[789] Zoom Zoom

Let's see what's going on. A few things have made me think it was time to write. One was a question that comes up in media enough when a character asks, “If there was one thing that you could change about your life, what would it be?” Hearing it yesterday, my only thought was wishing for things to happen faster. The second thing to explore was the question of what makes something “logically coherent,” or exists as the reason one sentence follows another.

Take the opening paragraph. When you're starting from “nowhere,” I often try to marginally preface how I anticipate a blog is going to go. Random jumble? Likely. Severe self-referential abstract “concept” blog? It probably won't get that bad. But because I don't quite know what I'm going to write, you shouldn't feel burdened to find “the point” anymore than I feel I need to land somewhere beyond “feeling better.” As it often goes, it is a line from a show or comment from someone I know that stirs up dust. This is evidence that dust hasn't settled.

I suppose one way to figure out if things are “logically coherent” or “true,” without getting into the symbols I don't understand from a logic class, is to see if the series of ideas leads to things manifesting in the tangible “real world.” My path in life has so far manifested in owning a fair amount of stuff, maintaining relatively good health, and at least bolstering enough lasting relationships that the ones which float away don't seem to unduly impact my mood or functioning. To the degree I wished to own my home, have too much money to play with, and flirt with ideas about “retiring” by 30, I think I've achieved a fair approximation for someone in my caste and cohort.

Can you measure a similar kind of coherence simply at the level of ideas or words? Perhaps I could contrast who I think I am now verses when I was a child. I could fall head over heels for a beautiful face as a child, never knowing what the day would have in store for me. Today, I know the relatively few things I would or wouldn't say to anyone I might be interested in, and it's nice if you're pretty, but I've probably seen a thousand naked versions of it before. That is, my “style” of interacting with a girl isn't befuddled emotion surprising me, and to the degree I express myself honestly, I get to return to a consistent and reliable personality pulse. That's not to say I'd be immune from character flaws that have been built into that personality, but at least we should be able to see them coming and decide how to manage.

I see so many hopeless memes. Here, because my two initial ideas I got enough “it” out about what I wanted to say on them, I don't know how or if it follows. The next thought. How? But I do, I see so many hopeless memes about not living up to dreams, seas of different manifestations of anxiety, and endless jokes about wanting to die. The wanting to die jokes make it into staffing meetings and active shooter trainings at work. Nostalgia is choked until it turns purple and then shaken until arms fall off. The “logic” of coping is my learned behavior of heartily laughing at so much atrocity. To some extent, I even get to walk around some days thinking things aren't so bad.

Let's reintroduce the idea of going “faster.” Why do I watch so many shows sped up? Why do I want to have the amount of money to sustain me where I'm at until I'm 100 “now?” Why did I want to complete my homework in advance in elementary school? My persistent ask of my life is to “get it over with.” If we have the recipe and a dictionary, don't condescend and ask me to make bacon and eggs first. I never want to quit my job more than when I'm told “you're still new” or “you haven't worked here long enough” to get into some new kind of training. Bitch, 7 months? That's a fucking eternity. This job isn't high-order intelligence and espionage. You think the stress results in high turnover more than the active prevention of allowing people to invest in themselves?

We can slow down. How easy would it have been to go on a tirade about the short-sidedness of work? Going faster is it's own animal. Like most people who achieve insane heights, and I think I've said this before, I want to prove things too. I wasn't perpetually told “you can't,” more than I still suffer the consequences of a world around me who feels like you can't. This makes me immensely angry. Of course you can. Of course everything you're saying about why you can't is horribly dumb. I want to race into the problem and blow it up. I want to spend all day and night adding one more layer.

I think for all of people's lofty talk about the future, their noble intentions, or “passion” for what they “love,” they don't actually conceive of much beyond themselves in the present moment. I think that's why what would otherwise be functioning relationships breakdown. Quit your good job? Doesn't matter if you're suffering, even for bad reasons. Want the upgraded version of your spouse? Feels like a less compelling argument the farther you stray from the language of what you “deserve” or are entitled to. We're bombarded with people's “personal truths” to compare our own to, and then it's off to the races to get matching Instagram pictures.

I take a lot of pride in getting to things before they become “cool.” At one level, I know there's no such thing, so it's more a measure of can you be Bernie railing about climate change and corrupt oil industries before people start chiding you for being too old to do something about it. There were climate activists and scientists warning about warming during the oil boom in the 20's. It's a component of the “faster” mindset. The second you become aware of a problem, you either race towards it and discover your responsibility to it, or you pretend. I think evil grows out of pretending, compounded when we pretend evil negligence is merely “tragic reality.” I think it's evil to regard genuine expressions of reality with “justified” indignation because your feelings were hurt. It's to continue to ignore or refuse to engage because the nothingness of your position and potential is laid bare. “We want social justice!” No, you don't.

We're most evil to ourselves. I have the weird experience of watching my friend find “project young white boys,” and turning them out. He'll play into their desires and insecurities. He'll dictate their medication. He'll put money and connections in their hands. Sometimes, briefly, they'll seem marginally better. But that thing, that lie, at the center of their being that allows him to do that? That rarely, if ever, goes away. It's case study after case study that might testify to how much it's not nature verses nurture, but what first impulses came with your nature that were nurtured when you were younger. Some kids make it out of the trailer park or hood. As a “global species” or “wealthiest nation” or “nicer newer more sensitive Gen Z” string of nonsense grouping qualifiers are concerned, we're nowhere near eliminating the hood and trailer as modes of being.

I want to pull off the bandage. Homeless? Give them homes, we have too many. You want me to read 9 books and write 5 papers? Let me see what I can do this week, don't make me pay for the whole semester. You're wildly depressed and I'm doing a bad job managing what to do with your stories about how or when you plan to kill yourself? I've literally handed you the blade and watched the blood pour down your wrist. Let's have the fight now. Let's build into our relationship going forward with every drop of fear and insecurity we can squeeze out of our thoughts. Let's build the mental and physical framework that protects us from the unyielding doubt and chance that will inevitably kill us. We're already dead, so let's work on how to continue dying well.

[788] Information Age of Hysteria

Another day, another round of opinions on Jordan Peterson. I also read a killer piece by Matt Taibbi about the “Russia scandal.” I think maybe the easiest way to start is just to talk about labels.

