near as i can tell this is what it looks like:

AUSTIN, TX: “hi! i love anything outdoorsy! i work in PR and love walking my dog! i love sports! i love breakfast tacos!”

PORTLAND, OR: “haaaaahhhhh pizza rules man hahaha satan i was daria for halloween i wish i would just die already lol i told my gynecologist i was going to kill myself and he laughed aliens 666”

i think maybe last night i wrote a post that a lot of people thought was scary

god i can’t go to austin

it is three minutes past minute and i have uncorked a frighteningly bad bottle of wine. i have been picking a different wine each time, none of them costing over $8. i guess at that price point you’ve got to know what you’re getting yourself into. it isn’t so bad after the first few sips. your throat accepts its fate and the body opens the gate. you are taking care of yourself, in some strange way, and it cost you less than ten bucks from your local grocer. self-medicating is sort of like self-preservation. i think so anyway. but then i don’t actually know anything at all.

it’s not as though i’m sitting here with black tar heroin. wine is a good buddy to have i reckon. it can be got cheaply and it is available everywhere. it feels less severe than liquor, and you can still respect yourself a little. drinking a six-pack feels like eating an entire loaf of bread.

dante is sitting on my lap. tomorrow afternoon it is going to start snowing. there will be several feet of snow on the ground by saturday. i guess that’s what they’re saying anyway. i went to the grocery store yesterday, very crowded, and got as much as i could carry and went the hell home. i was only 12 miles away but it took me an hour and a half to get back. it was snowing. i saw cars sliding all over the road and people getting into accidents.

i went home and descended way way down there. i am still down there. all i did today was lonesome road. i feel so sad it’s making me sick. i would give anything for a little comfort.

you’d be surprised at my degree of uncertainty

i drove to lonesome road tonight

that’s a real road, by the way. it’s about two miles from where i grew up

someone had stolen the sign

i loved that sign: “lonesome rd”

still felt lonesome though

used to go there a lot with this girl i loved

been going there alone now for many years

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.”