The Man From Boston

Well. There are many things I want to say. So many, many things. My perpetual problem plagues me once again, has been plaguing me. I have so much material for writing, so much content that I am completely overwhelmed, and feel unable to write any of it. I have old material, that I am revising, I have material that I am working on, have worked hard on, New York writing, and I have a little novel idea that I already have made progress on as well. I have the entire book in my head, and just have to actually write it, but that’s the part that takes the time, and the time, as we all know, is precious, and limited. It is the reason why everything I ever want to write about has not been written. And here we are, I want to write yet again, but with so much to say, and never enough time to say any of it. The thing to do in this case, I know, is just write anything, and whatever comes out, that’s it, and at least something was written. At least some of the story was told, and some of the story is much, much better than none of the story. So here I will tell you, on this fine morning in March, some of the story of what’s going on here now, in East Nashville, a true paradise on Earth for many of the East Nashvillians, although I guess just because it’s America, there are still people here who are not living their best lives. But for me, in general, I can’t believe the absolute paradise I have just teleported into, from the horrible Hell and Misery that I was previously a part of. To be able to step outside, into grass, into trees, and the singing of birds, into my very own yard, to sit at a nice picnic table and play my guitar, to hear the clicking, high-pitched grinding of squirrels devouring big nuts, to open the blinds on the window of my room in the morning, sunlight streaming in, and to see directly in front of me a handsome squirrel going bananas on a big, tough nut, my God it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen from a window, and it is my window, and my yard, from my room. (Well, it’s rented, but hey. It’s mine right now.) A room that I have decorated with my things, my books, my guitars, my Squishmallows. I guess I am particularly happy today, but I am happy every day that I’m here, that the sun is shining, and I can look out into my lovely yard, and hear the birds chirping, and see the squirrels frollicking. We have mostly clover in our yard as well, which now has hundreds of incredibly dainty, small flowers, that still attract all of the pollinators, tiny bees and flies, and they hover all over the clover field, which to them is I’m sure a magnificent forest, a huge bounty of food. They are grazing, in a way, just like cattle, scouring the field for the sweetest, tastiest nectar, sucking away at the sugary goodness.

I don’t have much energy because I woke up early this morning, and went to bed late (I thought about saying “bedded late”, I have been reading the ancient tomes), but I am not upset. I would gladly wake up every day in this way, and sacrifice sleep for it, because what woke me up was an incredible thing, that I have never seen as of yet that I have been here, for one month now, and that was, Nick Harding in the kitchen, making breakfast, at 7:50 am. Still, it is surreal to me, that we are in fact both awake at this very moment, going about our business, now 10 of the clock. I felt like I was dreaming. I heard his movement, and I walked out into the living room, and he immediately looked up at me, like he had been caught being a naughty boy, and whispered, “Sorry!” And I said, in my underwear, still half-asleep, “It’s alright.” I thought it was Josh, because although Nick had been hinting that this was coming, and had been trying for a few days, and had told me of his new plan last night, to not stay out all night, and come back early, and take a powerful sedative, to wake up early and restart his sleep schedule, I knew this was coming, but to see it in reality is another thing. Someone says, “It’s coming, it’s coming,” and it finally comes, and you’re still shocked, even though you knew it was coming. Nicholas Harding, the entire time that I have known him now, has been staying out, later, and later, and later, a creature of the night, and sleeping in, later, and later, and later, waking up with an hour of sunlight left in the day, and watching it disperse through a crack in his bedroom window. He has been as nocturnal as the Count himself, and the only way you would have ever seen him in the “morning” was to wake up early enough to catch him before he retired for the day. I would spend all day, many, many hours of the day, living my life, before Nick Harding had risen from his tomb, to begin his night. So to see him, standing there, in the kitchen, cooking bacon and eggs, in his hat, sweatshirt, sweatpants, morning sun streaming in through the windows, birds chirping, and his cat, Brady, out in the living room with him, also shocked and clearly very pleased with this new development, at 7:50 in the morning, was understandably, totally surreal. It took me many minutes to process that this was happening, that it was in fact reality, and that I was not dreaming. I kept repeating that I couldn’t believe this was happening, and Nick said, “You think you’re still dreaming, don’t you?” We had a great morning chat, in which he told me his new plans for life, taking the week to get his sleep schedule in order before he goes back to work, getting back into morning gym workouts, and, of course, very soon he was telling me “I’ve made a decision. (A famous Nick Hardingism.) I’m back on the dating apps.” To which I replied, “You got off of them?” (It felt like he had been on just as many dates as ever, which was, nearly every night. But now that I think about it, he had been having a lot of boys’ time.) He said, “Yeah I was trying it out, trying to date more organically, but…” (This phase of organic dating can’t have lasted for more than a week.) In short, he’s looking for real love now, which I would say is a great and noble thing to be searching for. I went back to my room then, Nick to his, to watch The Patriot with Brady, I think because just yesterday we had been talking about, if we had to fight in any war, any kind of military conflict, what we would have wanted to fight in, and Nick was for certain, the American Revolution, which I thought was a very good choice. We talked more about it this morning, when I went into his room, to behold the most incredible scene, that I still could not believe I was seeing, that was Nick, cozy on his bed, watching a movie, with his window curtains actually open, with his room not dark and cave-like, and not lit by the harsh overhead light, but by in fact, true, real natural sunlight, and with a candle burning, with photos of his family now on the windowsill, and with Brady at his feet, in a state of perfect contentment, he looked like he was purring his soul out just being alive in that moment, I still couldn’t believe that this was really happening. And he had so effortlessly switched, like he had been doing this every morning of his life. And he did comment, “I’m good at switching.” We rekindled our war discussion, as he was watching The Patriot and I could hear the sounds of battle, and I said, “You wish you were there?” And he laughed, and said, “Dude… I’ve been thinking more about it.” And his answer was still Revolutionary War, OR, to be in the Roman Legion, infantry style, because then if you die, you die with your boys. He said the worst thing would be to die alone. I mostly agree with that, except I would not want to die in an absolute maelstrom of chaos, which would unfortunately be very likely. I would rather have a picturesque death, in battle, and with some time to say my last words to one of my comrades who had really gotten to know me, and who would promise me that they would kill the bastards who did this to me, and win the fight, and carry on, and stay alive, and tell everybody that I loved them, and all of that stuff that you say when you’re meeting your untimely end in war. I would not want to just be blown up by a mortar as I stormed the beach, too loud to hear anything from the bombs and the gunfire, with my guts out.. wow, umm, anyways.. where were we. Well, basically, that’s it. My answer was still in medieval times, and if I was a common man, I would want to be an archer, but of course if I could choose it I would be a knight. To which Nick replied, “Oh of course, if I can pick I’m going to be George Washington.” And I said, “As in you would want to be George Washington himself, or you as in Nick Harding substitute for him?” And he said, he, Nick Harding, which I said, that is an incredible amount of responsibility, and do you think you can do the job? And he laughed and said, “F*** no.” And the whole time, the fact that we were having this conversation here in the morning, still, that the sun was out, not to set anytime soon, that it was in fact the beginning of the day, for me and him, I still could not believe.

