The Obscure

Here I sit, on the eve of the funeral of a good man I barely knew.

Death does a strange thing to a person, regardless if you are the person who happens to be doing the dying. Even the death of a person I barely knew, a man I've met maybe all of three times in my life, but who's existence had become something of a tangible aspect of my reality, has affected me in a way I would not have previously thought possible.
Everyone has encounters with death. Death in the family, death of a friend, or a death in the family of a close friend. Everyone knows, to a certain degree, what it is like to be touched in a personal way with that one universal and irrevocable loss; even if it is only by the absence of that loss that one comes to fear it so.
The death of a family acquaintance, or a teacher, or a man to whom you used to deliver newspapers, this is a manner of death that is quite unique in it's effect on the living. No, you do not neccessarily mourn them in the deep, heart-wrenching way you would say: your father. But you are nevertheless touched by it, someone who once was there is now not. Someone who once laughed, once cried, was once hungry and certainly at some point once was full, is now simply no longer there. They do not exist in our plane, that connection has been severed, in that one and only universal and irrevocable way that it can be. The person you knew, respected, understood, liked, perhaps loved, is gone. No more will you see them in this life, though you may laugh for eternity with them in the next.
Though your soul may not cry out with loss, and though you may not experience that hard physical ache that accompanies the more tangible death of a close loved one, a part of your mind will always stand back and wonder; wonder, of the infinite things that have been torn down along with the life of the person you were never close enough to to mourn effectively. I wonder, how many memories did this man take to his grave? I wonder, was the life of this man bright, did this man know his soul? Was he afraid when the time came, or was his faith as such that he could look into eternity with a smile on his face? Again, I wonder, if this man's story died with him, if his words will never again be heard, if we all shall never know the truths and beauties he has seen, the glories he has experienced, then is that not truly enough to mourn him as he deserves? Should we all not feel his departure as if something was taken out of our own souls to help cushion him in his eternal resting place?
Death, it would appear, is the one and only true constant in this world. You can say other things are constant, but that does not definitively make it so. Are we sure we are held here by gravity, or is it that some living will emanates from our every molecule and crushes it against this rock? No, the only true constant in this world is death. Oh, I suppose it has different forms in different context, but even the tallest and mightiest mountain, over time, will succumb to the laws of this world and slowly crumble, until there is nothing of is but it's basest molecules, floating in empty space. Do you feel it? That all-encompassing knowledge that you are, slowly but surely, winding down? That, in fact, this whole world, in one way or another, is winding down. Sayeth the Dead God, "In the end, entropy wins all."

I certainly feel that way this evening. Goodnight, friends.

Happy Birthday to Me, boys and girls.

Man, what a long, boring year it has been. That's all I have to say about that, moving on!

My mom went into the hospital the other day with severe stomache pain. At first they diagnosed her with having a hole in her stomache, then they said she had pancreatitis, and then they actually checked and found out that she has a small, easily taken care of ulcer. Right before we found out that it was an ulcer and thought that it was pancreatitis (which, despite what the doctors said, we knew could be much worse than her just spending a few days in the hospital not eating anything) I went to the hospital myself with a terrible headache, no doubt induced by the fact that my mother was in the hospital with some as-of-yet ill defined disease in her stomache or vital organs. What did they give me? Three hours in a dark room before I got to see a doctor, and then a bitch of a doctor who gave me two roxicets and said, "That ought to hold you over til' your refill." and gave me a long lecture about how I was handling my pain. You know, one of those doctors who think that every patient they have is a moron who has done absolutely no research into the needs or chemical reactions of their bodies. One of those doctors who give you pretty much no help and then try to charge you for it. It was a fucking waste of time, and I told the nurse exactly that (a very attractive, intelligent, and kind nurse; who unfortunately had the duty of giving me a shot in my ass muscle). She said that according to the texts the medicines they were giving me were the best things for migraines, I said that I had read all the texts and tried everything that the texts indicated, finding nothing that worked without almost killing me in the process, and that the doctor wasn't giving me any help at all. She looked very upset and said, "Well, I hope you feel better." I gave her my thanks and then left without signing the discharge papers. I'll be damned if they are going to charge me 50 dollars for lying in a bed not using their electricity, getting a lecture, and getting drugs that I could've very easily gotten for nothing if I had felt like going in a less legit direction and talked to some of my contacts on the street. I could've gotten more effective ones, too, but I prefer the legit way. I do not like to accept or smuggle stolen or illegitimately gotten drugs, be they neccessary to my health or not. I do have some scruples.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave.
They didn't even give me an anti-nausea med. What kind of doctor does that?

Anyway. I'm working a lot more on "The Chronicles of Heck." I've come to realize that that writing, like many others I have started and then found myself unable to leave incomplete, has begun to become something of an obsession for me, and I am not surprised. It's just such a large undertaking, longer by far than any one piece I have written thus far. But the story compels me so, I find myself unable to resist creating more of it in my mind, or creating more social and political overtones to it, giving it more depth, more structure. Even did I not write the story, my mind would be completely consumed by it by the time the summer is out. The urge to give a figment of your imagination an element of humanity is an urge that I doubt any one with any creative muscle could ignore; and I, the bi-polar pill-popper with a few loose wires firing off short bursts of incongruent thought inside my already pain ravaged brain, I can ignore that urge least of all.

I guess I have nothing else to write. I am nineteen now, it'll be exactly two more years till I can legally by alcohol. God help us when that time rolls around.

The Cosmic Equilibrium

I am a strange person, totally manic. There is nothing that can be done for the boy, leave him be.
Drums in the deep, my friends. How profound! Here I am, here I sit, with my skull that's full of shit. Can't see up, can't see down, I can only look 'round and 'round.

