It’s been a long day. I’m burned out to the point of hazy vision and tired eyes, and most everyone around me seems to want more than I have to give. Of course, it ain’t never enough. Bunch of bullshit excuses don’t add up to a goddamned thing when measured against the more useful aspects of friends and acquaintances. I want to sleep so badly I could cry, and at this hour of the night/morning, there ain’t a soul awake to hear me scream. Usually that would be a good reason to lay down and stare at the ceiling until my legs stopped burning, but tonight the pain won’t stop. I am a prisoner of this useless body.
There is a latent realization concerning my dependence upon the good people that spend their time and energy keeping my spirits from sinking any lower. The faces change as time expands towards the infinite future, but each and every one of the kind folks go a long way towards making life a little more bearable and a little more sane. Still, I cannot escape the feeling that I’m going to drown, even as hands are extended in a desperate effort to keep me from falling. It’s a fools errand. I promised myself that whatever the outcome of this tete-a-tete, things will soon change for the better. That’s my faith; no supporting evidence, just the hope that somewhere between Joe Henry singing about the time of lions and the silent phone telling me I’ve been set aside for more interesting people is a sort of painless plateau. Deep down, I know I’m stuck with stab wounds in my legs and lower back. The pain keeps my mind going far after I would have chosen sleep. Sometimes, there is no choice to be made.
For just over four days I’ve tried to duck and dodge the shrapnel headed my way. The doors are locked, and the screens are pulled tight against the windows. The alternating cold and warm air comes and goes without asking permission or even the simplest questions with straight-forward answers. Too much of some things, not enough of others. I thought I missed the ‘burg, but I realized that I no longer know of a single soul wandering the the campus and shops looking for grass and finding trees. So much didactic servitude is expected from the discordant. Can it be fixed? I don’t know. Personally, I worry that things are permanently fucked. A man can live with excruciating pain; a man can live without good meals in his belly, or fine wine in his cup. Nobody can live without some kind of hope that all the suffering will be worth it in the ens. Fucking theists. Maybe next time we can burn them at the stake instead of the other way around.
Well, tomorrow will be slightly better than today. I’ve struck a few names from my list of approved personages, and am waiting with bated breath for word from the front lines of the battle between suburbia and real life. Yeah, that means you. So what if you don’t like it? You’re too busy to prove without a reasonable doubt that 2+2=4.
The head banker cheats on his taxes. The head coach beats on his wife. FOr all I know, Bobby is still doing a tapdance on Whitney’s face and chest. He’ll feel terrible about it later, but that won’t heal the scars and purple bruises. As I stand up to stretch, pain shoots from my lower back into my legs, and I know it’s time to go smoke another cigarette.
All 20 cigarettes in the pack are kind, honest, and thoughtful. Give up smoking? You might as well ask me to stop breathing. I’m no Victor Lazlo, just another cripple with a penchant for hopelessness and a few ideas on what needs to be said and written in the short time left. Until then, it seems that staring at the ceiling and hoping for a brief respite from this wounded spine and shooting pain. I suppose I could just lop the leg off, but that seems so messy, and the carpet cleaners are due here at the end of the month. We don’t have anything that will get blood out of the carpet. The leg stays attached, pain be damned.
I need a few cigarettes in the cold before I lay down to admire the plastered ceiling hanging down above me. My lighter and my jacket keep me warm, but the cold air of the November night sees fitting, as if for once I could join in with the last gasp of Summer heat. I want to enjoy the rapacious movement of the hands of the clock, watching the days tick by while lawyers argue about who the fuck knows what and doctors make sure to forget about treatment in favor of an endless waiting game. Muscle spasms tell me to go outside before my casual disregard turns into real anger.
There must be some ending to this story, but as of now, it’s just another week in another month in another year. Aoolied theory never had it so good.
Did you really need to keep ditching out on me? I’m in no mood the chat about it. You want to go your way, and leave me to mine, that is your prerogitive. It’s just so chickenshit not to say so. Good luck to you; and good luck to me. I’m crawling to bed, but not before a cigarette takes another five minutes off my life expectancy. Bunch of standard bullshit. Apologies all around. I just want to sleep peacefully. Instead, I’ll be up in 5 hours at the latest. That can’t go on forver, right?
Filed under: Uncategorized
Why are the top search terms for this wonderful little shit-press “Porsche” and “carerra”? What sense does that make? I don’t care about cars. Stop that, whoever the fuck you are that is doing that. (Though I’m not sure even how or why, so actually, let me know. That’s pretty fucking funny.