Briefly, if you don't already know my reticence for the connotation and presumption that goes along with “trigger” words, nothing I write, nor will ever write, is going to register with you. The amount of times I put “truth” in quotes, attempting to discover the process of churning through my thoughts more than proclaiming the surety of my views, is instructive. I pick words that feel hot, and build a narrative around them. This is how we attempt to grasp the world around us. Is a tree a tree? Or is it bark, roots, leaves, etc. How you understand “tree” is going to determine many more things about how you use it or the place it occupies in your life.

How many words do you think we use that are much broader and more confusing than “tree” routinely? I've gone after “feminism” and “privilege.” I don't like when words that used to be pretty deliberate, like rape, become generalized indictments for miscommunication or unwanted and inappropriate attention i.e. “rape culture.” How many things in the news start with “the war on,” as if war is an easily accessible and sustained violent attack you can invoke with impunity about any imperiled topic? “Anti-Leftist,” “alt-right hero/darling,” “pseudo-intellectual,” the “ists” and “isms” of political shades, and general besmirching of character via scorn for alleged followers and “enabling” or “giving a platform.”

You can write, endlessly, using a combination of the same techniques to “critique” literally anyone or anything. Absolutely none of it does you any favors merely because you are able to deliver your “evisceration” with the pompous indignity that could only rise today to parody. There are many things that have contributed to what I'll posit as the “cultural decline in our capacity to speak and think clearly,” but a daily helping of unsubstantiated nonsense from our most popular news and info-tainment options doesn't help.

Even recognizing that we're playing into an ignorant hand becomes impossible, as “fact-checking” becomes a lurid task of retractions and nose-thumping a barrage of insinuations and accusations while the work to suss out truth goes ignored. “Whistle-blowers” and “alt-media” attempt to hijack the ceded space to tout their perspectives (more true because they're tinted with oh-so-justified doses of emotion and “outrage”), virtue signaling and dog-whistling Dixie.

There's such a stark contrast between the “hit piece,” and the methodical breakdown and cited explanation of a topic. There is no opinion piece you will find that casually refers to Jordan Peterson as “alt-right” that will have the examples demonstrating the label. They'll skim a phrase out of context. They'll poo-poo away hours of video expanding on where his grievances lie. They'll latch on to something misspoken or perhaps genuinely worth apology, and then proceed to ignore the apology.

This is the criticism popular thinkers are making of the Left. You can't continue to play judge, jury, and executioner who presides over the entirety of someone's life, and put them into a box of perpetual scorn and dismissal. This generalized habit reflexively dismisses not just what the other person you despise is thinking, but how they got there. If you refuse to attempt to understand how someone thinks, it suggests to me you're unwilling or unable to think for yourself. That's the impetus for free speech. That's surviving the cringe of listening to Ann Coulter or Alex Jones speak.

There are consequences to inciting anger and violence from positions of power. That is different from hearing the attempt to incite, and having a plan or disposition to put it aside. Censorship doesn't protect you from the obligation to learn why you're thinking is incomplete. The broader culture will always figure out a way to spite you, dig up the taboo, or act like it's the protector and purveyor of “unseemly truths,” while the snowflakes melt. This is the heart of my contrarian personality, and a psychological place I think we occupy at large (Trump is fucking president) when we've been fucked with and ignored for too long. The “right” is trending around the world. The self-righteous of every ilk zero in on “guns” or “transgender bathrooms/pronouns” as if those are the real topic.

It's your fundamental insecurity and lack of personal responsibility. That's the story of humanity. Justify for yourself, and pillory what you don't like or understand. We've psychologically distanced ourselves from accountability writ-large. Anonymous facebook hatred. “Self-taught entrepreneurs” and “influencers” serve to legitimize attention for its own sake. The only thing to learn anymore is how to exploit and brand. You label something “bad” with words that “trend,” or you capitalize on fantasy courting Pyrrhic victory. Who cares if the leaps and inferences you made didn't pan out? Who cares if you say it's “cute” an over-worked waitress needs 3 days on the job to afford your jeans? What's really lost if it gave me more followers, likes, clicks, and traffic?

I grow less tempted to be obnoxious every day because I don't believe there aren't consequences. No matter how you started something, if it was “just for fun,” that fire can get out of control. Just because every one else was doing it, doesn't mean they deserved the reach they got. I'm thinking of tech companies. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should or should be allowed to, the tacit approval of waves of ignorant masses notwithstanding. Here I think of Gavin Newsom suspending the death penalty. I don't care what the majority thinks either if it was my innocent ass on the line about to be executed. I care about wasting money and the grander cultural narrative regarding vengeance and State power, but in the immediacy, fuck all that noise.

I don't see it getting better. I actually see violence and other life-threatening or dramatically altering consequences before we find a “collective” chance at survival. You can't attack the basis for grasping existence and think “everyone” is going to get “wise” about their failed “wokeness” and start to zero in on the words that never bother to give them pause in the first place. When a narrative style becomes embodied, that's colloquial reality. Trump repeats. That's the “magic” of his madness. That's the secret of people slowly growing more and more insane losing the ability to reflect. We retweet, and carry the sentiments onto our “news” and otherwise sources of information. We're suffering a mass psychosis of our own doing by not taking a thousand beats to breath, parse, and prove.

Even with the best information still available, I don't think we'll be saved. Noam Chomsky is still speaking. Matt Taibbi is still writing. Spatterings of comedic and reporter voices are “doing their best” to summarize and explain without stoking insanity flames. So what? Me and the old people with time enough to go to book store reads and lectures will know? Hippies and Bohemians will get to scoff until their safe-spaces are in the crosshairs? We're all breathing the same air. The whole system's immune system is implicated. I'll be doing my best from a field in the middle of nowhere.

[787] Fantastic Voyage

I don't know when it happened, but at some point in my life making plans started to feel dangerously presumptuous. I'm having the opportunity to reflect on the small changes in my behavior. Planning a vacation in July? Why do I assume I'm going to live that long? Or that every mode of transportation to and from is going to go off without a hitch? Or that the weather will be conducive? Or insert any number of questions and surprises that could result in things derailing.

