[767] Lines In The Sand

Convergence! Too many things all tying to a theme equals, gotta write. You may or may not be familiar with Chris Gethard. I'm not, but for my constant immersion in media. I clicked a random episode of his show I've never watched. Then I clicked somewhere in the middle of the episode. Then I watched as a caller from Bloomington, Indiana did his betting game on air. That's what brought me here. Of all the gin joints in all the world, people literally call into that show from all over the world, I found the one serving Bloomington gin, on a whim, while I'm arguably in the middle of 3 entirely different things to watch.

Next thing. I had a dream that was straight out of Interstellar. I was doing something innocuous, like brushing my teeth, and at the same time, doors were opening on a subway, a bird was flapping it's wings, and some other picture I can't remember was moving in sync with my movements. This, I take it, is because I started reading a book called “Now” about how science is trying to understand what that means. We have particles that can flow backwards in time, we all agree on the lengths of different things no matter our individuated frames of reference, and we all pretend to have a grasp on our butterfly-effect waves we send into the world. It was almost like a mini-acid trip dream that felt oddly reassuring that I was part of the machinery.

The third thing is a meme picture a friend I haven't really seen or talked to in a while posted about getting better at dealing with stress. It postulated either she was getting better, or just not giving a shit anymore. She's posted another one about one day having the money to actually live like the person she really is. Massive red flags go off in my head any time I relate too closely to what I consider “throwaway” sentiments and cliches about life. I promise, if you dig through blogs I wrote towards the end of high school and start of college, I say constantly how often I want nothing to do with the regular struggling Joe narrative and pull-cord sentiments of the old and lazy.

The fourth thing is just me recently musing on a kind of ethical style. As of late, I'm realizing my ethics, so to speak, have morphed a bit. Anymore, I wait to consider something as ethical or not in the moment. I have some loose standing presuppositions, like don't murder perhaps, but otherwise, I'm kind of waiting to see what I see or feel what I feel before I allow something I'm doing to register one way or another. It's not amoral, but it's not specifically speaking to a moral either. Sometimes I feel justified in driving like a dick. Sometimes I want to throw the gum wrapper on the floor. Sometimes I want to be as polite as can be while you unload your pointless and boring life story. I didn't know what I was going to pick until it was happening.

The more I find myself under the “rules” of normal society, the more I find myself wanting to play with boundaries in other ways. I know, barring everything, what kind of person I am and what I need to be doing in order to not lose my shit. It is an impulse I not only refuse to try to kill, but one I revel in as a kind of personality drug. It's the levels of obscenity or pretentious air. It's the complete blunt disinterest in things you purport to care about or find funny. It's a harsh boundary, but it's my boundary. But this raises old questions in a new paradigms.

What's got me here? Why is there little to no emotional investment in the grand standing narrative example I might be setting for the world? It's old news me calling myself an anti-particle, villain, or self-indulgent loon. Have I truly been shaken hard enough that I can't conceive of the “proper” thing anymore? Is my restraint more a hamstrung choke than wise and measured practice? Can I refrain from floating too far away from anything making sense?

I've had several opportunities over the last few days to lay into people who've objectively mislead me or had me on the receiving end for the consequences of their unforeseen circumstances or disorganization. I've been letting it ride. When I thought my job was going to get a leg up on me in monopolizing my thoughts, I picked a “morally equivalent stress relieving” course of action that seems fair enough and has me continue to get the job done. I think that just gave me the insight. When you start to scoop up points of corruption into your perspective, you're forced to make little negotiations. Why not eat more sugar when everyone's got so much candy and cookies and donuts they bring to the office, and why, you didn't have breakfast! That last call was super annoying and technically cut into your break. Better sit in the parking lot for 20 minutes and talk or smoke it out.

Perhaps what I conceived of as my morally backed insistence to work outside the confines of normalcy is decaying after being subjected to the regular world. Recall, I have a job paying me more than I've ever made, just got a new car, have spent kind-of wildly on some things for the future and in eating out so much, though not so much lately, and this is the place I've always conceived of as “losing.” That car is debt and a substitute for the rent I was trying to escape. Those indulgences I'm always and forever going to be doing alone, and my job, for as noble as it exists in the minds of those around me and for the odd amount of power it grants, has nothing to do with where I saw myself at this point in my life. I don't have it “bad,” but I don't have it “me.”

