Why We Drink -

There's a fundamental reason. We desperately yearn for a sense of self as part of a larger social fabric.  Whatever that means.  Even alone.  Especially alone.

Because we maintain a relationship with drink past the borderline of intimate, and that skews all other relations to things, people, places, and events.  And skewed understanding of self-other references are about as problematic a thing as one might muster on a steamy night in a Russian bath with a good whacking of bamboo and a brutal splinter beveled into the left cheek of one's ass.

I tell you this from the cocoon of reclusivity.

I tell you this because I cannot tell anyone else.  Because I'm also losing my sense of distance.  Because a sense of distance is all I have anymore, a palpable tension of humidity that conducts stuff, I know not what, through the current of our mingling and maligning, and there is nothing healthy that is not toxic, so forget about the dualistic tendencies of obsessives and try to engage with your true self for a little while. He or she has been trying to show him or herself for a few years now, all the while smothered by your need to fit in.

He or she has been muffled by your teflon exterior, fried deep in fat.

I used to have a poem.  I used to have poetry.  In my journal.  Locked up for my own recognizance. Before I knew the plastic lining of costumes, the musty smell of body odor that's lingered one season too long.  Before I knew the heartbreak of aging, the desperateness of decaying ideals, I was already building new triumphs to hope toward, denying the outline of hope-lost, figuring that I'd fix that with the next fix, and on it went.

The most brutal fact of excitement is loneliness embodied.  The second less brutal fact of growing up is fornicating on the biblical notions of fidelity and righteous fulfillment, graduating to flossing daily and getting your exercise in before your body turns to mush right under once watchful eyes.  Now lazy, desolate, repining forthwith into the ether of ongoing effort and strained gaze.

It only matters if you make it matter.

Quick Maxim -

This is probably ridiculous, but:

If you stop struggling, you are no longer restrained.

Too Much Out There . . .

To even begin to form an opinion.  Allow me to consume for another few years, please.

I'm an Inane Fuck-Up and I Falsely Believe It Matters

My sobriety, that is.

As if there's a score card.

Quick, how long have you been sober?

Quick, tell me to fuck off. 

The details of my life have dwindled into a rusty barrel, brimming with the saliva of western movies' used chewing tobacco.  

The color of gasoline in the sun.

A dragonfly's wings.

The smell of musty attic, fraught with the voice of ghosts.

That condensed exhaust smeared onto snow. 

An after thought.

Tell me it matters.

That I can care.

Why is it we run from these thoughts even concurrent to having them?

Hard Easy Realization -

Is just this: if you think you can make contributions to the world without steeping yourself in already existent knowledge, data, experience, and already established fact, I think you're probably wrong.

Said a different way: If you think that you can be successful by being totally anomalous, you're probably wrong.  There are counter-examples, sure.  But most people who have "made it" have successfully synthesized fields of knowledge,  and made a ton of errors, before they strike out into uncharted territory.

Alcohol Causes Anxiety -

Marker for Future Posts - Comments Welcome.

Laughter's Function

1) Laughter is a waste of breath.  To laugh is to show, simultaneously, that we don't need the breath for something else, mainly running

2) Laughter shows vulnerability.  When we want to signal comfort, we can use laughter to do it.  We do not have to use breath to run away = we are comfortable

3) However, laughter also can show dominance; it can be used as a show: I don't need to use this breath to run because I'm not scared of you.

When we are nervous, we often laugh to try for a return laugh, which could signal comfort.  We are also trying out a little dominance; we are testing the waters for a response.

Every Day -

I try not to hate the routine.  I try hard to stay energized.  I try to find meaning in the grey cubicle world that so many would long to relish.  I am pushed into many meetings.  I am forced to compel numbers toward electronic transmissions.  Am relegated to the inside of my head.  Have difficulty expressing the humor I feel everywhere.  Have lurking suspicions of eavesdroppers just out of my visual field.  Award myself for discipline.  Plan to accomplish too much.

Plan on grand connections that are asexual, but manifestly full.

Barely succeed in running out, the doppler effect of my scream changing tone for all those but me.

The Sin of Youth

That one's perspective is universal.

That one's insight about something makes it valuable to the something.

Loud laughter in a crowded train as a show of force.

Competitive humor--this one has always pissed me off.

Working hard creating opaque goals that justify laziness.