I'm well aware I've made it this long. I even built into my disposition and preparedness after enough shitty cars the idea that I will break down, it's just when, not if. The biggest “surprises” to my life are things like traffic tickets or broadly speaking mere unanticipated expenses. But there's still a deeper kind of dread. It flirts with tapping into the panic impulse. Why should what I want or plan on doing work?

Here I suspect is a kind of learned response related to emotional trauma. The things I've invested in in that capacity I had high hopes for. I've had to grind myself down. I've had to reexamine my place across many different levels and figure out what kind of responsibility I could and couldn't take. The kind of healthy staples they say predicate long-lasting and fulfilled lives, I've treated like tacky cliches subjected to endless jaded shade.

As such, to the extent I ever believe in myself, it's what I can pull off right now. I'm here in the moment we're together. Otherwise, it's lost in the wind or sea as useless strings of words catch and release the swollen bubbles in my chest. I get that kind of resolved anxiety with certain kinds of shows or scenes I encounter. The hopeless love story of an Orville episode took me away. I'm burning through Friends From College as adjacent-enough scenarios drag me into that awkward “but we're older and things are different" energy flow.

I guess there's things that sort of act like little shitty reminders. The big picture game we all pretend to understand, let alone strive for, related to those deep and trusted friendships or partners is a recycled plot when it fails with each generation of age-appropriate actors. The plans and idealism degrade as quickly as secrets get out or feelings dissipate. Maybe this is something I've misunderstood about how people operate. Maybe we want the illusion to begin with. When that's the case, when it inevitably fails, we can treat it more like a movie that's ended or embellished romantic memory reinforced with each retelling.

I also know that, as a robot, I'm likely the exact opposite of the kind of not-person to be attempting to draw insight from these sorts of things. It's just, the stirrings are hard to ignore. The desire for the occasionally moving depiction on screen to be real is a compelling mental narrative, if fiction. To be able to believe has a kind of power that begrudging skepticism and doubt will never match. I feel if there's a single lesson each day teaches it's that you'll do well to increase doubt to critical levels. Inching closer to the wizened detachment, I suppose, only to invest that much more because you've built the death into your disposition.

That's something I don't like about myself. I actively wait for, not root for, the crashes in the lives of the people I know. I think they're as happy to gloss over details and sugar coat as anyone. I think I've experienced the sharpest edges of their deeply-rooted judgments, fears, and hatred. God forbid they believed in me as though I were a “spouse.” I have sincere doubts anyone is thinking of the unborn children. The reasons for the inevitable are too obvious and numerous. What I can't get my head around is why we can't do better.

Maybe we only know the language of fantasy. All there is is the abstraction. It doesn't take work to feel right along with a character. It's not hard to repeat the romance as it's been sold. The spell of what we watch and retell is strong. Strong enough to have me needing to break it into pieces and find the trauma. And I want to break it, you don't. Another death to build into my story of what I attempt to believe in.

[786] Yawn Care

I kinda want this to be the last time I talk about work for a while. It shouldn't be long.

I bring a certain kind of philosophy to what I do. One, it's rare that I get called to a house that isn't under a fair amount of duress. That duress looks something like the varying degrees of fallout related to addiction. It's one or more of your family members having spent time in prison. It's the legion of things from cleanliness to attitude that accompany generational abuse or poverty. If it's 1/12 families I might ever substantiate on, it's 1/25 where both mom and dad have working cell phones that they answer immediately, with a clean and nice smelling house, a basic consistent income and habits that match that income, and literally no excuse, it's just a reasonable explanation or miscommunication, for why I'm there. My habits aren't bred from interactions with “normal” people.

I think about this when it comes to other people who routinely deal with this class. Apparently, police have an even easier time with this crowd that we do. They just arrest them, write up a report, and move on. We sit, and coach, and look for services. We remain polite and conversational as someone, very often, tries to unload their 10, 20, or 50 years of trauma over the phone. We try to treat your situation as “normal” as we watch cockroaches crawl over your baby's face. We genuinely have to worry we'll get infected with bed bugs if we sit on the wrong surface. This does something to you.

I don't like to scroll through 15 years of unsubstantiated histories and calls made to your house. I got a kind of passive aggressive jab for saying I walk into a situation trying to first figure out why I'm there today. I think this is most practical. One, not all reports are created equal. I could literally spend an hour trying to summarize the rambling of another assessor. Two, whether someone has a drug history, violent past, or one of a dozen things that set off the “worker safety” concerns, I already take myself into situations assuming the worst. I ask about your history, I feel out to what degree you're willing to bullshit me. Most people know they can lie their way to freedom and drug screens are voluntary. They already look bad, they don't care if they look worse as long as you're walking away without evidence.

I adopt a tone reflective of a strongly-worded email. Things need to happen, and they need to happen now. Sooner than later is preferred, because when I hang up the phone with you, you're never going to pick back up. That's what people in my world do. They have a dozen phones over the course of a year, throw out incorrect numbers, and then disappear. So tomorrow, when I'm hunting down the person who hung up on me today, even if my sternness led to the hang-up, I need the severity of the situation to translate above the niceties I put on to get you to listen for as long as you do. I know you're an addict. I know you'll probably deny and decline. I also know that me being there is part of a larger trap State intervention sets.

We cause trauma. We ratchet up people into going overboard. It's our presence that takes someone walking a fine line and tells them, “I should make this public!” And then an assessment I just closed turns into mom getting arrested the day after. We're at once a light getting shed and the false relief that once I'm gone or you haven't heard anything for a while, you can go crazy. I, to the best of my ability, try to get ahead of that. I try to appeal to your capacity to be honest or work with me. I assume you won't. I politely ask you to do the things I need. I assume you won't. When you don't have a job, don't have the kids with you, and I can come to anywhere you are in a moment's notice, there aren't enough errands on the planet to justify you playing games with me about “tomorrow” that never comes without a court order.

There's something to be said about not kicking people when they're down. It's the same thing in this job as I do in the rest of my life. My language describing these people is horrible. I never bring that to their face. I get off the phone with, “This crazy bitch fucking lying to me,” and it's “I'll sit with you and explain everything I possibly can to make the process suck less!” an hour later. Their depravity doesn't feel personal, and I get paid to try, not to win. I understand what being helpless feels like. I also understand that as a function of my youth an ignorance and work obsessively to try and mitigate. No, most people aren't born like me, so of them I ask that they put on the same face to society required of us all, and at least go through the motions for getting caught.

