We're only as real as the stories we
tell. Variations on that theme are, “history is told by the
winners,” "there's your side, their side, and the truth lies
somewhere in the middle,” and even “happiness is a state of
mind.” We convince ourselves we're moral. We don't have to be the
most moral or the best
at it, but we have to believe our intentions were pure, if not
rational and certainly speaking to some correct identification of our
feelings.
There's a reason I remain perpetually desperate. I don't care how I feel. My feelings tell me absolutely nothing, ever. I've had this sinking, hollow, very confusing sense of foreboding in my stomach the last few days. I thought maybe it had to do with approaching this blog from a very deliberate and informed way, because I hope to speak to something at the heart of my being. I still want to write something important, but all I had to do was take a shit. I was none the wiser.
There's a reason I'm constantly tossing the definition of things over and over again in my head. There's a reason I want to question your integrity and shit on the concept of “friend” every other month. It's necessary. I'm absolutely correct in doing it. I've spent most of my life attempting to nail down the intricacies of how we employ certain words and ideas, or how we should approach our interpersonal relationships. You've just been living them. If I find something confusing or absurd, it's not that you can't understand or ever even generally disagree. But it's built into your being in a way you're not actively trying to extricate. It's behavior and perceptions that have the greatest consequences.
What to make of consequences? We think we live in a pretty straightforward world concerning consequences. You don't pay, you get punished. You won't work, you don't eat. You don't say the right thing, you'll be written off or ostracized. Maybe instead I should put it like this. It's certainly insisted, quiet consistently, how I should know better as there are rules for your world. And I call it your world because you all act the exact same ways in response to it.
Say something simple like cussing. If I do so, you say, “Shush! there may be children!” If I don my perpetually ridiculous caricature and make a racist joke, you say “Shush! you may hurt someone's feelings!” Something ever more confusing when it's us alone, sometimes even in my own living room. I say relax and have another, you say, “I need to be alert and ready so I can hate my job, put on a fake smile, and throw up my arms because nothing else exists.”
Your feeling-laden world of blind expectations does so much work to arrest and account for your behavior. You're not concerned about accuracy or accountability. You're not concerned with truth as it may exist in between the words and beyond our best definitions. You don't want pragmatic daily action plans and reminders to pierce the veil. You prefer your judgments. You prefer acrid piety. You need your sacrificial goats for the God of the Dammed.
I don't care how you feel.
What do you make of that sentiment? Am I making a moral claim? Am I speaking my personal truth, or am I shooting for some loftier generalized conception? Do you have to treat me differently now? Do you have to re-evaluate what I am to you? What is a person who doesn't care how I feel? A psycho or sociopath? Am I trying to hurt you? What are you supposed to make of all the things I've done or said that seemed to try to make you feel good? Maybe he's just an idiot and jerk who doesn't want to deal with how I feel.
I don't care how you feel.
I really want that sentiment to be repeated to have it sink in. It's the kind of phrase that provokes those words we need to invent that transcend irony. It's something I've so often been accused of it's lost all it's meaning for me. It's something I watch people behave so manifestly destructively in service to, they think the overall carnage is normal.
In fact, you don't know how I feel, I don't know how you feel, I barely know let alone care about how I feel, and as a matter of circumstance, I do not care how you feel.
The best you can do is take people at their word. The one with the best words, or, the one who employs them at the right times to the right people, tends to win. This is why you're pieces in the overall capital G Game I refer to. This is why I'm fairly unapologetic in my phrasing and behavior. When I'm playing your game, I'm the coolest person you'll have ever met. When I want to die without regrets, I'll carry on picking you apart for as long as it takes for you to be as large a disembodied whirlpool of words as I am.
Consider the insane amount of problems at taking people at their word. Now you get that ridiculous language of “respecting feelings.” By virtue of opening your mouth and talking about your irrational fears and irrational political positions, you get your respectable adult hat! No checks and balances. No training course or certification. You're living it, and I have to swallow it! Isn't this fun, kids!
There is no metric for lies. There is no follow up. Each day you get to wake up with a new memory of events gone past. You get to fill your internal dialogue with every cliché you pick up from misappropriated thinkers and insecure megalomaniacs that would have never been able to stand a conversation with the likes of you. And you get so many followers! You're playing the game so perfectly, everyone is there to reinforce you because they feel you're so sweet, and loving, and sacrificing! You work so hard! You're being all you can be! You deserve the world!
