I’M GONNA kill the NCAA here after some more dust settles, because it’s a piece of shit and the exploding scandal in college basketball – which has seen indictments, arrests of assistant coaches and shoe company execs, and the firing of Hall of Fame Coach/Master Tactician and Motivator/All Around Sleazebag Rick Pitino at Louisville – looks as if it might have ramifications for years to come. We’ll deal with that soon as we have more time and the scandal further unfurls.
But let’s post something beautiful right now. We need more beauty in this life.
I’m in a literary mood today, and since I had college basketball on the brain, I thought I would pull out a college basketball poem, yes, poem, which is written in couplets, of course, because the 3-point shot hadn’t been invented in college basketball in the 1970s when it was penned. (Nowadays the stanzas would be tercets a third of the time.) This comes from a basketball anthology published in 1980 called Take it to the Hoop, which my dad gave to me in 1982 as a gift for my 13th birthday. It was my favorite book, a cherished book which was lost when a storage shed of mine got broken into. Getting another copy took forever, as the book went out of print years ago, and I finally got ahold of one last year in exchange for joining a library in Kansas and contributing to their fundraiser for building a new library, a cause which I wholeheartedly support.
I think about my dad a lot these days, because he has new challenges that we as a family will likely struggle to deal with and come to terms with. He introduced me to basketball: I went to my first game with in 1975, when I was six years old and Washington State defeated Jacksonville 82:77. (Go ahead and look it up. I told you that I remember everything.) But it was when he gave me this book about the game, and when I read this poem, that I realized I wanted to write, a realization of what would become a lifelong pursuit for which I’m grateful, even though I hate it a lot of the time.
And it’s a perfect poem for this blog, because the bad guys win in the end, and we’re left to learn to handle disappointment. Sounds almost perfect.
And the Long Beach State teams in the poem were coached by Jerry Tarkanian, whom I met once, as his daughter went to the same school as I and he came for a speaking engagement. He was always in the NCAA crosshairs for improprieties, and yet, in retrospect, and somewhat paradoxically, he was arguably the most honest coach the sport has ever seen, much more so than the sleazebags who are about to taken down by the feds.
-- -- --
The NCAA Mideast Regionals,
and Other Existential Setbacks
It was #1 ranked Indiana
against #2 ranked Marquette
and the announcer announced
that the Indiana coach Bobby Knight
had his office wall papered with uplifting slogans,
in particular one from general Patton
about having one goal and driving toward it
singlemindedly, and that people will try to stand between
you and your pinnacle, and the closer you come to it
the more furious shall be their resistance,
but in the hall of the Marquette coach, Al McGuire,
there are pictures of clowns
and he is reputed to have said,
“All of us in public life are clowns.”
I had also read an article about McGuire,
about how all his players are crazy about him
and how he’ll get pissed off and end up
wrestling with them on the locker room floor
and five minutes later all animosities are forgotten.
Once he told the reporters that one of his players
couldn’t throw the ball in Lake Michigan,
and the next day the player called his own press conference
and drove the press out to the lake
where he proceeded to toss a basketball
off the end of the pier. I also remembered
when he brought his team into the Long Beach Arena
back when he had our greatest team
and had never been beaten at home
and nobody in the top twenty (UCLA and USC most noticeably)
would schedule us even at their places
and no coach in his right mind
brought his kids to the Arena,
so naturally Long Beach beat Marquette
but it was a close game in which our guys
spent the whole night at the foul line,
and afterwards McGuire didn’t bitch
or temporize or alibi,
and so I now said,
“Right on, Al McGuire;
I hope you kick those goose-step Hoosiers’ asses,”
but he drew two technicals
and Marquette lost by nine big points.
– Gerald Locklin
“... everything is complicated by the presence of the opposing team.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Soundtrack for a Nervous Breakdown
TODAY we are going to talk about losing something entirely different, which is my mind.
People keep asking me why I haven’t been posting blogs, or writing novels, or writing articles that I’m proud of, or whatnot. What follows is why. When this occurs, me getting anything done is pretty difficult.
Every now and then, I make it a point to write down everything that is going through my head during the day. I’ve been doing this now for 11 years. I don’t do it all the time, just when I start to completely go off the rails. Usually, I just think my way through it, but sometimes, it needs to be written down. In an effort to maintain openness and honesty, I’m going to take this particular day, which was yesterday, and share it with you.
This is unedited, save for removing some names where appropriate to do so, and makes no real sense, but in total, it makes perfect sense. [NOTE: I did, however, clean up some of the grammar, because I found myself annoyed with how incoherent my incoherence was.] If there are references in here to things I have written about on this blog, I will provide a link to provide some context. Also, when I do this sort of thing, I’m usually listening to music, and doing things like singing the lyrics and responding to the songs, so where that occurs, I’m inserting the songs, which came from a playlist of several thousand songs that was set to random.
Happy reading. It wasn’t happy writing.
- - -
3:49 a.m.: I woke up KC because I thought she was choking. She said “huh?” She was fine.
3:57 a.m.: Probably best that I’m awake. The argument is always the worst part of that dream. I was just about to start the Q&A, I asked for questions and she stood up, like always. Oh here we go, yeah, flash that fucking gun and tell me how you’re going to shoot me already. But then she’s waving the gun around, debating who to shoot and here comes the argument. No, don’t shoot her, you idiot, shoot me instead. You don’t even know her, and I’ve not seen her in a decade anyway, so I don’t know what she’s doing here in the first place. Just shoot me and get it over with. Fucking get it over with already you psychopath.
4:08 a.m.: Might as well go to the office today. I can catch the early shuttle and be there faster.
4:10 a.m.: The early shuttle means getting somewhere I don’t want to be faster. It’s got to be the goin’ and not the gettin’ there that’s good. I’ll work from home. 51 pages by Friday? No chance. No problem. No just no and that’s my final answer.
4:12 a.m.: I needed some music. Something African and soulful. Fuck yeah Bombino, shred that fucker.
4:20 a.m.: The chiropractor crucified me on Monday. “Oh how are you feeling?” “Oh I’m fine thanks.” “You know your back is something of a mess again.” Just adjust the vertebrae and stop calling me on my bullshit.
4:35 a.m.: Latin trash. I need that. Oh that song feels good.
4:40 a.m.: He spelled art wrong. He spelled it aart. Jesus Bastard Christ. “Cars that doubl has works of aart.” He also wrote the word Prrnion in the same paragraph. What could that possibly mean? How do you have a fucking job? Jesus.
4:50 a.m.: Interesting random choice, iTunes. Grant Hart just died the other day. I always thought of Hüsker Dü as the soundtrack for a nervous breakdown.
