Another voice added to the choir...

I’ve been gone from this place for too long. Hiding from myself and from having to face down and admit things I’d rather keep denying or ignoring. In the interim my father has passed away, my family has splintered, my friends have gone their own ways, and my life despite losing so much has become a bit more fulfilled. I’m in a good place. That’s all I’m saying about myself right now, because I don’t want to this to turn into a “Here’s what you missed” episode. Rather I feel compelled to join the chorus, if for no other reason than to say I spoke out. I often claim that voting means nothing. We live in a representative democracy where we elect leaders that are supposed to have our best interests at heart, but due to a quirk in the rules, put there by design, we don’t actually directly elect our leaders. I’m not going to decry our system. There are faults in it, that much is sure, but there is no system that is flawless. We’re better than most in a lot of ways and we seem content to rest on the laurels that afford us.

We’re lucky. We live in a country where healthy discourse is encouraged, at least in theory, and we can be the voice of dissent without fear of real repercussion. We are exceedingly lucky to be here, but too often we argue for our own exceptionalism as something that’s innate rather than something we earn. Since the events of September 11^th, 2001 our world has changed. We are no longer the unquestioned super power in the world. Sure, we brought to bear the might of our military against those that sought to harm us, but we’re almost fifteen years down the road from that fateful day and the world is no safer. We’ve gone backwards.

I recall the early aftermath of 9/11. Pundits and newscasters made the case that were targeted for a multitude of reasons, “They hate our freedom” “They’re jealous of what we have” and most of these explanations made sense at the time. It satisfied two needs that had developed. On the one hand it explained away something so senseless and horrifying. It provided us with a context within which to place something that up to that point only one generation of US denizens had experienced previously. On the other hand it consoled us by reminding us that ours was the greatest land, the best place, the ultimate utopia of everything good in the world. We readily accepted these claims as fact and an undertone of fear began to percolate.

We got daily updates of military actions overseas, but with them we also got reminders that no place in the world was safe. From bombings to shootings, we were constantly reminded that the next attack could happen anywhere and come from anyone. That fear began to take hold and strangle us.

I remember being sixteen and questioning a lot of what the government was doing. I decried the Bush administration and their actions, I lambasted the government and their rhetoric, I sought to tear down anyone that championed the superiority of the country without taking responsibility for the atrocities we had committed previously and were continuing to execute. I was vicious. A petulant little child that disagrees with so much of where the world is headed and yet speaks about things like foreign politics with the learnedness of someone that has only a passing familiarity with the subject.

I got older, I grew up, and I learned more. I learned about the history of our country and their hand in ousting governments they didn’t like, how they subverted movements and revolutions in order to protect their own interests. I learned these things and I became more and more disillusioned with the world I lived in and the government that increasingly appeared poised to assert their dominance of it. I had learned a valuable lesson in my teens. I had to temper my response, pick my battles, and choose which points and causes were worth devoting energy to.  It was this temperance that kept me from being plagued a second time by my own exuberance.

We live in an age where recent memory is almost disappearing because of how much documentation we have of things. The internet has become the ultimate record of human achievement and the deepest pit of our shortcomings. Once something is posted here, it’s here forever. That said, the question has to be asked, how did we get here? I’m not talking about arriving at the internet age, I’m talking about how we arrived at a place where something that happened just fifteen years ago and all the events that followed it can be so easily and readily ignored or forgotten. I’m talking about how there have been countless mass shootings in the past decade and a half and yet we’re no closer to owning our collective complicity in them.

The same rhetoric is always espoused, “This was the act of a deeply troubled person” “This was a lone gunmen suffering from mental issues” “This was a home grown terrorist” “We need to legislate more gun control” “We need to limit the public’s access to assault style weapons” it all goes into the same echo chamber. We tie ourselves in knots over these things and after a week or two we come out the other side with nothing done to really address the problem. I don’t pretend to know the right answer to the problem. We’re too different and varied a people for me to say that a broad reaching blanket solution will be completely effective. I have friends that own guns and are enthusiastic about it. They treat them with respect and they have never and will never discharge a single round in anger. I also know a few people that the sheer notion of them holding or wielding a gun makes me cringe and shudder.

We’re right back at the crux of the argument though. One side says “No guns, ever!” and the other side says “All the guns! Always!” and they champion their ideas to their own acolytes and try to win their argument in the court of public opinion with things like rhetoric and grandstanding. They espouse statistics and studies that support their claims, they rail against their opponents as being too militant or backwards, or the claim is made that those that want nothing to do with guns will invariably change their tune when faced with a life or death situation. I won’t lie, both sides make compelling arguments.

