Once I was in faculty in North Carolina, I flew residence to Pennsylvania for the vacations. My mom and father had been going by a divorce at that time (a divorce that ought to’ve occurred a few years earlier than), and so my father had determined I needed to spend my vacation weekend staying with him, not her, and on condition that he was paying for the airplane ticket and such, I agreed. He was supposed to select me up from the airport, however he didn’t.
His buddy did. A man I had possibly met a couple of times earlier than. I met him, went to his automobile, and as soon as on the highway this man, a relative stranger, gave me shit as a result of he was making an attempt to hit on flight attendants within the airport and I “interrupted” him getting laid on the airport. (Be aware, that is pre-9/11, when you possibly can simply free vary it by the airport even in case you didn’t have a flight. And I suppose this man was pondering he may Get Some on the Airport Applebees counter, or some shit.)
When he advised me this, I smelled the alcohol on his breath. After which I observed his driving was, ahhh, not good. I spotted he’d been within the airport, not simply hitting on flight employees, however consuming. He was drunk. I used to be in a automobile with a drunk driver. And at that time, my choices had been minimal. Wrestling management of the automobile away from him would’ve in all probability crashed us. And he was actually making an attempt to crash us anyway, weaving out and in of site visitors. Greatest I may do was buckle the fuck up and attempt to be calm sufficient in order to not rile this man, who appeared like he was not essentially the most steady particular person.
Residing right here in America proper now looks like that point.
Caught driving shotgun in a automobile with a drunk driver.
It’s exhausting to focus. It’s exhausting to concentrate on the issues in entrance of me, that I must do. It’s exhausting to concentrate on the information, as a result of it’s not only one factor, it’s 100 issues, information like fireplace ants, such as you stepped on their mound and right here they’re, swarming, and every ant feels meaningless within the context of all these indignant fucking ants. Taking a look at my telephone or pc or any related gadget looks like tonguing a damaged tooth–an electrical jolt of ache however one which feels paradoxically satisfying, like if I poke the unhealthy tooth, possibly I’m fixing it, possibly poking it makes it fall out and the ache will go away. Which I do know is fucking silly so then I cease doing it — cease trying on the telephone, cease poking the tooth. However there’s somewhat rat scratching at the back of my head and it makes me surprise, what are you lacking, what aren’t you seeing, stay vigilant, fixed vigilance, there’s an incredible wave coming, a wall of fireplace, a meteor, a swarm of wasps, higher look, higher click on, after which I look, and am rewarded. By some definition of that phrase, “rewarded.” My nervousness is rewarded as a result of issues are unhealthy, and issues are occurring consistently. You’re taking three hours off your Diligent Watch, twenty horrible issues have occurred. ICE stole your mom. Trump threw the fact-checkers in a pit. DOGE fired all of the individuals who look ahead to airplane crashes and tornadoes and pathogens in your meals. Elon Musk smuggled a xenomorph aboard a SpaceX flight. RFK Jr is hiding a zombie chew. It’s all occurring. It’s all coming for you on a regular basis all the time.
It’s exhausting to have hope. Hope is a factor with wings, the poet girl stated, however its wings have been clipped and it thrashes on the bottom in search of a strategy to stand up, get out, go go go, however it may’t, so there it’s, within the dust, thrashing.
Hope persists, although. Hope possibly isn’t the factor with wings however hope is the cussed inexperienced factor, its stem-and-leaf pushing up by what appears to be limitless concrete. It finds a breach and it pushes. Pushes and pushes. Grows and grows. Hoping nobody steps on it or sprays it with weed-killer.
Generally you kinda overlook. That it’s all occurring. Okay, possibly you don’t overlook, not precisely, nevertheless it drifts to the again of your thoughts the place you may’t hear the chimpanzee screams and the clamor and the banging of drums. And in these moments, normalcy happens, unbidden, uninvited. A mild gentle settling into an previous feeling, life like a pleasant pair of sweatpants. Household dinner, a humorous present, birdsong. Some emotionally-dysregulating model of Severance: your innie descends into the chaos mines, studying the information, feeling the concern, planning, enduring calamity. Your outie makes dinner and tells jokes and dances to the playlist you constructed. Then the telephone lights up, the elevator ding, and the innie rushes again in to see how flu and measles have mixed to kind the superbug, flusles, or how all of the turtles are lifeless now.