Filed under: Poetry
“i ain’t laughing”
daytime darkness is
made of clouds blocking
the sun.
less heat, less light,
harder to remember
all the things that needed
to be said to all
the people
that used to tell all the funniest
jokes.
underneath a sky like this
are all the fears of night;
diffused into the hours
that might be used
for working,
but instead rather slowly
crawl by,
interrupted to bring in
the language of theft
spoken judiciously.
strange people call,
sometimes write, not letters
but urgent requests; reminders
that bills haven’t
been paid in months,
that the Citi never sleeps;
they need the money.
From me. Now.
Over and over I protest;
there ain’t any money;
there ain’t gonna be.
Not today, not tomorrow,
probably not next month.
they already took my job,
my healthcare,
my health;
there’s not much left,
just another extraneous fellow
with nothing to give but
a foolish grin and a
good story.
Yet the calls never stop,
sort of polite but incessantly
pointing out my failure to pay.
the Lamarkian evolution
of bill collecting marches on,
to be what it will,
expressed in letters and
phone calls.
It’s not funny, but I want to laugh.
I want to laugh
at all the folks who keep
asking for the
blood of a stone
when the stone’s already crushed
into powder.
They’ll probably keep calling,
nameless peons without a
horse in this race;
each ring of the phone
a reminder of the greater
failure to transfer wealth
from my former employer
to my former creditor.
Only later do i realize
that I’m not that lucky.
I may be broke
but the Citi is still my creditor.
even though I
have nothing to send.
I want so badly to laugh
about how things can get
so far out of hand,
so quickly,
with or without the
greatest intentions.
Laughter is such a stretch
when you’re struggling to
breathe.
They won’t be wished away,
not with laughter
or breath or anything but
another in a long line of
something I haven’t got.
For a moment I can grin;
the Cheshire cat didn’t
have any money either.
The grin feels good,
like donning an old costume
or unexpectedly meeting
and old friends;
the grin feels good,
but it’s no place-holder
for a good laugh.
Filed under: FML
Metaphor is meteoric. I highly doubt that it’s anything to get that excited about, more like cheering on a principle or cause that means nothing but glacial movements that slow or decline ever further. For a minute I can breathe easily, content in the knowledge that whatever else is going to happen will just have to do so without any prep work from me. Like a Melanin Dolphin, or that other one still speaking in tongues from across the nation, all the murmurs and gestational voices boil over with suggestions that all make the garbage bin before the office even opens up. All the mistakes and intangible arguments serve as precedent for the easiest and best of us to do whatever we think is right, up to and including murder, rape, and suicide. Don’t let anyone tell you it ain’t a dirty world.
Still, somewhere out there the doctors keep writing prescriptions on little slips of paper and plumbers use chemicals to clean out drains clogged with hair. I can hardly think of a less interesting subject than the normal machinations with which each successive movement are built upon. There can be no call for the lamentations of the victims of stupidity or arrogance. It’s too loud. Nobody could hear a thing over the goddamned stereo. The same song’s been repeating for hours on end, and I’m about to snap. Nobody is coming along for the ride. Next time I’ll advertise better, like screaming over the music instead of dancing around it. The pain is intense. So much for clarity of mind and body.
Amidst the throbbing peckish rhythm of the early afternoon is a pigeon alternatively flying and hopping towards a lake. If he can pick through the lily pads and get down to the water, he might have a chance for lunch. Lucky for him, pigeons don’t eat sandwiches, just bread and meat separately served by being through a broken window. His path towards the lake is an appetizer of breeze. Old feathers fall off his body to be picked up by some passing youth who’s mother will later ream him out for picking up such a diseased specimen. That is not how sandwiches get turned into pigeon shit. The buffet is always just over the next row of houses. All the pigeon really knows is stale bread is better than no bread at all. Just like people, except pigeons don’t talk as much nonsense. You should know, you’re reading it now.
Euphoria through passive means. Most of the members of my species disdain such activity as unworthy of some intemperate facet of existence, but I feel pretty confident the whole concept will be forgotten in a few thousand years. Pity I won’t be alive to see it, but everyone else I know will be long dead by then, so what’s the difference? Split it and call me a bastard, or maybe an asshole. There are few things as gratifying as being told the truth.
