I'm a freak

I have not been around very long. I cannot say that I know what I am
talking about; although it is entirely possible that I do.

But at the same time, I've been around for thousands of years. All these
bits have been in others before. I'm nothing new.

I have a problem. The problem is that I want a problem. Sometimes, this
comes out as: the problem is that I don't have a problem. Problem, problem,
problem. Now what is it? Just a sound. Just a sound. Nothing daunting,
surely. Nothing to cause alarm.

I want to many things. Sometimes, this comes out as: I don't want to want
things; or, nothing is ever good enough. Mental fiction, that's what it's all
about. In my hand, I hold a something. In my other, another something of like
kind. It is possible to have the one and still want the other. This is what my
life is built on. Except it goes: In my mind, I hold a something. In my hand,
another something. It's what I wanted, but not what I want. That's how you
work a mental fiction.

I open and close all the time. I'm like a valve. Let you in, let you out.
Pull you in, push you out. You think that sounds like sex? So do I. Is that
what I intended, though? The world may never know.

Here's a picture for you. Yellow walls, to make you and the microbes sick.
Cinderblock walls. Paint peeling; it used to be toothpaste blue. A set of
drawers half-person high: 2 narrow drawers at the top, side by side; three
single wide ones below; all in a column; all together now. Life: a TV and N64.
You can play with them. There's shows and games. They can play you. White
noise: murmurs and hums. A newspaper backside-up with the controllers for
the white noise machines. There they are. They're on the chipped, cracked,
one-and-a-half foot table with rounded corners so nobody gets hurt. An empty
waterbottle with the TV and Nintendo up above those drawers. Cords and
wires -- some. Two garbage cans -- what a waste -- over in the corner. The
bathroom door is wooden with a black frame. It has a silver rectangle you can
push on to go in. There's a black grate near the bottom to circulate the air,
because my shit stinks. There's a bigger silver rectangle below that. There's a
few small bits of trash on the floor that someone will eventually pick up. I am
in orbit around these little bits of someone else's crap. Affected? Perhaps.
This room is full, though it looks like it could swallow a cement truck.

Words. So many words, and I could have just taken a picture. What's the
point of writing about it, then? "Because any idiot can push a button. It
takes a gift to make words say something pretty." Oh, I see.

Thanks to my inner dialog with myself, I might never need anyone else. But
"need" is such a crafty word. It makes you think it's enough by itself. But
really, there needs to be a something the needed thing is for. Nowadays, you
just automatically think need includes "to go on living physically," like you
just assume log₁₀ unless told otherwise. Need is both a difficult word and
thing to deal with.

So what do I need -- in order to go on living physically? I don't know. To
my knowledge, I've never been dead before, although I'm looking forward to
trying it sometime. Sometime. Always the day after tomorrow. That always
sounds nice.

So I packed someone else's bags today, so to speak. I helped these people pack
up their things to take them back to their real store. This was all just temporary.
Allow me a minute to bask in the pathetic metaphor. Fine. That's enough.

I try. Very hard sometimes. I give up. Very easily sometimes. Maybe my
problem is in there somewhere. Maybe if I only tried harder when I gave up,
and gave up when I tried to hard.

There's a book of mine out. It's called Maybes for All Seasons. It's dedicated
to the Absolute Idea. Antidisestablishmentarianism? What the fuck is that?! Go
look that one up in your Funk and Wagnalls'! Mechanic applause, mechanic
laughter.

All this fascination with space -- outer space. It's so big. I just wonder
what's underground. Maybe there really are gnomes down there or something.
A quick dialog for you:

I think some things are beautiful. That means I like them so much that they
could be around me all the time, and I'd never dislike them. That's what
beautiful means to me.

I like watching my pen move in the reflection o the binder clip. But only if I'm
making real words. Doodling doesn't captivate me at all.

So here's another complication: I want a problem. Do I have one and not realize
it? (Wanting, among other things, means not having.) Do I realize one and not
have it? Mental fiction.

How much wood would a wood chuck chuck? Well, if the wood chuck is a
person, and the chucking has no immediately apparent relevance to the wood
chuck's practical desires, probably none. Most of what we call needs would be
better to call desires, since nobody ever forgets that a desiring of something is
always for the sake of something else.