I've also managed to get offered “permanency” with my job. It took about 6 months. Whether it's some odd timing with some vacation I want to take in the summer, or I just show a basic apt and work-ethic, I'm unsure. But, this kind of thing keeps happening to me. My baseline suggests I do things well even when I have no desire to do them. I went from 14 assessments on my screen down to 7 in 2 days because I just stopped pretending I couldn't fill in a couple forms. If they would pay me double for the more assessments I'll get assigned for having “less to do,” I'd really kick it into high gear and bother to bring my laptop home. It's just kind of annoying to watch myself, yet again, take my capacity and watch it reduced to achievements I don't want and clout I plan to do nothing with. I'm attending extra training hours and looking for new windows into DCS as well...yay.

I think about this class of people when considering a universal basic income. They get tax checks and spend it on heroin. That's a real and consistent thing. There are people who handcuff themselves to their status in life because they know they can't handle existing beyond a certain kind of mean. Would an extra $1000 a month actually help you and me? Of course, the word “budget” exists in our vocabulary, and the edge we walk is from the stress of managing bills in under-paying jobs. Will it address “poverty” as a philosophy and mental condition? Will it erase the felony convictions, the credit history, or influence of trailer-trash friends and family? Will it stop people from lying about their addictions and abuses, or help them exacerbate them?

The more you see it, the familiar patterns and nonsense, the less, as if I had much, sympathy there is. They need to love each other, there's nothing else. They need their sugary drinks and snacks. They need to cultivate some kind of emotional boost of a lie to build their lives around. So, what's my job really? Kick in the door and tell you how it “ought” to be? To the extent you're hurting the fuck out of your kid, sure. That's society's obligation because they're blameless. But everything else? The world you brought them into that I can't fix? The history you saddled them with which motivates poor decision after poor decision? I'm supposed to “assess” it as anything other than what it is? A deeply inured human condition no amount of money or “resources” can fix.

The best I can do is relay the process as honestly as I can and make it as smooth as possible. I'm learning that for as impatient as I am in observing my own life, I have all the time in the world to drone on about what I know about the process. And it is a process. It's a necessary not-so-evil. It will never cease to amaze me that the people who get the worst aspects of that process literally have to beg for it. They have to take every suggested behavior and piss on it. They have to take every court order and tear it up. They have to scream, cry, and fight for years over every detail of the shit they took in the middle of the process. That's personal to them. Not everyone, not most, are like that. That's a you thing, not a poverty thing.

---the drift away---

Barring getting fired, I see myself in this job at least through my birthday. With the house flirting with functional, I need to pay off credit cards, the back taxes, and the vacation I'm taking, and then I don't know if I get gung-ho about entrepreneurship stuff, or more rooms, or just kinda sit and try to save up a ton to breathe a little easier and go at a slower pace. There's 9 checks between now and my birthday, $6000 of the low-end $9000 I'll make from them already gone if I pay off everything besides my car, electricity, and internet. $3000 in the bank isn't freedom with car debt and utilities. God knows I'll keep eating like shit too because I don't have a kitchen and still don't like to cook. At the very least, once back taxes paid off, I'll be able to pay 2.5 months labor for a year of security? That'll put me just over a year at this job. Then if I get the car paid off or sold, It's 1-1.5 months labor for year of security, assuming over-paying electricity. Can I keep it together till then? I mean, I have daily reminders of the kind of person I don't want to be by picking anything else, not that I ever needed them.

[785] The Good, The Bad, and The Pissy

I've got two wildly different things I want to talk about, but they occupy the same head, and I don't think there's any way to really combine them. I'm going to just start writing one of them and either break off and make a new blog, or somehow discover a way they might work together. We'll see.

I'm starting to simulate what I think will happen when I get back in “it.” It, in this explanation, is that mode of being that goes hard, obsesses, believes, and exhaustively explores some avenue that's taken interest. I felt myself so confused as to what to do with myself after work today, I ended up falling asleep. I can feel my psyche shifting into needing an overwhelming topic, or shutting down from the energy zapping the circuits. Nothing else seems “right” or “appropriate,” but to progress through the things I got a taste of the other day. Clean more, build more, work more.

I think a lot about having money. I already have money, not huge amounts, but a means of acquiring it where I'm no more than a month or 2 away from being “even” or generally better off than even most first-worlders. I think about all the money I watch on talk-shows. Rich people are just like us! After a while, they just want to have game nights, and raise kids, and while they'll talk more nonchalantly about the amount and types of vacations, deeper animal desires and instincts will start to reign. “Competitive” won't be an overbearing character flaw, or a niche interest can get to work masquerading as a humanitarian exercise.

When I have money, I'll want the laughs. I'll want to keep powering through movies and shows and being fairly culturally “plugged in.” I'll want to improve on my musical knowledge. I'll want to entertain. It occurred to me that when I actually believed I could “help” something, it seemed as good a reason as any to exhaust myself in service to the mere chance I could provide. I don't know how much of my languishing belief in that is due to this 2 or so year waiting period, but the “burden” feels less imperative. I want something profitable and successful drawing off the wisdom of a thousand failures tomorrow, but I've got more of a “pace of life” attitude about it. No matter what, I'm still going to work, and I still need to refine the home base. What sense would it make to start ignoring the foundation after you've been beaten into respecting what it takes to set it up?

It's interesting me to watch the priority shift. I'll proclaim how “anti-aesthetic” I am in service to getting the job done, but I'll take my naked insulation and barn over a trailer any day. The yellowing foam insulation is keeping the bugs out, and can be trimmed any time. The mud caked onto literally everything is an immensely satisfying power-wash away from clean. While I think it'd be dumb to go into debt for the things on my Amazon wishlist, they are there for various reasons. Few hundred dollars at a time? Spend the next two weeks playing with new toys until the coffers fill back up. Consistent ongoing tune-ups and oil changes? Why, it's the responsible thing to do! Ten dollar event insurance? No sense in risking losing out.

