Here’s the thing: I write sometimes. I don’t like most of it. I think that my thoughts are the same thoughts millions of other much smarter people have had throughout human history. When I go to write these thoughts down, I get self-conscious that I’m contributing to the great big swirling vortex of bullshit that already exists. I think of all these fucking people screaming and shrieking and creating noise that bears no significance on anyone’s life, and I feel like I don’t want to make any more of that. It’s loud enough.
But I also think about all the writing that has meant something to me, or comforted me, or amazed me, or whatever else, and I think, “Well, this person said the same thing a lot of other people have said, but it went through their unique filter, and this is what came out. And I’m glad they did this, because I feel better knowing that someone other than me exists (or once existed) who feels (or felt) the same way about these things that I think about a lot. And it won’t change a God damn thing, but hell, it certainly did something to or for me, and that’s great! I was so lonely before. Now I feel less lonely.”
And so on.
• • •
I am a fool. I don’t have any money at all. I have a lot of friends. I have a nice cat. I am healthy and I have all my teeth.
I like a few girls. I barely know them. They barely know me. Sometimes, when I’m drunk or spooked up, or whatever, I’ll think about them, and realize that I really don’t know them at all. And I’ll wonder what it is I like about them in the first place, given that I know so few details about their lives, and I have no idea how they act or think. Even their faces seem blurry to me in my head. Do I even know what they actually look like?
On weekends, at work, a woman will sometimes make eye contact with me. And I’ll wonder what’s going on over there in her brain.
I think of how disappointing it would be for her if she, for whatever foolish reason, wanted to know what I had going on inside my brain.
A stranger once said to me: “Let me into your brain! I want to walk the endless corridors in there!” And I nearly gagged, because that is absolutely the dumbest crap anyone has ever said to me.
Instead I said this: “Oh, trust me, they’re finite. In fact there’s just one corridor. And at the end of that corridor is something that even I don’t want to look at anymore, because it’s so useless and embarrassing.”
If I were in a bad mood and you asked me to describe human beings using two adjectives, I would say “useless” and “embarrassing.”
I am going to continue rambling: I have had sex with some people. A lot of those people don’t talk to me anymore. They didn’t know me to begin with. I can’t imagine why they would ever want to talk to me again. The before, the during, the after—well, it was probably a weird time. There is no after the after. No one wants the after the after. None of them want to see what that looks like.
Me neither!
What am I even saying? What I’m saying is this: we have nothing to talk about anymore, these people who are gone now, and we never did in the first place. We were fooling ourselves into thinking there was something else because we were stupid and controlled by our bodies.
Fucking bodies, man.
Every morning I wake up to fifteen or so messages from my friends. They are scattered all over the US. My friends send me messages when they’re sad because they know I won’t think they’re wrong for feeling that way, and because they know I won’t try to give them silly advice on how to “snap out of it.” They are positive I will say to them, “I know, I know. Listen: I know. And you’re not alone.” Like the books I have read, maybe this is a comforting thing to hear, even if it’s from an idiot like me. I can’t cure them, or make them feel any better, but I can understand them, and acknowledge them, and listen to them. Their words go somewhere and end up at me. I read them all.
It hurts! To read those words. Because I don’t want any of these beautiful people to have to feel rotten. But what can you do?
I need to write more, and play my guitar more, and exercise more. I need to sleep at night. I need to stop having sex with people who probably hate me. I need to stop being a god damn idiot.
Tim once said that ideas are nothing without work. God damn it, I’ve got to work. Because that’s all there is: the work. What else is there?
I need to get a motorcycle and drive it a million miles an hour down to Los Angeles and see a girl I know there. Because she’s nice to me and she’s pretty.
God. Yeah. I gotta do that.