20 year olds. When you tell me that you're into reading about human rights and are going into journalism to report on said issues, when I reference Nelson Mandela and apartheid, particularly now, that shouldn't confuse you. It's not their fault, but it's hard not to hear the superficiality a million miles away.

My problem is having a sense of feeling “above it all” even before I got into it. When offered a shot of Kamchatka, I laugh at your paltry disposition. I remember the first time I drank that shit as a shot. Not coincidentally, it was the last time I drank that shit as a shot. Fitting in isn't worth a hard fought lesson like that. I just go back to, how can kids who are spending $800 a month to live in, frankly shit, apartments, not afford better than horribly cliched and terrible alcohols? Technically, I don't have a job, but I find that common decency does not allow for Hamms to even enter my house.

It's kind of fun to talk like a pretentious rich person. I think it has more to do with how you conceive of yourself than you do other people. Like, it's painful to drink shitty alcohol. I wake up in pain and regretting my life. It's not uppity to acknowledge that message. It'd be great to be like an ambassador, and when they rudely assume you'll go out and buy alcohol for them, maybe there's a moment where they sincerely look at you and hope they can trust you not to undermine their stomachs. But they never do and that's why they pay the "fuck you" tax.

I think my biggest problem is trying to relate. I can't think of a time when I was gung ho about fucking my night up and getting incredibly drunk before 11:30. I can't recall being a “dumb freshman” who pounded whatever was put in front of me and was desperately telling people how cool they were so they wouldn't overly judge my dance moves on the fledgling floor. Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely happy to have missed that boat. It's just, I feel even more judgmental being even a couple years older and a few degrees removed from seeing people do it at any party I've thrown in the last few years.

The old cliché is that they're just kids. They'll get better. They'll learn. See, but they won't. That's what bugs me. I've known plenty of super seniors who are willing to shake your hand and pat you on the back because you brought Hamms to a party. That's just bad research which I can't respect. Maybe you have a stupid tongue who likes that shit, okay, hard to blame you for genetics, but it's truly hard to classify it as beer based on their own labeling of alcohol content.

Maybe I should stick to kind of dumb “kids and their stupid party”-esc blogs for while. I haven't done anything of merit in a minute, so this is what I get at the forefront of my mind. I'm sorry if you thought it as stupid as I kind of do.

[349] Giggity God Damn

Let's talk a little more about my god complex.

I act out of utility. This even more so that I gave up on letting people play their lives out like they saw fit. In order to behave as such, I need to see that things follow. Whether you're following a pattern of thought, or I'm carrying out a pattern of behavior that you behave in a certain way towards. Playing “god” is about evidence. Ego is weak. I don't merely believe anything about myself I can't bring to fruition. It's one of my favorite things about me.

It's why conversations need to be said, and re-said, and re-said again and again. I only make sense in the ongoing movement. The moment I lean towards a definition, I know I need to move past it and change something. This isn't a familiar ground for most people, as far as I can tell. This makes me sound at best petty, at worst, completely fucking insane.

I've stated before that I don't want praise for that which is simple. The “biggest most significant” things I think I'll achieve in life will speak to what I conceive of as simple. The world as it is let's the banal, meaningless, and empty look like triumphs of the human spirit and ingenuity. If no one else is willing to shit on these hopeless conceptions, I'm happy to shit upon myself. My world does not make sense from anything less than that which trumps a conceited plain.

At bottom, I wish it seemed as simple to most people as it does me. I've said that the more I talk to people, the more I give up. The harder it is to believe in anything. I, somehow, came out of this life thing with the ability to choose things people are unable to conceive of themselves as capable of. And all I'm left with is confusion. I'm left to roost on the idea that the whole of humanity could be crippled by the sheer inability to recognize the difference between two things. Sometimes it feels so absurd that to try and put words to it only seems to denigrate what one could conceive of injustice, but worse.

I think you reach a point past circumstance. As far as I can tell, being a tall white male who doesn't look like Shrek has it's advantages, but I know plenty of people with the same things that I would put down like rabid dogs. I thought that the whole “becoming an adult” thing was about handling business and making decisions that, theoretically, made sense for the continuation of this whole working world thing. I just don't believe it. I literally think everyone is shit. And now I just feel bad.

In a way, I love that talking, or bitching, here is selfish. I like to feel better shitting on everything and crossing my fingers that someone, somewhere, might change or enact some big thing based on my words, while realistically thinking I'm a screaming into the ether. I don't have faith. I don't hope. I just do. I know that as long as I'm doing, very little else seems to matter. Let's trust that what I choose to do actually matters, right?

[348] Whao Oh Ohho Mona Lisa

The difference between effort and effortless can't be overstated. What I find most intriguing is that I know when I'm trying too hard. I can hear every syllable being “too much.” I can immediately run to the questions of “was that appropriate? Did it make them laugh?” You're not immune to doing the shit you rally against just because you point out it's a clear failing of your personality.