In the end, we need to do something, and even if we make the wrong choice, nothing says we can’t correct it. We have a history of this. The eighteenth amendment made alcohol illegal in the United States, and for thirteen years the law stood. When at last we realized that we couldn’t actually enforce it and the reasons for its passing weren’t all that founded, we repealed it. We did something, discovered it didn’t work, and we changed it. That’s one of the amazing things about this country, or used to be anyway, we would try things, we would attempt seemingly impossible actions and if we failed we’d take what we learned from our failure and try again. It’s how we got to the moon, how we got the A-bomb, how we managed to navigate the Cold War without unleashing nuclear Armageddon. We recognized that we are human, we are flawed, and the best we can do is to learn from any mistake we might make.

Sadly, those days have passed. We now sit languishing under a government beholden to multinational mega corporations and special interest groups, like the gun lobby, and despite shootings and massacres being almost a common occurrence in recent years, we’re no closer to preventing them than we were a hundred years ago. We have ineffective leaders and a divided country that makes any movement, for good or bad, next to impossible.

When I was a kid, I remember hearing my father make comments that showcased an inactive, if not token, racism. He’d deride other races and cultures with pejoratives and insults forgetting that his wife was of a different race, and his children were of a mixed heritage. While I would listen to these things from him and truthfully not think very critically about them, I never adopted them as my own ideas. He might speak harshly about blacks or Asian at night, but I’d go to school with kids from these races and some of them were great friends of mine, or even someone I had a great affection for. So it never reconciled with me. I never took his terms to really be applicable to anyone I knew. While I’ll admit I never called him out on his use of the terms, it was easier to treat him like that senile grandmother that still uses antiquated 1960’s racial terms because it’s just what she’s used to.

Unfortunately, my brother did assimilate those ideas as his own. So did my sister to a lesser extent. Both of them look down on anyone that isn’t white, and for the most part they deny their own Latino heritage. I’ll be the first to say I don’t wave a flag of pride for mine, but I don’t deny it. I accept it’s a part of me and I’m responsible for how I choose to acknowledge it.

Responsibility is really what all of this boils down to. Personal or collective responsibility for the actions taken by others and allowed by our own inaction is what needs to be examined. We live in a world where shootings are just part of the background noise. A world where bigotry and racism are becoming more accepted because of public figures, a world where classes are suddenly needed to explain to people what constitutes sexual consent, a world where every ill that’s perpetrated is either not the fault of society, the result of blind ignorance, or the product of fanaticism.

The fact that there are universal things we all hate but are still collectively allowed is beyond me. No one likes being shot, but somehow we can’t come together to say that we agree on a list of criteria that must be met before buying a gun. If someone got on TV and called for the unilateral outlawing of Christianity there’d be riots in the streets and completely civil unrest, yet we do nothing when that very thing is proposed, albeit in not so many words, in regards to Islam. We pick and choose what to care about based on what directly impacts us. If you’re Muslim or you have someone in your life that you care deeply about who is, suddenly you have a vested interest in preventing their persecution.

Ignorance is okay in things like forgetting to order your burger without ketchup. Ignorance is fine when you call a business to find out what time they close. Ignorance is perfectly acceptable when you go to your doctor and ask for more information about the treatment you’ve been prescribed. There’s nothing wrong with ignorance, so long as you don’t attempt to use it as a crutch that allows for plainly stupid action to be explained away. No one should have to tell you that killing is wrong. You shouldn’t need to be explicitly told that having sex with an unconscious person is not okay, and if you actually do need to be told these things, I don’t think you’re really all that fit to be part of society.

Fanaticism can be a good thing though. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the product of fanaticism. The internet meme “If Darryl dies we riot” is the product of fanaticism. Sports rivalries are the product of fanaticism. All of these things are born from the same place. We have a deep love and admiration for something and that devotion pushes it to be better. It can drive us all to be better. It doesn’t though. We consume the things we love and at best ignore or regard with indifference the things we don’t.

