[1147] Class Hole

Apparently, I’m stuck in a considerably more thoughtful place than I had planned for the day, so let’s digress.

I want to talk about class and character.

I tried to go to a comedy show in Chicago on Saturday. I had to drive my F-150 4 hours there. Parking was $16. I got there hours early because I’d never been to the venue and wanted to scout the area and know where I was going. I find out when I arrive that the show had been cancelled. No notice came out on social media. No email blast was made.

I reached out to the artist, who somewhat surprisingly, responded and said it was the other guy who he was performing with that was supposed to put out the cancellation. He offered to refund the money and apologized. He showed an understanding and courtesy that I feel has become something of a coin-flip in general. It speaks to a class of character.

He’s not responsible for parking in Chicago, and I think it would be very not-classy to bundle that cost into a request about what I’d get back for the ticket. So I reach out to SpotHero. Turns out, by virtue of my spending habits and use of their app, they’re happy to credit my account! They must insist that this is normally outside of their policies, but, me being me, they’ve got me covered.

Can you spot the difference in each piece of how that scenario was addressed?

There’s a version of that story where I’m simply shit out of luck. The “non-refundable ticket” is sunk. The parking I needed for 30 minutes but paid 9 hours for is gone. The gas, old truck wear-and-tear, and time and effort just part of an unfortunate scenario that most adults are going to understand, but also encourage you to move on from pretty quickly. Especially in the era of discussions on “privilege,” I’ll be invited to appreciate more that I even own a vehicle, could afford the ticket, or have any number of qualities that do a terrible of job of acknowledging and entertaining the actual discussion I’m hoping to have.

I belong to a certain class. It’s not rich, but it is first-world and informed by some upper-asshole sensibilities. I have rich family members (who, to be sure, want nothing to do with me). I’ve dated girls with even richer family members. I own stuff, including land. I’ve got a college degree. I have hobbies that involve big-word books and expensive tools or instruments. Most of my “problems” fall between a set of safety barriers that would have to work pretty hard to approach something resembling real poverty or struggle.

If I weren’t regularly spending the money, how classy would SpotHero be? How supportive of my character would they be inclined to build in to their business model? Is the money I spend and frequency with which I use the app a good or the best measure of said character?

By our capitalist logic, yes it is. I clearly do something worthwhile that affords me either the cash or credit to play along the lines I do. And, to be sure, I do and have worked to make money, subjected myself to many forms of job types and punishments, and actively campaign to maintain every inch of gained privileges or access I achieve. Is it “fair” more than “fair enough?” No. It’s just fair enough for a practical means of approaching an otherwise impersonal mode of operating.

It gets sticky and complicated, particularly with modern also-narratives about who is suffering from what and why. It’s gotten so dramatic that, without irony, people were trying to cancel the police and downplay getting car jacked and mugged from positions of leadership in major cities. Rich or poor, when you steal someone’s shit, it’s not classy and demonstrates poor character. Yet, we’ve seemingly allowed rich people to steal with impunity for generations. Our instinctive moral compass that would snap into action within a tribe gets twisted and broken when abstracted across a nation.

What you’re left with is resentment for those who can get away with it, and yet a perverse desire to be more like them. Don’t you want to be rich enough to get away with murder? Millions and millions of people vote for Trump on precisely that desire. They’re the “privileged poor” who have to deal with customer-service headaches, prices they can’t control, health care they can’t afford, hard to afford and maintain vehicles that technically work but are ill-suited, and every nagging detail that contrasts poorly against your imagination born from an episode of The Wonder Years.

There isn’t a lot of room to be “classy.” We’re in a fundamental death match of an eroded social contract, so it remains, tragically, something of a surprise when someone does the right thing. It reminds me of The Walking Dead, in that you never know what you’re going to get with the next stranger you come across. Even if you wish to claim the ones who almost immediately try to steal or kill your favorite main character are doing it wrong, you still begrudgingly understand where they’re coming from.

We can contrast my experience of getting a refund for this show with getting refunds from Ticketmaster. I shouldn’t have to climb the chain, implore the minimum-wager to not get unnecessarily verbally berated, or write heartfelt letters of my circumstances in order to get money back for a rained-out event. If I paid exorbitantly to see 4 bands, and half of them aren’t going on, and I’ve driven 2 hours and stood in line for 2 more, just give me the money back when I never enter the venue and the circumstances have materially changed beyond my control. It shouldn’t be a fight, but it always is. When you monopolize a space, you’re seemingly less-inclined to find civility or class.

Of the many shows I’ve gone to over the last 3 years, I’ve created giant playlists of clips I’ve taken from most of the shows. I haven’t had a single issue doing so, uploading to YouTube, and just playing them when I clean or sharing with friends and family. Yesterday, I get 2 copyright strikes from George Gargan and his Damnably label for Otoboke Beaver videos I took when the opened for the Chili Peppers in Noblseville. YouTube has a pre-scan thing that tells you if your video is copywritten. It says, “Copyright-protected content found. The owner allows the content to be used on YouTube.” It said that for the Otoboke Beaver videos, or I never would have posted them.

YouTube tells you to either reach out to the person who filed the strike, and ask them to withdraw it, or you can do some kind of legal retaliatory option. I did both. The email exchange was devoid of class. Whether it was George himself or a representative using his Hotmail, all I got was a series of bizarre condescending hoity-toity moral posturing and nonsense trying to justify filing the strike. It didn’t matter that I told him I’m perfectly happy to just take down the videos. It didn’t matter that I explained how I found the band, why I appreciate them, the merch I bought, or that they’re celebrated along with hundreds of others I’ve encountered no issues with for 3 years. Nope, he’s going to fold his arms and use vague truisms about what he thinks all bands in general believe about why he’s justified.

Naturally, I’m going to hold that grudge and avoid supporting his label going forward and cross my fingers the one band I care about on it drop him.

This intersects with notions about the appropriateness of recording anything from a show at all, what rights artists do or don’t have with regard to their work, and the monopolized means we’re offered by which to experience it…but I’m not getting into all of that.

The point is, I think a person who appreciates music and artists like I do to such a degree he’s spent thousands in support of them over the last few years, shares moments from one of their performances, and isn’t in any way making money from or misrepresenting them is the opposite of the one you try to moralize and punish for…trusting YouTube’s pre-check? It’s not classy and shows me your character is misaligned and petty.

I think one of our largest moral failings today is regarding each other as simply one of a pack of dogs wreaking havoc across our otherwise pristine and perfect palaces of leisure and indulgence. Are there healthy doses of entitled disingenuous and immature assholes pissing in the overall soup we’re trying to enjoy? Absolutely. Does that give you license to treat everyone like they’re coming for your last meal and head during the apocalypse? Not even a little.

You’re not classy or have a good character just because you have money, the keys, or the presumed duty to carry out some unjust and ill-conceived rule for its own sake. If you remain persistently unable to think critically, give the benefit of the doubt, or see and listen to circumstances that, often enough, don’t require a dozen tit-for-tat emails or tired digressions about “policy” where common sense would do, you damn us all.

