Why Am I Alive? (unabridged)

all snuffed out

It all started in the dark. Nothing but the dark.

I was the one who had to make the light.

The thoughts came through in flares. I couldn’t dissect all the colors.

It was all too much, even for me.

A placeholder sentence.

I started with simple stories. The kind you could digest in a single sitting. Most of them were only a hundred words. Some were longer. It didn’t really matter. They were all s**t.

I was just trying to get something off my mind. I couldn’t say what; I couldn’t ever get it off either.

It stuck with me. It hung in there like blood hangs from a limb. I couldn’t get rid of the impending sense of being senseless.

A placeholder sentence.

Then I moved on to poems. Poems were so short and so meaningless. It only took me minutes to do them. I could write a decent twenty of them by the end of a single cup of coffee.

It didn’t take much. Everything postmodern is only meant to impress once. After that, there’s nothing. It’s only sensation.

A placeholder sentence.

I met a girl in one of my classes. At first, I think she was scared of me. I’ll admit, I do look like a creep. I have a doughy face, uneven stubble, short and awkward frame--standing still, I trembled. I couldn’t even carry myself well. If someone watched me walk, they might think I was an extension of a Picasso poem.

But then, after some time, maybe she then liked me. I spoke a lot. Mostly because nobody else would. Now I’m really getting it. Having someone to think about while writing is all writing ever is. The Greeks had Muses as Gods--that must mean something. Having a muse is like having a God.

But it’s a lastless faith.

A placeholder sentence.

Why am I even alive?

I ask myself that question every morning. I don’t want to kill myself, but I certainly don’t want to live either. Neither do I desire to write anymore--that’s improper grammar, isn’t it? Whatever, I don’t care.

I’m done trying to keep up a sense of structure. My writing is getting sloppier, but that’s what writing is. I’m not trying to make some avant-garde statement or anything. I’m not even writing stories anymore--just thoughts.

A placeholder setnence.

We go to the amusement park. It’s nice. She’s really nice. She’s very soft and composed. She has a body that is cohesive. When she moves, she moves in a complete sentence, rather than in fragments. It’s all very nice.

A placehoolder sentecne.

Suddenly, I am very famous. My blog is getting lots of traffic. People like my useless thoughts. I get a mention on some hip publishing sites. I’m soon getting emails from people who want to help me make it. 

How does one “make it”?

A placeholder sent--we had sex.

It was my first time. Being a virgin until twenty-one is embarrassing. She didn’t care, although I could tell she cared. She didn’t smile once. Are you supposed to smile?

A place to hold this sentence.

That’s it. We’re done.

The fame got to be too much. People started recognizing me at coffee shops and open mic lounges. Lots of hipster girls began schmoozing with me. Lots of girls have had their mouths on my c**k in such a short amount of time, I might not ever be able to have kids. I’m exhausted.

The attention isn’t all that great. She doesn’t like me getting all this attention. I told her, when we first started, that it would be like this. “I’ll be great,” I said. “I can’t promise you anything because my heart is owed to the world.”

It’s not the same without her. My writing is empty.

It is all empty.

It is dark. Maybe night.

The beginning of…or the end? That's the part I can’t remember.

There’s still lots of lights, still lots of frustration. I take a sip of my beer. Glug glug glug. Gulp. Ahh. I light myself a cigarette. Hmpfh, hmpfh, hmpfh.  Pfhoooo. F**k.

My agent calls me up, says something in Arabic. Or something.

The pillar of Babylon and Zion stand in correlation with the temples of my cranium--

conducting a mystical electricity that has no cause to be in this universe and no effect to be useful. 

I invite everybody. Everything is blaring as we watch the city of Angels dance from my porch. It rests on a cliff, with a pool; one side the beach, one side the skyline. Everybody is noising around and conducting themselves like composers of a chaotic cacophony         --what s**t that is.

