Nihil Lacrima Citius Arescit.

When you feel this way, you don’t want to do anything. You don’t want to talk about it, you don’t want to write about it, you don’t want anyone else to know about it. On the other hand, when you feel this way, you want to keep it all to yourself, you don’t want to risk jinxing it, you don’t want to let your secret loose into the world.

So you got the worst of it from the worst side of the worst in your class. So they chased you off the grounds with hurled divots from the greens. They take so much pleasure in your pain, your displacement, your isolation.

But they’re bloodless. They have no teeth, no lineage, no future. Their anger, their hate, their ignorance and stupidity; it can only evaporate under the heatlamps of their passion or eat them away from the inside out.

Either way, they won’t remember you; they never do. Because you’re small, because you’re quiet, because you’re insignificant. Because you look inside while radiating out, like a plant, like ivy, like an immortal bulb, like a Martian, like a flower.

All they can do is consume more than they produce. All they can do is think of themselves. They lean on others just to make themselves look taller, but they just end up looking lame and hobbled.

…

I’m sorry you had to walk home from school crying, feeling awkward and stupid because you had to keep walking but you couldn’t stop crying. I’m sorry you felt worthless and low and wish you had never been born. I’m sorry you felt so angry with no way to release it except in tears, I’m sorry you were all alone, I’m sorry there was no one to hold you; I’m sorry I couldn’t help you through your pain and your frustration and all the other sharp, confusing, unwelcome feelings.

But believe me, it gets better. It gets harder, too; but it gets better. You do have worth.

⎋

Small News.

If Hell is other people, then Purgatory is other people’s minutiae.

This isn’t anything new, but it has its roots in an older idea, a mother concept, a precursor of a nagging, niggling, neurotic-erotic notion; that of the role of vanity: Look at me. Listen to me. Read about me. Look what I did. Lookit.

The only person anyone ever cares about is themselves, no matter how close they are to the person in second place. It’s not wrong, it’s not evil, it’s not destructive. It’s ambitious, it’s self-preserving, it’s the default setting imprinted on every human; survival of the selfish, obey the orders of the blind gene, inflate the name of the host and cry its praises from the hillocktops. Look at me. Listen to me. Read about me. Look what I did. Lookit.

Small talk from small people. Most of us are small, some of most of us are okay with staying small, but most of some of us aren’t. Being small is equivalent to being a whole, as opposed to a sum. Some of us want to be more than our parts, some of us want to be less than most of everyone else, some of us want to be big. Some of us take action to lessen the influence of our inner small person, to quieten the small talk, to quash the pointless prattling, the silly simpering, the nammering about nothing.

And then there’s the rest of us, upon whose backs those who would become more than the sum of their parts stomp; those who aspire to be wholer than whole, who dream of growing bigger than small, who say so much but still nothing unless necessary.

…

Next time the muse deigns to light upon your ganglions, take care to give the dear bird your undivided attention, lest you drown a newborn in rainwater, let sleeping dogs lie through their teeth, allow ten thousand truths to rout a single exalted dream, etc.

And take notes.

⎋

Branded Delusions.

Hey, you were the one who suggested we put our unprotected heads inside your preheated oven.

Hey, you were the one who called your record Bad.

Hey, you were the one who wanted to stand in line for forty-five minutes, a half-hour of which was in direct sunlight, just for a stupid cheeseburger.

Hey, you were the one who bought that stack of faded comic books and then read them all in one sitting.

Hey, you were the one who became a doctor and then complained every time another dead body wheeled thru the doors.

Hey, you were the one who wanted to go to the reggae club.

We all revel in our own schizophrenia.

⎋