Today

I need to write.  I tell myself I want to be a writer, but I don’t write.  As Franz Kafka said, “a writer who doesn’t write is a monster courting insanity”.  I am that monster. 

I know that all I need to do is sit in front of this computer and puke out words, so I will try today, and then I will try again tomorrow, and then I might make a habit of it. 

So today was pretty shitty.  I didn’t sleep well last night.  I woke up feeling like a zombie.  I was crying before I went to sleep, so my eyes were all puffy this morning, and I had to somehow get up and get dressed and venture off to work in order to teach things to high school students.  I didn’t want to.  I almost never want to.  To be fair, I usually love my job.  The students are the only reason I drag my ass out of bed and make an effort to be an extrovert for eight hours. 

So why was I tired, and why didn’t I sleep?  Because I was on the phone last night for several hours with a boy, who is my friend, and we got into an argument about nothing (which is probably untrue).  The middle part of that sentence needs attention.  “A boy who is my friend.”  This is a grown man, but he is still a boy, who is my friend.  He likes the word “boyfriend”, and I don’t.  All sorts of qualifiers come with that word.  Once we went from being friends to being “in a relationship”, the rules changed.  Gradually, sure, but now there are labels for things.  And now there is a line I can’t cross, which was a different line when we were just friends. 

Suffixes are important.  They change the meanings of words.

There’s a difference between being “childlike” and “childish”.  Childlike is fun.  Childlike is running outside during a thunderstorm to play in the rain.  Childish is a petulant brat.

I don’t want to be a petulant brat, but I definitely want to play in the rain with you.

Hope Is Not A Strategy

I’ve tried to right most of my wrongs in life.  I’ve tried to love and be loved.  I’ve tried to parent and be parented.  I’ve tried to try. 

Once again, the French-Algerian philosopher speaks up in my brain and says, “happiness is the absence of hope”.   

He understood that life is not a box of chocolates or a warm puppy (or a warm gun) or a bowl of cherries or a highway.  Life just IS.  We can either be hopeful for something we don’t have, or we can acknowledge that we have no control over the big picture, thus there is nothing for which we should hope.

To quote some other (green, plunger-like, alien) beings: “Here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”     

And yet it’s so difficult not to ask “why?”.  Why me?

(“Vy anyone?” said a German soldier.)

I will continue to practice caring a little, but not too much.  Caring too much is like a social STD; it burns, and it will probably never go away.  If only not caring was easier.  Some people have it (not caring) down to a science.  Or an art.  Or a weapon.  Some people tank the odds of finding other like-minded humanists with whom to spend time, because they don’t care about the hopes and dreams of other people. 

I’m just trying to stay alive and just be peaceful.  Both are becoming elusive. 

Emily Dickenson wrote that “hope is a thing with feathers”.  What the hell is that supposed to mean?  Hope is a bird?!  Birds suck.  They shit all over everything, and they have beady, weird eyes.  Yes, they can soar through the sky, but since I don’t have wings, I will pass on the feathery hope analogy.

 

I’m not trying to say hope is bad.  Maybe it carries certain people through their days.  But I am certain that hope changes nothing, improves nothing, and inspires nothing.  Life is chance. 

Hope is most often a vestige of fools.

13 Reasons

1.  Because people all have their own agendas, and we all want life to be a certain way.

2.  Because life is like Yatzee, all about the roll of the dice.

3.  Because clarity of thought is so rare, and it begs us to listen.

4.  Because I can sometimes hear the soundtrack of my own life.

5.  Because ideas exist and want to be considered, debated, and co-exist.

6.  Because creating a hashtag doesn’t solve a problem; people do.

7.  Because the mirror keeps showing me someone I sort of remember.

8.  Because words are a portal to universal truths that few people care to hear.

9.  Because humanity shares a soul through music, art, and literature.

10.  Because happiness is the absence of hope.

11.  Because, sometimes, in spring … and e e cummings.

12.  Because governmental constructs are polluted by humans, all the time.

13.  Because life doesn’t come to something so simple as 13 reasons for anything.