We’ve forgotten how to come together, how to work as a collective toward something greater than ourselves. I was born in the mid 80’s and grew up in the 90’s, but I think I might have been born in the dawn of the decline of humanity. On July 20^th, 1969 the first human being set foot on the moon. By all accounts the world collectively gathered around and watched this history event. We were one people achieving an amazing feat and despite the flags and symbols plastered on the side of the crafts that took those three men to that silent rock in space, we all felt like we were part of it. We had accomplished something that seemed insurmountable. In the decades since we’ve most closely recaptured that moment with the release of the next iPhone.

The term Orwellian is thrown around to decry an all-powerful totalitarian state as depicted in the novel 1984. The reality is that our world has come to resemble Huxley’s Brave New World more than Orwell’s own dystopia. We’ve drifted apart, lost regard for our common man, forgotten how to connect with each other and chosen to silo ourselves in with “Safe Spaces” and “Trigger Warnings”. We’re a splintered people, divided by our fears, empowered by the notion that our ideas are the only ones that are right, and consuming the same things but doing so under the belief that we’re discerning when we do so. It’s not too late though. We have all the time in the world to act, to try something, anything, until we’re out of time. Outlaw all the guns, take every single one and melt them down to make braces and rails for disabled and crippled kids. Conversely, outlaw no guns. Make everything legal. From tanks to missiles to APCs make it all legal and available to the general public. Park a F-22 Raptor on the same car lot as the Mercedes and see which one the hedge fund investor goes home with. We have to do something before we allow fear to take hold and strangle us from the inside. Doing nothing is what got us here to begin with. 

Definitely NOT a suicide note or a cry for help...

Drain the abscess, ease the swelling

Bring the terror back where it belongs

Let no man see the folly

Of believing that he’s god

Let the pressure build within

Until the soul is doomed to crack

Temper goodness in a furnace

Fueled by anger, shame, and misery

The essence that remains is little more than ash

Serve his head upon a plate,

His presence is a cancer

It will devour from inside

Consume your better nature

The reflections turns grotesque

When you’ve locked eyes with the abyss

And stared too long into the black

Probing empty depths

Nothing left to do

But let the wound bleed out

The salt and searing lemon

Remove all hint of doubt

The pain you feel is real

No phantom shadow or an echo

Reminding you that Death still lingers close behind

With baited breath upon your neck

The kiss that falls from tarnished lips

Burns hot upon the touch

‘til nothing’s left but fear and sorrow

The burden of this life, the cost just far too much

Too much is never enough...

It would seem that greed has become the bane of my existence. I’m fundamentally disconnected from whatever impulse it is that perpetually drives the inability for people to be happy with what they have. The desire for more just doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t “want” anything. I’d like more money but only so I can get out of debt and not so I can move to a big house or make my car into some gaudy flashy abomination, or even to trick out my wardrobe into some obscene pastiche of color and designer labels. I don’t need it. My great aunt used to impress upon me the difference between wants and needs. She endlessly sought to instill in me that there were things worth saving for such as car repairs, emergency medical services, etc. and then there were wants that could and should be relegated to a back seat position and regarded only when the disposable income was available.

I find myself in the unique position currently where everyone around me is speaking of and placing importance around the idea of planning for some idealized career situation in which they have total autonomy and want for nothing. One friend in particular made a proclamation some years ago in which he stated his intention to be a millionaire by the time he was thirty. With only a couple of years left before his deadline arrives, he had indicated that he’s on track to fulfilling this goal. Now given that I generally get by on a shoe string budget and still manage to have enough spare cash to help out those in need, the question for me is why anyone would need this much money? It serves no real purpose, it doesn’t enrich life in any real way and it doesn’t contribute to the content of one’s character. It’s ones and zeroes that are given arbitrary value and allow for the exchange of goods or services that are ostensibly of a quality that will somehow elevate the purchaser to a station or position of betterment and recognition. I listen to the rhetoric as it’s espoused, and I can’t help but feel indifferent or disgusted at the importance placed on money.

Given that I’m not too far from turning thirty, myself, I listen to all of these lofty ideas, intentions of taking off and going to Paris or some other exotic location to relax and indulge, and I can’t help but see it all as useless excess. It seems that everyone these days wants to travel, they want to see the world and take in what they believe to be some grand experience. Now I can’t and won’t decry travel or exploration. I’ve never left the country, I’ve never wanted to. That’s not to suggest that I’m some die hard, overly patriotic idiot that clings to the stars and bars as though they are the only true herald of prosperity and truth in the world, rather I recognize that on the whole, my interest in visiting another part of the globe would be unfulfilled given that my interests aren’t for sightseeing or taking copious photos of some landmark or work of art, rather I seek to understand the place. I would only go to one place in the world and it’s because of the history. And I wouldn’t visit, I’d go and never return. But the common refrain these days from most everyone in my age demographic seems to center on saving for the future because of the myth that Social Security won’t be around when it finally comes time to collect and that the greatest accomplishment one person can achieve in their career aspirations is to become their own boss. Now regardless of the goal, ultimately it seems to all come back to greed. This incessant need to just need more, to never accept enough as being sufficient is sick.

