I used to care a lot, and now I don’t care at all. There’s probably a causal relationship to be found. The simplest explanation is this: I cared so much that I probably fried some sort of receptor in my brain and now I am unable to feel anything at all. Yes, that’s probably it.

Last night, in an effort to care again—to poke at the world to see if anything happened—I rented a convertible Mini Cooper and drove up and down empty Texas highways at breakneck speeds while listening to delicious psychedelic rock music. I pointed that bastard toward San Antonio and really worked the engine. It seemed to do something to me: At first there was an aha! moment followed by the sensation of something resembling comfort. It melted into me like warm petroleum jelly. The circuits in my brain lit up, my eyes hummed with electricity, and everything inside of me screamed upward in a way that wasn’t horrifying. Maybe I’m not doomed after all! I thought as I swerved to get out of the way of a tractor trailer that was barreling up the on-ramp. . . .

This feeling—this fantastic elation—was followed by four hours of stone-sober darkness. Four hours—that’s about as long as I can sleep these days. And when I woke from the void—and I call it the void because I have stopped dreaming altogether (my waking life is the dream, and in my sleep I am dead)—I felt that same nasty dread creep up my spine and then plummet into the deepest parts my poor brain. Every unquestionably good part of me was charred once again . . . the part of me that isn’t spent rocketing down hundreds of miles of nowhere in little European cars in the dead of night as the summer breeze rolls by, which is to say most of me.

On my way to work this morning I sat in silence, listening to the blood inside my head. It’s all I can stomach these days. No more news for me; no more sickness oozing from the radio. Without thinking, I screamed “FUCK” ten or twelve times, I don’t know. I did it until my vocal chords burned, telling me, “Hold up there, boy.” And then I screamed again. It was all very primal, coming from some place I don’t fully understand.

Eight hours later, I’m wondering how much longer I can live in a world to which I am totally indifferent. It’s on fire, it’s sick.

Jesus, someone should really just put it out of its misery already. Race it toward oblivion with the top down and some of that good music playing real loud. . . .