full disclosure: i have not eaten meat in over ten years for a number of reasons that i am probably never going to write down

also i’m not going to wear a fucking t-shirt about it either, if you get my meaning

ok:

i think about this sentence sometimes, because it is so pure and beautiful in its ridiculousness

my friend was telling me about her friend, and how her friend had been seeing this guy

“she’s going to dump him because he can’t decide if he’s a vegetarian or not”

when i worked at the little coffee / donut shop in oakland, i would hear people sitting around talking about veganism all the time (the place was all vegan, though we never really even thought about it)

they would talk about how healthy they felt, or how they didn’t understand why other people weren’t vegan, or Where To Go in the bay area to get some “yummy vegan eats”

listen: hain’t nothing wrong with being a vegan. go ahead and do it, man

but if the only thing you have to talk about is how you don’t do something, whoa baby

get on that ASAP

that’s just my advice

(you could swap veganism out for anything by the way)

((p.s. one time my friend at the register was ringing a guy up, and she asked him how his meal was, and he replied: “de–awesome” which i guess is how you say “delicious” if you’re a moron))

(((p.p.s. another time someone was paying at the counter and i heard them describe their meal as “so many noms.” yeah, ok, let’s just go ahead and toss this generation of people who speak in baby-talk into the fucking ocean already)))

sittin here in the kitchen with my little baby cup of hot cocoa, gazing across this wintry abyss called a fuckin condominium parking lot

snowplows in the hospital parking lot moving things from one place to another

yeah

well the weather outside is frightful, and i’m gonna let you in on a little secret: it’s way worse inside my head

i’m stuck here, i feel like a garbage bag full of old pizza crusts someone threw into a swamp

let me know how you’re feeling

say hello: octonaut [at] gmail [dot] com

WE COULD FEEL ALONE
WHEN WE WERE TOGETHER,
ALONE AGAINST THE OTHERS.

. . . AND THE NIGHT
CAN BE A DREADFUL TIME
FOR LONELY PEOPLE
ONCE THEIR LONELINESS
HAS STARTED.

remember that part in ‘slaughterhouse-five’ where billy pilgrim is watching TV late at night and that war movie is on and it plays in reverse in his head

the explosions happen in reverse, the airplanes fly backwards, the bullets come out of the planes and soldiers, the bombs are taken out of the planes and dismantled, and so on

i have had this recurring dream where i reach a certain point in my life and then things start to go backwards

i turn 30, or something, and then the tape is rewound, and i get younger and younger, and my dad moves back into his old house, and i go back to high school, and my grandmother is ok and i can visit her at her house again, and i can be with my friends, and sit by the wood stove on old church road while it snows outside, and all my cats are alive again, and i play in the backyard and climb trees, and so on

imagine, if you will, how horrifying it is to wake up from this!! i dream this all the time. and then i am thrust back into the nightmare of a life played in the right direction, growing older, people going away, people dying, the world getting worse, and on and on. . . .

well hell i guess that’s just Being Alive, but nobody said i couldn’t feel like Being Alive is a crock of shit.

well boys, looks like snow’s back on the menu

(those footprints are mine . . . i threw dante in the snow)

remember when sam says to frodo: “don’t go where i can’t follow”

i just said that to dante

all those little things i liked about my life are gone and have been gone for a long time

they can’t come back

and nothing has come along to take their place

shadows in the fog, man

who is in charge here

please don’t put us in this place and make us grow old and die

please don’t make us do this anymore

10:40 p.m. EST, buried in this tomb of a house by two feet of snow which falls harder and harder by the hour, i stand at the kitchen table with a cup of black coffee and complete a quasi-journalistic essay about rock and roll and sleeping on a playground during a new england autumn

That night at the hotel, in our room with the long empty hall outside and our shoes outside the door, a thick carpet on the floor of the room, outside the windows the rain falling and in the room light and pleasant and cheerful, then the light out and it exciting with smooth sheets and the bed comfortable, feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

just going to go ahead and Post This Again

i have heard so many people say “ugh! hemingway! so overrated!”

and it’s like, man, shut up