I'm sick. I think Byron brought back
whatever his dirty poor kids carry and it's in the house again. I
hate being sick. I hate being even mildly sick, which is what this
mostly constitutes. There's a bit of a scratchy throat, a weak cough
every hour or so. I haven't managed aches or a runny nose beyond what
moving and airing out my dusty ass basement did to me yesterday.
The last week or two has been an experiment of not using the air conditioning. It's an experiment I ended 20 minutes ago when I decided I'd have enough of “roughing it” whenever I get my tiny house built. I'm about 85% done packing my shit up with the rest basically ready to go with minor disassembly and an extra hand for the bay glass window and dresser. I threw my back out wrangling mattresses, of all things, and am wary about pressing my luck. The 4 hours I spent delivering today helped make up for the eating out too much and Saturday drink prices.
I'm now full both figuratively and literally and can't settle into something that matters or I care about. My extra computer screens decided to flip out and it's a problem I don't have the patience to be plugging and unplugging wires for hours. Sickness always gets me psychologically regardless, so I'm contending the “bleh” of bothering to exist today at all. I'm hoping I'll manage to slip into what's been on my mind regarding “celebrity” and “meaningful contributions.” I stared a little too hard into the void yesterday contemplating my behavior towards bugs.
I kill bugs at random. I save bugs at random. I have no overall philosophy regarding the life of bugs that makes me even attempt to treat them “fairly.” I have no consistent driving ethos for why some spiders I trap and let outside, and some I smack as quickly as I can grab something to smack them with. Not every bug on my windshield gets a nice shower to shoo them away. Certainly every ant and centipede I've come across I've attempted to kill. Yet there's a handful of giant male mosquitoes I've let rest on my wall indefinitely.
My own indifference and inconsistency felt really rather dark. I thought that if I were so callous and disregarding, it was easy to sense that underlying lack-of drive that motivates society. Some days you invent a story about the timid driver who's been in accidents and is driving slow. Others you lay on the horn and flip them off. They're bugs. Maybe they drive a car you think is pretty or have a bumper sticker you identify with and they disarm you, like a butterfly. Maybe they're billowing smoke and waving a Confederate flag and were we not a polite society you'd chase them down with a giant electrified flyswatter.
I watched a bug crawling along my window and get to the edge. It paused and scanned back and forth, and proceeded to walk along the edge. Is it dumb to ask about its relative agency? Does it intend to seek food or a mate on my window? Is it intrigued because it's used to walking on gravel or dirt so now it's out for a stroll just taking it in? Is it more likely that it's a lost, confused, ignorant spec of incidental bullshit “inspiring” another lost, confused, ignorant spec of bullshit to talk about it, like previous incidental pieces of bullshit have managed to do so in the past? I like that third option.
Into this void is where I recognized my general source of motivation. Sheer and utter futility that causes you to overflow sporadically for brief emotional sentiments. Because there is no facade to keep up, there is no pause, no shame, no allegiance, and no expectation. For a brief moment I watched myself shuffle something around my living room and felt like it was precisely where I needed to be. I wasn't worried about where I'll go once the truck is totally packed or how much it'll be to tow it. I didn't worry about figuring out how to get the engine rebuilt or how I keep meeting people I want nothing to do with who also want nothing to do with me. I wasn't lost in whatever show or song was playing at the time. I was just able to feel my hands clasp around a feather of contentedness before it floated off moments later.
In watching all the shows I do and catching the bands I've seen, I think a considerable amount about “celebrity.” I've tried to read a handful of quasi-scientific explorations into it that felt too obvious and cold. I think of the thousands of actors I could place in a match game fashion to their shows and movies or the stream of lyrics that pop into my head sometimes, quite creepily, summarizing a blog I just wrote with the perfect title. What it is to be recognized, internalized, and shared. A fluidity we try to capture in retrospectives and documentaries. The seeming unpredictability of “forces” that paint periods of your life and emotionally tie you.
I think that's one of the things that bugged me about looking into the void. The mass consumption of “media” I engage in heavily depersonalizes is. Scale that up with life in general. How many first dates can you go on? How many times can you ask the same tired questions? How many times can you hope things will get better or something is going to pop up and surprise you in a good way? I consume shows like I consume cereal like I consume articles about the world. Is it a stretch to think that's what I do to people?
I think about when I'm moved to push my limits. When I know I shouldn't send that next text but do anyway. When I know if I keep pushing it my back is going to fuck me back. When I've gotten home and proudly stated my no good reason to keep drinking until some angry yet desperately hopeful hood nigga voice comes out in a status I delete halfway through re-reading the next morning dizzy and dehydrated on the toilet. When I seek attention, I try to take all of it. And with my piddling voice stretched across vague-enough entrepreneurial endeavors and practical concerns, I'm sure I'm wasting it.