I have 25 more shows on the horizon. I can create another channel. I’m healthy, fed, and technically not in debt, but definitely in debt with several means of alleviating it. I just saw Green Day at Wrigley Field. I’m not looking for sympathy. I do think one of their lyrics should rattle around more heads of those who try to shuffle the wrong targets back to their place.

“Do you know your enemy?

[1090] Chain Chain Chain

I'm in something of a somber mood. I want to expand on some ideas I've alluded to on a few posts or blogs over the last few weeks.

It happens often enough when I've too much time, but a pissing match online will ensue. This latest one over the immensely tired "controversy" of Dave Chappelle. Comedians serve as kind of a canary in a coal mine for me. You literally don't get a more immediate piece of feedback on where we are culturally than when someone, lauded for crafting humor, observes and reports the landscape, then everyone piles in afterwards. Sometimes they do so in a way that makes you think they believe the stage was really theirs and it's a sham that anyone would be allowed to take it and say what's been said, let alone laugh.

The person I reacted to, proudly, said they didn't even even watch the special. They called Dave a bigot who spreads hate and misinformation. They epitomized what I suspect a conservative thinker would describe as an angry "woke" cliche with arguments centered around ideas of "punching down," who does or does not have a voice, what even constitutes "comedy," and above all else how deeply they feel regarding, and this is key, the intent to harm. Words are still violence for these types of people. And any word they feel violently assaulted by, well, what kind of civilized society would allow that?

So much enters my mind at this juncture. The overwhelming ego and narcissism of modernity creeps in. The perfect ambivalence to using, about as simple of words as we get, like "violence" incorrectly. The absolutely exhausting compulsion to exude a flood of feelings to circumvent even the concept of a coherent discussion. It's the lack of irony or self-awareness. It's the energy spent functionally barking as though you're unwilling, incapable, and indignant about the prospect of being responsible and accountable to context. It's a perfect engine for feelings of hopelessness.

That posture. The confidence those who are "right" have is shaping up to be my capacity for emotional well-being's nemesis. I can't wrap my head around it. It manifests in so many ways. My trial-by-fire introduction was arguing religion. As I've gotten older and spent time in places I hardly imagined I ever would, I've seen it manifest constantly.

You don't lie to a judge about the health of someone else's family unless you are "religiously convinced" of your own righteousness. 

You don't get intractably indignant at your caseworker for your failure to protect a foster child from your son molesting her unless you were under a powerful delusion about what the picture of Jesus on your wall really meant about the likelihood of said molestation.

You don't sacrifice every waking minute of your life to work unless you've adopted unshakeable notions of nobility that comes with being exhausted, away from family, devoid of hobbies, friends, or a perspective on anything that doesn't pertain to that work.

You don't blithely accuse strangers of every terrible sin or behavior imaginable, without evidence, in precisely the opposite forum, like a comedy show, for your perspective to make sense.

You don't do things like "I know you are, but what am I" when someone challenges you with your own quoted words in disbelief that you seem unable to see what you've said.

You don't stay in abusive dynamics unless you are absolutely convinced there's something "greater" or "nobler" in trudging through a practically miserable existence whitewashed by the words "family," or "love."

You don't ignore and bankrupt efficient accountable means to fix problems to preserve your power or sense of control.

You don't cheer fascists and vote down measures to help the poor unless fundamentally, you and yours, by whatever means necessary, are correct.

It's not a "want" or "need." It just "is." Jesus is. Muhamed is. The power of crystals is. The inevitability of markets and capitalism is. The power of the state is. You being powerless is. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and fucking over is there someone there telling you how it is. This show is good. You want to buy this. You have to work. People are this or that. Your attention belongs here. My side is obviously right. It all has to be and is always about sides. You are the extent of my judgement, and my judgment is based on my judgment, so let's spin-round, vomit, and repeat forever.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a blog titled "Dead Kids." The main idea, if these ever have one, is that you don't care about dead kids. I don't consider that speculation or a moral judgment upon you. I consider it a practical fact. I don't care about dead kids either. Intellectually, of course I do. Emotionally and practically? They're not dying at my front door. I'm not dropping the bombs. I don't exert an immediate control over the circumstances under which children are dying. They are less important to me than my next meal. There are billions of people, living and dying constantly, and none of us really care about that until it's personal.

We ignore this at a our perpetual peril. As we ignore it, we allow ourselves to believe a story about our inherent righteousness. We start to think we're the good ones. As anyone who has genuinely attempted to do something good can attest, your intent, when it doesn't align with practical reality, doesn't matter. You get ignored. People don't care. Neither you nor I am a good person. We're just people. And people are animals. And animals don't give a fuck.

"Human" is a scientific intellectual construction. You don't get to be human by default. You have to learn and adopt rules. You have to sacrifice "merely animal" instincts and habits. To the extent any one of us is pulling off "human" versus "ape" can be fairly well assessed. We build what we seemingly aspire to in our mythologies. We carry on like a "godly" standard is flashing its naked ass in front of us at all times. We've built incredibly complicated systems of laws and bureaucracy to deliberately slow down our impulsivity and propensity for violence. The less you concern yourself with the hows and whys those systems operate, the less we should be obligated to consider you as anything but a noisy animal.

How we decide to treat that animal says a lot about us, but to treat it as an equal to those who work to actually practice the values of being human? Our cultural psychosis is so entrenched, we literally mythologize sacrificing those people and crown their martyrdom as a peak achievement.

While writing this, I got a response from the person in my latest pissing match.

"Touché. You have my respect. Please appreciate that my assertion that you were trolling was based on my perspective that a nameless, faceless, and apparently 98 year old man was, unprompted, attacking my expression of my views on somebody else, because I am assuming that you aren't Dave Chappelle himself, and I felt it necessary to defend my position because historically I have had to justify my very existence to what at times feels like everybody when the media and politicians are pushing a transphobic agenda on the initially largely-apathetic public, and as such I am naturally incredibly defensive.

When I can gather the emotional energy to do so, I will sit down and watch The Dreamer, make notes, and pass them on to you, it's only right for me to do so." Exactly. Green Day's, "Know Your Enemy" plays in my head. I'm not their enemy, and neither is Dave.

Wherever you find yourself on any position, when you occupy "have to justify" space, you're doing it wrong, noble intentions or otherwise. The less you concern yourself with the motivated reasoning of justification, the better the chance you have for understanding the multi-faceted, indeed infinite, nature of everything. You can take the fire out of your belly by honestly observing and evaluating. It's not actually a fight with anything, ever, but yourself. And, barring consistently demonstrated evidence to the contrary, you probably have a miserable idea of what you even are.

I can describe myself in less than admirable terms because I'm looking for who I am. I'm not convinced. I am every single example, good and bad, rolled into this ongoing moment. That can operate as the power of perspective, or it can be an infinite sea of obscurity to hide behind and justify whatever comes next. Who I am has been on my mind as I continue slogging through trying to be my own boss. I'm not the same person that started the coffee shop. I'm not the teenager who was readily primed to fixate on a singular agenda or idea until I got my way. I'm not that old, but I can certainly distinguish myself from younger people. My motivations have changed. My priorities have shifted. It's impossible to say to what degree any of it is good or bad. It obligates me to explore and reassert what needs it and let die what doesn't.