Other things I could write about include having a moustache, having already been infected by Southern culture, where people do in fact have moustaches, and now hardly without meaning to, I now have one too, and I have also been infected with Squishmallow disease, as have I have learned, all three of us masculine men in this household, via women in our lives, and how I am beloved at my local Kroger Starbucks because I only order black coffee, (“This guy’s a legend!” one of the baristas recently commented to his manager.) When I first ordered it, he told me he loved me. He said, after understanding that I just wanted a small black coffee, “Man, I love you.” I guess that nobody orders just a black coffee at Starbucks. Or at least, not at this particular Kroger Starbucks. It is a kind of crazy thing to do, I guess, like not having a smartphone, which is also continuing to win me much renown. Both of my roommates have commented that they have talked about me having a flip-phone, Nick to his therapist, and Josh to his friends. Also, I will just say I have full permission to write anything and everything about Nick, who told me, when I asked if I could write about him, “Yeah, you can write about me. You can use my social security number for all I care.”

Some of the other things Nick has said to me:

*In all seriousness* “I think about them all the time.” (Them being first editions of books.)

“Whoever it is, whatever I did, I’m sorry.” (Him telling me about getting a random call from someone who knew him from high school and would not reveal their identity, and started accusing and shaming him. He said he knew that all they wanted was, what’s the word, to be heard. (I can hear a flute playing in the background right now, some martial tune from The Patriot. I feel like this is something like having your kid home from college.)

When I went to talk to him about kitty litter. I said, “I need to talk to you.”

“About what? Is it gay?”

“A little gay.”

“Ok, carry on. Pro-ceed.”

This is at midnight, Nick only returning home for a brief respite. And something about the way he said it, especially, “Pro-ceed” putting his little twist on the pro like that, just killed me.

I was there to high-five Nick the moment he had received his award from Tinder for being in the “top 20% of profiles”. He said, looking up from his phone, “Guess who’s in the top 20% in Tinder profiles??” We high-fived. Then he said they shouldn’t be telling him that because his ego would go through the roof. I can’t remember his exact words, the way how he described how his ego would soar, but they were good.

I was showing Nick the second mattress that I had bought, in the midst of my failed mattress adventures, raging about how it was a piece-of-garbage sponge cake, and he had come in and was sitting on it, and I showed him, that I could easily bend it at a 90 degree angle, I showed him this and said, “This is not right. Look, I can easily bend it at a 90 degree angle. That’s not right.” And he stopped mid-sentence (extremely rare), having then fully processed what I had said, and laughed and looked at me and said, “What a f***ing test though.”

I mentioned again about writing about him, and he said his step-dad was a writer, and he had written about Nick before, and that he (his step-dad) had said to Nick’s mom, “I only married you for Nick.”