It's feeling more and more like a craving. I can feel my chest pulling me towards my spot. I can feel myself walking lighter and smiling quicker. I'm not a person who habitually looks for a problem, and when one of the biggest ones starts to lift, it's like, now what? What do I do with my improved mood? When did I start to bother mingling? Who am I going to risk sharing what I'm doing with? It's something I cherish about drive or compulsion. You know where it's pushing you if you're willing to pay attention. I can ask every question, but I'll know I'm where I need to be when I snap into the moment and just go, “yeah.” Enough of those bred the romance I had for college friendships, so I'll be better next time, but the feeling is no-less desirable.

Let's break off and flip the script entirely. The next blog is about pee tapes.

I watched the docu-series on R. Kelly. I notice a familiar pattern in documentaries. First, there's an obvious “bad guy.” R. Kelly the child rapist is about as dark as you can get without drifting into an exposé on murderers. What most people can comfortably and loudly proclaim is that R. Kelly has a problem, and it's wrong to take advantage of the naivety of youth. One profession after another testifies to his controlling nature, his charisma, and his undeniable music genius that millions find compelling. The regrets are for ever having introduced someone to him, being seduced by the money or perks, or knowing full well what was wrong and how they were complicit.

I was frustrated watching the show. I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that each person professing their pain was looking for their own kind of redemption. It's almost too easy to point to the Big Problem of R. Kelly's sexual exploits. It's going to a wake or funeral knowing it's not really about the dead person, but the living's ability to process or cope. It's a memorial to reflect on what the music means to you or what kind of spell he put you under, skipping right along past what your responsibility to it might actually be. At least with the actual dead, they won't be watching to keep you honest.

That's to say, no one was offering how their experience was going to make them better. No one recalled what they “might” have done to improve upon their concerns. No one offered a proactive sentiment or where they've taken their lessons after coming out the other side. There is no real understanding of the nature of that complicitness, and instead of parsing it, in an important sense, we pick the big easy and “powerful” targets to scapegoat. I think it's the normal generalized human tendency because complicated psychological trauma is just that.

Let me be clear as well, I don't excuse R. Kelly for “preferring younger women.” I don't deny the power and consequences of manipulation. I know teenager brains aren't developed. I know the fucked up situations I put myself in when I was younger that I would totally have appreciated more guidance through or received leeway on. Nothing I say in this blog is supposed to be the kind of devil's advocate for exploiting children, if you're so inclined to fuck about with deliberate mis-reading.

The task is to take from specific examples, and draw out the larger ethos or implication. Isn't it weird that pee fetishes or stories seem to come from the top? Why is Trump embroiled in his own? Where do you go when you have everything besides return to a kind of filth? You'd probably reflexively say you could just enjoy and vibe with the good you have and the opportunities presented, but then I think you're living in the kind of fantasy world where our minds don't attack us when we're happy, or pick our most secure periods to feel anxious.

I couldn't help but hear faint echoes of the dialogue surrounding me and the party dynamics in college. I've not been accused of pedophilia, but I have been of rape. How did that conversation go? Well, it mostly didn't, but my power was brought up. The implicit guilt I should feel because I knew what I was doing. What for years might've been written off as a kind of alcoholic and immature culture immediately became my problematic behavior. And certainly, let's not forget that we're supposed to, without examination or doubt, believe all women regardless, because it's time to wildly swing the culture war in the other direction, civilian casualties a mere rounding error.

I don't think I've ever denied my awareness of my power. I wouldn't be foolish enough to think the sway of fame and fortune wouldn't capture nearly everyone. But I always return to the moment. It's in the moment you discover what your responsibility is. It's in the moment you seize power. It doesn't help the conversation or the capacity to take on more responsibility when “problems” remain as distinctly abstract as a series of damnations all alluding to horrible feelings. It's not enough.

They say it starts small. First he made girls who were susceptible to him call him “daddy.” Then he'd control who they could talk to. Then he'd keep them in his house. He'd beat and degrade. Every day, every hour, and every minute of that process was a moment. Each of those moments absolved and absorbed by fear and every complicated psychological description of the consequences of fear. Here maybe we start to begin picking at what “our” cultural responsibility is to young girls, or young black girls, or youth. What we may or may not find entertaining I think is mute before you have that discussion.

What is R. Kelly afraid of? Consequences? Eh, maybe, but he pretty reflexively pisses in the face of the idea of those, and then proceeds to make a million dollars in doing so. What am I afraid of? It's certainly not bringing up rape accusations and comparing myself to R. Kelly. I want to have the conversation about what we're going to bring into the moment moving forward. I want to discuss the ardent feelings and insistence I believe is earnestly felt if misplaced. I could spend hours dancing around political ways to explain myself or write off the situation in a series of crass doubled-down horrible jokes (or do both), but neither would speak to the conversation I have with myself regarding my behavior. R. Kelly has fans who “believe” in him. How should we regard that belief? To the degree it's a blind fervent love, little to none. I can apparently party and have sex with a fair amount of people, be excessively open about it, and still have my motives regarded as predatory and forceful, to me, as ardently believed by any fan of popular hashtag-moments might. So then what's my responsibility?

Notably, when you do something criminal, the suggestion is that you go to jail. We, of course, don't live in a world where punishments ever remotely match crimes, and usually the accused's most ferocious defenders have more than one skeleton that resembles what's on trial. I don't think it wise to serve unjust sentences, nor do I think a lack of conviction erases implications. My method is to keep talking and keep asking. I likely won't be conducting myself with the same age-group of drunk crowds the rest of my life. Do you apologize? I was told it would be the height of a bad idea to reach out. And then I'm apologizing for hurting her, or for a rape I don't believe I committed? Moreover, I do believe, easily, that I tore her vagina and probably missed a cue to slow down or when to start back up. I've managed to accidentally make girls bleed with us perfectly sober, let alone drunk enough to think a quickie on the side of a house party was tactful.

That “compulsion” or “force” that points you at what needs to be dealt with is playing out with #metoo and Black Lives Matter, and the general consequences of concentrated wealth and power. That's the underlying conversation and psychological battlefield. Knowing what you know now, what happens if you have a daughter who'd ever be willing to call someone daddy? Knowing what you know now, how often should you use alcohol for anything beyond a polite buzz or to share in a sense of camaraderie? How easy is it to rail against the likes of R. Kelly or reel at the idea of getting pissed on, verses the Olympic task of addressing child brides more broadly, or our complicated biology and aberrant sexual preferences?