Lacking knowledge of one's own preferences.

Social standing as largest indicator of everything worthy.

Neediness and desperation (maybe that's just me).

Graceful hope that things will change, both internally and externally.

Being abused because of misplaced trust.

Lack of patience for hard work. <--this one is the worst, for me at least.

We Don't Know . . .

We don't know whether God exists.

We do know that social bonding rituals are strong.

We do know that group coherence is a primarily important feature of future human generations and survival generally.

Role playing (specific designated functions) are also highly necessary, and specialization creates fields of expertise that take years to understand and learn.

It is intuitive to think that, above the structures of specialization that we've created, someone, a boss maybe, a super manager, must be watching, and that such an entity by default has more perfect knowledge, because only that entity has access to all the information.

The ideal of an all-knowing systems manager is behind assertions of God's truth.  But we are partial imperfect knowledge knowers, so we by necessity, cannot know whether God exists.

That doesn't stop most of us appealing to the notion of grand authority, and because group dynamics are strong, doesn't stop groups from causing conflict with other groups who hold different conceptions of authority.

The problem: human-created authorities are endless.  Hence towns of only 3000 with 7 denominations to worship in come Sunday.

The secondary problem: if there's not a grand systems manager up there, however abstract, the meaning for our role-playing as well as we might isn't quite as crystal clear.

Drinking to Fake Yourself into Extroverted Territory

For a long time I drank.  No surprise there.

But here's the pattern when drinking involved social outings of more than 3-5 people:

I'd dread going.  Dread it as much as giving a presentation.  And naturally I'd get spit-faced drunk.  And naturally THEN I'd get through the presentation, err, group of strangers.  And some days I'd feel that I was more successful than others.  Most days I'd be happy to have survived without total social opprobrium.

When I drank alone (often) I also tried to convince myself that I was extroverted and convincingly charismatic, outgoing in an effortless way.

And that's just the farthest point from the truth I could get.  Because since I was a  kid, I was rushing away from social situations, running home at 3:06, as soon as school let out (in 5th grade, I still remember it precisely), through doors that would allow me to circumvent the main throng of peers waiting to imbibe on my flesh.

I have always felt over-stimulated in groups of people greater than a handful.  My preferred group is 3: me and two others.

And I've always needed recovery time from the social world: home.  Alone.

And I've always told myself that I was to blame for needing these things, for being this way, and that I had to work on getting better.

But I was wrong.  Because there's nothing inherently wrong with introversion.

What Are You Holding Back For?

What are you surging ahead for?

Perfecting the Look: Orgasm, and . . . Chess.

I've been looking through a lot of bios lately.  There's one thing in common with these bios (mostly of writers, but artists in general, and professors, and anyone who uses their mind to create stuff that's artistic or artful): they all long to get this kind of far away, but deadly serious, look.  Inevitably, there's those little white sort of reflection bubbles in their eyes, and their cheeks are rosy, and the focus in their eyes is, how can I say it: unfocused, relaxed, peaceful, IN COMMAND, and also: hungry and desirous, nay, ravenous.  How the fuck do they get those two looks into one picture like that?  As if they'd just had an incredibly potent orgasm and then dove right back into an intense game of chess.  THAT is the look, my friends, and you too should start to perfect it if you dare.

Two Types of Friends

There are the types of friends who you go to because you want your ego restored.  You've been insulted, or you feel insulted, or you're just feeling crummy, and seek them out because they support your conception of your self as it already was.  They're shoring up the cracks.

Then there are different types of friends.  Those who don't worry about how you're going to maintain your image.  They're not disrespectful.  Perhaps they are even more respectful because they don't placate false versions.  They push you harder than you push yourself at times.  They tell good truths.  They falsify nothing.  They're honest and it hurts, but out of the hurt comes a stronger version of you.  These friends are harder to listen to at first, like some good music, but with time develop to reveal layers that the other types of friends can't conceive of, no matter their assertions to the contrary.

Of course there are straight up strategic friends, and there are people who only seek strategic friends, and only know friendship as strategy.   And there are lots of people who seek out friends only to assuage their own egos.  And that does upset me, yes.

But other people exist.  And they won't always be easy to know, to spot, that is, or to know over time, but they'll be much more varied and understanding and they won't placate.  There's something to that.