This senseless keyboard rambling – day after day – has evolved into a diary of sorts. And from time to time when you think about it as a diary and when what you semi-coherently bloviate about is asses pumped full of caulk, lobster hands, the logic of the politics of necrophilia, Black and Gay Santas, Abraham Lincoln’s rumored bi-sexuality, and shit like that, then Ozzy’s album has got to come to mind from time to time.
But labels like crazy or madman or even eccentric are labels I loath to accept. See, there’d be some glory or romanticism if this is madness. But it’s simply sad and pathetic if it’s nothing but vanity. And I hate those folks who regard themselves as edgy cause they tell a joke about a dick or pussy or watch something cool and obscure on Adult Swim or who get a real kick from the irreverent, pedestrian edge of an old woman saying “shit” in a radio ad for hot sauce. And I’ve stayed in enough Airbnb’s to know there’s a lot more folks than I knew who at least own a Dostoevsky novel. So I don’t wanna be that deluded. This is just as likely – probably MORE likely – to be Diary of an Idiot than that of a madman. An idiot whose mildly skewed cultural awareness deludes him into thinking he has something worth writing about.
I have a steady and stable job and I’ve never fucked an animal, real or stuffed (stuffed as in a kid’s toy, not stuffed as in taxidermied – but for fuck’s sake…I’ve never fucked either so why this pedantic qualification over nothing!!!!), or willfully or willingly eaten shit or human flesh, which are essentially my standards for crazy. Though, realistically, there’s something to be said for those who believe in that divine “spaghetti monster in the sky” as being at least semi-delusional. See, I don’t believe in that stuff nor a flat earth nor (and I hate to admit this…sorta like a person who’s born into the wrong gender) neither do I believe in Bigfoot. So that makes me sane. So to claim the title of Madman would just be nauseating pretense. So I can’t. I won’t. I fight against it.
But belief in the divine sorta seems like madness. Ordinary madness as Buk might say. The ordinary madness of God and crystals and the magic elixirs/potions of kale and fish oil. Or astrology and numerology and Scientology and on and on and……
The everyday madness of thinking you’re a working class hero when you’re just some schmuck managing an Arby’s.
The everyday madness that gives confidence in your knowledge of how the world REALLY works.
The everyday madness that leads us to believe a bubblier ass or fatter lips or bigger tits or a tauter face is gonna make ya feel better about the idiotic life crafted by someone idiotic enough to think a less-bubbly ass, not her own idiocy, is the greater problem.
But maybe all that is just the madness of normal urogenital flora or acne as opposed to the raging sepsis of genocide, for example. Or another way of putting it: the collective, minor madnesses of homeostasis.
But I don’t accept any of that small stuff – neither L. Ron Hubbard nor the lusty promises made to guys my age by Grecian Formula for Men. That’s why I’m pretty sure I’m sane, though arguably lacking common sense. That’s why I reject a serious consideration of my own madness. I don’t reject it out of shame that it might be true. I reject it out of not wanting to believe I’m something that I’m not. Yet, I acknowledge that all things exist in degree. We all possess some degree of madness and jealousy and kindness and evil. So how does my madness compare to the average?
I spent an afternoon with a young guy (I hesitate to say friend cause I’m not sure at this point what really constitutes friend (with him or anybody else) and I really don’t want to dilute the meaning of the word)…I spent the afternoon a few months ago with this young man who may be mad.
I was passenger in his van and it was raining and we were riding down the interstate and I was looking out the window at some horses in a pasture. When I see horses or think about them, lots of times it makes me think about children and how horses are sorta like children – they’re okay but nothing I want to posses or be responsible for. So that mighta been what I was thinking about when Ivan says something like, “Sorry about that.”
So I said, “What do you mean?”
And he said something like, “Sometimes I think out loud without even knowing it. I spend so much time in here alone.”
Maybe I looked at him puzzled.
“You didn’t hear it?”
“No,” I said. If I was thinking about children and horses, I probably told him that.
He chuckled and said that maybe we’re both crazy and I think I said something about both of us probably spending a lot of time in our own heads.
But here’s where it gets fucked up. Did I truly not hear it? Or did he only imagine he was talking out loud? Cause if he didn’t really say anything….if he only thought he did….then he’s most likely the mad one. But if he was talking and it passed through me like radio waves, then there’s a case to be made for my madness.
Anyway, being called crazy from someone who’s at least close to the boarder of real madness is something I’ve decided to accept and hold on to, but reluctantly, like one of those reward cards you accept and tuck deep into a non-privileged pocket in your wallet just so they’ll shut up and quit asking if you’ve got one. And maybe handing me that crazy card was something I should have just accepted long ago instead of plotting out the polite denial of, “maybe next time.” He gave me that card so, whether it’s true or not, that might make him a friend.
Okay. I need to go for a walk to get some of this shit off my mind. I was supposed to get some Christmas shopping done but now all I got to show for the afternoon is a house that’s still a wreck and this wretched bullshit.
Peace.
mrobins71 