The farther I slip down this rabbit hole the more broken I seem. I am beginning to think too critically; I fear I see too well. For the longest time I have been gripped by this over-arching sadness; an evergreen spring of self doubt and malice which has trickled to a swade yet effervescent pool of loathing. It bubbles; to the surface it bubbles. I loathe the political system which holds its citizens captive. I loathe the social hierarchy which is so prune with hypocrisy. I loathe a humanity chained to a soul deadened pseudo freedom. I find my deft and drive confiscated. I no longer wish to write but I find myself compelled. Fear compels me; for the only thing scarier than the thought of being broken would be the realization that perhaps I am not; perhaps we all take this placebo of self dissociation and swallow. How many wills freed choose apathy? How is it that love tears hearts and hate builds them? Will I ever find these answers. Will I stop looking if I do?

Like many black men my age; not having a decent role model has created many craters and deep crevices in my being. What do you do when you look in the mirror and you don’t see a reflection? How do you distinguish the good from the bad, the man from the monster? It seems that like many things in life, as a young black male I am on my own; yet I have never found myself lonely or desperate; only numb. Though my particularly tough hide can mask the pain does it not also dull the pleasure? I solemnly vow to one day ascertain these answers empirically; I vow to one day move the collective. If and when that happens I’m sure I still won’t be able to see my reflection in that mirror, its far to late for me, but perhaps I will be able to feel it and I would think it would be nodding and smiling at me in appreciation and recognition. I believe that one day, I won’t be a vampire, I guess.

Love is a lot like a child learning cursive; you think it’s something that makes you seem classy or demure; adult. It changes the normal lines and squares you’re used too into something different; a rolling form of a static expression. But after you grow or shrink; age, you realize that you can’t really practice it…except at formal, accepted times. Then comes the realilzation that you have forgotten how to “do” certain letters; things, and all of a sudden everything looks alien; doomed. After trying to peice together what little you understand…you always come to the same realization…well at least it looks pretty….

How arrogant tombstones are; of what consequence is a declaration etched in stone that couldn’t be made in life? I always figured the fondest obituaries are the things left behind; the machinations, the culminations, the echoes; the constant emotional monoliths that resonate as memories; that equivocate us. When your loved ones die, don’t bury them in ground; bury them in your hearts. Let them in; let their words and actions vibrate your core, stir you’re very being. The world will continue to spin on it’s trestle, the yin will continue to confront the yang; are mortal coils really the harshest conduits of feeling? 

As a child; my family and I would sit down to play board games every so often and monopoly used to be my favorite. I would roll the dice with such vigor, build and expand my empire with such passion, crush whoever dared to have a folly of fate and land on my property. As an adult I picked the game up and realized all the countless hours I spent, not outside with nature, not bonding with love ones, but doing the very thing I would be expected too do for the rest of my life. Its called “growing up” the idea that I should and would slowly become a symbol of decadence; compare my assets to that of others, compete against others as well as myself with one goal in mind: to try and own as much arbitrary virtual nonsense as possible; a foolish quest that no one can win. You see in monopoly; in a life comprised of the idea that financial means equates success; no one can truly win; the winner is just the fool that loses last.    

Today I turned the faucet and was suddenly struck with a euphonious high. The water; brine; is summoned from an impossible place and as this water is conjured there it spills tenaciously on the ceramic curvature of my sink; the cradle of our lives; quenching our thirst; whilst courageously washing all of the pain and blemishes away. I watch in wonder, all the while in the deepest of thought, as all of the tubes and pipes intermingle intermittently searching for a satisfying release. What is water; life; without it’s sluices and valves? Without some kind of emotional release? Still, I suppose.  

Today while walking I saw an abandoned house. It was a wretched old thing with plain, deceitful wooden paneling for its door. Its sad face was covered in moss, spray paint, and gaudy intentions. Every single one of the windows were shattered from the inside out. The house reeked of fear and misery; the surrounding tempura; the fauna, seemed devoid of creativity; breath. I marveled at its beauty. Is this rotting monolith not a testament to brevity? Is it not the epitome of human form? A morbidly insightful recital of us all? A big gangling construct though discarded; foreclosed; useless; empty; is somehow, someway still standing; rooted; is it not liberating that a house, no matter how disheveled; no matter how many boards are put up; no matter how it is dressed, attacked, distraught or left for ruin; no matter how flawed; that the light always, somehow, finds a way to seep in? Surreptitiously, doesn’t the darkness always, somehow, find a way to leak out? 

