Not for the Faint-Hearted.

I remembered what she said when I was in the bathroom, trying to cover the stink of cigarette smoke. My thoughts about all of this have mimicked the swing of a pendulum; one day it all feels incredibly futile and ridiculous, and the next I'm ready to pack the car in the quiet of night and head west on route two. I just realized that my analogy doesn't have the upside of the pendulum as I had intended; instead I came up with two low-tide scenarios. I'm not changing it, out of spite! Oh, Dostoevsky. Why did you turn to God in the final moments?

Are we supposed to hope that blindly, is there really anything to be gained from it? What happened.

She had been talking to me about recent marital problems; what it boiled down to was that her husband wanted her to dress and be more sexy. She was bringing home the lions' share of the family income, getting a warm dinner on the table by six, scrubbing shit stains out of underwear and taking care of the bedsores on her disintegrating mother-in-law. She had exasperation in her eyes when she shook her head and told me, "I almost want to say to you girls to just not ever get married. That it's not worth it. But I also wouldn't want you to be alone for the rest of your lives."

And I thought of Terri, all of her stories of relationships winding up as bloated housekeeping jobs. "Girl," she said to me after explaining why she only lived with her current boyfriend for a month, "men will kill ya."

We think ourselves into tiny little boxes, we jam ourselves into perfectly tiny little squares with our thoughts. Expectation. What hope gives birth to. The realization didn't come to me until I arrived back at home: no matter what, we all die alone. Whatever you're looking for, stop. Whatever it is that you think you mean to anyone else, it's folly. Until you realize that, you're living under a delusion. There is no amount of permanence that you can take out of any of this. The curtain rolls back, and at that moment of being alone onstage for the first time, none of the effort you've put forth toward other people's joy or comfort will have any relevance. And you can see the first sprouts of this truth even now. You will squander your youth, your happiness, your thick hair, your very life by trying to make other people happy. Other people will only ever care about themselves. They won't care so much, for instance, that you spent forty-eight hours craving their touch. So what does the craving get you? A dark pit in your stomach.

Learn to put yourself first without being totally selfish.

This philosophy is ferocity, and what I need is more of the constant awareness that it alone lights the path that leads to individual freedom from misery.

Happiness, in other words.

People think they have everything figured out but in reality they're stumbling drunk, through the dark night, swinging wildly with a baseball bat trying to hit a 90 mph curveball that could be coming from any direction.

I'm not happy tonight. Allow me to strain my thoughts through this seive. Discontinue reading if you're already upset with my vitriol.

Here are some things that I loathe.

1. People who think you're blowing things out of proportion when they still have themself listed as single on a popular dating site and who, further, have begun communicating with some chick via said site and keep talking about her, and deep clean the house when they think she's coming over-- and this is the first time in several months that they've touched a sponge or mop.

2. People who think that anger is weakness or rudimentary.

3. People who won't shut the fuck up about the past; the ones who tell you the same boring story about how this one time at this one party this one thing happened... every freaking time you see them. Shut up already, you're not interesting or clever.

4. People who only call you to do stuff when their fuck of the night is otherwise engaged.

5. Yeouch, it's harsh, but it feels good to just be mean right now.

6. People who have only seen XXX but still pontificate about why Vin is a bad actor. FIVE HUNDRED, BITCHES.

7. Maybe he's retarded? I mean, not in an un-PC way, like, really retarded. Missing some chromosomes?

8. Egomaniacs like the lead singer of Metallica. Have you ever seen this guy's videos? Holy shit man, hire a creative consultant. People can go to your concerts to just stare at your mug. See also: Creed, Coldplay, and any of those whiny wanna be punk bands that the kids seem to like these days.

9. Speaking of coldplay, people who give their children ridiculous names. If a kid wants to be named "apple," he'll go to Evergreen and change it upon arrival. Johnny Cash will tell you all about it in "A Boy Named Sue."

10. Old people who just won't fucking retire.

11. My reticence at pointing out his asshole tendencies when they're happening.

If I could be anywhere right now:
Olympia, and I would have taken that Kevin guy's invitation to hear his band play in that seedy ass bar behind King Solomon's Reef. And all the cool guys I knew in Oly would be there, and we'd be drinking fishtail and I'd have my camera, there would be Russian and French in the air, and cigarette smoke, and it would rule. And in the morning we'd wake and really rule the world, Ahniwa-style.