So if you're not you, what's the moral? I'm the walking embodiment of unrelenting revolt and provocation who plays dress up and juggles crazy stupid people's lies. Play along? Remain patient? Stay in the moment until the next check comes? Go overboard in giving handouts to the dumb and needy that you know in advance they're psychologically incapable of figuring out or sticking with? That's the rub too. I've been reading more about people. The dirty facts about how we treat ourselves do much work in tempering my will to chase “helpful” impulses I might have to pretend inform people. It doesn't mean you can't try, but it does mean if I don't feel a genuine impulse to try, I'm not going to. I never believe the show I put on for myself.

[605] Race To The Bottom

Dear fucking god is there no way to approach this in a good way.

I don't even want to be writing. In fact, I think I'm going to pause here, go to sleep, and see if I still give a shit tomorrow morning. (6:48 AM)

1:15 PM (morning)

I'm not racist. Or, of course I'm racist. According to different people, I'm too blind or entitled to even see how I embody their idea of racism. What's more important than anything is that I don't have the same struggle. In not having to deal with the same issues, daily, at random, I have absolutely nothing to contribute to a conversation about race. My perspective isn't simply not needed, it's disrespectful and disingenuous by default.

What I know regarding any oppressed minority population is that you don't need the language we have in the United States to feel and act in consequential ways. I doubt a single Hutu called a Tutsi a nigger before chopping them with a machete. The “inhuman other” circuity worked just fine without a meditation on the power dynamics that have shaped white and black relations. That situation took a Rush Limbaugh type radio program. In that regard, the language we employ absolutely matters and absolutely can contribute to horrible circumstances.

My problem with discussing race is the same problem I have in discussing nearly anything. People want to have it all ways. The more specific you attempt to be, the less visceral and human they feel and your attempt to find common ground becomes an attack on their identity. In the U.S., whether it's spoken to enough outside of black circles or not, that identity is that of a perpetual victim. It's a skin color that can get you shot for no reason. It's people taking the low hanging fruit in insulting you online. It's being denied equal access and opportunities because of your name.

As it is my habit, I start to lean into the wind of topics that become “hot.” I piss off a black guy, of course I want the next 10 black people's opinion the next day. I'm not particularly surprised by what I found. In fact, every time I seem to approach something I'm not qualified or allowed to discuss, I end up finding fairly quickly a slew of people who seem to understand me. Also, I find a ton of different ways to get told how wrong and backwards I am on something. They generally play out in familiar ways.

Bloomington is a fairly diverse setting. You can start shooting the shit with someone from Ghana or Brazil or Nigeria over a cigarette outside the bar. As such, you can find exceedingly different conceptions of race from black or mixed people who don't even quite understand “the black experience” to the emotional degree of someone who grew up in this country. It's not a secret that they are often the most sympathetic. At the same time, maybe I've just been spoiled by the circles I grew up in, I roll with black people who don't seem to conceive of their lives in flatly race based terms. It's not that they ignore or don't experience racism, it's that they're as happy to make their identity about their work, relationships, hobbies etc as I am.

It's not the hard irony of people who contradict themselves in the same sentence, but I suspect it's a point that is lost on many people when discussing race, everyone is different. Literally every single person is going to give you a different answer about their experience regarding some racist ass shit someone did, racist ass shit they grew up with, or racist ass comments and behaviors they have to navigate in their daily personal and professional lives. There isn't, nor will ever be, a single conception of “white” or “black” that unites everyone you presume to fall under that flag. Black Lives Matter in a relatively short time has managed to get involved in politics and force a conversation this country absolutely needs to have. They've also attracted total nut jobs who've been given oversight and quasi-legislative powers in Canada who make racist hippie claims regarding divinity and the amount of melanin you have.

It's only in specificity and definition do you get anything resembling sense. Bill Maher got into his trouble for calling himself a house nigga in response to a congressman suggesting he'd love to see Bill out in the fields with him. The world gets set ablaze. As someone exceedingly sympathetic to people who make the wrong joke, I understand why someone with what he has to lose would apologize, but I still think it's stupid as shit to think Bill Maher is at the heart of our racism problem.