I remark on my relative wealth a lot. I don't know if I've heard half a coherent conversation about "priviledge," but I do know pretty much everyone I've ever met has had access to nearly everything we could ever need to live a decent life together. My cohort is educated. They were born in a, barely, still free country. They're fed. They have, most often divorced, but homes nonetheless. They are their own worst enemy. They are up against competing narratives or individual pathological behavior or particular illness.

I'm gathering that it's dangerous to acknowledge this. You don't just do so and then die having completed the game. You have to carry on the rest of the day doing whatever it is you do. Maybe that's a job you hate for not enough money. Maybe it's spending time with family who don't recognize you or you can't trust. My ego likes to believe it's getting antagonized by me and what I suggest we do with all of our time left and debt. We have an incredible amount of time to suffer or celebrate our circumstances.

The suffering is familiar. We've learned how to glorify it. We are slaves to the imposed narratives trying to stuff a bored, confused, angry ape into a human construct. This builds that inherent tension and "contradiction" into what it means to exist or why you should even bother. You're not actually a contradiction. You're an ongoing sum total and set of probabilities. We may never understand the mechanism that predicts this word or that word comes next, but I acknowledge that I'm doing something peculiar, specific, and different in relationship to my experience by writing and slowing down than in the moment I scream at someone who pulls a dangerous driving maneuver.

That's the terror of staying alive. Every moment there's someone poised to run you off the road. If they were exhausted having worked themselves to death for years in an exploitative and unforgiving environment or if they were distracted texting, the result and dramatic consequence for you remains the same. Either of the causes, or any imagined one that doesn't involve wildlife or the environment crashing in, requires the same obligation towards taking responsibility and exploration on comprehensively accounting for how to lower the probability of it happening again. You can have that discussion upside down in a ditch, or somewhere in the years before a predictable seemingly inevitable tragedy takes place.

This is often my counsel with my clients. You don't practice crisis management in the throes of a crisis. No professional waits until they meet someone choking to see if their understanding of the Heimlich maneuver works. If you're not practicing in the meantime, when the crisis hits, you'll default to whatever coping mechanism you discovered along the way, if that involves a deadly drug or other form of self-harm, that's what you'll do. Agency has left the equation. Choice is an ideal. The situation actually "is." To the extent you suffer your experience of it is what you can learn to navigate.

Humans can see things coming, prepare, project a series of consequences into the future, and do better exactly right now. Animals project their incomplete and irrational feelings onto every possible future in every single moment, pretending to have done the same work, finding conviction to double down and destroy whatever potential exists right now. They conserve their opinion into a dense weapon used to knock you out.

A lot of my behavior, and for the matter what I can gather from Hussain's, is driven by a sense of helplessness and anticipation of suffering. That's what was physically beaten into me. My baseline disposition is disproportionately informed by my abusive upbringing. I can't completely erase, reconfigure, or deny how stomach-dropping, shivering, flinching child is the foundation. I didn't have a choice in that. I suspect no matter how old I get I will resonate at an "irrational panic" level as though I've actually done something terrible or that the principal is going to expel me. It's a simple choice to acknowledge that, joke about that, write about it, or talk about it in a way that doesn't leave me perpetually victimized. That doesn't mean we're not victims or that we can't victimize. That doesn't mean we're not still at the mercy of forces that bring us to our knees. As intimately as you might eventually understand yourself, it doesn't mean you have someone else perfectly nailed in turn.

I find my life fascinating how much I've achieved in a relatively short amount of time. When I really sit in how much I've invested in learning to play instruments, how many books and shows I've consumed, how many projects i've completed, how much crap I own, and how much I'm looking forward to, it's impossible to take that exercise seriously and claim anything but the most naive sense of despair or hopelessness. What is debt when you have the capacity to pay it off? What is "stuck" when your fingers, feet, and voice aren't broken?

Every year you're alive is a smaller and smaller percentage of your existence. But every year your potential grows if you're acknowledging, incorporating, and moving with the changes. Staying defensive, quiet, and reactionary is shameful if you profess to be human. Burrowing into self-imposed guilt predicated on someone else's dogshit narrative is shameful too. You may not have all the words or even close to the best ones. You either own the life you're leading or we stay trapped in this place that pretends tomorrow will get better in spite of ourselves instead of because of it.

[1048] Vroom

Poised to be an extra-all-over-the-place one.

I’m back at my dad’s house after a weekend in Milwaukee. We saw Green Day, Foo Fighters, and most of the rest of the bands for Harley Davidson’s 120th anniversary festival. We ate great food. We drank beer. We navigated a mildly frustrating AirBnB situation, we got specialty coffee, and he picked up beer you can only get in Wisconsin. The day before, we saw David Cross and Sean Patton in Chicago during David’s latest special taping at The Metro. They were both tear-inducing and face pain funny. 

I do cool shit, but you already knew that.

I do cool shit like I’m someone who recognizes how quickly the entire world can be brought to its knees with the right bug. I do cool shit like I actually more believe than not I won’t have the opportunity to do so, at least in this country, when the fascist trends continue. I do cool shit like the artists actually mean something to me and like I think it important to generate positive feedback loops and new associations in an otherwise overwhelmingly stressful and stagnant existence. I do cool shit like it’s my job, because it is.

My dad has come with me to more music shows, comedy shows, or even movies than all of my friends combined over the last few years. My dad who iron works, takes care of graves in cemeteries hours away on the weekends, takes care of things around my aunt’s house, and keeps his own in order. My dad who’s turning 62 this year. My dad who lives 3 hours away from me. He has the time, energy, and attention to hang out and do cool shit in a way none of the other people I know, vaguely or otherwise, even flirt with having.

They don’t say, “Hey Nick, I’m not really into your genres of music, but so-and-so is playing, would you want to go to that?” They don’t say, “I’m so busy! But I’m budgeting to get a babysitter, and I’m definitely gonna hit, well, at the moment Fall Out Boy seems to be uniting people in a unique way." They don’t say, ”You sure do go to a lot, I’m legitimately too busy, but you’ve inspired me to take a little time and splurge or indulge or treat myself, because you know what? I do work a lot and I haven’t been attending to the necessary fun of a worthwhile life."

I inspire nothing! Today marks the 75th show for the year, 77th “fun thing,” with 34 left, Fall Out Boy on deck for tomorrow.

Is it debt? Yes. Is it long drives? Totally. Is it all of the risks associated with crappy vehicles, increasingly ugly and un-shared cultural landscape, and don’t my feet and back kind of ache? You might be arriving at the point and wisdom incumbent upon the whole endeavor. It’s work. It’s deliberate chosen effortful balance I’m interjecting against the void.

I’m incredibly frustrated by the lies, delays, and overall greedy empty nonsense trying to do good work and get paid for it. I don’t feel it in the same way as Hussain. It’s one, incredibly disappointing thing about how fucked we all are, let alone what I think to try to create. I have a dozen positive memories to choose from to pair that dissatisfaction with from the last few hours, let alone days. The “worst” thing about my life is “debt” which has come to symbolize considerably more about "potential" than "burdens" or "obligations." I don’t have a mortgage or car payment. I suspect you’d kill to be 3 months away, pretty much at all times, from being debt free, no?