For such long stretches of time there is just random movement and rhapsodic dalliance with the people who can craft beauty more powerful than my imagination. Still, it is there to be sampled by all, and for that I can only say thank you. I’d pay off every last one of the few of those willing and able to inspire before Citibank sees one thin dime from these cut and bruised hands. It is really true though, and when I say true I mean absolutely positively honest that slavery to need is the last demarcation point between the pseudo-free and those wise enough to know how impossible that really is. All the sun stamped dolphins and fake tanning machines and broken stereos and shards of glass don’t change a thing. Didn’t you know? It isn’t only the retards looking for roses growing out of the trash pile anymore. Nowadays, it seems like it might be every last one of us. Sounds stupid, like something Frank Fukuyama would say. After all, anyone crass enough to declare the end of history is probably selling something like Sarin gas or machine guns or botulism virus. Who else would have the balls to say something like that?
He cornered the market on truth only to find out nobody was interested in the ugly truth when beautiful lies were so much more precocious. So the academics don’t want you, the businessmen aren’t interested, and the politicians could care less. That’s no different than any other time. Another hidden problem of the democratic mind. No parties, no movements, no quiet estuary where the young grow and fatten up on easy kills, just someplace to pretend that normality is what you get when you pile debts on top of the broken and beaten agents of policy. How’s that for change you can believe in? Would the next sucker line up to be shot if you told him we’ll pay a few million dollars first? As long as you don’t ask to enjoy any of it, there is a feast of plenty running all night every night.
Tired of the melange, I stroll back out into the day. Someone besides Robert has to feed the pigeons. I can live with starving and dying humans, but not one pigeon. Better to sit back and watch the continents drift and the days go by. Different by scale, but not by talent, another block of time and space curves back towards itself. Envy is such a poor man’s disease.
Filed under: Poetry
For what its worth,
which probably ain’t all that much,
at one point,
I thought it was really important
to understand
as much as possible
about everything having to do with
why’s.
You can easily share the
apprehension that comes
with thinking about why,
much too much
for the sake of sanity
and getting something
useful done.
Moreso than any
chemical elixir
is the seduction of vanity
that comes with
thinking too long
about all the why’s.
Meanwhile the world moves on;
people have babies
that grow up to be more people
who act just as mysteriously
as their parents used to
before they got boring
and predictable.
All the while I lose afternoons,
and the last part
of a good many mornings,
and some all nights,
thinking about all those
why’s.
Like why does it matter
if I choose to disregard
some arcane aspect
of a dress code?
or
Why do people settle
for certainty when
uncertainty comprises
so much more of the world?
Before I knew what happened
to all the time that hadn’t
happened yet,
it went and happened
and all the time that’s
still waiting
will probably creep by;
but it won’t be
because I’m thinking
about the why’s.
Passive wonder will
have to be enough,
there are probably things to do,
things like buying sweaters
and ties, mowing the lawn,
and of course having babies.
It sure seems like a lot of work;
there’s not enough hours
in a day or even a week
to do all that and still
think about the why’s.
Practice trumps theory again.
a fact that there’s no need
to wonder about;
the same holds true
for the babies and ties
and lawnmowers
and department store sales
on all of ‘em.
Yet most everyone makes the same choice,
or maybe they just compromise;
thinking to themselves,
“it’s not as good as knowing why
but I’m getting laid more often,
and my car is shiny and fast,
and my house is huge,
and filled with stuff,
and all that’s gotta be worth
something, right?”
But what about the why’s?
Someone has to think about them,
and what is it exactly
all those University approved
Philosophers
do with their day?
I suspect they spend very little time
on the why’s.
A drug like that isn’t allowed
at work.
All of this curls back on itself,
with the gravity of everything
tugging on everything,
nothing moves except
when everything moves,
and why is that?
and does it have to be the
way it is?
Only when another afternoon
is lost on all those why’s
do I remember why I
decided not to think about
all those why’s in the first place,
saying to myself
“remember potted plants, and
settling down for a few decades,
and coaching little league,
and all the other shit you
thought you were supposed to do.”
With shaky confidence in my judgment;
is there any other kind? (strike that.
we’re not thinking about that right now.)
but confidence nonetheless,
I’m gonna settle in
for the long haul,
maybe get an office plant or two;
brag to everyone ’bout how good
it is when my car is the
right color, without so many
stickers and dents.
maybe even a baby seat
clinging to the seat belt
for dear life.
