[515] No We In Me

I'm inspired by Henry Rollins and his idea that there is no such thing as “we.” In his view, “we” don't do shit. There is no we. It's something of a mythical concept we engage in to reassure ourselves that no matter how terrible our personal lives may be going, as a whole, there's something to rely on. It helps us scapegoat responsibility. Maybe I'm not donating or volunteering like I should, but we mostly try to look out for each other and care. It's an affectation of the highest order.

His idea struck me because of how I considered my life before and after I tried adopting friends. That is, I always had people in my life to kill time with or whatever else, but regarding them as human beings with a whole host of potentials I respected and wanted to be apart of if not foster, was an entirely different kind of playing field. The majority of my life was living the “me not we” kind of idea. I wanted to kill time and I wanted people around who would coalesce to my behavior or intentions. Arguably, my life got insanely more stressful when I stopped playing that game.

Over the last few weeks I've majorly toned down my reading about the world. It honestly gives me a headache to see article after article about Hitler 2 talking stupid shit that compounds into more stupid shit. People like to joke or pretend, but I impress upon you, I get very sick to my stomach and violent headaches when I run my mind through the tumble cycle of that maniac. On top of that, I start to get, not just a “sense,” but a myriad of researched and despotic reasons to believe nothing about how “we” are supposed to behave or believe is true. My “sense” was Hitler 2 was in fact a modern iteration of Hitler until he actually quoted Hitler. Then he lost all license to his former moniker.

Today I've been day drinking and listening to old white peoples' ideas about what they do and don't want to listen to. Fly fishing and golf came up. The new technology in the classroom from a teacher gentleman I talked to was there. The plight of modern civilization was not.

Old people seem super keen on the “me not we.” Old people will sit in complete silence with you in the smoking room of a cigar shop until you're both good and ready to get up and leave. One imagines they care about their families or friends, but whatever their concerns, it isn't worn on their sleeves. My mind shoots to the Swedes given the book I'm reading at the moment. Get them drunk and pump them full of crayfish and you'll finally learn something interesting. Until then, they're happy to bump into you as if you don't exist walking down the street.

I suppose then perhaps I find a particular kind of wisdom. Say I give a shit about my friends, mostly, kinda. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter until they need something from me. Until they're particularly talkative or broke. I'm a vague idea. I'm an impression. My feelings extend to who I can compel in the moment. It's pointless and exhausting to try and extend them further.

I've been thinking again lately of “fundamental truths.” While I tend to lead with “the only truth is change,” one thing that's been floating around is the nature of the human animal. This, again, because of the book I've been reading, and comparing Scandinavian attitudes and ideas to what I'm familiar with in the US. We can be radicals or capitulate to “benign totalitarianism.” We can be emboldened individuals or suffer endlessly as a kind of puppet inundated with thoughts we don't understand and refuse to approach in any way resembling proactive. Your “progressive” cause is contingent upon way more than hopes and prayers about the arc of history. Today Britain voted to leave the EU. Ten minutes later the most googled question from Britain was, “What's the EU?”

A fundamental truth then seems to be we are infinitely ignorant. That is, without irony, we employ our tools for knowledge only after we've subjected ourselves to the punishment our feelings would wreak.

Essentially, as it pertains to me, I feel less burdened. I still want to pursue my goals and website and yada yada. I want to organize the information better and provide tools. I'm not naïve enough to think it will matter. If I win awards and get spots on television shows, I'll very dryly proclaim that it's all a game and all bullshit and my ideas about death being an eventual relief more than something to fear remain in tact. I know from today that I'm not merely contented to drink, smoke, read, and bullshit with strangers, but I won’t turn what actually makes me happier into some noble pursuit of “truth” meant to “fix” anything. I can't save you. I have a fleeting glance at marginally influencing a world or two that I come in contact with. If I can't be happy swallowing that, I won't be happy with anything.

[514] Full Stop

It's getting very hard not to have any problems. I'm not hungry. I'm not in bad health. Even if I've lost my youthful sheen it's hard to conceive of myself as ugly. I have way too much stuff from instruments to electronics. I have enough time to watch 60 TV shows and read several books every week. If I can keep the lie going, I make and manage friends very easy. I've got a college degree. I've been able to experiment as an entrepreneur. My dad looks out for me.

I can still make it sound like what plagues me is the worst place in life to be. I don't even have to cheat and claim depression or anxiety. My "sense of being" is one that fixates on whatever is wrong. I don't believe this happens because I enjoy getting worked up in some kind of emotional fervor. In fact, it mostly just sets in as a sort of added house guest in a space meant for one less person. This is in contrast to anxiety. It picks at you like maybe your best friend might who spits on your arm while they talk, and yeah it sucks, but after 20 years you kinda just wipe it off down your pants and move on. It's the thought out of nowhere during a nice dinner with your spouse or closest friends that you're all gonna die one day. You're going to immediately laugh at the next joke, but fuck your dumb brain, right?

And what if it's not just an errant thought? What if it has become a way of life? You impress upon yourself to approach most everything and everybody in life from that sort of high stakes place? You might even call it a form of desperation. There's thirst, and there's dehydration. You crave opportunities to be awash in life-affirming and honest interactions because for you, the drought is real.

I think people like to believe their perspective is their savior. They assert it when dismissing each other. They lean on it in claims about their happiness. They draw from personal wells of wisdom. To flash the badge of your perspective grants you access to every level of human coping ability. I'm doing it now. I usually rush to diminish or disqualify my perspective because I recognize it as one part to a whole. I reinforce that I acknowledge writing is my coping or "shit" or "very small window" into the world. I don't want you to think I believe I have special license. I don't want you to find something about me compelling or convincing to tragically and ironically leap right over actually thinking about how I feel.

Are those the words to help me discover a problem? People peeking their head in, having a particularly insufferable time given modern conditioning of our attention spans, and glancing at, dismissing, or abusing my ideas for inappropriate or opposite ends? Are my ideas like guns? There's no clearer definition of an object than a gun to efficiently kill someone, but the language of protection and "rights" is endlessly appropriated to keep it polished as something else. Now so shiny we can't really see it anymore but for the bodies it leaves behind.

It's one thing to have an extra house guest that keeps to themselves quietly reading in the corner. Unfortunately, this one is very chatty. Has a lot of opinions. One might say is unable to help himself from blurting out how cramped it's getting. And you know what? The others tend to agree. But what are they going to do? They invited him. He can usually be pretty fun and engaging if you know what you're getting into. Certainly no one is suggesting murder...

I gave my perspective up. I forsook what I used to argue fairly convincingly as not really having any problems. I left it up to friends. I turned my back on it as it drowned in pools of horrifying news. I begrudged my confidence and short memory for the institution of time-honored words and their bottomless capacity for undue connotative pride. It's where people love each other under a ceaseless deluge of timeless positive qualifiers, or "because." It's the place where your "best effort" and "latest attempt" become synonymous. It's an ethos of "overlap" because the tricky and incomplete nature of, if perhaps sometimes philosophically unsound, scientific discernment causes too many headaches. Who cares if facebook says we're friends? We're friends! Keep calm and click along.

We rise to the capacity of our tools. Why have the bomb or guns if we can't figure out how many people they can really kill? How can we be sure we've the capacity in our emotional magazines to appreciate hatred unless we're given opportunities to fawn over increasing numbers of the dead? Aren't we learning our lessons? "These are problems! These are problems! But alas isn't it clear!? We get to have problems! Purpose! Something to fix, and it's not us" If it's not, you, then who? Pick your scapegoat.

I still get blamed for things though. It's very clear that other people feel capable of informing me how many problems I actually really do and truly have. My style sucks, how I talk or don't care to dress. My disposition is all over the place, but mostly wrong or inappropriate. I don't do enough. For all my words, what have I fixed? What am I working on? Whose life have I made easier? Couldn't I donate more of my time? Aren't there things left to sacrifice in service to each other? Isn't the world burning down somewhere? Are you even human or don't you feel connected to the rest of it?

Now we turn into a whirlwind of confusion. Is being confused a problem, though? I have these words, these weaponized perspectives, aimed squarely at me. As a general rule, if I'm professionally unsure about much of what I think, just how far should I run with their ideas? Do they want contrary examples? Experience shows to offer those at your peril. Are they just trying to help? I mean, did they even consider that I maybe really don't have a problem?

It's many more questions than answers, right? That's the nature of that extra guest in a space meant for one less. The only way you ever get to feel comfortable is engaging and accepting the guest. You might find yourself lost in the good way in conversation. You might find the space feels larger as you become drawn to each other. Eventually, with enough practice, you might become so self-aware that you realize you're fictional people in one asshole's ongoing analogy.

I think stabs at genuine friendship are invitations to that guest. We only tacitly accept them again at our peril. It's why I'm generally willing to burn the whole house of cards down that many of my friendships take. I'm a very confused and talkative man in the corner rarely finding the company willing to discuss how cramped it truly is. I'm a party to your happy homes and c'est la vies. It's perfectly uncomfortable.

If only to defy myself, what problems might I invent? Maybe I can discover one by poorly framing ones that I could adopt. Here's one, I can't make people try. Whatever would have made me think I could? I've carried on about my capacity to "manipulate" for years. You certainly don't discover you don't have problems without it. People get cheeky or the giggles recalling someone who could always talk their way out of or around something. Angling yourself for achievement or safety in the world isn't categorically wrong. So then maybe the problem is that I have a few bad ideas about people, their capacity or definitions of trying, or have turned the word manipulate into something too obscure. Well now we're just pulling philosophical word play games and that's as easy to fix as a slap to the face.