But we’re broken. We don’t do the math budget-wise anymore than we do it with mental resources and allocated time towards worthwhile or otherwise thoughts. Concert crowds are certainly broken. All sense appears to have flown away. You’re around thousands of people, you’re going to get touched, you need to drink water, and setting down a blanket or chair anywhere near or around where a pit might open up is just a cunty dumb thing to do. When I’m walking back with two fresh beers to the spot I’ve been occupying for the last 7 hours, it’s the exact wrong time to strong arm block me and get into a debate about what, “We’re all trying to do” in getting in closer. No, bitch, you’re trying to be an incensed righteous lawyer cunt for no reason. I’m trying to politely edge past without spilling my waiting dad’s beer.

The whole concert scene has obviously been on my mind. It’s a unique expression of our selfishness and irony. I’m not there to love everyone in the crowd. The only thing we might have in common is barely knowing a few lyrics to some of your most popular songs. I suspect most people in the crowd haven’t read the latest Dave Grohl interviews or biographies of Green Day. A spattering of the crowd might be budding or capable musicians. Green Day in particular are great at appealing across generations. The old-school punk and the little girls all gather to belt out hits from 10 or 20 years ago despite 5 albums of music afterward you kind of pretend don’t exist.

I’m tired of hearing, “Welcome to the family!” from the singer of your band. I thought Pierce The Veil was incredibly awkward in their Green Day rip-off give-a-fan-a-guitar segment. Yes, Vic, sing into the weird gay kid’s eyes as he swoons on a stool before handing - an instrument he’s clearly never held in his life - a guitar he can keep and certainly cherish forever and not pawn. That’s crowd work.

Anyway, I’m gonna be 35 in 8 days. I suspect it will be uneventful. There won’t be a surprise party. No one’s taking me to dinner. I’ve already gotten the card from my parents with the $100 in it. On each day of the festival, tragedy struck someone in the circles of people I know. A friend’s mother’s best friend was murdered Friday. One of the step-kids’ husband had a stroke today. I’m just over hear chugging ice tea, listing my favorite bands, and bemoaning Sugarcult not getting as big as they should on the drive home.

I won’t be going this hard at this endeavor next year. I set the pace last year, kinda felt like I created a personal challenge to beat - beat severely - this year, and I’m chasing the feeling of a certain kind of magic going away. I used to find it incredibly hard to entertain the idea of ever leaving a show early, even a little bit, because I had to get my money’s worth. I didn’t go out that much. I’d never seen the band. What if something happens right at the end? I don’t leave early that often, but when I do, it’s because Tool is headlining, or the day before it took an hour just to walk out at an oversold My Chemical Romance Riot Fest performance, or Dave Grohl can make any one of his songs last 15 minutes, and that’s not always the best.

It’s an insane amount of privilege to perform, to attend, to afford the food, and to have the time to get there early, leave late, and be confident you’ve got the cash for the parking. It didn't use to be like that. It used to be music could bring any and all together. Now it brings those who can afford it, and those people are incredibly entitled, naive and out-of-touch cunts. It’s not all their fault, but they’re certainly not my friends, real or imagined versions of them, taking up room instead.

Finding common cause seems markedly different and opposite to finding common reaction. In a crowd, you react. That’s your job. Wave your hands. Jump. Scream. Unfortunately increasingly, hi-five, hug, introduce yourself, or dance with your neighbor. What are we all there for? To hear none of the women the day of or after The Supreme Court repeals Roe v Wade speak, sing, or scream into the mic about it? Hello, Lilith Czar, The Warning, and Halestorm, where the fuck were you?

If you’re not persuaded by the parts of the world on continuous fire, pick a metaphor you find agreeable. Minority stake holders in culture and environmental wars are plunging us into this absurd parody. How “festive” do you find festivals that have more bars than merchandise, art, or anything fun to do while you wait for your band to play? There’s music on. Some of them sound pretty angry. Anyone catch what it was? No protest song has stopped a war and no soundtrack makes the pills you swallow being born to your time and place any easier to digest.

The crowds aren’t diverse. The narratives around why are worn from being overplayed. The message isn’t clear and there’s no solidarity to be found. Rich whites like noise that helps them ignore all the screams they engender from their decision making. Let’s go, Brandon! No better time to be and loud and proud ignorant asshole than at the “Don’t wanna be an American Idiot” gig!

I want to say more or refine what’s here. I’ll try again later.

[543] Meandering Brain

I'm very “blah” and it's in between other “blahs” so I'm just doing that stroll through the blah of my existence and thoughts to hopefully discover something a little bit more than “blah.” I doubt it will be much worth reading.

I was once told that I was a self-actualized person. This was supposed to distinguish me from the people who harbor every downtrodden excuse to explain away their existence and lack of achievement. One of my go-to cliches is to say, if only eventually, I tend to get everything I've ever really wanted. I don't think this plays too closely to some idea of beging, borrowing, and stealing to do so, but I've been willing to to do 2 of those when desperation or boredom took hold.

Is it such a good thing to get everything you want? It's certainly not that I've never been denied. It seems like a question with at least 2 layers though. Say you want to “survive” so you'll figure out how to manage a paycheck and feed yourself. In that same spirit, say you're willing to work endless hours at any job to save and live cheap so you can afford some toy or vacation. It's the noble sacrificial level. Then there's the psychopathic sense. So cunning and premeditated, you'll negate all consequences in service to your acquisition. You leave people crippled and retain no excessive memory of them.

Try as I might, I still never manage to convince myself of “pure” socio or psychopathy. In fact, I pretty-well hate the words as I find them clunky, all-encompassing, and dismissive of the ever-evolving emotional capacity (or lack thereof) that works out in real-time how to account of personal, psychological, and social reasons for how to respond. What used to be “survival” looks “psychopathic” in a modern civilized society. Shutting off an emotional response to maintain sanity will register as plainly “sociopathic” as anything you couple with some harm it has done you.

In any event, I don't take my lack of “emotional cues” as necessarily insidious or problematic. I think about this when I hear someone's, generally bat shit, interpretation of my being. We all retain the capacity to be unrelenting monsters. It's simple decisions. In the name of decency, we choose what superficial lines we'd like to walk to maintain a particular aura. If yours wants to be a little whiter or shinier than mine, it doesn't grant you special powers nor a brilliant perspective that makes you correct in attempting to assess me. I can barely assess me, but I'm probably not a simple-minded asshole who just loves to cuss real loud.

“Self-actualizing,” if I am indeed such a person, seems to be always in process. I wanted land, so I acquired it. Every study I did was in service to the longer goal and game. I don't want to do studies. I don't want a normal job. I don't even necessarily want to spend most of my time in cousin-fuck Indiana regardless of the comforts and freedoms it will afford me. I always preface it with “unfortunately,” but my goal still resolves to a communal identity. One way or another I'll need to figure out how to keep myself surround by friends. It remains a very selfish goal for those who think I'm being sentimental.

