Little charmer

Sunday 4/18/21

Charming woman: I'm a stickler for punctuation and proper grammar and descent spelling skills, lol.

C: You might wish to learn how to spell "decent," in that case, and learn the meaning of the word "acronym."

CW: damn, ok. I said decent spelling, not perfect. and I know what acronym means, you pompous prick. Not a good impression, jackass.

Say the truth to almost anyone, and they will react with rage. One need not even say the truth. Represent truth in some form or other--by dint of what you are, for example, when it comes to publishing--and there will be rage and hate.

What is most typical about this exchange--which is so predictable and typical to produce merely another yawn on my part--is the misuse of the word "impression." Note the hubris and entitlement this person has subconsciously built into that word. Clearly the other party is not trying to create an impression, which also implies the word "first." Ain't about that. Nor curry favor. Not not curry favor, really. They're simply saying something that is true and all but begs to be said given the irony of the other person's initial response. The expectation is that people come to her. Men come to her. They try to impress her. Dance through hoops for her approval. It's a level of sexism--misandry--that is firmly established in society now, which one is supposed to pretend is not there. Especially if one is a white male. My profile firmly--but politely--states that I will not be interested in you if you communicate in acronyms and emojis. I'll put that profile up later. A woman reached out to say I should give a Ted Talk on it. Other pitch me on the idea of becoming a writer. "You'd be awesome at it." There is no way she knew that word. When should one learn how to spell "decent"? Third grade? The word is not "palavering." It's "decent." Having said that, this is one of the smarter people one will meet on a dating site. We are a functionally illiterate society. Another big piece of the pie for me when words, and the creation of word-based art at its highest level, is what I do.

What is also interesting: someone like this, I have no doubt, speaks of tolerance all the time. Look how quickly she moved to name-calling. There is virtually no tolerance in the world. People lie about being tolerant. They have no interest in tolerance. They are interested in themselves and protecting their feelings and a highly falsified identity and a near total-absence of actual, real self. It's essential to them that their lies not be compromised or impugned upon. Now, if this person had said, "Oh, shit, my bad, that's embarrassing. Long morning. So, what are you up to today, wiseass?" I would have definitely talked to them.

Depressing analytics stat: Kimball always plugs this site and this blog on Downtown. Think about how Downtown works. I'm the main guest, really. I'm on there more than anyone else. After the voice of one R. Kimball, it is my voice that you hear the most on that program. All of three people from Bangor--and I know who they are--visited this site or blog in the last thirty days. One was Kimball, one was Pratt.

Dreams I have had of late. I went to Pratt's house in Maine, which was not his actual house in real life. It was like a long, massive museum along the coast. In his bedroom was a huge grease board with notes--which reminded me of the grease board I had in Rockport that recorded what I wrote each day--and these windows that looked out to nothing but ocean. Another dream: in a record store in Chicago frantically looking for Minutemen bootlegs. Another: in a parking lot resembling one from Mansfield where there was a supermarket and a Bradlee's, with an old hockey teammate I used to look up to. I thought he was cool. Now he's like some guy in the South who isn't very bright and talks about guns a lot. That was in CT, so the geographical dream spaces were overlapping. He was in a softball league, and I asked him if anyone else I knew played as he took his gear out of the car. There was this girl--a woman now, obviously--with him, who I had this huge crush on in high school. The biggest crush of my life. From a strictly crush-based standpoint. Her name was Kate. She had on this half shirt and was more fit than she was back then. I wasn't prepared to see her. As in expecting. Another dream: I went to the library in Mansfield, a place that was so crucial to me. The building is still there--it's a beautiful old building--but it's not a library anymore. If this ever worked out for me, I could take a film crew on a doozy of a tour of the places of my artistic journey. I could show someone right where I stood, on a rock looking out to sea, as I wrote such and such. My stairs and my places and my walks and the buildings. The kids' section was in the basement. Kimball was actually outside the building when I went there. I had never had a dream about Kimball or Pratt before.

