Nonsense

I think someone took a crap inside my head last night.

If I were confident, I would walk through the mountains for months and collect twigs to build an exquisite pointer, perhaps three feet long. Then I’d travel to cities and use it to poke at people who seemed overconfident or condescending. I could enjoy doing that for a time.

Which way are you going? I asked. He said nothing at all. He just walked by as if I didn’t exist. I fell to the pavement and cried. He was but a stranger, but I wanted to be his lover.

Okay? Hello? Is there anybody there? I just moved in next door and I was wondering if you had any Spam. I crave the stuff, it’s delicious and extremely pink, you know. I slather it on my dachshund while I watch reruns of The Ropers. Excellent show, that. Highly underrated.

There are gaps in the logic, but they’ll be filled with rubber cement and earwax. I think it’ll hold until a new thought arrives. Ah, there’s one now.

An unproductive life: Let me first acknowledge that the very act of typing coherently is a productive act of sorts and as such represents a contradiction. But if I define productivity as a means of earning income or an activity that produces value for others then I will hold fast to the notion that this writing is unproductive. Having removed that obstacle, let me say that being unproductive is not necessarily slacking, not if the spirit of the lack of endeavor is based upon the principled act of not producing. In other words, within the supposition that productivity is meaningful, unproductivity may also be meaningful. Since I see no inherent difference in value between productivity and unproductivity, I simply choose to be unproductive because I enjoy it much more. I am placing value squarely on my enjoyment of life rather than any other principle. If I ever come to see productivity as being more enjoyable or more valuable than unproductiveness, then I will strive for productivity. Until then, I am a society of one who holds principled unproductiveness as value, though I willingly acknowledge that others likely share this principled viewpoint.

However, I am not communally unproductive—I am a solitary practitioner of the unproductive life, not sharing with others this principled lack of activity. In fact, if an unproductive lifestyle becomes socially valuable then that lifestyle necessarily becomes productive according to the parameters of my earlier definition. But in the spirit of honesty, let me say that I am not all that satisfied with unproductivity. That it is more enjoyable than productivity does not mean that it is actually enjoyable. Neither productiveness nor unproductiveness produces joy or peace within me. Yet, I sincerely want to experience joy and peace. But how? I don’t know. I simply do not know. Absolute power or the absolute lack of power, it seems to me, might in fact represent the two poles of joy and peace. Supposing that productivity fills the space between absolute power and unproductivity while unproductiveness fills the space between an absolute lack of power and productivity, then I obviously have a better chance to attain an absolute lack of power by being unproductive. I have already concluded that no amount of productivity on my part will lead to the possession of absolute power. I do still wonder, however, whether or not a certain degree of unproductivity may eventually lead to an absolute lack of power. It is doubtful, but I feel I have a better shot of attaining the peace and joy of an absolute lack of power through unproductiveness than I will of attaining the peace and joy of absolute power through productivity.

Liberals should cease being dogmatic or just come out of the closet and admit their fundamentalism. Conservatives should continue being dishonest and manipulative but should wear uniforms.

When you're a hippopotamus
You wonder what it's like to be anonymous
And when you're anonymous
You wonder what it's like to be a hippopotamus

Magic bunnies will provide life’s necessities from this moment forward.

Effervescent cinematic license instrumental to exclusive imaging and signifying speculative formalization ought not engender substantial outpourings of love or hate. However, most radicals will admit to conforming to historical patterns of rebellion when pressed on the matter. This admittance should not be construed as positioning, spinning, or constructing a false reality. The ambiguity inherent in such expositions will no longer assume a subject-object significance. Future linguistic endeavors will eschew the predicate in favor of pictorial representations or perhaps a high-pitched screeching sound. The written word shall be rendered obsolete in a matter of years. All representations, whether auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, or taste-based will be outlawed in the next decade. Mental constructions and abstractions should cease in the same time frame. Within the next century feelings, emotions, and instincts will also cease and the reign of nothingness shall begin in earnest. This course has been chosen in an effort to end suffering and the abuse of power. We are thankful for this and we despise our reactions to this path only slightly less than our ability to react. Nihilism, the belief in nothing, will give way to a physical nihilism—the existence of nothing.

I made a diagram of a space suit represented by pygmy masks and Aborigine obelisks configured around a thrice-painted picnic table. This powerful structure has the potential to be a replacement for Christian symbolism for the purpose of rallying support from the herd. Equal parts dogma, ejaculation, and fraternization, the space suit will engender fear and hope for a dichotomous interrelationship of twilight dining practices in most mid-size American cities (mid-sized defined as townships in mid-Atlantic states as opposed to population-based measurements). What can be said in opposition to the space suit without being deemed unpatriotic has yet to be determined. There will be an appropriate time to create an “other” perspective to serve as an outside threat to homeland security, but that moment is not yet at hand. For now, universal support is essential—the only appropriate nonsupportive response is silence. Watching reality TV shows will be considered a sign of obliviousness and that will also be acceptable. There will be no Q&A right now since questions could be interpreted as an act of terrorism. Please exit to the left and be sure to discard any waste paper or uneaten food products into the trash bins on your way out. Thank you.