It seems a very loud idea to me that people like to be told what to do. They like it especially when what they're told to do doesn't interfere with what they think they want to be doing. You won't get the stone-cold sober person to drink who's still reeling from the emotional trauma of their alcoholic parent. You will get the shy person absolutely obliterated and making out with the cute person they saw across the room. I apply this metric to more important things. It's very Field of Dreams; if I build it, they will come. If I create an oasis in cousin-fuck Indiana even I want to live in, your excuses will diminish. If I reduce my bills to a few hundred dollars a year while I dick around experimenting with business ideas, the door will remain open for you to work along side me.

I feel I have to consider these things in a more concrete fashion now that I've found this land. I'm a restless person. I have to even accomplish stupid things like watching movies and TV shows because cheering for hours over the Cubs I find mind-numbingly boring. But soon, I'll be digging and building. I've already watched a movie on laying concrete foundations and have started compiling numbers for farmers who have equipment I've never heard of that helps them maintain that much space. By July I hope to be out of here, alternate work days with study stays until I can discover something to profit from that doesn't rely on confinement.

What if this time next year I not only have a solidly lived in place, a budding green real estate venture, a workshop, a brewery, and enviable vertical hydroponic garden/greenhouse? What if I start sowing the seeds for several potential income streams? I imagine my days will still look a lot like they do now, I'll just be dicking around with those things with a movie in the background. Less we forget about the map. How long do you think it really takes to compile the information I'm after? Even Adam Ruins Everything spoke to how hard it is to learn anything about local politics just by simply going to Google. I'd put money on the idea someone is out there creating a quasi-parallel system as to the one I want. It speaks to something I read about once in undermining the “revolutionary idea” idea. Things arise around the same times in different spots and then forces take over that turns one popular and kills the rest.

Switching gears a bit. I feel myself growing resolved to superficiality. I haven't been moved to really contact or talk to anyone. Each time I start reflecting on parts of my life I considered pretty good or what I'd want, I'm reminded they were built on lies. I figure it's my responsibility to keep carrying the torch for meager and over-burdened truth, even if it's the one that keeps putting distance between me and you. I'm not particularly convinced you much care either way.

Part of me has flirted hard enough with the idea of just sitting pretty. I don't have to sign myself up for the work it'll take to develop the land. I could just forfeit the earnest-money and barely feel a pinch. I could not just massively overpay to see Green Day, but do so in Italy. I could buy a new car or develop a sense of style. There's just that nagging fact that those things aren't the goal. I'd have them already if it was, as that shit is easy. It's just stuff. Tickets and bills. I've spent the last couple years washing myself of any former go-getter creative glory so I could cope with study life and basement dwelling. I need to learn, create, and build. I need to force a ridiculous heart-racing smile to my face as people cock their head and think, “Wait, what are you doing?” I'm way more obnoxious and motivated than anything I've done in recent memory can attest to. I miss me.

Just the idea that so much of it is still predicated on staying healthy and getting into well-timed studies is annoying. That's my paycheck to paycheck. My life still isn't belayed by collective ingenuity and resources, it's capitulating to for-profit medicine motives. I'm still a cog, one way or another. The one upside is, even if I never get into another study, now, worst case scenario in life, I have to learn how to camp, because even a McJob would still afford me my time, which is always in need of protecting.

Guess we'll just have to see how it all goes. I'll know what it feels like when the real goal has been achieved. It's this weird about-to-break-ground feeling that leaves me feeling “hopeful,” but I'm too old not to feel sober about the process. And even when I find the people to start playing along, they're going to find a way to fuck it all up anyway lol. Oh well.

[538] Heart Attacked

I’m stressing myself out about my map, so I want to explore all the things causing it. This will likely be very specific to the project and perhaps perfectly uninteresting as a “general” thought digression.

I wonder if I’m thinking too hard about it. The irony being, I don’t think I could ask for something simpler. I have examples of significantly more complex maps with functions I want to adopt from. I want things stripped down. The idea is to be able to tell a million different stories with the data plugged into it, but you can’t tell a coherent story with a million “other” data or distraction points nowhere near relevant to the task.

I’m concerned that I’m on the hook of promises and reassurances. I know my programmer is competent. I know the company she’s working for is something of a start up. But, as recent history has informed me, I’m at the mercy of other peoples’ perception of their abilities and capacity to understand me, as well as their honesty or complete lack thereof.

The last time I remember being excited for the project was after the first “correction” was made to what she initially sent me. It was just a white sheet with a map outline of the U.S. I was ecstatic. It looked like a whiteboard ready for me to push pins in it, plug widgets into, and mold into what I needed.

The next iteration that popped up looked like that whiteboard had been put through a “sure, but LET’S MAKE IT LOOK COOL!” engine and it had more options, places to look, click, and scroll through that I didn’t ask for. I can only assume the things are partially related to a generalized long-term vision related to previous conversations we’ve had.

Now, that “general map” is hosted and updates I’m not quite sure of may or may not make it to me before I get into another study that will keep me from doing anything meaningful with it for another 3 weeks. I started this project 3 or 4 months ago? With a whole host of pauses and confusions that had nothing to do with my willingness to explain or ability to pay.

I’ve been talking about it for so long, I feel like a total asshole. I’m so insanely fucking stressed out about playing with it and actually seeing the things I’ve asked for put into it. I haven’t seen but one, the massive strip down, consequence that I recognize is my message getting across. I’ve been told literally everything I’ve asked for is straight forward and easily enough put in. Where is it? Where’s my search box? Where’s my drop down menus? Where’s my ability to navigate to files and upload them from a spreadsheet? Why do I have 700 backlogged articles and not one of them is represented on the map? Why does it take 20 fucking seconds for a mini panel of options to load or some filter (again that I don’t want even on the page at this stage) to be applied? You know what didn’t take 20 seconds to load? The whiteboard with an outline of the U.S. on it.

That’s sort of my biggest issue. The logistics of coordinating the different pieces of information I want to put on the map are going to be hard enough. If I can’t even streamline the logical pipeline of how to input, access, and display the information, there’s little hope for finding hidden correlations or making meaningful connections amidst a thousand data points marginally related to a physical location on a map.

I want a mind map. That’s what is occurring to me as this develops. I want something to mirror what I’m reading but to be able to access it in a fluid way that helps with recall. I want a physical compiler of my hours spent reading so I’m not half-assedly remembering some fact or digging through years worth of NPR articles to find the one superintendent that I want all superintendents to be aware of. The joke is that I could likely do what I want with note cards and a large wall. I could just compile sticky notes from various books.

I have nothing. I have nothing to do, nothing I find value in, and can achieve nothing of merit or worth but to find a purpose and intention in the exercise of my brain. I JUST WANT TO FUCKING WORK. Let me work. Let me have something to fucking play with so I can stop going out to eat and getting drunk alone. Give me a hard and fast date that I can rely on.

I feel like I’m losing my mind. I need something to go right for fucking once that isn’t predicated on self indulgence. Even that is failing! Fucking Green Day got sick and I’m stuck with expensive ass tickets I don’t know if I’ll be able to sell or make the new date that hasn’t been announced. I’m living in perpetual failure. Nothing I do and no one I talk to seems to be able to respond to me or be relied upon. I’m not even trying to be hyperbolic. I feel like I’m living some karmic payback for being a mass murderer in a past life or something.

