I am fully aware that everything is nonsensical chaos with no real thread stringing it all together. I know that people do things out of apathy or self-preservation or thoughtlessness, and that 99% of the time it truly is nothing personal. And as far as I know the huge unfeeling universe is not out to get me. Sometimes at night I believe in the unseen and unaccountable old joker, but that’s because in moments of extreme exhaustion and sadness, which are my eternal ailments, I become wholly delusional.

Maybe it’s time to quote this again:

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke.

. . . well, you know, that being said: The naive childlike part of me wonders what I ever did to deserve the things that I tolerate and endure and suffer through twenty-four hours a day. I can’t even escape it when I sleep. Last night I was talking to my friend and I got horrendously upset and drank a bunch of wine so I could pass out as quickly as possible. I woke up at four in morning almost screaming and my body was soaked in sweat. I had to get up and change and put a towel down in the spot where I had been sleeping. I went into the kitchen and glugged down a liter of water and I felt like leaving the house and walking around Berkeley in the dark but I went back to sleep instead. I woke up again at six. I had been dreaming of someone and even though I was awake then I couldn’t shake what had been real enough to me in my dreams seconds before. And it scared the hell out of me!

I’m the old man in the chair next to the fireplace with his head in his hands. I am a freak laid bare at eternity’s gate! Maybe it’s easier to just accept the malignancy and get the hell on with it. I tried to change and I didn’t change one bit. I tried for many years! Well, what’s the point any longer? I’d rather just lay low and be alone against the others. Alone by myself! I tried so hard to be nice to everyone. I’m going to keep on being nice to everyone. It’s just that I don’t see my life as an investment because I am not immortal. As the fella said, king or pauper, this is what awaits us all:

Hah~! The triumph of death, baby . . . the only kept promise!

Yesterday after work I walked five miles all over Oakland and Emeryville and Berkeley. I got a sandwich and ate it in a park by myself. I refilled my prescriptions and skulked around by the Bay. I went to the grocery store and bought some motherfucking vegetables. I thought all of this would help me, and it did, but the whole charade collapsed into a skeleton-filled sinkhole as soon as I got home and stopped moving. I sat on my crappy purple couch for a long time and tried to make my mind a total blank. I don’t think it worked very well though because I still felt that bad craziness all night long and into today. Who knows, man. I have many times attempted to make friends with the thing, but of course the thing is going to kill me eventually. There is no way it can’t. People die of many things, but this is the thing that will finally kill me if I don’t die in a plane crash or whatever before it gets to me. I will die with a chisel and hammer in my hands . . . die leaning against a 5,000-foot high tombstone for planet earth!

. . . upon which, in my final stupid desperate moments, I will have inscribed

THE NIGHTMARE
IS FINALLY OVER!

Hooray for Hollywood! I’m going to go walk around the block until my chest stops vibrating.