Tonight was a vibe night. I danced harder than I should have. I talked to however many random people. I very much made it look like I'm verily the most interesting person you should be engaging with at the bar. Really, truly, I'm not fucking bragging. I'm ever and endlessly struck by how “easy” it is to do these things. It's like being called “nice” for paying for a meal. Like, seriously, fuck you, who the fuck else would I pay for? You won, stop trying to congratulate me because you're not a fucking asshole.

I wish I wasn't an anomaly. Don't get me wrong, as an egomaniac, it's really great to consider myself something special, if only from the feedback of people I'm surely to judge beyond what they're due. But damn. It doesn't feel like work. It's just sort of, upholding an ideal. It's living what I think everyone knows, but for reasons I legitimately don't understand, aren't behaving like. Can someone please explain this to me? Fear just feels like a cop-out.

I cringe sometimes when I look at old blogs. Like, I don't think I was terribly clear when I said my friends were “bitch nigga ass pussies.” All that really meant was that I don't get any sort of public feedback when what I'm saying should be considered full of shit. I assumed there was likely something to be said, and nobody said it, thus rendering said inability as “bitch nigga ass pussy” status. I know I follow things up with “don't take it personally” but I'm not terribly confident that it always gets through as I meant...so, there, I fixed it.

I think we're a weird generation. Everything is fast forwarded. Our parents maybe had to take 30 years before they learned something we get on Buzzfeed (what a horrible fucking website) and the irony only gets to sting that much more. You'll get to make stupid marriage decisions and job decisions that, even if you follow for 5 years will feel like a fucking eternity compared to our parents. I think that's why a lot of the shit I rail about is only a glancing blow. You're stuck in the mindset I am; things move quick, even if I'm wrong, I'll flip a switch and BAM it's different.

I still think there's something to be said for not fucking up what you don't need to. The more I look at my life and time goes by, I'm really doing exactly as I think I should. It'd be such a waste to be on whatever pedestal I consider myself and have to sacrifice what it could represent for the ideals of the norm. Seriously, how the fuck do you say “I'm smarter than you” without being a dick? I want to know. I want things to be constructive, not pretentious. I literally can't avoid it. I'm committed to not being a cliched idiot, that doesn't mean I'm not an idiot or won't do idiotic things, but god fucking damn I'm really trying to not be cliché, and I don't know how to convey the message. I'm stuck just doing me and waiting for people to follow along. It fucking sucks. This isn't fun.

It's not hard. That's what gets me. Did you pick milk over orange juice this morning? That's the extent of effort you need to not be a fucking idiot. I really hate when people will fight tooth and nail as if they were born without the capacity for choice that I somehow inherited. I just wonder, what the fuck is it you think you'll learn? Do you need to have some really stupid decision vibrate in your bones before you give the lessons of hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of people before you any respect? Yes, it's at this point I feel very comfortable as a loner pretending that people are worth connecting with beyond fleeting cursory needs.

I'd like it go to away. I wish feeling like a broken record wasn't the default but god forsaken endlessly correct analogy. I want to exist in a world where I have to work to be special. I don't want to have to persuade pretty girls they're pretty, or smart people they're smart, or anybody who should take some solace in whatever they were born with for semi-granted. But that's the playing field. And it's pathetic and it's gut dropping and the only truth is change so I'll shut the fuck up and wait, I guess.

Work, you fuckers.

[347] Brittle Bones And Base Tones

I’d like to talk about fragility.

We’re builders. Whether it’s looking up at a sky scraper and getting chills or crying upon looking at a beautiful piece of art, there’s almost something spiritual in creating and then reflecting. I can’t say if there’s much a difference if you’re looking at your own work verses someone else’s, because it’s not just about pride. There’s an innate itch towards doing something that once scratched seems to fulfill everything.

As easily as we build, we destroy. I had to stop and kill a perfectly innocent bug in the middle of the last paragraph because I’m conditioned to feel uncomfortable by the amount of legs it has. I can’t even kill bugs without imagining an alien super race swinging an oversized telephone book at me. That organism was just as complex and lucky, well not so much lucky, to be alive as I am. In an instant and in fact every instant, some form of existence disappears.

Clearly, I seek to immortalize this bug. I should make its death mean something. Maybe I can use what happened to better explain how my thoughts on aliens don’t so much humble me as they do paralyze. Maybe I’ll be able to explain that’s what happens when you try to instantly evaluate everything you’ve created, everything you’ve invested in for your continued existence, and then poof it out of existence. It could help to explain that you can’t help it but to run such thought experiments. It could help relate your propensity to overstep or move quickly.

When a tornado rips through a neighborhood and leaves more than one house intact, no one’s following up with the lucky few who won’t do battle with an insurance company. The story is about the lost pet that was found under the rubble and returned home. Even with everything you own gone, the bond created between an owner and his pet makes it go down easier. Part of you always knew moving to “tornado alley” would beget something like this, but looking at your house in matchstick form is a different kind of loss. Even if all your neighbors’ pets are dead, and maybe they are too, there’s something we want to hear about, we want to believe in, which defies a, certainly impartial, wind storm.

