I need to get my bearings. I feel that for such a long time I’ve been lost, and afraid. I don’t know if talking about my life and my various insignifigancies (forms of insignificance) is the wisest thing to do. This might be edging into paranoia but after I published my article on my commute last week my work stopped. I don’t know why, and it’s pretty doubtful my article on the sounds of the highway had anything to do with it. Unless the Suncor cabal pulled a few strings and pushed a few levers of their no doubt significant power centers to ax my position as punishment.
My paranoia doesn’t actually show up like that, grand conspiracies and such. Though I do dabble. It more shows up in ways like thinking the car outside of my house is surveilling me, even though I know it’s a nurse for my neighbor. Or when my backyard neighbor starts playing a tuba, their motivation is to mock my failures as a tuba player, not that they are having a party, or are testing it before they sell it on the black market.
Speaking of surveillance, I have always wanted to do an FOIA request on myself. I have to admit that I would be a bit disappointed if I didn’t have a file. I have been to the Occupy protests, and I went to the Standing Rock protests with a pack of vegans. One of which has protested at (made a ruckus and got carted off) both Dali Lama and Kamala Harris events. So maybe my associations have gotten me that coveted file, but I’m thinkin’ I’m still just a blip.
Why would I let a general public know about this stuff? In the interest of connecting with someone? Would you feel less alone if I explained some deep secret of mine that you wouldn’t otherwise share?
I am interested in the confessional poets. And though it does suck that if I align myself with them, I am confessing to being selfish. Generally, I guess. But I do find a lot of value in autobiography and memoir. Each person’s microcosm of life can provide some insight into our shared condition. I think accounts like this can help people in ways that we are not really aware of. You put something out into the world, and I have faith that it will reach the right person at the right time.
I am being selfish for you is what I’m saying.
So Snodgrass and Sexton were influenced by their therapists. I have been too. In art and hopefully in life. I even had a few sessions with a therapist that wrote a memoir. One that closely mirrors my own experience, and while reading it I distinctly remember thinking that I should do this too.
Thing is I haven’t read any of the confessional poets! Lol. I just like the idea of the genre. I will read them eventually, they will be number 150 on my books to read I guess.
I have read many memoirs though. Many being about five. I bought Stop-time because David Foster Wallace (DFW) cites it as a major influence, but I never read it.
I love that Hunter S. Thompson practically created his own genre with gonzo journalism. And DFW has written some of my favorite articles going into the intricacies of a cruise ship vacation, or tennis, or the Illinois State Fair. I also love the way that DFW talks about addiction throughout Infinite Jest. As some guy on twitter said “The chapter with the guy craving weed and trying to talk himself out of it was one of the best treatments of an addict’s internal monologue I’ve ever read.” One of the characters is a person who is going through AA, and DFW explores the truisms and platitudes of the program. I read that book as I was going through something similar, and I think it truly helped me “get to the other side.”
I want to face my hopelessness. I get a weird sense that it has been a while without a day where I haven’t read “even with a complete stop.” In reference to the amount of gas and water and other forms of energy extraction, and that it would still take decades to do even a minimal reversal of the damage we have done to the climate. It seems like we must demand the impossible, and we are only demanding baby steps. A complete stop would have its consequences too, not only on the complex structures of industry and commerce but on the environment itself.
I had an encounter in a bar with an acquaintance one night where they asked if I was still writing. Before I could answer they said, “It doesn’t matter.” I’ve never known how to interpret this. Whether they were talking specifically about me, or in a more grand sense. I could have a non-reaction either way, I could agree to both cases, or I could defend the importance of my writing and writing in general. It has been a koan for me for a few years now.
Seeing as I would like to write, or be seen as a “writer”, I should write, right? Just write! Doing fiction, or hard-edge journalism is hard work, and my proclivities tend towards the lazy side, so doddering rambles about my state of mind or the experiences I’ve had are more my style. I haven’t lived a life of consequence or import, so I’ll probably focus more on my psyche and the impotent rage I feel over the conditions of our existence. Or like DFW I will try to extract something marvelous from the mundane.
Books that have shaped my ambitions include “Staring at the sun, overcoming the terror of death” by Irvin D. Yalom. Reading this I came to the shocking conclusion that, yes, I will die. I also learned that it’s a good idea to meditate on this at least five times a day. It is a way to gradually move towards acceptance. I also learned that at least for me, death is a great motivator. Any project that I do is motivated at least in part by death. Making art is a way for me to cast a magic spell. I hope that whatever traces I leave behind can carry on my spirit. That the art I make can communicate and reach people from the other side.