Maybe a problem could be that I want to be understood? That's hard to really qualify as well. When were you more terribly feeling than under the abuse of your mom or under the confines of love for someone in high school? In very important ways you certainly got over those, right? Your mom is insane and can't understand really anything. The girl certainly didn't empathize with you and hindsight speaks her wisdom and or luck. Do you really give a shit if you're understood? You don't discover that you don't have problems unless you knew there were people that perpetually seem to understand you. Why do you need one more? What happens then? They devolve into the cycle of asking nothing questions to no one in particular like you?

What if it's a problem just to want at all? This is tricky. Something insists. In an undefinable sense, I want you to feel, I want you to read, I want you to try and see things. The first half of each sentence betraying the second. Why do I want, let alone want you to take responsibility? Why do I want to see my effort reflected back?

AHA! The problem is that I'm selfish!

I feel betrayed when I'm not recognized. Why did I bother coming to this plain of existence and start using your words to embed myself in all layers of your problems and perspectives if you've got no time for mine? What am I alive for? The problem dictates that I can't know without you. As long as you don't think of yourselves as not having problems, then I must resolve myself to looking like the fool to be poked, judged, or impressively ignored. Giving up on what I, at least once, saw in you as ideal or powerful or intriguing about us, is giving up on something that allows me to claim a problem free life. Perhaps in my selfishness I've been willing to give up too much too often or perhaps the wrong things entirely.

It's really hard to say. I've carried on about the wrong and right kinds of selfishness before. My perspective, though small, I've fought very hard to find. It won't go down in one blog and would certainly need the failure of more honest and fluid friendships to harbor greater insecurity. But at least we've maybe stumbled into a more illuminated problem I might adopt. I selfishly want for you. Should I stop?

[513] The Next Smartest Thing

What's the next smartest thing to say or do?

I think this question has become something I'm crushed by. I hope to accidentally stumble over a few lines or paragraphs when I write blogs. You'd be perfectly ridiculous in thinking that these lined up as some kind of measure of progress or will terminating at some bastardized conception of “enlightenment” or some such nonsense. But it's something I'm constantly wondering about my friends and speaks to why I say I hate you when you don't talk.

I've said a number of times that we already live in Utopia. All of the best ideas are here. The problems are the same, and we're mostly just playing a reorganization game. If that's true, and I think it is, what is our next move? For me, it's been to read what's sparked my interest. It's been to talk. It's been to find the humor in the darkest layers of our depravity. I've adopted something of a “reinforcing posture.” Perhaps that's why you might call me “negative.” In my mind, I'm negative like the Germans who engrave the dead family's names in plaques outside of your house and post signs on the street corner citing old anti-Jewish laws. Who wants to think of the Holocaust? The Germans do, every single day.

The problems don't go away. They don't disappear behind the facebook pictures. They aren't fixed by likes. This is why it causes me an undue amount of suffering to see no one I'm claiming to respect sound anything like me in public. You have hundreds, if not thousands of “friends.” I impress upon you, 68, to even give me a page that makes me feel like we have more in common than the worst imposed American selfish and solitary archetypes. My mouth is only good for making me noisy and getting me in trouble. You'll phrase it better. You'll interpret an angle I have no perspective on. Put it out there. Let me share it. Let me read it and incorporate it into my thoughts so they can be a little less like “me” and more like “us.”

That's what I feel like my next step is. To get 68 blogs to read out of my friends instead of 68 news articles about how the world is going to shit. The world's not really going to shit, but my head can only take in so much. How do you really feel about your job? What are you worried about? What do you think about our relationship being, apparently, an opportunity for me to find ways for you to lower your opinion of me once or twice every couple of years? What problems do your jobs face and what do your coworkers talk about? This is where we find life. This is the connection that feels broken in our society.

And I don't even know if anyone agrees with that. I know what I'd have to be doing as a college graduate if I didn't have drug studies. I know debt can't feel good. I know the little things or dreams that seem to be slipping away as I get older. I know whether I read ten books this week or watch 50 movies I'm not going to feel connected to you unless we spark up some semi-bullshit idle chit-chat on facebook. I recently railed about how I was sick of being lied to. I feel like the silence is the lie. When we talk in person, the gap closes, you come out. But here, in our new town square, we can’t find each other even when we're plugged in 24/7?

I've been romanticizing just disappearing. Just going to a country that would pay me to get my master's or doctorate. Just be a modest arbitrary specialist and go get “cultured.” Maybe find a way to relax and discover a way to write in a way that provokes action. Then I realized I'd be glorifying what I can't stand about us. Run away and be self-indulgent. Pretend the problem isn't there. Pretend I don't have something to say, even if it just needs to be reinforced. Act like what I want said exists and that's why I'm putting thousands into trying to better organize it. The world doesn't really need me with a psychology or sociology PH.D. Does it need you doing what you're doing? Are you practicing for the next smartest thing to do or say? Because at least for me, this morning, it was to open my mouth and ask the question.

[512] Listen to the Wind Blow

So, I want this to kind of talk about two things, and apologies in advance if it seems...kind of back and forth.

The first thought is that I think I'm a perfectly terrible friend.

The second thought is that.......jesus fucking christ I think I lost it.....fuck it was compelling on the drive home. Maybe I'll come to it again as I digress upon the first thought. We'll see.

The longer thought anyway is that I'm a perfectly terrible fucking friend. One reason is very obvious. Consider when I was told I was “negative.” I like when things go to shit, not because I actively enjoy or root for failure mind you, but because I like to live in the consequences of inevitable failure in general. I barely know shit about you, I poke my head in disingenuously, and I don't know, it's not like you do anything more than me to suggest you're better than me, but I still feel like I don't do enough to suggest what you mean to me.

In any event, that means I can't root for you. That means I'm not sorry for your loss.
I'm quick to cut you down because I don't speak the language of sympathy. I'll defend this idea until the day I die. I can know where you're coming from with having no inclination or justification for carrying on like what you choose to feel registers in my mind as correct. I get that you generally believe I'm just a sociopath. You're fucking wrong, and if you're an asshole, the more you'll pretend like you're not wrong. Fuck you deal with it. (Christ, you can tell the drunkenness at this point, right? I'll try to do better)

Nothing I do in life is, in my mind, by accident as far as I'm allowed to surmise. I don't shoot for an open relationship because I've somehow managed to quell feelings of jealousy. I don't call people friends had I not done anything less than sacrifice the amount of manipulative matter-of-fact plays into the future I might conjure about your behavior. I know what I'm giving up. I know what I could exploit.

You get that right? Like, when I'm crazy, it's probably part of a game. When I get fucking obliterated and try to defend drunk driving, the first instinct you should have is that I'm bored. I feel like I stress this in a way, but it doesn't always connect. Like, I'm not your suicidal friend. I'm not someone you should ever be convinced about. I play. I'm a fucking terrible asshole. I use words and impressions to give me reasons to feel marginally “in place” with regard to you and in life. Please, always allow yourself the leisure to fuck me the fuck off.

You're my friends because I think I can fuck with you. I think you can play my stupid game. Mind you, the game informs, but ultimately, I'm seeing if you can handle my egomania as it pertains to language and bullshit. Doesn't that feel vapid and empty? Of course it does! You're beginning to maybe see the fun!

Part of being cool with me is understanding my “essence.” It's grasping what drives me. It's knowing that behind the most fucked up thing I could ever say there's something you can rely on. I know I'm not going to kill myself, for example. The longer you pretend you don't know is your problem. Think about that. Really mother fucker, think about it. If I wrote a ten page digression tomorrow expressing the virtue or legitimacy and wisdom of suicide, I'm significantly more intrigued by your reaction to it than what “nothingness” holds for me as I bleed out in a fucking bathtub.

It struck me that the moment I scared the shit out of my dad I started getting more texts and likes to my statuses. I'm a fucking attention whore. It's fucking deplorable. I just want people to acknowledge they give a shit and my problems are themselves dismissed immediately. I can know logically there's always people there I can rely on, but the fact that they like the status or send me the “how you doing” text makes all the difference in the world. And I've even shitted on that idea in the past! Just to make it that much more confusing.

I guess you can call it a head nod to the “real shit.” My dad doesn't care if no one needs to like the last 7 stupid things I said on facebook. He cares that he was there for me. As do I. I don't mean to scare him or friends or whatever, I just try to impress upon them that I'm the sole ambassador for everyone I know who says anything fucking resembling anything fucking real. It sucks. I want you to talk and you fucking suck and you don't. Fuck you, friends. I fucking hate you for that.

If I were to parlay this into a discussion of relationships, I might speak to that second thought that escaped me

It's always going to go to shit. You can be the 20 year old infatuated with your high school sweetheart, or you can be the 50 year old with tales of your rapist and insane family members which colorized your contrasting “perfect” relationship today.

It's always going to go to shit.

I love this idea not for some horrible feeling it's supposed to arouse in you. I think people vastly and perpetually mistake my position on this to the length they're capable of feeling self-righteous and indignant.