I could keep going. This is effortless for me. It is just as effortless for Nick, to say all of these incredible things. Nick told me about killing beavers, killing beavers for his step-dad that were destroying their special pond on their hundreds of acres of property in Vermont, and how his step-dad had paid him for each beaver he slayed, $100 a beaver, and he got $350 dollars, because he killed four beavers, but the fourth he shot in the water, and it sank and he couldn’t get the body. This story was a short segway in a conversation about a woman who was a hunter, who told Nick that she could dress a deer in 10 minutes, that Nick was currently seeing. On some of our very first nights together in the house, Nick was fretting over sending a message that he felt was too romantic to this woman who he was I think not supposed to be falling in love with, as that was not what she wanted, but he didn’t want to lose her at all.. Something like that. He was telling me about this, and he said, he knew women very well, growing up with two sisters and watching Sex and The City with them. “Everything I learned about women I learned from Sex and The City. There’s four types of women….” And, to this hunter girl he was seeing, he had said something about, “I’ll have to be careful about riding alone with you in a pickup truck on the country roads.” Or something, because I guess that’s a thing they say, or a song, about falling in love with a blonde girl while driving in a truck on country roads, basically what I just said (I don’t listen to country music, I don’t know about this stuff.) And he thought that was too much, and he was in great despair, putting his head in his hands, groaning, saying, “She’s not gonna’ text me back. 100%, she’s not gonna’ text me back tonight. If ever get a text back it’s not going to be until after this weekend.” And she did text him back that night, in only an hour, which was extremely relieving for him, so relieving that he texted me and said, “She texted me back. We’re good.” (Because of course I was also so invested in this) and said that she was in the shower or something. In the meantime, as he fretted and tortured himself, he commented on the chess set that is the only piece of decoration or homeliness in our still-barren living room, on the standing counter of the kitchen sink, and he said he had always wanted to learn chess, to which I replied, “You are a 31 year old man and you do not know how to play chess?” Excuse the stereotyping, but I mean, come on now. And he went to prep school??? (Well. So no he didn’t. It was revealed later that this enigmatic and fantastical man was full of lies, and a general ne’er-do-well. That may be something of a spoiler, but.. it fits, doesn’t it.) So I taught him, easing him into this, because I knew it would be a lot for him, in this moment, a lot for him to handle, and after starting with the pawn, and then moving on to the rook, then the knight, finally the bishop, he says, “Ok, hold on. Let me run this back.” And then he took a deep breath, and said, “God, I have to think. I haven’t thought in so long.” And he was being completely genuine. This man was, and generally is, but particularly so at this time in his life, in those first few days that I had known him, operating on pure, primal instinct, animal energy, running off adrenaline, testosterone, caffiene, nicotine, and mango-flavored White Claws, of which he downed one in the middle of our game of chess. He stopped and said, “Hold on, I need to do something.” Getting a large 16, 20-ounce White Claw out of the fridge, and saying again, “I have to do this.” And I knew. I knew what was about to happen here, but still I had to confirm it, and I looked him dead in the eyes and said, “What are you about to do?” And he laughed, and he said, “That’s a great response.” He said, “I’m going to chug this.” He said he could chug it “really fast.” His best time being seven seconds or something. I said, “Let’s time it.” He pulled out his phone, and he said, laughing, “What?? I’ve had my timer on this whole time??” And the timer on his phone had been running for nearly 10 days. It was approaching exactly 240 hours, it was on 238 hours and 40 minutes. And I said, “Dude, screenshot that, that is insane. In an hour you’ll have it at exactly ten day-“

“It’s gone.”

“What?”

“I deleted it on accident.”

He then handed me the timer, and crushed the White Claw, in 7.8 seconds. We then resumed our chess match, for the eleventh time that we had put it on pause, because during this match we had stopped many times, for him to review the mistakes he had made in messaging this woman, for him to put his phone on silent to help him get away from it, then deciding that was not sufficient, and turning it off, putting it in his room, then going back to get it, turning it back on because he “needed to know if his friends texted him” but he put the woman on silent (apparently you can do this?). He was also constantly vaping, huffing and spewing vapor throughout. After him crushing the White Claw, we had now “played” for about thirty minutes, what felt like an eternity (actual game time being only about 3 minutes), I just had to end it. Actually, the universe conspired to end things at a proper and natural time there, because somehow the most amazing and effortless checkmate showed itself to me, and I figured, even though we had actually only played about 8 turns in this chessmatch, that was enough for now, and so I took it.

I think I was even talking about this because of the phones, and displaying his primal instinct, but Nick has a terrible addiction to his phone, which he “just realized” recently. A few days after our legendary chess match (there have been no more of those, by the way) I was up to go to the bathroom in the wee hours of the night, or morning, around 4 am, and the bathroom is right next to Nick’s room, and he keeps the door open for Brady to get in and out, and I heard what sounded like two shows, two audio streams happening at once, and the next day we were talking, and I asked him about that, saying “Were you watching two shows at once?” And he said, “Oh, 100%.”

