Tonight I decided to go out and enjoy myself. I went out with some friends and had some drinks. Some good drinks. I drank my drinks and decided to play some pool. We left our table and focused on our game.
I left my bag at our table up until a couple of guys decided to sit at our table. I moved my bag from the seat and told them, hey, go ahead and sit - we're just playing pool.
I've been away from New York too long. I've forgotten that people are LCD - lowest common denominator. Yes, my bag was ransacked while I played pool. I lost a few hundred dollars worth of stuff. A big deal? Not in physical items, no.
What I lost tonight was faith. I was mugged by reality - again. I was foolish for thinking I could leave my belongings without suspecting my fellow man. Stupid me.
Now I want to call on my friends. I want comfort, someone to more or less cry with. Nope. Not going to happen. They're all in their own thing. I am screaming and punching things and throwing things. I am filled with rage and there is nothing to level it. Nothing to balance it. Nothing to bring my primal to something even.
It's this time that I think of when people say, "I'll be there for you." I know what they mean. I know what they intend. I know what they're trying to express.
I'm here for you like I wish anyone would be here for me. I don't want to be alone - so I won't leave you alone. I understand how those moments of utter emptiness feel. I know the sound of the void and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Yeah, but I know just as well as you. I know that when you're sitting around with beer and music with your friends, the last thing you want is to be reminded of that abyss. I know there is nothing less attractive than the depths of terror. Who in their right mind would want to tap into that - even in a moment of selflessness?
Such is my existance. I look at my cell phone and know in a horrifying assault that I'm alone for this. I'm going to have to put my big girl pants on and just suck it up.
At what cost? At what price? No need to consider it - it's cost is automatic.
I hate you. I hate all of you. I wish I didn't and I wish I couldn't, but I do. I hate you all with exactly as much vigor as I hate myself. It'll come back at me - and we'll share it.
When one party in a relationship says "we need to "T" talk", said talk must take place within 24 hours. If it does not, the potential damage from the Talk is geometrically increased, per day, as each party fills with suspicion and dread about its content and outcome.
Lack of attention to scheduling and/or attending the important meeting can be percieved as carelessness or even abandonment, with corresponding equal, yet dissimilar, penalties for each party involved.
A similar situation can found in steeping tea, where at a certain point a critical threshold is crossed and the focus of importance shifts from the degree of its concentration to the method of its disposal.
In either case, a terrible waste. I'm currently learning this for the second time. I do not think there will be a third, as this rule busies itself burrowing into my fundamental canon. Painfully.
Wow. Sundays are normally my best day. Somehow this Sunday decided to lay into me pretty hard. I guess my self-pity party of yesterday set the stage for today's excitement.
"The game didn't change, it just got more fierce."
- The Wire
Halfway through "Mercury Rising", a terrible Bruce Willis movie, I realize that I'm alone. It's not something surprising or unfamiliar, since I seem realize it every few hours. I run through the list of women in my life and it dawns on me that I have in various ways lost, ignored, rejected (or been rejected by) just about all of them.
One hurt my feelings so badly that I had to slide the bank vault protections into place. It's hard to hear anything through those, and I suppose that's the point. Another got tired of my shit and moved on; so what else is new? Another I recently tried to get closer to, but ultimately she had to point out that I was alone in that endeavor. I'm glad I got the picture, but I would have liked it more to have seen it before her. Still others taunt me from my cellphone directory.
It's probably time to reassess the situation. I probably should analyze the part I had to play. What this situation calls for is fresh thinking, and decisive action.
Yeah, I'll get right on that.
I've been saying for the past few months now that the real enemy we face is radicalism.
Before one gets all jumpy about "those radicals" you know of, it's important to define at least generally what the spectrum of beliefs is composed of so you first have some idea of how to gauge where you stand in relation to the others. This scale definitely exists, it's just not being used. To some, I am a raging right-winger. To my raging-right winger friends I am a friendly liberal who will soon learn the error of my ways. It is a matter of perspective, but not infinitely so.
Each of us have positions and we fight for them based on real-life realities and issues. The implementation of abortion, education, foreign policy, gun control, hate crimes, and other mechanics of society are all axis around which our perspectives spin.