A couple days ago, someone I know rattled off a list of people who have abused me. It was a painful roll call. They were trying to make a point. They said, "Even after what those people have done, after the evil, the plotting against, the sabotage, the betrayal, if any one of them phoned you or knocked on your door and needed help, you'd help them. Because that's who you are. And most of those people also know that, and it's allowed them to do more to you in the past, in very cowardly, passive aggressive ways." I thought about some of the names as he said them. We have these conversations--they are gravid conversations of gravity--where we recognize those beats in which normally we are to speak. When it's our time and place within the rhythm. But we know, in these kinds of conversations, that we are to let the beat pass, because it's not our beat--our beat is to continue listening. "You would even help Molly," this person said. I would say that this person knows me better than anyone. But I told them they were wrong, because they were wrong. They were right about almost everything they said. That is my nature. It is carved through me so deeply as to be me. It's what my work is for. It's what my purpose is. It's what my drive and focus work in tandem with and on the behalf of. But I would not help Molly. No matter what. Nor these people of publishing. I'd work with them, if that meant the higher purpose for which I am here, for which I believe I am here, was being realized, and the people I need to reach were being reached. That is my categorical imperative. That is what I answer to. That pulls rank on all. That is everything. Getting the work to the people I believe I am here to get the work to. That's a lot of people. Many millions. And I'll do whatever I have to do to foster the reach. But even if I wanted to help, within this example this person provided, I would not allow myself to. Because there is something bigger than help or relief or aid or even saving at play. And that is a moral principle. A sacrosanct moral principle of decency, of self-respect, self-love. Evil crosses a threshold that invokes the built-in sacredness of that principle, and to not answer to it, is to vitiate a part of one's soul via another person who has already sought to destroy it. There is no situation in which I would help such a person. I would go against my very nature, because of the transcendent principle of my own soul and humanness.

How's that for a Sunday morning thought?

Get some, bitches!

Joking.

Let's settle down.

In some ways, they were only right about one of the people, actually. But that was also the only person I'd say I've ever had a true connection with.

I've known so many people who as adults are just evil children. Once I was in a relationship with one, and a disturbed person who I see obsesses over this journal sent a letter to her parents saying what a bad person I was. As if I wouldn't know and know exactly who did it. And as if I didn't know the weakness involved on all sides, though I hoped against hope--and I think this is one of the rare times that confusing expression works--that the person who mattered to me was not this way, or could become a different way, via a different environment, but I knew. I always knew. What one learns is that the adult who is really an evil child is always going to be an evil child. That's their path in life. It is their nature. It is truly who they are, on account of everything they could never be strong enough to face and fight. Fortunately for them, they will meet many people who are similar in this manner. They will have people to hit the like button on their Instagram. To kiss their ass. To offer praise where none is merited. To wish to be with them, be around them. Because voids that cannot be filled, that will never be filled, are being tended to. The person way at the top of this entry--I did not tend to her void. Even in the passing sense. That fleeting interaction of twenty-five seconds. The void must always be tended to. Not filled. But massaged. Cosmetics are applied; the void is masked, it is disguised, it is dressed up. But the void is never filled. Does one understand what I mean? And then that person, with the void, with the hollowness of all of their interactions, the walking insincerity and con job that is the life, will resent, will fear, will envy, will wish to destroy or have destroyed, or suppress--as in publishing--the person who is their opposite, and the opposite of this kind of empty entity. They will be the devil to them, because of what they are an actual paragon of. And what they really are. Now, they'll term this in different ways. They'll say, "He's a thug," or "he attacked me," when there was no attack. There was some statement of truth after ten years of abuse. One will see this in full soon enough when I document the career practices of an editor who compared me to the Mafia. But he knows the truth. He has to call it something else, though. Has to turn to his wife and ask her to help him call it something else, and decide upon suitably negative terms to frame me as the bad guy of the piece. But people know. They always know. On some level. That is why they prefer to surround themselves with people exactly like what they are. Because that quiets the voice of truth that comes when disparate forms stands side-by-side. This is a huge piece of the pie with which I am dealing. And when people say to me, "Your time will come, you are here for a larger purpose," I hope they're aware of these things. Because this is the reality of the situation and what must be overcome for me to have that time that I hope is coming.