I must confess that I could write for many more hours on Nick, and our relationship. He is an incredible goldmine of writing material. The man is a living, breathing, treasure trove of content. Truly for a writer of the type such that I am, I could not have found a better roommate, and I still can’t believe my good luck in how this has panned out. (And even wilder than I could have ever imagined, in these glory days, the downfall that was coming. For Nick Harding turned out to be lying about just about everything in his life, and was stealing, and forging, and was with high probability what was formerly called a sociopath, and now termed anti-social personality disorder, which seems shocking, and it was incredibly shocking to discover at the time. I would say it was even somewhat frightening, as I felt that I had become intimate with him, and thought I knew him well. But so is the art of sociopath, the confidence man, the fraudster. And perhaps some part of me wanted to believe all of his fantastical tales, his recounts of wild adventures and his deep well of fabricated knowledge, as it was so entertaining for me. I didn’t care so much that it was true or not, I just wanted to keep hearing it. He probably knew that about me, too.) From the very beginning this Nashville business has been fated to be, it seems, blessed or at least destined to be. I don’t know how long this chapter will last, this magical new bromance I have found myself in (only a few days ago Nick walked in on Josh and I and said, “Boys, I have some bad news. I might be moving out.” Which was absolutely shocking and also completely crazy, because he had not paid rent in a few days, and the landlord, his friend, was pissed, and then of course in several hours he had made the payment, “a friend giving him some money” (now in the future, we know that that could mean anything at all), even though he has much money himself, as he has, he told me this, “gold and silver bars” in a Nashville bank, that he brought with him, as well as expensive watches, in the bank, that are investments. And he just came back from a trip to Boston with ten of the most beautiful suits I have seen. He took them all of his bag, one by one, sometimes with matching pants, and showed them all off to me, telling me about each one, the style, etc., which was incredible fun for both of us. So how this man comes into my room and says, “I might be moving out.” because he couldn’t pay his share of the far-less-than-New-York-rent rent, completely baffling. Every day with this man is a new adventure, and other days have started off with, me answering the door, bright and early at 7 am, to a group of no less than 11 firefighters, and just a few days ago, waking up to having no water in the house. I will have to write more of our adventures together here soon.

(From the future.) You know… Knowing what I know now, this paragraph and writing seems to be so full of red flags. And yet, at the time, it didn’t seem that way. He was so artful in his reasons and excuses and explanations, and I also am (well really, was, because I don’t think I will ever be taken in by someone so easily again) trusting and honest myself, and so I really didn’t suspect anything for a long time, and believed him when he told me any of his never-ending explanations and excuses for the strange things that happened with him. There is more to this story, and I should tell it, so that you can hear the full arc. That’s where it really gets good.

General December Writing – Philosophy Thoughts, Starbucks, Invasive Species, Personality

It’s December 16th or 17th, 2024. This pen has dried up and is too scratchy.

Did I fix it?

Whatever. There we go.

I have not been doing much writing these days, no writing for sharing. All writing just for me, because I am writing nearly every day. But I haven’t written a piece in months, and I am inspired to write one now, with so many topics and themes and developments I’ve been stewing on, and I just picked up Hamilton, by Ron Chernow, last night, and for some reason that’s inspiring me. Maybe because Hamilton was a prolific writer and reading his writings about his life makes me want to write about mine. It’s generally a good thing to do, and I have mostly not ever regretted taking the time to really go for it and write about anything. So here we are again.

In a way, it’s like writing a letter to a friend, but that friend is myself, but also whoever wants to read this, because for some reason I like to share this kind of thing. Well, that’s what blogging is. A lot of people do this.

Here’s the status report.

Starting small… I’m 146 pounds. Lean and wiry with almost no body fat at all. I eat light but healthy, and have taken to running because weight lifting is boring and I am.. can’t be bothered to try and arrange tennis matches. But for awhile I was having a good time playing tennis with Nicholas Harding of Vermont, who was a sociopath (what they now call antisocial personality disorder) and generally crazy, delusional, a thief and grandiose narcissist and liar, so we had to kick him out. I wrote a bit about the new roommate…….

I’ve arranged my furniture so that my desk is over again facing the window, where I’m sitting now. My bed is next to me, the couch fitting perfectly into a space by the door, opposite from the window. This is possibly my final arrangment. It’s a fun thing to do in the winter. I don’t usually care so much about how my room looks, but when you spend enough time in here, and you get bored, you start having ideas. Having my desk back at the window where I can sit here and look out at my small yard and contemplate the meaning of things is definitely the way to go. The only major lifestyle change I’ve had to make as a result of this new arrangement is that my record player is now on the floor. Of course at first I thought this wouldn’t work, but you quickly get used to things, and actually it makes sense. Right now it’s one of my most precious possessions, so it being front and center in my room is actually exactly where it belongs. And I can lay on the floor, or sit on the bed, or sit lotus style, and listen with the headphones. The cable reaches long enough that I can do all of those.

