What I See

Why I’m Not a Good Writer

It’s tempting as hell to just half-ass this and say that at least I tried today.

This is one of those days where I feel like I have absolutely nothing to say. In fact, I don’t know that I ever have anything to say. I think to myself sometimes that I will run out of things to say.

It’s not the end of the world if I do. It’s not like I’m needing to do this to pay the bills. I do need to do this though. It seems to make life a little more bearable. I feel more present. I feel like I’ve done something with my day. My head feels a little less foggy.

At this point, this is little more than a bit of self-help.

My pledge is this: Write even if my head feels dull and even if I feel no hate, love or any fucking thing at all. Just have to do it. It will probably be shit but even in the midst of the shit, there have to be moments of perfection, right?

So, I’m not a terrible writer. I know I’m not. I’m not a particularly good writer either. Why? I’m gonna tell you.

I don’t do a ton other than work, play some games and sleep. I don’t have a ton of mileage on me. I haven’t done a ton with my life. I’m short on experiences. Sometimes I think maybe I should just go to bars and talk to people, anybody and see what the fuck happens. A friend of mine told me he is driving across this fucked up country of ours just for the hell of it. I need to do that but the thought of doing something like that scares the shit out of me. I got serious social anxiety. I’ve never quite been at peace with the fact that I’m a human being. Is it as weird for you as it is for me? Probably not in the exact same way.

I’ve already mentioned I’m deficient as hell when it comes to focus and self-discipline. Finishing a book is a near impossible feat for me these days. In fact, the other day, I thought maybe I’d read Umberto Eco’s essay Ur-Fascism which I guess is about the qualities of eternal fascism. Fascism is ultra relevant these days. So many countries on this earth seem to be lurching towards it. I’ve tried getting through the essay twice but without success. My just wanders. I need to read more. What should I be reading? Not real sure but I’m almost positive that I should be reading more.

I don’t know a lot. I’ve got a vague idea about a lot of things but there is not a single subject on the face of this earth that I can call myself an expert on. You can see that in my screed entitled ‘What I See.’ Most of that flowed from emotion. I was talking about the real world so I feel that perhaps I needed to show my work a bit more and maybe cite sources like I was back in school or something.

I get these ideas for creative pursuits and then I just abandon them. I’ve started two short-lived podcasts. One was a political show that I began in the wake of Trump’s election and another was just me talking about random things or.. something. Who the fuck knows what I was doing with the second one? I don’t follow through. I’m a flaky son of a bitch.

I’m lazy and I don’t put in work.

There are probably other reasons why I’m not a particularly good writer but those are the most fatal symptoms in my estimation.

In the back of my mind, I have to wonder if this is just filler to put off going into the stuff that really makes me look like a god damn loser.

We’ll get there though.

Summer

I’m swimming through a world of thick oatmeal. I’m in oatmeal purgatory.

My deepest desire at the moment is a dim room and the feeling of bedsheets against my bare skin. I’ll take a whole week of that. In fact, get me three months or so of that. Just give me time and I’ll decide how to kill it. Mostly though, I just want to close my eyes and drift off. When I wake up, maybe I’ll feel like smiling. Maybe I’ll feel like life is okay.

I don’t think I ever quite adjusted to the lack of a summer vacation in adult life. It was a life saver. A soul saver. Was three months or so of nothing but damn did I need it.

I remember late nights. Staring at the ceiling. Chocolate milk on the nightstand. Art Bell’s voice on the AM radio gently interrogating a long haul trucker who has visions of how the apocalypse might go down. I remember the sound of the garage door opening. Dad home from the night shift.

I can remember my face illuminated by the pale glow of a computer monitor. Lights were off. Tapped gently on the keyboard so mom and dad had no idea I was awake. XXX lovin’ with strangers on IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Some of ‘em come to me more than once. Yeah, I had online “things” with people who I never really knew back in the dial-up era. Like friends with benefits type stuff but instead of real life sex, it was just writing dirty stories together. I never ended up on an episode of Catfish: The TV Show. I’m thankful for that. That could have been way weirder.

I can remember getting dismissed from the last day of school. High school some time. Evangelical Christian school. The books say diabolical shit. The Great Depression was socialist propaganda. British rule was good for India cuz it exposed Indians to Christianity and many of them cast aside their false religion for the only savior that laid it all down for them. Nelson Mandela was a dirty commie. Satan basically ran the Catholic church. Bible teacher was a nice guy. I think his heart was in the right place. I think that to this very day. I remember when it was all done. No more schooling left so we all chilled and watched a movie about getting left behind after the rapture. So, I walked out of the school a free man. The sun was shining. Women wore sundresses. My mind kept wandering to the appearance of the Anti-Christ and 7 years of tribulation. I can kinda laugh now but that shit fucks with a kid.

