I’m Slipping A Little. I Feel Laziness Starting To Grip Me. I Ain’t Been As Conscientious With This
I’m slipping a little. I feel laziness starting to grip me. I ain’t been as conscientious with this endeavor. I missed two days this week. I did not write a single word. Whatever. Like many a baby boomer says, it is what it is. I’m gonna pick up. I’m gonna continue. I’m gonna live on. I will survive. Aight. I’m gonna put on that song. The Cake version.
I sit in this room that was my bedroom back in the day. I grew up in this room. I came to be in this room. I prayed in this room. I had my first orgasm in this room at the age of 16. I dreamed in this room. I woke up on summer days that were full of nothing but possibilities in this motherfucking room. I sat in the dark and listened to Art Bell in this room. I don’t have my own space anymore. I haven’t since some time in November, I think. I miss it. I’ve always felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I don’t really have a space right now where I can just be. That’s traumatic, man. It really is. I express this and nobody really seems to give a fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Part of me thinks this shit is about on the same level as some angsty, hormonal teenager who is failing English and is brilliant but lazy according to themselves and who writes on a blog with a background that is as black as their nail polish.
I need to challenge myself. I’m not quite sure how though.
I finished reading two books this week. For a man that has been struggling with his attention span for years or at least feels like he has, that is an accomplishment. I finished the The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi and The End of Policing by Alex Vitale.
Taibbi is just an excellent writer with a good eye and a keen social conscience. He’s a minor hero of mine. I will pretty much read anything he writes.
The End of Policing made me think a lot. I can’t say that it challenged me too much but it made me think about the why of a lot of things. In recent years, I’ve become really concerned about the militarization of police forces and the violence that more often than not victimizes the poor and people of color. It keeps me up at night. It makes me angry. It makes me want to give the finger to every cop I see. Blue Lives Matter flags make me fighting mad. I really cannot watch cop shows any longer because they play like insidious propaganda to me. The book is a bit dry but it’s quite readable. It is written by an activist academic who traces a lot of the problems heavy handed policing is thrown at to cruel austerity measures. If you’re reading this, you should read that book. I kinda wish everybody in this rotting empire would. Maybe some time soon I will write about some of the things I actually learned from the book.
More Posts from Mistahsojourner and Others
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.
Red Pills
Every red pill I ever swallowed
was barely a placebo
dime store salvation
dolled up like nirvana
to get me through the day
to get me through the day
to get me through the day
and some days I came out something like alive
and thought I’m free of the dread
in this dream
none of us chose
but nah
and I’m never getting a refund
for any of those pills
the twisted man
from the internet sold me
so I’ve got a live with it
Improvised trek
into the coldest
and maddest parts
of you and me
and I hope you’ll come with me
into the setting sun
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.
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.
Fuck
Fuck.
When the boss on his shit again and I got a head full of commie propaganda on a Monday
When it’s one way and I need it to be another
God damn it, good looks don’t pay fuckin’ bills.
Fuck.
She whispers it in the dark
when she wants that love harder.
At the sky
when you got nothin’ but the rain, your sweat, your bones and a raw deal.
Gotta watch who hears you say that
Not sacred
but it’s something, ya know? You feel me? Am I talkin’ crazy?
Fuck.
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.
I sit down here and I try this. Type my thoughts. Try to dress ‘em up like Fonzie or a monk who just got it. Thing is, usually I’m going nowhere. I’m not Fonzie. I’m not a monk. I’m not the hero. The world is full of people who think they need to be the big-dicked hero.
We. We>me.
I say that as I tickle these here keys all alone. Are we all these people having heroic fantasies all alone? We’re all Luke Skywalker staring at the horizon. Maybe it’s time to cut that shit out. Maybe we need to cut it out because it’s dangerous.
I remember. Nah, I half-remember. Shit, maybe this never happened. I remember a Saturday Night Live Christmas parody. It was a parody of those holiday specials with the clay people. I dunno. Do you know what I’m talking about? Aight. There was a line that stuck with me. I don’t remember the context. I just remember the line, “It’s not about you, you douchebag.”
IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU, YOU DOUCHEBAG.
Maybe I’m way off here but that’s the heart of pure, undefiled religion right there. Of course, what happens with religion is people get transfixed by the messianic figures. That’s all they see. They try to see themselves in the messiahs.
Went somewhere. Somewhere. Got lost there though. Might not be able to go any farther.
Don’t Wish it Was Sunday
Tomorrow is just another manic Monday. I don’t like Sundays. That’s not new. I suppose it’s not so bad. Things have been a lot worse. I could use some paid vacation though. I could use some time to chill, just be and kinda get my head right.
I tracked down the number of an old therapist. I’m thinking about giving him a call this week. I figure it can’t hurt. I’ve got some things I need to figure out. There’s only so much that I can figure out on my own. Not to sound all emo and self-absorbed here but this exercise here has me all up in my feelings and it occurs to me that I should probably be talking to someone. If you’ve been regularly watching this space or if you know me at all, you’re probably inclined to agree.
It occurred to me last night how taxing it is for my mental health to reside in Trump’s America. Shit is fucked up and I honestly feel like we are all being gas lit when people pretend that it isn’t incredibly fucked up. I feel a tremendous amount of guilt about the fact I can choose to ignore this horror show if I so choose. Others do not have that luxury but god damn it, I’m not doing anyone any favors by making myself miserable.
You’ll notice that I played around with my poetic meditation on the word ‘fuck.’ Not sure how I feel about it. Might play with it more.