Yesterday I bought three records. I walked on over to The Groove, to see what I could see. I had a feeling that they would have Nevermind. The last time I was there I scored In Utero. Well, guess what? They had it but it was overpriced, and I didn’t really want to listen to it anyways, yesterday. I wanted stuff that was not Nirvana.

Eh. This part is feeling too diary-esque for me. If I write all of that kind of stuff, I’ll run out of steam before we get anything good.

Since time and energy are limited, what are the best topics, for you and I, that I could write about?

Well, I have now volunteered twice removing invasive plant species from the local park. Our last session was attended by a crew of enthusiastic veterans, and so we did damage. The two main plants we removed were Bush honeysuckle and Chinese privet. And I’ll tell you about this.

The first time I volunteered to do this removal, my main focus was Chinese privet, and that’s what I learned to recognize. I came home and saw it everywhere in our yard, and then pulled 10 or 15 plants. This time around, I solidified my ID skills of privet, and can now ID Bush Honeysuckle, and as with privet, when I came home, I immediately spotted it in the yard. On my run yesterday, I saw it everywhere. Bush Honeysuckle is even worse – just as bad as privet. And it is everywhere. Both of them can get quite big. As big as small trees, 8 feet tall or taller. They’re large and proliferate rapidly, and at Shelby you could clearly see the effect that Bush Honeysuckle was having on the forest. By being a solid plant on the ground, vines are able to grow across the tops of the honeysuckle plants, and they fan out, and with the vines on top, suddenly where there is supposed to be clear, open forest, there is an impenetrable mass of vines and bushes and these small trees. Choking the forest. Not at all what it’s supposed to be.

So we tore it out, and it was hard work. Using handsaws, weed wrenches, and mattocks, which was the best and an incredible time. The mattock is like a pickaxe that you can use for mining an embedded plant out of the ground. You can pick in and get under the roots, and then pry the whole root ball out. There was one Bush Honeysuckle that Eve and I double-teamed, with me picking away the dirt surrounding the thick roots that were holding the plant down, and then Eve taking the loppers and severing them, one by one, until we could finally get the thing out of the ground. It was an enormous root ball, and we took a photo together, holding it like it was a prize fish we had just caught.

The ground was soft and wet because it had rained last night, so the conditions were perfect. You could pull most of the privets out of the ground, just rip them right out, with no tools, and I was running around ripping them up like I was playing whack-a-mole. I was really in hog heaven. It’s not often that you get to do demolition, to chop, hack, and destroy, which is at least for me, totally very fun, and then it was also a fun winter outdoors activity. It’s harder to find fun stuff to do outside in winter.

Running around the neighborhood, I now see privet and honeysuckle everywhere. Our crew leader CD Paddock had once said, “Once you see it, you’ll see it everywhere.” And it’s so true. What has been seen cannot be unseen. I think it is a clear and obvious metaphor or example of how knowledge opens our eyes and our minds to new things. These plants have been all around me, but I never noticed them or thought much about them. And now, suddenly, my brain is aware of them, and trained to spot them, and I see them everywhere, and think, you. You do not belong here.

Language is another example. Looking at the sake bottle on my desk, I see written on the front, むら。And I know now, of course that’s mura. But once upon a time I did not know.

I’ll take a break.

I’ve taken a break. I think that the writing bug has been scratched. That’s how it goes. But there is much much more to be written about. For what purpose? A good question. Well, does everything have to have a purpose? And, does everything have to have a purpose that you can understand? Many things are happening with purposes that you do not know about. Including your own actions.

That sounds like some Buddhism stuff right there. Pickles is currently barking like a savage maniac. What the hell has gotten him so triggered? Or her. Patrick must not be home or he would have yelled by now.

The Buddhism thoughts… I will say that I have had some Buddhist type thoughts in my head recently, and in my conversations with Rachel recently, I seem to have hit on some Buddhist ~~principals~~ principles. I can’t believe I just spelled that wrong.

In no particular order.. One thought I’ve been having recently is that, probably inspired by my reading The Republic, everyone has to come to knowledge for themselves, and only they themselves can unlock it. Even if it has already been discovered a thousand times before. You see this on Reddit, I saw just last night, people say things like, “Now that I’ve quit YouTube I find that I’m having more time for thoughts.” Or, now that I’ve stopped watching/reading the news I feel more peaceful. Or that connecting with nature makes you feel more at peace. This knowledge, about anything, in this case about mindfulness practice, is already out there. These thoughts have been thought many times before, and people, some people are already very aware. But there was a time when they learned that. Everyone must learn everything themselves.

Some things are instinct, and inborn, knowledge. But understanding on a higher level, grasping with the intellect, must be done on one’s own.

