Music, Food, Being Jilted, and Memories

Music, Food, Being Jilted, and Memories

The French say the Self is loathsome. Buddhism maintains that suffering comes from a having a delusion that the Self is separate from the Other. Pop psychology preaches that to be successful, one needs to suppress talking about oneself. Dostoevsky, a sick gambler and rambling writer, once wrote that humans loved talking about
themselves. And you, an artiste manqué, concur with Dostoevsky, and openly and energetically shout and scream that humans need not pretend otherwise. Humans always concern with themselves first and foremost, with their hopes, dreams, and fears, in short, with their own survival. Once you understand that, all the human behavior you label despicable and deplorable makes sense, and you start having peace with
yourself since you accept humans for what they are: many are unable to rise above the level of animal existence. There's a reason why there exist the words "human animal" in the lexicon. When I write, you and I are always intertwined. The first and second person singular are interchangeable.

Your partner keeps complaining why you persist in being a child, talking about yourself all the time as if you are the most interesting human ever coming down the turnpike. You slyly chuckle and reply with a wink, "Maybe I am." The irony is that a person who appears excessively egotistical could be surprisingly empathetic. He just does not show his empathy openly like the pretenders do. In other words, he is a honest person. He may be foolishly honest, but he is honest all the same. Maybe he is so comfortable with himself that he doesn't care much what others think of him. On the other hand, he could be a social retard and suffers from an arrested growth. You are way past bedtime. You are destroying your good looks. You are playing with fire.

You woke up the next day with an aching loneliness, despite spending the evening making out with Sylvia. The emptiness asserted its presence during the sex marathon and lingered on after Sylvia departed in that purring Benz of hers. The aching loneliness reminded you that you were cursed with the haunting memories of Laura. No woman would be able to dislodge her from your mind. She no longer reigned in your
heart. She had travelled upwards and wormed herself into your mind, making it diseased and lonely beyond repair. Only when you are asleep, you are given a break from the torment. Even so, the dreams sometimes come back. Lately they take on the horrible specter of your finding yourself completely unprepared for the finals of a certain course. You wake up in the middle of the night, drenched with perspiration, heart racing a million miles per hour, and relieved that it was only a bad
dream. During your waking hours, you have to keep yourself constantly occupied. Your moments of peace and joy are those when certain Spanish language ballads come in on the radio during your drive to and from work, and when you eat home prepared roasted peanuts with the skin on. The aroma of tbe peanuts fill your nostrils and you inhale deeply while chewing slowly. Your overwrought mind is temporarily relaxed and you close your eyes and think of the time you ate the roasted peanuts with the skin on while standing at the window looking out to the rain falling down in a late Sunday afternoon when you were a mere lad in Vietnam, not yet troubled by feelings of sex and jilted love. Joy is nothing but memory and so is pain.

Father's Day June 20, 2010

Authorial Note:

I love writing notes, to myself and to strangers--- big and small, beautiful and ugly, kind and cruel, especially to the small, the ugly, and the cruel. My note is sort of my saying to them: sons, you are no way in the same league as mine, no matter how hard you try. You are only fucking scums and animals, diseased to the core. Look at the lyrical way I express myself! Can you do that? Can your grandfathers do that? Of course not, you all are only able to eat, shit, and fuck,
and nothing else.