5:07 a.m.: I need to buy their new record.
5:12 a.m.: There are no photos for this article. Why are there no photos? Oh, right, because he LIED AT THE FUCKING BUDGET MEETING. Goddamn it. I’m going to fucking fire him tomorrow. Jesus Fuck, am I the only person who is paid to give a shit?
5:22 a.m.: This song also came up yesterday when I was walking in the fog and it was threatening to swallow me whole. Do it, Karl, you bitch. “Old man yells at fog!”
5:28 a.m.: Laura asks me “why didn’t you say that?” I say that if I had, it would have ruined everything. There are things you say, things you don’t say, and things you can’t ever say which wind up leaving you inconsolable. All you are left to do is to imagine the consequences, imagine the worst case scenarios, but also dream about the beauty of what could have come to pass ...
5:31 a.m.: I can taste opportunity near ...
5:39 a.m.: I found a nice house. €300,000.
5:45 a.m.: I’ll go to the office today and sort this mess out.
5:48 a.m.: No, no I won’t.
5:50 a.m.: I’m a dark star.
6:05 a.m.: Kevin is funny. He said “you’re going to the office today,” like any day that I show up at Royal Ground at 6:00 a.m. I felt bad the other day when I walked past him on the street, carrying a cup of coffee from another café. I’m such a coffee slut.
6:24 a.m.: Was that really necessary?
6:36 a.m.: Laura asks me “what if you said it now?” and I said that it wouldn’t mean a thing because the biggest problem with remembering everything is that no one else does, and when you point out something that someone said on a Tuesday a whole bunch of years ago, their response is to say, “I don’t remember that,” and you take it personally, because you made a metaphor out of it when it was nothing but a random utterance, the words having come to explode with meaning in my mind because I make meaning out of everything. Blue is just a color, goddamn it. Linen is a fabric, coffee a way of life.
6:55 a.m.: bang bang bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang bang bang
7:02 a.m.: Except the bullets don’t work any more, and neither do the drugs.
7:05 a.m.: Shit that’s loud. Who cares? I’m deaf anyway. I kill headsets faster than I kill brain cells with whiskey.
7:07 a.m.: The router conked out for the second time this morning and I thought about solving the problem of getting a new one by simply smashing that one to bits and necessitating its replacement, but if I’d done that, I would have mourned its loss.
7:11 a.m.: Fuck it I need to walk around the block and wage silent war against my right foot and ankle and knee and hip. All of this conspiratorial shit on the right side of my body needs to stop.
7:24 a.m.: Home of the motorloaf. What does that even mean?
7:35 a.m.: She brought flowers last night, flowers which were sitting in her lap before the shooting started and she ducked for cover. This sequence used to horrify me, before I realized that the aim is poor.
7:44 a.m.: I hate it when the walls start to move. Next thing I know, you’ll be sitting over there in the corner, asking me why it is I haven’t written to you in so long. My mind can make a mess out of an empty room. Shoulders hunch, neck contorts. I love that feeling of being able to differentiate every single vertebra in my neck by how much it hurts. Isn’t that just super. Get out of this fucking chair!
7:48 a.m.: That hurt.
7:56 a.m.: I get more things not accomplished before 9:00 a.m. than most people do all day. Fuck it, I’m going for another walk.
8:22 a.m.: Hmm, I appear to be having a crisis. It’s bad to go walking on a day like today, because there are always cars. There are always hills and always cars. This city was inherently a bad idea. And I hate that fucking building downtown that I can see from here. That’s the sort of arrogant building dictators build in places like Brazzaville and Azerbaijan. Salesforce can suck it.
But I have Norwegian technotrash so everything is okay.
8:30 a.m.: I just missed the last of the shuttles and I don’t give a fuck. I get more done at home than at the office anyway, and this way I won’t murder anyone.
8:43 a.m.: tell me now what I’m gonna do … all my desire to be with you … juste un peu d’amour … juste un peu d’amour … iTunes has decided to fuck with me today.
8:49 a.m.: I’m thinking about that burger again. Laura asked me about that burger, and I said I went to Burgermeister because I missed the train, and I ordered it with swiss cheese and jalapeños, no lettuce because lettuce is trash, with bacon and tomatoes and sautéed mushrooms and red onions – red fucking onions! My god they are so good, and when I quit smoking on the 2nd of October I’m going to eat so many fucking red onions and remember how good they taste just like the last time I actually quit smoking and stuck to it for any period of time. So I got extra red onions on that burger and smothered the fries with Tabasco and vinegar and smothered the burger with Worcs and with the green Tabasco, that jalapeño version, and it reminded me how good it was to be alive and actually make the choice to be alive – eat the damn burger because you know that you want to and stop not doing stuff like that – but that burger wasn’t made of gold dust or ferry dust, it was just a burger, which I said I wanted to eat and actually ate, and I also ordered a Trumer Pilsner which I wasn’t supposed to do, but the drugs don’t work anyway and who gives a fuck sometimes you need to break rules simply to break them and I reveled in the subversion.
8:55 a.m.: I would’ve shared my burger with you.
9:13 a.m.: I wish I could get high. The drugs don’t work.
9:19 a.m.: That was the worst sentence in the history of the English language or, at least, since the last time I read one of his articles.
9:28 a.m.: That other house I found was cheaper and had a better view of Mo’orea.
9:39 a.m.: I have a headache. It must be a Tuesday.
9:45 a.m.: The train has left the station without me.
9:49 a.m.: Seriously, if you’re going to shoot people in public like this, at least shoot someone that you have a connection to. Don’t shoot some random chick from a decade ago whom you’ve never met. And don’t argue with me about her relevance. You don’t know how unimportant she was to me and apparently neither do I. I don’t know what she’s doing here, either.
10:09 a.m.: Mo’orea ...
10:14 a.m.: Why was I fixating on a burger all day yesterday? A burger on Monday, the 18th of September is no different than on any other day. What a dumb fucking thing to daydream about, to talk about. Maybe it’s because I can remember every moment of it: the layout of the room, the color of the seat on the other side of the table, the red onions. Oh man, all of it mattered at the time. None of it matters. I can’t believe I subject Laura to this shit.
10:22 a.m.: I don’t know where I’m going from here. This ain’t my revolution. You know, I should probably put on some more upbeat music.
Better. I need to buy that record. I think I have 44 records I need to buy.