This is actually a serious statement because it means that you can’t just give someone knowledge, like you can give them $5. You can’t just give anybody knowledge. Not knowledge that they will really feel and thoroughly understand.

It is difficult and requires work. Possibly even certain mental capabilities that are beyond some people. But everyone is capable of learning.

I think what I really think is interesting about this fact is that it means that… Jesus that’s a long load of nothing. It means that even if someone were to attain true, perfect knowledge, if you could have such a thing, there is no guarantee that anyone else could ever have it again. No one else might ever be able to reach it, even with it all laid out and explained by the one who had achieved it.

Everyone is making a journey in their lives, of learning, of discovering, every person must do this, and it can’t be inserted or implanted in anyone else. Every person, every new human is a chance for a renewal of thought and a fresh outlook. That is the positive side of it. And then the negative side, if we can label it as such, would be that everyone has to suffer into the same knowledge, the “perfect, true” knowledge, over and over and over.

Let’s go for a walk.

I walked over to Walgreens and picked up a 9V battery to use with the pedal that my Dad gave me. The price tag wasn’t quite right, and I thought it would be $10.99, and it turned out to be….

Diary writing.

I reflected on mindfulness and Buddhist-type thinking on my small adventure just now.

I want to write more.. but I’m tired.

The sun is setting. I’m not ready. Well, bring on the night. Let’s get to creepin’.

Some creepin’ has been done.

Since I’ve been here, soon on arriving at 805B N 12th Street here in this duplex owned by Sir Michael Shields, I discovered the joy of candles. I never really knew about candles. That I myself could buy, light, and enjoy candles in my own home. I just didn’t know about that. I had never done it myself. I only write this because I have recently been enjoying candles to the fullest amount, now that it’s winter again.

I enjoy candles, records, books, and writing, and have a flip phone. I made one major step in moving away from the digital world, further distancing myself, when I decided to stop streaming music, and just go in on records. And I have found like I do whenever I have done these experiments that I am pleased with the results.

You know what’s really crazy? I think if people from the past could come here now and see Smosh sitting on the couch watching Tik Toks, see Taloya at the ovens with her phone out, all these people so disconnected and in phone world, they would be shocked. I know that people used to think that books were doing what phones do now, that people would be buried in books. There are always parallels. But think about this – how within a generation, something like 15 years, there is now a prevalent and normal, completely normal and commonplace behavior of being out in the world and holding a screen to your face and watching TV. Or being home and holding a screen to your face and watching TV. Or being 3 years old and holding a screen…. you get it. I guess I’ve really opted out. What’s also interesting about this is how things, how decisions feel to you at the time of you doing them. Going without a phone felt like a momentous decision, but only for me in the past, when I hadn’t done it. Living with a flip phone, with no smartphone, felt crazy and revolutionary. And now? I don’t think twice about it. I had all of these thoughts and revelations about it all, and now when people ask me I just say, “I like the flip phone better, basically.” Which is the truth. And that’s about it for me.

I’ve moved on. But I see those still enmeshed in phone life, smartphone life. Smartphones being very much a core part of their lives.

I am surprisingly popular. I am not writing this to stoke my own ego. I swear. You can never be sure that I’m telling the truth. I can’t even know. Of course I like being popular, but it’s not like Arianna Grande’s character in Wicked, who craves it. I don’t care either way. It just turns out that I am. And I’m writing about this because I am reminded about it almost every day. Like today, once again. Jessica commented once again that “Everybody likes Steven.” To which Stacy Hamilton quipped, “Not everybody.” And I said, “Who doesn’t like Steven? Let me find out.” Stacy said, “I’m just playing around!” Jessica says, “What are you gonna do? Give them that?” (This is some slang Jessica uses that means, you give them that, as in they say, Do you need that? And then hit them.) I said, “I’m gonna’ whoop on that heinie.” And that had her laughing. Not hard to make Jessica laugh. Just have to say something ridiculous like that. Chris K. said he misses me when I’m not there. He’s said it many times. Emily has said the same thing, that “I bring her joy.” Even Stacy has said, “He’s alright sometimes.” That’s a big deal. And I heard Jessica say today that Stacy has actually spoken the words, “I wish Steven were here.” When I’ve not been there, which, if true, is an absolutely incredible fact. I have had two work wives, Leah (my first wife), and now KB. The remarriage was instantaneous, more for KB’s sake than mine. Sorry Leah, but if you come back you will be my wife again instantly.

Leah may have been pushed out by Stacy. Having her hours reduced until it’s not worth it for her to stick around. That has been happening. Stacy does some scheming, I think. She has some presumptions and perceptions about the team that I don’t think are totally accurate. But she also has preferences, and one of her preferences is to minimize the fun and shennanigans. This is where I have been running into trouble, and recently much more frequently, because I have been recommended by my fellow maties to be an honorary shift supervisor. I wonder if Stacy groaned as she realized that I was the one to be picked. But Stacy has one great shortcoming, I would say, that she is too easily frazzled, and is too tightly wound. The stress is terrible for her. And just last week she said that she felt her heart beating in her chest. I was legitimately concerned for her life. She could straight up have a heart attack at Starbucks. She’s 62, overweight, a frequent imbiber of alcohol, and stressed out to the max. Me writing this is kind of showing me how possible this really is. I am often concerned for her health.

