[758] Read 'Em And Weep

There's something I do, not very often, but often enough that I want to talk about. I've sat on several Amazon wishlists with different groupings of items, sometimes for years. Things can range from a $1 book to a $3000 high definition camera. There's things meant to scratch the OCD-adjacent itch like American Gladiators DVDs which have no torrent presence but I'll be damned if it didn't feel like I was missing out on the ability to reminisce when I first thought to look them up. Just now, I decided to start adding up the cheapest used versions of a 50+ long book list and see how much it would be to buy them all at once. I got bored a little over half way through and decided against some that were pricier than they should be, marring the results and estimation, but it's probably safe to say it'd be about $500 or so after shipping to get everything. My finger lingered over the “place order” button when I showed the cart at $309.

 

A small point to be rushed out of the way is that I have $309. I have the $500 or more it would take to order them all. I have the money to do that, and pay rent next month, and pay for gas and food, and stay as perfectly comfortable as I am now, but with 50 more books in my life. 50 more windows or distractions on topics I've found interesting enough to note on a list and then carry on with my life in spite of. 50 reminders of all of the things I'm not learning about that inspired me, excited me, or prompted me to act in a world that I'm otherwise mostly dragging myself through without the narcissism of a proper depression. Yes, that was a deliberately provocative and ignorant phrasing, good catch. It made me smirk, so it stays.

 

The large point to be labored over and confused, I'm sure, is that I am, in fact, inspired. I'm inspired in my feelings of “deadness.” I'm inspired by the indignant and ignorant testaments to our impending demise. I'm inspired by numbers and whiffs of ill-conceived yet tangible “progress.” There's a lot of the world that, despite everything contrary I might conjure to say about it, I'm actively wishing to learn about, understand, and then build into a new expression of myself. Thus, this overwhelming empowering sentiment of self-actualization and connection becomes the most depressing thing. To have an “intellectual” mode of viewing all topics as “potentially interesting” or drumming up reasons to claim interest is a step removed from rushing to Amazon or the library to devour where thoughts were pushing you.

 

I had to individually delete each book from the list. I had to see the title of something I want to be intimately familiar with fade into the background of my “one day” life, even if that life is maybe mere months away. I had to get the sinking feeling of “what if” my car or my guy working or some inconvenience pops up and the $300 or $500 could be better spent. Right before the book list I was reexamining heating/air conditioning units. A $1000 one of those might make a survivable difference where the flow of ideas might be a lower-order need than the flow of blood.

 

More and more I want to be the quasi-hermit just learning or just experimenting. I find myself growing increasingly fascinated with the infinite potential and particulars of what it means to be truly individual. The only path to wrapping oneself up in a tough blanket of understanding seems to be in the tireless pursuit of understanding as many pieces of the infinite sea of variables as you can pass through your consciousness. I'm already a fairly provocative and particular beast. Who am I after those 50 books? Who am I after trying and failing over and over again?

 

It's a different kind of energy. I got something of an adrenaline rush dealing with a particular kind of ignorant client. I was “excited” at the prospect of being what's going to be a pretty dramatic and severe consequence to stone-cold ignorance in a way that life rarely provides. At the same time, it's not lost on me that this isn't the kind of excited I want to be. It's also a kind of weak co-opting of State power that could arguably pass through anyone with my same title. Yes, the professional world let's you jiggle around details, but picking your weapon in a war you've been conscripted into seems fundamentally at odds with the kind of individual liberty or choice that would sustain meaningful interaction with the world.

 

I want to give myself up. I want to serve myself on a platter to the ideas that want to take me as far as they are able. I want to lose myself in the argument and effort and find myself in pieces scattered between pages. I don't want to hear the back of my mind chanting “gotta work for the weekend” and “working 9 to 5” as I feel defeated cracking a book I know I'll have to put down, no matter how good, so I'm not too tired for my job in the morning. I don't want to pretend “broken” is the same thing as “tempered.” I'm playing the game Red Dead Redemption and recently learned how to lasso and break horses. It's in the person who's riding you's best interest for you to forget you're as large and kicky as a horse.

 

My compulsion to sit and play, or read, or sleep, or just talk and eat forever are also provoked by my genuine feeling that we aren't going to make it. I want to enjoy my gilded age. I want my head put through as many word washings and tumble cycles as I can get my eyes and ears on. “People,” as that abstract concept or mass are always going to provide you the same things. Carving out your individual person is an every-moment kind of task. It's why I'm thankful for writing. I know I'm awake and “mildly annoyed.” I know I have an image of a video game bucking horse flashing in front of me and am I'm exhausted by Trump-esc ignorance, unyieldingly proud, and see first hand its deadly effects personally and culturally. I know I want a nice little dopaminergic rush from spending or to feel like something is happening that finally has to do with me, and not what I'm otherwise compelled to be doing.