Now I know that human beings are hard wired to strive for more, to work toward achieving higher aims; it’s how we cultivated culture, language, and produced civilization, but the things we work toward in this society seems to just be material. A bigger bank account, a nice suit, flashier clothes, a nicer car, a bigger house, a pet with a pedigree, a job with a multi word and multi syllable title that comes with a corner office and company expense account, and all of this is nice in theory but we define ourselves by it. We actively believe that attaining these material or arbitrary items and titles respectively will somehow enrich us as people. No one takes the time to realize that even with a bank account that sports a seven figure balance, a house that has taxes equating to more than I pay in rent for the year, or a job title that can’t be translated into the native language of the country where you multinational corporation is pillaging and raping the land, you’re not made a better person. You’re still you. Nothing changed. Greed has become the only reason to do anything anymore. The same tiresome refrain is repeated today to kids just like it was told to me. Go to school and get good grades so you can go to a good school and in turn get a good job. Why do you need this “good job”? So that you can make obscene amounts of money and in turn live a life of luxury. The equation seems a bit lopsided to me. I work myself to the extreme of fatigue and exhaustion; I relegate myself to the bottom of the list in terms of priorities and put everyone and everything else higher up. I don’t intend to ever retire or shuffle quietly into a state of idleness and uselessness. Leisure is great, insofar as you’re doing something to enrich yourself, to better your character, cultivate your mind, or produce something useful that will benefit the whole of mankind. Instead everything has a price tag. Video games, spas, cars, movies, music, television, posters, trendy books, comics, even the simple act of having a meal has some connotation of privilege and prestige to go along with it. No one creates art for the sake of making something beautiful, they want money for it. It’s all about compensation.

I find myself at odds on the mindset of achieving a station in life where it’s acceptable to do nothing. We are the only species on the planet that seems to actually buy into the belief that there’s an imaginary quota to be filled before it’s socially acceptable to sit around and let time pass us by. Every moment of every day should be spent doing something that betters us as people. I’m a writer, or I like to dilute myself into believing I am, and while I will indulge in movies, I listen to music constantly, and on occasion I’ll read for pure enjoyment. What you don’t know if all of this is speaking to me, it’s enlightening me, it’s informing me on some small aspect of something. I’m cultivating an idea, a message, a missive, a meaning, an understanding, or reaching for an epiphany from all of this. It’s not just filling time, and that seems to be the aim for most everyone. Fill time now by working and making money so you can fill time later doing nothing of any importance to contribute or benefit the masses or yourself in any lasting way. Why does anyone need so much money that they can buy land or personal aircraft? They don’t need it, they want it. But their wants have become something to be impressed upon the masses as things that everyone should aspire to obtain. I don’t like flying to begin with, so the last thing I want is a private plane. I really only work so I can pay my bills cover my expenses. I’m not saving up for a big house, a new car, some expensive elective surgery, or even to go travel to some far flung corner of the globe. Money changes people, and the pursuit of money changes people even more. I will keep working until the day I die. And if there comes a day where I’m told that I am no longer able to work or perform the things that I find fulfillment in, that will be the day that I make my grand exit from this plane. Idleness is uselessness. I dislike the feeling of sitting around with nothing to do. If I’m ever sitting and staring blankly into the expanse of the world, I assure you, I’m not just counting passing seconds, I’m most likely working or fabricating some facet of a story I’m working on, analyzing an interaction I’ve had with someone else and the conversation that took place (questioning their word choice,  tone, inflection, timing, pacing, behavior, the focus of their eyes), or examining the nuances of some situation that I’m seeking to get more control of. There are no idle moments for me. Every second is spent doing something and it’s not for the pursuit of money or more “things”.

