in my world “staving off ruin” is the name of the game

despite all the fancy window dressing most of us are just peasants. i know i am. i can’t even make a living wage, man. i feel so anxious and depressed and i haven’t eaten more than two or three meals in about as many days.

i’ve started talking to myself when i’m alone on a street. it’s just comforting to me. sometimes i have to jolt myself back to earth by doing that. it’s something to do, anyway. i use a perfectly calm and reasonable voice. i don’t actually feel like that at all. i have to use that voice so i don’t freak out anymore than i already am.

i keep seeing these older guys in their forties and fifties who kind of look like me, or dress like me, or talk like me, and they don’t have it together at all. they’re not bad people but they’re obviously broke and miserable and they’ve never been able to make it work. my fear is that i’m going to be that weird old guy who talks to you at the hostel breakfast table. you tell him you’re in town on vacation and he says he has nobody and no place else to go.

i am sitting on the worst most uncomfortable couch there ever was and i just realized, in a sort of flash of nausea and extreme revulsion toward every person and inanimate object surrounding me, that i feel so terribly sad and alone i could scream and it’s probably all my fault

this morning i woke up in a very comfortable bed near the laurelhurst theater. i had shared this bed with my platonic bed-sharing buddy, who is also a private investigator. we were snug like ishmael and queequeg. we woke up and worked on two separate things in the same room, which is my favorite thing to do with another human. i don’t think you read this website, but i’m glad you’re my buddy.

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i am in a lot of pain, i am sick, and i had to do something terrible yesterday for not-my-sake. i don’t know, man. i just wander around in these ragged clothes and sit in coffee shops all day. it’ll be all right. i can’t be broke anymore and soon enough i have got to get out of this country. have any of you belgians ever wanted to marry a yank? i can be kinda funny sometimes and i don’t take up too much room. my friend called me a “greaseball” the other day but i’m pretty clean i think.

well: at least everyone is friendly here, and i can walk around fearlessly. i’m going to oakland in a few days to get dante and film the pipefest 2 commercial. yeah. that’ll be all right.

i guess i’m allowed to legally move into my house in four days. that’s pretty all right too.

buncha stuff ain’t all right

oh well!!

the terrible reality is that if i don’t take a little white pill every morning my body will cycle through every possible way to destroy itself

I need a scenario like this to happen so I can remember my own humanity:

Someone: (pointing to a gloomy, elderly woman in a wheelchair) “This is my grandmother Esther . . . she hasn’t spoken a single word in over ten years.”

Me: (falling to one knee) “Hi Esther. I’m Ryan. I’m sorry that I crashed my motorcycle into the side of your house.”

Esther: (looking deeply into my eyes) “You star boy. Star boy still got the light in ‘im.”

Someone: “Grandma?!”

Me: “Dude hell yeah.”