Yet, because the void knows no pause, shame, allegiance, or expectation, I kick the record back on and play the same song until someone stands up and rips the cord from the wall. I play bug to your general indifference. Occasionally, I sting you on the nose and try to crawl in your ear. Regardless of my intent you'd slap and dig and try to kill me. Helpless little meanderer with the power to become a point of all-consuming focus and frustration, if only for a moment.
The idea of always needing the lights and camera on me sounds exhausting. Life is superficial enough without institutionalizing it even more deliberately. The lyric “A real thug is a thug that's HUSH.” Irony is lost on the demifamous.
It goes the other way though, because I often let a particular interaction or person take over my head until I can find myself angry and disgusted enough to move on. I don't like that it always has to be anger or disgust that “fixes” me though. Or, rather, I don't know if that's particularly healthy or a long term strategy for improving my general relationships. I can look at a picture of my ex and feel nothing but a scowl. Does she deserve that? Do I care? The pithy pissing matches with a few acquaintances don't keep me up all night, but how many times will I be dragged into them before I just find someone else that's “cool?” How many tens of thousands of people have I met to get to 50 or 60 I'd ever bother to speak to? Just the most fascinating bugs?
The motivation I feel to climb a mountain hungover, which I can't cum in service to its beauty to, is what I seek to celebrate. The process of making up and looking forward to things grants you celebrity status. I don't write 5 pages exploring the psychological profiles of television characters and the intricate details of a plot I'm sure you missed not being a “proper nerd.” I want to unearth the heart of what moves people to substitute their lives with the glamorous illusion. I want to strip away as many unnecessary illusions in my own life as possible.
There's plenty of room for struggles without the self-imposed consequences of denial. If I were lonely, I'd say so, for example. But people force themselves together and play the pleasantries and relationships games constantly. Their focus is on the friends list or number of followers and perfect pictures. They're worried about what their family will think. I certainly need to be “distracted” or “engaged,” but I don't need to do it at the expense of you or my self-respect. It speaks to why random bar hook-ups lost much of their appeal, not all ;). That Key and Peele sketch about the non-stop party comes to mind. Here though too, you can be incidentally jaded and self-pitying or recognize what's actually capable of motivating the party.
I'm sick. I'm a sick little bug. I'm a sick little bug who's confused and lost and unmotivated were it not for his endless drive to find noses worth stinging and ears worth crawling into.
The last week or two has been an experiment of not using the air conditioning. It's an experiment I ended 20 minutes ago when I decided I'd have enough of “roughing it” whenever I get my tiny house built. I'm about 85% done packing my shit up with the rest basically ready to go with minor disassembly and an extra hand for the bay glass window and dresser. I threw my back out wrangling mattresses, of all things, and am wary about pressing my luck. The 4 hours I spent delivering today helped make up for the eating out too much and Saturday drink prices.
I'm now full both figuratively and literally and can't settle into something that matters or I care about. My extra computer screens decided to flip out and it's a problem I don't have the patience to be plugging and unplugging wires for hours. Sickness always gets me psychologically regardless, so I'm contending the “bleh” of bothering to exist today at all. I'm hoping I'll manage to slip into what's been on my mind regarding “celebrity” and “meaningful contributions.” I stared a little too hard into the void yesterday contemplating my behavior towards bugs.
I kill bugs at random. I save bugs at random. I have no overall philosophy regarding the life of bugs that makes me even attempt to treat them “fairly.” I have no consistent driving ethos for why some spiders I trap and let outside, and some I smack as quickly as I can grab something to smack them with. Not every bug on my windshield gets a nice shower to shoo them away. Certainly every ant and centipede I've come across I've attempted to kill. Yet there's a handful of giant male mosquitoes I've let rest on my wall indefinitely.
My own indifference and inconsistency felt really rather dark. I thought that if I were so callous and disregarding, it was easy to sense that underlying lack-of drive that motivates society. Some days you invent a story about the timid driver who's been in accidents and is driving slow. Others you lay on the horn and flip them off. They're bugs. Maybe they drive a car you think is pretty or have a bumper sticker you identify with and they disarm you, like a butterfly. Maybe they're billowing smoke and waving a Confederate flag and were we not a polite society you'd chase them down with a giant electrified flyswatter.
I watched a bug crawling along my window and get to the edge. It paused and scanned back and forth, and proceeded to walk along the edge. Is it dumb to ask about its relative agency? Does it intend to seek food or a mate on my window? Is it intrigued because it's used to walking on gravel or dirt so now it's out for a stroll just taking it in? Is it more likely that it's a lost, confused, ignorant spec of incidental bullshit “inspiring” another lost, confused, ignorant spec of bullshit to talk about it, like previous incidental pieces of bullshit have managed to do so in the past? I like that third option.