My car is falling from together, my apartment is in a house that is rotting away on the foundation, my job has little to no room for advancement and betterment in my career and I devote far too much of myself to it for what pittance I actually get from it, but none of this matters. I’m fulfilled. I earn enough to survive, the car keeps moving under its own power, and the house remains standing. I don’t need any of the frills and accessories that we’re told to want. I’m utilitarian to a fault, if it has no purpose, I don’t want it. It has to do something, to better my existence in some way. If it can’t, I don’t want it and I’m not interested. Now while I know the point might seem murky in all of this, let me succinctly phrase it here: why is it so hard for people to just appreciate what they have?

I know there are those that will say I’m guilty of this sin, and I won’t deny it, but I don’t seek to obtain more useless crap in an effort to find contentment. I need fulfillment on a philosophical level more than anything else. Perhaps I’m disconnected because I recognize that none of this matters. In a few billions years all of our money will mean nothing, all of our companies, our civilizations, our petty squabbles over land and beliefs, all of it will mean nothing because the little rock we inhabit will be nothing. In the grand scheme none of it means anything. So why can’t we just try our best to revel in and appreciate the things we do have while we have them? Greed drives us further from fulfillment because we always believe we need more, nothing is ever enough and never will be. I’ll keep showing up to my job until I die on the clock or they fire me because I can’t do it anymore. And if the latter happens, it’ll be on that day that I’ll know I’m no longer of use on this little rock and take my leave. I have to remain busy, to be useful, to better the subjective experience of reality we all share instead of just trying to accumulate useless and intrinsically worthless crap for the sake of saying that I managed to get more than someone else. We’re all born into the world the same way, naked, covered in slime, and screaming our heads off. We all go out of it, none of us is above death or able to cheat it (except perhaps my father, that man is harder than a coffin nail), so why should any one person have claim or need of more pieces of paper assigned an arbitrary value than anyone else? Kate Beckinsale, Keira Knightley, Channing Tatum, George Clooney, even the stuffed shirts in congress all have the same thing in common. They’re human beings, brought into existence on the same little blue orb and breathing the same air. Sure they look different and have more money, bigger houses, nicer cars, and whatever what have you, but they’re no better than me or you. They still bleed the same, they will all die in due course, and once humanity has ceased to endure, they will be forgotten. Enjoy life and what you make of it, you don’t need more, you just need enough. 

A Taste of Something Sweeter...

Why is love so complicated? We aspire to it, we covet it, we’re told it’s the ultimate and the pinnacle of human achievement in terms of finding happiness and fulfillment, yet we complicate and taint it in so many ways. If not for the fact that sex feels so damn good and the act itself is not tied directly to the emotional feelings of people having it, the human race would no doubt have died out long ago, or would rapidly be going extinct. We search for weeks, months, sometimes years to find someone that we can devote ourselves to and too often we wind up settling for the first person we can stand to be in the same room with for more than five minutes without being compelled into projectile vomiting or wanting to strangle them to within an inch of their lives. So much pressure, even just telling someone you love them, the connotation has been built up into something to heavy and almost burdensome and the words seem to hold the weight and gravity of collapsing stars. The first time you find the courage to say them to your significant other, it’s as much an expression of your emotional state as it is a more heavily veiled hope for validation that what you think you’re feeling is something real. We’ve diluted ourselves to the point that we no longer know what love really feels like, we never commit or connect in any meaningful way and the best we can muster in most cases is a willingness to forego personal ego in favor of showing a sliver of vulnerability.

I know firsthand how terrifying it is to be genuinely naked in front of someone that you hope will not betray your trust or take for granted the risk you’ve taken in opening up that much. It’s almost crippling in the amount of fear and trepidation that it engenders. For most, finding someone that will penetrate the walls, sneak past the guards, and infiltrate our defenses into the deepest recesses of our true being, a place even most of us are too scared to tread, is little more than a pipedream and all the same as much a debilitating prospect as it is something we hope for with fervent intensity. We want to find that person, to be able to shed the armor we wear even when clothes do not adorn our shoulders, and yet for all that want, we can’t give blind trust. The compromise usually ends up with us doing our best to devote ourselves in a way that eventually will build love. The old idea of two people seeing each other across a crowded room and experiencing instant attraction to something more than the physical attributes of each other, our society regards it as cynical romanticism and nothing more than a fairy tale. We’ve complicated it far more than it needs to be. But fear can be as powerful as love, in some cases even more so because of the things it takes from us. It can knock our knees right out from under us and leave us wondering what the hell happened. We wind up spending more time trying to figure out how it all fits together and actively seeking blind ignorance to the disparity, willing and wishing away the gap. Love is scary, I won’t argue it. I chose fear more than once; hell I chose addiction and called it love. I’m far from being the poster child for a healthy relationship or even the high water mark for what a romantic should be. Too often I throw all of myself into a dynamic and hope that when my head comes back up for air, she’s still there smiling. Sadly I’ve wound up floundering and almost drowning a few times too many, but at least I got my feet wet.

