Wednesday 10/23/24
Friend today tells me that they want to start dealing in what I call the reality of my situation with me. My situation being that I'm fucked and this is how it ends. After however much longer my suffering must go on. Too much to overcome. Millions of things against me and millions of things in opposition to what I'm trying to achieve.
I asked them what they meant, just so we were clear, and they said, "I understand that I'm out here living life"--it's true, he just bought another house--"while you're marching to death, and I want to face that with you."
There's little point in me saying how difficult it is to keep going. That doesn't begin to scratch at just how difficult it actually is.
Let's see. What else. The kids all read "The Bird" last night. I finally mailed it to them on the same day I mailed it to my mom.
My sister read it to the two girls, who she told me were both rapt. Lilah said it reminded her of a poem. There's probably not a harder audience than a pugnacious four-year-old, that being Amelia, and Kara said it held her complete attention. Charlie read the story on his own, then came back into the room to say that he thought it was about them. It is about them. It's about everyone. It's about you. You just don't know it yet because you haven't seen it. And when I say it's about you, I mean it's specifically about you. My sister said they would read it many times as a reminder for how humans should live their lives.
But outside of the few people who have seen it, no one else gets to see it right now. See the above situation.
Was back in the Monument today.
I just wrote and/or finished like twenty-five new things. Fiction and non. I haven't gone into any of that, have I? Doesn't matter how good it is. Doesn't matter the good it can do. Doesn't matter being the best artist ever, a human unlike anyone there's ever been. To the good. Nothing is about any of that. When it's about it, it's because people hate it. Hate the truth of what I am. Resent it. Fear it.
There is this woman I know. Have known for years. We're sort of friends. She has me on such a pedestal. She's terrified of me. I've only ever been nice to her. So it's not because of something I've done. It's because of what I am. And what I am to her.
This is someone who has a degree of affection for me. There's no envy. Just unparalleled admiration.
Now, if I post something I've published on social media, or share an excerpt from a work, she won't so much as hit that like button. Because it's me. It's the great man in her view. The person above all. It's directly related to him. She doesn't want to take the risk of a misstep. So she sits out everything when it pertains directly to me. My work.
But if I post, say, a cover image of a magazine from the 1930s, with authors that she's never heard of mentioned on the cover, or the cover of a very obscure book she's never read by an author she's never heard of, she'll hit the like button for that. It's not like she's read the work of Oliver Onions. She's never heard of him.
This happens because it's not me. The great man she has on the pedestal. So she doesn't worry how that reflects back on her. That she doesn't say something smart enough--in her mind--whatever it may be.
The irony is, it does reflect back on her, for me, more than if she'd done anything or said something. But as long as the person she thinks is above anyone else isn't involved, and their work isn't involved, she can show "support," or interest, if you want to use those terms. Indirectly. Do you understand?
And I know what this person thinks and feels about me. I know how in awe they are.
That's the situation even with people who like me. No one else is this way, because no one is like me or can do what I do. I don't know what you do when this is how it is even with people who like you (and there being so few of them anyway) and then of course there are however many who hate you and want you dead. Because of good things. Like a genius beyond anything else. And strength. And decency. Etc.
These are just a couple of issues, of which there are thousands. Hardly anyone can even understand anything they read, no matter how simple, even if they were going to read, which they don't. That's a pretty big issue in its own right.
I'm using this woman as an example of this particular thing, but it's the same with everyone I know. I shared the example of this woman with the friend--my closest friend and my oldest--I mentioned above last week. He does a version of this, too.
He texted me back saying, "Like I've said before, no one knows what to say to God."
And he's probably said that to me 100 times.
Was talking to my mom about this today. And I said, "If I was some fat tool, with no ability, three cats, and I just sucked, and I was an asshole, and I knew nothing about anything, and I went online and posted how I wrote 1000 words for the first time in three months today, you'd have all of these people hitting that like button and cheering along. Now, none of them would mean any of it. People don't mean anything they say like that, for the most part. They just autopilot out the compliments. It's all bullshit. There's no sincerity. But it's like people can't care about anything if they wanted to. All they can do is the autopilot, insincere bullshit. And if people have to get real? To say something they mean? And to someone they think is above them? Who they're in awe of with work they're in awe of? They can't do it. You see how it plays out. I don't know what to do. I don't know a way around any of this. I have no solutions. Death? That's an end, not a solution. Unless I get a chance somewhere else, in some other world, where it is about what I am and what I can do, and what I do do."
It's not the online thing that matters per se. It's how that's a barometer. It encapsulates what are truths here.
I need to finish "Words of Rain." That should have been done over the weekend.
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