05/06
A few things happened today. Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk passed away. We had a work meeting. Mo and I had dinner together for the last time this year, presumably, since she is flying back tomorrow afternoon.
I drank some coffee after 7 pm and had two cigarettes with Mo. Now I’m feeling a bit nauseous. Laughed at some Jammie Dodger videos because they were very heart-warming, but at the same time, I know it’s not really how I’m feeling. It’s only something put in the way in order to try to block the plumbing.
==
When I was in middle school, I made blog posts often. Sometimes almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I kind of miss that. In the past few years, I have tried to resume this habit, to no avail. I get self-conscious and wonder if I’m saying things I’m supposed to say, or if I really mean the words I say. If I’m saying something problematic. If I have checked my sources, made the right citations. If I’m leaving room for misinterpretation. If I am leaving weapons for anyone to use against me if they ever feel like doing so. I have been paranoid.
The third day has just passed in the second quarter-century of my life, and I think I want to stop looking over my shoulder. I think I want to stop thinking and start doing again.
===
The 700ml bottle of Black Label is almost empty now, with only a double shot remaining.
Tonight I feel a strong sense of the cruel passing of time. I feel this often, but this is sharper than usual. Perhaps because I am grabbing it harder this time. Since high school, a notion was instilled in my head somehow that time is like a rope made of hemp, with little barbs on it. The tighter you grab onto it, the more it hurts. But if you let go, it slides through your palms.
Or perhaps it is we who are falling down into the unknown.
In the face of grand problems, the strategy I adopt has often been paralysis. Blend in with your environment, become an inanimate object; vanish from your enemy’s field of perception. Stay active, but also just irrelevant enough to not become a target. Somehow I have grown to love such paralysis, too. Sink slowly into the ocean like a big chunk of granite, stare at the fish as they smell you and turn away, marvel at how beautiful they are, but silently. In silence, entire worlds exist, with volcanos, forests, the bottom of the ocean, bathrooms inside bars, or gut microbiota.
With such silence, I can sink indefinitely into a bottomless ocean without a problem. I think I’d be happy there, sometimes.
Sometimes I wonder if there are other things I’m meant to do in this world.
===
What do I want out of it? Sometimes this question makes me feel so ashamed I want to hit reset. Some other versions of me may begin from the top; the page is only quarter-filled, it’s not too late to scrap it and write the whole thing again. There is time before the deadline. Now, many little things are wrong; start again, everything can be right.
There are two hangups that I have, nonetheless. First, I do not trust anyone else to do a better job. Secondly, it’d make me feel like a coward to quit.
I wouldn’t define toxic masculinity but sometimes, in weird ways, it does save lives.
Not that it doesn’t also take.
===
There are a lot of things that I want to say, although I know I will never be able to say them all.
===
I’ll just say one thing that came to mind and then I’ll go to bed.
On my birthday this year, I did not blow the candles on the cake. I waited until they went off on their own. There were many; all of the numbers that were of the colors of my liking. It was a sweet coincidence. There were 2g and 5y in the middle, 6g and 9b at the back, 8y at the left, and 3b at the right. They made me feel safe. Lighting them was not easy due to the particular lighter I had to work with, and I almost burnt my thumb.
The Ape of Naples was playing in the background and I stared at the candles as well as the strawberry pieces through the camera on my phone. It was like wearing double glasses. Or triple, if you count the brain as one.
It didn’t take very long at all for them to burn out. The Last Amethyst Deceiver was playing during most of this; I was listening, and I got kind of sad. I had been at dinner with my parents that evening. During the whole time, I barely said anything, despite their effort of starting conversations. I think the only time I said something instead of just looking profoundly depressed and constantly checking my phone was to tell my dad that the “vegan Kung Pao Chicken” was made with Lion’s Mane, and that it was in the name of the dish.
At one point, after I failed to respond to something again and instead just stared at these leftover banana avocado pizza, which my father had suggested we stop eating since everyone was already full. My mother seemed worried. “Hey, if something happened, you can tell us! You have to!” She said. It made me want to vomit. “I think I’ll get these to go, they could be my lunch tomorrow,” I said.
Somehow this seemed to qualify as a relief.
They are both getting old, but we don’t really know each other. At least, they don’t really know me.
And I don’t know if I want them to. Other than money and resources, I can’t really find a reason why I’d. I think deep down I have developed a profound aversion to the Oedipus trap, where just because some people gave birth to you, they have to remain socially significant in your life. Surely it works for some people, perhaps even most people, but I don’t seem to need it, not specifically. I just don’t have anything else to replace it yet. If I say that I value my family, it’d mainly be because I like to be polite and avoid offending people. But that wouldn’t really be the truth. What would you like to hear?
It bugs me that there are many ways in which I am “different”, not because I don’t like the way I am or because I think it’s wrong. It just makes it harder to be gentle and polite sometimes. I’d like to be a knight, a hero, but sometimes I am just a regular guy who doesn’t like trouble.
Does that make me selfish?
Sometimes I feel like I’m pretty awful. Not that it’s a problem, since we all know, more people are.
It’s just a sense of loss that bothers me. Can you lose something you’ve never had? One can certainly feel this way, yeah.
===
I never made my mind up about what my wishes shall be. When 8y went out, the only light in the room was the Bahama Breeze. It made me think of Bahamas, and it made me think of myself back then, lying next to a dock where the rich people go, looking at Leo, exhilarated by the idea that all these possibilities are within reach.
That was three years ago, and now I feel like a different person. Ok, maybe that’s a lie. At least I seem like a different person. But do I really feel that different? I don’t know. Maybe not.
I don’t feel young anymore, though. That’s the truth. And I don’t feel like I have a lot of advantages, not like I used to.
This is something I struggled with for a long time and perhaps will continue to struggle with, perhaps for a little while.
But that’s ok.
===
I’ve failed too many times to keep trying without reflections.
It’s possible to sink without moving, just like it’s possible to look without seeing. But now it’s time to see, to really see. Isn’t it?
There will be answers in dreams and there will be questions in waking.
It’s time to let go; of the right things, that is.
Good night.