I can remember a suburban megachurch. I can remember a youth pastor with swagger. Shit, I think he hangs out with Justin Bieber. I’m serious about that. I’ve seen pictures on Instagram. He spoke with a drawl despite not coming from anywhere near the south. He was obsessed with talking about sexual purity. I used to go midweek. Jesus power ballads and righteous suburban honeys I never said a word to. One night, his words cut deep. I had mad guilt. Mad guilt over being a human being. Mad guilt over filthy thoughts. Come forward and re-dedicate your life to Jesus Christ. I did. I responded to an altar call. I cried. I got taken in a back room. I got told to accept the baptism of the holy spirit. The evidence of that was speaking in tongues. It was supposed to come down on me and I would speak in tongues that were not my own. Some bald dude had his hand on my chest as he declared that I should let the spirit speak. I did not speak in tongues that night. I didn’t feel it. I had at least one person years after the fact admit to me that they faked speaking in tongues.

I’m sitting here in the office on a Monday. I’m tired. I keep sipping water and having to go to the bathroom. Maybe I should stop before someone thinks there is something wrong with me. I also keep getting up and just taking laps around the office.

I need mercy today. I need the world to play as nice as it can today. I feel like I don’t have ‘it.’ I don’t know what ‘it’ is. The best way I can describe ‘it’ is whatever you need to be in the world and not totally fucking lose it. That sense is always more acute on a Monday. As the week goes on, I feel it less and less. That’s how it goes most of the time anyway.

I do feel some satisfaction. I did the work of attempting to communicate the realities of my internal world. Just trying to do that is fulfilling. It occurs to me that I’m not only trying to communicate my internal reality to whoever might be reading this, I’m also attempting to describe it to myself.

I better get to trying to look busy. I better get to trying to look like I know what I’m doing.

Strumming a guitar in a dimly lit room. A little stoned. Slightly stoned. Just a little.

Strum the guitar.

Think of how I might give you multiple orgasms.

This is not any sort of earth-shaking revelation but it was apparent to me today that I am capable of expressing myself very lucidly if I try just a little. It’s important for me to not try too hard. Trying too hard will fuck things up. You gotta dance with it a little. You make it smooth. You steer it gently and you make it do what it does. That’s how expression works for me. 

I got into a discussion with the parents about the way the world works, about U.S. foreign policy, about a better world. It wasn’t very long before I got fucking pissed off about their attitude. I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow breakdown of this discussion but the gist of what I kept hearing from them was people can and have tried running the world a different way but those different ways have always failed. The way things get run in this country is not perfect but it’s a hell of a lot worse in every other place on earth you care to name. 

Is that what getting older does to us? We just shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, things will never be perfect but we have it a lot better than those brown people over there who don’t speak English and who get followed around by flies.” 

I am not at all convinced that this is a generational phenomenon. 

This is totally a propaganda thing. We don’t get educated about the way power works. Maybe we go to college and we get a professor who assigns some Zinn or Chomsky and then we forget all that when we go to work to make some asshole a bunch of money. I think maybe something like that is what happens. 

https://youtu.be/8hTRb-OQdKU

This track always goes right to my heart for some reason.

“The borders should be illegal instead of the people / That were here before the Bible and all of its sequels.”

Someone will always think you’re full of shit. That’s okay. 

What Happens

What happens is the machine 

goes through us 

too damn quick

til we got nothin’ but fun size Milky Way wrappers 

in a Halloween treat bag. 

-

What happens is sometimes you find yourself ponderin’ what hell is. 

It’s geographic region. 

The shit that goes down there. 

Always in the same ZIP code you’re in. 

It’s Monday eternally. 

That deep, polar bear cold you feel all over your body

never quits 

and everything you got to do to eat that day 

is gonna kill you. 

-

What happens is sometimes you live 

and you’re happy enough to (almost) thank god. 

Your walk has swagger to it.

Maybe the air that slowly kills you tastes sweeter. 

You think maybe it’ll all be okay 

till it all wears off like a crack hit. 

- 

What happens is life. 

So a friend of mine told me how yesterday his coworker died on the way to work due to speeding and crossed a red light (she was late for the third time, so I’m guessing she was trying to avoid a write up). As soon as she crossed the light she was hit on the drivers side by a semi. The messed up part is that in less than an hour her table was cleared for a new worker. In less than 4 hours they had sent out the news that they are hiring. By the end of the day the hiring manager had contacted 4 people for an interview. Moral of the story is, these jobs don’t care about your ass. They will replace you in a snap. Don’t risk or waste your life trying to go above and beyond for a job that could care less about your wellbeing.

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. 

This is me reading two of my posts.