10:33 a.m.: Editing this article wasn’t happening so I decided to work on a blog. But which blog? I have 10 of them here, 10 frickin files dating back to July, none of which are close to being done. Jesus Fucking Piece of Shit Bastard Fuck. I should finish the Hate Mail, because at least that one will be funny. Fuck I need to read this article.
10:37 a.m.: “marqued contrast.” I swear I am going to murder you …
10:44 a.m.: I wish it was Excellent Birds.
10:56 a.m.: What what what? What? What? I hate phone calls because all it ever is is what what what? Splat I felt my eardrum explode again, it is 40° outside and 100° inside and there is blood, 7-year-old blood, but also there is slime and why am I so jumpy about this? Fuck, that was over 40 years ago and I dwell on the stupidest fucking things sometimes.
11:09 a.m.: Empathy not sympathy. Learn to listen, learn to love them in your own way, even if it is not the way you wish to love them.
11:13 a.m.: The Qail? What are we, in Monterey or Mecca?
11:17 a.m.: Laura says, “the biggest regret is the empathy you never gave.”
11:20 a.m.: “... more events were held then any were else on the plant.” The plant? ANY WERE ELSE ON THE PLANT? I swear, I am going to assassinate him in the office tomorrow.
11:25 a.m.: Moving this to the soundtrack for Within. Within … where is that fucking draft, even though I can recite it from memory. “Melanie stands amid the rampoles.” “Stories all have to start somewhere, even the stories, such as this one, which will end really badly.” WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT FUCKING DRAFT? “Of course it will be a disaster.”
11:30 a.m.: I hope KC comes home soon.
11:45 a.m.: Thank god for some football. Football is a life saver sometimes. Never has that been said before about a 3rd round Carabao Cup match. Too bad Norwich are dross, but this team they’re playing, Brentford, are fuckall. Dross and fuckall. Amazing how I turn the Norwich game on and instantly become British again. We all had British accents by the time we left that island. that, and we were afraid to get in a car on the right side of the road.
11:55 a.m.: Goal Norwich, Vrančić with the penalty. I like typing Vrančić because it has cool hats on the C’s.
12:15 p.m.: Saved by the Brentford centre back, who blootered that penalty over the bar, over the stands, and somewhere into orbit. I pointed to the sky that one time, said “kick it up here” and the striker did just that. I’d already stopped two of his other penalties. Oh you fuckwit, I was so in your head. I stopped your ass so many times. I set a state record in that game, I had a black eye for the prom. Yeah so we lost but if we’d won, I wouldn’t have seemed so gallant and noble. Fuck I hadn’t thought of that game in 20 years. “Jerry’s ball! Jerry!” That was his name. Little prick. I punched him in the first game and the referee only gave me yellow, lecturing me about how just because Jerry was a piece of shit who just injured our fullback, it didn’t give me license to punch him. We turned it over in the midfield and there were eight of them in a row across the field coming at me and I felt like Custer, and Jerry was shouting “Jerry’s ball! Jerry!” and Windsor cleaned him out and should have been sent off for it but only got yellow, conceded the penalty and my oh my, did that ball ever fly fly away …
12:18 p.m.: But we lost, so who cares? But Jerry didn’t score. Winning the skirmish can be more important, so long as you don’t wind up getting killed during the war.
12:20 p.m.: Amazing how your present edits your past. In that memory, my 17-year-old self had a limp.
12:25 p.m.: Brentford are rubbish. I should go for a walk. No, don’t. Cars.
12:27 p.m.: A cheque for $3.82. Who sends a cheque for $3.82? I just ran through all of the scenarios, wondering how this amount came to be? Someone bought the book in a foreign country, ebooks perhaps? Several people somewhere on this planet want to read what I’ve written and let the stories become their own, let Inga and Mallory and Karen run rampant through their own imaginations instead of through mine, which is a good thing because those three are a handful. This should make me happy. Why doesn’t it? I can buy two cups of coffee from Kevin for that.
12:32 p.m.: Fuck the process.
12:40 p.m.: That last cigarette was godfuckingterrible but the next one will hopefully be better. The key to understanding the addiction of smoking is to know that it’s rooted in wishful thinking.
1:04 p.m.: Norwich is winning so easily that I’m bored.
1:08 p.m.: Process, patience, remember to breathe.
1:10 p.m.: I should probably do some actual work. I should probably also bash my skull with a cedar plank, since it would be less likely to make me scream.
1:18 p.m.: I’m supposed to write Nebraska. Is that right? I think it is. Mother fucking shit bitch. I only forget things which are meaningless to me in the bigger picture. That, and my keys.
1:20 p.m.: I’ll write that article after I go for a walk. Fog free, blue sky outside. I’ll walk and think about Nebraska. What the fuck do I write? Just use my time tested rules for both journalism and poetry: no mentioning 3:00 a.m., no using the words meat or pants, no more writing about Barcelona, bar fights in Brugge, or the jewelry mongers on the Ponte Vecchio, and slant rhyme whenever possible. And also make it swing, and taste good. I should be fine.
1:55 p.m.: It’s 834° outside and it feels almost sane.
2:13 p.m.: Can the dead really dance? I guess I’m about to find out. They certainly cannot shoot worth a goddamn.
2:15 p.m.: I should tell KC I need her to come home.
2:16 p.m.: But how to make all of it funny? Comedy = tragedy + time. Laura said, “the humor finds you. You even make jury duty funny. You can make anything funny, including this.” I say, “if I pull this off it will the best thing I ever do, but people will hate me for it,” and Laura says, “that would never have stopped you before.”
2:20 p.m.: I keep grabbing at my forehead.
2:31 p.m.: This song was banned in China. I should aspire to be banned from foreign nations, instead of being banned from grocery stores in Yelm. I should go back there, walk through the front door and just stand there, see if they remember me and throw me out. That would require me being memorable. I’d remember them, and I bet some of those dumb hillbillies are still working there 20 years onward, because what the fuck else do you do in Yelm and what is a Yelm in the first place?
2:33 p.m.: I did a lot of bad things. We all contribute to our own demise.
2:36 p.m.: Oh put the fucking gun away. Only cowards carry guns. That time you pulled the chef’s knife on me was much more effective, except that it was so dull it couldn’t cut butter, but I was high then and I acted like I was scared. No, I wasn’t high, because the drugs didn’t work then, either. Christ I must be a mess today if I’m thinking about chef’s knives and Yelms. I’d much rather be thinking about Mo’orea or burgers.
2:39 p.m.: That part of my body is not supposed to hurt. The others I can live with at this point. I’ll right this article later. And write it while I’m at it. And probably writhe. I need to move around.