Into this void is where I recognized my general source of motivation. Sheer and utter futility that causes you to overflow sporadically for brief emotional sentiments. Because there is no facade to keep up, there is no pause, no shame, no allegiance, and no expectation. For a brief moment I watched myself shuffle something around my living room and felt like it was precisely where I needed to be. I wasn't worried about where I'll go once the truck is totally packed or how much it'll be to tow it. I didn't worry about figuring out how to get the engine rebuilt or how I keep meeting people I want nothing to do with who also want nothing to do with me. I wasn't lost in whatever show or song was playing at the time. I was just able to feel my hands clasp around a feather of contentedness before it floated off moments later.
In watching all the shows I do and catching the bands I've seen, I think a considerable amount about “celebrity.” I've tried to read a handful of quasi-scientific explorations into it that felt too obvious and cold. I think of the thousands of actors I could place in a match game fashion to their shows and movies or the stream of lyrics that pop into my head sometimes, quite creepily, summarizing a blog I just wrote with the perfect title. What it is to be recognized, internalized, and shared. A fluidity we try to capture in retrospectives and documentaries. The seeming unpredictability of “forces” that paint periods of your life and emotionally tie you.
I think that's one of the things that bugged me about looking into the void. The mass consumption of “media” I engage in heavily depersonalizes is. Scale that up with life in general. How many first dates can you go on? How many times can you ask the same tired questions? How many times can you hope things will get better or something is going to pop up and surprise you in a good way? I consume shows like I consume cereal like I consume articles about the world. Is it a stretch to think that's what I do to people?
I think about when I'm moved to push my limits. When I know I shouldn't send that next text but do anyway. When I know if I keep pushing it my back is going to fuck me back. When I've gotten home and proudly stated my no good reason to keep drinking until some angry yet desperately hopeful hood nigga voice comes out in a status I delete halfway through re-reading the next morning dizzy and dehydrated on the toilet. When I seek attention, I try to take all of it. And with my piddling voice stretched across vague-enough entrepreneurial endeavors and practical concerns, I'm sure I'm wasting it.
Yet, because the void knows no pause, shame, allegiance, or expectation, I kick the record back on and play the same song until someone stands up and rips the cord from the wall. I play bug to your general indifference. Occasionally, I sting you on the nose and try to crawl in your ear. Regardless of my intent you'd slap and dig and try to kill me. Helpless little meanderer with the power to become a point of all-consuming focus and frustration, if only for a moment.
The idea of always needing the lights and camera on me sounds exhausting. Life is superficial enough without institutionalizing it even more deliberately. The lyric “A real thug is a thug that's HUSH.” Irony is lost on the demifamous.
It goes the other way though, because I often let a particular interaction or person take over my head until I can find myself angry and disgusted enough to move on. I don't like that it always has to be anger or disgust that “fixes” me though. Or, rather, I don't know if that's particularly healthy or a long term strategy for improving my general relationships. I can look at a picture of my ex and feel nothing but a scowl. Does she deserve that? Do I care? The pithy pissing matches with a few acquaintances don't keep me up all night, but how many times will I be dragged into them before I just find someone else that's “cool?” How many tens of thousands of people have I met to get to 50 or 60 I'd ever bother to speak to? Just the most fascinating bugs?
The motivation I feel to climb a mountain hungover, which I can't cum in service to its beauty to, is what I seek to celebrate. The process of making up and looking forward to things grants you celebrity status. I don't write 5 pages exploring the psychological profiles of television characters and the intricate details of a plot I'm sure you missed not being a “proper nerd.” I want to unearth the heart of what moves people to substitute their lives with the glamorous illusion. I want to strip away as many unnecessary illusions in my own life as possible.
There's plenty of room for struggles without the self-imposed consequences of denial. If I were lonely, I'd say so, for example. But people force themselves together and play the pleasantries and relationships games constantly. Their focus is on the friends list or number of followers and perfect pictures. They're worried about what their family will think. I certainly need to be “distracted” or “engaged,” but I don't need to do it at the expense of you or my self-respect. It speaks to why random bar hook-ups lost much of their appeal, not all ;). That Key and Peele sketch about the non-stop party comes to mind. Here though too, you can be incidentally jaded and self-pitying or recognize what's actually capable of motivating the party.
I'm sick. I'm a sick little bug. I'm a sick little bug who's confused and lost and unmotivated were it not for his endless drive to find noses worth stinging and ears worth crawling into.
