Hyperreality

I've seen it done, so. But someone asked whether there was some other reason I didn't say yes to a viable option. I've always thought I knew the answer to that. But when it was asked I found myself speechless.

The truth is, and you know this, I am tired of being sad. I can tell you I know all about fate and destiny and how sometimes people are meant to be melancholy, that sometimes people enjoy being despondent. But I'll be the first to tell you that it's not a nice place to be in.

Which is why, despite full knowledge of tendencies to keep running into walls and jumping unprotected into bottomless gorges, I will keep trying. And the past may remain hanging in the background, and I might not be able to completely eliminate the effects of whatever happened in the past and what it did to who and what I've become, but I've found it pays to stop the addicting, debilitating kind of rumination I sometimes think my cortexes were made for.

I'm going to run my answers down until I can punch them in the face and call them all manner of bad things. Especially for keeping me waiting.

Plan B

It took us days, days, to assemble the road spikes. We had neutrino bombs waiting at the sidelines, Trojan horses ready with their toothy smiles and sincere crinkles at the edges of their eyes, we rehearsed everything from the approximate blood pressure of the caravan driver at the time of assault to the point-blank plunging of the spear into said driver's chest. Everything.

Everything worth thinking about and planning for, we did. Shobashi Wayne, the slit-eyed guy with skin like porcelain, kept coming up with stupid ideas to anticipate: a sudden sandstorm, the president driving, even the spear-bearer developing a brain aneurysm at the last minute.

I obliged, every step of the way, because this day was unlike any other. If this day pans out the way it should, I would have single-handedly brought this entire town to its knees. It was an important milestone, too crucial to leave to chance. I have the patience of a vulture waiting on a lion to finally die. I circle, invisibly, unceasingly, until a clear shot is made available.

It was all going to be beautiful. Except for one thing. The one thing we didn't even have to consider. The one thing we assumed would behave according to plan given the annual recurrence of the caravan arriving on the 20th of January at 3 in the afternoon.

It is this: that the caravan would be a caravan.

When I first heard the helicopter's rotor blades, I simply wanted to die.

Before Step One

My third night in a row thinks it should never really have happened but is thankful it did. Everything feels wrong and right and deadly.

What makes sense now? I don't know what to expect from work, from the family, from dreams sketched hastily at the back of unlined notebooks. And yet none of that matters. There is only asphalt and feet and a simple decision that should do wonders for a soul that had lost faith in itself and in the world.

Pure and full and black and white. Here in this world there is no try, there is do and not do. A curse, a blessing, that thin line that is actually a universe—three universes, even!—apart, the porous, scalable, absolute-ness of actually doing something versus just thinking about it.

How close we are to utter destruction every time we fail to try.

So It Goes, Also, To Be Made Stupid for Your Own Good

Things happen. Nights happen. Conversations happen.

The most unlikely things: someone eventually bashed my dearest beliefs about the world. There was nothing to it, really, because it was I who was sad. It was I who could not let go.

I won't idealize that moment anymore than it needs to be idealized. The long and short is that happiness is a thing you have to learn to generate inside of yourself, because any other kind is fleeting, illusory, and sometimes insane.

The realization could not have come at a better time, i.e., just when I've skidded over a metaphorical existential rock-bottom. The past few weeks, you still see me walking around but I'm really just the shadow of my former care-free self.

It is a sad thing to be dead before you're really dead. It's even sadder when it's your own beliefs that are killing you. Whether or not these beliefs are idealistic balls of magma that have become your very core. It is very sobering to see that you do have to live outside of your head to get that sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, often intoxicating taste of the real world.

And so I must, again, go out and do stuff. See you around.

Neurotic Alt+Tabbing

It's a sad thing when being in the world around supposedly the worldly wise actually roughs up the idealist in you to a point where you become convinced they're right, that the world is all about who can be useful for you, that the world will take advantage of you and suck you dry if you don't build defenses around yourself, that the universe is a wild and random thing you need to invent principles for so you won't go insane.

I'VE BECOME A VERY SAD PERSON, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

It was prettier before I met you, people of the world. Everyday I regret ever having opened my heart and mind to you. I had a way easier time believing the world loved me when I had the guts to just keep on offering myself like a fucking doormat. But why is it that that had to be a bad thing? Giving is good. Giving is supreme. But now I will forever carry with me the stigma of knowing. You become old and sad after that. None of it is your fault, people of the world. I just wish I'd been warned. So at least the sting would not have been as acidic.

The risk is pain. Mind-whirling, gut-wrenching, life-destroying pain. But what else is out there in that void of utter suffering? That blank between moments of weakness and moments of actual living it out in the world. Sometimes that's all I live for now. Alt (breathe) Tab. Alt (huff) Tab. Alt ( --- ) Tab. Switching madly from work to family to why the fuck need I be in this universe to love and hopeless hoping and falling in love with an ideal to why did I not shampoo my hair today to wow no more mannequins in the front lobby to dear Lord, take me now, I did not come here to feel such torment.

We Either Fight or Die

The meanings derived from everyday things continue to pale.

Enter Revenge

Some notes on revenge: I'm not a big fan, but I prefer anger to soul-shaking depression, so while it's here, I'll let it drive me.

The final friends said it best: get yourself out of there, and do that one thing you know will save you from utter destruction. Write, damn it.

But first, work.

I already told my mother about it, and she says, should I feel so inclined, it might be time to move on. Where will I find myself next? Will I settle again? Will I savor new-found freedom only to have to go back to the comfort of a steady job again?

A steady job is so tempting. So bloody necessary, so unnaturally liberating I can only guess I probably have no idea what I'm talking about while money and purchasing power fly in my face in sweeping, flowing pas de chats.

Anger, anger, why must you be a better ally than apathy? I was never a belligerent person, and I don't suppose I will begin snapping at random people, only that I will start respecting myself a little more.

We know this shameless self-centeredness should end soon, but let me live it out here, it's fine. I'm old but I'm stupid and I don't really care what you think.