Say this for CW: She did use commas correctly. You can go three months on a dating site and not see anyone do that even once.

I watched The Hustler (1961). That is some seriously bad acting and over-acting. The only person who is not terrible in the picture is Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats, but that character was under-used and under-developed. He ought to have been given more utility and less passivity. I would have liked to see him take some kind of stand at the end. Intervene. At one point they play pool for forty straight hours--while drinking, too. Someone recently told me it wasn't possible to be awake for forty straight hours.

Today marks 1757 days, or 251 weeks, without a drink.

I composed two stories yesterday. One of them I am still not sure on the title. It's fine. I have to look at it some more. I have to look at both some more. The second I know is excellent. It's called "Nickle Coffee." It's told by a woman. She and her husband seem to live in this sleepy kind of town. And they have a seventeen-year-old son. All of the men in her family drank. They die of drink but it's called something else. We're given some quick examples, and then a longer example of a man cleaning a rifle. What happened to his eye. Among other parts of him. We find out who that is. And the story starts with the father saying these awful things about their kid. They're at this police station a lot in the middle of the night because the kid has been brought in. Notice that he's still a minor. They settle into this routine. They park outside the sheriff's office. The town insignia on the doors of the police cars plays a major part in the story. And they sit there. They don't go in right away. They've debated hard love. Leaving the kid there. And they sort of go through these motions that desperate people go through. The man gets out of the car, and he walks across the street to the gas station that we know at first is open very late, and that we can later deduce is open all night. He buys a couple cups of coffee. They don't cost a nickel each--that's not where the title comes from. When he gets back in the car, he has this news to report about what the gas station guy said to him. It's the same guy every time. The wife doesn't know his name until this night. They're going to have this conversation about the gas station guy. And that conversation is going to mean all of these other things. The wife kind of acts as our guide to that. She doesn't explain everything--there are things for us to put together on our own--but she knows her husband in certain in-depth ways, and she translates, if you will, part of his words. The guy at the gas station is reading this huge book--like 2000 pages--of English mysteries. And the husband is sort of troubled by this. But it's also not really about the book of the mysteries. And it all plays out in the car. But it's also playing out in the past, the present, the future, and in these networks of relationship. Wife-husband. Wife-and her family. Husband-wife-her family. Mother-son. Father-son. Mother-father-son. While you have this great, offstage character in the gas station guy, who provides the narrative motor in this ingenious way. I need to go over it now. I think I can get it to be as strong as "Buck a Drive." "Buck a Drive" is sick.

The second pair of shoes came. I haven't had new shoes in so long. Later today I'll get arch supports and put them in the shoes, and throw away the old ones at last. Soon I must get sneakers. I go through sneakers so fast. The tread goes. The backs rip out completely. The sides start to split. I'm very not confident with clothes. It's one of my definite weaknesses. Normally, at best, I'm in jeans and a sweatshirt. If this ever happened, and I was going around the country talking and do a lot of TV, I'd need some real help from someone, with getting up to speed on clothes. Getting clothes. I don't know how to tie anything. I'm pretty helpless in this area and bereft of confidence. I think I could get okay, and I could even see myself as something of a clothes horse in Rockport, but that's not close to where I am right now.

Listened to Primal Scream's XTRMNTR. It helps me get ready to pop the people I need to pop. Which is, again, not my nature. But it is even less my nature to lose to evil, bigoted people. In the nature battles, the latter will ultimately assert itself with me. It is the dominant nature.