I’m tired but want to keep going. I was just lying in bed and my brain was firing away at a much faster clip than I can possibly keep up with in writing. I will continue with me being popular, an interesting point, and I bring it up because this whole Starbucks venture has been an interesting environment for me, a foil to learn about myself, which is always interesting to do, but also is a hot topic because I am a hot topic. You can tell I’m tired now because I’m writing all this and saying very little. I’m trying to say that being thrown into this new environment and mix of interesting personalities and learning how to work together and all that has shown me some things about myself, or clarified them or made them more obvious to me.

I write this as you know I am interested in human psychology and personality, and have enjoyed taking personality tests and etc., even when you know it’s all BS, because it’s fun.

People are notoriously bad at self-perception. So to have external comments made about your person and personality can be very useful, assuming that they are correct. For example, if you’re playing dumb, or acting a part for some reason, people will draw false conclusions about you, obviously. And all of these people, my coworkers, new friends and comrades, never knew me before. So they’re seeing me and taking me in with fresh eyes, as I am now.

You are lucky to be able to live this life. You have many luxuries. Sake. A guitar. Coffee. Blankets (kind of essential actually.) Books. Many luxuries. A camera. A laptop. Nice clothes. Pens and paper. A room with a view. No disease or illness. Records. Very lucky you are.

Benjamin The Donkey

Last night I read a story called Yugao, from my Anthology of Japanese Literature. Yugao was a chapter of the great Japanese masterpiece called Genji Monogatari, which is usually (always?) translated into English as The Tale of Genji. It is considered to be Japan’s greatest work of literature, and it was written all the way back in the 11th century. Think about that, people. That’s 1000 years ago. 1000 years ago, and it slaps. And I was thinking, are there any books that we still read in Western literature that are that old? I thought of The Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare stuff, but I don’t actually know when they were written. I’m going to guess 15th century. Shall we Google it? (Shakespeare, 16th century, The Canterbury Tales end of 14th century.) Don Quixote, another old Western classic, 16th century. We have Beowulf, and Beowulf is older, between 600-1000 CE. From what I just read last night in The Tale of Genji, Beowulf is really primitive in comparison. Beowulf also slaps though.

All I really wanted to say here is that Yugao was riveting and compelling, and that maybe we should be including The Tale of Genji on our lists of greatest works of literature, and I want to read the whole book.

I dismantled more Chinese Privet this morning. I needed something to get me activated, give me some enthusiasm. Seek, and ye shall find. Every time I look, I find more of it in my yard. I now have an enormous pile of trunks and branches in the driveway.

Last night I read that snippet of The Tale of Genji, but a few nights ago I read Animal Farm. You know, in high school I believe I really did say, in my English class, when we were discussing the book, or at least I definitely thought this, because it has now been ringing in my ears, I remember thinking, “Maybe this book doesn’t have a political message. Maybe there is no symbolism. Maybe he just wanted to write about animals.” Well, high school me was not very smart. At least, I didn’t know much about the world and the machinations and movements of societies. I also remember that I thought Old Man and The Sea was boring, and could not understand how this was a celebrated work of literature. I’ve also recently read that, and of course just like with Animal Farm, feel very differently about it now, but that’s how it goes. We are not always ready for what the books have to tell us, and especially I’m sure when the books are about life, and living, and you’re young and still don’t know much about that. But I read Animal Farm, after attempting again like every single night for the last month, it feels like, to try and go to sleep before midnight, and after attempting this and again laying in bed with my mind whirring, fully awake, for an hour, I opened it up, and I read it all the way through. I have gotten into the habit of testing out books, because I have picked up so many classics from an amazing used goods store here in Nashville called MacKays’s, and when I’m looking for something to read I will just grab one that I have laying around and start reading, and if it grabs me I’ll keep reading, and if not I’ll put it down and plan to come back to it when I’m ready for it. So I just picked up Animal Farm to take a little looksie, and then I didn’t put it back down until I was done. This little book that I had thougth really nothing of in high school, hit me harder this time around.

The thing about Animal Farm is that, after I was done with it, I felt very disturbed. I was disturbed, I can say, because unfortunately, it was way, way too easy to draw parallels between what happened on that farm (I mean some countries right now are fully fledged Napoleon farms, North Korea, China, Russia), and what’s happening in many countries around the world, but most unfortunately, with what’s happening here in America. In such plain and simple language, Orwell shows exactly how a population is tricked or cowed into loyalty to a ruler, the steps by which that ruler is able to establish complete control, and how it ultimately descends into conditions that are just as bad if not worse than any the animals on the farm had experienced before their revolution, in hopes of achieving a more equal and fair society. All of the mechanisms, subtle and not so subtle, the gradual degrees in which the population is subjugated, duped, placated, or cowed, until they are completely subservient to the regime, and the single ruler above all.

