(no subject)
Just because there was an unnerving silence around the table. For no other reason but because there was the kind of big, silent, gaping hole sitting right in front of us where four friends perhaps think "just who are these people who I have absolutely nothing to say to, anyways, and why I am sitting with them? We've eaten our food and are done with it, don't I have better things to do?" The kind of silence that makes you desperate to give these people a reason why you are important and they shouldn't scurry off to bigger and better things. Something entertaining. So for no other reason(I promise), I blurt out my doings of late, desperate to fill up time and space, and receive the incredulous stares and suspicious confusion of people who do their homework and turn it in on time.
Just what, exactly, would possess you to do a thing like that?
Wait. Isn't it obvious? Isn't it a given? Aren't you terribly jealous of every brilliant, tortured soul, every sick-man genius, every tragic hero haunted by his private demons? And doesn't it seem like the surest way to access their genius is by copying their bad habits? Seriously? Aren't you riveted by sad stories and bad decisions? Aren't you addicted to your own longing and loneliness and desperate for every inch of your heart that remains to be smashed to pieces? Seriously? Don't you want to find the bottom while you're still young? Isn't safety fucking disgusting and heartache reassuring?
But they don't seem to have any idea about that, and I have no idea how to say it, so I make shit up, generate the type of plastic in myself that makes me feel like utter shit, I've learned my lesson and am excited about the positive direction my life will move where I am a great dad and won't make any more bad decisions, and later in the day, I can barely look them in the eye.
Sometimes we all want to do the types of things that make for good pharmacuetical commercials. We want to climb mountains, graduate college, kayak with our sensibly dressed wife, wear fashionable glasses and start our career on sleek Mac notebooks. We want to defeat allergies and give our depression the heave-ho. We all want to be safe and happy.
But more often, I want to do the types of things that you would want to read about in a short story by someone you assume to be cooler than you are. I want to do the types of things that I wouldn't want my parents finding out about. I want to do whatever precious few dangerous things are left now that I don't have a house to sneak out of, now that I have no one to keep any secrets from. Those are the types of things I wish I were doing when I sit around wasting all of my fucking time. That is the life I want to lead and that is the life that I mourn the passing of, now that I've taken on the role of father.
And now even this embarrasses me, because real fuck ups, real geniuses, don't justify what they do. Tragedy and heartbreak flow from them as naturally as great poems, effortlessly, for no one else but themselves. They aren't excited by their mistakes and they certainly don't talk about them. They just live, and thats a problem, and thats all there is to it. When I blurted that out to an unenthused audience, I was exposed. Please think I'm dangerous, please think I'm smart. But the truth was all there to see as soon as I uttered those words. My mediocrity at being a real fuck up is proportional to the limits of my intelect, creativity, productivity. A silly show with no substance, a transparent charade not just for something like sympathy, but one that seeks to inspire a kind of reverence for stupidity. The words that I feared on their faces wasn't "Why on Earth would you do a thing like that?" but "Why on Earth are you telling us this? We aren't impressed. Now, we've got some schoolwork to attend to."
Just what, exactly, would possess you to do a thing like that?
Wait. Isn't it obvious? Isn't it a given? Aren't you terribly jealous of every brilliant, tortured soul, every sick-man genius, every tragic hero haunted by his private demons? And doesn't it seem like the surest way to access their genius is by copying their bad habits? Seriously? Aren't you riveted by sad stories and bad decisions? Aren't you addicted to your own longing and loneliness and desperate for every inch of your heart that remains to be smashed to pieces? Seriously? Don't you want to find the bottom while you're still young? Isn't safety fucking disgusting and heartache reassuring?
But they don't seem to have any idea about that, and I have no idea how to say it, so I make shit up, generate the type of plastic in myself that makes me feel like utter shit, I've learned my lesson and am excited about the positive direction my life will move where I am a great dad and won't make any more bad decisions, and later in the day, I can barely look them in the eye.
Sometimes we all want to do the types of things that make for good pharmacuetical commercials. We want to climb mountains, graduate college, kayak with our sensibly dressed wife, wear fashionable glasses and start our career on sleek Mac notebooks. We want to defeat allergies and give our depression the heave-ho. We all want to be safe and happy.
But more often, I want to do the types of things that you would want to read about in a short story by someone you assume to be cooler than you are. I want to do the types of things that I wouldn't want my parents finding out about. I want to do whatever precious few dangerous things are left now that I don't have a house to sneak out of, now that I have no one to keep any secrets from. Those are the types of things I wish I were doing when I sit around wasting all of my fucking time. That is the life I want to lead and that is the life that I mourn the passing of, now that I've taken on the role of father.
And now even this embarrasses me, because real fuck ups, real geniuses, don't justify what they do. Tragedy and heartbreak flow from them as naturally as great poems, effortlessly, for no one else but themselves. They aren't excited by their mistakes and they certainly don't talk about them. They just live, and thats a problem, and thats all there is to it. When I blurted that out to an unenthused audience, I was exposed. Please think I'm dangerous, please think I'm smart. But the truth was all there to see as soon as I uttered those words. My mediocrity at being a real fuck up is proportional to the limits of my intelect, creativity, productivity. A silly show with no substance, a transparent charade not just for something like sympathy, but one that seeks to inspire a kind of reverence for stupidity. The words that I feared on their faces wasn't "Why on Earth would you do a thing like that?" but "Why on Earth are you telling us this? We aren't impressed. Now, we've got some schoolwork to attend to."