In the midst of all the
gonna be’s,
it seems too much; for one thing,
who’s going to trust me
with all the trappings of
this high class life?
Not me, that’s for sure.
Not to mention,
it still feels like
too much work without
adequate reward.
Call me foolish anytime,
but that much work
demands much more,
why sell out so cheap when
the money’s just paper
and the car needs gas,
and a trustworthy mechanic;
and the grass is growing too high,
and it’s not the good kind of grass
or the good kind of high.
Suspended between everything
with no desire to choose
seems to piss off those
around me, but none of them
know why it has to be
a decision in the first place;
so why should I trust their judgment
over my own?
Nothing resolved,
but another evening and morning
sacrificed to thinking
too much about all the things
I keep promising myself
I won’t think about any more.
Does it say something about
my infidelity to myself;
or simply my lazy ambivalence
to anything but thinking
about the why’s,
and do they have rehab
for this sort of thing?
I walked 12 steps to the kitchen
and drank some soda
and ate some leftover spaghetti
with cold sauce and no meatballs
and wondered why I hadn’t cared
enough to make some
earlier this afternoon.
Tomorrow I’ll go to the store
and get all the stuff to make chilli.
It’ll be progress.
It’ll be fun.
Really.
With all this on my plate,
for later, I feel fine;
fine enough for omphaloskepsis;
babies and chilli are the farthest things
from my mind. What’s a few
more hours, anyway?
This one’s about genesis. That’s the only way I can think of to say that all the warnings and suppositions are just more kindling for the fire. Right now is what can be controlled, at least in that vague manner of the righteous few. It doesn’t happen much, but the rules are there. The best part is nobody has to think about it. The worst part is that nobody does. Still; it could be something more ethereal. Every time I get too close to knocking it down, the whole thing stops making sense. I guess thats O.K. I mean, it’s not like you can pick and choose when to stop and start. What’s the fun in that?
I was going to tell you that I’m “fighting onward,” but that’s the wrong analogy. Fuck it. Maybe the whole thing is a poem. There’s nothing to fear about that. There’s that whole murky clarity of painted straws cut with the fine mist. Ain’t nothing that can’t be solved with the right mixture of fuel and desire. My fingers might be slow and my mind drafting, but let’s split the difference and call it the kind of essential preparation for enlightenment. I got all kinds of experience that tells me not to worry too much. It ain’t that long of a ride.
So where is everybody now? Some kind of sick joke; bad advice mixed with good intentions. Never underestimate the power of the echo chamber. For a few brief seconds, gravity dissipates and everything rises a few inches. So tangled; how did they all hear the story at the same time? It boggles the mind. Most of them have better things to do when gravity reasserts itself and we all come down. But I got time. There could be measurements made. Maybe even those crucible judgments that let us know that yes indeed, we’re really one of the chosen few. I guess some find comfort in such simony. Still nothing to say about the rest of the world. I reserve all judgment until just after everything starts making sense. Mediation would work, but who sit’s where at the table? Do we need more than two chairs?
All the answers reside in the pocket of a pretty little thing walking around somewhere south of here. Miles are miles, and they make kilometers out of yardsticks. She never reaches for this particular pocket, but something she said years ago still figures in the thoughts of cloudy days raining down on those hillsides and mountain meadows. Some day I’m gonna reach for that pocket and find out what it was that made things as they are instead of some other way. I’m gonna question everything, down to Planck size issues that we never got to talk about when the time was wrong. Patience, patience. I’m not here as some johnny-come-rapist in the dark of night. I never hurt anyone without a damn good reason. It’s in the joke spoken by the auteur. Plainly said, I’m just here for the sake of the question. If there was anything that could be done (besides the obvious concoctions mixed with keen razor blade theory) then it is going to be done. Don’t ask me to stop. I couldn’t if I wanted to.
Precision knowledge can only be accumulated via conversation, or maybe in the recitation of restraint and self control. Who says who does? Go join the people, get yourself a wife or a husband, maybe have some kids. I’m told passing on your genes might be why we’re here. I shudder when those words pass through my lips, as disrespectful as I’m known to be. Fuck it. Like so much else, it will have to wait.
———————————-
Maybe it’s a poem?
The more I think
about the pocket of the jeans
of the girl walking
down an old boulevard or avenue
of a gracefully familiar town,
the more certain I become
that the contents of her pocket
hold the memory of my muse ,
and the answer to my question.