We don’t pine anymore, we don’t long for someone with genuine intensity; feeling that they complete us. Falling in love is something that happens against our will, and for me it’s usually most intense when I’ve tried to fight or ignore the impulse. But I’ve thought about it extensively of late, having reached a point where I’m no longer protected from my own safeguards, and recently having had a massive break through following a bombshell realization and a night that bordered on pure insanity, I’ve reached a massive epiphany. For all the bluster and blunder we ascribe to it, love is a very simple thing. Perhaps the most beautiful and simplistic description I’ve found reads: Love is composed of a single soul inhaviting two bodies. Aristotle is the quoted speaker of that little nugget and despite its being almost twenty-five hundred years old, I feel it’s as true now as it would have been the day he said it. It’s equality and recognition, respect and trust, vulnerability and openness. Love is letting it all hang out because the person you’re with is you. They’re your reflection, your ideal self, the better part of you that you never knew was missing. It’s no more complicated than that. You don’t need a reason to love someone, you just let yourself do it. For those that have someone to hold close, to call their own, someone waiting at home for them with a smile and warm gesture, treasure them above all else, and don’t just go through the motions, commit yourself every day to a better tomorrow. Finding someone that tolerates you is easy, finding someone that will make you a better person in spite of yourself, now that’s the real trick. There may not be someone out there for everyone, I’m still convinced I’m dying alone but I’m okay with that. But those that have managed to find someone that touches them in a way that defies words and goes beyond physical or emotional and to a level that boggles the mind and still leaves the stomach leaping when they walk into the room, know the value of what you have, and never take it for granted. 

Always something...

Compelled toward something beautiful

Eyeing perfection in simplicity

She knows nothing of her beauty

A flawless reflection of what she admires, yet fears

So wrapped up that vision blurs

A vision of completion is all that's seen

Silent longing echoes into the ether

Yearning for a touch, a chance, a kiss, a word

Hold the idea with fevered fingers

Hope blooms within every heartbeat

Reality sinks in time and again, unrelenting

Always something...

Close your eyes and go there, we'll meet you on the other side

                It’s ten forty at night as I write this and perhaps this piece, more than any other, will serve as a true and unfiltered glimpse into my badly decayed psyche. Fate, has once again conspired against me in a terrible fashion. I am a slave to the circumstances and whims of whatever ungodly power runs this world. She moved on, I still haven’t.

                I make no promises that any part of this will be coherent in the slightest, or even that if asked an explanation could be provided. My mind is clouded in a haze of raw and competing emotions. A simple accidental click and my entire world comes crashing down around me, the whole of my reality obliterated by a simple mistake.

                Today is her birthday. I’ve spent the majority of today debating with myself if any part of me has right, reason, or cause to acknowledge it. I’ve wrestled with the impulse to wish her well, to offer good tidings. Now I wrestle with something for deeper, far more wounding. And the worst part is, I don’t know why it’s affecting me like it is.

                This universe is sick, whatever entity, consciousness, deity, or energy controls, coordinates, orchestrates, influences, or engenders the goings on is reprehensible on a level that makes Hitler seem like a saint. I have nothing but loathing and disgust for this existence. There is nothing redeeming in it; no facet of salvation that makes it all worthwhile, no set of circumstances that make everything fit together in a neat little package. This universe is chaos, it’s insanity packaged like a frozen dinner but served at a five star restaurant. None of it makes sense.

                I’m a victim to my own machinations, consumed by my dealings, a slave to the slow implementation of my own agenda. I am weak and humbled, pitiful and abashed, embarrassed and at this exact moment nauseous. There is no humor in this, no punch line that makes it all come together in a clever way. There’s only the wound, still seeping, the scab barely holding together and serving as the slender thread connecting the great gaping chasmal abyss of my rapidly evermore deteriorating insanity with what scraps and shreds of my fragile psyche remain intact enough to be held together. Even now I’m fighting the urge to vomit, cry, scream, rip every hair from my head, and just shut down. Some part of me wants to curl up into the fetal position, but another part me knows that the action itself will do nothing to bring me solace or peace of mind.

