These so-called cigarillos come five to a pack for $1.29; with 6% tax added, rounded up as taxes are, they're 27.4 each. Being classified Disabled and on a fixed low income gets me a Lextran photo ID and 50 cent bus ride each way with one transfer per leg included, so if I smoke three of these in a day but don't go anywhere I'm ahead by 17.8 cents. By the math of secondary poverty anyway; what expenditures are not required for survival and contribute nothing to future gain should be avoided, if prolonging your misery is your primary goal. The deserving poor have no vices, they thank God for what they have rather than complain about everything that's out of reach, they greet every morning as a precious opportunity to practice virtue, and they look forward to not being tone deaf in the heavenly choir. To hell with that. My Daddy did raise a fool, but some things didn't take.
So after being out of bed for about two hours I put flame to the threat of cancer. And I started typing this.
"Writers write," it's said. And those who want to be read should practice every day, even on those days when all that presents itself to digital transcription does not accord with the writer's particular goal. If you can't write a sonnet then make a shopping list; if you can't come up with fiction then bang out a journal entry. Most professional writers these days go out of their way to credit their muses and their editors, their spouses who support them and those who take their musings and make them readable. I have neither, so all my output may be labelled Before. When you have no expectation that anybody would pay for what your write you needn't have an After.
"Writers write," it's said. And those who want to be read should practice every day, even on those days when all that presents itself to digital transcription does not accord with the writer's particular goal. If you can't write a sonnet then make a shopping list; if you can't come up with fiction then bang out a journal entry. Most professional writers these days go out of their way to credit their muses and their editors, their spouses who support them and those who take their musings and make them readable. I have neither, so all my output may be labelled Before. When you have no expectation that anybody would pay for what your write you needn't have an After.
So this is my life. It's what you get.
My father spent his whole life trying to make something of himself, to do something useful, to justify his presence. When he finally got disabled enough from a spine shaped like a question mark he didn't sit around watching TV and washing down his many medications with cheap beer like a normal shlub, he went back to college to work toward a four-year degree. He was taught the obligation to accomplish something and have something to show for it. He didn't live long enough to finish, but if anybody was keeping track got good marks for effort.
That didn't take either. Before I traded pimples for stubble I gave up on that idea. It was obvious that whatever striving I did would be done alone, and that all I'd gain is more to lose. "The bigger you are the harder you fall." There was no reason to believe I'd go splat and then get up, that I'd pull myself up from the potholed pavement and wobble away to heal -- only to try it all again; nor had I any expectation that inching forward toward worthiness would justify the damage even gainful effort does.
To just get through the day. That's the only goal I could afford, the surest bet there was to make. For a long as keeping on wasn't too much trouble. And anyway nobody but me would deserve to give a damn.
I will not sell myself, I told myself repeatedly. I will not be punked out by The System. If I must be a fool I'll be nobody's fool but mine. Their road is best not taken. What did that get my Dad?
So here I am, 61 years old, waiting comfortably to die. In a small apartment that rents for 30% of my income, leaving enough unspoken for to waste as I see fit. What I manage to squirrel away in Savings is my profit to date; I might on occasion invest in something that might get me more, so in the future there might be days that are easier to get through, if there might be a future. But getting old is getting old, I'm tired enough already.
And what, you might ask, brought me to this? (If there is a you, indeed.) The answer is simple: there has been a catastrophe for the world in general, one that I could never do anything to avert: a sociological tsunami, an electoral earthquake. They have elected him again, that stupid charlatan, that raving idiot. The Orange King off in the head, the senile fool they should have left drooling in his rocker.
And what, you might ask, brought me to this? (If there is a you, indeed.) The answer is simple: there has been a catastrophe for the world in general, one that I could never do anything to avert: a sociological tsunami, an electoral earthquake. They have elected him again, that stupid charlatan, that raving idiot. The Orange King off in the head, the senile fool they should have left drooling in his rocker.
The new world order is collapsing into nonsense; the future will be worse than my times have ever been.
People do not make their lives out of whole cloth but from what scraps they find where they can think to look. Every person is a quilt of whatever comes to hand. And when every rag is tatters there will be few prizes won. Under these conditions you'll be lucky to even warm yourself.
I've seen too much of that already, and there's always more to see. But there has been beauty in it, though diminishing each day, and there has been enough of me to be enhanced thereby. I could usually tell myself that there were compensations, that all I had to do was look to see something pretty. But it's already late November and that joy is almost over with, soon the ice will settle.
That fool will be sworn in on the 20th of January, in the middle of my Winter, when my sap is at its lowest. And what the equinox will bring is longer days of horror, more hell I'll have to hide from. The world out there will suffer the demise of its "democracy," and I won't want to see it. My skin is just not thick enough. And I'm too damn old to go through four more years of that.
You've really done it this time. By that you did me in.
You've really done it this time. By that you did me in.
You should be proud of yourselves. You've proven me as right as I'll ever need to be: I did not want to be like you, I saw where that would lead. At the end my father was round down by pain, curled up from his crumbled spine, taking nothing with him and leaving less behind. That's what all that got him, that's all there is to get. And what about you? What kind of future do you see? Is the humping you're getting worth the humping you're getting? Do the words "in vain" mean anything to you yet? How stupid are you, anyhow? (No, I don't want to know the answer to that, I'll find out soon enough.)
So. These are the words I've got to write, this is all that comes to mind. For now anyway; until you're sure I'm gone don't expect me to shut up. Hearing myself type is my favorite noise, and my present state of mind and the likely immediate causes for it are my favorite subject. It's all about me. But you might as well start considering anything you read from me from now on as a bonus, a blessing, insult added to injury. From here on out know that I've understood that it just ain't bloody worth it, nothing I can say will really mean anything to you. Nothing ever has.
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