 

I think, at a certain point, you get to be justly complicated. The concept of “listen to your elders” comes to mind. It's hard to say someone who's been around for 2 or 3 times longer than you have is going to be summed up. In theory, we should all be filled with layers of wisdom and in/dignity to be poked and shaken for insight, but those “sparkly” people running through the halls trying to turn on the light in every room might be garnering your attention for more than bombastic or selfish reasons. Enough obituaries have read “He/she was a point of light, the center of their family, the beacon etc” to the point of absurdity, but I think about it initially more cynically. An individual, almost by definition, is a brand.

 

If I were merely a machine, and I produced “content,” you'd have nearly 740 pages of whatever you want to call it. Was Anne Frank a “good” writer? Doesn't matter. Is Viktor Frankl's voice unique? Can you feel a line from Dostoevsky in your bones that sounds worlds apart from one of his no-name contemporaries? These famous individuals are manifest in various and insidious ways, but they thrive and live on in the people who adopted deeply personal genuine understanding from what they were attempting to convey. Ignorance and relativists may want to bicker of “true understanding” verses “false understanding,” which to me might indicate they're in some of the furthest places one might inhabit in their ability to understand much of anything at all.

 

If I were merely a machine, I have a consistent and powerful history of drawing out such deeply ingrained reactions to my being as to engender some of the harshest and most incoherent judgments. Simply, I'd provoke noise. At the same time, I make a lot of noise. I raise the concern. I ask for the fight. I talk too much and too loud. I try for the next boisterous laugh. I seek out other noise makers to fill the air when I need to breath.

 

We're currently caught in a psychological hole and feedback loop where noisy content stokes the flames that power the insecure engine away from individuated self-expression. That line is a convoluted way of describing our collective death. I said recently I'm not interested in dying if I'm going to bother with life. It's that much clearer to me now why I want to buy hundreds of dollars worth of books and secure my tiny shell that everything can burn down around.

 

I'm already breaking through, but I'm not enough. So much of me already exists and fights for its sole voice. I'm taking shape, as quickly as I can through writing, and as slow as it takes to get a driveway, or build a library, or pluck a sapling. Maybe I'm too hungry in wanting it 24/7. 2 weeks at a time is 26 monopolizing moments. That's dangerous and deadly. 8 am to 4:30 pm was agreed upon without your input. The base of my current orientation I consider corrupted, which means it has an expiration, and eventually I'll talk myself out of it. But I also know that argument is essentially dead without help from another individual or statistically unlikely empowering circumstances enriching me.

If it's still somehow lost on you, this is me fighting.

[757] Natural Disaster Artist

I’m so “mildly everything” right now as my mind shoots between past thoughts and recent experiences that I think it’s time to dig.

I’ve finished my “training” at DCS. As the time went by, people loosened up more and more and those true colors started leaking through. Dress got more relaxed, pretty grievances started to surface, and the reality of our collective situation was no more epitomized than when a group presenting a mock case got reprimanded for their parody lyrics after being encouraged to be creative in their presentation on the very last day. It’s The State, ladies and gentlemen. I’m surprised you didn’t see the stick up its ass from miles away.

There were several “strong” personalities, including mine, in the class. I got to watch with the wisdom of knowing what happens already, as how I managed to integrate myself, or not, into different conversational circles. Again, older people like me. I stayed polite in playing games I find incredibly boring or biting my tongue on what would otherwise be an endless stream of jokes and commentary. There’s a handful of people I could see inviting to parties or hanging out again, but we’ll see if they’re still employed and answering their work emails even 6 months from now if I so conjured the right situation. I wasn’t so much about trading numbers.

One particularly wordy and jokey person decided to send an email out to the group about how she really enjoyed everyone and that the cohort will leave a lasting impact. I intend to getting around to writing a goofy poem in response to it. You couldn’t ask for a better example of the people who want to kind of act out using it as a shield because they really do care in more ways than they’ll let on. She also invited everyone out to drink on the second to last day, though I’m unsure who decided to attend.