What if we took a step even further? What if we discovered in ourselves the filth and the worst thoughts? What if we couldn't pass the depravity onto someone else's example and had to take responsibility to act in spite of it? What if we had to remind ourselves every day, “But for the grace of God go I?” What if you're always going to love I Believe I Can Fly no matter how many 14 year olds you watch R. Kelly pee on or have sex with? What if you never allow yourself to forgive what your under-developed brain considered a good idea and “always/never” your understanding of yourself and past into a depression spiral? When do you recognize and take the moment for all that it is, and not just the single feeling or person you can point to and judge?

I'm in a job where, to be effective you're forced to, at the very least, pretend that everything is okay. Interestingly enough, for me, in an important sense, it is. I can calmly ask you about accusations that you sexually molested your child. I'm not there with an agenda to catch you. If I can I certainly will and will nail your ass to the wall, but it's a story first. There are significantly more examples of spiteful ex-spouses, resentful sister-in-laws, and crotchety grandma's calling us with crazy stories than there are violent drug-addled child molesters looking to hurt everyone around them and tear things down. There are a lot of problems out there, and there's an infinite sea of grey that no institution, nor really any individual than the person suffering, can do much about. The story of either of our responsibility to their situation is the eternal cultural question.

Are there easy takeaways? Don't be complicit might be one. I'm not going to ignore a hypodermic needle I see in your house or pretend it's cleaner than it is. I'm not going to attempt to unduly punish you or speak as harshly of you as you attempt to provoke me to. I know you're broken. I know you can't pronounce “denial” before you get around to discussing what it is you're denying. I know that method works insofar as you're not the one rehashing dramatic instances in your life from slightly modified angles over years. I know it's hard to accept that achieving a remote peace of mind is even possible. I know you'll feel guilty of something regardless.

That's how I read people. I get bored to tears hearing the same catch-phrases and cultural virtue signaling. You can state what you blame on someone and follow it up with your course of action or responsibility. You can build within yourself, and future relationships, the bullwork for combating what you see wrong with how power manifests or the indignity and intransigence of those you wish to see take more responsibility. But you can tell most of the story in how they respond. Do they want more or less? Do they entertain or dismiss? Do they cry and shut down, or spit and choke out as close to an approximation of what they're feeling and thinking in spite of themselves?

::breathe::

But let's bring it over to “forgiveness.” I feel like forgiveness is a pat-on-your-back sort of thing. They say you'll never really process or move on until you forgive. But if things are all coming from you. If it's about how you morph reality and how you understand it or can cope, then ultimately you're forgiving yourself. No matter what somebody has done, you have to forgive yourself your anger, forgive yourself your angst, forgive yourself the depression and the pain and the lashing out or whatever the fuck else.

And then that becomes a double-edge sword, because your capacity to forgive yourself can develop the kind of pathologies that protect a lot of shitty behavior, or give others the tools to understand you in a “forgiving framework,” even when some shit doesn't deserve to be forgiven. Remember, it's God that forgives all sins. So how convenient little god-complexes present a holier-than-thou posture about their hypocrisy and hatred. It becomes forgiven when they give up thinking about it or were too dumb or afraid to process the devil at the wheel.

I don't like a great deal of things that have been implicated about me and my life. I don't like that I had to pay a ticket for passing a school bus I did not intend, nor really believe, I actually passed turning. I don't feel like a proud “bad boy” for being overtly sexual and finding myself on some proverbial opposite side of the ring regarding the progression of women's rights or the severity of men's shitty behavior towards them. I don't beg for the pain and drama nor try to deny when it's a palpable force in how someone's life feels like it's being conducted. I don't want to be ignored for my railings against too-good “problems” and the weather to then dare believe we should be dismissing the complicated psychology or circumstances of teenagers who are stardom-adjacent or 20-somethings and party hook-ups. You have to be willing to accept it and work with it all. Not accept things as “perfectly right” or “correct” or “inevitable,” but accept there's layers that work to depersonalize and reassign the nature of how we're going to relate to each other.

You have to remain responsible to the moment, not what you presume to believe yourself capable of in the future. You have to examine the past, because it's manifest in what you're feeling and how you're behaving right now. I'm not begging to be around people who prefer to think of me as a rapist. I don't feel guilty when a catchy song comes on from someone we all know about. If you do, turn it off. And if you feel bad and don't, unpack what “complicity” means to you. Put little weights on the scales about how good, or nothing, you feel against the idea of kids getting peed on. Or don't, and keep skipping from monster to monster to blame. I think at some level we know we deserve what that strategy is giving us.

[784] Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home

I've spent a few nights in my shed, both in the bitter cold and sweltering heat. I've swept the floor and packed things into available nooks. I've sat and listened to the silence, and peered out the little window into the blackness as I imagine someone creepily looking back. Today, though, today I felt like I actually started to clean and put together my home.

I don't know that it's ever taken me so long to get something. Lack of time, knowledge, money, or even luck have made every single inch of having a place to live paint a ridiculous picture. It involves every angle from the shit gotten into with previous roommates, to the terrible place it looks like I'm at in my judgment and capacity to plan while couch-sleeping. “Isn't he a grown man? Why do you keep helping him,” my friend's mom said in her suggestion he shouldn't sell me his car. There's no benefit of the doubt or good will when you slip or need help, at least, it might go as far as it can throw you.

But that's the thing too, I've shown I'm willing to sleep in my car. I've never not been able to afford rent for a room. In, mostly an act of spite, I paid the difference between what I was saving by not having a room, because the idea of being viewed as unequal or inadequate I refuse to stand for. You see, it's only reasonable for the smaller room, let alone no room, to pay less for other people, not really for someone like me. I always owe a little more, don't I?

It's been changing forever, but today is the first day it happened. I drove straight home, figured out what little I could do to refine my space, and just proceeded to do so. The heat works. The lights turn on. It's unlikely there will be a parade of muddy boots across the floor. Now, I have my mildly disheveled day-2 dorm room, and I'm certain somewhere in me is a weeping little child. I saw myself playing my instruments. I saw myself building a tri-lofted couch/bed combo. I saw myself opening my big garage door into an in-process carport-eventual-studio space. I saw myself being left alone to finally just do and just be.

