Near as I can tell, just about every friend of mine who is single is currently experiencing Dude Woes. Which is to say: they keep meeting and, to their dismay, briefly dating these sniveling losers who bail or ghost after a few dates . . . the operative word being “briefly” on account of they (the women) would have liked for the budding relationship to sail on to that secret place only lovers know. In a few cases, the dude breaks it off after several months of dating apropos of nothing . . . after having lulled them into a false sense of security, when things were going well for both parties! Some tumorous thing has emerged in people on The Apps in this post-virus world where they are absolutely terrified of building something with a kind stranger who is open to loving them. It is endemic. Seems these creeps would rather stay home and look at their phones and feel depressed than see something through just for the sake of the song.

Every week a friend will send me a screenshot of a Breakup Text and ask me for my Dude Perspective. In essentially all cases, the dude admits that, while he enjoyed getting to know my friend, he feels it is best they stop seeing each other for one of the following cliche cop-outs:

• “I’m depressed”
• “I’m not over my ex”
• “I’m afraid of commitment”
• “I need to focus on myself”
• “I have a lot going on at work”
• “I don’t think I’m ready to be in a serious relationship”

. . . and so on. Cowardly stuff!

Listen: these friends of mine are top-shelf high-caliber individuals. They are rarefied . . . truly some of the best people walking the earth. I am fortunate to know them. My friend Emi once said to my brother Kerwin: “Ryan knows all the best people.” It’s true!

The other night my friend Cecelia came to me and asked if something was wrong with her on account of all these scrubs kicking her to the curb after one or two dates, and I told her the truth, which was “Cecelia, absolutely not”. I told her also that in the last two weeks, many of my friends had, like her, lamented The State of Things, had shown me screenshots of messages with these dudes and their weak-ass excuses for splitting, had the asked me the same questions about themselves. And then Cecelia said one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me:

. . . wow! She’s right.

I have spoken of this many times, but I believe there is a point of no return with a dude in his thirties where, if he does not get it together, which is to say GET OVER HIMSELF, then he will be permanently frozen in that state till the Reaper beckons them into the abyss where even Time does not exist. It seems as though a lot of dudes just putz around shrieking and wailing, not having any sense of themselves or the world they inhabit . . . and have let the three decades of their life render them a jaded, selfish, aloof, cheap, indecisive, and spiritually bankrupt pile of protoplasm.

If this sort of life continues on without being rectified, the dude may as well be strapped into a rollercoaster ride straight to hell. I myself was in danger of crystalizing into this thing. Somehow during the pandemic I was able to overcome it. I know now that operating out of fear is never the true path. A decision made in fear is always wrong. It is better to make something than to wallow in an inert state until the clock runs out. It is, of course, better to love someone else than to hate yourself. Live while you still can! Otherwise you will always wonder at what could have been. TAKE IT FROM ME: in a decade, you will not think “I’m glad I did nothing” . . . you will be tortured by your stupidity and inaction now that this person and this time in your life are fucking ghostly fragments!

It seems to me that, nice though some of these guys may have been to my friends, they still fled out of fear. Must I quote DUNE??

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

LISTEN:

Stop fucking around and BE somebody, baby! Just start flying . . . it’s that easy! The illusion of choice—forfeiting a chance at true romance because you think there might be some better thing on the horizon—is just that: an illusion. Even if it doesn’t work out, it was not wasted time. As I told my friend Leila the other night . . . when the nukes start dropping, would you rather be hugging yourself or someone who loves you? Now that we live in the Dark World here at the end of all things, it is foolish to turn away from a good thing. If you’ve got a good thing going . . . keep it going! “I’m depressed” is, quite frankly, an extremely pathetic excuse not to hang out with a beautiful and intelligent woman who wants you there. Jesus wept!

OK?

I shall end this post thusly:

. . . OK?

There is a feeling which permeates every waking moment of my life, as though it were some inexorable truth laminated on top of my reality, which is this: I am a Fool . . . a deliberate, intentional fool, which is the worst kind. Or didn’t you know??

Consider the tarot card. Head in the clouds, this guy is blissfully about to walk off his ass off a cliff into oblivion:

. . . don’t I know the feeling! I have only ever been this thing, so I can’t say for sure what it’s like to live any other way, but maybe it is not a bad way to go about it after all. Or anyway, after decades of bearing witness to the fates assigned to others whether they like it or not, there are certainly worse things to be than the Fool . . . things which are, put simply, not nearly as fun. Just like how the Devil is lying even when it’s telling the truth, I am always having fun even when I am not having fun, even if it means walking off a cliff just to find out what’s down there . . .

I think also that being the Fool keeps me honest in some way. I don’t know that there’s anything anyone could tell me about myself, even and especially the bad things, that I am not already paralyzingly aware of, and lambast or even torture myself with when no one else is around. If you preemptively toss the pie into your own face, what else can anyone say, really, to cut you down? (This is nothing to say of Jester’s Privilege, which insulates me from most harm and repercussion, but that’s a whole other thing.) And while it is true that I am completely deluded and, as an ex-girlfriend once put it, “vibrating past reality”, I at least know what I am and have made a joke out of it.

There is of course a major consequence to my godforsaken station in my life. By my own hand, I have recently got myself embroiled in a series of strange circumstances, some unraveling as we speak and some which wait for me in the near future, and I could stop it all right now if I wanted. Right this very second! And yet I cannot and will not let myself do that because . . .

I told you I was the worst kind. Though there are many paths, I can only go the one way, like an utter fool. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. I dream of a heaven in which I am free of my own foolish self-ruining machinations, the endless wandering, the endless wondering . . . perhaps then I would actually have something or someone waiting for me at the end of this long dark trip, rather than falling through this galactic tube of time, this bottomless abyss where there is no certainty even for something as simple as tomorrow. Gazing upward with tears in my eyes, I am barreling straight off that cliff with a little white flower in my hand and a little white dog at my heels and I know it! Being as dumb as I am is a kind of hell. And yet even when I am crying I have to laugh. It’s like the fella said:

. . . a laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer to all that’s queer; and come what will, one comfort’s always left—that unfailing comfort is, it’s all predestinated . . . I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.

☆彡

Today was the autumn equinox, which is when the sun is directly over the equator, and thus there is as much day as there is night. And so saying, today marks the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. But you already knew that shit!! I’m a solstice man myself, but it is cool that we got both a new moon this past weekend as well as an equinox. It feels auspicious in some way . . .

Anyway: I love it!

I’ll just go ahead and say it: I am feeling increasingly insane as I keep getting farther away from New York City. I will get back there soon enough . . . I just got to make a big circle around a whole lot of this continent before I do.

I take a picture of this playground cemetery every time I pass it on the way to my dad’s house in Tennessee. In the 14 years I have driven past it, I have never seen anyone there. The cemetery holds a sort of significance to exactly one other person on this planet who may or may not read this website. Anyway, I dig this place . . . the children play while the dead sleep below.

I am in Lexington, Virginia for my cousin’s wedding, which is tomorrow. Tonight there was a sort of outdoor gathering in a beautiful park here, surrounded by mountains and later lit by many stars. When I was younger I didn’t think my home state was cool, but now I know that Virginia is one of the best ones. Sorry everyone, but it’s true.

I’ll write more tomorrow after I bear witness to it all. For now I will sleep soundly within the dark and beautiful confines of my A/C-frozen room at the Motel 6 off the highway . . .

Fairly certain I have said this verbatim to someone . . . also: rest in peace to my brother Robert Redford. Now he is with Paul again.