“Love,” “trust,” “care,” “perfection,” “the dream,” “my one and only,” “fill in the blank something fucking Disney taught you” IS NOT REAL. Nor is the fucking complicated reality antithetical and opposite to those ideas. Should I really have to fucking state this shit at this point? Absolutely, because new idiots are born everyday.

My first thought when Kristen was like “peace!” was how relived are friends might be. How the fuck could I manage that for as long as I did? Well, if we pretend I didn't call it from about day one, it's as much a mock of VICE verses Disney. And fuck discussing the minutia, you just want her ass tapped by Gaston.

I'm cold. I'm boring when I'm boring. I bring up the para-glider who died by being a dumb-ass amateur flying over the trees as we're looking over the forest at the national park. I managed to drive myself into a place that can't escape “necessary consequences.” Every time I express some colloquial or matter-of-fact sentiment, I'm lying to you. I need to shut the fuck up and not play the “regular person” game or I'm disrespecting you. Kristen's grandma just died. What the fuck else do grandma's do? Mine certainly figured it out as well.

I “love” it.

I don't think people really get that. I love being right. I love seeing things coming. I love knowing that when I wish I could be an emotional wreck, I'm mostly just playing a game with myself. I love watching your excuses play out. I love knowing I'll be your coolest fucking friend on the planet when you and I are 35-40 after you've crashed and burned in your marriages or shitty kids. I love seeing things coming. I love holding my tongue for the conversation we'll have ten years from now.

It doesn't sound human. I'm not your friend because I don't believe the lies your parents taught you to engage in the shitty lives you lead right now. I sell my fucking body so I can tan and read and watch movies from pushing 100 years ago. I'm after every perspective that makes everything you or I say a fucking joke. You know so much about one thing. Bravo. I'm not saying you won't keep my ass alive when something goes terribly wrong. I just don't know if I want to live in a world where you forgot why getting fucked up with me was just as worthwhile when we're both going to die anyway.

I'm not sad. I'm not negative. I'm not the cynic. I'm not a reaper or wisher of terrible things. If you refuse to figure out what I am, I can't help you, and we're probably not friends. We'll certainly never be family as I have the inkling my dad knows the kind of fucked up I am regardless of what I write.

68. I have 68, less than what old tribes might have considered their villages, as my amount of friends. I'm basically too old and dead already. How long do you want to play the game of superficial facebook likes and brushes past each other every couple of years? How many times are we going to have the same stupid fucking conversations about our relationships? Where can we go if we all just choose to not suck and be honest?

I'll just be here watching you die failing as you read me bitching. It's really the best we can fucking hope for right? Lol I sound so angry.

[511] I'm So Fancy

Despite what this may look like, there's a very clear and very poignant point I want to get across in this post. I'm deeply mired by the colloquial milieu over the last few hours, so please, bear with me. I think I can do it. I'm not even really that drunk anymore, but again, I've been provoked by a conversation I had with what I deem the “normal” folks. Let's begin.

I think we dismiss “class” at our peril. For as often as it is invoked in our modern political arenas, I do not believe we spend time defining it. I've offered a few instances in the (too lazy to link atm, but stay tuned) past. We tend to believe it has much to do with our income. You're automatically in a higher class once you breach a threshold. Jay-Z says, “we don't pay the same taxes,” because his realm of existence is better than yours.

As with everything, I've again noticed a pattern. I know guys, my bad, it's all just boring patterns and shit, but really, I think it can inform and help. Maybe you won't sound stupid or like someone of a lower class one day because you caught this blog. :p

Anyway, first we must bring up the idea that someone isn't “political.” I think this is a horrendously vacuous and insidious lie. It is a lie that is so reflexively employed that people routinely take pride in espousing its virtue. Shame on them.

You see, in my view, we don't have a choice. By being born, for all the shit loaded upon your shoulders, you are by default “political.” You want your food not poisoned? Yeah, politics stepped in and regulated that shit. You want a world not suffocated by a nuclear Holocaust? I'd put money on the idea that you have an opinion on our maintenance and use of such weapons.

What's important to understand, is that for the “normal” folks, they can't be bothered. This sounds simple, but it speaks to so much more that you can only get when you impress upon them.
A woman I talked to tonight said she wasn't “political.” Her exact reasons why were, “I was raped when I was 7, then again when I was 11, my family are drunks, and it's taken me years to find this guy who I for the first time in my life am actually happy with.”

At first glance, her story has nothing to do with some political position she may take. More importantly to realize, she is speaking to the kind of overflow our minds are constantly dealing with in attempting to discern where our attention should lie. Because everyone has a story, right? We're all still in the margin of error coming out of primarily murderous and rapist behaviors that fueled our species to this point, no? One not need be callous in dismissing someone's story or hardship, but if we're going to power on into the future, your personal hardship is not a counterpoint to your responsibility or capacity to engage with a larger picture.

Because that's the important thing. You're not just your hardship or capacity to pursue happiness. You're not the endless stories you can offer me about some trip down video game lane or vacation or conversation you took that stood in stark contrast to your otherwise terrible or tumultuous life. This is an extremely hard, if not impossible sell, in the moment someone is trying to relate these things towards you.

It speaks to the tools I hope to create. We're all in this together and probably speaking about the same language even if you only ever get peaks at it in my drunken diatribes because you're pussy ass niggas who ain't worthy my time. Or at least, that's the story you tell me by faking your lives on facebook and giving me nothing to read. It's hard to burrow down until you find common ground. If it's hard between me and people I might have too quickly jumped into calling friends, get drunk and talk to the your average Steak and Shake employee. I promise you, by virtue of you seeing this, you occupy a class unfamiliar to them, if only because my patience cannot abide otherwise.

Endless deferral is the name of the game with regard to the desperate, broke, and tired. It's not their responsibility to think about who's going to be the next President. All they know is, when time comes to abort their mistake and they can't afford it, times are tough once again. When they used to get that dank weed from the guy who got deported, man, just our luck, gotta go back to the mediocre shit. It's a one to one analogy when you think of the general thesis to Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Poor dad has no other option. 2 thousand or 6 thousand doesn't mean shit to him except as something that's going to be spent in some form of desperation or treat. You're dumb to tell him to invest, just like you're dumb to expect people who've never felt their impact on the system to appreciate the degree of impact from their choices.

It's the sickest thing to recognize that these desperate, had their whole lives fucked with mother fuckers, actually do care. They ask questions. They'd get involved. It's like looking at the “dumb kid” and realizing they just need to be given the time and attention. People only go so far as you're prepared to support them.

I think we just need to spend more time talking to each other. You'll see the same shit I do. You'll see the great divide in perspectives that still seems to resolve around similar points. I know a world's amount of information more than the people I talked to tonight. That doesn't make me special. It's not particularly hard or different than the shit they know. But I come from a place of privilege that allows me to contemplate and play with that information. I have to “bestow” tools that get them involved because I don't have a pocket “I was raped when I was 7” story to use in service to my disenfranchisement.

We're only as good as our worst player. And I keep meeting people who say the stupid ass phrase, “I'm not political.” I think we can do better.

[510] Drip

Just troll and down vote now. You won't care to read this, I promise. (reddit disclaimer)

I'm so fucking sick of being lied to. It's so loud. It's an endless cacophonous barrage that beats its way into my head despite every effort to fight. Or worse, I don't fight and try to avoid, or maybe play along, and the insidious fear and anxiety burrows into the pit of my chest.

It feels like "everything." Logically, I can pull back and know some things or people remain consistent. They are the clear exceptions to the rule. I do not believe culturally we have a grasp on what it means to be truthful. I don't mean the truth as you see it. I don't mean some throwaway comment about opinions being like assholes. We don't understand the transcendent value of striving, fighting, and sacrificing for what is true and real.

I know this because I struggled to not put "truth" and "real" in quotes like just now. Because I know what I mean by them. I get the feeling previous eras had fairly strong conceptions of them. Talking at the jaded fuck tards in a shit hole forum has me sensing their desperate desire to pounce. Their insecure "wisdom" meant to perpetuate compounded lies about their capacity for perception or clinical diagnosis. My capitulation to addressing the non-existent impersonal and presumed "hive mind" in jaded fuck tard shit hole forums.

It's easy to shit on people when they present as whiny cliches that compose the various relationship and life advice subs here. "I just don't believe in myself." "My upbringing was terrible." "I'm super stoked about my spouse, but should we be fighting this much?" "My suicide ideation has reached critical mass." "It's just, I'm not that old, but I feel..." "Mostly it's that I'm out of shape and unmotivated." "My friends left, my girl left, I'm in recovery." "The one book I've read this year really opened my eyes."

I find cliches useful only insofar as they promote genuine and nuanced change. You can't blame your brain for phrasing things like you've grown up to hear them. But cliches aren't the answer. We'll all talk ourselves into someone else's all-too-familiar corner. How'd you get there? Can it change or inform for the better? Do you really care, or are you just pretending; have you been told you should care and found yourself here by accident?

I reflexively shit on cliche people and stories because I don't truly identify with them. I'm confident in my looks, even if I could stand to be more active. I don't try to lie and hide my faults behind the mirage of happy and healthy relationships. The last girl I was with we were together for 5 or so years. It might have been day 2 that I voiced constantly why it was going to be her to leave and all the reasons that would start to add up in her head.