I read the paper today and reverbed in horror as I scoured an article that relayed the the most startling facts; that an overwhelming amount of single parent households are comprised of minorities. I wondered; maybe wandered is a more appropriate word, as to where they would find the need to study such trivial information, or that they would focus their research on the perpetuation of half truths. Let’s assume they threw out the obvious; the war on drugs claiming and reclaiming so many young minorities, the constant relaying of messages that minority men are lesser forms; and focus on the supposed “randomness” of the research. The randomness is non-sequitor, since the theory of random remains just that, a theory which is used to justify the inconsistencies that unripe minds cannot ascertain. This so called study is an attack, a principled attack on an opponent that is down. Is this what scholars resort to just to be published? When I receive my diplomas I will burn them. Then work hard the rest of my life to unlearn the atrocious imaginings that were spoon fed to me these last 18 some odd years.

I have found that my imagination is most vivid right before I sleep. I am constantly ripped from the loving embrace of my dreams to sit in the squalor of reality; prison. I attack my pad furiously and with contempt. I write with no central idea or consciousness; why should I? life isn’t a neat little packaged series of events. Life is misspelled; everything is erroneous; trust me if all of this was a word document, there would be red lines all over the place. Maybe the reason humanity has such a love affair with stories is because that’s how we wish life truly was. We wish we got the girl or guy at the end; we wish we vanquished some great evil, some even wish they were that great evil; but the bottom line is we all wish we had someone narrating our life; leaving out the bad parts, accenting the boring ones, and embellishing the decent; and it all sickens me.

Every day I read the same sob stories, the same warring sub cultures, and the same so called intelligent and insightful people verbally spar while patting themselves on the back. Lets address my favorite subgroup shall we.

Pseudo-Feminists/Body Image/Self Hatred Fetishists

The following is not a message directed at people who truly want change. I am all about change. This is about all of the women and men who claim to be self conscious yet can still muster up the courage to broadcast their pictures and their shortcomings all over the internet. I honestly think that some people have a fetish for hating themselves. I get that people struggle with their weight, heck I’m one of them. But for the people gripe about how their life is so hard and fish for compliments, complain that someone called them names. EVERYONE GOES THROUGH THAT AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER, HOW ABOUT INSTEAD OF LETTING OTHER PEOPLES PERCEPTIONS AND WORDS DEFINE YOU, MAKE THEM EMPOWER YOU INSTEAD. The worst self haters of all are the people who aren’t bullied, the ones who’s very world hinges on the perception of being perfect in others eyes, to me that worst than being large, that worst than feeling sad. When will people realize that you, being the flawed you, is better than you, being the perfect someone else? Pseudo-feminists, or the women who claim equal rights but than forget to mention the billions of marginalized women in other countries really don’t make sense to me, that’s the kind of shortsightedness men are usually blamed for. Real Feminism isn’t about vilifying people who don’t identify with what ever you determine is right, its about teaching, illuminating the dark, and just like with any lesson, some people might not get it, that is when you show mercy and compassion, break it down for them ultimately make it easy for them to understand that they are ignorant without calling them such.

But in all honesty here is the part I don’t get I think I have a pretty basic understanding of how civilization works. There is one group in power (heterosexual white males in case your keeping score journal) and several marginalized groups set up in a cascading hierarchy with other slightly varying factors that determine their socioeconomic position. One of those factors is the culture, there are two kinds: individualistic and collectivist. Since most american “feminists” were born here, they were socialized the same as the rest of us, Individualistic, and with that comes the desire to want to be number one. They want to be “right” and there is nothing more detrimental to change than wanting to be “right” The group in power, the heterosexual white men for us in america, get the keys to our reality. They control what we deem real. They are the forgers of our destiny, So telling them they are wrong, is like telling yourself your wrong. The only way they, your world will listen is if everyone, and I mean everyone not in their group is up in arms.That’s right individuals of america, we need to be more of a collectivist society just to get the people in control to respect the individual.   

Well guess what women, men, oriental, black, latino, white, rich, poor, gay, straight, asexual,  transgenders, intersexuals all our lives are equally shitty; you face problems, some you should have to deal with and some that you shouldn’t. How about we use our equally awesome and tragic differences to bring us together instead of divide us.

Ahhh I feel so much better

see what I mean…no rhyme or reason to what I write. Crazy huh journal?

 I hate my 4am moments. But that is when I’m struck with a provocative clarity it seems.       

Today I realized If you watch the movie Mannequin backwards it is a startlingly accurate biopic of so many people. How many friends did you have that in youth, seemed so happily lost in the wonderment and intricacies of the enigmatically beautiful world around them, only to slowly stiffen up to the point where they can only observe a small window of a small area; frozen; with a plastic like gaze? Waiting patiently for the store owner to move them, dress them, tell them where to face? It is isn’t it, it is the unabashedly truthful retelling of all of our lives, and journal, that might just scare me.