Don’t Wish It Was Sunday

Maybe I'm doing something right.

Maybe.

I don't fucking know though.

You feel me?

Can't even dress it up.

Anything that ever worked wasn't cuz of the white boy in me.

I wanna mean that.

Loosely connected thoughts.

Back to the lab again.

Just tryin' to live.

She told me, "May you find your worth in the waking world."

I picked up the controller again.

She shook her head and insisted I had learned what I needed to learn.

The waking world.

Back to the world.

To try and live.

Ordinary man.

Trying to live.

That's all.

It's a weird life. That's all it is.

We repeat the nonsense we hear. Find decent nonsense. 

I’m slipping a little. I feel laziness starting to grip me. I ain’t been as conscientious with this endeavor. I missed two days this week. I did not write a single word. Whatever. Like many a baby boomer says, it is what it is. I’m gonna pick up. I’m gonna continue. I’m gonna live on. I will survive. Aight. I’m gonna put on that song. The Cake version. 

I sit in this room that was my bedroom back in the day. I grew up in this room. I came to be in this room. I prayed in this room. I had my first orgasm in this room at the age of 16. I dreamed in this room. I woke up on summer days that were full of nothing but possibilities in this motherfucking room. I sat in the dark and listened to Art Bell in this room. I don’t have my own space anymore. I haven’t since some time in November, I think. I miss it. I’ve always felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I don’t really have a space right now where I can just be. That’s traumatic, man. It really is. I express this and nobody really seems to give a fuck. 

Fuck. Fuck. Part of me thinks this shit is about on the same level as some angsty, hormonal teenager who is failing English and is brilliant but lazy according to themselves and who writes on a blog with a background that is as black as their nail polish.

I need to challenge myself. I’m not quite sure how though.

I finished reading two books this week. For a man that has been struggling with his attention span for years or at least feels like he has, that is an accomplishment. I finished the The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi and The End of Policing by Alex Vitale. 

Taibbi is just an excellent writer with a good eye and a keen social conscience. He’s a minor hero of mine. I will pretty much read anything he writes. 

The End of Policing made me think a lot. I can’t say that it challenged me too much but it made me think about the why of a lot of things. In recent years, I’ve become really concerned about the militarization of police forces and the violence that more often than not victimizes the poor and people of color. It keeps me up at night. It makes me angry. It makes me want to give the finger to every cop I see. Blue Lives Matter flags make me fighting mad. I really cannot watch cop shows any longer because they play like insidious propaganda to me. The book is a bit dry but it’s quite readable. It is written by an activist academic who traces a lot of the problems heavy handed policing is thrown at to cruel austerity measures. If you’re reading this, you should read that book. I kinda wish everybody in this rotting empire would. Maybe some time soon I will write about some of the things I actually learned from the book. 

I’ve been inexcusably lazy this week. I’ve written nothing this week save for what you’re now reading.

Laziness and boredom have been the order of the day. It’s a bit excruciating to even sit down and attempt to write this. I know that I’ve got to try though.

I come from a fairly conservative background. I grew up in the suburbs. The suburbs are tough for me to endure now. There ain’t much in the way of soul there. It’s all Neighborhood Watch and I’d like to talk to your manager. It’s wine moms and religion that consists of nothing but not making Jesus cry over what you may or may not be doing with your genitalia. I’ve changed. Maybe you can say that I’ve evolved into whatever it is that I am now. Whatever it is? C’mon. I guess I can label. Wishy washy agnostic socialist writer who can be pretty god damn angry sometimes.

Anger.

I woke up from a nap Saturday evening. I see I have a notification on Twitter. It’s someone that went to my high school who I used to be friendly with. They tell me that I’m being a typical irrational lefty and labeling people fascists who disagree with me. The last sentence of his insightful commentary tells me that ANTIFA are the modern day fascists. Call me pathetic, call me crazy, but if you ask me it’s crazy, this pretty much ruined my Saturday night. I fired off a multi-tweet reply. I never heard a word back in response. It took a lot of effort not to just attack him personally (Although there was a bit of that. Sue me. I’m no debate team nerd here. I’m not above ad hominem attacks.) but I have to say that I’m a bit in awe of a person who thinks exactly the same way that they did when they were a “porn addicted” pimply-faced teenager. There really has not been too much in the way of appreciable evolution. This is a guy with a well-paying job in tech, a wife and an investment portfolio. I guess you can’t blame him in a way, this is a guy who has a lot invested in keeping things exactly the way that they are now.

