that's awasum

Ugly Thoughts
11.11.04 + 9:37 p.m.

So I’m on the bus, and there are two dumpy women a couple of seats in front of me, talking about their shitty lives, and about one of the woman’s kids, who probably also have shitty lives. I’m eavesdropping.

One woman says that she had nothing before she found God. Sounds to me as if now, God is all she has. And, good for her. Whether or not that God is a phantom doesn’t make too much of a difference, since His perceived presence filled a void that she may not have the resources to fill any other way.

She brings up her drug-and-booze-addled past, saying that she quit, because if she hadn’t, she would have died. And there was God, ready to guide her through her recovery.

Again, great. It takes mettle and awareness to recover from addiction, with or without God’s help.

But as much as her sober, God-loving life might be a vast improvement from the steaming pile of crap it once was, sounds like she was still left with a steaming pile of crap for a life. Except now that she's stopped abusing her system, the lif will be prolonged. Maybe her main salvation is that she no longer wakes up in prison, wallowing in her own filth.

That reaction surprised the hell out of me. It was judgmental and cruel. You guys know, I’m as whimsical and humanistic as a motherfucking unicorn on ecstasy. But lately I’ve been seeing that life, by itself, removed from a person’s situation, might have no value in and of itself. That is an ugly, disenchanting thought.

It could be that at one’s lowest point, she chooses to look up, or die. Could be that looking up, surviving, is an animal reaction, and that God is our way of justifying it, because we’re too arrogant to admit that we’re animals. Could be that choosing death would be the response that smacked the most strongly of humanity. Could be that hope is as empty a feeling as shame or regret.

I don’t know. I’m starting to see why so many of those bleak philosophers sounded so batshit crazy. No one wants to believe that hell is other people, that God is dead, or that life is solitary, nasty, brutish and short. But sometimes you see that horrible perspective so clearly that it can neither be ignored nor forgotten, and it clouds your optimism, no matter how natural and omnipresent you once thought Joy to be. That kind of awareness can break your brain a little, all syphilis symptoms notwithstanding. (Shout-out to Nietzsche.)

Maybe those philosophers argued so verbosely and vehemently in favor of well-reasoned misery because they wanted someone to refute them with a bit of clear evidence that the ugliness they spouted was bullshit, and they just kept getting angrier and crazier because no one ever came through. No one proved them wrong.

Recognizing that your faith in Joy could be crap, while existential gobbledygook is starting to make more sense than anything else ... that hurts like a bitch.

Stupid, stupid world events, following a friend’s recent suicide, have affected me slowly, and more strongly than I realized. A bit like a toxin accumulating.

Let’s hope this is a phase. I know I tend to be sort of extreme, so this outlook is probably fleeting. Hope so. It’s totally damned boring, I know, not to mention scary.

Sorry.

Anyway, on a more positive note, tomorrow’s my birthday. This weekend will rock, and I will have fun stories.

This morning I found a check for fifty bucks that I’d forgotten I had. I can have crazy good luck, sometimes.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Arm-in-Arm Down Burgundy - 09.05.05

Motivated! - 08.25.05

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.
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words ฉ luvabeans, 2003 - 2004