Checking In

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

Midweek in lieu of more imaginative title

I haven’t been reading over my words too much lately. I often do while in the course of writing them but it’s pretty rare that I revisit them after the fact. I think that probably needs to change. I read over the words I wrote yesterday about faith and lack thereof. Things were more lucid and interesting than I initially thought but there was more awkwardness and lack of clarity than I’m comfortable with. Things that read clumsy get on my nerves. Unfortunately, it seems to me that I’ve got a knack for that sort of thing. It’s frustrating. It pisses me off but it’s not like I’m trying to make a living here. Language that is just functional bothers me. I like it to have flair, swagger, style, musicality even. I guess it can’t always. I guess it depends on what the hell it is you’re trying to do. Maybe I’ll get on firmer footing with this. It has been awhile since I’ve actually tried at this. Of course, I’d contend that I’ve never really tried.

There are things I don’t want to do. There are places I do not want to go with this.

I don’t want this to degrade into pounding out “hot takes” on current events. I’m absolutely nobody. Nobody cares what I have to say about the horrors of the age. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’ll never comment. I’m not above breaking my own rules. If somebody shoots up a school or some other place like probably happened today somewhere in America (Fucked up, right?), do you really need me to tell you how awful it was? Do you really need me to ruminate about how surreal and terrifying life in Trump’s America is. You don’t. You’ve got people with more expertise and talent than me to do that. The other thing is I’m invariably going to read an issue of Current Affairs (look that one up. Good magazine.) or listen to an episode of Chapo Trap House or Citations Needed (Great podcasts. Listen to them.) and my take is going to be influenced. When I had short-lived podcasts of my own, it essentially became this frustrating exercise in “hot takes” on current events. I definitely delivered them in my own style but it felt very derivative and pounding out “hot takes” is exhausting.

It seems pretty inevitable that I’m going to re-tread ground I’ve already been over. How many times can you read that I just don’t want to go to work? That I’d rather chill in a dimly lit room? That pretty much describes every single day since I’ve been conscious.

Of course, I think maybe I’m catching myself engaging in “market thinking.” I’m under no obligation to make this interesting in the least. I’ve said that this is not my diary or my journal but it essentially functions that way and I’m some weirdo that has inexplicably given the public access to my inner thoughts. It does not get more non-commercial than that. Still, if this gets boring or tired, just remember that you’re getting what you paid for.

Be me. Get notification about a like. Think, damn. I touched somebody’s soul with my words. 

Nah. Just a porn bot. 

The Internet was a bad idea but without it, cults would have to start the old fashioned way. 

The Internet was a bad idea but without it, her love never would have found me and traumatized me and murdered me and made me cry like a bitch. 

The Internet was a bad idea but without it, how the fuck would the Illuminati make us all sane? 

Yo. I’m broken like you but not in quite the same way but I bet you wanna piss in your boss’s Diet Coke too. No? You don’t? You can fuck off. 

It’s so cheesy 

cheesy like the orange fingers 

on a dateless wonder

but if I call you brother 

I mean it 

desperately 

like a cardboard sign SOS 

spotted on a freeway off-ramp.

In the night 

when the breeze is gentle 

can I tell ya how terribly strange 

this all is to me? 

can I tell ya how scared I was 

trippin’ on shrooms and that it was your 

voice that brought me back? 

Will ya come to me in the midnight hour 

with the knots you can’t untie? Will ya? 

Sundays, My Voice, Etc.

This is me trying again. 

This feels like trying to carry a depressed sumo wrestler on my shoulders. 

I want to say that I had something specific in my unremarkable, possibly second-hand head. I kinda do but see, I don’t really know how long I can really go on about it. 

It’s a Sunday and those are tough. Sunday means Monday comin’. Feels like the day before the chair, ya dig? Thing about the chair though. Thing about Old Sparky is that it is a cure for Mondays, right? Yeah. I don’t know if it is. I got suspicions about what happens after death and I don’t really want to discuss them with you, okay? I’d rather discuss them with a naked woman in a room full of something like love on some night that’s way too warm and sticky, maybe on some day where there is nothing else to do. 

I guess it doesn’t have to be like that. It can be with someone who has somehow become like a brother or a sister to me. There are a few like that if I really take the time to think on that. You need that or else you’re like some inmate in solitary fixin’ to bang your head against the wall. 

A moment of silence for those in solitary. It breaks my heart that that happens to anyone. I don’t care how guilty they are. Fuck. Maybe it happened to me. Maybe it will happen to me. Maybe it happened to you. Maybe it will happen to you. 