2:46 p.m.: The poor guy’s life goal is to make it from one bus stop to the next so that he can sit down and remove his prosthetic leg. He has a black cowboy hat and doesn’t remember me whenever he sees me. He asked me for a cigarette, just like he always does. How can you not give the man a cigarette in that circumstance?
2:53 p.m.: I should probably eat something. I haven’t eaten since Sunday. I forgot. Pfft. Bull fucking shit I forgot. I never forget anything. When I forget something, it’s a deliberate act and conscious choice.
2:56 p.m.: You know, I should put on some happier music.
That’s better.
3:01 p.m.: She yelled at waiters. She also yelled at a bank clerk once. And she insulted my boss that one time as well. No, that was two times. “I hope you know you’re employing a thief.” “I hope you know I’m employing a thief who is married to a bitch.” Bless you Diss for the diss. She also yelled at a psychologist, who said, “you know, people don’t act this way.” Why is all of this so fresh all of a sudden? This is all old news. Who gives a shit when there is so goddamn much to fret about in the present?
3:03 p.m.: My hand has this slight quiver to it today.
3:05 p.m.: I have to get something done before SF95, even though I probably shouldn’t go to club because I can’t concentrate for more than 20 seconds on anything. I remember when I used scrabble to focus. Those were the days. Scrabble was more fun when I was simply bad at it, instead of being terrible like I am now.
3:15 p.m.: “One car that drew a lot of attention was 1965 Ferrari 330 GT 2-2 Shooting Brake – another words a station wagon.” Another words? ANOTHER WORDS? FUCK YOU YOU GODDAMN PIECE OF SLIME.
3:19 p.m.: In Denmark, you can get sued for even thinking about this song.
3:22 p.m.: I say to Laura, “I wish I could have healthy addictions.” She says to me, “I’ve seen you with those before and it isn’t good.” I say, “they would be healthy if they weren’t so stupid.”
3:25 p.m.: It’s this weird sort of thing, in that you decide the time has come to touch that abyss, and it all comes at you so fast. It’s sort of beautiful and you cannot write it all down fast enough. You’re going 1000 mph and it’s like you’re watching a film of yourself in real time, in real motion, except that the reel is a little bit off and so, instead, you’re aware that you’re watching a film which is slightly, ever so slightly, different than reality even though it’s the exact same image. All of the details which are slightly off are what you then go back and write down.
3:28 p.m.: And it’s not an accident, either. It’s a decision. You say, “you know what? Fuck it. I’m going off that deep end and seeing where I come out,” and you touch that abyss, you touch that fire and it absolutely wrecks you. I’ve got no idea how anyone survives this. This is why she stands amid the rampoles – that row of dead trees charred and blackened after the wildfire has burned up the hillside. Feel the fire, feel it burning you alive and burning through the countryside. But I do think this explains my ability to wander amid the densest wettest fog along the Pacific Coast and western front in sandals and short pants and never feel cold. I’m burning up in here. In my ennui and angst, I went and did something stupid recently and jumped into that abyss once again. Now I’m on fire and I’ve got metaphors everywhere. Jesus, you imbecile, you know this never ends well. All in the interest of beauty. There is beauty in the breakdown.
3:30 p.m.: I hope KC comes home soon.
3:33 p.m.: Breathe. No, fuck that. Water.
3:37 p.m.: Fuck Nebraska. I’ll write that later. It is later. Goddamn.
3:39 p.m.: There are probably 10 songs on this laptop which I never skip through and this is one of them because it captures either my mood or the mood I want to have.
3:43 p.m.:
(This space has purposely been left blank.)
3:53 p.m.: I’m going to take as a sign and symbol and gospel that the random placement of a dice song followed by a song that mentions the Queen of Spades means that I should go back to writing the gambling book, because that’s how this stuff works. Symbols mean what you want them to mean and you wind up looking at disgusting sludge in the bottom of your teacup in search of meaning. I was reading that first draft of Queen of Diamonds again. It wasn’t bad except for the parts that sucked. Take out all the bad parts and the parts no one wants to read and it should be good. Carrie has potential to be an amazing character. All you need to write a novel is two years, a plot you know how ends, a great leading lady, a good therapist, and strong drink.
3:56 p.m.: Laura helps me piece together all of the stuff I tried to forget but never could which now comes back to me in bits and pieces and shards. There are compartments and there are categories – stuff to forget, stuff to remember every single detail right down to how much I tipped at the restaurant on the bill, and somewhere in between. It’s fun to shock her with being so calm about it all. “She said she’d put the cat to sleep. Meh, whatever,” or “We’d be driving down I-25 and she’d just let go of the steering wheel and let it veer nearly into the ditch. That was odd.” The stuff I want to forget gets in the way of the stuff I’ll never forget, like burgers on a Monday evening, which is all pointless anyway, since the other person doesn’t, or persons don’t, remember it. What do you do with a headful of useless crap? WHISKEY! THAT’S WHAT YOU DO!
3:59 p.m.: Whiskey of the Week. Whiskey of the day. Whiskey of the hour. In about 18 minutes or so, my back will stop hurting.
4:04 p.m.: That may be the most logical song I’ve heard all day.
4:15 p.m.: I hope KC comes home soon.
4:18 p.m.: I’m not usually this needy, or this angry. Or am I?
4:24 p.m.: If I do something great and it’s too late, and he doesn’t remember, then what was the point? Perhaps that’s where the urgency comes from, to make moments that feel like memories before memories are impossible for him to form.
4:27 p.m.: I should call.
4:30 p.m.: No, I should write Nebraska, because it was due a week ago, and if I’m going to maim and assassinate people at the office, I’ll have to also blame myself for missing the deadline. Fuck, I hate being management sometimes.
4:32 p.m.: My feet are on the floor, I had my eyes closed and I smiled. It was weird.
4:35 p.m.: KC’s coming home soon, right?
4:38 p.m.: “I’ve been doing a lot of reading about depression and trying to learn how to deal with people like you.” And I’ve learned ‘how to deal with’ people like you by dumping your ignorant ass.
4:41 p.m.: GET SOMETHING DONE GODDAMNIT ANYTHING!
5:36 p.m.: That there was some bad writing. But it is done and I managed to concentrate for long enough to vomit on a page. Sometimes, it is all that you can hope for.
5:38 p.m.: Laura reminds me that I always tell her that I remember to laugh because the joke is on them.
5:45 p.m.: What would I go back to?