I don't root for failure, but I genuinely attempt to be honest. I try to acknowledge the oncoming train and actively prepare for fallout. My life tends to not arbitrarily and unexpectedly blow up that way. It still hurts when things go bad, but it's the loneliest place on the planet being Cassandra.

It's hard enough to point outside of your relationships and start noting what's wrong. It's even harder to feel intimately every failing and foreboding point of your day to day. The first time, that you're aware, that your partner lies to you in years. The laundry list of things they say are wrong with you or they don't want. A list strikingly similar to character flaws and strategically negotiated characteristics you've had since day one. Did they not know what they wanted? Were they lying all along?

I'm willing to believe people are dumb first. I think it takes time to figure anything out about yourself, let alone many things about yourself. But what we do control is what makes me feel like death. We do control our approach. We don't have to lie. You can feel as sad as you've ever been and come to it honestly even if you feel you deserve to feel as bad as you do trying to lie.

But relationships will always be a clusterfuck. How about at large? Again, we can defer to cliches to write off people that don't try. I do. Unfortunately, I try. I experiment and say yes. I invest. I engage in conversations with people I would instantly judge and write off. I explore entertainment or other topics in the same fashion. I hate Arrow, and I hate it after watching every episode of it. It's real. I can provide truthful examples of its brand of stupid without lazily proclaiming the folly of The CW or kitsch superheroes.

Media gets to lie. The most popular gets that way why? For the same reason we're flirty with fascism. Repeat something often enough, you get comfortable. You get persuaded, even against your will. I never wanted the name Trump to pass my lips. It's hard to imagine being a functioning human being if I hadn't adopted a position on him today. Lazy, cynical, and ham-fisted attempts at "entertainment" or "journalism" become our standards for conversation and beguile our capacity for evaluating information.

We learn to accept it. We learn to breathe the deception. Personal public relations departments take up office space in our heads to spin the filth of our circumstances clean. We're not struggling, we're fighting. We're not sick, we're poised for revolution. We're not dying, we just can't be bothered to care.

Honesty, for me, I practically worship. I'm so "meh" or "even" that by the time I feel sad, especially sober, it's a glorious invitation for me to mine personal truths and find words for why I'm tearing up. It's a privilege to be moved to create. It's a privilege to abuse your perspective in service to try and understand or connect. Honest feeling leading to honest reflection, if only back at yourself, when the ones you wish could see it aren't able or are unwilling.

I hurt for my craft. Every area of human engagement requires some kind of street cred. If your hands aren't burnt and cut up, you're probably not a real cook. If you haven't broken a bone, what are you doing at the X-games? If you're a stark-raving mad doctor of anything who experiences borderline PTSD upon reflecting on grad-school, you owe it to yourself to insist people use the proper title.

My sacrifice is different, because it always seems to manifest in relationships. I always have to be prepared to lose the friend even if I don't want to. I'm not allowed to believe I can't see where something is going. I have to eviscerate my privacy and notions of "taboo personal thoughts" or a different, and worse, machinery kicks in. I have to really think and work with suicide. I have to really play with and tempt certain kinds of fate, or I'll never find the truth. You certainly don't have it. The collective wisdom I employ to manage train wrecks still leaves the trains crashing.

I don't like looking angry or "crazy." I don't like being picked apart by people with no capacity or respect for what I try to create. From writing to my relationships, it's all meant to strive for truths you can rely on. It's never and not for some naive or perpetual "happiness." I'm not hoping we polish and politicize our avoidance mechanisms. I don't want the "implied" demeanor and level of conversation. I'm so fucking sick of being lied to.

I'm so sick of it, I find myself empathizing with my bat shit mother. I've taken more slaps to the face over lies as a child than anything else. She vehemently hated when we lied. If she felt as broken and insane as it's making me, maybe I understand why she'd fuck us up. We were persistent and easy enough targets. Certainly I currently feel like a number of people could stand to be slapped.

I want more people to sound like me. I want them to start any and every discussion with "now, I could be perfectly upside down on this issue." "My feelings are super compelling and probably shit right now, perhaps we should talk later." "I respect and acknowledge your perspective and see your point, can you offer it with regard to my next question?" "I will talk to you as long as it takes for us to find common ground." In today's world, the first one to scream, throw up their arms, or accuse the other side of something wrong "wins." Take the last quoted approach, say in "debating" with a fundamentalist. Someone who re-asserts the same lines over and over isn't willing to talk, but their lips will keep moving. They can't be honest, but they certainly feel like they're saying something.

It's the liar that perpetuates the self-fulfilling feedback. You can rely on nothing if not for things to fail. With a simple adoption of that idea, you've set things in motion. To distinguish how and why something or someone fails as opposed to categorically dismissing them as inherent failures deserves the widest distinction. I could take my Cassandra plight and refuse intimacy, scorn women, and levy endless blame on my ex. Because, of course, pick your favorite cliche about humanity in general or women specifically or condescendingly "kids" perpetually.

Instead, I can talk about the moments it sinks in how bad I feel. I can identify the strategies and ideas I think should permeate every relationship, intimate or otherwise, and pick out when those stopped functioning. When the lies come out. When the conversation stops. When the positive characteristics and good habits get ignored so the looming monster can be made to look all the more necessary to be killed.

And I don't think it will get better. I don't think I'll meet many more if any people who don't fall right in line with a kind of failure I'm pressed to call even spoiled and bratty. I took my racing heart and bout of kicking my bed over a culmination of frustrating forces, and turned them into a boring procedural explanation. I allowed myself to be human, and then attempted to approach my actions as an adult.

My life feels stagnant. My life constantly has parts of it breaking down and away. Much, if not nearly all of it, is predicated on lies. I try to respect and explain how I feel concurrent to the fact of my friends' recent and terrible hardships. The false comparisons and pissing matches would be the liar's game. As long as I can't find honest assessments and self-reflection, per my mother's instruction, I'll just continue to beat it out of me. I'll have to rely on my torrential television and foreboding literature. I'm losing my ability to cope with engaging people much further.

[509] Power On

I think a wildly important variable to consider if you ever hope to understand me revolves around power. 

I’ll give you my conception. I think power is fluid. It’s not this steadfast macho archetype meant to stomp out and dominate everything in its wake. Power is akin to recognition. You know when you can and can’t make a move and what the likely output will be. 

It gets deeper and little more insidious. Power is translation. It was a rather striking conclusion to me tonight, of the male teachers and leaders I’ve experienced in life, none have stepped to me like I’ve seen them do to other people. I think this speaks to “implicit” power. Take something as banal as a marching field. The director will whole up in the weakling’s face. If I fucked up, I can’t even imagine a scenario where he’s staring me down daring me to fuck up again. 

I didn’t think of it at the time. You don’t play ignorant monkey games when you’re a child bred to play by subservient rules. But the reasons some people got shit on to their face while others did not becomes clearer as you get older. They recognized more in you than you did at the time.

It’s something that speaks to how you can take things for granted. I, literally, have people actively avoid bringing certain situations to my attention. It doesn’t have to be because I’m some special awesome problem solver. It’s because they know how I’m going to end the problem and end it now. The implicit threat of force. The matter-of-fact approach I’m capable of applying. 

But I’m still so wildly intrigued. Why am I granted that power? What do you hear in my voice when shit gets “serious” that you know, fucking end now or god forbid? Is it really just an evolutionary thing? 

I’m not the biggest or strongest. I very well might be the craziest. I don’t think anyone who’s genuinely gotten to know me would doubt that. Is that matter-of-factly translated in how I speak? When I tell you to incapacitate me or else, even if the sentiment scares me, does it scare you more?

Because I don’t think it’s about sheer ego. There’s plenty of hedonistic egomaniacs that I’ve never felt intimidated by. What is this power that we give people like me? Just how “all-encompassing” might it speak to in group dynamics? 

I’m okay with this being a blurb because it’s just something I’m super interested in that I don’t think I’ve given enough time. I know the world changes when whatever my “dominant” influence kicks in. Why? How? How do I know that were my high school band director to get in my face, I’m convinced he would be genuinely worried I’d beat him over the head with my instrument in a way that the scab he fucked with wouldn’t? Just how much are we dominated by the will of the angriest monkey?

[508] The Sickness, The Lie

I want you to know that I hope for this to get dark. I know I already don’t manage to ever speak to things in generally positive ways, but despite what you may think, I don’t feel I go out of my way to try and suck your desire to live. I want to pursue, as far as they’ll take me, the thoughts that evoke such feelings in me. I want this to put you to tears after you’ve already been having a bad day. I want to be ashamed I thought some idea needed to be shared.

Luckily for me, I recently wrote a very ridiculous, redundant, and shame-worthy “defense” of drunk driving. That seems as good a thing to start with as any. What on Earth would possess me to do such a thing? Boredom is a cheap and easy answer, but not correct. Devil’s advocacy pretends there’s really another side that isn’t bred from self-indulgent ignorance. No, the only reason to write something like that is because I believe it every time I, or someone I know, gets away with it. The longer we get away with it, the more compelling and correct it feels to defend, in spite of the bullshit nature of the argument. 

You also don’t make an argument like that for fun. You do it because you’re desperate. The guilt starts to build. The magnifying glass you apply to your life spends a little too much time under the sun. The hopeless and hard to define reality starts to shape words and windows of justification because, how else could it possibly be? This is your state of being. How long are you willing to torture yourself thinking you are perpetually wrong? No one’s arguing back, at least, not with any muster. More to the point, no one’s really paying attention, and if you can’t create this little island of soapbox proclamations, get busy drowning. 