I’m trying to make this weird. Is it working? Truth be told, I hope it fuckin’ is but if not, at least I tried. 

I haven’t really tried at this in awhile. Fuck. I don’t know if I’ve ever really tried. I lack discipline. I lack focus. No Mr. Miyagi or Yoda or Mickey Goldmill is gonna show me how to get focus. 

Life has a shape, ya dig? Well, mine does. That shape is a mess. I promise I will go into details on that mess and some of those details are not gonna make me look like a big, god damn hero. Thing about life is there are no big, god damn heroes. Just people. 

That mess though. My mess. The mess I’ve made. It’s been a whole lot worse. Maybe I’m making progress. 

What was on my mind is my voice when I do this thing. Lord knows I don’t talk like this but I don’t typically get the chance to talk about anything that actually matters if I’m gonna give the vocal chords a workout. I will confess to you though that I spend a lot of time concerning myself with whether this sounds vaguely cool. 

Shit. I’m 35. I have no business worrying about what’s cool.

Am I talking about my persona on the page? Yes. That’s me being clear.

Part of me thinks I’m just not really being authentic. I’m just stringing a bunch of words together that sound cool so people think I am some great soul. Some wise soul. Like, sometimes I think about shit hitting the fan for someone. Red alert. Barbarians are at the gates. Chips are down. Abandon all hope. That person going through that wishes I was there to tell them it might be okay, that I’ve seen beyond the veil and that there is absolutely no reason to be afraid. 

I mean, what the fuck is that? There’s mountains of ego there to be sure. I just hope that that isn’t all there is. 

What is it? Okay. There’s this desire to make someone go, “I kinda know what this weirdo is talking about here. I get it. Somehow I get it and I kinda felt something.” 

I can live with that. I think. 

The President

I’m going to tell you the truth. 

Not gonna put sugar or honey on it. 

It’s not that I disagree with the President or his policies. 

It’s not that he represents everything that is soulless and wrong. 

No. 

It’s that I fucking despise him. 

With everything in me.

I hate him. I don’t give a flying fuck about discourse or listening to or understanding the other side. If you are going to come to me with that, fuck you. I don’t care. We are past that. What has the fucking discourse ever gotten us? What has being respectable gotten us? 

You can tell me that I’m wrong in my hate. That’s fine. Maybe you’re concerned with the effect that such intense feeling has on my health. I mean, God bless you if you think that. Let me tell you, it’s hard to carry around, aight? 

See. I’m owning the hate. I’m not dressing it up in some pretty three piece suit and calling it something polite. Nah. This is me owning it. It’s ugly. It’s awful but I’m owning it. 

I go off sometimes. I fucking lose it. I lose my voice. I get told by people, “Oh. You’re so full of hate. Everybody hates him so much. It’s scary.” What the fuck?! WHAT THE FUCK?! What do you think he’s full of? Love? Hell no. If you are going to put on that stupid red hat, you do not get to play that card. That’s perverse. 

Halloween: I Was That Guy That Didn’t Wear a Costume

I get invited to a Halloween party by a fella I used to work with about 4 years back. We were call center slaves once and sorta young. We survived the brutal, terrifying drudgery of that white collar McDonald’s. I can’t speak for him. I emerged as the man writing this. I got wiser, weaker and my eye got keener. Reader, this is me bearing witness. This is the mundane drama that gets us where we need to go, I suppose. 

It had been a brutal week of pretending I knew what the fuck I was doing at my day job. I had my suspicions I was probably gonna get found out that week. I made it through. 

Let me make one thing perfectly and abundantly clear to you sir or madam or whoever it is that’s reading this. I don’t get out much. I sorta know how real life works from TV but I don’t spend a lot of time out there. I spend a lot of time alone with my stupid thoughts that melt the steel beams of my life every once in awhile. I’ve been in this period of trying to get “right” again recently. I know I’m gonna be too anxious and inept to drive out there so I don’t. I summon a poor soul with the Uber app on my Samsung personal surveillance device to get me out there into the land of pick-up trucks and country music and maybe god damn Trump supporters. 

Yeah. This shindig or whatever the fuck was way the hell out there. The Uber drivers I get when I use this terrible, dystopian service are usually these motor-mouthed go-getters who probably do a lot of Adderall or they tend to be these earnest, polite immigrants just trying to make it in this fucked up, racist, brutal country. I get this gentleman from Eritrea who barely says a word the entire ride. I should note that before I got in the car about 15 minutes before, I had ingested some cannabis infused chocolate. If I’m not mistaken, that put about 10 milligrams of THC into my system. I then pick up on something. 

