My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Tattoo by Colt, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo, my seventy-eighth, is from an Elliott Smith song, Pitseleh, off of one of my favorite records, XO. It’s a wrap-around tattoo that’s pretty much impossible to photograph. I’m pretty much out of flat open spaces, so my leg had to do.

It reads:

“They say that God makes problems just to see what you can stand before you do as the Devil pleases… Give up the thing you love.

No one deserves it.”

To me, the lyrics are saying, it seems like God pushes, and pushes, and pushes, until you break and make decisions that make life even worse.

The last few years have felt like this, but I don’t literally believe it’s God’s fault that absolutely everything in my life has gone to Hell. 1xbet شرح موقع Really, sometimes bad things happen for no reason, and sometimes when life turns sideways, we break, we make bad decisions, and our own stupid decisions wreck our desires. It’s not my fault the state of Florida destroyed my independence, nor is it my fault I had to move and leave the room I spent nine years crafting, but it is my fault I lost the woman I love. العاب على النت Bad things happen, we have a vast capacity to make everything worse. God doesn’t go around sticking it to people. Still, I think that that’s something people of faith worry about, especially we with Catholic backgrounds, though not practicing. We wonder, My life is shit. Does God just hate me? I’ve had the thought often enough, when it seems like life goes the opposite of all my prayers. Tivoli once wrote me, after I died but didn’t, and I was scared of losing Sara, “I still don’t believe God hates you, but I’m beginning to think He likes fuckin’ with you.” God hating me has always been just one of my host of worries, but not a belief (usually). طريقة المراهنات في كرة القدم

So, why the tattoo?

Because I think the words are beautiful and I like having them with me. Because if I manage to dig out of the hole I’m in, the words will remind  me of how deep the hole was, how far I had to dig to find someplace beautiful again.

If I post nothing of substance tomorrow, I’m quitting the blog.

Tonight was supposed to be so good, and turned out so astonishingly bad.

So, I know I guaranteed a real post, but the day wouldn’t allow it.

Today was very long, and very dull.

Tomorrow I guarantee better writing.

There are lots of stories in which celebrities are… unkind. Robin Williams wasn’t that sort of celebrity. I met him once, outside of the Late Show, it was only a few seconds. We were both going into the side-entrance, both of us guests in very different ways. He was very kind, but very quiet, the opposite of his on-stage persona. He said it was great to meet me, gave me a European kiss on the cheek, and was off to do the show.

I remember his eyes most, there was fierce intelligence, deep warmth, and just a shadow of sadness. I could see that hint of sadness.

I’m sorry he’s gone.

Me!

Today was a fucking waste.

So, I recently started cross-posting to my little used Google+ page. I don’t know how I feel about Google+, the pages look really haphazard to me. Still, I want to try using it more than never. I want to use it at least as much as Facebook, which is almost never.

Also, I re-ordered my sidebar, but I’m not sure if I made it better or worse…

So, I woke up at 4:30 am totally scared. I don’t remember dreaming anything bad, I just woke up feeling like something bad was happening, or was ready to happen. After that, I couldn’t sleep again. I didn’t want to sleep again. I always immediately go to wake up my display (I never sleep my computer, just the display. I run the thing like a fucking server.), the day-bright LED is reassuring. The past few months I wake up and just read for at least three hours, sometimes longer. It’s calming to go wherever some book wants me to go, even a post-apocalyptic vampire world.

The idea of apocalypse is actually soothing to me. At the end of everything, tedious stress is out the window; schedules, money, Goddamn politics. All that matters is the stuff that really matters, being alive, being close to at least one person you love. Perhaps I’m taking a romantic view, but I honestly think that’s how it’ll generally go when the zombies come. There’ll be brutality, it’s not like sociopaths will snap out of it and become armed guards for nuns, but good people will remain good people, and will remain trying to find goodness in whatever nightmare is happening. This isn’t a just from fiction, the emotional connection we feel to scenes in fiction happens because those scenes are based in reality.

A writer doesn’t sit down and just make shit up, not everything, not the visceral emotions being evoked by their fiction. The words are different, but the ideas within the fiction that make us feel joy, fear, sorrow, love, are as old as language. There’s nothing new under the sun, fiction comes from things that actually happen. I once kissed Sara in a park, under a gazebo, just as a torrential, Tsunami-esque downpour started slamming onto the wood above. We’re making out, as mist and sideways rain is cast into our pocket-universe. It sounds like the fucking Notebook, or any John Cusack 80s movie, but it was real. Tom Hanks died for others in Saving Private Ryan, fiction, sure, but every single Hell-on-Earth war has countless documented acts of selflessness. There’s a reason “life imitates art” isn’t the way that phrase goes, it’s not true. Art imitates life, in some way, always.

No, I don’t think my post-apocalype is saccharine at all. I think that when the zombies come, the most valuable resource will be time, and people will stop wasting it on shit that doesn’t matter. At the end of everything, I love you will be one of the easiest, least terrifying things to say to another person, kind of the opposite of now. We blow through so much time just being afraid to say those three words, let alone a thousand other things.

The way we waste time scares me. I feel time, I feel the clicking wheels wearing me, everyone, everything away. I know it’s happening, I know that no matter what, we all run out of time, and a thing that scares me is that too often I feel pretty much alone in how I feel the wearing away of all. There’s always tomorrow to do something I’d rather do now. I want to go, and see, and experience, because I know that time isn’t some wallet full of unlimited cash. Still, even knowing, I’ve forgotten, and THAT really scares me. 

Thinking that tomorrow is a guarantee is a trap, there’s such a cost to pay for that kind of thinking. I’ve paid it, I fucked up. I lost someone I love, and she’s never coming back. I just assumed her clock was wound way better than mine. She was so vivid, I felt like she’d be around as long as the sun. A stupid accident, and she wore away in a blink. I didn’t get to tay good-bye, didn’t get to say plainly how much she meant to me. I took time for granted, it was so unnecessary. t never want to pay that cost again, it’s something I regret every single day. I don’t understand how anybody could pay that cost, then pay it again, and again, and again, but it happens. That also scares me.

Lately, I’m scared a lot, I feel time pressing harder, moving faster.

Anyway, enough of me for now.