Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Words
Caught a few minutes of Sling Blade yesterday.
Heard some dialogue that moved me.
Frank the kid talking to Karl about Frank's dad:
"He shot hisself with a shotgun on purpose....................'Cause he didn't have enough money to take care of us the way he wanted to. That's what the letter said. He got laid off from work and had to just work odd jobs. I thought he took care of us fine."
Does anybody have a fucking clue what reality really is?
Heard some dialogue that moved me.
Frank the kid talking to Karl about Frank's dad:
"He shot hisself with a shotgun on purpose....................'Cause he didn't have enough money to take care of us the way he wanted to. That's what the letter said. He got laid off from work and had to just work odd jobs. I thought he took care of us fine."
Does anybody have a fucking clue what reality really is?
A Minor Incident
Fucking January 3rd. Another day just like any other goddamn day.
January 3rd is August 18th is September 29th is March 21st. What the fuck difference does it make? Driving himself to his shit-ass job just like any other day, driving himself home from his shit-ass job just like any other day.
All the mindless idiots throwing happy new years at him. What is so happy about it? Fucking people fooling themselves that they got a fresh start, a new perspective. Pretending. Most of them spit out the words without thinking. Because that's what you are supposed to do. Even though their lives still suck. Even though they will always suck.
It is all one long continuum of complete fucking bullshit.
He knew better than to get his hopes up. He had been around too long. Besides his hopes were buried so deep it would take a fifty ton crane to drag them back up.
And what about these assholes with the Christmas lights still on their houses? On January 3rd? They are not kidding anyone. The holidays are dead, leaving a bad taste in the mouth. It's usually the tacky ones, the people with cheesy multi-colored lights sagging along the side of their crumbling houses.
Probably still too drunk to get out and take them down. Maybe too stupid to even know the holidays were over.
Yeah there was no such thing as a happy new year. All there ever was was more of the same. More sacrifice, more loss of dignity, more struggling, more disease, and eventually more death.
This is what Rick was thinking as he ran over Janice Bulba's dog. He was taking a sip off the Knob Creek nip a hundred proof and delicious; when his eyesight came back down he saw the dog in the middle of the road.
Sam. The dog's name was Sam. He was 18 years old and he was all Janice Bulba had left.
Janice lived two doors and half a mile down the road. Rick spent time with her once in a while; they drank together and laughed about people who manufactured positive attitudes. Her husband committed suicide eight years ago because he could not face one more meaningless new year. He was worn and torn, beaten and down and lost.
So he checked out.
Since then Sam was all Janice had left and she latched on to him with an iron grip. She loved that dog; worshiped him. Hugs and kisses all around.
She had nothing else. No money. A fucking relentless mortgage payment that sucked her dry. Two part time jobs. A thin winter coat, and a broken down truck. Broken and buried dreams and a solid understanding of the cruel irony of life.
Rick should have cared for her but he didn't. Rick didn't care about anybody. Because life had fucked him bad. Caring was soft and soft did not survive.
He never even slowed down. Pulled into his driveway two minutes later, shut down the truck and sat for a minute.
Slowly, a warm feeling spread throughout his mind and his body.
Janice would suffer. For a little while anyway. Even more than Rick was suffering.
Turned out to be a happy new year after all.
January 3rd is August 18th is September 29th is March 21st. What the fuck difference does it make? Driving himself to his shit-ass job just like any other day, driving himself home from his shit-ass job just like any other day.
All the mindless idiots throwing happy new years at him. What is so happy about it? Fucking people fooling themselves that they got a fresh start, a new perspective. Pretending. Most of them spit out the words without thinking. Because that's what you are supposed to do. Even though their lives still suck. Even though they will always suck.
It is all one long continuum of complete fucking bullshit.
He knew better than to get his hopes up. He had been around too long. Besides his hopes were buried so deep it would take a fifty ton crane to drag them back up.
And what about these assholes with the Christmas lights still on their houses? On January 3rd? They are not kidding anyone. The holidays are dead, leaving a bad taste in the mouth. It's usually the tacky ones, the people with cheesy multi-colored lights sagging along the side of their crumbling houses.
Probably still too drunk to get out and take them down. Maybe too stupid to even know the holidays were over.
Yeah there was no such thing as a happy new year. All there ever was was more of the same. More sacrifice, more loss of dignity, more struggling, more disease, and eventually more death.
This is what Rick was thinking as he ran over Janice Bulba's dog. He was taking a sip off the Knob Creek nip a hundred proof and delicious; when his eyesight came back down he saw the dog in the middle of the road.
Sam. The dog's name was Sam. He was 18 years old and he was all Janice Bulba had left.
Janice lived two doors and half a mile down the road. Rick spent time with her once in a while; they drank together and laughed about people who manufactured positive attitudes. Her husband committed suicide eight years ago because he could not face one more meaningless new year. He was worn and torn, beaten and down and lost.
