i always think of that part in ‘1984’ where o’brien is torturing winston, asking him what two plus two is, and winston is screaming “four! four! two plus two is four!” and o’brien is electrocuting him and saying “no, two plus two is five.”

man, that’s what my whole life feels like

the answer is four but they’re telling me it’s five

I worked in an office in Austin. I only took the job because I was living off white rice and I had to pay for a lawyer to get my cats back. I faked my way through a year of braindead nothing. Or rather I just didn’t talk much and nodded along when they told me stuff.

Three weeks before I left for California I had a sort of breakdown at my desk. I wrote my boss a little note and left it on my monitor saying I had to go home because I couldn’t function anymore. I walked outside the campus, across the lawn of immaculate sod, and went into a nearby cluster of trees. I took my shirt off and leaned against a tree in the shade. I called my friend. My friend didn’t pick up. I left a message saying I just needed to talk to someone for a few minutes. They sent me a message containing three words: “I’m sorry Ryan.” A little green insect landed on my hand and I watched it for a few minutes until it flew away.

I drove home. I walked to Speedway Grocery. I bought a six-pack of Lone Star. The guy behind the register carded me for the 500th time. I walked home. It was maybe 3 p.m. I drank all those beers in probably 20 minutes. I went to sleep. The sun was still out. I woke up three hours later and threw up and then went back to sleep.

Just burned my bagel. Took the charred remains out of the toaster oven and said, “Hell I know how that feels, brother. So it goes.”

I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of someone trying to talk to me at the grocery store.

“Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense!”

“How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home?”

“A frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean.”

“Words are for meaning: when you’ve got the meaning, you can forget the words.”

This guy wrote these words over 2,000 years ago. Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. Yeah. So get all this other garbage out of my face.

In the dream called Ryan I still have to do my taxes and no one is going to kiss me good-night so there’s that. At least I get to die one day—or wake up, however you want to look at it.

Once upon a time, I, Ryan Starsailor, dreamt I was a molten ball of space trash, soaring unfeelingly through a vast galactic wasteland of nothingness, and not knowing it was Ryan Starsailor. Suddenly I awoke, and came to myself, the veritable Ryan Starsailor. Now I do not know whether it was then I dreamt I was a molten ball of space trash, or whether I am now a molten ball of space trash dreaming I am a man.

tomorrow the big snow comes

tonight i stock my fortress with red wine and the white whale

at midnight i dump it all into my bloodstream, wine and whale both

my friend in chicago, who i mentioned just now, and who, along with tracey and laura in oakland is one of the most beautiful and interesting and wonderful people i have ever met, said something to me yesterday that sounds like the first page of a book i want to read:

“I woke up and it was snowing. The city looked so beautiful. Then I remembered everything else.”

i was talking to my friend in chicago, who is one of two people i know who suffers from the same godawful it’s-never-going-to-get-better 50%-suicide-rate malady as me . . . we were talking about how we feel as though we occupy a pocket in reality which exists outside of the one we are always looking at or trying to interact with, one foot in each dimension, our minds split between two worlds, both bad. we decided it’s like being that kid from the sixth sense. we can’t make anyone see what we see.

and please know that i do not think my perception is superior, or that i think i am better than anyone else. are you kidding me? next to schizophrenia this is the absolute worst sort of mind window to see through, mostly because you are not seeing things that aren’t there, and are not hearing voices, and so on, but are trapped in the same world as everyone else except you SEE and FEEL everything and the things you see and feel are so bad you feel like there’s no way you can go on living like that forever. i know why my brothers and sisters drink themselves to death, or take a shortcut to get there quicker. your body is a haunted house. your eyes see a world full of malicious spirits! and your brain traps them inside.

and no one can join you there, and no one can really understand. and even when my friend and i talk, and we understand each other completely, we see the same ghosts—it’s not like that makes life any more bearable. all you know is that you’re both in total agony every waking moment of every single day we are still here.

people try to reconcile the person with the sickness. without the person there is no sickness. without the sickness there is no person.

please don’t tell anyone but i’m about to quote kierkegaard only because it is the quickest and cleanest way to wrap all this up:

“since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. as long as it stays i am ironic—if it is pulled out i shall die.”