I’m genuinely in crisis mode people. I’m worried I’m going to break down. I don’t know what it will look like, but I think it will involve part of my skull cracking. I’m tired of watching TV. I’m tired of yelling into the ether. I’m tired of being told yes when you mean no. I’m sick of the prevailing lies used to shit all over my life and intention. I’m going fucking crazy that nothing feels real. Nothing is helping. No one is helping. I’m alone losing my mind because there is no place for me and what I want to create.

[436] Beacon of Dope

Take an immediately hyperbolic sentiment like, “I don’t believe in free speech.”

I’ve been feeling my gut want to flirt with expressing and justifying this sentiment for the past couple days. I’m provoked by statements that I think I can show to be threatening, deadly. I have a waning conception of “freedom.” I’m so steeped in how “I” can “break down” or “justify” what the statement means to me. I feel a crippling sense of irony seeping into every new line.

Again, I’m falling over the edge of thoughts provoked by the world of music. Watching the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony specifically. Whether the artist being celebrated is alive or dead, it feels like a eulogy to me. Nothing is genuinely bad at ceremonies like that. The tears are real. They flow from the kind of emotion that springs from a place so much bigger than you or your song. Somehow you and everyone you’ve touched are sharing the same moment.

And that’s the dreamy way to state it. Is it somehow more or less real than other things I could say? Timeless classics I’ve never heard of don’t bring me to tears. I can understand the marketing behind including artists that span generations and styles. I’ve looked up the biggest names and attempted to listen deeply and hop into the boat of emotionality and passion that you can feel from each person expressing themselves about their respective hero. I’m, often, just not that into them.

There’s so much to be said about the personal nature of experience. To my mind, it’s the difference between creating for personal reasons and the infinitely different ways your creation can be experienced. I think you approach a danger zone that pits “popularity” against “truth” and can only mangle what either could mean.

There can be no doubt as to your reaction. You felt the tears fall, the chills on the back of your neck, the unstoppable butterflies and urge to dance. In the moment, it doesn’t have to mean anything “more.” I imagine it’s the same sort of rush from winning a championship or nailing a job interview. You don’t want to hear about the handicaps working against the other team or that the person they were really after couldn’t make it. Aspects that are just as true, just as immediate and relevant independent of your awareness of them.

I think this is why you can experience, though I haven’t lately, people who are scarily passionate about a band. It doesn’t matter to them how many came before, nothing has moved them “like this” before or since. How could you not understand!? Then be prepared to tread lightly in how you talk about their gem. Objectivity needs to be left outside. Just feel it. But I also think this is the difference between the litany of videos of crying little girls at a Taylor Swift concert compared to the zero crying older women videos after seeing Paul McCartney for the 40th time.

Here I begin again thinking about “truth.” Perhaps that woman was a shrieking crying girl back in The Beatles’ heyday. Perhaps the power of their music then is felt just as deeply as it is today, but her sway and lighter mean as much or more than the tears back then. Perhaps there’s an extremely detailed handbook for making superstars willing to put in the time with a dedicated industry geared towards hijacking the naive, fallible, and inattentive brain. Perhaps that doesn’t matter.

For all my “cynicism,” a word I still use under protest, I’m no less compelled by musical heroes. That is, I can listen to Ringo Starr sing in an annoying “old guy voice” wrapping up the celebration of Rock and Roll’s latest wave of paid respects and think “eh I’m really not into this performance or song...holy shit is it cool to see THE BEATLES and GREEN DAY playing together!” Look at all those legends trading solos and singing about how they get by with a little help from their friends too!

I want to maybe shift down a gear and hit a new tone. I’ve been thinking a lot about the last book I read on empathy. At the same time I’ve been listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts. At the heart of the messages I’ve received is to work harder on putting yourself into the other person’s shoes. Before you bang the drum of patriotism or rush to signify someone as “evil,” genuinely ask yourself how you’d behave, what you’re government would do, and what’s really at stake.

Here I see the power of music. It’s an open invitation to jump into someone else’s world, cynically contrived or not. Empathy splashed around to be basked in at your leisure or desperation. Justification rendered impotent and insulting. You could no more question divine love for orphans when you absolutely should.

I think transformative artists and compelling work needs to be respected, protected, and inducted. I like feeling a fire or comfort from the right song at the right time. I remain “stuck” more concerned with the truth about Imagine not dictating our foreign policy. I get by knowing most of my friends are stressed, broke, and more lonely than they’d let on. I can actually play American Idiot, and no matter how angrily I sing or loud I crank the amp, we’re still pretty fucking idiotic.

I come back to my truth. I don’t seek to disrespect or degrade the work that has moved me too. It’s just work in a very specific self-indulgent direction. Self-indulgent doesn’t have to mean “bad” or “selfish.” It just needs a more dramatic fissure than a liberal artist getting pissed off at a crazy person co-opting their message and sound.

I pick up on habits of self-justification. How you feel being all that matters. The difference between how an artist speaks to you about war and your appreciation for the reasons we engage in and perpetuate wars cannot be understated. It’s bathing in a pool of empathic feelings not tied to the deeper reality, deeper consequence. I can’t call you “wrong” about what U2 means to you, but I can know how fucked Live Aid left Africa. No one was really trying to walk around in Africa’s shoes, even if they really felt like they were doing something good.

There’s a kind of happiness and motivation that is unmatched when you’re working in service to the bigger picture. I hit large periods of not playing music because I feel too dishonest. I’m not expressing as much as copying or drilling. I’m not telling a story as much as I’m trying to distract myself. I don’t want to see an old nuclear silo, poorly maintained and understaffed in nowhere Ohio, “accidentally” turn the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame into a wasteland. The situation not made better by my favorite bands in hazmat suits standing atop the rubble vigorously belting out a protest song.

The equivocation remains at the level of feeling and awareness. I’m not telling bands to fix war. I’m telling you to not allow yourself the feeling that they might. Your brain doesn’t split hairs about what you feel or can be made to believe. Certain truths need a louder volume. They need to beat harder than your heart and your fist. They need to ring with the many voices of adopted and respected realities you’re not habituated in seeking or figuring out. We sing alone and will die together.

[80] Insignificant

Probably the biggest word to describe how I justify most of my actions in life. Words, for example, are pretty insignificant. I was asked why I cussed recently and the best I could come up with is that I've been doing it since 2nd grade. Who cares? In a number of years many of our words will disappear with history. History that, as tv so clearly points out, is nothing but violence, take overs, political squabbles, and wrought with fear. From one famous name to the next the world is passed around like a cheap whore. If there's one thing i learned from watching the history channel and then switching to Green Day's cover of Working Class Hero its that we, as existing individuals, are completely insignificant in relation to the universe we inhabit. I mean who's reading this that's really thinking about the Darfur people?

You hope your actions will influence people, assuming you even act at all. The burden is still on them to accept it and understand you. This is a give and take relationship. The highest honor you can aspire to in this life is that your service to someone will make you and them truly happy. I don't like to focus on bullshit and that's why people think I'm the rebel or one that likes to fight. I don't care to talk about half the shit people revolve their worlds around because we both know it will provide nothing in the end for either of us. I'm concerned about the all too frequently used term sheep that I see people become. They don't know how or are afraid to weed out this intrinsic bullshit.

