I'm losing sleep nowadays because while I know insanity is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results," I continue to find myself in pursuit of the same goal, going about that in the same old way, with the same role players involved (only- different faces). I've become comfortable, somehow, with the back rooms and kitchens and grease pits of the world. How sad is that. I'm good enough with myself to say that I have a grip on the lowest level work offered by my society. Fuckin badge of honor!
I know the direct future involves me doing idiot-work for jackshit wages while the people stream through and (hopefully) only occasionally use me as a human Kleenex. Being new and unknown somewhere means working from the bottom-up, resume notwithstanding. Retard-work like salting the fries before putting them in a bag and then putting them in a larger bag and then doing that again is what I have to look forward to. If I'm lucky. I've spilled out in a big way professionally, so much so that it's laughable to refer to any one segment of my life as being "career-oriented."
Hasn't happened quite yet. And now I'm starving myself and scouring the streets like a goddam zombie. When I get out. I have to commit to at least a mile-long walk in any direction just to get anywhere, and when I look out my tiny window and see those snowflakes whirling in the wind against the gray sky and it's cold as fuck in my room because I killed the heater in order to save on a bill that I still haven't figured out how I'm going to pay...well. I guess I rationalize my pathetic life by putting it up on the world scale. "A Somali man has actually killed another man for gloves like these," I'll think as I stub out my cheap fucking cigarette and hustle my hand back into the mitts my Mom bought for me.
It's all so hilariously sad! I'm worried it'll be this way forever. And so what: if it ever stops, I'll just get bored anyway--because (here we go...grandiosity as a means for distraction) happiness is a stunted concept. Problems originate in any environment, you know, like it's not gonna matter that the toilet seat I'm puking into is a Kohler or laid in brass or whatever. I understand the wisdom of utilitarianism.
But something else in me strives for a splash of color. "Strives" is the wrong word. "Hungers for," maybe. And of course we all do, otherwise we'd be living in space-efficient tombstones like they have up in Shanghai. Who and what I am is always changing, but I guess collecting shit along the way broadcasts the closest signal I've been able to obtain so far. But that signal is still so fuckin hazy, and I'm always always surprising myself (for better or worse) with the fresh curvatures of my reactions to this and that. I used to LOVE Green Day way back when, like bumpin fuckin "Dookie" every day for a month, and now I can't stand them! Not even "Dookie!" The guy starts whining into the mic and a rising siren of hatred sounds far and long somewhere deep in my skull. Like you know that feeling you get when you see Fred Phelps talking? Or when you witness the unfair, state-sponsored execution of an innocent convict? That's what happens to me when a passing car stereo pumps split-seconds of their bullshit into my life.
So fuck those guys. But that's what I'm saying. As I've grown to learn more about music, my tastes have changed. Ostensibly, for the better. But Green Day sells out arenas full of devoted fans. Whatever wait.
Am I more myself or less myself (yep Tracey Thorne) because my perspective is in perpetual mayhem?
Now I make coffee and hope to wrangle up an interview or two at your local Arby's or Burger King. Less myself.