With the end of the traveling, I get to settle into my townie rut. I can start regularly maintaining engagement in my distractions and practices. I can start finding my rhythm and how to disrupt it with inappropriate levels of overtime. Before that was my first foray into living that “travel a bit and visit friends” kind of life. I’m writing this from my bedroom at my dad’s house as I’ve been sort of marooned in the region after a miscommunication. Tomorrow I venture to a play before a very late drive back. Today has been needlessly spending money in an effort to distract myself and stay out of the house. I’m pausing work on the land for a month or so, so sneaking in video games, books, and a vanilla caramel chiller get to scratch spending itches.

But seriously, I’m trying to figure out how to get to the good stuff. I’ve been considerably more “functionally dead” as time goes on. I routinely envision myself strung up by my fancy belt on a door handle. I still have very little desire to connect with people in general, let alone anyone new, and even seeing some acquaintances in the mall, I did basically everything in my power to pretend I was trying to get their attention before walking the other direction. I’m an odd duck.

Part of that behavior is feeling so insular that people are again becoming flatly what they can or can’t provide me. Another polite conversation about the nothing either of us are doing or plans neither of us care about isn’t what I need. Seeing people you went to high school with get married and mall walk early Saturday morning is the kind of kick in the teeth to how “easy” it is to get comfortable and sit still.

I think a lot about people’s relationships. A trainer asked the question of our cohort, “How many of you are on your first love?” and nobody raised their hand. He was making a point about change and how hard it can be for not just our families but us as well. I make the more cynical point about the kind of desperate illusion the love story is and the power it’s had to drag us up to this point. But it was funny to see the people who didn’t know why they were in Indiana, but moved their because of their boyfriend, or who had stories about being the mom at 17 and 40 year old grandma taking tips on how to relate to their spouse from one of our book sections, or the 26 year old talk about his time in marriage counseling and girl with a 1-year old who very clearly wanted to be drunk as shit and still in college once the wheels started coming off of our group’s general civility.

It’s just lost on everyone. It’s lost that you can be forcefully and proudly yourself, and still build your life and relationships from there. Old people find themselves there sometimes by default, so they jive with me. Take no prisoners. Be honest. The “professional” world has an obligation to keep things obscure and lightly touched because they’re wielding enormous power. Society at large needs something of a baseline, sure, but if Trump has taught us anything, if you don’t protect and fight through the uncomfortable truths, you’re not just harmed by the lies, but utterly overwhelmed to the point of threatening extinction.

I have a mild post-traumatic response when I think about my stuff that got stolen. Concurrently, I have an overwhelming feeling that I don’t want “stuff.” I come in through the garage at my dad’s house and see stuff up stuff piled up. It’s been through several garage sales. Some of it is semi-useful some of the time. And this house is filled with stuff that was supposed to serve later purposes or be a part of my step-mom’s craft business. This house isn’t breathing with the lives this stuff is supposed to enable. It just feels heavier and heavier and hard to maneuver around.

That’s what my stuff was. The pieces to the coffee shop. The toys and collectables I’ve saved since childhood. The books the thieves opened one box of, threw around, and then decided they’d grabbed everything worth taking. I’m sitting with the weight of a piano I have to figure out how to pack into my space. At the heart of the acquisition of my stuff was to help enable me. I never opened a single Marvel Legend as I figured they’d be worth something one day. The same rationale left some QVC comics my grandmother bought me as well, also gone. The time and money and effort it took to get that stuff not only into my life, but onto the truck, and out to the land, just gone. My effort, my plans, and my wisdom-seeking investment behavior nullified.

Here I think about help. If I had help to establish my place earlier, I could have been out there. I could have protected my stuff. I could have made my little empire a few thousand dollars richer and extended my online sales presence. You know, the true noble goal of existence. I could continue to draw from the desperate insecurity of the past that provoked me into getting that stuff and investing myself in it when there was nothing else. I could go on and on like fires and hurricanes aren’t routinely wiping out entire lives by the thousands. I can pretend I give a fuck about them like I do what happens to me.

I guess there’s the irony. The utility and training it takes to pretend. Pretend hard enough and you’ll donate to charity and take up a noble profession. You’ll believe your just desserts in heaven are for a life well-lived and hasn’t been you jockeying to garner favor. I’ve heard a number of times from different trainers, “I have a passion for this work! It really bugs me when people are just here for the paycheck!” Because they require the nobility and dignity of their position to understand and orient themselves in the world. It’s beyond their comprehension that you could give zero fucks and do better by virtue of understanding the nature of the game. They don’t know honesty and compassion without reward, so when honesty and compassion show up brazen and “creative,” they instinctively shutter at the thought anyone would dare pay someone for their time and effort when a heart can bleed all on its own. Fuck them.

