Before

What it is

All of this arises from a sense of loneliness. That’s what drives this. There are layers to it. 

Not a ridiculous number of layers though. I’m a simple guy. 

I’m not close with too many people and by many, I mean, like any. That’s not to say that I don’t have my moments. Those moments kinda scare me though so sometimes I need to take a few years to breathe and by breathe I mean, mess up my life and sink into a pit of self-loathing. 

I’m questioning the wisdom of doing this but not really. Fuck that. You gotta take risks sometimes. 

This is an unremarkable’s man’s inner monologue on a Friday night. 

I was about to declare this art but god damn it, that would be cringe-y as fuck. It is art though. It just will never be studied because it’s not that good. It has its moments though. This is all about those moments. 

Saturday and some stuff and things

The words written the night before (See post entitled “What the fuck do I call this?” I think that’s what I called it.) were what they were. That was an experiment. If you surmised that those words were the product of an altered state, you are correct. It’s fair to say that I do have a relationship with cannabis. It’s been an off and on thing for about 3 years but mostly on. I despise a lot of the culture around this drug. A lot of it makes me cringe. That said, I do find it a valuable exercise at times to write while under the influence of it. 

That can be easier said than done. The temptation is to just chill and listen to some music until I just get drowsy or to play some Rocket League. Rocket League while high can be quite the trippy, beautiful experience. That’s often when I can enter ‘the zone’ when it comes to that game. I know when to challenge for the ball, I somehow make decisions that seem to make sense without really thinking, I seem to react automatically and I’m okay trying something crazy to see if it works and it seems like I learn how to make “crazy” work. 

A soccer game with rocket powered cars while stoned as fuck is only so satisfying so at some point I’ve got to pry myself away and look at the page. I’ve got to ride the green dragon and take it where I want to go. 

I’m less judgmental of my thoughts. The flow is easier. There is a danger there. If you’re high as fuck, you can be really satisfied with mediocre or lazy ideas so you find yourself in the position of trying to figure out whether you are onto something or if you are just being silly. If you can tell the difference (even sort of) then you are getting to be dangerous. 

The problem with school is that it doesn't teach you to be a human being.

Idea

So... 

I’ve been thinking about reflecting on The Purge films that I’ve seen and basically writing about them as they relate to the world that produced them. 

How qualified am I to do that? Not very. 

I believe this could be an interesting exercise for me. I would like to do something other than navel-gazing and quick angry political rants. 

Obviously, there has been a lot of commentary on these movies by people that likely possess more insight than me.

I’ve seen The Purge: Anarchy and The Purge: Election Year so far. At first, these movies kinda repulsed me. However, the near-future world of these movies started to intrigue me. I believe there is kind of a clumsy sort of wokeness in these films that is worth exploring.  

As far as cinematic universes go, this is one of the more intriguing ones to me. 

You gotta know why you're doing something, don't you?

This has hung in the home I grew up in for as long as I can remember.

My world is nothing but mundane. I work. I worry about screwing up at work. Sometimes I study for an exam that baffles me and interests me little. I slouch at my desk and look busy. I anticipate terror that often times never comes. 

Sometimes I manage to focus enough to read. I finished Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky. I e-mailed the man. He wrote me back. He didn’t say much but I appreciate that he acknowledged an anonymous nobody like me. I learned a lot from that book. It did something to me. 

I came very close to angrily declaring to my therapist that communism will win. That was really the first time that I expressed candidly the role living in such a fucked up society has on the psyche. That is a huge part of this. This. What I’m doing here. What makes me cry. What fucks me against my will. What turns me into a homely yet charming robot who is programmed to provide you with excellent customer service today. What makes me do this. Trying to express without asking you for a credit card number first. 

That’s a huge part of the project. 

What do you do in the world when you just can’t shake something? 

The inner-city crack epidemic is now giving birth to the newest horror: a bio-underclass, a generation of physically damaged cocaine babies whose biological inferiority is stamped at birth...[This is] a race of (sub)human drones ... [whose] future is closed to them from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe deprivation ... [T]he dead babies may be the lucky ones.

-Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer in 1989. 

People like to pretend there was a time when the American conservative was sane and not possessed by cruelty and a special kinda crazy.

It’s not a myth. It’s a lie. It’s total bullshit. 

That’s so called respectable (and soon to be deceased) conservative writer/thinker/fantasist/whatever the fuck Charles Krauthammer condemning an entire class of people when they were fetuses back in the much simpler and much more innocent year of 1989. 

Only difference now is there is less sophistication. Less subtlety. 

There were dog whistles before but now the dog whistles are replaced by screams and shrieks. 

You could say something wicked this way comes but you’d be wrong. 

Something wicked was always here and just leveled up the wickedness. Just made it nastier. Just made it harder to look at. Just made it make your ears bleed faster so you plug them and tell yourself it’s all gonna be okay. 

See, we all gotta confront the possibility that it might not be okay. 

Leaned forward. Heartbeat thump. thump. thump. Action. Controller in hand. Rocket League. Maybe this clipped style isn’t as cool as I think it is. Maybe it just sounds weird or contrived or not real. 

I’m watching the game all so closely. Supposedly there are levels to meditation. Maybe I’m experiencing what a monk feels when he is about to really go somewhere. Chill. Chill. Focus. 

I ask myself what I need to do? What is my job in this situation? Clear the ball. Challenge. Aim there. I see the shots lining up for me before they even line up. Never saw any of that before. Couldn’t slow down enough to actually see it. 

I become aware of the pop punk blaring in my headphones as I play. Off With Their Heads. The song is Clear the Air.  For the first time, I actually hear the lyrics.

I never feel happy, I never feel safe I can't let myself ever stay in one place I look in the mirror and I see the face Of a failure who will never be significant The face that you see from the morning to night Is the mask that I put on to hide what's inside I don't take it off until you fall asleep I don't want you to see what lives inside of me 

That reads like angsty teenage journal shit but man, I can sorta believe a real person would write that. Sorta. I thought about the way I would deliver those lyrics. How I would read them, sing them, really sell them. Make you believe them. 

This is me just slowing down and noticing things. We’re most alive when we notice things. Did you ever notice that?