With little to nothing to look forward to, you begin to worship pain. You want to hear the drama from your friends or your town about their health or relationship issues. You want to see people screaming at each other in reality television. You’re finally back to sharing something meaningful! It’s not just wait and stew and think and drink and wander and lose yourself to moments that pick away at your being. My mind just shot across thoughts running from religion to revenge porn that could speak to this, all of which I’m going to ignore. 

We have this presumption that we have a right to live. Like the goal is to survive until the end of the universe. Like our programming is made of anything more than the same instincts animals have to lick themselves and masturbate in public. Who gave us that idea? One of your gods? One of your fears? Your proud indignant ego? “The masses?” A small group of well-intentioned but ignorant people who would have reasonably killed themselves otherwise? 

Our species is terminally sick first. That’s the struggle for finding a purpose or reason. That’s the lip service to hope and love. That’s so-and-so’s foundation and your anonymous donation. That’s eloquent defenses of liberty and justice. That’s belligerent nonstop greed and fear-mongering. It’s this giant depressing, looming, terrifying dance with death we never learned how to deal with. Our methods reinforce lies. Our methods are fake smiles and secret prayers to the darkness. We talk about what we “can never do again!” and to “think of the children!” Death isn’t real. It’s like a cold. Over-medicate and sleep it off, and it’ll never come back. 

I want to die. The catch, I want it to be for something, more specifically, for me. I want to kill my time on creating what is stuck in my head. I want to lose weeks or months off my life staying up too late and partying too hard striving for the extra memory or spark of inspiration. The sad part won’t be when I’m gone. The sad part will be when it clicks that it’s in this moment I know I’ll be dying for nothing. 

“Reason,” “progress,” “common sense,” or any other qualifier you want to apply to the space we occupy in evolutionary history do not, and cannot, win. You think you’re helping? It’s helping yourself. It’s helping yourself to cope. It’s your persuasive rhetoric to keep you showing up to work and inventing new sex games with your spouse. You’re a “good” person or a “hard worker” or called your congressman and recycle. You’re an “inspiration” and a “leader” to those around you who “just needed a little encouragement.” Language is what keeps your disposition alive. Hatred and fear fuel the soul. 

I’ve been thinking that there are an infinite number of universes, and each one is dedicated to a specific lesson. This one’s is that we’re infinitely small and need to learn how to die graciously. That we won’t discover what’s making us sick or how to defeat the lies until death takes the forefront. Hearing about old cultures and the origins of human sacrifice certainly tells us this can go terribly wrong, but the Mayans could never cut out as many hearts as are stopped when we drop bombs. 

We can dial it back from genocide though. I have a wonderful story about sexual exploitation. I recently met a girl who described showing up to a friend of a friend’s house to buy cocaine. Within minutes one of the 2 guys who were there took her to the bathroom and whips his dick out. She describes being put off and angry. Then it occurs to her, as they leave the bathroom and drink/snort a little more, that while she’s had plenty of 3-ways, it’s really been her fantasy to be with 2 guys instead of her with another girl and guy. Dick-whipper now gets rewarded for showing initiative. 

Their scene gets interrupted when one of those gentlemen’s girlfriend shows up and knocks at the door. The guy who drove my new friend to the apartment is friends with her boyfriend. A fact he uses to try and blackmail her into sexual acts a few days later, claiming he has no incentive to keep the secret. 

There’s a “moral high ground” person in me that would begrudgingly support every half-assed 14-year old run Tumblr page about the immorality of men and how NOT APPROPRIATE WAAAHHHH it is to present your dick to someone within 3 minutes of meeting them. I could put on my pretend psychologist hat and explore the hidden self-loathing and lack of esteem this girl holds for herself, despite her clear enthusiasm in relating the tale. I could go belligerent soccer mom and disavow the use of drugs because they “clearly” lead to this or that. I spent most of our conversation debating whether I could stomach hooking up with a girl I wasn’t attracted to sober. 

For those wondering, these are the instances in my life I draw from in describing a contrast between “people I deal with in general” and “people I apply the word friend to.” My concern wasn’t for her and her decision making. I wasn’t even being funny running through “butterface” jokes or that scene from Scary Movie. I don’t know how to blame someone who’s taught themselves that showing their dick can get the desired result as wrong, when even the girl who capitalized on her “opportunity” at least said she thought it was wrong too, but picked differently. Words like “respect” for each other don’t really make sense in that conversation. 

From the sickness of my stagnant and ridiculous circumstances, I perpetuated the lie. Not that I’m concerned with what you do sexually or what drugs you take. But I pretended along with her that this situation was complicated or interesting. I played along like it’s “her relationship to honesty” that’s all that matters in whether or not she should tell her boyfriend. I didn’t go out of my way to be actively flirty, but I left a proper window of tension open as some perverse “option” for later. Not one I plan to pursue, but I no-less gave myself up, like she gave herself up. 

I do think I’m broken. I don’t take joy out of nice things or pleasant conversation. I want the game, the exploitation, and the cold sad feelings that drive you to be interesting. I want you to selfishly and pointlessly use me or my words to make yourself, and by extension other people, miserable. Then maybe you’ll do something dramatic. Maybe you’ll get the stage and tour the country giving impassioned speeches about things we all know but can’t feel. Maybe the tragedy of my head can reach you before damage of something more horrifying becomes personal. Can I co-opt the space for your actions after losing a child to gun violence? Can I poke your depression and anxiety until it bleeds into the waters of more influence? Can I make you afraid of genuinely feeling like me? 

Now we get empathy. That’s when you understand. None of this support group bullshit. No “it gets better” moment. Now there’s teetering and flirtation to sustain you. You’re forced to incorporate death onto your thoughts. You’re forced to balance pushing too hard with somber contrition. You jump off the roof when you’ve spent too much time under water. 

I’m a symptom of the larger sickness. I’m the fallout and the lie that we didn’t drop a bomb. I have to pretend every moment that this was worth it, and have little idea as to why, other than to spread the pain around. At least I own it. I don’t want it, and this might be me trying to give it back, but I know it’s mine.

[507] Stick It To Me

A significant portion of my thoughts are dedicated to the idea of “efficiency.” For me, to be efficient stands in contrast to how most of the world operates. They take ten years instead of one. They offer 50 excuses instead of 3 solutions. They sip various poisons instead of shooting for the vein.

A component of being efficient is the feeling of laziness. Why, what are you if you’ve nothing to do? Say you plan to clean up the house and get all your errands run throughout the day. 2 o’clock rolls around and you’re done left to stare into the void and start drinking wine. My modern sensibilities often direct me towards media. Many I’m sure play video games or build ships in bottles.

For me, efficiency is about awareness. I can peak into a million different futures depending on how I decide to spend my time. I can glimpse my half-assed effort engaging in things “for the sake of it,” or I can pick the ideal when my focus and intention are harnessed correctly.

This means, while I got fucked with my contract during the coffee kiosk times, my response should not be to become a better lawyer than the one I consulted. If I genuinely care to be even marginally healthy and informed on too many TV shows, it’s just dumb not to watch them while I’m on a treadmill or exercise bike. If I can read a comic in 12 minutes, I should own a tablet that doesn’t take 2 minutes of loading/freezing for each one in order to power through hundreds of back issues. Or maybe it’s alcohol! Why sip a shitty beer for $5 unable to get drunk, when I can buy a handle for $15 and car bar? It makes being the first ones to show up trying to avoid the cover charge a more fun drunkenly infused time.

Oddly enough, I’ve been criticized for trying to be efficient. I’m “holding us back” by car-baring as if the handle came with a set of handcuffs. As if anyone likes to spend more than they have to in failing to reach the desired effect. My impression, your attitude and lack of perspective is holding you back. I was making an offer; please feel free to reject it.

Less specifically, criticism comes in the form of “well, why don’t you learn it yourself?” I’m trying to have a website built by the world’s busiest web developer. I’ve made several statements about the work I’ll be able to do and expansions I’d like to roll out that have all proven fruitless. So, in the intervening weeks, the advice is to get my Master’s degree in open source mapping programs? I’m not exaggerating, this is how people approach advising about programming because places like Codecademy and Udemy made it seem like it’s just that easy.

I think it’s a rather destructive idea to always think there’s something to do. It’s a distracting one that helps remove your mind from what’s going wrong. Say you built a building and your boss said, “You should always be building. A. B. B!” The power is still running to the tools. You’re balanced precariously on a high ledge. You pack layer after layer of spackle and other shit that walls consist of on. It’s dangerous, dumb, and a waste.

My current trapping is figuring out how not to fall prey to dangerous and dumb wastes of time and resources. I’m failing pretty hardcore, but luckily I’m pretty good with money and patience. There’s probably another way to phrase that more accurately because I definitely can blow money and fucking hate waiting for anything, but my life doesn’t reflect that of someone you’d think struggled with those things. 