What’s funny though, I can’t really pretend. When you’re willing and able to see what I am, like the obnoxious, and older, and melancholy, that’s when my star shines. There’s a reason I seem to attract a litany of girls with severe depression and anxiety. There’s a reason I draw such visceral reactions to being consistent and persistently forthcoming in how I feel. I recognize the pretend game as death, and if I have to keep bothering with being alive, I’m not interested in dying. I only imagine myself hanging from my belt, I don’t make plans.

I keep thinking we’re, for several generations, irreparably broken. Whether it’s people feeling creeped out at the idea of picking up a phone or the obnoxious individual haze of pursuing things for the sake of things, perhaps my harking for the time spent in college becomes less about some romantic togetherness and friendship ideal, and more a recognition that that’s all there is. That’s when you’re allowed to be an individual and bounce your process off other processes. Friends are an incredibly positively selfish thing to have if you’re using them right. But what do people do instead? They pretend. They play house. They pose for Instagram. They make it incredibly hard to ever see each other again because it’s time to look for the next thing.

I don’t know what I want anymore. I wanted the struggle, and that’s been subverted by the proper form and process. I wanted to be engaged and creative, and now I’m searching for hobbies like I’m trying to pack in extra curriculars before applying to college. They say to pay for experiences, not things. What if you don’t know how to? What if your experience is so marred by your collective psychosis that no matter where you go, you’re paying for the same thing over and over until you go mad? Why do I want to be lonely and bored in a foreign country anymore than I want to be sitting alone in my field contemplating whatever there is to buy after a driveway?

Today has been one of those exercise days in really hammering down the hardest and most depressing points. I tried to be proactive. I got some slime to fix a slow leak in my tire. The head popped off, and I end up deflating the tire more. I got a magnet phone holder so I could stop precariously dancing with my fumbled phone while driving, only to lose a piece of it, somehow, into a black hole that opened in my lap. I could see the pissed away money flutter about in the aggressive wind. I was told to “ignore the barking” and “say hi, it’s about respect” as if I don’t regularly say hi or need lessons on respect and haven’t been routinely and unceremoniously ignored by the person I’m supposed to say it to for years. My working self gets to watch the step-white-trash retard in my basement play video games, still without a job, not paying rent, pissing all over the toilet, as the expectations of my household remain shackled. It happens too regularly for there not to be some metaphysical-esc being out there zeroing in on the points where the exact opposite of what should be said or did in fact happens precisely then.

I’ve been heavily restricting my diet lately too. Each day I’ve gone with a can of tuna and 4 apples. I don’t really care what you know about health and weight loss. The results are pretty dramatic even after less than a week. I’m interested in what happens when I add exercise. Part of me wants to be “default” attractive again so I can try to remain silent and/or “buff and dumb” for places like Tinder. Another part of me wants to get as close as I’m ever going to get by way of analogy to addiction. If you need meth as much as I need food, and I’m over here refraining from the hundreds and hundreds of options with my growing and growing bank account, I get to retain even less sympathy for you, and I might stumble upon some insight on how to steer your attention and behavior into another direction. If that fails, at least I’ll be skinnier and saving money regardless. But it seems, as with most things about me, it’s another behavior engaged in out of spite.

Ah ha! That was the last piece I wanted to fit in somewhere. In reminiscing about my childhood, I wonder sometimes if I was born “bad.” I don’t have a lot of insight into my childhood. I don’t have access to pictures. I don’t have family videos. My dad isn’t particularly detailed or forthcoming when I ask him about it. I still don’t talk to the cunt that bore me. I find the proposition intriguing for the consequences of pairing a bad kid with a psycho mom. Maybe it’s not all her, or her mental deficiencies’, fault. Maybe I say things like, “I don’t like helping people” or “here’s another justification for relative sociopathy” or revel in the taboo and precarious while enabling whatever pathology you have on offer because I’m bad. Maybe the world constantly signalling for me to play pretend with them has nothing to do with me as a person and everything to do with a subconscious self-preservation response about the natural disaster that is my being. If there’s a louder message I most often hear besides “you’re not a person” in so many forms, I’ve not caught it.

The insecure put me down. The scared turn what I say or do into personal affronts or redefine their laughter or buy in as something “mean” about me. The jealous avoid. And it isn’t even about them. I’m the storm. I’m a knotted ball of cancerous karma keeping myself stuck between personalities like theirs and an unforgiving world in the face of my best efforts and investments. They’re blips in my blogs and I’m still the writer. The work gets to be here even if I’ll never be.