Just now, my mother handed me, having found it in a book, a chunk of my past. I feel winded. So here’s a text I wrote in Jerusalem, following some of the same past creeping up on me on the one hand, and, on the other, several conversations with friends.
Why do things need to be so goddamn complicated? We look at each other and see, in effect, complications. How can I sleep with her, she’s my best friend – how can I buy this, I earn too little money – how will I graduate, I have no motivation to study – how how how does the world not end when everything is so hard on me – and how, not unsimilarly, do things end so quickly when I want them to go on forever?
Quoth Rufus Wainwright ‘everything I like is just a little bit harmful, a little bit deadly for me’. The human race is inclined to self-mutilate by contemplation. We reflect, and deliberate, and consider, and binge-think – all to our own and everyone else’s damage. Each and every one of us is at some point prepared to hurt another, to hunt them down and eat their fucking heart out (instead of heart, I subconsciously type ‘hurt’), all in the metaphorical sense which, of course, is always worse than the physical.
I, too, have a destructive purpose in life. There can be no happiness, no stability whatsoever, for fear of unbalancing my whole loose rickety construction which holds my life as together as possible ever on the brink of falling apart. This is why I am always so scared; so angry. For this reason I exclude myself from exciting things that could easily determine the rest of my life: I am not ready for the rest of my life to be determined. In fact, I am determined to prevent it at all cost.
Missed calls. Have you ever thought about them in the sense of karma and the noosphere? How every missed call is actually an un-happened conversation; un-happied too. They aggregate just above the space that we humans occupy with our houses and our phones, and eat on our bestial id like everything else that hasn’t happened to us, but could have. Visits count as well. I wonder why we keep calling.
Consider also our promises. How is it that we always promise each other only material, futile things? Gifts and stuff and items and love eternal and fruitful co-operation are all pointless. We never promise each other that we shall speak before we think and say hurtful things and this is going to be the main way we ever express our love and respect for each other, and to be ready. Whereas this is about the only promise we could make with all honesty and respect.
Some people take pride in their truthfulness. They take pictures of themselves without make-up (I never wear any, does that make me especially honest?), and don’t eat meat, and obey orders, and raise their children to be good citizens. Watch me now insult every single person in the whole Western civilization: all this is not honesty. Honesty is admitting that you think your morning face cute; you never liked meat in the first place; you hate initiative – but your children are all your own merit. Honesty is indeed saying it like it is, and not the correct way you think it ought to sound.
God, I hate myself so much now I should go on and kick myself in the nuts. Consider preachers if you will. Their main job is to tell people what to do while they sit in their own shabby fucking hermitage and have no chance whatsoever of committing any wrongdoings. Because they don’t do anything. All they occupy themselves with is talking to people without even the chance to hurt their feelings as everyone could care less what they’re saying.
I am a preacher. I’ll go sit in my hermitage and kick myself in the nuts with such a vengeance that I just might kick myself out into the open. See what I do then, the git.