Gaining perspective is a good thing, but there’s purposeful and not ways to do it. I don’t read because there are words on a page that desperately need to be in my head. I’m usually reading so I can better argue. Just because there’s a book I thought was cool that’s calling my name as I write this doesn’t mean I’ll get the most out of it because I break down and finish it in the next few hours. I hate working out for a week or two just to get into a study where I need to keep my blood work even. No matter how much I think about getting in better shape, until I don’t rely on my muscles to not be in constant repair mode, it’s an unrealistic goal I can only inefficiently pick at. If I can’t practice the ten instruments I’ve bought over the last few months for roommate, neighbor, or sleeping through the day related reasons, I’m not going refer to myself as a “multi-instrumentalist” who’s “passionate” about music. If an old movie kind of sucks or has subtitles, or maybe a lecturer talks slow as shit, I’ll watch the video at 1.5 to 2x the speed. That’s right I even try to kill time efficiently.

I guess I just wanted to state once again that I’m stuck. I suppose I feel the stuck so loud again because I tend to feel unstuck after I complete a study. I buy things that have sat in my Amazon wish list for years. I schedule myself to do things or join groups that carry fees around town. I get the most painful kind of excitement in making $500 payments on things like my website or in service to some other entrepreneurial idea. And then I subject myself to the mercy and time management skills of the rest of the world. It rarely goes well, and they stick me back in my place.

[506] Suicidal Tendencies

I once referred to “progress” as working things out of your narrative. I think the culture, in the United States particularly, raises you to believe that accumulation is key. Get degrees, get stuff, and get promoted. If we start to cobble together what a “world culture” may look like, it’s accumulating “friends,” attention, and vast swaths of wealth. It’s best to go viral, find your appropriated personal style and voice, and touch or take a picture with everything.

I’ve been thinking a lot about suicide. I don’t mean in me committing suicide, but the general symbol, power, and almost mythical lore attributed to it. In my own life, the only times I’ve genuinely thought I needed to die were when I was so disastrously sick I felt like I was never going to get better. The idea of never escaping. The mercy life would be bestowing upon me. It’s in being totally honest with myself in those shitty moments that I started to empathize and respect “right to die” groups.

At that point, you only really serve the people around you’s insecurities. You’re essentially suffering for nothing. They won’t put on their adult hats that knows death is coming for us all, and a few more months or years of your pain isn’t going to make their life any better. To die then becomes a noble acceptance and respect for reality and your limitations. To regard that as some kind of perverse fetishizing of death or “playing god” are the immature and petty reactions you find any time a childlike mind approaches something they are uncomfortable with.

The broader theme is perhaps more to do with death in the abstract. The death of how you talk about yourself or behave. The death of your relationships or friendships. The death of your interests or certain things you used to worry about. When do you allow something about yourself to die as opposed wishing things around you would? Take an easy example in considering politics. How do you switch from “all the old crazy racist bastards need to die!” to “I’m willing to pop and bury my bubble of hatred?”

My instinct is it starts with exhaustion. You’ve just cared too much for so long that your body gives up even if your mind would like to keep lying. This could be another way of considering your familiarity with things as well. Does the person who vividly remembers hiding under their desks over the threat of nuclear annihilation really give a shit about a Trump presidency? Or how about people who’ve been shot at and maybe kinda sorta played a role in committing war crimes? They’re likely going to have different priorities, no?

When I go back and read old blogs I see so much that I’ve cut out of my concerns after becoming too exhausted. You can only bang your head into fundamentalism for so long. You can only employ battered-wife analogies so many times before you remove yourself from the conversation as you start to believe they deserve it. I see how many conclusions I’ve come to years ago that still influence how I write today. Much of the same language, if not better clarified and expanded, is employed. I get to watch just how convinced I was of some proposition or problem that I might now have to approach in a roundabout way.

Do you feel you change because you’re learning or because you’re giving up?

I suppose it’s important to qualify what you’re learning and how. One of my favorite things to do is look at relationship subreddits and watch these clumsy immature tales of woe put every “dramatic” thing that’s ever happened in my life into perspective. It humbles the mind regarding ideas related to progress. In this society, you can stumble into a corner of the internet apparently dedicated to sharing your story and maybe finding useful advice at 35 while you display the perspective and writing skills of a 14 year old. You can say, “hey, he’s trying and has access to a tool.” I say, “how much has he ignored in 35 years to end up here and why does he think this tool is adequate?”

To whittle things down seems the only route to “true progress.” You can think of it like this. We start as “everything.” We’re atoms. We’re a micro-biome. We’re water. Peel away the larger distinctions and you begin to feel like you have a personality or responsibility. You feel intentioned and perhaps we traverse into the language of “free will.” The more you regard yourself in the abstract and at the will of an endless confluence of forces, while some like to pretend it offers a kind of nihilistic and fatalistic relief, I would argue you move away from any dignified claims regarding a distilled person.

I think this is why you abstract out problems. How many of them really have to do with you? How much can you shed in your approach to “problem” as a concept before you allow it to become you? At what point can you be reliably responsible for taking ownership? I suppose this is another way of stating you should be concerned with your little corner of the world. I’m pressed to think your little corner has wildly larger meaningful consequences than people want to give it credit for.

Let’s think about what happens when we approach a problem. Say the situation resolves poorly. The wise thing to do seems to ask, “What did we learn?” This is an ever-fleeting ideal. Every time I get into some form of confrontation with friends I “learn” the same thing. I just shouldn’t bother. I seem to only ever piss them off when I’m genuinely hoping and trying. My next option would be to get really angry which would help no one. So how to maintain friends? Smile, accept, shut up. Ideas that make me feel terrible, but the lesson is very loud.

You could also say I should learn “how to approach” or “how to speak their language.” Here I see a problem though too. Their language is incomplete. Their language is angry and judgmental. Their language is pretending to understand. So should I drop my “pretension” rooted in boring procedural language? Is that really the lesson? When discussing things with students, do teachers just go “fuck it, you’re not understanding, so I’m going to contort this concept into the language of gossip related to the Kardashians and call it a day?”

I want to work out stress and anger from my disposition. I don’t want to just be exhausted. I want to work through every point of contention and believe I took something meaningful away from whittling down all that isn’t. I think that project applies to my hobbies and habits as much as it does to my relationships. How do I call someone friend who refuses to talk to me? Who am I to a person that I only make angry when I appeal to some “higher” form of discussion or connection we may have experienced in the past? To me, after having every outstretched branch cut off, the wise thing is to let the butchered and naked tree die.

I can’t stress enough the difference between murderous intent and mercy killing. I cut off friendships because I feel sacrificing my time and stressed out brain for the sake of it is unwise and unfair to myself. I don’t hate the people, but I recognize and respect that I don’t really mean to them what I did in the past and that doesn’t become an opportunity to throw around blame. Even with something less volatile than relationships, I consider old fashion sense. I don’t hate my old wallet chains or goatee. My relationship to them just changed.

I wanted to discuss more how we make the decision to kill things in ourselves. Why people talk about sacrificing dreams for kids or their spouse. Why they “grow up” and adopt conservative cliches related to embarrassment and high-class sensibilities. When I approach my dreams at 27 that were the same at 16 that I conceived of first at 10, am I accumulating skills and perspective that will help me achieve them? Or am I shedding ideas from 10 years old I was previously unable to appreciate how deeply they rooted into my mind; ideas about the rush from getting attention, the power of money, and the satisfaction of besting some academic problem. Will those make me happy about pissing people off I thought I could get along with as a “not human” who’s accused of every character flaw under the sun?

Or do I let the goal of relating die? Do I regard my ideas as a 10 year old’s and let them die as well? Have I made progress keeping my “sociopathic” relationships strong and steady while I take some ill-begotten “pride” in leaving a sad sea of “feelers” in my wake? That begins to bark at the annoying confidence assholes have from every rich white male archetype.

Who and what are we killing ourselves for? The idea of a “project husband” comes to mind. “Oh, you know, I had to train him.” What if we regarded every act as one in service to death? Every step a decent into death. Where are we walking and why? If you regard me doing drug studies as dangerous, what would possess me to risk my life like that? For the money? Kind of, but I’m saving way more of it than I’m spending. I’m doing it in service to my creativity and time. Would I still do them if they scared me as much as they do you? Let’s remember, we’ve all had to approach things for the first time, and I promise you have no idea how close I was to leaving.

I think it’s important to give yourself the permission and power to die. People don’t want you to. They want to believe that they’re worth you hanging on. You have to remember, they’re looking for a statement about them, not you. It’s why I’ve so endlessly stressed myself out about who I was going to have in my circle and why. I’m not defined by my ability to maintain or amass friends, and god help you if you desperately need me for some dose of “insight” or “real” or whatever paltry qualifier has been employed to dignify my shitting on the carpet. It becomes unbearable to watch people sacrifice themselves for a pittance elevated to “compromise.” I won’t watch the language of murder disguise itself as noble self-sacrifice. If I hate watching myself beat my head against a wall, at least I’ve learned how to persuade myself to stop.

[505] Earth's Mightiest Heroes

For my sake, in attempting to tie everything together, here's a few thoughts I ran with in the car I don't want lost. One, after watching Captain America: Civil War, it was a lie between Captain America and Iron Man that left them both broken. Two, I felt every minute of my shift washing dishes, and knew it would be in poor taste to make a joke calling to unionize. Three, I don't “simply hate” people as much as I hate how they react to a challenge; to protect what they hate as well. And four, value is cripplingly subjective.