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About three weeks to go before I hit one of those useless ages. It's not the harsh slap of thirty, nor the warning bell of thirty-five, but rather some limp-wristed inbetween. To mark an event so underwhelming seems like an exercise in vanity, but since in many ways that is a hallmark of my entire lifestyle I suppose I'll go ahead anyway.
I'm going to have a party. Yes, a nice, big party. Well, big for me at least. As usual, my birthday falls on one of the more annoying days of the week - hump day, or as those fool schools taught me, Wednesday. Second in frustrating date spellings only to February, my party simply cannot take place on that day. So, it will be November 6th, the following Saturday.
Saturday's are far better in any case, because it allows guests a day or more of extra time to think of excuses for why they didn't show up. A small perk, but I value good excuses; it's the thought that counts. I'm not certain at the moment what the theme will be, or where I'll be holding this Grand Prix of drunken vomiting, but rest assured if you're reading this you're probably invited.
I never liked Christopher Reeve as Superman. I always felt he was too much pretty-boy and not enough Man of Steel. But Reeve as an actor always had me. Deathtrap, Somewhere in Time, and Noises Off come to mind. He made me cry in Somewhere in Time, and although I was pretty young at the time, that is no mean feat. His movie career, overshadowed by his role as the man from Krypton, may not have been illustrious, but it certainly was honest and talented.
Like most people, I was really struck by his actions post-accident. It took real character, real internal strength and integrity, to fall from the heights he had enjoyed into the depths of a terrible, crippling injury and choose to come back at it swingin'. It is true that his body could not get back up, but it is far more true that his body was the only thing that couldn't. He inspired millions in his movies, and millions more in his life, to aspire to greatness and overcome the impossible.
To me, he may not have been Superman in the movies, but he certainly proved to be Superman in real life. Rest in Peace, Mr. Reeve.
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We're just passing day six of no cigarettes or coffee. I think tommorow is the last day for me. The very moment I get this massive writing project knocked out, I'll be settling into my couch for some very serious scotch and soda movie-watching. I wish I had company.
I was eager during the first Presidential debate to see what Kerry might propose as his plan for Iraq. I was disappointed to only get the stump speech bullet-points. I've read his plan from his website, and I confess to being confused. I've said it before, it seems like his plan is more or less the same as Bush's plan, except for the forming of a real 'international coalition' to help bear the load. I'm curious about two things. One, who is he talking about? Which countries will comprise the new coalition? France and Germany?
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For the gay-marriage supporters, Kerry's position:
"I think you have to draw that line, so the answer is yes, they reached beyond that line, and in my judgment they're trying to exploit certain issues," he said. "The president and I have the same position, fundamentally, on gay marriage. We do. Same position. But they're out there misleading people and exploiting it."
The NY Times is a register site, so I set up an account for you lazy folks: for username type "openmatt" and for password (you guessed it) type "password".
It's late Sunday night. I've always been partial to Sunday nights. Most people have a semi-dread of them, the anticipation of the following Monday morning being something of a buzzkill. Not me, I've always liked the quiet, the sense that I've closed out another week, and the truly bizarre TV programs they show after midnight on Sundays.
Programming for these hours must be like cleaning the sewers or changing billboards. It's done, and it's important, sure, but no one ever sees it. Someone once described integrity as who you are when nobody is watching, and maybe in some sense that makes these little hours the most honest of the week.
The events of the week were the usual assortment you'd find in Matt's life. I worked hard and was hardly working. I fell in love and got dumped. My bank account filled up and emptied down. Easy came and easy gone. I met strangers and they found me strange, and I hung out with friends who found friends strange. I felt great on Friday, I'm sick now.
2 AM hasn't happened just yet. I have about ten minutes and all I want is a cigarette. I'm not smoking. Whatever I have, it's respiratory. It feels like a little cold, except for when it feels like I have tiny worms wiggling in my lungs. Then it feels like I'm fucked. Thinking about that is in my "very important" box that I keep precariously perched on the edge of my memory.
By tommorow it won't be there anymore.