I move from room to room in a diaspora of disaster--

a flowing and reckless thing--

pushing through souls I never met or knew or intended to master--

just blushing colors swirling in the ceiling’s kaleidoscopic rain, 

as if in a jungle of psychedelic metropolitan vibrations--

the zenith of civilization echoing through itself, 

only to realize its own imminence and its own hollowness--

the end of it all; 

these people they dance, dance, dance 

while a revolution takes form beneath them, beside them, all around and through them, 

a sensory displacement of everything we’ve ever known--

how cold the floor is, here’s a beer, there’s a beer…

how cruel it all is, 

the crushing despotism of existence 

and the overarching nihility of this narrative we call life--

pick and choose, pick and choose--

but don’t make the right choice for the wrong reasons…

A placeholder sen"

just let them cry, just let them grow afoul with themselves; 

just let them weed over into a bending tower of vapidity and gross indifference--

their skins will peel soon enough, their blood will paint the cathedrals we never had,

 the songs we never spoke, the conversations we never sang--

their art will be a reflection of their deflective selves, 

a mirror to the mirrors of their self; 

their fashionable consciences ripped asunder by the moral complexity of 

a universe that is both conscious and unconscious to the finer points of plot and drama; 

the tragedy of life because we all know it ends in death, 

and the comedy of it that we are ever given life at all--

what an absurd joke to play on someone, let alone an entire everything--

what a practice of will to consider yourself special 

in a place that is fraught with specialness--

every atom, every molecule, every cell, every tissue, every flesh, every person, 

every leaf on the eternal tree withering and burning in its own castigated flames--

what nonsense to ever think of a why to the question of who--

we are nothing; I am nothing.

Sdhardaandiaed offers me another drink, a martini or something. He/She says it will be my last drink, because there’s work to do. A new project. A movie or something. A book tour. Somebody wants me to start a podcast. A Late Show appearance. Colbert cracking wise as I try not to let my nose bleed.

A darling repose.

A crackling dissent.

Now I’m just making s**t up.

So is she/he.

The smoke is rising and swallowing the scene whole. The irony is so thick we cut it up and spread it on our bruschetta. I go outside. Not the patio--everybody is there.

I drive up to a local bar, where there’s only old men from a time before their time, and old ladies with nothing left to give but their kidneys.

I call her. Twice.

First, she doesn’t answer. Second, she does.

“How have you been…?”

Nothing.

“I miss you…”

A cough.

She waits and waits. I wait and wait.

Finally, she says, “You’re a s**t.”

“I know.”

“Why should I forgive you?”

“Because I am broken. And alone. I have nothing. I have always had nothing. I was born this way. Almost dead. Already dead. It doesn’t matter which, and it means not that which it does.”

“…”

“Babe, I…”

“Don’t speak.”

“But…”

“Write.”

“…what?”

“Anything. Everything. Nothing. I don’t know, neither do I care. Just write.”

“…huh…about…?”

“About me. About you. About us and we and everybody else…they’re all the same. We’re all the same. You want change? You want closure?”

“…”

“Then write…”

“…but…I can’t…”

“You can. It’s all you have. It’s all you’ll ever have. 

You’ll love and you’ll be loved--you love me, I love you, you love yourself…I love myself…sometimes--we’ll be together. 

We’ll have children, a family. Everything else that comes with that. 

Whenever the lights get to be too much, the parties. The glitz, the glamour. 

When fame fades, and the emptiness consumes you, you’ll be here, you’ll return--I’ll be here for you. 

That’s how it goes.”

“…sure.”

A pause.

“But you’ll never be full. You’ll never have anything. What I give you is not something you can have. It’s just something that’ll be…around you.”

A pause.

“Go write--

I’ll be here if you’re done.”

 

I’ll never see her again.

She’s like a ghost. I am haunted by her.

There goes life, going on by you. You can’t catch it.

You go with it. Or you go against it.

If you’re like me, you do neither.

 

Life is a series of patterns disrupted by beauty--by change.

It all starts in the dark. Nothing but the dark.

We are the ones who make the light.

Author's Note

for fuck all and fuck in