In the days since reading it, there’s been one character who’s stayed with me, who I’ve been thinking about, and that’s Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin is the character that really got to me, because Benjamin is exactly who I don’t want to be. Most of the animals on the farm can’t quite grasp what’s happening, the meaning of the events that are taking place, the inevitable outcomes of decisions that are being made. They may not understand at all, or they may have some reservations about changes that they can’t quite express, but their concerns are either relieved by Squealer’s sweet, compelling, and manipulative words, or they are forced into silence by Napoleon’s dogs, or they are steamrolled by the sheep, and never given the chance for public discourse. Some of the animals eventually draw lines in the sand, when pushed too far, but at that point Napoleon (the pig, ruler) has solidified his power, and has the military/police force at his command (in the form of dogs that he bred for the role), and so he can deal with them via force. A few of the other pigs are aware, and dissent, and as they are threats, are killed. Benjamin doesn’t object, doesn’t dissent, but Benjamin is aware. He knows what’s up. Benjamin is old, Benjamin is smart, Benjamin has been around for a long time, and Benjamin is cynical. His expectations are low, and he is not passionate. So, Benjamin is something like an outsider, politically, or inert. He’s not involved, does not lean one way or the other, does not offer any opinions, does not rock the boat. Benjamin is not ignorant, however – he is intelligent, he sees, he understands. He simply chooses passivity. Benjamin cares about one thing, he has no allegance to anything other than his friend, the workhorse, Boxer, and so the only time we see Benjamin show any real emotion or move to action is when Boxer is being taken to his death. Benjamin is so exasperated by the other animals’ stupidity, that they can’t understand that Boxer is not really being taken to the vet, but instead has been sold to the “knacker” to become glue, and so upset that he’s losing Boxer, that he actually does something, and shouts at the all, hey, you dumbasses, that cart says “horse killer” on it, he’s not going to the vet!!!!!! And of course they all try to save Boxer then and fail, and Benjamin goes back to being a passive bystander, now without his best friend, Boxer.

This is why Benjamin has stuck with me. Benjamin is passive, and it costs him his best friend. It probably costs him his happiness too. He’s cynical, and sad. And even though he tries to keep out of affairs and makes no waves, he cannot get out unscathed. The hens die, some of them, because they refuse to lay more eggs for the regime. Their defiance costs them their lives. The pigs die, some of them, because they voice their dissent at the meetings. Benjamin doesn’t die, because he doesn’t dissent – but he still suffers, and he suffers doubly because he loses Boxer, and because he has to live with a cynical, hopeless worldview to justify living his life of inaction.

That begs the question – would you rather resist, risking death for the cause, or would you rather comply, and live (possibly, because Boxer complied, and still he died for it), and suffer? I don’t think that Benjamin ever felt compelled to resist, though, because Benjamin didn’t care one way or the other. I think Benjamin did not really have a belief that things could be any better, as he says, which actually can be perfectly summed up by the words of a cynical friend of mine, “Life sucks, then you die.” Benjamin had no reason to act, because he didn’t think it would matter, whether Napoleon was the ruler, whether a human was the ruler, or whether Snowball, who could have potentially have been a much better ruler for their new society, was the ruler. In Benjamin’s eyes none of it mattered, because life would still suck, life would still be hard, that that was just how life was.

There were other politically inactive, politically indifferent characters, but they weren’t as aware as Benjamin. Benjamin was indifferent, inactive due to his cynicism. Moses, the raven, also didn’t care who ruled the farm, but that was because he had Sugarcandy Mountain. He was a problem for the pigs in the beginning, because while they were trying to fill the other animals’ heads with ideas about their political systems and designs for the society (which they called, Animalism), Moses was out here telling everyone about Sugarcandy Mountain, and how great Sugarcandy Mountain was, this magical place that you went when you died, and got all the sugar you ever wanted. Moses had religion. He was not interested in the movements of the animals or their society. He was outside of it. (Or, possibly, Moses himself didn’t believe in Sugarcandy Mountain, but both governments, Mr. Jones’s and Napoleon’s found his preaching useful, and so they would treat him well.) Moses was useful to Napoleon later though, I think, when things had gotten so bad that he couldn’t give them much else to work for in terms of hope, so if they couldn’t believe in a good life on the farm anymore, they could at least believe in Sugarcandy Mountain. There was the cat, who just didn’t care about anything at all, (classic cat stereotype) and there was Mollie, the white mare, who just wanted to eat sugar and have ribbons in her hair. She wanted an easy life. She didn’t care about politics, but she liked the way she was treated by Mr. Jones, because she got sugar and ribbons, so for her the previous order was just fine, and in the new one she couldn’t have her sugar and ribbons, so she went to another farm where she could.

I don’t want to be a Benjamin.