ANTIFA engage in violence. Thing is though, I can’t fault them for that. They are putting their bodies on the line to defend people who are not white, not Christian, not straight against fascists who are very openly calling for their forcible removal from society. I told the guy on Twitter who I used to be friendly with that it was very clear that he didn’t care. He doesn’t care. Even if this country gets even more horrifyingly authoritarian, they are never coming for him.

Yo.

Half naked. 

Arms raised like some prophet preachin’ what nobody wanted to hear

but I bleed for ‘em 

so they love me

Get punched. 

Get kicked. 

The more it hurts 

The more they feel it 

that stuff people think is the holy spirit. 

Tightness in the chest 

need bed rest 

but the show must go on 

the roar of the diabetic souls 

that in the night 

tell me not to mix those two things 

gets me through another one. 

Fly to victory 

and then the waiting room. 

Introduction

My name is not important in any way. If I’ve linked you to this blog, then you know my name. If you do know my name, then for some reason, I think you’re capable of handling this. 

Shit. I’m reading over the above paragraph and it’s so lame, right? What the fuck am I ever gonna write here that’s so earth shaking? 

I suppose I’ve had a lot to grapple with in this life. One of those things is a harsh truth. I’m nobody. There are other things too. Life is boring. It’s dumb. It’s scary. Mostly, it’s just boring. It leaves me feeling restless. 

I get older and I get more restless, ya dig? 

I’m a lazy son of a bitch. 

I’ve wasted a lot of my life. 

I got this need though. I said need. I didn’t say love. I got a need to put words to a page. I got a need to play with language. I got a need to write. I don’t love it though. I hate this shit. It frustrates me. It pisses me the fuck off. It makes me want to scream. It makes me want to put my fist through a fucking wall. If I’m not trying to do it though, I just don’t feel right. 

In fact, I can feel myself calming down as I write this. I don’t feel like I’m just wasting. 

It’s unfortunate but I’ll never be famous. I’ll never be rich. I’ll be average looking but I’ll be wise. I’ll have bore witness. Bearing witness to what I see is something that’s important to me. You can laugh. You can scoff but the idea of bearing witness is sacred to me. 

Part of the reason this exists is cowardice. Actually, maybe cowardice isn’t the right word but I’m usually not too gentle on myself. I’m freer with my expression if said expression is not tied to my slave name. Aight. Maybe slave name is a little dramatic but ya know, there is some truth there. If i’m not worried about reputation or about people sending me messages that they are praying for me, then I express myself more freely. So, there is slavery to reputation and to capital. Capital got us all by the naughty bits, ya dig? I get paranoid about something making me less employable. Look, I’m probably never paying the bills with this shit. I know this. I know what it’s like to struggle to find a day job. Let me tell you, that can fuck with you. 

So, it’s between you, me and the NSA. 

There will be navel gazing. There will be laughs. There will be tears. There will be stuff that works and stuff that doesn’t. There will be poems, prose, jokes maybe. 

Thanks for reading. 

Additional Notes on How I Learned to Love the Lord

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what I wrote earlier today. Mostly I’m not too satisfied with it. I feel like things could have been more lucid and more interesting. There was so much that I could have said that I did not end up saying. 

Faith or lack thereof is a challenging thing to express. There was a lot that just got lost or at least that’s my feeling. 

The story that I told myself as a Christian was that I was a reformed criminal that found redemption. Reformed criminal? I was a kid that did something dumb but in my mind, I might as well have been knocking over liquor stores or have been some kind of budding serial killer. I had a desire to convey to people what a wretched sinner I was if I ever got the chance. I look back on this and I’m both amused and disturbed. 

People give reasons for doing things. I don’t know that I buy too many of the standard answers given about why someone takes the dive for J.C. especially if it is couched in theologically “correct” language. People can say that they became conscious of their sinful nature and of their need for a savior but I often suspect there is a more interesting, more honest, more genuine reason. If someone tells me they believe simply because they like Jesus or it just kinda seems correct or just wants it to be true then I respect that a lot more than some bullshit they half remembered from a text book or a tract or something. Wow, this paragraph sucks. Moving on. 

My faith was nonsensical. It was utter bullshit. It basically revolved around feeling guilty for having sexual desires. I got really tired of hating myself for natural desires so I kinda just said fuck it and quit. Hating myself for liking the idea of sex made no sense. I wasted a bunch of time hating myself for a stupid reason when I should have been hating myself for being a Republican. 

The marriage between evangelical Christianity and conservative politics is an awful thing. It’s destructive. It baptizes ideas like peace through strength, low capital gains taxes, gutting the social safety net and other abominations that make the world a terrible fucking place to live. I can’t be part of that no matter how bitchin’ those praise songs are. 

It’s ultimately just not a very adult way of looking at the world. Adult is the wrong word. I just don’t think it’s a very honest way of looking at the world.