We’ll go with the a la Hedberg here, writing until something decent
comes out or a needle does. Just writing about nothing and maybe
everything, tolling with a wandering mind, ticketing any
shiny-thought like a red sports car stunting on the freeway. We’re
at a breaking point, perhaps the colloquial The. For art thou
withering in hope and pocketing despair, like some weighted cadaver
in the depths of some nondescript lake-bed?
It’s
a waste of time, all of it. Spend a few grand on school and the
economy shuts down—where to go? Back to retail or flipping burgers
and scrambling eggs. Twenty-eight goddamn years old, reformed and
fucking livid, realizing in some way that the brash cunt I used to be
was right the whole time: to just write and let the creativity guide
you. I quit dreaming to go to school. Not that I had to, but they
conflicted. It seemed one or the other, within the capacity of
thought that I was dwelling within, then. Boozed up and chasing
fantasies, my trajectory was off. The engine and mechanisms seemed
there but the calculations were nil and I wasn’t heading anywhere
worth going, that much was clear. It’s a curious thing,
life—certainly as we see it now—though you wonder sometimes why
and how you stumble on things; sometimes you wonder if you’re meant
to. This bug, this illness, the need to gas-off this incessant
mind-juice, it’s what was left when the alcohol was gone. Just one
moldy box brimmed with memories of some chubby kid and his dreams.
Now jobless with a college degree, a reformed drunk with abs, I
wonder if the fantasy was keeping drink around and not the idea of
writing.
That
sounds like a pretentious thing to say, to assume but it’s more of
a question or several. Like, to what end are we guided by our
desires? To what end to they mold us and perforate our temperament? I
feel that when the alcoholism swelled, I was more enthralled by the
idea of being a functioning fuck-up than what got me to the dance: I
just wanted an escape—not from home but reality. There might have
been a few months where I enjoyed it the way a normal person might: a
party or social gathering. It was just quick to change into something
else, it became my escape—available whenever. Writing or being
creative was and is this big, vague whatever-the-fuck, I could get
hammered within half-an-hour. It’s what all the greats did anyway,
right? Write drunk, edit sober is what Hemingway said. Well, I’d
certainly partake in the former but the latter, much like this,
really, came out as gibberish.
It’s just curious, the things that prick the skin and remain
inside, embedded like a tick. The rocket-ship off this plain that I
had created in my minds eye had indeed crashed and burned. My
“trajectory” was askew to begin with, trying to force a hand that
wasn’t there, bluffing against a faceless foe. I was living in a
bayou, knee deep in shit and it wasn’t until I was out and showered
that I could see the kid I was remained.
But
here we are in a pandemic, seven months or some garbage deep and for
the first time in my life, I’ve dotted my I’s and crossed my T’s
and NIL. I get it, we are rife with discomfort and suffering, it’s
faces down across the country and this year’s maple syrup, she’ll
be bitter. When I look that little fat kid in the mirror, happy to be
in shape but somewhere I realize it’s just a veneer… I feel good
but somethings off, like trying to drink from a bewitched cup, I’m
lacking sustenance—like I can see and feel but can’t ingest the
thing. I think on a base-level we know who we are, when we’ve done
wrong and now in the midst of this shit I find myself hangry for
redemption, if only to make the short, chubby, pathetic little kid
inside me, happy. Whisky might’ve gotten me to the dance but it’s
writing that’s worth holding onto.
It’s
not like any of this means anything… it’s the rantings of a guy
holding on to one last string, daring it to snap and honestly,
there’s something about that I kinda dig. Throw it all out there,
shit on the floor—live a little.