5:50 p.m.: Okay, I figured it all out. The problem is that she’s like my ex-wife. I’ve been dwelling on this now for a little while. Yes, she’s like a psychopath with BPD, right down to the ability to masquerade as being empathic, or at least flip the switch here and there and fake it for the purposes of her profession. No, that’s not it. They can feel what you need so long as they’re the ones deciding to give it to you. It’s fake empathy, a power trip. These sorts of people are fucking toxic and fucking dangerous. Interacting with one of these type of people recently has reminded me of this fact and sent me down this fucking rathole, which is why I’m all screwed up in the head right now. You know that type of person when you see them. But … but … but … you can’t say that aloud. You can’t say that’s a psychopath and it will only end in tears. You can’t say he’s a narcissist and it will lead to disappointment. You can’t say these things even though you’re right. Who gives a fuck about being right? I’d rather be wrong for once. I’ve spent the past 16 years wishing I was wrong and lamenting that I’m not wrong about other people and politics and whatnot. Christ, I’m not even bright and I can see this. All of this stuff should be FUCKING OBVIOUS to anyone with an IQ higher than a mollusk.
5:55 p.m.: Fuck off and stay dead Tam, you fucking psychopath.
6:10 p.m.: KC is bringing me a sandwich. This day might not be a total loss.
- - -
As nervous breakdowns go, this one was slightly more awful than the norm, but nothing that I can’t get past.
So, take this day here, and do this every single day. Do this all day, every day, inside your head, while you’re multitasking and carrying on with the quotidian torpor and banality of evil that is day-to-day existence. Do this EVERY FUCKING DAY for the rest of your life, because if you don’t talk your way through it in your head, you’ll probably drop dead.
Welcome to my life. Sorry if I get a bit distracted.
And when some prick says something malignantly ignorant and stupid such as this, I get really annoyed.
And if you, my good reader, are someone who does suffer from a form of mental illness of some sort, get help. Seek help. And if you don’t suffer from that, and you know someone who does, practice empathy and not sympathy with them. Listen to them, learn from them, and love them in your own way.
And sometimes, all that you need is a really good sandwich:
KC knows what to say, even if it means saying nothing at all.
People keep asking me why I haven’t been posting blogs, or writing novels, or writing articles that I’m proud of, or whatnot. What follows is why. When this occurs, me getting anything done is pretty difficult.
Every now and then, I make it a point to write down everything that is going through my head during the day. I’ve been doing this now for 11 years. I don’t do it all the time, just when I start to completely go off the rails. Usually, I just think my way through it, but sometimes, it needs to be written down. In an effort to maintain openness and honesty, I’m going to take this particular day, which was yesterday, and share it with you.
This is unedited, save for removing some names where appropriate to do so, and makes no real sense, but in total, it makes perfect sense. [NOTE: I did, however, clean up some of the grammar, because I found myself annoyed with how incoherent my incoherence was.] If there are references in here to things I have written about on this blog, I will provide a link to provide some context. Also, when I do this sort of thing, I’m usually listening to music, and doing things like singing the lyrics and responding to the songs, so where that occurs, I’m inserting the songs, which came from a playlist of several thousand songs that was set to random.
Happy reading. It wasn’t happy writing.
- - -
3:49 a.m.: I woke up KC because I thought she was choking. She said “huh?” She was fine.
3:57 a.m.: Probably best that I’m awake. The argument is always the worst part of that dream. I was just about to start the Q&A, I asked for questions and she stood up, like always. Oh here we go, yeah, flash that fucking gun and tell me how you’re going to shoot me already. But then she’s waving the gun around, debating who to shoot and here comes the argument. No, don’t shoot her, you idiot, shoot me instead. You don’t even know her, and I’ve not seen her in a decade anyway, so I don’t know what she’s doing here in the first place. Just shoot me and get it over with. Fucking get it over with already you psychopath.
4:08 a.m.: Might as well go to the office today. I can catch the early shuttle and be there faster.
4:10 a.m.: The early shuttle means getting somewhere I don’t want to be faster. It’s got to be the goin’ and not the gettin’ there that’s good. I’ll work from home. 51 pages by Friday? No chance. No problem. No just no and that’s my final answer.
4:12 a.m.: I needed some music. Something African and soulful. Fuck yeah Bombino, shred that fucker.
4:20 a.m.: The chiropractor crucified me on Monday. “Oh how are you feeling?” “Oh I’m fine thanks.” “You know your back is something of a mess again.” Just adjust the vertebrae and stop calling me on my bullshit.
4:35 a.m.: Latin trash. I need that. Oh that song feels good.
4:40 a.m.: He spelled art wrong. He spelled it aart. Jesus Bastard Christ. “Cars that doubl has works of aart.” He also wrote the word Prrnion in the same paragraph. What could that possibly mean? How do you have a fucking job? Jesus.
4:50 a.m.: Interesting random choice, iTunes. Grant Hart just died the other day. I always thought of Hüsker Dü as the soundtrack for a nervous breakdown.
5:07 a.m.: I need to buy their new record.
5:12 a.m.: There are no photos for this article. Why are there no photos? Oh, right, because he LIED AT THE FUCKING BUDGET MEETING. Goddamn it. I’m going to fucking fire him tomorrow. Jesus Fuck, am I the only person who is paid to give a shit?
5:22 a.m.: This song also came up yesterday when I was walking in the fog and it was threatening to swallow me whole. Do it, Karl, you bitch. “Old man yells at fog!”
5:28 a.m.: Laura asks me “why didn’t you say that?” I say that if I had, it would have ruined everything. There are things you say, things you don’t say, and things you can’t ever say which wind up leaving you inconsolable. All you are left to do is to imagine the consequences, imagine the worst case scenarios, but also dream about the beauty of what could have come to pass ...
5:31 a.m.: I can taste opportunity near ...
5:39 a.m.: I found a nice house. €300,000.
5:45 a.m.: I’ll go to the office today and sort this mess out.
5:48 a.m.: No, no I won’t.
5:50 a.m.: I’m a dark star.
6:05 a.m.: Kevin is funny. He said “you’re going to the office today,” like any day that I show up at Royal Ground at 6:00 a.m. I felt bad the other day when I walked past him on the street, carrying a cup of coffee from another café. I’m such a coffee slut.
6:24 a.m.: Was that really necessary?
6:36 a.m.: Laura asks me “what if you said it now?” and I said that it wouldn’t mean a thing because the biggest problem with remembering everything is that no one else does, and when you point out something that someone said on a Tuesday a whole bunch of years ago, their response is to say, “I don’t remember that,” and you take it personally, because you made a metaphor out of it when it was nothing but a random utterance, the words having come to explode with meaning in my mind because I make meaning out of everything. Blue is just a color, goddamn it. Linen is a fabric, coffee a way of life.