So he checked out.
Since then Sam was all Janice had left and she latched on to him with an iron grip. She loved that dog; worshiped him. Hugs and kisses all around.
She had nothing else. No money. A fucking relentless mortgage payment that sucked her dry. Two part time jobs. A thin winter coat, and a broken down truck. Broken and buried dreams and a solid understanding of the cruel irony of life.
Rick should have cared for her but he didn't. Rick didn't care about anybody. Because life had fucked him bad. Caring was soft and soft did not survive.
He never even slowed down. Pulled into his driveway two minutes later, shut down the truck and sat for a minute.
Slowly, a warm feeling spread throughout his mind and his body.
Janice would suffer. For a little while anyway. Even more than Rick was suffering.
Turned out to be a happy new year after all.
Monday, January 2, 2017
Bobby Tried
Bobby had struggled with drink for all of his adult life.
Never considered himself an alcoholic; he just did what he had to do to get by.
Only a moron gets up every day in anguish and comes home in anguish and does nothing about it.
Bobby did something about it. He drank. Brown fluids, baby, the sweet blissful escape of whiskey.
He crawled home from work and went right to the bottle and began working on that. Two or three swallows beat the pain back and made it manageable. Joyful sipping over the course of the rest of the night destroyed the pain miraculously.
Bobby like the way life looked through the prism of whiskey. He enjoyed sitting in his chair feeling like an outlaw drinking his whiskey in extraordinary amounts. Knowing the responsible people out there would frown at what he was doing.
He also knew those responsible people were the scum of the earth; vicious assholes feeding on hypocritical feelings of superiority. Kissing each other's asses, stabbing each other in the back, stepping out to high end bars where they themselves drank to excess.
Responsibly.
But lately things had changed. Bobby realized he was making more frequent trips to the liquor store, buying cheaper whiskey and getting less benefit and more pain from his beloved ritual.
He hated his fucking life but did not want to die. Bobby decided upon an experiment.
The holidays were here and Bobby never liked to do anything the easy way. He decided to stay sober from Thanksgiving through the new year. Six weeks of sobriety. Maybe somebody could make a movie out of it; that would be a great fucking title.
It was painful at first, took one hell of a lot of determination. But he stuck it out and it got easier.
Bobby woke up on New Years Day in amazement with no hangover.
He had done it. He had pulled it off.
Of course willpower of that magnitude deserved to be rewarded. Bobby decided to get himself a little whiskey. Drove to the liquor store and got himself a bottle of JTS Brown.
Cheap but soothing.
He pulled out of the parking lot and took a left, stopping at the red light at the four way intersection. The Allman Brothers were on the radio and Bobby was singing along at maximum volume to "Blue Sky". Feeling good about himself.
The light turned green, Bobby cruised forward and was T-boned on the drivers side by a car screaming through the red light.
A drunk driver.
Bobby's neck was snapped, his back was broken and he was fried in his car after it burst into flame.
The drunk driver was not seriously hurt.
Never considered himself an alcoholic; he just did what he had to do to get by.
Only a moron gets up every day in anguish and comes home in anguish and does nothing about it.
Bobby did something about it. He drank. Brown fluids, baby, the sweet blissful escape of whiskey.
He crawled home from work and went right to the bottle and began working on that. Two or three swallows beat the pain back and made it manageable. Joyful sipping over the course of the rest of the night destroyed the pain miraculously.
Bobby like the way life looked through the prism of whiskey. He enjoyed sitting in his chair feeling like an outlaw drinking his whiskey in extraordinary amounts. Knowing the responsible people out there would frown at what he was doing.
He also knew those responsible people were the scum of the earth; vicious assholes feeding on hypocritical feelings of superiority. Kissing each other's asses, stabbing each other in the back, stepping out to high end bars where they themselves drank to excess.
Responsibly.
But lately things had changed. Bobby realized he was making more frequent trips to the liquor store, buying cheaper whiskey and getting less benefit and more pain from his beloved ritual.
He hated his fucking life but did not want to die. Bobby decided upon an experiment.
The holidays were here and Bobby never liked to do anything the easy way. He decided to stay sober from Thanksgiving through the new year. Six weeks of sobriety. Maybe somebody could make a movie out of it; that would be a great fucking title.
It was painful at first, took one hell of a lot of determination. But he stuck it out and it got easier.
Bobby woke up on New Years Day in amazement with no hangover.
He had done it. He had pulled it off.
Of course willpower of that magnitude deserved to be rewarded. Bobby decided to get himself a little whiskey. Drove to the liquor store and got himself a bottle of JTS Brown.
Cheap but soothing.
He pulled out of the parking lot and took a left, stopping at the red light at the four way intersection. The Allman Brothers were on the radio and Bobby was singing along at maximum volume to "Blue Sky". Feeling good about himself.