And I've got so much else I want to do. Greenhouse experiments, a pool, and a deck are all on relatively short order. I need to raise the house again and put it on permanent concrete columns given the precariousness of so much water and mud affecting the blocks. I need to drain/build the driveway. I need to build the canopy so I can work in the rain. I need outside lights, a fence, and to hook up my security cameras after figuring out why the wifi/router isn't working. I need to do a dozen tiny things that I'll be able to do 5-6 hours at a time after work (thus taking my mind completely off work) every day, all weekend, and to my heart's content. I can design the layout freely, paint with whatever colors, and just be free to fuck things up in my own time and at my own pace.

Dear god, I actually started organizing my space. I was tempted to say “forever space,” as an homage to an incredibly stupid saying people use about their partners. You know, their “forever human” who's their “best friend.” Gag me. My best friend will be the silence I fill with struggling to learn new instruments and songs. It'll be the noise of my obnoxious treadmill or power tools. I'll occupy the “now” space again. No, not next month weather providing. Tonight. No, not when we find the extra hands. This weekend, one way or another, this is where I am, here's the task, I'll proceed to do the task. It sounds like I'm overselling it at this point. There is no greater joy than getting out of this sit and wait bullshit nonsense period of my life. I can't wait to start falling so behind on so much TV. I almost stayed the night just to prove a point about what I could manage with the bottles of water I left out there.

[783] He Made Me Watch

This is in several pieces I'll separate with lines that I've been writing over the course of a few days. Part of me thinks the common thread is as obvious/opaque as anything, and part of me is just happy that all of it constitutes the kind of “I have to talk” vibe, which has always been the point.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At the end of the day, there is a baseline “you.” No matter how many times you're polite, there's maybe a shark swimming in the waters of your eyes. No matter how many times you're defeated, there's a boxer pulling themselves up on your heartstrings as the count hits 9. Maybe you spend years mocking yourself up against a kind of manliest archetype or expectation, and then the floweriest fairy springs forth for your kid's college graduation, straight-life be damned.

I don't know that I've ever wanted to believe “the best” of anyone. It's rarely been my experience, and the only people I've found myself tending to do so about have been routinely taken advantage of. This likely kicked of my nice “fetish.” To be of some kind of genuine goodness is the kind of ethereal contradiction I leave it to faith to blind you towards.

I invert the habit. I'd rather be prickly and surprise you with outpourings of goodwill or something that surprises me. It feels more personally honest. I don't want to be here, I barely want to know you, and I'm doing everything in my power to take my mind off the myriad things I reflexively say “I hate” about. There's the wizened edge of people who've seen it all before, and there's the despotic cynic. I feel I work incredibly hard, if not merely psychologically, to not reduce my attitude and prospects to the ferociousness of my feelings.

Lucky, or not, for me, I can usually tell when I'm “too emotional” because it very much feels that way. I talk of wanting to destroy things. My chest swells. I ball my fists. I throw something. By now, this whole process happens in a flash. That means, I can “freak out,” do a bit of useless muttering to myself, and within 6 minutes find myself right back here, picking apart who I don't want to be.

My baseline dreams of being “crazy.” I wish I felt as compelled to act a fool for as long as it's taken me to find the control to do this instead. To try and become aware of your baseline is a gigantic actively working task I do not believe people really do until they're forced. Then, say they figure it out, there's no guarantee they won't revel or suffer in what they discover. I say again, I refuse to be a martyr, even to my own absurdity. How many obnoxious MTV reality personalities flaunt how horrible they are? You can love it, and be rewarded for it.

I have clients who swim in the infinite sea of grey in how humans are going to interact with each other. When they are “nice,” I can't let myself slip and believe they're real. Yes, we do get calls to the normal people's houses, and they answer their phones, and sign all the paperwork really quick, and you're not stepping around cat shit as your hair and coat soak up cigarette smoke and stale milk scent. They have reasonable explanations for why we're there, and they don't get angry or spend 30 minutes trying to talk themselves out of a hole. But there's a fundamentally different kind of person walking alongside us. Whispering zombies perhaps?

Can you dream of having DCS show up at your house growing up 12 or more times throughout the course of your life? Maybe. I called my mom’s bluff one of the times she dared me to call them. Broadly speaking though, do you grasp the difference between why they didn't come to your house, and they show up almost monthly at others? Your baseline family and concept of what's acceptable isn't too far deviated from the norm. Your “crazy” doesn't love it. Your crazy has the capacity for shame, or the ability to pause and reflect on the reasons something may be going wrong in your life, and what may be done to account for it. You don't surprise people with shitty texts the moment they wake up because, like some nascent Pokemon, you hurt yourself in your confusion, and are looking for someone to blame.

It's exceedingly dangerous to fall under your own spell. Don't think you're too smart, too moral, too correct. The exacting nature of your understanding is precisely what tears you and everything down. This is why I write. I have inclinations and “clarity” of mind enough to power through shitty feelings. But with each word, the approximate thing I'm trying to grasp grows more defined and starts to disappear into the sea simultaneously. That's the whole exercise. Take something extremely personally and show how it maps onto experiences at large. Consider a single offense or compelling feeling, and translate it into the language of coping or persistence. Turn bottomless pain and frustration into finite pages to step on until you reach something you can comfortably-enough stand, sit, or pass out and die on.

In reviewing my personality assessment, I decided that I didn't want to be “typical” in my levels of neuroticism anymore. The places I've compelled my perspective have turned into “patience” or “cool” or “confidence” or “comedy” or some measure of things I watch people envy about me every day. My capacity to mirror the tension in the room is something a supervisor recently said is something you can't teach. I'm always feeling guilty. That's the gift of my crazy mom. I have an exacting scientific barometer for anxiety that tells me where you are at all times. When I'm not using it, it's eating me from the inside out. This needs a fix.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A persistent theme of people always finding the fault in you is that, one way or another, you're taking the responsibility for it. Be it the tension in your jaw, or in their unwillingness to engage or define it. It's yours. What's the response? Dive right back in? Keep sacrificing for their sake? Jesus the shit out of the place? No. You leave. You reduce your interactions. You parse out your thoughts in excruciatingly painful detail, and give them every possible chance to keep reaming you further. Because you've learned your place as the person capable and finally, at their insistence, willing to keep piling it on. You turn it into a process. You draw selfish satisfaction. Where else would you go? Prison bitches survive.

