The Iconoclast

Nothing's changed much except the weather.

The job is... routine. Presently, I'm averaging reading a book a day while there. I've already re-read all of the books I have here and have started scouring the library for new selections. I was asked by the trainer who taught my class to assist in training the class that was hired after mine, and spent a week supervising them as they got acclimated to the business and various lines of service. Also, this past week I've been working on a focus group project and documenting discrepancies in service from partner companies. It's... not what I  want to be doing for long, but as it stands I've already been noticed as someone who pays attention to details and is the go-to for those around me. As my supervisor put it to me, "It's hard for you not to stand out, isn't it?"

My private life may as well be dead. Friday night means having a few drinks at the bar with my friends Chris and Steve. Aside from that, I'm at home reading or watching television. There's been the odd occurrence of company, maybe twice in the past two months, but otherwise my time is spent solitarily.

The holidays are approaching and bringing with them everything I wish I could avoid. Simply going to keep my head down and my "bah, humbugs" to myself.

I'm not much given to flights of fancy when it comes to folklore, tending to view it with a grain of salt and interest in the story, not the origin. However, as last night was the year's end festival of fire (Samhain) on the traditional Irish calendar, it also marked the fourth move of the courts of the aos sí (people of the mounds, or, in other words, faeries). If one looks at the old calender, the court would have last moved May 1st (Beltane), which coincides with the beginning of a lot of a long string of odd, bad luck for myself. This was punctuated with my being run off the road early Halloween morning and spending several hours in the rain waiting for a tow truck.

Faeries are mischief makers and a lot of the things that have happened in the past six months do seem rather Puckish. Additionally, this morning as I rose and all day I have experienced a feeling of... change? Something in the air seems different.

Perhaps it's too much reading lately. Perhaps it's the distortion of time from daylight savings. But something genuinely feels different and I just cannot put a finger to it, save for old folklore. I laugh at the idea that the Fool and his Unseely court might have been having their sport of me, but I have heard stranger things. Seen stranger things.

It is cold and so am I.

As Summer has given way to Autumn, so too has one phase of life given way to another. Three weeks ago I started a new job. Nothing glamorous, but it will keep a roof above my head and let me replinish the savings I lived off this Summer. There's the faint possibility of advancement, but at this time I'm simply glad to be doing something structured.

The redhead from this summer tired of me, ending things with little communication. We remain friends, though I am still a little irritated at her choices in handling the situation. So it goes.

I'm puzzled by memories that have been coming up lately. Triggered by smells, locations, songs. Perhaps it's the time of year or something more, but I've been horridly nostalgic and maudlin. It's not all bad, though. The memories are good and the introspection does no harm.

The only real thing troubling me at the moment is my weight. Over the course of my unemployment and the depression triggered by it, I relapsed into binge eating as a coping mechanism. While I am still far away from the size I used to be, I still see myself in that state and the scant few pounds I've gained in the past few months only exacerbates my negative self image.

Maybe someday when time has passed you will understand the things I do. I make little sense at times and I know it must be frustrating to endure. I can do little but offer a nod and the phrase, "time will tell." I can only be who I and what I am, and I know that you cannot see that sometimes. I simply must trust that the revelation will come to you once upon a tomorrow and that will soothe your opinion of me.

Earth and moon would have been moved for you. There's nothing I would  not have done for you, accomplished in your name. Time has shown me to be a fool, a jerk, an ass.  I can do little to change the past, only affecting the future.

Drank all night at the bar for $4.25. Talked to the bartendress about school, life, people, and everything inbetween. She's an utter sweetheart. Kept handing me beers whether I asked or not. I actually had to turn down a beer when I was leaving.

What is it that makes people open up to me? Trust me? Talk to me candidly about everything? I'm not complaining, I just wish I knew what it was. It's not something I push, at least consciously.

Talked to a friend tonight about my options as they stand. He offered a spare bedroom in Arkansas, should it come to that. It's closer than the other option I have, which is moving to Idaho to my mother's spare bedroom. Or perhaps D.C., to crash on Kristin's couch. all options I'd rather not explore. Pride is all I have left. Pride, that invisible bone that lets a man hold his head up. To quote Young MC, "[...] I don't have much, but it's mine. I worked for it. I paid for it. I earned it. I hate asking for help. I hate asking for anything.

We'll see what happens.

I miss Christina. I miss the redhead. I miss a lot of people right now. A quiet house and a lonely heart are not good for one's well being.

There are worse thing than dying alone. Living alone. Being alone. I suppose.

What do you have to say for yourself? I am proud of my life and the things that I have done. Proud of myself and the loner I've become.

Say Anything isn't music. It's a fuckin' autobiography. Seriously, there's never been anything else I've listened to that has so closely identified with my own feelings.

The only job option I have at the momoment is a position with AmeriCorp. Sadly, it is not a "salaried position". It has $10,000 living expenses and health care for the entire 12 month contract. Including Federal Health Care. That's more than $5,000 less than if I worked a minimum wage job full time. However, I'd be advocating literacy, which is something I care about a great deal.