But then you fuck up. You meet someone like me, or Byron, or Smash, or Pat Patterson, or just that person who seems to have a superhuman capacity to be off yet completely engaged. While I've basically shed my capacity to constantly say the right thing or even pretend I can grasp even the most feeble body and language cues anymore, these people are stars. You love them! You'll tolerate me.
I can pick you apart. They pick you apart. Their world and our conversations are different than when we're all being super cool with each other at a party and wildly engaged, normal, and interesting. They know how to lead with the active, thoughtful, analysis of their own minds and employ the truth before they play the game that makes you feel good. They're watching, not judging. They won't call you out, I will. They collectively have 1700 facebook friends, I have 59.
It's hard to believe that someone can know something about you that you don't feel. And that's only hard because you unfairly and unduly respect and care about feelings. The harder evidence is closed to you. The larger patterns, the awareness of the language, and the mannerisms or demeanor are lost on you. And the snippets of time you pop your head in to claim awareness usually bite you. You don't do the work, and so you hope you find someone who can hold your hands the rest of your life and make you feel good about your choices and ideas. I refuse.
For every judgment I get about “who I am” or “what you think I'm doing” or “how I'm not listening,” I'm going to be prepared to cut off our “friendship.” All I'm ever willing to do is constantly talk until I reach a point of understanding. I'm not going to hold a shadowy raincloud of doubt over my head about who you are or who I am to you. You have enough fodder from my brain to figure out your own position. You're someone capable of honesty, patience, or perhaps merely a perverse hope for more than the massive joke that is played on thoughtful individuals about their place in the herd. Or, you're not, and I'm not okay with you. I'm comfortable playing with you, lying to you, and holding your hand so you can tend to your dog shit fickle feelings.
I know better. And the only reason I know better is that I can go back and check my work. I can look at the decisions I've made in total spite of your feelings, know what they spoke to, and feel proud for having made them. I don't lose sleep, nor time, nor opportunities based on your judgments. If you're willing to walk with me and observe, I'll perhaps bother with working you into my thoughts. Until then, this is my new line in the sand. I'm not obligating myself. I'm not stressing myself out or wondering. I'm not going to get anxious if I don't write you a personal heartfelt birthday message or find the time to fly out and see you. I know what you want, and it's not me.
There's a reason I remain perpetually desperate. I don't care how I feel. My feelings tell me absolutely nothing, ever. I've had this sinking, hollow, very confusing sense of foreboding in my stomach the last few days. I thought maybe it had to do with approaching this blog from a very deliberate and informed way, because I hope to speak to something at the heart of my being. I still want to write something important, but all I had to do was take a shit. I was none the wiser.
There's a reason I'm constantly tossing the definition of things over and over again in my head. There's a reason I want to question your integrity and shit on the concept of “friend” every other month. It's necessary. I'm absolutely correct in doing it. I've spent most of my life attempting to nail down the intricacies of how we employ certain words and ideas, or how we should approach our interpersonal relationships. You've just been living them. If I find something confusing or absurd, it's not that you can't understand or ever even generally disagree. But it's built into your being in a way you're not actively trying to extricate. It's behavior and perceptions that have the greatest consequences.
What to make of consequences? We think we live in a pretty straightforward world concerning consequences. You don't pay, you get punished. You won't work, you don't eat. You don't say the right thing, you'll be written off or ostracized. Maybe instead I should put it like this. It's certainly insisted, quiet consistently, how I should know better as there are rules for your world. And I call it your world because you all act the exact same ways in response to it.
Say something simple like cussing. If I do so, you say, “Shush! there may be children!” If I don my perpetually ridiculous caricature and make a racist joke, you say “Shush! you may hurt someone's feelings!” Something ever more confusing when it's us alone, sometimes even in my own living room. I say relax and have another, you say, “I need to be alert and ready so I can hate my job, put on a fake smile, and throw up my arms because nothing else exists.”
Your feeling-laden world of blind expectations does so much work to arrest and account for your behavior. You're not concerned about accuracy or accountability. You're not concerned with truth as it may exist in between the words and beyond our best definitions. You don't want pragmatic daily action plans and reminders to pierce the veil. You prefer your judgments. You prefer acrid piety. You need your sacrificial goats for the God of the Dammed.
