Sundays, My Voice, Etc.

The blank space and the blinky-blinky. 

Fan blowing and gettin’ down to the slow beat only they can hear. Move its head to the right. Move its head to the left. Do oscillating fans get together and have raves? 

I’m a straight man. Sometimes I don’t even know what turns me on anymore. I mean, I do but not really. 

I have an appointment with a therapist on Tuesday. This time I’ll go to the right address. I don’t really know what to say to him. 

So, what brings you in? 

Scream my lungs out. 

Or punch the wall. 

Or throw something. 

Note to self

Need to reflect on the features in society that exacerbate or animate depression or other mental illnesses. The way out of the darkness clearly isn’t self-help or drugs. 

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

The Day Job I Ain’t Quitting

I do not feel like doing this today. The only thing that seems to be possible is dog shit doggerel. 

I will try today and I will be proud that I tried and then maybe I’ll try tomorrow and maybe the next day after that and then I’ll give up and feel this maddening restlessness.

I fear this whole thing becoming like my diary. The diary that some of you happen to get to read. Is it so bad if it does become like that? Maybe not. 

Okay. Focus, dog. Focus. 

Does it really fucking matter if I focus? This isn’t an article in Rolling Stone. I’m not Matt Taibbi chronicling the unraveling of the American economy back in 2008. I read shit like that and I think, “Fuck. I wish I could have done this.” I’m not Chris Hedges writing some beautiful Jeremiad about all the ways America is spiritually bankrupt. 

Fuck that. I’m not going to talk about what I’m not and what I’m never going to be. That doesn’t matter. I’m going to talk about what I am. What do I do?

I’m some company’s computer guy. They need IT (I.T. not the clown), they come to me. It’s me. Just me. It’s a one man band. Maybe some day it will be the basis of some narly off, off Broadway one man show about how the office computer guy slowly becomes this crazed motherfucker who hears the voice of God. What does God say? Death to capitalism. Ya know, if God said that then I would have to conclude that he truly is God. Anyway. Focus. 

Focus. 

I can take a computer apart and almost put it back together. It’s not hard. If you come to me with a computer issue, I can usually zero in fairly quickly on what exactly is broken. Look, it’s like this, okay? I’m not some wizard that is going to code some app that is going to make me insanely rich. No idea how to do that. The computer stuff is my most practical skill. That’s just about the only thing I can do that I’ve figured out how to monetize. I think that’s about the only thing I can do that makes money. 

This current gig is the most responsibility I’ve ever had in any job. It’s just me. There is no one to pick up my slack. I don’t call in sick even if I feel like it. I’m not going to bullshit you. I’m barely a computer guy. Sometimes I have no idea what the fuck is going on. Thing is though, I make up for that with my people skills. I build rapport. I charm. I play the role. I look the part. Stocky nerd with glasses but with passable personal hygiene. 

I go in and recede into the required persona. Friendly nerd with okay computer skills who idolizes MacGyver. They got no idea. They don’t need to have any idea what I really am. 

It could be worse. Seriously. I could be someone with nothing at all that is marketable. 

I hate that I even have to think that. Shit. I hate that anyone has to think that. 

Yeah. I’m underpaid. If I had a choice, I’d never work for a wage another day of my life. 

I’ll tell you what though. Somebody comes to me all stressed the fuck out over something that is going to keep them from getting their work done and I fix it? Shit. I think on that too much, I kinda feel myself getting misty. I’ll walk through the halls and get the respectful nod from people I’ve pulled out of the fire in the past and it kinda makes it worth it. 

Look, you gotta understand. You are reading the words of a guy who has not held down a job for more than 6 months since 2012. Do you have any idea what happens to the soul of a person who can’t hold down a job in 21st Century America? I can say that it rots but that’s not accurate. I can’t describe it.

Fuck. I really wish that the ability to work was not a prerequisite for dignity. 

I can feel myself getting angrier by the minute because I feel like I’m still accepting the precepts of this insidious and inhumane capitalist system. I feel like I’m weaving this tale of a man who was a flake but who battoned down the hatches and became not a flake. I went from a flake to a good employee. 

FUCK THAT. 

I get to have dignity cuz I breathe. I get to have dignity cuz I’m here and I didn’t ask to be here. I get to have dignity cuz I can bleed and I can cry. 

Fuck you, Ben Shapiro. I just felt like saying that. Fuck that guy. 

I have a day job that I can sorta stand. 

I don’t know if I believe in miracles but that’s pretty close. 

Got stuck at work way too long and it fried my fucking brain.

Dad bod and the mind of a philosopher king.

It’s.. hey. I don’t really think I’m a king. It’s me being  braggadocious. 

Get lost in the night’s machinery

with nothin’ to see but what there is to see

synthetic angel glow and Internet Protocol that never sleeps

I want to write an essay. 

What about? I don’t know. I think I can do it though. It is going to take some trying and some discipline from me though. 

Day dreamed of spiking the **********’s [Redacted] Diet Coke with LSD. 

Of course, I don’t know that that would do much good. Never done LSD myself. Some day. Maybe. 

Was going to throw some lines out but nothing is really coming to me. 

Plans. Plans of mice and men. Best laid. 

Laid and paid. Can never get both, ya dig? 

Gotta get outta this place. 

Game, set, match, cowardice.  

.Don’t play tennis. Never played it. Never watched it. Never think about it. 

Dubious metaphor. Why reference something you know precisely dick about, dog? 

That’s been on my mind. 

What? 

Appropriated blackness, ya dig? You want depth or whatever it is so you channel a voice that ain’t your own. That creeps into my voice both on the page and out there and I’m not sure how the fuck I feel about it. I mean, is that right? 

I blacked out the owner of the Diet Coke due to paranoia. You can probably guess who it is. It occurs to me that the paranoia might be preposterous because who really cares what some loser writes on some blog almost nobody reads. You never know though. I’m not too keen on having a sit down with Feds. 

Fuck.

God damn it. 

Fuck. 

Structure. 

I need to read poems or something. Let that seep into me. Let it influence me. I learned not too long ago that the Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh wrote poems. I read a few of them. I dug them, especially the ones he wrote while incarcerated. There was something really honest and pure there. There is something about the work of someone who is not noted for being a poet. There is something about the work of people you don’t ever study in some course in school. Example from Ho Chi Minh: 

A COMRADES PAPER BLANKET

New books, old books, the leaves all piled together.

A paper blanket is better than no blanket.

You who sleep like princes, sheltered from the cold,

Do you know how many men in prison cannot sleep all night?

I mean. God damn it. That hits me. 

CLEAR MORNING

The morning sun shines over the prison wall,

And drives away the shadows and miasma of hopelessness.

A life-giving breeze blows across the earth.

A hundred imprisoned faces smile once more.

See. Nothing too mysterious or abstract there. He’s just writing about his situation. 

Yeah. I know. Blood on his hands. The French and The Americans had blood on their hands too. Not too many heroes there. 

Or anywhere really. 

Heavenly father, 

One more day. 

Have mercy on your boy

but if not on me, someone who fuckin’ needs it more. 

Can ya do that? 

Amen. 

That sudden peace and drive safe was me be being lazy as fuck. 

God damn it.