Here's a fairly often shared sentiment I get from black people. “Well, it all contributes.” In that way, the racist joke is tantamount to redlining, is beckoning the death of another unarmed black male, is the sneers and comments from introducing yourself to a setting where you don't belong. I think this is a slip in reasoning. I think this disavows nuances. In practical terms, I think this actively creates barriers to building coalitions of people who are sympathetic and agree with most everything you'd say regarding race.

People notice differences. I think it's outside of how many approach race to think that some of the most “racist” language or behaviors someone might employ are precisely them treating you equally. Calling you black when you're black isn't racist. I've seen white people get uncomfortable when I say, “I don't know his name, the black guy, you know, the only black guy here so it's obvious and easy for us to recognize what I'm talking about, said he'd meet you on the corner.” It's frequently white people who are uncomfortable or ashamed to even acknowledge color. I think that's a harbinger for the “sly” racism in a way that saying “the black guy over there” is not.

In a further sentiment regarding noticing differences, that's human. That is going to happen, all the time, every day, to absolutely anyone that your internal judgmental machinery has denoted as “the other.” That is a long-standing in-built survival mechanism that I don't believe for a second is going away. Is it terribly helpful when you're trying to have a singular connected conception of people working and living together? Fuck no. Is it something that millions or billions of people in one capacity or another manage to get over in order to remain civil and survive together? Absolutely. Voicing difference isn’t necessarily divisive.

One thing I wish to make clear, I don't presume or pretend to know anyone else's daily bullshit or hardships. My interactions with cops, while too frequent, have gone over exceedingly well. I've never been followed or stalked thinking I'm about to get raped walking home. I'm not an invisible old woman who society doesn't think exists because the mainstream doesn't want to fuck me anymore. I'm not physically or mentally disabled. I don't get routinely called names unless I go out of my way to stick my neck into situations “no one invited me to.”

My night consisted of hours spent talking to complete strangers about the oppressive circumstances they grew up under, the cancer they overcame, the world travels they've experienced, secretive medical work they aren't allowed to talk about, and eventually experiences with race here and abroad. One woman even tried to hook me up with her sister. And I forgot what I discussed with the Oliver Platt looking 21 year old. The sun-raising race conversation ended on the person I was talking to getting heated and loud. Our stumbling point initiated on a difference we had regarding how much credit you should give people. I give them none. He thought something in the vein of “society will figure things out eventually.”

I pretty well forget precisely how it broke down, but I think I was arguing against a violent response to something and found myself saying, “Did Martin Luther King Jr. tell anyone to get violent or fight when they sat at white counters or marched in racist towns?” The black dude walking away turns and screams back, “And what the fuck did that get ANY of us!”

[375] I Can't Hear Myself Think

I'm shooting for long and something of a ramble. Save yourself the time.

I hope to layer cliché upon cliché until I can balance the word meta on a turtle. Also, to make obscure references/metaphors to answers about what holds the Earth in place that don't quite work.

It's wrong to say “I don't care.” It's very wrong to say “I'm depressed.” I suppose it's good to get those out of the way quickly as I anticipate this sounding like both.

As I get better at framing my position in ways that keep people older than me from being condescending, the nature of the excuses they offer to help their fellow traveler become clearer. You'll always find a habit. For example, they always have a “secret.”

Some of those secrets include that your views and ideas will change more than you can appreciate until you're older. Things that used to matter “just don't” anymore. You'll realize that all there is to do is focus on things like friends, family, and caring about other people. Sometimes, if not most of the time, you have to suspend your disbelief because it will help make life “bearable.” They used to hate hate hate as much as you. Time will fly by! There's always something new to learn.

Wild and crazy stuff right? It's almost like the veil has been lifted. You mean I used to crave the latest video game, and then one day, almost like a switch was flicked, all I'll be able to care about is the next country we go to war with? Or, how about that lesson plan that tells you to appreciate and care about people. Brilliant! If only we told that to our children before they reached existential crisis mode in college. At least we caught them before that looming mid-life crisis.

