The more I live, the more I struggle with the issue of silence. When I was 18 years of age, I became enamored of Nietzsche because this philosopher had an incisive, trenchant, penetrating remark, "it's hard to live with Man because silence is difficult." It was difficult for me to keep silent then because I was talkative, childish, trusting, lonely, and confiding.
It is difficult for me to keep silent now because I am vain, conceited, angry, and homicidal. Fools tick me off. Assholes infuriate me. Scumbags and motherfuckers make me want to reach for my big Colt Magnum 357. Is the problem with me or them? I often wonder, on account of my being proud of my analytical ability and untiring, ceaseless search for "truths". And since I am perfect in every possible way, I invariably conclude that the problem is with them. So, I fucking laugh my head off when I hear of calamities and disasters befalling those sorry animals I chance to encounter in my busy, hectic life.
If you want to know the truth, the more you know a human, the more that person shows he's much, much worse than when he first appeared to you because every mother-fucking asshole in this world always tries to put on the best front in order to create favorable first impressions. Yes, every mother-fucking asshole, that is, except me. I am a firm adherent of contrarianism. Not because I want to, but because I don't believe in social conventions, and because I embrace truths fearlessly. Take me as I am, I tell the world, I am not going to change because of you. I change when I want to.
I am an avatar of narcissism.
A few years ago, I was at an outing. The keynote speaker talked about himself so much in self-inflating terms that I had to rush to the bathroom. Luckily I made it in time otherwise I would have thrown up in the auditorium. Later, to no surprise of mine, I learned that the asshole was cheap and manipulative. When it was my turn to speak, I was cooler than I wanted to although I briefly stumbled because of my inveterate tendency to stutter when I get excited. I talked confidently about language acquisition and poetry translation, the two processes I happened to know quite well. A familiarity with these processes and an ability to gather seemingly disparate facts and construct a theory out of them help make me walk tall and with a swagger instead of with downcast eyes like so many defeated, soul-stultifying homeless panhandlers I see on the streets of the good old US of A. My heart aches whenever I see these folks. They make me confront the issues of dignity and death and the meaning of life.
Today I wrote two poems about silence so I didn't have to write a thunderous philippic to denounce a stupid, ignorant, envy-laden asshole. I wanted to kill the bastard so badly.
January 24, 2015
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