6:55 a.m.: bang bang bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang bang bang
7:02 a.m.: Except the bullets don’t work any more, and neither do the drugs.
7:05 a.m.: Shit that’s loud. Who cares? I’m deaf anyway. I kill headsets faster than I kill brain cells with whiskey.
7:07 a.m.: The router conked out for the second time this morning and I thought about solving the problem of getting a new one by simply smashing that one to bits and necessitating its replacement, but if I’d done that, I would have mourned its loss.
7:11 a.m.: Fuck it I need to walk around the block and wage silent war against my right foot and ankle and knee and hip. All of this conspiratorial shit on the right side of my body needs to stop.
7:24 a.m.: Home of the motorloaf. What does that even mean?
7:35 a.m.: She brought flowers last night, flowers which were sitting in her lap before the shooting started and she ducked for cover. This sequence used to horrify me, before I realized that the aim is poor.
7:44 a.m.: I hate it when the walls start to move. Next thing I know, you’ll be sitting over there in the corner, asking me why it is I haven’t written to you in so long. My mind can make a mess out of an empty room. Shoulders hunch, neck contorts. I love that feeling of being able to differentiate every single vertebra in my neck by how much it hurts. Isn’t that just super. Get out of this fucking chair!
7:48 a.m.: That hurt.
7:56 a.m.: I get more things not accomplished before 9:00 a.m. than most people do all day. Fuck it, I’m going for another walk.
8:22 a.m.: Hmm, I appear to be having a crisis. It’s bad to go walking on a day like today, because there are always cars. There are always hills and always cars. This city was inherently a bad idea. And I hate that fucking building downtown that I can see from here. That’s the sort of arrogant building dictators build in places like Brazzaville and Azerbaijan. Salesforce can suck it.
But I have Norwegian technotrash so everything is okay.
8:30 a.m.: I just missed the last of the shuttles and I don’t give a fuck. I get more done at home than at the office anyway, and this way I won’t murder anyone.
8:43 a.m.: tell me now what I’m gonna do … all my desire to be with you … juste un peu d’amour … juste un peu d’amour … iTunes has decided to fuck with me today.
8:49 a.m.: I’m thinking about that burger again. Laura asked me about that burger, and I said I went to Burgermeister because I missed the train, and I ordered it with swiss cheese and jalapeños, no lettuce because lettuce is trash, with bacon and tomatoes and sautéed mushrooms and red onions – red fucking onions! My god they are so good, and when I quit smoking on the 2nd of October I’m going to eat so many fucking red onions and remember how good they taste just like the last time I actually quit smoking and stuck to it for any period of time. So I got extra red onions on that burger and smothered the fries with Tabasco and vinegar and smothered the burger with Worcs and with the green Tabasco, that jalapeño version, and it reminded me how good it was to be alive and actually make the choice to be alive – eat the damn burger because you know that you want to and stop not doing stuff like that – but that burger wasn’t made of gold dust or ferry dust, it was just a burger, which I said I wanted to eat and actually ate, and I also ordered a Trumer Pilsner which I wasn’t supposed to do, but the drugs don’t work anyway and who gives a fuck sometimes you need to break rules simply to break them and I reveled in the subversion.
8:55 a.m.: I would’ve shared my burger with you.
9:13 a.m.: I wish I could get high. The drugs don’t work.
9:19 a.m.: That was the worst sentence in the history of the English language or, at least, since the last time I read one of his articles.
9:28 a.m.: That other house I found was cheaper and had a better view of Mo’orea.
9:39 a.m.: I have a headache. It must be a Tuesday.
9:45 a.m.: The train has left the station without me.
9:49 a.m.: Seriously, if you’re going to shoot people in public like this, at least shoot someone that you have a connection to. Don’t shoot some random chick from a decade ago whom you’ve never met. And don’t argue with me about her relevance. You don’t know how unimportant she was to me and apparently neither do I. I don’t know what she’s doing here, either.
10:09 a.m.: Mo’orea ...
10:14 a.m.: Why was I fixating on a burger all day yesterday? A burger on Monday, the 18th of September is no different than on any other day. What a dumb fucking thing to daydream about, to talk about. Maybe it’s because I can remember every moment of it: the layout of the room, the color of the seat on the other side of the table, the red onions. Oh man, all of it mattered at the time. None of it matters. I can’t believe I subject Laura to this shit.
10:22 a.m.: I don’t know where I’m going from here. This ain’t my revolution. You know, I should probably put on some more upbeat music.
Better. I need to buy that record. I think I have 44 records I need to buy.
10:33 a.m.: Editing this article wasn’t happening so I decided to work on a blog. But which blog? I have 10 of them here, 10 frickin files dating back to July, none of which are close to being done. Jesus Fucking Piece of Shit Bastard Fuck. I should finish the Hate Mail, because at least that one will be funny. Fuck I need to read this article.
10:37 a.m.: “marqued contrast.” I swear I am going to murder you …
10:44 a.m.: I wish it was Excellent Birds.
10:56 a.m.: What what what? What? What? I hate phone calls because all it ever is is what what what? Splat I felt my eardrum explode again, it is 40° outside and 100° inside and there is blood, 7-year-old blood, but also there is slime and why am I so jumpy about this? Fuck, that was over 40 years ago and I dwell on the stupidest fucking things sometimes.
11:09 a.m.: Empathy not sympathy. Learn to listen, learn to love them in your own way, even if it is not the way you wish to love them.
11:13 a.m.: The Qail? What are we, in Monterey or Mecca?
11:17 a.m.: Laura says, “the biggest regret is the empathy you never gave.”
11:20 a.m.: “... more events were held then any were else on the plant.” The plant? ANY WERE ELSE ON THE PLANT? I swear, I am going to assassinate him in the office tomorrow.
11:25 a.m.: Moving this to the soundtrack for Within. Within … where is that fucking draft, even though I can recite it from memory. “Melanie stands amid the rampoles.” “Stories all have to start somewhere, even the stories, such as this one, which will end really badly.” WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT FUCKING DRAFT? “Of course it will be a disaster.”
11:30 a.m.: I hope KC comes home soon.
11:45 a.m.: Thank god for some football. Football is a life saver sometimes. Never has that been said before about a 3rd round Carabao Cup match. Too bad Norwich are dross, but this team they’re playing, Brentford, are fuckall. Dross and fuckall. Amazing how I turn the Norwich game on and instantly become British again. We all had British accents by the time we left that island. that, and we were afraid to get in a car on the right side of the road.
11:55 a.m.: Goal Norwich, Vrančić with the penalty. I like typing Vrančić because it has cool hats on the C’s.
