write something else

write something else about what a maniac you are and what you think you see when you look at people
how their whole lives are scrawled across their faces
how they don't hide anything, nothing, no pain that hasn't crystallized into a wrinkle or a furrowed brow at the sight of a crying child

something like that
about the women who shop in your store with their children and their children's allergies
their reusable shopping bags
their neverending quests to eat themselves skinny

how you know which one of them is in love
which one of them has a shell around her skull blocking anything from going in or out
which one knew you were about to ask them if they were finding everything ok
who sucks
who shaves

who cares?

it's taken years of experience and more than a little self-convincing to think that this feminine rabble i rub elbows with are anything more than buckets of their husbands money or black holes of their own debt.

but those are the typicals
there are the exceptionals

the ones who smile at you first (1 in 1,000)
the ones who aren't married (1 in 10,000)
the ones who don't look like their hobbies include boring paint off walls (1 in 100,000)
the combination of all three of those things (you do the math)

why am i so hard on these women?
is it because they are so hard on me?
is it because any one of them can be the lady who stops me when i'm on my break and asks me to check for something in the back even though i told her i was sure we didn't have her plain flavored pub cheese? (i pawned her off on a new kid, but still she had the guts to ask)

sorry ladies.
it's all just a little too overwhelming sometimes
the breadth of your characters
i'm sure i'd feel the same way about men if i worked at home depot

i'd know who was gonna ask the girl if she needs help
i'd know who talks about my beard because he can't grow one
i'd know who's an asshole to girls and who gets romantically exploited
who sucks
who shaves

who cares?

truth does not exist

i've been thinking about conflict in the role of fiction. conflict as it's portrayed in fiction. conflict between characters, ideals, or the former embodied in the latter. whatever.

i think the primary role of fiction is to create what the mind cannot absorb naturally. fiction used to just be a smaller and more palatable rendering of reality. it created order and implied that life would surrender to the same rules of logic that theater does and for the most part it does. the lives of the characters are simultaneously sacred and worthless. the audience holds them sacred as the whole of the drama generally relates to their actions. to the writer the lives of the characters are worthless. they will die for the sake of the drama, they will succumb to the theme and should they disobey the unspoken rules they shall surely suffer.

and what better thing can a person be than the main character in his own drama? the comedy of youth, the drama of life, and the tragedy of death. but we're not characters in anyone's drama and as far as control goes we all might as well be sitting on the couch screaming at the tv.

but who's writing the drama of planet earth? the drama of america? and what type of movie is this anyway? i know who.

6.8 billion monkeys at typewriters. they're typing and typing and i still can't tell whether this chaos is elegant and brilliant or random and atrocious. i mean this is an all or nothing type situation right? it's either everything or it's nothing? it either all means something or none of it means anything, right? god's either watching or he isn't and we either get reincarnated or we don't. when it comes to different religious staking claims on the unknowable i still think about it like somebody's right and somebody's wrong. i've been boiling down to the absolutes and i think i have a couple i'm willing to stick with

1-if you can't know then you don't know

if you don't know but you act like you do you're a christian
if you think you know but you act like you don't you're a buddhist

then there's the atheists. can they really do anything but tell other people they're wrong?

then there's the agnostics. wouldn't they just love to be the prophet ridiculed in the first act who turns out right in the end?

so where do i sign up? and why do i have to?

every now and then i have a quick little crisis of faith in humanity and think OH MY FUCKING GOD PEOPLE REALLY LIVE THIS WAY. i do it when i hear about girls getting their genitals mutilated and when i see people go to church all the same.

people still think their particular brand of knowing the unknowable holds court. well, not only holds court, but has a moral authority over the other.

buddhists have it right and this makes me think i understand buddhism more than people who study it. (ed. note: CC if you're reading this i don't mean you i mean the yuppies who start yoga and eastern thought to burn the bad karma they've accumulated in the imaginary race to the top of the pyramid) anyways, all roads of thought that want the closest thing to truth anyone will ever be able to observe lead to the idea that truth does not exist.

that's the one noble truth of roman: truth does not exist.

but it's nice to pretend it does.