You recognize there’s ice cream and you already know you shouldn’t eat it as a result of part of you needs to be in higher form. When the Secret Police come for you, you’re gonna need to run, and you’ll’t do this with a Physique by Jeni’s, no, no, you should be lean protein, a gazelle to flee their nets, but in addition, it’s ice cream, and also you crave pleasure, some pleasure, any pleasure, and who is aware of, we would not even have ice cream in a yr, they’ll outlaw it, or tariff it so it prices $50 a pint, or your taste selections will probably be Listeria or Ivermectin, so that you say fuck it, and also you eat the ice cream. Every spoonful is somewhat trip. However later you’re feeling unhealthy and also you surprise if the trade-off for pleasure was value it after they catch you and throw you within the SuperDoom jail they constructed on the fucking moon.
Yesterday I noticed a bag of chips on the retailer that was $14.99. Beef tallow potato chips. This wasn’t Erewhon. The bag of chips was small. Issues are silly.
Perhaps it’s like turbulence on an airplane, you assume. Only a bumpy disagreeable terrible expertise you gotta get by. However when turbulence hits it’s not as a result of the pilot is a man who doesn’t “know planes,” when turbulence hits they don’t disappear the ninth row individuals out the airlock as a result of they “look completely different” and are “in all probability inflicting the issue.” Planes don’t have airlocks, do they? No matter. My mind is spray cheese.
Perhaps it’s a vaccine, you assume. Perhaps we want this ugly dose of What Can Be as a way to keep away from What May Come. Then once more we had 4 years of it the primary time and by some means, immunity didn’t take. Perhaps we fucked that up and now it’s a drug-resistant socio-political superbug. Or possibly the medical metaphor is incorrect and the dude is simply the antichrist. I wasn’t non secular earlier than however he’s sufficient to make me consider.
Perhaps it’s good to look to historical past, you assume. Historical past goes in cycles. This isn’t the primary Very Silly Very Dangerous Time in historical past, and it’ll not be the final. But humanity continues on. A consolation! You then assume, yeah possibly it shouldn’t have as a result of we appear incapable of studying from historical past. Certain, studying historical past is fascinating. However residing it fucking sucks. The lesson is, we didn’t study the lesson. The fuck can we do with that?
Generally I feel it’s local weather change. That we’ve boiled the planet because of capitalism and it’s boiled our brains. And our brains are already a soggy dish sponge filled with lead and microplastics anyway.
Late-stage capitalism is enjoyable to say till you notice it’s the identical factor, largely, as late-stage most cancers. A illness that has progressed up to now you may’t cease it now, you may simply trip it out and discover peace earlier than *fart noise*
Yeah, it’s like being a passenger in a drunk driver’s automobile. It’s additionally like working in an workplace constructing the place new administration simply took over, they usually’re a bunch of previous braindeads and younger dipshits and all of them are operating round with sledgehammers and cartoon bundles of dynamite, flattening load-bearing partitions as a result of “it’ll open the place up.” You assume you must go work some other place however additionally they took over these buildings, too. They’re all over the place now, like termites.
It does really feel actually silly. It’s callous and it’s evil and it’s craven nevertheless it’s additionally very, very silly. Clown-show, clown-shoe, clown-shit silly. It’s like, a minimum of as soon as a day I’m all, these guys? THESE guys? THIS is what’s occurring, and THESE fucking guys are doing it? Are you fucking kidding me? You couldn’t write this as fiction. It’d be too on-the-nose. Satire written by a concussed eight-year-old. Actuality written by ChatGPT.
Writing is tough proper now. Releasing a e-book is tough. Selling that e-book is, say it with me, exhausting. It’s not trivial nevertheless it feels trivial. Like performing a puppet present within the city sq. because the city burns down. It feels good to do it and also you need others to really feel good whereas studying it however you additionally know feeling good proper now additionally feels by some means unhealthy, and possibly that’s one of the crucial fucked up issues of all. They didn’t take pleasure however they took the enjoyment of feeling pleasure away, made it really feel incorrect and unusual. Turned happiness right into a scorching range.