12:15 p.m.: Saved by the Brentford centre back, who blootered that penalty over the bar, over the stands, and somewhere into orbit. I pointed to the sky that one time, said “kick it up here” and the striker did just that. I’d already stopped two of his other penalties. Oh you fuckwit, I was so in your head. I stopped your ass so many times. I set a state record in that game, I had a black eye for the prom. Yeah so we lost but if we’d won, I wouldn’t have seemed so gallant and noble. Fuck I hadn’t thought of that game in 20 years. “Jerry’s ball! Jerry!” That was his name. Little prick. I punched him in the first game and the referee only gave me yellow, lecturing me about how just because Jerry was a piece of shit who just injured our fullback, it didn’t give me license to punch him. We turned it over in the midfield and there were eight of them in a row across the field coming at me and I felt like Custer, and Jerry was shouting “Jerry’s ball! Jerry!” and Windsor cleaned him out and should have been sent off for it but only got yellow, conceded the penalty and my oh my, did that ball ever fly fly away …
12:18 p.m.: But we lost, so who cares? But Jerry didn’t score. Winning the skirmish can be more important, so long as you don’t wind up getting killed during the war.
12:20 p.m.: Amazing how your present edits your past. In that memory, my 17-year-old self had a limp.
12:25 p.m.: Brentford are rubbish. I should go for a walk. No, don’t. Cars.
12:27 p.m.: A cheque for $3.82. Who sends a cheque for $3.82? I just ran through all of the scenarios, wondering how this amount came to be? Someone bought the book in a foreign country, ebooks perhaps? Several people somewhere on this planet want to read what I’ve written and let the stories become their own, let Inga and Mallory and Karen run rampant through their own imaginations instead of through mine, which is a good thing because those three are a handful. This should make me happy. Why doesn’t it? I can buy two cups of coffee from Kevin for that.
12:32 p.m.: Fuck the process.
12:40 p.m.: That last cigarette was godfuckingterrible but the next one will hopefully be better. The key to understanding the addiction of smoking is to know that it’s rooted in wishful thinking.
1:04 p.m.: Norwich is winning so easily that I’m bored.
1:08 p.m.: Process, patience, remember to breathe.
1:10 p.m.: I should probably do some actual work. I should probably also bash my skull with a cedar plank, since it would be less likely to make me scream.
1:18 p.m.: I’m supposed to write Nebraska. Is that right? I think it is. Mother fucking shit bitch. I only forget things which are meaningless to me in the bigger picture. That, and my keys.
1:20 p.m.: I’ll write that article after I go for a walk. Fog free, blue sky outside. I’ll walk and think about Nebraska. What the fuck do I write? Just use my time tested rules for both journalism and poetry: no mentioning 3:00 a.m., no using the words meat or pants, no more writing about Barcelona, bar fights in Brugge, or the jewelry mongers on the Ponte Vecchio, and slant rhyme whenever possible. And also make it swing, and taste good. I should be fine.
1:55 p.m.: It’s 834° outside and it feels almost sane.
2:13 p.m.: Can the dead really dance? I guess I’m about to find out. They certainly cannot shoot worth a goddamn.
2:15 p.m.: I should tell KC I need her to come home.
2:16 p.m.: But how to make all of it funny? Comedy = tragedy + time. Laura said, “the humor finds you. You even make jury duty funny. You can make anything funny, including this.” I say, “if I pull this off it will the best thing I ever do, but people will hate me for it,” and Laura says, “that would never have stopped you before.”
2:20 p.m.: I keep grabbing at my forehead.
2:31 p.m.: This song was banned in China. I should aspire to be banned from foreign nations, instead of being banned from grocery stores in Yelm. I should go back there, walk through the front door and just stand there, see if they remember me and throw me out. That would require me being memorable. I’d remember them, and I bet some of those dumb hillbillies are still working there 20 years onward, because what the fuck else do you do in Yelm and what is a Yelm in the first place?
2:33 p.m.: I did a lot of bad things. We all contribute to our own demise.
2:36 p.m.: Oh put the fucking gun away. Only cowards carry guns. That time you pulled the chef’s knife on me was much more effective, except that it was so dull it couldn’t cut butter, but I was high then and I acted like I was scared. No, I wasn’t high, because the drugs didn’t work then, either. Christ I must be a mess today if I’m thinking about chef’s knives and Yelms. I’d much rather be thinking about Mo’orea or burgers.
2:39 p.m.: That part of my body is not supposed to hurt. The others I can live with at this point. I’ll right this article later. And write it while I’m at it. And probably writhe. I need to move around.
2:46 p.m.: The poor guy’s life goal is to make it from one bus stop to the next so that he can sit down and remove his prosthetic leg. He has a black cowboy hat and doesn’t remember me whenever he sees me. He asked me for a cigarette, just like he always does. How can you not give the man a cigarette in that circumstance?
2:53 p.m.: I should probably eat something. I haven’t eaten since Sunday. I forgot. Pfft. Bull fucking shit I forgot. I never forget anything. When I forget something, it’s a deliberate act and conscious choice.
2:56 p.m.: You know, I should put on some happier music.
That’s better.
3:01 p.m.: She yelled at waiters. She also yelled at a bank clerk once. And she insulted my boss that one time as well. No, that was two times. “I hope you know you’re employing a thief.” “I hope you know I’m employing a thief who is married to a bitch.” Bless you Diss for the diss. She also yelled at a psychologist, who said, “you know, people don’t act this way.” Why is all of this so fresh all of a sudden? This is all old news. Who gives a shit when there is so goddamn much to fret about in the present?
3:03 p.m.: My hand has this slight quiver to it today.
3:05 p.m.: I have to get something done before SF95, even though I probably shouldn’t go to club because I can’t concentrate for more than 20 seconds on anything. I remember when I used scrabble to focus. Those were the days. Scrabble was more fun when I was simply bad at it, instead of being terrible like I am now.
3:15 p.m.: “One car that drew a lot of attention was 1965 Ferrari 330 GT 2-2 Shooting Brake – another words a station wagon.” Another words? ANOTHER WORDS? FUCK YOU YOU GODDAMN PIECE OF SLIME.
3:19 p.m.: In Denmark, you can get sued for even thinking about this song.
3:22 p.m.: I say to Laura, “I wish I could have healthy addictions.” She says to me, “I’ve seen you with those before and it isn’t good.” I say, “they would be healthy if they weren’t so stupid.”