The driver of this Toyota Prius criss-crossing it’s way through this autumn night is getting worried, he’s getting flustered. He is getting lost. Oh shit. See, I haven’t been in the exact same spot this guy was in but I know what it’s like to feel utterly alone in the night. I know what it’s like to feel sweat collecting on the back of your neck. I know what it is to feel like your body is itching with fear and dread. He starts apologizing to me. Something happens to me. I know what I gotta do. 

“Brother, don’t worry about it,” I say. “Do not worry. Aight. Just go straight and follow the road for a few miles. You don’t gotta turn for a bit.” 

THIS IS FUCKING CRAZY TO ME BECAUSE I’M NOT USED TO BEING THIS CALM CAT THE UNIVERSE PUTS IN PEOPLE’S PATH BUT THAT’S WHAT I’M GONNA DO FOR THIS GUY. 

He thanks me and thanks me and thanks me. 

“Alright. You gotta turn right in a few hundred feet. There we go. See that road sign? Just turn there when it’s safe. Don’t even worry about it, man. Why do you think I ain’t drivin’ myself? I’d get lost out here even worse. This ain’t my hood, man.”

He calmed down. I’m not sure when I started to feel the cannabis. I’m not sure if me being so fucking kind is the cannabis or if that’s just me. It’s just me. Being alive has hurt me in the weirdest ways and as a result, I’m basically a wannabe Mr. Rogers who is angrier and curses a lot. 

I get to the party. I guess it had a circus theme. There was this circus tent. My friend is in a cover band. 

I walk in. I have a brief conversation about the health impact of vaping and I deftly steer the conversation away from whether Trump is really all that bad. The weed was starting to kick in. I was high but I sure as fuck ain’t stupid. I ingested the second piece of cannabis infused chocolate that I had in my coat pocket. I’m starting to feel it. I know I am. 

I’m in uncharted territory. When I’m high, I’m usually alone. Yep. I am the weirdo that gets high and will just let the chips fall where they may. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I just waste time. So, there I was getting higher and higher around a bunch of strangers. 

Some of the things I say that night, 

“Holy shit. Is this what an episode of Miami Vice is like?” 

“See. I feel like I should tell you. What you’re seeing right now is a cat who don’t get out much.” 

“We don’t need secret police. We build the dossiers on ourselves. It’s crazy, man.” 

“I’m too old for this shit.” 

“FREEBIRD!” 

“THATCHER WAS A CUNT AND I’M GLAD SHE’S DEAD!” in a dubious working class English accent. 

At some point I get offered beer. I don’t ever drink. In fact, I will admit that I had never been drunk before. I start drinking and drinking and drinking. I end up stoned as fuck and somewhat drunk on um light beer. I can feel my inhibitions lower. I’m definitely keenly aware of it. I shout things at the top of my lungs. I even dance and don’t really give much of a fuck how it looks. 

The lowered inhibitions start to concern me. I lean in close to my friend. I say in his ear, “When you get a minute, I need to talk to you.” He nods. See, I ain’t used to alcohol. It’s the weirdest thing. I’m very accustomed to being very high on marijuana and I’ve lived to tell about a few intense trips on psilocybin mushrooms. Alcohol just isn’t something I have a lot of practice with. In fact, being out ain’t something I have a ton of practice with. 

I become intensely concerned about what I might do while under the influence. I worry I might become Brett Kavanaugh. I’m terrified I might flip out and kill someone. I nod to my friend’s friend. He’s dressed like The Driver from Drive and has this weird kinda charisma. I see something in him. I see a kindness. I see a light in that man. I ask him if he’ll step outside with me. In fact, I’m pretty sure I say something like, “Forgive me if this is weird but will you step outside with me for a second?” He doesn’t even question it. We step outside and I lay it all out. 

“Like I said. I don’t get out much. I don’t get fucked up with other people around so this is a new experience. Do you ever worry about what you might do under the influence and does that scare you?” 

I actually start crying. I don’t even recall what he says now. I just recall that he listened to me. He told me it was okay. I remember telling him that something told me I could come to him with that. I told him that even as a complete stranger, I could sense the goodness in him. I told him he was a good man. 

Yeah. So, I got to be the shepherd and the shepherded that night. 