To me, it's no secret that simply because you are old, that does not grant you Wise Old Janitor status. In fact, the majority of the stupidest shit I've ever heard my entire life has come from people older than me. That's likely an obvious statistical point, but one I hope still serves to shit on the idea that if your tools for “consoling” someone about what they don't feel are “give it time” you're making a very obscure appeal to authority. That you've experienced more, even if it's strikingly similar, does not mean you grasp the particulars of anyone else's head.

It's worth noting, that this is why I offer habits and contingencies, not necessarily “how to think” advice. You love your abusive boyfriend? All I can really say is that eyes get black when you keep your face within his arm's length. If you don't like black eyes, step back, maybe even several hundred feet. If the pain from black eyes = less than your desire, maybe stop complaining and focus on how happy he makes you.

But look at that example. Isn't spousal abuse pretty terrible? Why don't I give a shit that I could make it sound like the person being abused is so impossibly stupid that I basically want her to keep getting hit?

There's a certain kind of “thing” I don't care about. A kind of reaction. The idea that I could provoke you. I don't respect an inability to read the example and miss the point. I don't respect allowing your feelings or history with the problem instantly making you think I'm the worst kind of human being. And I think all I ever see out of people is their reactions. Not all the time of course; I'd go insane. But overwhelmingly I get their conditioned responses. They're no better than battered wives.

Take this Comedy Attic situation. A rude person would talk and text during the show. A rude person would order the beer, dump it on the floor, and then refuse to pay. A rude person would have called the waitress a cunt, irrationally dammed comedy and all it's followers, and gotten off on making a scene.

I just didn't want to spend more money or drink anything. I calmly explained that if I wasn't Comedy Attic suitable, I could just leave. It wasn't a weird stab at a threat. The house was packed. I literally asked them if I was so in the wrong that I should just not partake in the show at hand. But there is no calm way of expressing to someone that their set up is as bad for you as they think you are for them. Not because I didn't explain it calmly, but because people don't react to you acting differently than they expect you to terribly well.

And part of it harks back to an idea of boredom. I know what happens when I pay for something I don't want and capitulate to a pushy waitress. I don't know what happens when I get a chance, so to speak, to explain what I don't like about the situation, and to the head honcho no less.

At that point, it's an adrenaline rush. It's not anxiety. My heart races more often than I care to think about. Races like when you get called to the principal's office. It's like I always feel guilty of doing something before I've done it. I'm living the consequence of calling the waitress a cunt or throwing a bottle at the door. I'm convinced I'm that big of an asshole and I'm very intrigued to see why I'm going to move one way or the other.

That's the kind of disbelief I can't suspend. The one about our worst demons. I don't take any special prize home for realizing my capacity. I just get to shoulder it when my body defaults to “ultra pissed off man mode” about exceedingly innocuous situations.

But I can't allow them not to matter. I'm rather obsessed with the idea of strings. Everything being tied to everything else. We're as much “star stuff” as we are the bonds we form between people. The rules we put in place. The ideas we cultivate and defend. I can't pretend that I don't have something to say.

Whether it's the guy “stepping up” and buying a beer to “not hear me talk anymore.” Or thinking about the owner's motivation in his ticket prices or how he structures his payouts and rents. Maybe he's been given an unfair shake on something like property taxes so he has to do “marginally shady” things in how he runs business. But how do we ever get to a conversation about poorly structured Bloomington tax law if we're squabbling over the merit of squeezing people as part of the “policy.”

I want to shoot to what matters. There are immediately ten ways that situation could have been handled that would have been just as “effective” without ruffling a ton of feathers. The waitress could have ignored me. They could have taken me up on my offer to leave. They could have snickered to each other about “that asshole with the pony tail who never wants to buy anything” from the corner. But none of those happened. And even if they did, we still wouldn't have started on a path to discussing why it became the policy in the first place. In truth, I'm more interested in how much these comedians are getting paid and what it takes to get them on stage anyway.

In that situation, I'm more concerned about ruining my friends' time, or the time of the people around us, more than what the waitress or manager think of me. Now I get to run through that line of speculative thinking. Are they pissed at me? Are they going to bother inviting me out to places? Do they see any merit in anything I've offered as my reasons? If they don't, why am I calling them friends? If they do, are they feeling as hopeless as I am right now? Doubtful. Am I going to get a “time and a place” or “pick your battles” speech? Is this more likely going to get swept under a rug like most things and tomorrow's another day? Cool.