Do you want someone to tell you your life before you live it? You'll be born into such n such religion, told right and wrong, go to school, get a job, have such and such right of passage, go to college, get a job, work the next 50 years, have fun sometimes here and there, talk about these issues your parents did, find someone to "settle down" with, the list goes on and can get unbearably specific. To take a misquoted line from the Astronaut Farmer "When I was a kid I was told I could be anything I wanted to be, somewhere along line I think we forgot that." I think before we ever ask questions we should start with the ultimate question. Are you happy? Before you care about someone's cussing, their religion, their possessions, their anything, ask yourself if your happy. If not, why not, if you don't know, why don't you know. If you don't know why u don't know then I can say you're in denial.

How much fuller can you make this life when you realize your probably not going to dance across the universe with Jesus forever anymore than your going to burn in hell for having an opinion?

[115] A Speculative Guess

Saturday, August 2, 2008 at 11:42pm

Warped tour was bloody amazing. I definitely got to see a ton of bands and hurt myself squeezing between people. There were a few moments of rest between a couple bands so I got the opportunity to sit against a gate and watch the fifty thousand people walk by for a while. I had a bit of an epiphany when I saw this rocker looking girl, rather scantily clothed, with a cross tattooed on her back. This epiphany was later reinforced when I found myself rather enjoying a band called Family Force 5 who, really rock the fuck out, and are a Christian band. So what was this idea I had? Religion is a form of self expression that doesn't need to have anything to do with why it was originally implemented. Why I call people hypocritical and mentally enslaved doesn't seem to register or feel like a valid observation, because they hear me telling them something like, “Green Day is better than Reliant K and they are both gay and retarded for liking Reliant K more.” It isn't about immortal souls, angels, or eternal not-so-at-resting places, it's about viewing themselves as some reflection of what they've heard from the bible or about Jesus, and taking it on like a new band. I think it's important for me to point out that I don't think I have a problem with these kinds of people any more than I could be angry that someone liked rap over rock.

This speaks to a bigger point though. I don't think people are generally aware. When I can watch Shwayze semi-rap 7 songs about weed, then go across the lot to see The Devil Wears Prada express their faith though screamo, to me, it would feel like two conflicting mentalities. The next time you go to church for the pastor to scream throatily about how much love is there for you, you'll understand my confusion. I just can't help but think a venue where fuck is said every tenth of a second, girls boobs are popping out everywhere, and weed wafts though the air is the “best” time to show how awesome of a Christian you can be. So along with my usual comparison of religion to drugs, take with you a comparison to music. You can go to a rock concert, know your ear drums are going to get blown, people are going to hurt you, and you'll burn your face when you get home, but the amount of fun puts you in a mind to override that. With your religion, you know you won't be able to explain it, defend it, and usually won't know shit about it apart from the usual time honored tales, but it puts you in the mindset that may calm you down, keep you thoughtful, or make you connect with friends. I just ask that people be aware of that, before they pretend to know the facts. The more often they realize that they can be more honest to themselves and to me before they tell me their religious or really know truth, you know, because its true, because.

If you didn't go to Warped, you suck :p.

::Update::

I just read an article about another cartoonist being investigated and taken by police for "potentially offending Islam." In case you haven't heard, Islam is the new epidemic for Europe and any and everything that can be done to appease it, including taking down posters with unclean dogs and building indoctrinating schools, is being done. I really don't get this notion of taking offense, nor do I understand why people's ability to throw tantrums and hold signs grants them any right to walk all over the majority of people who only see a marginal social issue at best. Remember kids, those last pictures got a suicide bomber to kill 8 people at a Dutch embassy. These are the moments when I just wish it was my finger on the trigger to end these sorry lives who have forgone peace and understanding for ignorance and intolerance. I honestly don't understand why there isn't a bigger push from academics to tell these people how fucking stupid they are. Haven't we gone on long enough seeing what keeping people ignorant of the facts can do? When your legal system, as it is in Europe, is passing legislation to promote the religious views of a blatantly dangerous view system because they don't want to "offend," who's going to find the balls to go "HELLO, WAKE UP, this shit is ridiculous, no?"

It isn't all the "peaceful" practitioners of Islam that make it dangerous, it's the ones we read about in the papers. News flash though people, it wasn't the peaceful Christians who "just understood what things were really about" that led to the Inquisition and Crusades. Those times are relevant now as they were then. Stop excusing the works and history of your faith because that was then and this is now, and your not the one picketing funerals. When you look at the religions, again, it is simply blatant for why they can go either way when it comes to peace and love or terror and destruction. Yet, you people claim to know the absolute truths within them? We are living in the 15th century with 21st century weaponry. The same problem with them now is the same problem I've been bitching about for years. KNOWLEDGE, INFORMATION, PROVABLE TRUTH, OBJECTIVE AND UNBIASED ANALYSIS. The word "respect" doesn't register with me when you can pretend like it is okay to ignore those tenets of a productive society. While you may not regard yourself as stupid or as misguided as the "extremists," maybe you should tell me how keeping yourself in the dark is ever productive to anything.

1 comment

Updated about 3 months ago

Michele Elizabeth Zerbe wroteat 2:00am on August 3rd, 2008

you know what doesn't suck? yOuR cAr.

(sorry that doesnt really have to do with anything) :P

[13] Stories Are Fun...Specially When Legally Drunk

 Current mood: beyond dead tired
Category: beyond dead tired Writing and Poetry

Prologue

Young and blind, arrogant as the devil the little boy lived. Each day was a flurry of excitement as he jumped from one adventure to the next. Be it throwing rocks at the prissy girls who thought they could take his tire thrown on the playground, or leading his pack of friends into trouble with security at the local hotel, each day was carefree and without thought. He went to school, came home and watched television, and played outside like every other normal person. His parents lived as happily as married parents do and tried with all their might to set their child straight, instill good morals and values. This child was smart as a tack, challenged any and all to games and puzzles that would test him. The whole world was for him to take and he had not seen it yet. With this child, so open, and free there always lies the possibility for a fall. One that torments the mind and doubts the soul. One that makes the eyes swell up and tear. It is always when life can never be better that the sharp turn into nothingness is taken.

Clause 1

He never really noticed the girl other than for her pretty face. They were just classmates in a band room of a school in a town. His brimming self confidence and her reserved inner being conflicted so this roaring lion was reduced to nothing but a pesky brother type. He antagonized and played and each day went on and on and nothing ever seemed to change. Throughout those days things at home began to change for the boy. His parents began to fight more and stress was as common as breathing or eating. After months of carrying on his parents split up and unbeknown to him this sparked a change in the boy.

