090818 it’s the easiest thing in the world to do yet a gaggle of concentric or divergent forces conspires to make you run away desperation rears its ugly ass shouldn’t you be eating something? drinking something? smoking something? busying yourself with something? folding some laundry? washing some dishes? reading a website? Pacing back and forth? worrying about something? Going over and over in your mind how you’re unfit in some way, cementing the neural pathways of your inferiority so you will never forget that the badguys and even the superior goodguys will always be darker, harder, stronger, younger, and sexier than you ever were, let alone are now, old man? shouldn’t you? what is the worth of an old man? I suspect I may be reinventing the wheel here: what is the price of experience? it’s late. i kinda downgraded my second session. before, it was fifteen minutes strategically stuck in the middle of the day to strengthen my ability to do it any time, in any context, regardless of noise or pattern or momentum or ennui. Now, I’m doing it at the end of the day, *whenever that is,* even if it’s like eleven oclock or whatever. The “have to do it because it’s just what you do” hasn’t changed, but the fact that you can do everything else first seems to kind of water part of it down. I don’t know. What do you think? Oh yeah I remembered one more of the concentric rings of fuck-off energy: shouldn’t you be asking yourself questions like what kind of camera should you be using and should you buy a new one just because Celi said the word “camera” and you started thinking oh hey maybe I should *give her mine* and cloak my own greed for buying a new one in generosity for giving her the old one--that’s how giant holes in the ozone layer of your financial atmosphere get started, my friend. And shouldn’t you be asking yourself questions like should I use this computer for work and put the iMac out as a “family” computer, even though that’s ridiculous and it would disrupt my whole work environment and I would end up spending hours and hours readjusting megan just came down the stairs to interrupt me (that’s the other thing) and she needed the speech about “it gets better” and “your world will expand” and “it’s ok” and “be patient” and “did you ever watch that adam sandler movie where he fast forwards through all the best parts of his life because he was completely backwards about what the best parts really were” and so i tried my best to deliver it, and i guess it went ok. Question: when we deliver these speeches, does it really matter whether we believe them or not? Does it really matter whether or not we can even remotely begin to empathise with the kid we once were? Not to mention, we’re not the kid our kids are, remember? We talked about that recently, as I recall, if I’m recalling correctly over the space of the memory gap in between the lonely particles floating in the void, the lonely particle of the last writing session and this one. Like, it’s easy to sit here at however the fuck old I am, and pretend that I didn’t just watch a cheesy martial arts movie that my former Mestre helped make and that I’m not all hollowed out scooped out bereft and wondering if I missed something and thinking about fighting and strength and survival and discipline and standing up for something, and picturing all those as little bar graphs and wondering if ANY of them, ANY ONE OF THEM AT ALL even begins to creep high enough on the graph to register in the red, or even the orange, or god help me even barely get into the yellow. Or are all my bars little stumps, little nubs, little buds that never blossomed before they decayed. Millie just came down here to ask me to tell Megan to be quiet and i told her to tell her herself because you have to at least try, at least go through the steps, and if it doesn’t work then you go to something else, but you have to at least try. she wasn’t really buying it but at least she tried. megan is such a selfish bitch sometimes but someone’s got to teach her. or at least try. At least I think so anyway. Doing the best I can here. At least I think so anyway. ALL THESE god damned interruptions means the time ran out and i’m only at what, 700 and something words. Fuck. This is what I mean by watered down. But then again, I could decide to keep going. But why? I barely asked a question that I barely answered. It (the half formed question) reminds me of Glenn. “You’re always going to be missing some important detail. How do you know what the most important details are? You’re always bound to be leaving something out.” Now, did he ask himself that and then, deciding he didn’t have a good enough answer, arrange to get himself hit in the head by a hard projectile and then go to sleep and die? Or is it terribly “just so” and bullshit-mythological and magical-thinking and retrospectively back-formation bass-ackwards and just fucking arrogant and self-centered of me to think so? I don’t know. I don’t have the energy to castigate myself over this one. It’s beside the point anyway. The narcissistic part is even posing that for a debate, as if it were interesting. Like Mary’s mom, out there on the porch watering her azaleas. Was she out there only because the flowers needed water, or was she also out there because she keeps an eye and an ear out and her finger on the pulse of her neighborhood. A car sidles up to the side of the street and parks. who is in it? it could be important. it might not be. you might never know, so you keep an eye out and you water your flowers it’s not always this peaceful. megan did not stop talking. she ignored my text. millie came down here again. i had to go up there, fucking go up there and tell her firmly to stop talking in consideration of her roommates. She just doesn’t get it. She blames millie. She said “She’s been giving me shit all day.” She is one of the most self-centered people I have ever met. That makes me so fucking frustrated and sad. Finally she says can i just go for a walk. Fine. Thank you. Fuck this. Fuck “the teenage years.” This is some bullshit. How did I fail to teach her basic social decency? She’s pissed off and so that means we all have to deal with it and put up with whatever, regardless of what effects her preferred method of dealing with it have on the people around her. Jesus fucking christ. Grow the fuck up. I never should have given them phones. Why can’t I just take them back now? When did phones become a god given right and necessity for older kids? Why have I LEARNED TO BE SO HELPLESS ABOUT THAT? Megan: if for some reason someday you’re reading this, sorry about calling you selfish so many times. It’s just at the times I typed that, that’s really what it looked like. After going for a walk with you and listening to you for hours, I see that it’s not that simple. I’m worried about Millie because it seems like there’s a lot she doesn’t tell me. I think I need to follow up with her about the therapist thing still. Looking across the table at you tonight at about 2:00 am before finally saying I need to get some sleep before I go do Amazon tomorrow, it struck me that you’re more grown up than I had realized. You talk, gesture, and inflect like a grown-up. You understand things that “kids” aren’t supposed to understand. Maybe it’s cuz you’re the oldest, but I can’t ever seem to keep up with your development. I keep getting taken by surprise. I’m scared about Millie because I don’t want her to feel alone but I don’t always know how to reach her. I want to be able to reach out and give her a hug without her flinching. I want her to feel bathed in love. I hafta try to find ways to help her let herself let that be a thing that happens. and remember, movies are only big and real when they’re right in front of your face