It's something of a traffic jam, but the cars are coming from all directions. Like, out of the sky. Until a big enough truck comes in to pave the way to how I find myself proceeding throughout the situation. Often, it's like I'm watching. Waiting for my mind to give me the signal that of these many balls of potential, it wants to play with the pink one right now. Did you know our brains invent the color...SHUT UP NICK THROW THE BALL!

I think in this...tunneling...this quick shooting down many holes (you hear it too?) speaks to the ambivalence. Like I've watched every possible future but the one I'm experiencing “now.” And so rarely is it ever one of the good ones. But this might be over-stating it.

I think about what makes me happy. I'm not, old condescending people, thinking that it's this “thing” I'll one day achieve after enough gamer points and sexual conquests. I've argued that it's a choice. Like right now, I'm exceedingly happy to dig into the depths of my head. Figure out my motivation. Dissect disagreements. I was happy to piss off that waitress. I would have been happy if I had to leave the room. What makes me happy is actually doing and behaving like I want. I like to see myself speaking to the things I have a very hard time explaining. I can tell you the waitress was a cunt. That doesn't make me happy. What makes me happy is when someone hears me call them a cunt when that's the loudest and most honest thought I have in that moment. I don't want to tell you I hate you. I want to make sure you can never un-feel it.

That's sort of how we conduct ourselves though, right? If we go back to abuse. Your most compelling horrible feelings seem to dictate how you behave. You were abused, so you abuse, whether it's yourself or others. You take your insecurities and, if you can't act in spite, you try to live in denial. Or, you “accept” that you're only going to feel like shit no matter what and that becomes your new baseline. Whatever you're afraid of, whatever you've felt the most, that writes the rules. That gives you direction. In a way, I'm only trying to speak your language.

Whether those fears are real or imaginary, they're real. But, not as real as when you experience someone else at critical mass. A genuine threat to your being. An explicit personal affront to the very fact you exist. That's what I like. That brings me joy. You wonder if your boyfriend still loves you as much as the day he met you? Surely that's an unpleasant thought, but you're unsure. But I can make you sure about something; there's someone that hates you as much as you could hate anything, at least for this fleeting moment. Even if it fails to haunt you, you'll remember it.

And talking like that brings me joy. It's motivating. Not because it's powerful, but because it's as honest as I could be to a person. I can take all my gobble-d-gook about tunnels and flying cars and boil it down to, first one thing is true, YOU'RE A DEPLORABLE CUNT! And we've started down the road to rebuilding.

But this idea of “being in on the joke” like everybody knows the world is like this or this. NO. Fuck no. I don't believe you. I think everybody knows how to make that empty statement and everybody knows how to respond to it like we're all on the same page. I believe we have similar emotional states. I believe we abuse old adages and cliches. I believe we've all had moments of “super real realness where shit got so real you never wanna see me so real again.” But that doesn’t mean anyone knows shit. How do I know this? They never talk about all the shit they don't know. And they don't care to go about figuring it out.

Everyone's got answers. That's how I know they're full of shit. The biggest answer I ever come to about most things in life is “well, we can talk about it” or “well, if you do this, this is seemingly likely to happen.” REDDIT, HOW DO I STOP LOVING THE PERSON I LOVE! Well son, when I was your age, I realized the meat bag who's more bacteria than human was going to die one day and get saggy tits I'd no longer find attractive. I decided to just picture what that would look like now and took off down old road 37. At the behest of my dick, I found someone within my proximity to lay my emotional baggage on. You'll see, it's all gonna come up roses for ya if you can just find yourself so exhausted that things you once cared about you no longer do! Exciting! Upvote my wise! ALL THE WISE!

But we don't talk. Not until we're drunk. Hint why I like to get you drunk. Or not till we're “in a bad place.” What if you're always in a bad place? What if that bad place isn't a fix like, stop putting yourself in front of a fist? What I've learned is you write and write and write, and then you read it back over hundreds of times so that you can at least pretend to be having a conversation. Because that's all that ever makes you feel better.

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