Except happiness? Sounds good. There are two kinds of happiness: Happiness
with a big H, and happinesses. The first is a mental fiction. Think Miniver
Cheevy. The second can't be a mental fiction because each little happiness is
lived out in something: an action, an object, a person, whatever, an idea. People
who live by the latter, I think, come the closest to what is meant by the first.
Go figure. This world's got some crazy wiring.

I can't believe how often people -- esteemed philosophers included -- try to find
a cause for unhappiness in the world. Part of the human world is what is made
of what's going on. At least half of the problem is upstairs. Change your
attitude, and you change the world.

I feel like I'm already on some sort of different plane of thought. I worry
so much about who it is I'm writing for. For me or an audience? Am I doing it
because I feel it or because I want an effect? So I make myself the audience.
I say I'm the only one who will ever read this. Now it's a diary or a journal.
Solution? On the surface at least. It's a pacifier: good enough until the real
thing comes along. I'm not an avid writer by any stretch. I like to say that I
wait for my pen to pick me up. Sounds good. I don't want to be in control at
times like that. I just want to ride. That was my mood last night. These last
two paragraphs come from too calm a source to seem to me very meaningful.
"But if there was a tidal wave every day, it wouldn't be such a big deal
anymore." Oh, thanks.

So, I hear the best thing to do is write every day -- at roughly the same time.
That way you somehow train inspiration to know when you're waiting. I don't just
do anything. I need at least some semblance of a flimsy reasonable justification.

Reasonable and rational do not mean the same thing. Rational is step-by-step,
calculated. Reasonable is what my mom wants me to be.

My life passes like flashes in a dustpan. I've never stuck with anything: people
or activities. Why did I quit the choir? I've been in choir every year since the
eighth grade. I have problems. (Yay!)

There is an obsession that passes all attempts at being understood; an obsession
so compelling that I often feel I barely know how or why I'm doing what I'm
doing. Waking from sleep is a decent if hackneyed analogy. This obsession is that
there is a right and wrong way to experience pleasure, right and wrong objects by
which to feel alive.

I flit. No sooner have I begun a book than I think of some other one that I
simply must begin, or continue, or finish. I organize books over and over in
different orders in which to read them, scarcely actually reading five pages. I
destroy myself -- for not reading. "No! Books are meant to be read -- not
arranged!" Essence before existence. Play; that's what it's all about. I think
that play is what happens when you stop flipping yourself over like a luck penny --
trying to find the lucky part. I'm nicest to people when I don't try to be.

I know. Or I don't know. The world -- what a big thing. It would take a Jesus
or a Buddha to make a shockwave that big -- or an Adolf Hitler. My life --
somewhat more manageable. This, here, now; I. Open it up. Eternty is every
moment. Or, better, the moment. Drink up; there's plenty to go around.

Who am I? What a daunting fucking question. No matter how many times I
ask myself -- no matter how many ways -- I can never do it justice. Every
embellished response -- it's just noises. Noises that mean nothing. There's
always a part that's left out. Let go of the question, man. Flit on, flit on.

Go away, come back. It's never the same the second time around. Is it
different? It's different -- from the memory. Trying to match a memory to
a reality is frivolous. Luck, luck, luck.

Will people like it? Is this worthwhile? Different questions. Say it
again. Different questions. Again. Different questions. Are they?

Where is it? It's all there -- it's all right there. Everything. Millions of people
don't collectively pull happiness out of their asses. They've got exactly the
same world to work with. Michaelangelo and I have worked in the same media.
It's what you do with it -- now what you have to work with.

Hunger, starvation, poverty, greed, malevolence, injustice, torture, grief
registered on a human face so meticulously that you feel yourself in there,
and I here making it all into shapes. But just look at it. That cloud's a
turtle -- and there's Cinderella. It was all there. Before you pressed your
stinking face up against it, it was all there.

I thought it was gone. It seemed so very obvious that my life had become a
flatline. I miss my highs and lows.

But they're not gone at all. Me, me, me. My focus has been nothing else.
So, on a high day, I think there is nothing wrong with me, that every
single person could do to be a little bit more like me. On a low day, I think
that I am completely worthless, that the world would be so much better
without me in it -- if, of course, I mattered enough to have my loss make
an impact at all.

The ups and downs were still there all along. It's just that my only real
object somehow became my own crazy self.