————————————-
Maybe it’s a stab wound in the arm, or a fall from from on high, either pride or a skyscraper. But maybe she’s just got the peculiar mix, like shards of green busting through concrete. Maybe I know how to slap together some kind of dinner from scattered lines of poetry gathered up from the tangles of her hair while all around me is in motion. Is this a weathered grin? Is it important that she not know her role in leading the words and sights of this sorry assed dumb fucker? He’s still convinced that the word and the light (sorry CB) mean more than a ragged body and scattered mind. He cares little for anything but the word. With the help of music and his muse; strike forth. Forget meaning for a moment; create something else based in part on that sensation of reflection of the light from bulb banging into her eyes. A welcome wave of relaxation passes through. You can’t make this shit up. Who knew what unlocking the passenger door could do to a fool?
With all the conversations that never were, the word and the light (apologies again CB) seem to leave a broken trail to follow from the exhaustion to rebirth. If there was any justice, I’d be weeping. More truthfully, it’s late, and I’m too tired to satiate my muse with the praise she deserves.
—————————-
nobody remembers how it felt
to open the door of my piece of shit car,
on a cool night in the old mountains,
wearing my lousy jeans and a cheap shirt;
and welcome Pallas Athena
with prayers and nervous laughter.
warm light from the sodium bulbs,
lascivious light falling down
made the act of opening a door
seem magisterial; my muse
sat next to me as we drove off.
at the same time, far in the past,
I was dumb enough to look at the front
of Athena’s tight jeans
instead of the hip pocket;
where everything I could ever want
waited on me.
back to the present, years
later and in a different place,
straining to remember the
night I tried to satisfy my muse,
sharing cigarettes, wanting something
I couldn’t quite name.
the scent of perfume remains
embedded in my memory;
lining my mind as I look to that moment
when she swung her head
around and washed me
down for good
the scent of beauty and genius;
Pallas Athena
It’s late, and I’ve failed;
and I’m too tired
to satiate my muse
with the praise she deserves.
————————————-
Too many questions for a restless night. I might be getting my poetry mixed up with my prose. I’m so tired, and I can’t give back what was given to me one night a long time ago in a place that’s as closed as a boarded up row-house. I did the best I could tonight; I tried to be a poet.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Various portents of salubrious consternation. There isn’t much too it, not like fancy words and facile logic was really ever that useful for anything that important. The Fool was traveling in the limited manner he often enjoys, and it brought to mind trips to far off beaches, like Ocean City of VaBeach, where there is a skein of mud covering everything the eye can see. Still, good memories all around, at least to whatever extent the memory remains. Short term is not my strong suit. There used to be a real good reason to go to one of those beaches, but like all real good reasons, this one ain’t good anymore. It happens, and it’s not much of a surprise as to why. The only real question is why it took as long as it did. Fuck it, this is no night to be looking back. That seems so boring and cliche.
Tonight’s trip was one of those enjoyable traditions that intense and repetitive pain can’t stop. The mind gets limber after recreational exercise provided by the good people of Consolidated Industries, Inc. If they only knew how much it helps. Still, that’s why they’re in business, to help seekers like myself. That deserves a coke and a smile. Only you older fuckers will pick up on that. Pity you can’t join me. This droll pretense of reserved laughter and the quiet pin prick of my assertions of petty dominance are quite the show. So much the better with an appreciative audience. Then again, there’s always a table for one. Cheaper that way too.
Little bit of everything on the drive. The near miss of a few hundred pounds of steel hurtling across three lanes of traffic is always enjoyable. Like I am forced to keep repeating; almost getting into an accident is the same as not getting into an accident. Fear not the unknown…it can’t possibly be any worse than the known.
This was meant to be short, so let’s agree to keep it that way. Rest assured I am as filled with the same vitriolic and often petty hatreds as usual, but am too far gone to make any sport of it tonight. Some nights are good enough without adding anything else, and lucky for this son of a bitch, tonight is one of them. No running into walls or playing with scissors for this kid, there’s more enjoyable pastimes to fill the void. Like Eleanor of Aquitane;
“Come, stickpins. We can do it all again tomorrow.”
Actually that wasn’t it at all, but seems like it will work well enough for tonight. Me? I’m gonna go jerk off to the box score and think about next weekend, when we clash with evil for the second to last time this season. Until then it’s going to be a long, long week ahead. Could be worse, tomorrow could be lorded over by some dickhead sky pilot. Better not.