I speak too quickly, which isn't to say that's a good thing nor that it's coherently coupled. If there's a battle back and forth of compelling feelings, I rarely win, because I just feel stupid saying the same things over again or pretending loud equals correct. Another reason to write. Your first and tenth, or 800th draft might not quite get there. Whatever you're talking about is constantly changing, and you can literally track the weird bend conversations take whether they're pretending to be hyper-critical, or just shooting the shit. It doesn't really matter if the underlying mechanism is about breaking whatever's in front of you.

The pattern of my life of having things break down and me finding myself more and more isolated is, superficially, me perpetually failing to grasp the problem of keeping people in my life. But, and stop me if you've heard this before, if you simply refuse to go beyond "I have a problem with you!" I still feel comfortable blaming “you.” “You” have a “problem” with “me” in the exact same manner the same is true for me about you in all of my blogs. Certainly I draw from interactions or memories, but I never know how personal it feels or sounds until many many years later, maybe. Just like you didn't write your favorite love song, but damn if it isn't so true!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hate me when I don't try. I hate me when I feel dishonest. I hate me when I think I'm trying to persuade myself of something I don't really believe in in a short-hand ridiculous way in order to appease someone I don't respect. I make enough of these statements over time to have a fairly solid grasp of the things I hate or dislike, and discover not-quite by accident all of the things I like in contrast. If you don't understand why I exist in this moment as the culmination of my failures and spite, I can only guess that your understanding of what you hate is more pallid or obscure. It's easy to like a lot of things you're unable or unwilling to think about. Old news. It's easier to like obviously easy things when you consider how much hatred needs to be overcome in order to find the mildest, but more persistent, sense of satisfaction.

[782] Dildo Bars

Let's try something different. Here we're gonna be mildly tipsy, take the first launch-pad thought, and try to get something down before I make a series of poor drunken decisions in going out. No rambling teary-eyed angst fest wondering how my brain decided to capitulate at the zero hour. No lamentation I didn't decide to sleep with someone I wasn't into. No guilt over my propensity to manipulate and smile too big about the absolutely boring nothingness you told me, but are convinced I find fascinating. Oh man, I'm changing the whole game with this one.

 

Anyway. I just watched a man play piano for elephants. One of the captions said, “They say elephants never forget, maybe they'll remember Paul forever!” Or something close. Forever. What an idea. What a persistently reassuring thing. Forever you'll reside in heaven. Forever your impact will be felt by those who come after you. Forever the universe undulates and resets because, as you're certainly well aware, “nothingness” is too unstable, and after enough quantum fluctuations, something akin to everything we've ever known is not just inevitable, but infinitely so.

 

Shooting for the idea of “forever” I don't think is necessarily bad. The day your baby is going to die is not what's on the mind of parents. Underwritten is the expectation that humans will colonize the stars, or at the very least they'll have that same kind of bitchin party you once called the greatest night of your life. Selfish genes be damned! If forever wasn't a thing, I wouldn't be made to suffer the infinite hole of my perspective, if my solipsistic argument would be sufficient alone.

 

But on to better things. Are there? You can really feel the arbitrary free-form to this bullshit tonight, no? I'm trying incredibly hard to have the basement division of my subconscious brain persuade me that “hefty” middle-class wife/life is as good or equal to the kind of Bezos-adjacent (I'm in no way as moral as I suspect Elon's Asperger's compels him) kind of life. I was seriously entertaining the idea of being a slumlord-esc person the other day. Whether it's attract poor people to the land I already own, or invest in other properties and put up affordable, hard to destroy green-based things elsewhere.

 

Think, I'm still bitching, but I'm bitching about more and more minute things. My air conditioning isn't set up! Well, the whole house is, and it's paid for, and so is the land, and everything I need less maybe a water pump. I'm down to the particulars. When I had the coffee shop, it's analogous to complaining about not having 15 varieties of tea instead of 3. My first-world ass is showing. I'm finding myself moved to want to make that happen in a big way at the expense of people I have no respect for. It's not money=value in some strict fashion. But I'm ever-more convinced the world looks the way it does because there are people who actually embody the kind of people depicted in places like Atlas Shrugged, and those who do everything in their power to absolve themselves or attempt to hijack the work. My work is bordering on making me insufferably smug.

 

I don't fear repercussions. That is, I know how to navigate the world at large, and get that people can hit back, and know there are laws and whatnot. But I don't think there's a kind of “cosmic comeuppance.” I don't believe in Karma. I don't think anyone gives a shit or there's any manifestation of consciousness that could accurately do the math, let alone long enough to ensure the result was an accurate one. So, I'm tempted to pursue those kind amoral rich cliches. You know what happens when DCS shows up to your bed bug house? We foot the thousand dollar bill for your slumlord. Go us! And we didn't even fix the problem because they exist in more places than your house alone.

 

I know you can't get crazy with it. I don't even want to get crazy with it. But I want white people entitled reparations. I want the kind of life I was “promised” or envisioned for myself. I want all the lost time between when I was 20 and now that I could have shaken my youthful ass and went about whoring that didn't have to be coupled with a mature and measured tone of my “adult” 30 year-old self. It sucks knowing better! I want to be an idiot and confident in that, or at least, I want to take what I couldn't squeeze out of it from somewhere else. This is a horrid thing, don't get it twisted. You shouldn't behave this way, nor should I. I just, I don't know, don't really care. Or, if I care a little, I can feel it slipping.

 

The only reason why it would is from a misguided sense of pride and ego as well. There is no respectable “individual” without one, I'm sorely convinced. The “damage” left to account by your God I imagine. The idea that I would unlock that kind of “cheat code” freedom to explore those darker exploitative corners is really dawning on me. Who's going to stop me? Haven't I, in my own long-form convoluted way, been begging you to?

 

Lol, this is goofy and long enough. I'm gonna finish these beers, take a few shots, and find a way to the bars for a series of ridiculous and dumb conversations, and I'm not even going to sabotage myself if there's a decent-enough honey who's trying to mack. And 90% of the reason I framed it that way is the smirk it caused on my face. Peace, ninjas.