I don't care how you feel.
What do you make of that sentiment? Am I making a moral claim? Am I speaking my personal truth, or am I shooting for some loftier generalized conception? Do you have to treat me differently now? Do you have to re-evaluate what I am to you? What is a person who doesn't care how I feel? A psycho or sociopath? Am I trying to hurt you? What are you supposed to make of all the things I've done or said that seemed to try to make you feel good? Maybe he's just an idiot and jerk who doesn't want to deal with how I feel.
I don't care how you feel.
I really want that sentiment to be repeated to have it sink in. It's the kind of phrase that provokes those words we need to invent that transcend irony. It's something I've so often been accused of it's lost all it's meaning for me. It's something I watch people behave so manifestly destructively in service to, they think the overall carnage is normal.
In fact, you don't know how I feel, I don't know how you feel, I barely know let alone care about how I feel, and as a matter of circumstance, I do not care how you feel.
The best you can do is take people at their word. The one with the best words, or, the one who employs them at the right times to the right people, tends to win. This is why you're pieces in the overall capital G Game I refer to. This is why I'm fairly unapologetic in my phrasing and behavior. When I'm playing your game, I'm the coolest person you'll have ever met. When I want to die without regrets, I'll carry on picking you apart for as long as it takes for you to be as large a disembodied whirlpool of words as I am.
Consider the insane amount of problems at taking people at their word. Now you get that ridiculous language of “respecting feelings.” By virtue of opening your mouth and talking about your irrational fears and irrational political positions, you get your respectable adult hat! No checks and balances. No training course or certification. You're living it, and I have to swallow it! Isn't this fun, kids!
There is no metric for lies. There is no follow up. Each day you get to wake up with a new memory of events gone past. You get to fill your internal dialogue with every cliché you pick up from misappropriated thinkers and insecure megalomaniacs that would have never been able to stand a conversation with the likes of you. And you get so many followers! You're playing the game so perfectly, everyone is there to reinforce you because they feel you're so sweet, and loving, and sacrificing! You work so hard! You're being all you can be! You deserve the world!
But then you fuck up. You meet someone like me, or Byron, or Smash, or Pat Patterson, or just that person who seems to have a superhuman capacity to be off yet completely engaged. While I've basically shed my capacity to constantly say the right thing or even pretend I can grasp even the most feeble body and language cues anymore, these people are stars. You love them! You'll tolerate me.
I can pick you apart. They pick you apart. Their world and our conversations are different than when we're all being super cool with each other at a party and wildly engaged, normal, and interesting. They know how to lead with the active, thoughtful, analysis of their own minds and employ the truth before they play the game that makes you feel good. They're watching, not judging. They won't call you out, I will. They collectively have 1700 facebook friends, I have 59.
It's hard to believe that someone can know something about you that you don't feel. And that's only hard because you unfairly and unduly respect and care about feelings. The harder evidence is closed to you. The larger patterns, the awareness of the language, and the mannerisms or demeanor are lost on you. And the snippets of time you pop your head in to claim awareness usually bite you. You don't do the work, and so you hope you find someone who can hold your hands the rest of your life and make you feel good about your choices and ideas. I refuse.
For every judgment I get about “who I am” or “what you think I'm doing” or “how I'm not listening,” I'm going to be prepared to cut off our “friendship.” All I'm ever willing to do is constantly talk until I reach a point of understanding. I'm not going to hold a shadowy raincloud of doubt over my head about who you are or who I am to you. You have enough fodder from my brain to figure out your own position. You're someone capable of honesty, patience, or perhaps merely a perverse hope for more than the massive joke that is played on thoughtful individuals about their place in the herd. Or, you're not, and I'm not okay with you. I'm comfortable playing with you, lying to you, and holding your hand so you can tend to your dog shit fickle feelings.
I know better. And the only reason I know better is that I can go back and check my work. I can look at the decisions I've made in total spite of your feelings, know what they spoke to, and feel proud for having made them. I don't lose sleep, nor time, nor opportunities based on your judgments. If you're willing to walk with me and observe, I'll perhaps bother with working you into my thoughts. Until then, this is my new line in the sand. I'm not obligating myself. I'm not stressing myself out or wondering. I'm not going to get anxious if I don't write you a personal heartfelt birthday message or find the time to fly out and see you. I know what you want, and it's not me.
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