I'm already in less than ideal situations. Next month is the last time I can a pay rent. After that I'm homeless. No other job has replied. Do I sacrifice a year of my life for literacy and children, or continue looking? At this time, I've settled on teaching as a fallback career, provided that whatever trash I write doesn't sustain me (Kristin, I'm looking at you, here).

Before I moved to LA, I never knew such hope and support as that came from my two roommates, Kristin and Wendell. Maybe it was some sort of illness. A malaise of sorts. Or maybe there's a reason I can't help but write about what I feel. Either way, I owe to them, I owe it to myself to finish this book. To finish something. Hunter Thompson once wrote:

"Tired and wiggy from no sleep or at least not enough. Living on pills, phone calls unmade, people unseen, pages unwritten, money unmade, pressure piling up all around to make some kind of breakthrough and get moving again. Get the gum off the rails, finish something, croak this awful habit of not ever getting to the end of anything."
- Hunter S. Thompson, Screwjack

I've been hiding behind alcohol. Behind Xanax. Behind anything. Afraid of my own shadow. Afraid of the world. There's no work. No place for a man who tells stories in a world that lives and sustains itself on the here an now. I am outmoded. I am outdated. I am a fossil in a world that cares not for it's past.

I weep for my place in this world, a shaman at the eclipse of our place in the tribe. No one wants to hear stories as oral handdown. They want the here and now. The fresh. The new. The now. I am a relic in my own time.

Still awake. Spent all night/morning watching comedies and unconventional superhero movies. Brain hurts. Emotions hurt. Trying to dull the pain with alcohol, sleep deprivation and video games. The anesthetic effects are losing their strength, though. Something else is needed.

Still no work. Still no offers. Still nothing else cropping up on the horizon. The time to worry has come and gone. I am in a full-bore panic now. Next month will be the last time I can, with any certainty, pay my rent. Following that things will go from "close" to "skin of teeth".

Tired. Lonely. Tired of being lonely. Inquiries and apologies only come when I'm useful. Elsewise I'm uncertain why I keep a phone. No calls save from the student loan collectors, whom I don't look forward to. I don't know which would be worse -- to have a phone which does not ring, or to simply not have a phone. At least in absence there's not the false promise of hope.

Driving myself insane in this house. These walls become a prison become a tomb. Brick laid next to brick as the days pass, sealing me inside like the victim of Amontillado. Quiet hours spent talking to myself, awaiting answers to queries that I should pose to others. Awaiting responses that will never come from others. Wondering as the minutes pass if this hasn't all been a farce.

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Unfortunately, in disagreement with the late and great Mr. Vonnegut, whom I hold in high esteem, I must say otherwise. I have reached an equilibrium between the beast of my ever-looming depression and that small cinder of hope that I kindle in the chambers of my figurative heart. Everything is beautiful, but everything hurts. I am miserable, however, this is a misery I can live with.

"My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said, now what?
My dad didn't know, so he said get a job.
When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn't know, so he said, get married.
I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need."
- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

I have lived my entire life in the shadow of my own intelligence. I was ear-marked for advanced placement in first, third, and fifth grade. My mother fought vehemently against it each time, wanting me to grow up with my peers, my friends. I spent most of my early educational life bored. The latter part of my educational career has been spent exasperated at the professors and teachers I've endured. Friends make jokes that I know everything. People who've just met me comment on my intelligence, as it inevitably comes through in conversation. I live with the fear that I will never match the expectations that others might have for me. I fear that I will never be worthy of this brain I have been gifted with.

"Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts"."
- Henry Rollins

I dive wholeheartedly into things. I feel a lot. I think a lot. If something, anything is worth doing, then I throw myself into it with the vigor of a zealot and should things go badly I pick up the pieces and sew myself back together as best I can. This has been my undoing many times but the clarity with which is allows me to see at some moments makes it worth it. It is questionable whether or not I invest too much of myself in other people, however, the beauty that even a fraction of them show makes the gamble worth it. As I mentioned earlier, everything is beautiful and everything hurts. The people with whom I associate, the people who I call my friends are magnificent and glorious testaments to what any person should aspire to be. I fear sometimes that I may seem creepy, but I try to remind them of this when I can. I would remind them more were I able.

"The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything."
 - Friedrich Nietzsche

I love too easily. The counter to that point is that there is no limit to the love I have to give. Yes, my heart has been broken. Uneasily mended, but still it beats. I am not afraid of love. I do not fear the inevitable breaking of that shoddily repaired organ which beats in my chest. I throw myself willingly to the tigers of Eros knowing I will not come away unscathed.

This odd balance inside me leaves me at a loss. I do not wallow in my misery, but I acknowledge it's existence. I do not hope, yet I look for the best in situations. I can survive in this state, but would one truly classify this as living? For the moment there is naught else I can do. I draw breath, I place one foot in front of the other, and I trudge along as I am able.