                Anger, it’s the only clear emotion, the only thing that pierces the blinding curtain of uncertainty and trepidation that has descended. Anger at myself for not having found my peace, not having let the wound heal, at allowing myself to be so deeply affected, at feeling anything at all, at not being strong enough to achieve my goal of being numb, at having every breath feel forced and labored. It’s all just excess, so much clutter. The furniture of my mind is broken and worn, long past due to be thrown out and yet I sit huddled in the corner clutching armor that is too worn thin to provide protection and terrified of moving for fear of losing footing.

                Thoughts come and go, like fluid. They’re more ethereal, less real than ever before. Thoughts have never had substance but I could dwell in them. My memory has gone soft, it’s at the periphery, over a wall I can’t climb. The ladder’s not tall enough. Bring me the head of the disco king. It was over, I was healing. The pain had ended, the hurting stopped. I had found peace. I spiraled out…didn’t I? Why does it go on? I cried until there was nothing wet in me, I screamed until my rebelled and threatened to rupture. I prayed in silent agony, every second an anguish to any god I thought might listen. Still it goes on, no end in sight. It doesn’t relent, I knew then and know that any relent would not be out of caring. We’re insects, observed but not interacted with. The ants keep marching into the infinite, oiled bioorganic machinery, a giant organism of delegated labor. Lift the legs higher, dragging your feet slows progress. Why the torment? Why no release or escape? What sin condemns to this hell? What hypocrisy curses me with such tortures? God loves all creatures, but forsakes those he chooses to condemn. Faith is the result of forsaking logic in favor of blind obedience. No longer a martyr, not even capable or fighting. I have no belief left. The echoes assail in silent attack, ninjas on the wind with boots that make no sound. Bring the war to them. Where has my sanity gone? I chose this hell. I did it. I had the choice, to forsake the emotion or indulge it. I chose. Turn off the bleeding, not enough left to fill the cup. Magnesium. Endless reckoning and reflection, find the soft spots, history is static but memory is biased, smooth the edges and see the picture. No more wrinkles. Precious. Happiness, they say it’s the ultimate. The pinnacle of human interaction, the paramount endeavor of any intelligent being is to attain happiness. Love is a chemical imbalance in the brain. Dopamine and serotonin are secreted in response to pheromone recognition in the olfactory senses resulting in the brain flooding with chemicals. Opiates do the same. Opiate, Tool’s first EP. Drug of the people. Opiate brings happiness. Systemically removed like any kind of termite or roach, this part of the building only though. The memory’s come and feel solid one second then go soft and flicker away into the black. Nothing solid, nothing tangible. There’s not such thing as death life is only a dream and we’re the imagination of ourselves. If you attain enlightenment in life is there anything left to offer you when you stand in judgment? Unconditional love. How diluted was I? How utterly self-indulgent was I to remain blind and willfully ignorant, to now see the course of the future? Elevate me enough to bring me down, the air is stale up there. Never had a nose bleed. Disjointed thoughts find footing in the ether, drift away on the wind. Chaos controls the minds of everyone, order is the illusion. Well-ordered fear is not the soup du jour. The failed stalker, she was terrible at it. Ask a question, get an answer. I got you something. My pig. My Sol. No more tears left, the well has gone dry. Dust burns the eyes. Laughing and crying are the same physiological process, lachrymal stimulation is the only difference. Why is nothing solid? Why does it come one second then leave the next? No excuse. Everything has a reason. Explain the cause. Nothing just happens, chaos still has traceable patterns. The disorder is just beyond human comprehension. It bleeds the same either way. The purge, long overdue. The library charges a fee for late books. Purge the humanity, drain the abscess and close the wound. Sutures, scalpel, staples, stitches, thread. Tighter. Apply pressure. Stop the bleeding. Red, the color of war, passion. Passion, where did mine go? Eaten up. Consumed like a star. Burn twice as bright but half as long. Candles is snuffed out. Stoke the coals but not hot enough to cook. Empty cold black space. No stars in the sky, gathered them up, gave them to her. Greatest gift of all. Smile. Her smile. Vulgar thing. Common. She has terrific teeth. Profane the priest. Nobility is lacking is self-righteous action making a good deed into something tainted. I’m tainted. A pure heart filled with poison. Barred from happiness. No longer chosen, or even wanted. Terrible thing, happiness never lasts. Bitter taste and bad memories of it. Warm fingers gripping cold flesh. Thinner then. Less hair. Cold eyes though. She said she saw love, warmth. The couch left marks in my back, scabs arrived by morning. Blood from her nails digging into back during lovemaking. The cat knows something’s wrong. Big yellow eyes pierce my own. He sees through me. I’m scared and helpless. Feel like I’m drowning. Gulping air but can’t fill my lungs. Air burns the nasal passages as it passes. Don’t know what she smells like anymore. She used to smell me. Random times. Odd texts telling me she could. Nothing but an illusion, the whole of it. Years of investment wasted, no return and in the end lost more than I put out. I’m not right. Something is severely broken and this rabbit hole goes deeper than I thought. I don’t want to feel anymore, I’ve felt too much and swallowed too much pain. Make the hurting stop so I can sleep. I just want to be numb. I never asked to feel love. I don’t like it. Messy thing. Makes the brain soft and emotions take over. Rationality doesn’t fit. Puzzle becomes different. Broken thoughts. Dammit why can’t I put words down. The last talent I had and it’s gone. Swallowed whole. I’m so tired, so empty. Drained. Hollow. There’s no love in fear. Staring down the hole again, hands are on my back again, survival is my only friend. Terrified of what may come. It will end no other way. Tool will save my sanity. 