I had the terrible thought that I would be helpful and wash dishes. I thought it would be something to do to kill time with. I've done a little irresponsible spending lately and could recoup. I wanted a peek into a friend's world who spends huge swaths of his life in a kitchen. I did not think spending 9 hours hunched over scalding hot pans and having filthy water splash over me would leave such an indelible impression.

That is, I'm not a stranger to hard work. In fact, one of the biggest reasons I thought offering myself to this gig would be to sort of remind myself that coming home a little sore or finding the rhythm of a menial task can actually prove to be somewhat rewarding. If I walked away with a quick $200 on top of that, great. I'm not concerned about my swollen fingers or, now that it has had adequate rest, my back giving out like I was last night. Nor was I “tired” in that I couldn't have kept working were it not for my reliance on being propped up on counters.

What made the shift insufferable were the endless stream of thoughts I've accumulated through years of work like that. I didn't find ten minutes of “flow.” I didn't stop hounding myself about what I'd rather be doing. I was genuinely saddened to learn I couldn't see Captain America: Civil War early because the shift was in conflict. Of all the damn movies in all the world to coincide with my stupid decision, why an awesome Marvel one?

I affirmed many things in going there. Even if I hate something, I still stick to it. I allowed myself to be drowned in my commitment. I didn't exactly ignore the pain, and I did inform the management I'd be perfectly fine with someone taking my Saturday spot, but I'll be back tomorrow if they don't find someone. I said my pain was worth it. I said they deserve my swollen fingers, aching back, and burns for $100. In the past, I wouldn't have thought twice about that dollar amount or the time. That's the wage, the offer, this is the task and duty. You volunteered. They were polite. Why do you still feel like this is so bad?

I think it's because I allowed more into my perspective about value and worth. It's important to keep commitments, but even better when you can respect and have a stake in them. There are perfect soldiers in every army, and that by itself shouldn't endear you to any one in particular. Every kitchen is the sum of its employees. I don't disavow leaders or think everything should be equally distributed, but I think it should be distributed. Not wages, a stake, ownership. As the owner, you worked so hard and so long that you feel entitled to take off early and get to regard yourself as a “job creator” or whatever. But you've been raised in a sick system that dignified dangling the carrot.

Consider The Avengers. Consider the damage they cause. Cities wiped out. Innocents dying. But do you ever truly question their moral compass? Do you ever worry they genuinely want to kill each other even during a civil war? A major theme of the movie is accountability, and as Captain America rightly points out, to whom? Governments with agendas? People incapable of determining the nature of an existential threat? The consequences of their battles are certainly not perfect, but it's hard to find a single disaster that wouldn't be worse without their intervention.

And aren't we fighting the same kind of war? Your boss is friendly. Your co-workers are funny. The mission statement of your office is to change the world and donate to charity. How do you negotiate what you're accountable to? If your moral compass isn't as fixed as a mythical superhero, what steps in to supersede bureaucratic grandstanding in order to save us? What do you bring to the fight that at least can show us that it's not about levying blame and sacrificing relationships, but bringing to a head difficult questions and conversations before they're forced on us.

I think you should own your work. Like heroes must accept the consequences. When it becomes about ego, revenge, or fear...you turn into the bad guy. I suppose I wanted an ego check. Maybe I couldn't tough out the grease and the attitudes. Of course I could, but it wasn't anymore worth it than when I put up with the particular problems of any other job that I didn't own. I have enough self-respect and sense of responsibility to not leave people hanging, but I don't believe in tacitly accepting the noose. At least not when you have a choice.

I feel like it's perfectly in line with a string of decisions I've made “just because.” Because of some vague notion of what I'd like to do in the future. Because I'm bored. Because I don't feel a part of a community. Where does that fit? I'm not angry, but I phrase things in ways that make me come off like everyone is the enemy. I'm not afraid of looking good or bad, which poses unique problems in and of itself. Where does boredom fit? Where does “I can't make people do anything” land me on the hero scale? I can put them off. I can ignore them. I can denigrate them. But I can't get them to offer honest time lines or often on the phone. I can't get them out of work. I can't persuade them I'm not just a whiny achy old douchebag who complains too hard about dishes.

It speaks to my obsession with stories. If you're paying attention, and the teller truly cares, they help you explain your life. They let you join the superhero team when you've only ever felt isolated or confused. Even telling the story is something of a resolve. It existing and validating. Perhaps I am the villain. Maybe I internalize a level of hatred I only dream others could experience. Maybe they'll get to suffer every minute of their sacrifice like I do. Maybe they'll drown in their thoughts. Maybe they can be coaxed over the cliff into a forced resolution.

I just...I want to believe in people like Captain America. I want to defend all the best we as a species have created and think individuals all have a vital role to play. But who is Captain America without the fight? A lost and jaded poster-boy. An ironic symbol of days gone by. He needs an enemy, even from his own ranks. So my fear is of what we're doing to ourselves. I want revenge for every wasted opportunity. I have a large enough ego to at least consider myself more than a dishwasher. I aspire to an ideal, but I won't get lost in the myth. I'll be the villain until you're willing to fight hard enough to defeat me.

[504] Milking It

What's your first inclination when you hear someone complain about something?

It seems there are the empaths who deeply hurt right along with you and always know what to say. There's the “take it like a man” types who wouldn't be caught dead wincing about their arms being ripped off let alone some personal or mental struggle. I find the people who, in a sense, find a way to offer their problems in an enduring sentiment related to hope or faith the most interesting. They forgive themselves, you, and manipulate the word “complaint” into a life affirming resilient statement.

It seems to vary depending on what's being complained about. The other night a girl who spent a solid 10-15 minutes flirting with me turned and disappeared after I innocently said the way the bartender had tried to hit on her had been working for him for hours. This was before she pulled him in to explain how she doesn't appreciate it. I didn't mean to condone his style, or in her view, lack thereof, but there's a chasm between me and her concerning what we'll regard is worthy of special or perpetual indignation.

I'm not even sure if there's a right or wrong about it. Worse than that, I'm provoked to think I have a diminishing conception of things as “inherently wrong.” The harder you play the empathy game, you give yourself opportunities to grow and understand. With that said, I think that's where my concern lies. We're not an understanding bunch. We don't really care to try. We react and then seek justification.

Consider complaints about identity. I just watched “Lemonade” and read a piece about it being about black and particularly black women's identity. That they have to play the support role. It quotes Malcolm X when he says, “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.” I then tried to read a piece complaining that there isn't powerful art like Beyonce's that represents fat black women femme something something other qualifiers, and couldn't she have invited American Horror Story's Queenie to the party.

I started to think of the delusions of grandeur rich white dudes hold about their business savvy or political acumen. I started to think about Native Americans.

Surely you have the right and obligation to use your soapbox when you feel compelled to do so. You can never stop giving attention to a societal ill without sacrificing yourself in the process. I suppose I'm worried about the kinds of divisions we create in the kinds of identities we claim. You can be as defined by what you assert as you are what you're leaving out. Responses like “why aren't there any fat black women in your videos?” articles seem to ironically compound the problem.

Hopefully I can unpack this. You can say Beyonce is about anything. A celebration of capitalism, black women and identity, celebrity, love, empowerment, on and on. You can recognize how and why identities have been marginalized and the importance of artwork like hers. You can deeply empathize with her messages about family or infidelity. And it should be obvious, that in order to create or say anything, you have to leave many things out. How you talk about what's been left out makes a difference.

So you're concerned about fat black women not making the final cut. Are you trying to say you're more worthy than the disabled black women that didn't make it either? Are you saying Beyonce deserves blame and your community's anger? Why don't you feel compelled to create art celebrating yourself?

Humanity is the game we're playing together, inroads to a conversation are made in either noisily reacting to someone's creation, or taking what it affirms and incorporating it into our lives. One splits the identity further, the other provokes understanding. Just as I can only write as a white guy, I'm not saying fuck everyone who isn't me and you don't belong in my experiences with pain. In the reactive fervor we seem to weaponize our identities. We focus on the potential for scandal in Beyonce's personal life and tip our hat to her marketing team. We'll make claims we're contributing to the “cultural conversation” when we're really stewing in our defensive jealousy.

Do I agree with Malcolm X about the state of the black women? No. Am I capable of pulling back and seeing behind the words to know what he's getting at, to try and feel the level of pain that compels him to say it, to adopt the identity for a moment that's genuinely angry and hurt and feels that way? Absolutely. Do I think his words are an indictment of other oppressed people? Kinda sorta. What we need to ask ourselves when we get the microphone is whether the conversation is helped or hurt by not speaking to “one love” so to speak. By respecting all the nuances and potential for connection in the word “identity” when it's coupled with “black” “native” “fat” “disabled” “gay” or whatever.

For all the happy white family shows that are supposed to represent me and celebrate whiteness, those people don't feel like me. I'm not a CEO. I don't have that much money. I don't seek to constantly reinforce or believe in the strict lines about what it means to be white. I see bigger lines between rich and poor than I do black and white. Are the poor people coming out to complain they wish they could afford a car nice enough for Beyonce to consider smashing it?

I think by looking for an unsubstantial qualifier, you end up accidentally caricaturing yourself. To be black is as fluid a game as who's got the microphone. But that's the case for every individual. What you pay attention to. What you choose to incorporate and respect. Does “Lemonade” speak to me? Not really. I don't care about infidelity and don't believe in marriage, so the first half is out. I got a quasi-emo vibe from some of the poetry that felt overwrought and had me smirking. Slow motion shots alone didn't do it for me. And who cares? None of my views or criticism really matters, even to me. She's good at what she does, so props.