I spend some time just chilling outside in the dark. I get to talking more to the dude who was dressed as The Driver. As I write this, I am sober but everything is slow. I feel sluggish. In retrospect, I say too much. I guess that it might be kind of a bad idea to get all cross-faded like that. That’s a young man’s game and I ain’t so young any more. I say too much. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t get out much and you’re drunk and high, you start sharing the thoughts that terrorize when you’re alone in a dark room. 

I spill about my upbringing. My overprotective mother that wouldn’t let me out of her sight and wouldn’t let me grow up. I talk about how I BS my way through like half my day job. Driver tells me how badass that is. I feel the need to keep mentioning I don’t get out much. He tells me, “You’re an astronaut, dude. Exploring new worlds.” I say, “I know what you’re saying but that’s a little too dramatic.” 

I spill about the heroic mushroom trip. I talk about how dreamlike everything was. I talk about how I had only messed with shrooms a time or two before but the last time, I suddenly found myself drowning in a psychedelic ocean. I tell him about coming to grips with how weird and terrifying that could get. I look over at him with a straight face, I say, 

“This is the part where you tell me about Jesus.” 

I was kidding. He says, 

“Do you wanna pray with me?” 

“What? Are you fucking with me?” 

“No man.” 

I size him up. “You’re being sincere.” 

“Yeah man.”

“I did not see that coming. I don’t know how to respond.” 

“You think mushrooms are amazing. Wait til you commune with the creator of the universe.” 

God damn it. This is a hell of a plot twist. 

“Do you want to pray with me?” 

“No offense but I don’t feel led to do that.” 

“That’s cool, man. I’ll pray for you though.” 

“Aight. I just wanna say though, if you are only talking to me to get a convert, you can fuck all the way off. That’s not comic exaggeration. That is not me playing a character. Fuck all the way off if that’s what you’re doing.” 

“I’m not doing that, man. Don’t worry.” 

“Okay. I’m just gonna be chill. It’s outta my system.” 

I had more intense, way too intimate conversations that night. I don’t feel the need to recount any more of them. 

I get home somehow. I don’t sleep much. I only sleep about four hours or so. I have a lazy Saturday. I don’t feel quite normal all day. I feel tired and need to take a nap at some point. 

My soul changed. A little. Maybe. 

Thing with dreams is 

sometimes they are just too shiny 

and they blind you. 

Dreams burned into your brain 

by people who finished school 

and always work late

and you can never tell the difference 

between yours 

and theirs. 

That kills. 

Okay.

I’ve dabbled in Buddhism. The Buddha talked about subduing your own mind. You need to subdue it because it’s powerful. I guess maybe you can let it play a little but sometimes you’ve got to subdue it and make it do something. 

What I’ve just described would be seen as problematic as fuck by actual Buddhists. Can you imagine how insufferable a Buddhist fundamentalist would probably be? Imagine a self-styled western Buddhist fundamentalist. God. Think about how annoying Calvinists are. When I was in my late 20s, I saw a fair amount of the people I came up with go all Neo-Calvinist. They start wearing black. They grew beards. They listened to this funeral folk music shit that I felt guilty for not liking cuz maybe that meant I was going to Hell. It was all such a drag. It was really fatalistic and mournful and had this twisted conception of God as this holy serial killer who gonna fuck some people up with tornadoes and STIs. 

Part of me still fears going to Hell. 

Part of me wonders if they’re right. 

If they were right, that would be one hell of a plot twist, right? 

Imagine you go through a year of Hell. Imagine losing everything you love. Imagine losing your mind. You stumble upon the truth and it’s the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or it’s The Church of Scientology. Sometimes I imagine what it’s like to actually believe the truth is in one of those places and to fear that you’re turning away from it if you forsake it. Forget the Job shit. Maybe it’s not that dramatic. Imagine that hole inside you is filled up by what you get in those places. It’s hard for me to conceive but I think about it. 

I’ll tell you what though. I don’t really want to fake it till I make it just because I’m deathly afraid of Hell. No. That does not seem like a very good idea at this juncture. 

Slightly Different

Monday morning and Eugene Debs is whisperin’ in my ear

The word is fuck. 

Fuck this. Fuck the boss. Fuck the Benjamins but save some for me, will ya? 

When it’s just about all you can say

When you ain’t got a prayer but mama says ‘em for you anyway

FUCK 

She whispers it in the dark

and then screams it 

fuck yeah. 

Fuck. 

Can’t say it in front of everybody 

It’s special like that, ya dig?