B. tries to convince me: the difference between dust and dirt is philosophical.
“The former is what we all become and the latter is what we all stand on.”
It’s all beneath me, I think. It’s all foundation. B.’s face sinks, like a submarine,
and looks out at the waitress bringing us black coffee—B’s hand already on the sugar.
We’re on a trip to see emo bands, somewhere in Ohio. South of Columbus.
I have struggled my entire life to ensure to the ones I love, that things are going
to get better. B. eats a single chocolate chip waffle and says she is on a new diet,
but KiwiFarms has been calling it an eating disorder. I nod along, interested in girls
being spiteful and angry, like boys on 4chan. For a few seconds, it makes me
unreasonably happy: there is no real difference in the two genders at a community level.
I was 19, then. I didn’t know about any of that stuff. I just knew obscure porn sites,
inside jokes about old video games, and hardcore music. I was blank slate. A sponge.
Ten years now: the tablet ran out of room for any new cuneiform. I’m burnt out
or just dumber. In the funhouse of the past decade, I’ve learned more about capacity.
For example, B, if you’re still around — did you know that the formicidae (ants),
if only a half inch larger, would very likely be the most dominant species on Earth?
In general, though, Yale scientists say bugs have decreased by 40% in population worldwide, since our conversation in Southern Ohio. You were really into bugs. I’m sorry.
I can’t help but listen to The Doors today, June 12, 2024. My birthday. I’m the same age
as Morrison was, when he overdosed. A secret I never told anyone, really, but why not:
a night in the ER my sophomore year, after a pathetic attempt at a benzo-alcohol
self-own. I remember how clean oxygen could taste, the pinches of IV on my wrists,
and the lunacy of being administered charcoal. In the psychiatric evaluation, as part
of my release, they asked if I knew what I was doing to myself. I said no and I meant it.
B., I read the other day, in a book I think you’d really quite like—Notes on Suicide by Simon Critchley—that “the only successful actors in a suicide are inherently optimistic.” This explains
more about my life than I cared to ever know. It must be why I had called 911, rather than
laying there and expiring. I felt in my heart that to desire an escape—to flee out the door with
an exit sign shining above—just leads one outside. It’s not unlike origami, which you used
to do with sticky notes I used to write accounting study guides on. As much as I hate
Deleuze, and the mental plague he gave all people of our age, he was right about one thing:
the inside is just a folding of the outside and so on. The blurred boundaries of Whatever,
even when you feel your own death at a college hospital. I saw it myself, with all the red snake-wires protruding from me, white pressed clothes surrounding me, and gray metal taste
covering my tongue. On release, walking back to the townhouse we used to throw shows in,
I saw ants crawling in and out of a beer can, disappearing into the concrete-grass borderlines.
I’m sorry again, about what has happened to the insect populations worldwide. I stopped stepping on critters for that very reason. I haven’t caught a lightning bug in a jar in a decade.
HBD
wow happy birthday! same day as mine,,,