I'll remain concerned about how we think of identity going forward. How we think about the racist reactions. How we think about celebrity. How we'll hijack and piggy-back and shoot ourselves in the foot as we innocently claim to be enjoying or offering “constructive criticism.” Yes, to everything but ourselves.

[503] Child's Play

I’m always confused.

It occurs to me that I never know what’s going on. When I seem to accomplish something that suggests otherwise, I feel it a trick being played on me. Of course I frequently offer reasons for what I do. I say I write to keep sane. I say I read to take pride in being pretentious. I say I revel in my likes and interests because the alternatives erase my soul. I claim to do dumb shit to keep things interesting.

All the reasons tend to pass. That is, no one has found the will to claim I’m downright incorrect in my assertions. Every once in a while perhaps I make a blanket presumptive statement about the course of the world that gets a bit of banter, but that tends to end fairly quickly. In that instant, you begin to wonder if the person responding to you is suffering the same problem. Did they really want to challenge me? Did they really care my opinion?

I’m considerably more confused about how and whether I get along with people than anything else. To this day, the best explanation I have for my best friends is they are as concerned with their own lives and feelings as I am mine. Another way to state that is I’m not their problem. They don’t blame me for talking or phrasing the way I do, joking the way I do, experimenting with or liking things they don’t care for. And it’s more than some simple societal notion of, clearly fake, respect we pretend to have for one another because the word “tolerate” comes across as rude.

If I were to pretend I wasn’t confused, then I would say the people who seem as up their own ass as I am mine make the most sense to me. I’ve referred to this as personal responsibility. You could describe it in terms of awareness. Immediately I feel I should interject that they aren’t all people who can be as forward or direct as me either. It’s not a kindred spirit convention where we desperately beg back and forth not to be judged. I would call each and every one of these interactions the ideal kind of friendship. You relate who and where you are. You pick up where you left off. You’re happy that this person even exists.

It’s perhaps not a secret to you that most relationships don’t seem to operate this way. Most relationships are about leverage. It’s not an accident that popular listicles and tabloids say the same things time and again about toxic behaviors and habits. We, by and large, have found no will, reason, or capacity to get over that game. We trap people. We emotionally manipulate under the guise of romance. We fetishize the story of togetherness to reinforce pop culture kiddie conceptions. We excitedly brush under the rug our fears and doubts because we believe in ill-defined “more.”

As I get older, the confusion grows. You get to spend time running your life experiment and testing what you’ve learned. Results don’t even retain the courtesy of being merely inconclusive; they play out in flatly contradictory ways. You can take a friendship between two guys who routinely get into fistfights only to discover they’d go to the grave for one another. Across town two gentlemen who claim friendship might experience a tussle 1/10th the degree and never speak again. This leaves you to only confidently claim that the word “friendship” is practically useless or so context specific as to be perfectly obscure.

This is of course how I arrived at my problem with the word “love.” It seems not a cold, nor mean, nor closed-minded position to say if a word means everything, it means nothing. But we retain feelings of that ill-defined “more.” Even if I hate the word, and genuinely don’t know what it means culturally, an irreverence or utterly compelling sensibility or awe or appreciation begets its usage. It speaks to the depth of our subjective sense. We are never more real or alive than the moments we want to claim love. In practice, that claim spans from your picturesc and cheesy facebook photos to your movie clichéd ideas about what you’re supposed to say under the moonlight. It runs across your food, pets, kids, hobbies, indulgences, and so forth. You fall in the deepest the moment you are able to hand yourself over to being defined by something that provoked the true depth of how you consider yourself.

But you don’t consider yourself confused. You don’t ask why you’re able to see the enduring and special majesty of your spouse, but someone else can’t. You don’t ask why you’re a dog person or love ice cream. You don’t watch each feeling move into a space to be accepted or rejected. You ride the stream hoping to avoid rapids.

For me, I often think of my confusion in terms of what other people have introduced into my life. I have friends with high anxiety. They’ve had that anxiety kick in after we hadn’t seen each other for a while and it seemed to be making their visit kind of a letdown. I recognize this as the emotional leverage game. Unintentionally and without malice, but unwisely, that friend wants me to find a way to assure them we’re still cool. Presumably, the choice is mine to determine us, but by extension, them. I almost certainly never play this game.

I had a friend who I defended from physical harm and gave money to who found more value in re-befriending the person who choked and tried to extort her than find even ground with me. I’ve had a friend who I’ve driven across several states to visit because they were lonely and we were “just that close,” who decided a year or so ago to just stop talking to me because I made a joke about a new boyfriend, or so the excuse that has never been expanded upon goes. I had a friend explicitly state how well they got along with me and my group and they weren’t just trying to “make their rounds” and disappear before they practically disappeared.

You begin to develop a sense that when you care, when you try, when you live up to some kind of valiant honor as depicted by timeless heroes, the quicker you will garner scorn. By enjoying yourself, having principles, or even remotely attempting to accurately account for your responsibility and perspective to the moment, the world will lash out at you and teach you to break. It becomes obvious why we seem desperate to see things play out in a morally expectant way in our stories. Why we love to bang the pots and pans of self-reliance and liberal progressivism; the “real” world makes us sick.

My confused speculation has posited that people hate themselves, and after several hours of listening to Sam Harris, aren’t even aware of it. Say what you will about consciousness or the depths of potential confusion regarding a personality, I know there’s a disproportionate level of vitriol I experience from the people I’ve chosen to try and give myself to. I didn’t perceive a line in the sand, I didn’t draw one, and as long as you remain concerned with taking responsibility for yourself, you’re never going to cross one in my mind. As long as it’s my feeling to examine and make a choice about, I have to extend the basic level of respect I hold for myself to you. Overwhelmingly, I understand, you don’t want it.

I don’t understand the capacity for prolonged disapproval or hatred for someone anymore. When I did understand it, I understood it as work. I knew it took reminding me of bad things to stoke the flames. I knew I was constantly looking for a reason to feel self-righteously invigorated. I knew that the future looked like it was going down in flames if things didn’t go my way and people didn’t agree with me. I can certainly still dislike people and want to remove myself from particularly bad ones, but I can’t maintain the machine that lets them define me. I go and look for something to be proactive about. I try to find a way to incorporate or discuss what puts me off if and when they’re open to it.

But again, in my confusion, I’m led to believe this is “mature,” “respectable,” “worthwhile,” “progress,” “accepting,” “friendly,” “loving,” etcetera. Instead, it makes you look like a rube. It makes you look weak. In fact, you are weak. You didn’t push the boulder over the top of the hill promising to squash who set you to the task. Moreover, you’re to blame. You made them something you should want to squash! If only you’d swallowed your hatred and let it play out like a normal person. If only you’d break something, or yell, or hit me instead of “act” like it’s all so very confusing. Like you didn’t do anything wrong!

It’ll probably be filed under things I’ve said a million times, but I’m always wrong. My state of being is wrong. I’m wrong when I try and especially when I don’t. I’m wrong when I’m too angry, but wrong when I’m feeling nothing. I’m wrong in my choice of language and when I eat like shit. I’m wrong in making any conditional statement that can only speak to a moment that has passed. If I post this in the wrong forum I’ll be told so rather quickly with prejudice.

If I’m so wrong, why aren’t they? Why aren’t you? Why am I open and willing to accept you when described by your worst features, but mine are unforgivable or not worth the effort; worthy of literally being shunned? I don’t mean as if I was the kind of person who routinely emotionally or physically abused our friendship. I don’t mean as someone who pathologically enjoys creating and seeing suffering. Like a desperate orphan crying out to the parents that abandoned it, why can’t you love me!? I don’t even believe in love; I’m making it all the easier for you!

The only way I can ask the question is in deeply appreciating the contrast. How do you know someone for years, have thousands of pages of conversations or countless hours of memories, and then one day you become an unrecognizable animal that they never understood how they gave it the time? If I’m confused with a whirlwind of thoughts, haphazardly collecting in blogs, what kind of Armageddon is going on in the other person’s mind? Have they just not known pain, or so much that it’s all they know how to operate in?

The ones who resembled my best friends are the most confusing. The ones who I’ve never been nor could see me in a fight with before they turn on me. The ones who’ve made heartfelt professions about who we’ll be to each other in the future before they storm out the door or talk to me like they’ve put their daycare center worker hat on. People grow up and priorities can certainly change, but as far as I go, I feel consistent. Consistent confusion, perhaps consistent mistakes, but who you met in college is likely who I’ll be when I show up to your funeral. If you’re not about that, please stop playing with me.

I get confused by my sadness. I claim often I don’t have hope. I don’t feel hopeful. I don’t speak in hopeful terms. But my body and mind break down and want to die as if I have more hope for everyone who’s ever beaten, ignored, or hurt me than I ever see them finding for themselves. I write in sheer defiance of the assumptions I operate under about how little I matter or frequently will be misunderstood. I don’t know why my mind won’t drop the ideas of anxiety or anger for what never was in the first place. I don’t know why it blames itself for being tricked or for trying.

I suppose it’s preferable to feeling nothing, but what do I know?