Phlegm in throat feeling for weeks. Allergies, sinus infection, something more mysterious. Not every ailment has an entry in a book. Related to spring, the stirring earth; winter is the season of death; spring is life and life is fresh aches and flesh-eating illnesses. The time of year when everyone wakes up, including intestinal parasites. Sprouting seeds, stinging bugs, viruses and germs; peel off those layers, shed that winter weight and do naked summersaults in needly new grass where poisonous insects and irritants have unprotected sex.
Almost never check my physical condition. Feel parts of my body as little as possible, look only if necessary. Don’t want to know what’s going on with my nuts, asshole, face. If people don’t wince or gag when they look at me I’m not looking either. If I don’t feel an organ explode or a bone break I’m not poking around, putting an otoscope in my peehole.
Same goes for my psyche. Unless the ghost of the man who molested me appears at the foot of my bed in the blackened night, I’m not going back to my past to pinpoint my trauma. Not drawing a chalk outline around my murdered innocence. Leave it for the buzzards.
Men don’t go to therapy or the doctor. They don’t reach out, plan events. They don’t know how to live. They pleasure themselves in a flurry of loathing and shame. Women feel energized and connected after an orgasm; men think about hanging themselves before the last brackish drop has fallen.
So why don’t men take better care of themselves. It’s because we know what we are. Unless we’re building, protecting, inventing or entertaining we’re worthless. Redundant beasts with slim odds of distinguishing ourselves.
Higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse, more suicides and mattresses on the floor. Men tend to live their whole lives like escaped cons. Women have higher rates of mental illness because they care about well-being.
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My friend came to town for a night. Played a show at a local dive. He’s a drummer; jazz, improv, solo. One of the world’s finest, an incredible performer. But it was still a show. Hours of sitting at a bar and drinking pisswater I can’t afford. Standing on concrete in a suburban hillbilly’s garage, pretending to listen to the others, 40 year old men playing like they’re robotripping in the bedrooms of their adolescence. Not even youthful indulgence with these husks.
Pain in the ass shows. I could never go to another one in my life and I wouldn’t miss it for a second. I’ve read several of the 47 billion (48 by the time I finish this parenthesis) critical essays on disconnection and loneliness and how no one hangs out anymore; I’ve written a few myself. As I stood at this show, a thought pulsed through me, matching the dull throbbing in my knees and feet: I’ve hung out enough for three lifetimes, and for the most part it hasn’t amounted to jack shit.
37 years old. No money no children. No real use to anyone. Still trying to save up to fix my cat’s teeth. But I surely have stood at some shows. Watched movies and read books. Formed opinions on cultural products I’ve forgotten. I used to hang out all the time with cool dudes who had good taste. Who gives a rat’s ass now.
Loneliness and atomization; caused by the phones and the decline in third spaces. Caused by capitalism, individualism and so on. Try a simpler explanation: we don’t like each other all that much, nor do we like ourselves. People stick together not because they enjoy it, but because they need to. And when they don’t need to, this is what you get. Not that isolation makes people happy; nothing can do that.
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The phlegmy throat lasted long enough, I opened my mouth and had a look. Tumor on the inside of my cheek. Raised and not painful, not a chance it’s a chancre. Could be benign or malignant. Mouth or throat cancer isn’t out of the question. I’m an ageing man with a history of smoking.
Unsettling at first, but I thought about it. The idea of dying soon doesn’t bother me. Not that I want to die. But how much time do I need? Considering what I’ve done with time given. Without a living tie to future generations, how much time do I need for more acculturated frivolity. Already mourning all those aioli's and A24 films I’ll never know.
You have more time than you think, more time than you want. You say the opposite, that you don’t have enough time, life is so short. If life is short why are you so slow in getting to it. All this deluded blather: the overwhelming pace of modern society, pressure to perform, stay relevant, burnout, exhaustion, etc.
However much time you have, it’s too much. Whether you’re a single mom with two jobs or an unemployed single man, your time will burn like a giant barrel of old electronics. Living in the moment is easy; it’s the moment after, then the next, then the one after that. Duration—long, heavy, shimmering and scaly—coils around us and suffocates like a python. Say life is short to lessen its killing length. Years and years of waiting for what never comes.
The seeming brevity of our days arises from the illusory view of life as primarily structured by events, experiences and accomplishments with standout significance and heightened intensity. We anticipate and remember these moments. Condense the time in between, time’s crushing bulk and vast emptiness; all the tedium and drudgery, the mechanical acting and exhausting idling. Man, it all went by so fast. No, you can’t relive the torments of duration, so you round most of your days down to nothing.
How much time do you need; what is death interrupting? Do you know how long 20 minutes is? 20 minutes taking orders at a register, after you’ve been doing it for five hours already, after you’ve been doing it for two years, five years, ten.
How many more podcasts, videos, movies, trips, messages, books and poems, partners, rodeos and hoe downs, bottles and joints and lines of blow. Browsing scrolling swiping hours. I’ve seen plenty of sunrises and sunsets, glimmering light on a lake. Need to live longer to update my resume, send messages that will sit forever unread, ignore other people’s heartfelt creations.
No one is addicted to phones or drugs or booze, attention or sex or work. Dopamine isn’t real. Every compulsive act is an attempt to chop time into digestible bits, but no matter how much we dice, we still choke.
The move to a new city, the wedding, the divorce, the promotion, the debut, the contract, the birth; then the time after, more than enough to grind it all to dust, leaving you to wander the desert, still there to bear the awkward shapes of sluggish afternoons.
"Loneliness and atomization... Caused by capitalism, the rapacious drive for profit, individualism and so on. Try a simpler explanation: we don’t like each other all that much, nor do we like ourselves."
Dialectic at work here; move to a place like where I live, where basic communal solidarity still exists to some extent and late-stage capitalism isn't the only game in town, and you find that folk don't dislike each other all that much. Some of them even like themselves, though corporations are working hard to stamp that shit out ASAP.
This sentence of yours made me chuckled - "If life is short why are you so slow in getting to it." I agree that the loneliness, depression, narcissism trends have been analysed to death by now. There's just so many different ways to describe how messed up we are and the fact that we have society to assign some blame to.
You mentioned A24 and that instantly brightened up my day. I'm a big fan of the studio too. So many masterpieces produced in such a short span of time. I have enjoyed their work with bolder narratives like Everything Everywhere All At Once, Midsommar, The Whale, Beef, Past Lives - unfolding human trauma stories in the most creative ways.
But you're right, I think that we like each other less. Whether it's from some of us having less tolerance, or that people are becoming more of an asshole. I mean, there's actually a book called "The Asshole Survival Guide" that came out in 2017 that teaches you how to deal with the ones in power. Assholes in power... I think that's the problem right there.