Wednesday, July 22, 2009

FEET


I’m sitting at my desk at work right now and I can literally smell my feet. With my shoes on. Does this ever happen to you? I mean, I don’t mind, I kind of like the smell of my own feet. But it is unsettling when someone comes over to talk to me and the whole time I’m thinking, “can they smell my feet too?” I knew I shouldn’t have worn my skate shoes. The sad part is: the stench is only going to get worse throughout the day. It’s only ten, and my thick, black cotton socks are only going to get wetter as my feet get sweatier.

What should I do when someone comes over to talk to me? Do I make light of the smell by joking? Something inappropriate like, “Hey co-worker, your feet stink. Just kidding, those are mine.” Is that funny? Would other people respect that?

Three people taken the poll. Don’t forget to vote.
When I arrived at work,
I noticed with a smirk,
That the feet underneath my belly,
Are really quite smelly.

I shouldn’t have worn these shoes,
They are too yellow in hues.
I might have worn my vans,
But I'm not much of a fan.

As coworkers approach,
It’s like they see a roach.
Because the smell from my feet,
Has been likened to rotting meet.

When we talk I am worried,
My speech with them is hurried.
I try to laugh and smile,
Using all my guile.

I say It doesn’t matter,
It’s only mindless chatter.
But the truth is present,
The smell isn’t pleasant.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Depression session

I finished my story about John and Steve. It’s currently 8 pages long and, per your request, quite depressing. I will post it as soon as I’m finished revising.

Sadness and depression is relative. What I find depressing, you probably find cheery (i.e. the suburbs, high paying corporate jobs, most Bob Dylan). I also think true and genuine pity is the most gut-wrenching of all emotions.

Waiting for a subway in Boston this past weekend, my friend Jake commented on how sad and horrible he felt for a blind man singing for spare change. I, on the other hand, thought the scene was quite relaxing. The blind man didn’t look sad (he looked drunk, which at 1:00pm on a Sunday is pretty sad, I guess). His voice was pleasant and heartfelt as he belted some Motown hits. What is depressing about that, I asked Jake. Jake claimed the man’s life was probably riddled with alcoholism and lost loves. Jake looked at the blind man through a different lens. What caused Jake to feel sadness?

What we find sad is based on something innate that isn’t necessarily universal. Jake has a tendency to see blind people as tragic figures, while I do not.

I get pangs of guilt and depression when I witness severely mentally handicapped people enjoying simple pleasures. In Boston we sat and played in a fountain. I watched a mother happily wheel her handicapped child to the edge of the fountain, and although his facial expressions were hard to distinguish, the boy laughed and clapped with joy. Other children were running and jumping in the fountain, but the boy was content just watching the fountain work and the other kids play. The mother stood by her son and pointed at the high streams of water with a smile on her face. I thought of how that boy would never run from water, never scream with the other kids. I thought of how the mother, who knows more about unconditional love, perseverance, and tragedy than I could ever fathom, enjoyed watching her son feel good. I realize that the mother would probably take offense to fact that I felt pity for their situation, but this is the reality of my emotion. The scene was heartwarming and excruciating at the same time.

Why did I find this particularly sad and Jake didn’t? I don’t know. What makes us sad is complex and powerful. Also, why do we sometimes like sadness? Why did more people want a depressing ending than a happy one? Do we find pleasure in pain? Of course.

What makes you saddest?
-a kitten who is the runt of the litter
-your parents selling your bed from childhood
-an industrial town that is dying
-watching someone botch a public speech
-none of the above
-these are examples of pity, not sadness

OK. Enough of that. I’m kind of interested to see if people vote. Next post will be about something happy, I promise.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The Fog is Thick on a Sunny Day


This weekend, I will brave a four hour barf bus to enjoy a weekend in Beantown. Me, Louis G, Eric, Rob, Jake, and maybe this kid Corey are taking somewhat of a dude weekend up in the Walking City. So, if anyone knows any spots we should hit up in the Hub, let me know because I w….

Phew, that paragraph was exhausting. I couldn’t think of much to say about Boston and instead tried to insert nicknames for the city in order to fill space.

In fact, lately I’ve been having difficulty thinking of much to write about. Anything blog worthy, at least. Blog worthy-yuk. Why is this? Where is my mind? What would atrophy a normally churning mind filled with half-cocked ideas and hardly thought out proclamations in a week? Could it be that seven days of boozing with Louis G has turned my mind into a pink margarita? Nah, that can’t be right. Have three months of work as a mindless city drone waiting to be devoured by the metaphorical queen bee of bureaucratic society gradually digressed my brain power to that of a third grader’s? Does that bee analogy even make sense? Obviously not. But what happened to my brain? Where did my ideas go?