Now for the terribly depressing introspective part of my hackneyed word-jam. Bad luck follows a man wherever he may go, and it's close friend good-fortune is never far behind. Lock your car keys in the car, find a five-dollar bill, use five-dollar bill to buy new crappy pair of sunglasses, but they are greens, I haven't had a pair of greens for a while, I suppose it is a fair trade, three hours sitting in a parking lot in exchange for a pair of crappy green sunglasses and a night at my favorite Aunt and Uncle's house.
I was all set-up to write a long, long piece of shit right now, but exhaustion can melt one's mind; so I shall go smoke the last ciggy-sag of the night, and then I guess I'll go to sleep. Goodnight, friends and countrymen.

I feel as if I've lived each day of my life in an inescapable stupor.

We're all mad here. Quaint saying, isn't it? I'm out of money, I got some paperwork from the disability people today that I suppose I have to fill out by monday morning, maybe, in like another three months, I'll start having money again. I wouldn't count on it, given my luck.
I'm getting my wisdom teeth pulled out in a week or so. I guess that's a good thing. One of them is troubling me, so why not just yank out all four, just to be safe?
I feel very lucid right now. It is unfortunate how often lucidity and excrutiating pain go hand in hand. (It is unfortunate that what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye are seldom the same.) My concentration does wax and wane a good amount, one second I can focus on anything of my fancy, remember the day, date, year, and time all at once. The next second I forget everything but my first name, and half of the time I get that one wrong, too. Then, the flashbacks. I'll remember some obscure thing that happened to me three years ago, and I'll think, "I wonder what would've happened if I had spoken exactly what was on my mind at that precise moment. How much of my personal history would've changed? How different would I be?"
To my indescribable sorrow there is no way to determine any of those things, save some kind of time machine. But then, I would have to have some version of myself to stand aside and be a casual observer, unaffected by the ravages of time.
I think I have multiple personalities. I think only one of them believes this to be true. It is he who is speaking now.
I am totally fucking crazy. I hate it when I realize how goddamn nuts I am. I'm giving up on living, there is no fucking point to it. I realized this a long time ago, but it has only dawned on me how true it really is now. My life is pointless. Completely and utterly pointless. I help no one, I have no goals to accomplish. All I have are dreams and hard-ass fucking headaches. I'm done trying to be something. It is all pointless.

Wayne the Main-Brain McClane

Time is fucked up, huh? I'm sitting here right now, simultaneously feeling dread that I am going to have to wait something like two months until anything happens to me at all to change the current rut my life is in, and being very annoyed that enough time has slipped through my fingers that I'm already on the brink of losing the insurance on my car, or having to empty my storage room. I think about how long it has been since I haven't had a headache, and how excruiatingly quickly I have currently burned through my headache medication; which in turn makes me face the prospect of spending two weeks sitting pretty with something ugly gnawing on my brain, with none of the pills I've come to fucking loathe to sooth me. Strange days.
When your short-term memory is as messed up as mine, you lose all concept of time.

I can't really think of anything else to say right now. Like I say, anything in the world is as confusing as hell if you give it any thought.
Goodnight.

Arrakis Awakening, by the Princess Irulan

I am not in the mood to write, nor do I have anything going through my mind which I may write about; yet, I've found that some of my best stuff comes out of me when I am in a totally uninspired state. Unfortunately, some of my worst stuff comes out of me under the exact same circumstances. We'll just have to see how this goes, if it is terrible, then it will be nothing but a waste of my and three or four other people's time. If it is good, it will still be a waste of my and three or four other people's time, but I can be slightly more satisfied with the time I wasted on this particular evening.
Sometimes I have the audacity to call myself a writer, I don't mean to do this terrible thing, it just pops out of my mouth. I spend a lot of my time writing, so I suppose that title could fit, but I hold the idea of actually being a Writer on a very high pedestal. The things that I write are no more than angsty descents into my own psyche for the purposes of emptying my mind of the things that burden it. I do not think that is actually "writing," I don't know what one would actually call it, but I think the actual profession or calling of "writing" is more than that. Hence my reluctance to call myself a writer, hence my desire to waste an entire paragraph describing this constant floundering in the deep pools of social inaptitude.
Earlier today I ran into my ex-girlfriend. By "ex-girlfriend" I mean the girlfriend I had before my most recent ex-girlfriend, the break-up with whom devastated me in ways I hope never to experience again; and by "ran into" I really mean "walked by with a nervous smile and quick wave."
I wonder if one can ever truly be comfortable around someone with whom they were so physically and emotionally intimate with during their pubescent years, only to have it broken off. My personal experiences aside, a purely philosophical question. Your first serious boyfriend or girlfriend, a relationship grown a little too serious and then broken off for any variety of reasons. Can you truly ever see that person again in the light of just another human being, carving a life out of this rock like every other human being that you see every day? Or will the light shining on them always have the slight tint that shows that that person know some of your most intimate secrets, and you some of theirs? Extension: Can one truly be friends with any "Ex" the way they can be friends with someone with whom one hasn't shared any deeper level of intimacy? Does sharing the illusion of love with someone forever change whatever kind of relationship you may have had with that person in the future? Or is that just for those of us with a heightened sense of their own social and romantic failures?
Following this line of thought, what about (and pardon the expression) "fuck buddies?" Where is the line drawn between romantic physical acts performed under the illusion of love, and the consummation of lust between two people otherwise unaffiliated except perhaps through the bonds of platonic (yet occasionally sexual) friendship?

There is nothing in the world that is not as confusing as hell, if you give it any thought.

Goodnight folks.