The light turned green, Bobby cruised forward and was T-boned on the drivers side by a car screaming through the red light.
A drunk driver.
Bobby's neck was snapped, his back was broken and he was fried in his car after it burst into flame.
The drunk driver was not seriously hurt.
January 2, 2017
Ah, now this is a very different beast, isn't it?
You got a three legged stool of hope, happiness and illusion at this time of year.
Thanksgiving kicks it off, emotion kicks in and keeps on rolling right into Christmas. The whole month of December feels alive with possibility.
Christmas happens and then - boom - one goddamn week later it is New Years Eve/ New Years Day.
New Years Day represents a last gasp of illusion which, hopefully, you can enjoy if you're not too hungover or working some shit-ass job that robs you of holidays.
Then today rolls around. All illusion is stripped away and you come face to face with "reality", with your fucking resolutions and your hopes for a better tomorrow.
The holidays are dead and most won't see another one until Memorial Day.
That is one harsh fucking stretch of "reality".
When you wake up on 01/02 you know in your heart if you will really move forward in the new year, or if all your positive thoughts and words were just bullshit.
There may be a residue of hope there, of good intentions, but as day after day rolls by and nothing changes, inside you or outside you, resignation and dread settle in.
Your life will not change. You will not be a better person. You will not make enough money to live in dignity.
Your life's course is cast in stone and there will never be anything to look forward to. You become numb one to two weeks into the new year and there you shall remain.
So you have to initiate change immediately. If only to give you something positive to cling to, to give you a reason not to die inside for a little while.
Even that is hard. Most times you strike out in a new direction with something new and you become enthused. One month later, in the bitter cold and dark and depression of February, it has all slipped away.
January 2 is the first step. You gotta take that first step or slip back into the most vicious word in the English language - routine.
You gotta get up on January 2 and say fuck you, buddy, I got this - my life is racing by in meaninglessness and this is the year I dig in my heels.
You gotta puff out your chest and fight back.
And keep fighting back.
Tough day, today is. This "reality" things sucks; it grinds you down, makes you dead before you die and somehow keeps you getting up every morning filled with hate.
You have been filled with false happiness since Thanksgiving and it is really fucking hard to come back down. Hurts like hell.
I wish you luck.
I have failed over and over and over again to grab my life by the throat and make it mine. And now I am 63 years old and smelling the fresh earth being turned over to make room for my corpse.
Still, I am going to give it another shot. I haven't defined the rules of play for 2017. Don't know how the hell I am going to release my soul from captivity and get face to face with the life I should be living.
All I know today, January 2, 2017, is that I am feeling hopeful. Grimly determined.
That's all I got.
You got a three legged stool of hope, happiness and illusion at this time of year.
Thanksgiving kicks it off, emotion kicks in and keeps on rolling right into Christmas. The whole month of December feels alive with possibility.
Christmas happens and then - boom - one goddamn week later it is New Years Eve/ New Years Day.
New Years Day represents a last gasp of illusion which, hopefully, you can enjoy if you're not too hungover or working some shit-ass job that robs you of holidays.
Then today rolls around. All illusion is stripped away and you come face to face with "reality", with your fucking resolutions and your hopes for a better tomorrow.
The holidays are dead and most won't see another one until Memorial Day.
That is one harsh fucking stretch of "reality".
When you wake up on 01/02 you know in your heart if you will really move forward in the new year, or if all your positive thoughts and words were just bullshit.
There may be a residue of hope there, of good intentions, but as day after day rolls by and nothing changes, inside you or outside you, resignation and dread settle in.
Your life will not change. You will not be a better person. You will not make enough money to live in dignity.
Your life's course is cast in stone and there will never be anything to look forward to. You become numb one to two weeks into the new year and there you shall remain.
So you have to initiate change immediately. If only to give you something positive to cling to, to give you a reason not to die inside for a little while.
Even that is hard. Most times you strike out in a new direction with something new and you become enthused. One month later, in the bitter cold and dark and depression of February, it has all slipped away.
January 2 is the first step. You gotta take that first step or slip back into the most vicious word in the English language - routine.
You gotta get up on January 2 and say fuck you, buddy, I got this - my life is racing by in meaninglessness and this is the year I dig in my heels.
You gotta puff out your chest and fight back.
And keep fighting back.
Tough day, today is. This "reality" things sucks; it grinds you down, makes you dead before you die and somehow keeps you getting up every morning filled with hate.
You have been filled with false happiness since Thanksgiving and it is really fucking hard to come back down. Hurts like hell.
I wish you luck.
I have failed over and over and over again to grab my life by the throat and make it mine. And now I am 63 years old and smelling the fresh earth being turned over to make room for my corpse.