Nonetheless, I write. I gotta write. Pay the payments but in addition as a result of it’s an escape in its means. I prefer to say it’s an act of resistance, and possibly it’s, as a result of they actually don’t need me otherwise you or anyone doing it. They need to censor and steal and feed all of it into the wooden chipper of AI so it may sloppily spill all that artbarf out onto the ground after which they rent us again at half-rate or much less, so we develop into those not making the artwork however as an alternative scooping up the artbarf and pushing it into some form of form, some form of digital particleboard. Like Dreyfuss in Shut Encounters, smooshing his mashed potatoes into the form of a mountain. This implies one thing. However it doesn’t imply something.
Generally it feels just like the pandemic. However that was higher, in plenty of methods. As a result of we had been all collectively in it, a minimum of at first. Singing for well being employees and staying residence and whispering candy nothings to our collective sourdough starter. However then we stopped singing and we politicized staying secure and we stopped feeding our sourdough starters and now the ghosts of these sourdough starters are actually fucking pissed at us. Truthfully possibly they’re those doing this to us. Perhaps we stopped tending them after which they died and now they’re in search of revenge on us. Perhaps it is a metaphor for democracy. We must always’ve tended our democracy yeast goo higher.
One bizarre factor that provides me hope, actual hope, is that for the final eight-plus years, I may drive round this space and I knew, I knew there have been homes that you possibly can depend on to have all of the TRUMP SHIT out. The banners and flags and crazy-person indicators and rah-rah-rah, Expensive Chief, Expensive Chief. I drive round now and people homes, virtually all of them, have taken down their Expensive Chief shit. Perhaps it’s as a result of they realize it’s not well-liked however I feel for a few of them it’s as a result of they’re lastly beginning to see. Eight years of cult propaganda on their lawns, gone. I drove up by Pennsyltucky final weekend, a very good hour’s drive, a drive I’ve made earlier than. And I knew I used to be going to see plenty of gloaty-bloaty Trump shit on their lawns, porches, homes. I noticed one. One home with indicators out. The home was condemned. Half of it, falling down. Junk all around the garden. No person lived there anymore, by the look of it. And even when they did, they didn’t.
It’s that. It’s the protests, too. Huge protests. Simply getting began. Individuals are mad. Huge mad. There’s a feral Philadelphia vitality afoot. I do prefer it.
In order that’s the place I get hope. Individuals are waking up. They need to’ve woke the fuck up some time in the past, however we began to faux woke, being awake, was a foul factor, when it’s actually an important factor.
Onward we go. Upward, we hope, however let’s keep in mind, the wings are clipped. So it’s in all probability flat and even downward for awhile. Generally sharp drops, different instances a spiral. Like a flushing rest room.
The postscript to the drunk driver vacation story is, I obtained again to the home alive, the motive force managing to maintain on the highway. My father was at residence, additionally drunk. Most likely too drunk to have picked me up. We had a foul, unhealthy couple days after that. And earlier than Christmas I fucked off out of there, wrote him a notice that stated fuck you, I used to be gone, and he may do no matter he wished to do with that, cancel my airplane ticket or minimize me out of the desire or no matter. On the finish of the journey, he referred to as me and advised me he’d take me to the airport. He was good within the automobile. Not drunk. Advised me how unhealthy drunk driving was and I ought to by no means do it — in any case, my sister had been hit by a drunk driver a couple of years earlier than, and it fucked up her leg completely. He advised me this with what appeared to be no consciousness that he had despatched a buddy to select me up drunk, however I additionally knew he was telling me it as a result of he rattling effectively knew he had despatched somebody to select me up drunk. Generally we study classes, different instances we don’t study shit and stuff simply occurs, however we faux we had it discovered all alongside and we hope everybody simply forgets.
Purchase my e-book or I perish within the abyss, please and thanks.