I couldn’t sleep because all the settings were wrong. Not too far, the knobs weren’t twisted more than a quarter turn. I get the sense it might even have been less than that. We’re not talking about black swans, or those one per billion years or so kind of event. Maybe that’s the problem. After you live on gruel long enough, it tastes like everyday. Just enough to get by. Just one bite to tide you over, one cigarette to pack it down. Makes you wonder. Makes you wonder is all that it does, the never-land variation of questions and quests, movement of jaw and body down a long road or up a high mountain. Either/or repetition might make you really good at some tiny (and possibly obscure) part of the game, but when it slows down and the thoughts roll out to the sounds of trucks driven at high speed on cold nights, it seems both wondrous and mundane. That’s a week. That’s a day, an hour, a minute, all representational of the wide world of ideas. How frustrating. Hold for another smoke. Talk about a miracle.
None of this will hold indefinitely. Even the newly fired commandant will probably figure it out if given enough time to think about it. Maybe not. Maybe I’m giving out too much faith and not enough realism. Whatever the shortcomings of living in the moment, there has to be some way of keeping in mind the thematic glory of free living. It seems so paradoxical amongst the theology of old friends. I can’t really comment save to note that that all this (gestures wildly about the room) is not the hall of trophies. There is life, even in the anteroom. Damned rationale of the fearless fool. Life accretes, everything else is nickels and dimes and glass trays filled with razors. Am I getting through to you? Does any of this make any sense?
Let’s leave that to bleed on its own for a minute. Don’t worry, the human form is filled to the brim, and we’ll come back to that later. Even at this early hour when the commercials on television seem like they’re selling something that might be true on another planet, the mind reels and then falls over with the weight of incredulity. It would take a much more vapid mind to believe what it was told. I’ve seen that girl before, the one in the commercial for eHarmony. She was bitching and moaning about how hard it was to find love as a working woman. Never mind that this time last year she had fallen in love after being matched up with a different actor. It makes me feel better to know she’s probably out behind the set sucking cock for 15 bucks a pop, swallowing for an extra fiver. Let’s kick her while she’s down; the bitch probably likes it. And this is supposed to make us feel better about the power of the internet? Bah. Foolhardy to find your faith in the memes of late night commercials. Even when sleep is a dream, there is no manna to save your soul. I haven’t given up; I’m just taking a break.
There are substances that can help fix the location and provide some bulwark of security. I think it was said somewhere else, but it’s never going to increase the enjoyment of existence to see the boss on the soup line with the rest of us bastards and fuck-ups who make it their business to get the shit end of the stick. Still, the sun comes up at the same time for all of us. Even if the taste is reminiscent of the mornings back before giving up the goat and living this morass of stillness, it still doesn’t equal defeat. Not yet anyways.
What started in sadness can end in euphoria. As hard as it can be to keep a smile from forming on such a tiny basis. It’s kind of funny to see a loser cheese off the fuckers trying to run him down. I can always sympathize with an underdog. I’d call it one of the great faults in both my judgment and my sympathies. Not for nothing, but there’s something strange in looking around and watching the desperation that pervades suburbia. Worse yet, it’s not the same as the quiet desperation of Thoreau. He saw some deeper meaning in the nature of desperation, as if it propelled some great desire for something, or some great movement towards fulfillment. Maybe that held true in his time, but not now.
Most of what I see are the reflections of desire expressed as a longing for some mythical time where everyone gives up the adversarial bias and actually begins to care. The signs are everywhere, but never articulated in a direct manner. Must be something that stops it from happening, but the end result seems to be greater pressures placed on each interlocking individual as opposed to less. If I were the type to jump to conclusions, that kind of theorem would seem to lend itself to all manner of possible answers. Somehow, the worst realizations are the easiest to ignore. Fucking Darwinian selection of psychological attributes. Maybe that explains why so few people seem to grasp the connection between isolation and desire. But shit, I saw it on television. It must be true.
The logic required to hold all of this together comes with indoctrination. First things first; mind the borders of thought. After that, just add in repetition (in various media and culture) of a few simple ideas and watch it ripple through the population. Unintentional comedy.
Distance and perspective seem to be the only way to see the larger implications of what might be the natural response to infectious thought. The rest can be left to Dan Dennett. Sleep is no antidote, but it safely gets us all from now to later. Eyes forward, but closing slowly. Can’t imagine why.