Still, I am going to give it another shot. I haven't defined the rules of play for 2017. Don't know how the hell I am going to release my soul from captivity and get face to face with the life I should be living.
All I know today, January 2, 2017, is that I am feeling hopeful. Grimly determined.
That's all I got.
Sunday, January 1, 2017
January 1, 2017
Well here we go.
New year for the world. New year for me.
My birthday. Again. 63 years old.
I tried to delay this day but was powerless to prevent it. Now it is here and it is in my face.
Feeling strangely ebullient today. Unusual. This day is usually well tempered with dread for me. But I got up with a smile today, inside and outside. I felt happy.
Strange holiday season. I fucked up on Thanksgiving, made it uncomfortable and I hated myself for being so fucking weak. And for putting that weakness on display in front of my family.
Especially my sons.
I vowed to myself that Christmas and New Years would be different.
And they have been. I crushed down emotion and experienced an internal feeling of reserve. It was odd but it felt right.
Christmas did not trip my emotional trigger, last night did not trip my emotional trigger, and, hopefully, today will not either.
I say that not in a bad way. I experienced these holidays in a calm way. Enjoying them quietly without becoming overpowered by emotion; I experienced them in accordance with my view of the world.
It was a foreign, unique, yet no less pleasurable way to go about it.
So here I am.
A man disappointed in himself with a whole new year stretched out ahead of him to do something about it.
Thinking about insanity. I got it in me, a lot deeper, a lot more intense than anybody really knows. Might have to unleash it.
Gotta lose weight. Such a cliche at this time of year but excess poundage is slowing me down. Taking it's toll.
Did it a few years ago but it took almost the entire year to reach my goal. Not interested in slow and steady this time. If I pull it off this year I will be using Christian Bale from "The Machinist" as my role model.
I am in a hurry. Regarding everything in every way.
Can't decide who I want to emulate. Vascillating between Jack Reacher and Tony Soprano.
Gonna resurrect some interests, stoke the fires of passion to bonfire proportions.
I want to feel. With intensity and focus and purpose. And for the sheer joyful result of feeling alive.
No more numbing myself down, no more dumbing myself down.
2017 will be an experiment. Another chance. Another shot.
Got a lot of thoughts and emotions swirling through my mind and my body as I approach 2017. Not sure where they will lead.
The only words I can use in my defense as the year unfolds are as follows:
"But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."
From "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" by The Animals
New year for the world. New year for me.
My birthday. Again. 63 years old.
I tried to delay this day but was powerless to prevent it. Now it is here and it is in my face.
Feeling strangely ebullient today. Unusual. This day is usually well tempered with dread for me. But I got up with a smile today, inside and outside. I felt happy.
Strange holiday season. I fucked up on Thanksgiving, made it uncomfortable and I hated myself for being so fucking weak. And for putting that weakness on display in front of my family.
Especially my sons.
I vowed to myself that Christmas and New Years would be different.
And they have been. I crushed down emotion and experienced an internal feeling of reserve. It was odd but it felt right.
Christmas did not trip my emotional trigger, last night did not trip my emotional trigger, and, hopefully, today will not either.
I say that not in a bad way. I experienced these holidays in a calm way. Enjoying them quietly without becoming overpowered by emotion; I experienced them in accordance with my view of the world.
It was a foreign, unique, yet no less pleasurable way to go about it.
So here I am.
A man disappointed in himself with a whole new year stretched out ahead of him to do something about it.
Thinking about insanity. I got it in me, a lot deeper, a lot more intense than anybody really knows. Might have to unleash it.
Gotta lose weight. Such a cliche at this time of year but excess poundage is slowing me down. Taking it's toll.
Did it a few years ago but it took almost the entire year to reach my goal. Not interested in slow and steady this time. If I pull it off this year I will be using Christian Bale from "The Machinist" as my role model.
I am in a hurry. Regarding everything in every way.
Can't decide who I want to emulate. Vascillating between Jack Reacher and Tony Soprano.
Gonna resurrect some interests, stoke the fires of passion to bonfire proportions.
I want to feel. With intensity and focus and purpose. And for the sheer joyful result of feeling alive.
No more numbing myself down, no more dumbing myself down.
2017 will be an experiment. Another chance. Another shot.
Got a lot of thoughts and emotions swirling through my mind and my body as I approach 2017. Not sure where they will lead.
The only words I can use in my defense as the year unfolds are as follows:
"But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."
From "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" by The Animals
January 1, 2017
"This year I will be more thoughtful of my fellow man, exert more effort in each of my endeavors professionally as well as personally. Take love wherever I find it, and offer it to everyone who will take it. In this coming year I will seek knowledge from those wiser than me and try to teach those who wish to learn from me. I love being alive and I will be the best man I possibly can."
Duane Allman's diary, January 1, 1969.
Duane Allman's diary, January 1, 1969.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)