I wish I was Jewish. Then I could have a story to tell. Something to write. But most of the time, I am hollow. Events pass like clouds in my life. Everyone is anonymous -- nothing really juicy or fleshy happens. I am a white man, without a soul. Mediocre as a bowl of oatmeal. Oatmeal without brown sugar, or jam, or honey. Or milk.
Where do I get my inspiration, my friend? Must I bring knife to palm and cut myself some pain? Do I do it intentionally? I write words, but a word is something skated over almost to infinity... even my ideas are not my own. Someone thought them. Someone wrote them.
And why write? Who would read me? Even if I could write, that is. Our planet's population is multiplying exponentially -- as are the books, written by people that didn't bother to read if their idea was already "been there, done that" by some obscure predecessor. God, even my mood swings have a trademark, owned by Lord Byron or Samuel Johnson. My body is not my own, it was made by my parents. What's mine? Where do I begin?
So you understand my dilemma? I try to think something original, then read Plato years later to see he already thought it. Do I go apeshit Derrida style, throwing my feces at the ceiling out of an attempt at bizarre originality? But someone is bound to walk out of the shadows and claim that as their own.
Is it my damnation to suffer this endless cycle? To be trapped in the Pacific Northwest, in a silent prison, impossible to penetrate to the Beyond, because I must somehow make friends with paper dolls with interesting names like Peter and Jill? Is my job to find some crumb or scrap of something that hasn't yet, I would imagine, enflame the soul?
The old routines aren't working anymore. Deluged in my books, even that... of reading... that has gone dry for me. I get nothing.
Chaos. Random chance... that is my savior. I will read no more. Only walk into a crowded street, get lost, walk for many blocks, end up lost. And sit on a step, pull out a smoke. Observe. Thinking is a junked up broken down machine. A stupid device.
Now only partaking of the psychic panoply, the environ of life... waiting for something to happen... will I recognize it?
Or will I be lost further in the labyrinth, in the full embrace of suffering?... I'm tired of transcending, understanding. Only descent, experience... only dive ... only be too willing to dive into the dark valley and make the darkness my abode... and outside in the weeping and gnashing of teeth will I find my kingdom... in the Abyss of Unknowing.
