On A Summer Night In Mid-July

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? 

Sometimes the sun shines 

and somehow I’m okay with that 

The wind tickles me like it does 

and I really can’t protest 

even if I got no clue 

what the sweat and the tears 

were for. 

Laura Ingraham

I cannot stand to listen to that woman’s voice. 

What I See

I’m typing this as I sit in the office. For all I know, someone is going to walk up to me with a crisis any second. I’ve usually been going “home” (I’ll explain the quotation marks another day.) and engaging in this exercise this week but I’m afraid that I simply won’t have the motivation after the work day is done so here I am. I type fast. As odd as it is to say, I’ve been typing since I was a kid. I’ve been told that I’m an angry typer. Now that I’ve just typed that, I’m cognizant of the noise my typing is making.

The office is quiet. The people with offices are all buttoned up in them.

I’m buttoned up in my thoughts but not really. I guess I’m trying to be buttoned up in them. How the fuck do you manage to be truly present in your thoughts? Shit. That reminds me of all the talk of mindfulness. Practice mindfulness so you can be a better employee. The CEO should practice mindfulness so that maybe he doesn’t feel so bad when he has to lay off a bunch of people. Maybe the homeless should practice mindfulness so that homelessness might suck less.

I’m getting political now. I’m sick of people who are sick of everything being political. There is a political dimension to everything. Nah. Nope. It is deeper than that. Everything is political. There is no divorcing the personal from the political.

See, the piss of the political class gets on me. There is no escaping that. Even if I never mentioned the name of a politician or a political party or anything in my written emo ruminations, the forces that these things exert touches my thoughts whether I want to acknowledge it or not. I’m choosing to see these things. The bitch of it though is I feel like I cannot un-see them even if I want to. I don’t want to make myself into some kinda god damn martyr but there is a real price to pay for awareness. It ain’t pleasant and it really kinda sucks.

I woke up one day and I took a look around. It didn’t use to be this way but every job I saw was some kind of temporary or contract job. A job that offered barely a living a wage and that offered terrible or no benefits. I don’t know when exactly almost every job I came across became like this but that’s how it is now. I’ve been in such jobs. Those precarious gigs offered by companies who have smiling minorities plastered all over their websites. Look, listen to me, okay? Almost any organization that has pictures of smiling minorities in their advertisements is up to some shit. That’s just the way that it is. Apparently, since the year 2005, almost every job that has been created is a contract job. You ever hear the term precariat? It’s a portmanteau of proletariat and precarious. That’s what we’ve got. We’ve got a work force that is in a permanent state of precariousness drifting from temporary job to temporary job for years and for years. We’re a nation of Uber and Lyft drivers. We barely noticed that shit. Do stand-up comics who get HBO specials talk about this? Is this a plot point in romantic comedies? Hell no. Most of us have been too busy working to notice.

I guess being a flake who constantly had to look for work has its advantages because that had a lot to do with me noticing that trend. It’s not like it’s hidden. You can Google it but it just doesn’t get emphasized all that much. After a long day of working hard so that the boss can buy another Bentley, who wants to think about the fact that a lot of us find ourselves in a terrible position?

What else do I see? I see more transients in the suburbs. I’m a sheltered kid from the ‘burbs. I’m used to going to an urban area and averting my eyes when the stench of the homeless tickles my nostrils. Thing is though, I don’t have to go to an urban center to see homeless people. I see them more and more in the suburbs now. I see people sleeping rough. I see people panhandling. I bring this up to people I know to see if they notice this too and I’ve gotten asked if I called the cops cuz that’s scary. I’m no sociologist. I’m an expert in precisely nothing. I think what I’m seeing is the decay of a society. I find myself wondering how many of those sleeping rough on the streets of the suburbs once owned houses there.

See. You are being psychologically abused. Yes. You. I’m talking to you. You are being gas lit. The TV tells you that the economy is booming, that jobs are being created left and right and that the country is becoming great again but you know that that’s all complete bullshit because you have EYES. You actually live in the world that they supposedly are describing. That fucks with a person.

So, I see what I see and what I see is a society that is decaying, rotting. What is society becoming?

A fascist police state. It’s nascent right now but fascism is here and it will get worse. Trumpism is conservatism in America. The media loves to parade around these allegedly sane and respectable conservatives who don’t much like the Trumpster but here’s the thing, THEY FUCKING LOST. The man is the party now and Trumpism will be with us after one too many Big Macs finally stops his heart. A certain segment of this fucking country loves him because he says the shit they say in taverns loudly and proudly. He’ll make all of those dirty, criminal Mexicans disappear. We got ourselves an efficient deportation task force in ICE. We got privately run facilities that ICE throws detainees into. Children are being ripped from their mother’s arms. People get abused in all sorts of ways in these facilities. Right now, the people subject most to the police state are undocumented immigrants and people of color. That who it is today. It’s going to be somebody else tomorrow.

The reality is this, okay? We’ve got a septuagenarian ex-game show host with a mean streak and a thing for vindictiveness who has control over a nuclear arsenal and the most sophisticated surveillance grid ever devised. I’ve reminded people that this septuagenarian ex-game show host could possibly end human civilization and it gets laughed off.

An unwillingness to engage with the world as it really is could be deadly.

That’s what I see.

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.

Random embarrassing fact #1

When I was in high school, I used to play this game on the Internet called Harsh Lands. It was a MUD. Basically, it was this text based medieval game world with a heavy emphasis on in-character roleplaying. You stayed in-character. You talked like your character at all times no matter what. You did what your character did. My character was this deeply religious warrior who rose to the rank of Master Sergeant in The Tashal Watch. The Watch was the organization in charge of keeping the peace in the city of Tashal which was the largest city in the Kingdom of Kaldor as I recall. I was the highest ranking player character lawman so I was basically the law in that city. After I retired that character, I played a thug/enforcer type who was a member of the Lia Kavair. The Lia Kavair were basically a medieval Mafia. They were a den of thieves, assassins, racketeers. My character roughed people up who needed roughing up, extorted people, menaced people and on one occasion even killed someone. I remember spending a lot of time ruminating on this character's guilt for having taken a life to the point where I made myself pretty much a wreck in real life. I should mention something about death in this game. Death was permanent. If you died, there was no coming back and starting over after losing some gear or whatever. You were dead. As you can imagine, that made shit pretty intense at times. This sounds nerdy and dumb and it was but it was incredibly fun to collaborate with other people and create stories.

If I could exist as some kinda layabout, I would do that. I’d shave when I want to. I’d sleep when I want to. In fact, I’ve kinda done this. I’ve spent a great deal of time jobless. You get a ton of time to yourself. Thing is though, it’s pretty much a living hell. Even if you have a place to go if you absolutely cannot pay your bills, it’s awful. You don’t feel like you have a reason to be living. You don’t feel like you deserve to live. Fuck. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. I did that off and on for about 6 years. 

I fucking need space. 

I could have spent all that time that I had writing but I had even less focus than I do now. 

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. 

Been kind of a brutal weekend for me. 

Didn’t know that I was going to be dealing with a sick dog. All of that wrecked me. Think I got my cry quota done for the next week. 

I’m exhausted. I feel beat up. 

I’d take a hug or two.

That dog is hanging in though. She is this adorable thing but god damn, she’s tough. 

I think I’m way too up in my feelings right now. 

I’ll get back to you. 

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.