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.”

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