3:25 p.m.: It’s this weird sort of thing, in that you decide the time has come to touch that abyss, and it all comes at you so fast. It’s sort of beautiful and you cannot write it all down fast enough. You’re going 1000 mph and it’s like you’re watching a film of yourself in real time, in real motion, except that the reel is a little bit off and so, instead, you’re aware that you’re watching a film which is slightly, ever so slightly, different than reality even though it’s the exact same image. All of the details which are slightly off are what you then go back and write down.
3:28 p.m.: And it’s not an accident, either. It’s a decision. You say, “you know what? Fuck it. I’m going off that deep end and seeing where I come out,” and you touch that abyss, you touch that fire and it absolutely wrecks you. I’ve got no idea how anyone survives this. This is why she stands amid the rampoles – that row of dead trees charred and blackened after the wildfire has burned up the hillside. Feel the fire, feel it burning you alive and burning through the countryside. But I do think this explains my ability to wander amid the densest wettest fog along the Pacific Coast and western front in sandals and short pants and never feel cold. I’m burning up in here. In my ennui and angst, I went and did something stupid recently and jumped into that abyss once again. Now I’m on fire and I’ve got metaphors everywhere. Jesus, you imbecile, you know this never ends well. All in the interest of beauty. There is beauty in the breakdown.
3:30 p.m.: I hope KC comes home soon.
3:33 p.m.: Breathe. No, fuck that. Water.
3:37 p.m.: Fuck Nebraska. I’ll write that later. It is later. Goddamn.
3:39 p.m.: There are probably 10 songs on this laptop which I never skip through and this is one of them because it captures either my mood or the mood I want to have.
3:43 p.m.:
(This space has purposely been left blank.)
3:53 p.m.: I’m going to take as a sign and symbol and gospel that the random placement of a dice song followed by a song that mentions the Queen of Spades means that I should go back to writing the gambling book, because that’s how this stuff works. Symbols mean what you want them to mean and you wind up looking at disgusting sludge in the bottom of your teacup in search of meaning. I was reading that first draft of Queen of Diamonds again. It wasn’t bad except for the parts that sucked. Take out all the bad parts and the parts no one wants to read and it should be good. Carrie has potential to be an amazing character. All you need to write a novel is two years, a plot you know how ends, a great leading lady, a good therapist, and strong drink.
3:56 p.m.: Laura helps me piece together all of the stuff I tried to forget but never could which now comes back to me in bits and pieces and shards. There are compartments and there are categories – stuff to forget, stuff to remember every single detail right down to how much I tipped at the restaurant on the bill, and somewhere in between. It’s fun to shock her with being so calm about it all. “She said she’d put the cat to sleep. Meh, whatever,” or “We’d be driving down I-25 and she’d just let go of the steering wheel and let it veer nearly into the ditch. That was odd.” The stuff I want to forget gets in the way of the stuff I’ll never forget, like burgers on a Monday evening, which is all pointless anyway, since the other person doesn’t, or persons don’t, remember it. What do you do with a headful of useless crap? WHISKEY! THAT’S WHAT YOU DO!
3:59 p.m.: Whiskey of the Week. Whiskey of the day. Whiskey of the hour. In about 18 minutes or so, my back will stop hurting.
4:04 p.m.: That may be the most logical song I’ve heard all day.
4:15 p.m.: I hope KC comes home soon.
4:18 p.m.: I’m not usually this needy, or this angry. Or am I?
4:24 p.m.: If I do something great and it’s too late, and he doesn’t remember, then what was the point? Perhaps that’s where the urgency comes from, to make moments that feel like memories before memories are impossible for him to form.
4:27 p.m.: I should call.
4:30 p.m.: No, I should write Nebraska, because it was due a week ago, and if I’m going to maim and assassinate people at the office, I’ll have to also blame myself for missing the deadline. Fuck, I hate being management sometimes.
4:32 p.m.: My feet are on the floor, I had my eyes closed and I smiled. It was weird.
4:35 p.m.: KC’s coming home soon, right?
4:38 p.m.: “I’ve been doing a lot of reading about depression and trying to learn how to deal with people like you.” And I’ve learned ‘how to deal with’ people like you by dumping your ignorant ass.
4:41 p.m.: GET SOMETHING DONE GODDAMNIT ANYTHING!
5:36 p.m.: That there was some bad writing. But it is done and I managed to concentrate for long enough to vomit on a page. Sometimes, it is all that you can hope for.
5:38 p.m.: Laura reminds me that I always tell her that I remember to laugh because the joke is on them.
5:45 p.m.: What would I go back to?
5:50 p.m.: Okay, I figured it all out. The problem is that she’s like my ex-wife. I’ve been dwelling on this now for a little while. Yes, she’s like a psychopath with BPD, right down to the ability to masquerade as being empathic, or at least flip the switch here and there and fake it for the purposes of her profession. No, that’s not it. They can feel what you need so long as they’re the ones deciding to give it to you. It’s fake empathy, a power trip. These sorts of people are fucking toxic and fucking dangerous. Interacting with one of these type of people recently has reminded me of this fact and sent me down this fucking rathole, which is why I’m all screwed up in the head right now. You know that type of person when you see them. But … but … but … you can’t say that aloud. You can’t say that’s a psychopath and it will only end in tears. You can’t say he’s a narcissist and it will lead to disappointment. You can’t say these things even though you’re right. Who gives a fuck about being right? I’d rather be wrong for once. I’ve spent the past 16 years wishing I was wrong and lamenting that I’m not wrong about other people and politics and whatnot. Christ, I’m not even bright and I can see this. All of this stuff should be FUCKING OBVIOUS to anyone with an IQ higher than a mollusk.
5:55 p.m.: Fuck off and stay dead Tam, you fucking psychopath.
6:10 p.m.: KC is bringing me a sandwich. This day might not be a total loss.
- - -
As nervous breakdowns go, this one was slightly more awful than the norm, but nothing that I can’t get past.
So, take this day here, and do this every single day. Do this all day, every day, inside your head, while you’re multitasking and carrying on with the quotidian torpor and banality of evil that is day-to-day existence. Do this EVERY FUCKING DAY for the rest of your life, because if you don’t talk your way through it in your head, you’ll probably drop dead.
Welcome to my life. Sorry if I get a bit distracted.
And when some prick says something malignantly ignorant and stupid such as this, I get really annoyed.
And if you, my good reader, are someone who does suffer from a form of mental illness of some sort, get help. Seek help. And if you don’t suffer from that, and you know someone who does, practice empathy and not sympathy with them. Listen to them, learn from them, and love them in your own way.
And sometimes, all that you need is a really good sandwich:
KC knows what to say, even if it means saying nothing at all.
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