#398

And now, a letter to those who would like to know how I am and have no recourse. I suppose it also functions as a kind of castigation for those who would rather know nothing about me, but then, why would they read it?

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Been listening to a lot of soundtracks lately, yo. And depressed as FUCK. You know me! Life of the (depressed) party. 

You want to know where the fuck I am, how to get in touch with me? I mean, I been around. You don't wanna know about the soundtracks, huh. You wanna know why I'm not on farcebark or insta or anything through which you can appraise and consume a facsimile of me.

Dude, forget about it. I don't wanna get into that, but you just have to understand that this blog is the only thing I interface with that allows for the kinds of updates on my life and activities that I consider relevant and timely. The social media websites are just like, working down a fucking mineshaft. For what? That shit is haunted. That shit is terrifying, what these websites have done to us.

Yeah, it sucks that it basically means I'm socially dead. But do you know how high-effort being socially alive is for me? I feel I have never adequately communicated the cost of just showing up at a time and place and being perceived there. What an imposition.

Another part of it: you remember how bad I don't care about or hate commercials. Well, I give even less of a fuck about commercials now, except when exposed to them, wherefore my anger spews from some part of me that is more molten and pressurized than ever. And these fucking companies have polluted internet with ads to such a degree that I can't even look at it for more than fifteen or so minutes most days. I see how some people have brought back such as like text only browsers through which to view internet. I should get in on some kind of that action. Will I? I'm too much least-resistance with computers in that way, man. Gotta pick my battles. But I may. 

Now that we've established what kind of a deadbeat I am, it feels a little daunting to go on, like, who the fuck cares what else is up? But I'll hazard it.

I have continued to read books and play video games and watch movies with what some would call bloody-mindedness, in that I have reliably cared more about these things than anything else that needs doing, like making decent money or a positive difference in this world. Well, I have also tried to do that in my own humble ways, here and there, whenever possible, sometimes at cost to myself and sometimes to the benefit of all. Money has reliably eluded me, and I have spent tragic and laughable quantities of what I did come into on drugs and cigarettes and much else one cannot take into the grave. Despite this I have also kept fit, by and large, and my reflexes are still honed. I wear the same pants you remember me in,  the same shirts. My hair is still thick, but my forehead has grown considerably, as they say. 

Yes, hilarious, my head was already so big. It's true. My forehead looks like half a basketball. So it goes. Whatever dude, I like how I look. Less likely to be confused for someone who just fell off an apple wagon. I was damn tired of looking like a kid. Still looking forward to becoming truly gnarled and fully bald.

Learned to play bass, got pretty decent at doing my own thing. I know I never had much sex back when--despite what you may have heard! I have heard some truly ludicrous stories about myself--but I made up for it in my twenties. Looking back at it all it feels a lot like a feverish dream. Guess I still have plenty of sex, but nothing like what used to take up my time and attention on a basic day. Never had a threesome, but I have had sex with two different people on the same day and three different people in the same week; separate weeks. Been a cook, a delivery driver, done retail, school bus driver, roadied, odd jobs and strange deeds here and there. Tripped a bunch of acid, shrooms. Never been a cocaine or opiates guy; nothing all-consuming or weapons-grade, you know. 

It is perhaps weird and alarming that despite how much weed I've smoked in my lifetime--a weird and alarming amount, in my opinion--there are many in this world in whose presence I am but a neophyte. Nevertheless, I have smoked a bunch of weed. Being sober is also weird and alarming, but it is cheaper. Got so bad and crazy on liquor and beer I was lucky to survive, and relapsed twice. Five years now without a sip. That kind of puts my tendency to keep smoking cigarettes in some perspective, but not much.

Still like to play chess. Try to make a habit out of keeping my game about me. I have tried to stay thinking about everything we've talked about; have tried to hold on to it all because I am certain it is important to the whole. I am as occupied as ever with interpreting an approximation of the whole which exceeds established parameters. My one unseemly, hubristic ambition, yes, which reveals so much about me that is ridiculously aggrandized in actuality as well as prone to delusions derived from said grandeur.

As you can see, I still thirstily seek a turn of phrase where I can get it.

That reminds me; I still hate being thought of as a fool. Can't seem to outgrow this and the shame it brings me, but at least I do not act like less of a fool out of fear of the thing.

Extant chances that you might read this are infinitesimal, and that is on me. I have made decisions that, well, are typical of me. Never found the trick of compromising how I think and feel based on how easy it would make dealing with the world. So you won't find me by the name you know me, and my books are obscure and and self-published and contrary to both the algorithm that might sell them and the values I espouse. They are simply emblematic of my wish to make something concrete out of my writing without having to change a word of it or make any big promises or garner anything resembling an accolade or anything that might warp the affect of what I hope is like the kind of thing I personally love to find in unlikely places and hoard like the most precious of gems--my work, which if nothing else has no one to blame but me.

If you happen to recognize this and think of me, me as you knew me, then I have no doubt thought of you often, though we may be long, long out of touch. I am as forgetful of practical, dull details necessary for a well-ordered life as ever and perhaps moreso, but my memory for things people say and how they looked and felt to me as they said them is as powerful and gripping as it ever was. Yes, I remember you. I think well of you, and hope well of your life, and pray that one day we might meet again and share some time.

Got married; more like, live ethically non-monogamous with my platonic life partner--but legally, married. Got two cats. There's duct tape applied to my hatchback so that the frame doesn't leak rainwater into the cabin. Lately I have begun to philosophically embrace anarchy in more ways than simply advocating for relationship anarchy or related approaches. Thinking about Tolstoy's later life. Thinking about Jesus in new ways. It's being out of work and able to witness the end of western civ as we understand it in such granular ways, I guess, that's got me on this tip. Guess I'm still something of an apologist for the west, despite my scathing critiques. I am as sentimental, perhaps as naive, as ever. I have tried to get stronger and tougher, but I have resisted hardening my heart or closing my mind. If that makes me an idiot, then an idiot I shall be.

Yeah man, soundtracks. Fuckin good shit out there.

Jazz, too.

Still listening to the Mountain Goats. 

There's so much more to tell you, and yet, haven't I blathered on about nothing? It's just life, man. It keeps on happening. In some ways, we can catch each other up, and in others, we couldn't even tell anybody the whole truth about even so much as a single day. 

Ha! Yes, I am still capable--perhaps more than ever--of bringing up such a useless, even pointless fact. 

--JL