For a long time, through most of college, my thoughts were clouded by fog. Everything I tried to wonder about exclusively, things I wanted on the tip of my conscious tongue, was behind opaque glass. I could only think in images, in general motions, in figures, not specific constructed thoughts. It’s difficult to explain the feeling, other than you know it when it’s there. It’s roughly like the side effect of the devil’s weed: never total awareness, even when you desire it.

The fog is a coupling of anxiety and general despair. John Cheever talks about the fog in Bullet Park. The fog pushes Hammer to drinking and madness. Although Hammer recognizes the fog, he never speculates on a specific cause, largely because there is no cause, no epicenter of haze. He lies and waits for a clearing, unable to sleep or eat. He changes his surroundings desperately but seems to know all active efforts to completely escape the fog are useless. He only hopes to escape through the minutia in life; living completely in a yellow room that brings him peace. What pains him most is the inability to leave. But Hammer fights, he knows it is a loosing battle, but he fights anyway.

Perhaps what Cheever misses in his consideration of the fog is the apathy. Apathy is a leading symptom. The knowledge that there is a pervasive nothingness, a falseness in life, and not caring to act against it.

I hated the fog at first, but slowly accepted it once I realized it was always present. It’s like someone pulled off my rose colored glasses and exposed me to the dullness of reality. I grew comfortable. I also recognized the importance in acknowledging the fog. Like Walker Percy quotes Soren Kierkeggard in The Moviegoer, “the specific quality in despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair.” Since I recognized the truth, I could finally work within the truth. Also, like The Moviegoer, I grew content in an existence within. The fog was there and after brief searches for escape, I accepted the damp, clouding blanket. The search for escape was exhausting, so I stayed inside.

And because I didn’t fight the fog, the fog cleared. Out of apathy and love and interest in various things, I seemed to see things again. I could think with complete mindfulness. In fact, it’s cleared so much I forget what it feels like. I have occasions of immersion in the haze, but I’ve generally lost the Fear, the Dread, malaise, or whatever you want to call it. And this has inspired a different kind of apathy. I’m happy tending to my garden.

Is this why I can’t think of anything to say? Because a life without fog is a life of happiness? I miss the edge of the fog; having a foot in both worlds. Anxiety and despair were, on some level, exciting.

But maybe, and perhaps the scariest thought, I’m back in the fog and don’t know it. Has the war against the malaise and routine been lost, and I didn’t even notice the white flag? Did I put on my rose colored glasses again? I don't feel passion about much this past bit, at least not enough to write about. Is this surely a false sun?

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Louis G and Me




The results of last week's poll are in! 9 people voted, about 8 more than I anticipated. And the winner...

Depressing fashion!

Ahh, good old depressing fiction, could you ever lose? And the more I read the story, the more excited I become. There is great potential for a depressing story, and I'm glad you chose this option. As for more good news, no one said the story sucked. That's promising.

I quickly abandoned posting on a daily basis because Louis G is here in NYC. The stinky-footed Frenchman is sleeping on my floor ( I don't have a couch big enough to support his ample frame). So, needless to say, instead of writing I have been drinking. Drinking and skating after work don't lend themselves to the writing process. Neither does having a 6'2 Frenchman sleeping on your floor. The little writing I have managed to do in the past week has occur ed while at work. It's well worth it though; Louis G is one of my best friends. I can actively say that unlike most foreign people I meet, I legitimately think he is funny. Usually with foreigners, there is such a language barrier that humor is demoted to a base level, where we resort to awkward gestures and quick, funny sounding sentences instead of real humor. But, Louis has mastered English on such a level that there is a perfect combination of wordy jokes as well as awkward sentence fragments. For instance, we were walking through the grocery store and he insisted I 'Drive' him to the beer aisle. See, instead of 'lead' him, he said 'drive me'. Funny stuff. Or maybe you had to be there?

We are going to Boston next weekend. And, as far as my break from writing, you know what my favorite dude Richard Yates had to say- "To be a serious writer you must be a serious drinker."

PS. I think of this when pondering a way to finish the story in a depressing fashion:

What a fate, to be condemned to work for a firm where the smallest
omission at once gave rise to the greatest suspicion! Were all employees in a body nothing but scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in a morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?