From those days on he began to think, not about it being his fault or how depressing life could be, but instead just think about everything and everyone all the time. He would play out their actions in his mind and see how they affect his life even in the smallest and seemingly insignificant times.  He paid attention to all of his feelings and learned how he could manipulate them, subdue them. Still pursuing his outgoing and outlandish persona he never wanted to look weak and despised the notion of other thinking less of him. He made promises to himself that would be accomplished by no less than all of his will. All of this swirling in the back of his head and never making sense. Making itself known only in his dreams that would wake him to find his heart racing and legs twitching. Time moves on. The days go on much like they always had. Now he went to school, came home to a distraught mother, played outside, and slept like the dead. He still thought all the time yet never acknowledged it, maybe hoping that over time his subconscious would disappear and he would never have to face the questions and realizations that were screaming to be acknowledged.

His mother never seemed to help any situation. She would shed constant unwanted and unneeded worry upon the household. She had the same affect on the boy as all other people do. He began to feel no connection or bond, simply another being that needs to be tied into intricate webbing of those in his immediate surroundings. She tried to restrict him. Govern like the all knowing mother she knew she was. This would fuel a flame more than either would expect. Unable to deal with her own grief and mind she dumped herself onto the boy and his brother. He could not feel sorry for her.

Clause 2

            Perhaps it was coming of age or perhaps it was his new found perception but things began to significantly change within the boy. He began to see himself as somewhat of a rebel. Bad ass mother fucker in later day terms. He knew he was smart, he knew what he had to say to get by, and he had the arsenal of friends and bad ideas to bring it to fruition. Now when he went to school he did not antagonize out of blind youthful exuberance, he did it because he could and it satisfied his devilishly ingrained thoughts. This new gift would fuel every decision. He was not the all A student anymore? Fuck it, who cared, he would get by and no one would ask enough questions to make him feel like they cared. No one could ever make him feel anymore. The time bomb in his mind was beginning to sink in and each day he faced another realization and truth that perhaps he was not ready to deal with. So he used it as fuel to make his mind stronger. He knew just how horrible a person could be, just want they could accomplish, and where their actions could take them. He reveled in this realization.

The pretty girl passes by his right side…

Clause 3

            Fun was not fun anymore. Excitement was nothing but a mere word of the past with no real connection in his mind. Of course there were high points here and there. Going from one extreme to the next proved to be unhealthy after a while. All the while time kept coming and going. The boy new he was getting older. Each year would bring more responsibly and teenage thoughts would try to fuck with his mental system. This would never deter him though. Any and every question or thought was to be pissed off about or complained about. How can one get by if their constantly trying to solve every little thing that pops into their mind? They can't, and their weak if they try. The shell of the boy existed on. The constant struggle to grasp something real and teenage urge to be perverted, troublesome, and destructive propelled the laundry list of bad decisions over the years. Connections to friends were broken. Not by the times and circumstances but by something deeper that the boy could not control.

Clauser 4

            Flash to high school. Here is where the boy senses that he is finally setting into his "true" self. He prided himself and stringing together curse verse of which none could challenge. He cared for nothing but himself. Any and everything he knew he could work over and he did work them over. Any sense of virtue or innocence was in bolts of absent thinking before the boy could catch himself. He tried and succeeded to push away anything that did not have his minds stamp of approval posted all over it. This game was getting old. He hungered for reason and purpose……..

 Tap, tap, tap, tap, concert B flat scale. He heard the band playing and realized he had missed the entrance. He liked music, hated the class, but liked music and was good at playing. It took ten minutes of a Green Day album to make him appreciate and sense what music really did for him. Always next to him throughout the years was the pretty girl. He never really thought about her but she always was in his head. He was just asshole boy with no real positive feature that could woo one such as her so what did he care? So time went on.

Clause 5

            With the sin belt ever increasing with girls and property in the wake, the boy knew that while he feasted off of this lifestyle that urged him to keep going and throw out feeling it was taking its toll. He wanted to break down but would cease to see himself as a man if he did. He made newer, greater visions of the future for himself, filled with money and parties and people. As with all things though he would think about it all, over and over, until it was picked apart and made him feel unfulfilled yet again. Where would it end? Only a little bitch would commit suicide. While he tried to work things in his favor he never had the urge to ruin or play with his friend's lives to suit his urges. There was no group that he wanted to claim. He was just an outspoken thinker. He prayed for a change.

Clause 6

            Life will find you at every point you are not ready for it and all you can do is sit back and pray it is a good surprise. Maybe it's the magic of summer or just something in the air but when it happened it was as though the boulder had finally rolled off and shattered that ice that was this boy. There are not enough words to depict how it really felt. Her warmth, curled up body pressed closely to his. The ever present sent of her hair flowing up through his nose and blanketing his head. Heartbeats and breaths in sink. Hs mind, with all its jittering and babbling, got lost in night and was silent. The sleeping souls around them provided the most surreal ambiance of relaxation and serenity. How was it possible for people to survive as long as the boy had without a feeling like this?

Clause 7

            The wave of questions and wonders and hopes and dreams barraged the boy every day. Wasn't she with someone? Did he do something good? Can this go anywhere? Should he talk about it? An endless stream toyed with his insecurities. He was strong and could deal with it, no thought had ever bested him and God forbid it happen now. Each week the same overwhelming happiness set in and when he thought he could not handle another minute of it, gone. With new turmoil comes new clarity. The boy began to get in touch with the kind of person he really was and knew he could be. There was no need to deny feelings. He just would not allow them to control his actions like they did with his parents. Instead he realized it was important to act on them in order to make the true statement about who he really was.

Clause 8

            He let her in. She was not the simple pretty face he has always known but the keeper of his feelings. She held the key that unlocked thoughts about the meanings of life and the important of love. He made himself there for her. He offered his advice and concern during the troublesome times of her life. He became the big brother. This simply would not do. He pressed his attack and made his intentions clear. Like night and day she would either play into it with her flirtatious nature or look at him like he was on drugs. With every attempt that failed his pride and heart were diminished. He lashed out at this feeling by divulging back into his self destructive ways of the past, only to feel terrible about it later. This roller coaster of emotion and new pieces to the ever growing puzzle had not end in sight.

           

            Clause 9

                        He did not know if he was going crazy, literally. Never very if at all religious he began to look for signs to maybe confirm or deny his actions, no longer able to count on his thought process as a reliable source. It would take a sentence or an action from her to strike a chord that rang so loud and deep and in the boy that to try and explain it would take so much away and denounce it happened. Here is this confused being, getting lost in signs and stomach dropping feelings that has not made any real connection with anyone who may be able to sympathize or offer advice. Perfect.  When worse comes to worse you will find that you can always bitch about your issues to your best friend. And the boy's came in handy to pick up spirits and renew faith countless times. Another sign? Who knew? And the boy did not care to think about it anymore.

           

            Clause 10

                        Cat and mouse has yet to end. Grasping for the hand of God and truly beginning to believe he might have to let go of the one thing he has ever held precious in the world the boy writes, looking for a path of enlightenment. He does not want to play that games he used to. He does not want to rely on the old adages, though helping him to become the person he is, are not righteous or worthy. He broke down one night and felt like he could truthfully pray and ask for help. He doesn't know if that would help him and realizes that he truly knows nothing. One can only live each day with actions derived from their feelings that define who they are as one of God's children. He knows he is the loving, deep feeling person that is committed to proving his worth to the one he wants to live his life for. As long as he sticks to that path, he is never lost, or alone.