I’ve certainly experienced the shock of something unexpected or completely new jamming up the works. It’s a rather haunting paralysis. You’d like to believe even in the worst of situations, it should be possible to “keep it together” or whatever that’s supposed to mean. But I think there’s a power in identifying and owning how easily you can be blown away. I think you step more carefully and maybe care more deeply.

You hear stories of the slow burn. The scientist who thought the systematic killing of elephants would re-enrich desert land only to have that shocking moment 20 years later that everything he’d been doing was dead wrong. The bad relationship where something finally snaps and you find yourself saying or doing things best represented in what were previously considered overly dramatic movies. Rarely are you next to the roadside bomb or getting railed by the Mack truck, the next moments only confirming you still have light receptors and tinnitus.

The best you can do is try and form a solid foundation. It’s something of an oxymoron, but I’ll take troops who’ve been through boot camp before the overzealous neighborhood watch militia any day. You want the best kind of friendships? Try and be the best of what you expect out of your friends. When things go wrong, you’ll be able to recognize if/when they’re doing the work as well. You want to be an authority on something? Make sure you’ve incorporated the lessons of those who’ve earned the right to own that authority before you.

We’re a memory. You’re basically “kind of cool” or “kind of not cool” to everyone you meet. The amount of time and circumstance it can take before someone gets a real sense of what you’re about, generally, is exhausting and often not worth it. (amIrite!?) Once people start to see themselves in you or see themselves depending on you for something is when stupid words like love come into the equation. The memory converts from merely remembering things about you to now provoking how they’ve made you feel. Add this to the list of reasons feelings shouldn’t be overstated.

Think of the Christian pride of those who are excited to knock on your door. They think they have something to share! But generally awake and thinking people see it as annoying, hollow, naïve, and kind of take pity that you can’t be happy with real things. They telegraph their bad motivation. Ironically, they think they’re trying to save you from something they’re running from. I look for people who give off the impression they think. I invest when the message is about the struggle, not necessarily the answers. After all, the answers are generally obvious once you ask why or get details.

How do they keep the faith? Ignorance and denial. They are as solid a foundation as anything, in that you can build the exact same walls as high as you like regardless of the materials. How do you maintain confidence in your relationships, your likes and dislikes, your motivation? It’s really easy to confidently masquerade as if you have a plan when no one’s asking to see it and you’ve no intention of offering it up freely. Then the truth of how little it’s built on might come to light. Then you might get stuck, having never been forced to deal with what you’re doing and what it really means. You might have to wonder how it matters, HOW ANYTHING MATTERS!? And then carry on like your mind wasn’t blown by a category 5 tornado.

It’s in doing the work that you have any real kind of foundation. A completed building just sits there. All ideas either linger or get lost forever. But when you’re in the thick of it, things get clearer. When your feet move down the path you laid out, for better or worse, but you really did everything you could to make it your path and not “a path,” things start to border on making sense. It’s when you allow yourself to create exactly what you needed to see.

Whether this helps tackle problems or not, you at least start to see the role you’re suited for. That way, if you die before the play hits the stage, at least you’ll know it was yours.

[346] Chip Off The Old Block

I need to feel better about leaving for a week. I think I'll get there by the end.

So much of myself seems to exist in contradiction. I'm dead inside, then I'm overly elated with a trend or mood. I'm the nicest guy who even blacked out says sweet endearing things, then I'm the meanest person I know. The confusing part is that they all feel as “real” or as “me” equally. There never feels like an appropriate place to be one over the other, I just sort of take it in stride and come up with probably too many words to justify.

It's extremely hard to be vulnerable, for example. However you conceive of vulnerability, I guess. It's one thing to wear an aspect of your life on your sleeve, entirely another when you feel like someone you respect or care about is checking out your style. The tension of trying to figure out if your personalities are “compatible” can be palpable. It's been an investment in your sense of self, after all. To what degree should this person be allowed to tinker with it?

One of my biggest issues is that I genuinely don't like hope. I've been reminded that I've made such a sentiment in the past, but it feels louder at the moment. I don't want to believe people like me. I don't want to look too forward into hanging out or getting into a good conversation. And it's not like it's because “things won't live up to the dream” type of bullshit. It's just that it inevitably seems to change for spectacularly bad reasons.

That's where you learn detachment. That's how you forget best friends. It's why I feel myself ever compelled toward perfect moments or vibes and similar personalities, and have practically zero patience for those not on board. It almost feels like you've stolen something when it goes right. Like you're caught up in something so infinitely fleeting, trying to call it “special” feels cheap. And if/when you can create those moments, you've maybe done something that matters.

I find it damn near impossible to keep at it in the world as it stands. So I need to create my own and send out invitations. It'll presumably be easier to do that “losing” 6 days now.