“Maps to the Other Side, the adventures of a bipolar cartographer” by Sascha Altman DuBrul. In this book we follow Sascha from New York playing with the band Choking Victim, to train hopping, to being in Mexico working with the Zapatista movement and Earth First!, to his eventual break from reality where he ended up being hospitalized. When I found the work of Sascha I felt less alone. I know I shouldn’t just be looking for one big reflection of my life, but it is nice to not feel so alone in what you’ve experienced. Here is an excerpt:
The police found me walking on the subway tracks in New York City and I was convinced the world was about to end and I was being broadcast live on primetime TV on all the channels. After I’d been walking along the tracks through three stations, the cops wrestled me to the ground, arrested me, and brought me to an underground jail cell and then the emergency room of Bellevue psychiatric hospital where they strapped me to a bed. Once they managed to track down my terrified mother, she signed some papers, a nurse shot me up with some hardcore anti-psychotic drugs, and I woke up two weeks later in the “Quiet Room” of a public mental hospital upstate.
I remember thinking that I was famous and that everyone was taking pictures of me, and that rappers were communicating to me through their songs. Here is a picture I took at the height of my mania and I remember taking it as a way to show how cool I was or something along those lines. I took it in photo booth and it’s labeled “Photo on 9-23-14 at 3.40 AM”
“The Body of Chris, a memoir of obsession, addiction, and madness” by Chris Cole. Another person who had an eerily similar experience to mine around a mental break from reality. This is who I had some therapy sessions with. I am sad that we couldn’t keep working together due to money constraints because I felt like we really touched on something deep that was holding me back from losing weight. Maybe it was because I felt I could trust him, or I knew in my mind that he had known the world as I have. There must be some science paper on clinicians doing self-exposure and how it helps the clients along their path.
“The Collected Schizophrenias” by Esme Weijun Wang. Reading this was interesting for the experiences she had, and also the literary high-mindedness of it all. Same with the next one.
“Hunger” by Roxane Gay. Having my experience of body-shame reflected and analyzed so thoroughly, with so much insight, and clarity, was really a relief.
And the book that radicalized me “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” as told to Alex Haley. I have not seen the world the same since I read this book. This book gave me strength. I learned what conviction and dedication mean. I what it means to hold strong, while still having the humility to change course.
Something about recent omens: the first night I drove out to my job there were accidents both ways. One was especially scary because it happened a few rows of cars ahead of me, and the person spun out and for a few moments, it looked as if a car was heading in the opposite direction directly towards us. That could be interpreted as an omen to steer clear of that job.
Losing my job as I began to get serious about putting out some kind of writing once a week is a positive omen, I believe.
On good periods of sobriety, no drinking, no smoking weed, my penchant for paranoia turns into a penchant for pronoia. I imagine that there is a plan, and whatever I am suffering or enjoying is part of the larger project. I am protected, and one large family is guiding my path.
I think this is a way for my mind to compensate for the immense loneliness that I feel. If feeling like no one cares gets too intense, then my mind pushes the “everyone cares” button.
I know that I do have an impact on people. We all have an impact on each other. One event I like to hold onto to prove that to myself is a concert I played in college. I was really sick and had to leave right after the concert was over. But apparently my high school band had traveled up to see the show, and they were looking for me after. A lot of them were inspired by my story of going to CU based on the merit of my playing. Those students traveling to see me has gotten me through many hard nights. And who knows what my story did to motivate or inspire them.
One of my favorite songs and one that sums up in a humorous way the feeling that I get writing this column is “It’s Hard To Be Humble'' by Mac Davis. I am in flux over whether I am a slobby piece of shit or god’s gift. But I am usually able to level that out even if my words or actions don’t reflect that.
I also just love the classic country sound of the song too. It reminds me of hanging out at Grandma’s trailer park in the smoke-filled room, belly stuffed with Mac & Cheese, playing with Hot Wheels on the shag carpet.
I think I’ve accumulated enough trauma to start projectile vomiting it on to you! Hopefully, you can pick the meat out of the mess and walk away with something to chew on.
The next two weeks’ articles will be about rejection, and exploding head syndrome respectively. I will try to soothe my hurt feelings from the rejections I’ve received from art projects by making it about gentrification instead of not being a good enough artist, and I will explore how exploding head syndrome could be related to my paranoia and possibly even my musical aptitude.
Consider subscribing to help me pay for my pills! You will still get all of the articles even if you choose the free option though. I just want someone to talk at.