A Thought Problem of Preference....

If you take a shot and everything about it from the aim, the trajectory, the wind conditions, I mean everything about it is perfect and planned for, and you hit the target with absolution precision, flawless execution but still don’t get the outcome you wanted would you have rather missed? I’m debating that question because a recent series of events is very much like this. I took my shot, I hit the mark, and I still got nothing for the effort. I’m debating if it would have been better if I missed altogether. On the one hand I’d prefer it because then at least I could just say reload and try again, but in this instance I hit the bull’s eye without blinking. I nailed it dead bang. Shooting again would do me no good and only serve to undermine what little I managed to accomplish with the first shot.

So that having been said, the question has to be asked, would it have been better if I was off or if I missed on my first try? I feel like it would have been. Somehow it just feels like I failed miserably to have everything lined up so perfectly and yet still not have things come to fruition. It makes me question if I’ve slipped in my skills, if my eye for analysis and evaluation is somehow less than it was before, if I’ve lost a fundamental and unique skill. That kind of self-doubt is dangerous to say the least. I know that somewhere in me the impetus for all my skill, all my ability was the fact that I cared. I had passion and that lent itself to something powerful and wonderful. I had the full use of my abilities because I was passionate about them and the use to which I applied them. The impetus for my passion is no more and thus my passion no longer burns as the conflagration it once did. I’m sure it could but it’s finding the spark to reignite the fire that is proving more troubling.

Going through the motions is easy, it’s controllable and simple to maintain. Reeling and struggling as I’m battered from one end of the fire storm to the other is difficult. In many ways I miss feeling so helpless and ineffectual. To know that the maelstrom was outside of my control and that the best I could hope to do was come up for air every once in a while as a kind of reprieve to attain clarity, is something seems like a welcome condition these days. Few people know what it is to be passionate, to genuinely be inspired and feel the energy of something beautiful flow within you; to wake up every day and find new zeal toward a goal or endeavor. I felt it and I reveled in every day I had it. I was wrapped in it like a gossamer blanket of joy. The inferno dimmed. The spring ran dry. The intensity of that light only lasted so long and eventually there was no more fuel to feed the fire, no more rain to replenish the well. I did my best to cling to my blanket but wound up holding onto shadows and ghosts.

This is the world that I have inhabited for far too long. A run down and derelict structure that once served as the seat of unrivaled grandeur. I’ve dwelt within a palace that has served more as a tomb than a shrine or an edifice of lavishness; a hollow kingdom with a king that cares nothing for the suffering of his lands and peoples. I sought the disconnection, reasoned away attachment as something to be reviled and abhorred. Human affection is a weakness, emotional investment is foolish, trust is the ultimate invitation for betrayal; the rhetoric goes on and on, but in the end it’s all the same idea, “misplaced faith and trust can only end badly”. But even as brilliant as some might claim me to be, I missed the first word in that: misplaced. I pressed on, willing away anything that would possibly connect me to humanity and thus leave me weak, heedless of the possibility that the choice might turn out to be one of ultimate self damnation.

But now we arrive at our present hypothetical discourse. If you make the perfect shot but still lose in spite of it, would it be better to have missed completely? Put another way: For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?