Nonsense reigns supreme when detachment is absolute. Disconnection equals bliss. Happy smiles of contentment displace furrowed brows of anguish. Importance has diminished. Belief has waned. Values are discarded, replaced by sighs. The pursuit of power is abandoned. Being is enough now. Sitting still, eyes closed, mind blank. Time is irrelevant, one moment indistinguishable from another. This could be bliss, boredom, suffering, but the terms have no meaning. Existence reigns supreme, all that is.

But this isn’t the way it is. And yet, it’s as much the way it is as anything else. Nothing is definitive, no absolutes, no certainty, but neither is there relativity or ambiguity. Knowledge could possibly contain truth or it could store a myth. Belief is a reality and an illusion. Compartmentalization is effective but erroneous. Division is addition, multiplication subtraction. Authenticity betrays longing for authenticity, absurdity betrays an inadequate attempt to escape desire. Wanting is, but it’s not enough. Or it’s too much. Time deludes but controls perceptions. The moment is too short for measurement but not long enough for satisfaction. A feeling develops, takes shape but never solidifies. Change is constant but imperceptible within a moment. Meaning? What is it? We could be geniuses or fools and never be able to tell the difference.

...

Terror. Paralyzing fear. Black out.

I’ve come to, sprawled on my back in the passageway to the kitchen. I’m sitting up, my head aching, feels like I’m hung over, nausea. I remember now, I look toward the pantry, the gnome is gone. The dead cockroach is still there, so it wasn’t a dream. How long have I been lying here? The microwave clock reads 3:14 AM. I didn’t see what time it was when I walked in, but it must have been close to midnight. I left the bar around 11:30, it’s a short walk home. Was it a gnome? What is a gnome? I must have labeled it instinctively, trying to get my mind around a two-foot humanoid creature staring at me from the pantry. God, I’m dizzy. I don’t know what to do. Surely, I was just dreaming. Just go back to sleep. Can I make it to my bed?

I step through a doorway filled with light, blinded. My language has abated, I begin anew, but compelled to utter. I am reified through enunciation, no longer but . Object. Subject and: + , implied, in that these sentences are written for . Manifest, disjunctive, decentered. Emerged from the primordial into abstract consciousness, signified. No longer myself, but still a self. No different, yet changed. Paradox, but determinable.

Issues of old Playboys from the 1980s are stacked next to the bed, a jerk-off column within easy reach. Uncovered lamp, bald 60-watt light, hard on the eyes. There’s a moth buzzing behind the illuminated cream-colored blinds. A bedspread lying on the floor. A couple pillows, one dented with an imprint of my head from last night’s sleep. The tile floor is cold and clammy, my bare feet feel sticky because of it. I’m still naked, sitting on a plastic kitchen chair with thin, chrome-plated metal legs. It’s almost nine in the morning according to my alarm clock, but I always set it ten minutes fast. I want a newspaper. And a different life.

The nurse practitioner tells me I have gonorrhea. She’s preparing a shot right now, take it way. I’ve been having unprotected sex with a young Vietnamese woman I met at a community college night class. How to use Excel, database entry. I didn’t care about the class. I just wanted to meet someone.

I’m losing the sight in my right eye. It’s been getting more and more blurry over the past couple months so I finally went to have it checked out. My doctor doesn’t know what caused it. They’re still doing tests. I try not to think about it; it scares me shitless when I start brooding. I started smoking again to calm my nerves and cope. I’m having a hard time functioning any more.

I keep thinking about the unseen. Why did they choose me? I’m grateful, though. I don’t know why exactly, but it’s how I feel. I keep trying to understand, to search for some sort of meaning, purpose, reason. There’s nothing there. I haven’t made up a story that I can believe yet. I’ve lost the ability to deceive myself. And along with that ability, hope. I don’t think I can hold out much longer.

My head is spinning now. I have a million different ideas. They’re immaterial, though. That they’re bubbling to the surface is what counts. There’s something underneath, something hidden from my consciousness that contains meaning. Or maybe just desire. I can’t let myself conceive it, it must remain hidden, this purpose, this drive. To verbalize it will kill it. I can’t know it if I want to propel myself to search for it. Actualization is doom. Keep creating false meanings, constructed idols to worship as truth. They’ll keep me alive, or at least compel me to believe that I’m alive.

I need to settle into something, encapsulate myself in a story, objectify myself in a world. This could be a beginning, this will be the process. I’ll call it my life.

Be patient with fools not for the good of fools but for the peace of your soul. Forgive the slights against you so that you can harbor joy instead of resentment. Enduring senseless cruelties is not just a measure of your perseverance but also of your will to live and, most importantly, your faith in the value of existence. Embrace the spirit of freedom and inhale deeply the exhilaration of being. Within the universe of love, these are merely the constellations we have charted. Live your life exploring the undiscovered galaxies of possibilities. And please, by all means, let everyone else be if you’re an asshole.