UNREMITTING FAILURE

The Rising

As we approach zero gravity we begin to float, our feet dangling just off the ground. And then, then, we begin to rise, towards our rightful home. You can call it what you want. I just want to see my loved ones again, way up there, and as we rise through the clouds we begin to laugh, life is such a funny thing and we never knew it, not really. I mean it was Hell, but only because we believed in Hell. Now we know better. As we ascend, 30,000, 40,000 feet we know better, and this is better than any drug I ever took, even the demerol they gave me in the hospital after I broke my jaw and busted my spleen. Let's love each other. We're all in transit. There is another home, one where we recognize each other and hug one another and everything is as it should be, because we've gone beyond suffering to see the way things really always were.

The Unutterable

I have searched all my life for the words to express the sheer torture and agony of my nervous breakdowns. The words don't exist. You can't express the inexpressible, speak the unspeakable. It is this which has made me feel so distant from my fellow human beings. This failure to communicate what I believe it is essential to communicate has also shaped my belief in the utter futility of existence. Kurtz managed, "The horror! The horror!" No one has come closer. Once you have looked into the abyss, the words vanish. It is this which makes me agree with my spiritual brother, E.M. Cioran, when he says, "As long as you live on this side of the terrible, you will find words to express it; once you know it from inside, you will no longer find a single one."

More Doobage

Last night the Doobie Brothers appeared at my door. They said, "We have no place to stay." I told them my apartment wasn't equipped to bed that much Doobage. "We can sleep on the floor," one of them said. "Oh black water," said another. "I won't tolerate any Doobie Brother lyrics in my home," I told them. "Mississippi moon," said the same Doobie. "He can't help himself said another one of the Doobies. "He can only speak in Doobie Brother lyrics." "Long train runnin'," said the retarded Doobie. I slammed the door in their face. And from behind the door heard the retarded Doobie say, "Perhaps I should have told him Jesus is just alright."

The Perversity of Memory

I was 21 and going to school in Shippensburg PA. I had suffered a nervous breakdown I told no one about and was desperately trying to drink myself to death. The agitation was almost unbearable. Yet I inexplicably look back upon that year with fondness. How is this so? Obviously I agree with E.M. Cioran when he says, "I remember a place I have been only if I have had the luck to experience utter misery there."

In the End, It All Comes Down to a Doobie Brothers Moment

I did not ask to be a human being. Nobody consulted me beforehand. I was not given a vote. A yea or nay. But if I knew then what I know now, I'm not sure how I'd vote. Sure, my life has sucked verily at many points. And sure, the bad of this world outweighs the good 6,000,000 to 1. But I've had good times, crazy times, wild times, loving times. I mean, if I'd never been born, I'd never have gotten the chance to smoke PCP at a Doobie Brothers concert.

The Russian Novelski

I drove my droshky into a snow bank. This pissed off Tolstoy no end. He shouted, "Where did you learn to drive the droshky, at drunkard's school?" That hurt. I mean, I had drunk six triple vodkas before getting behind the reins. But it's cold up on that bench. You need 18 shots of vodka to keep from freezing. I replied, "Chekhov was kinder." To which Tolstoy replied, "Yes, and he is deader than Haircut 100! Deader than Hootie and the Blowfish! Deader than the Captain and Tennille!" I replied, "There's no call to bring the Captain into this. I served under him on the US Muskrat."

THE LIME WORKS

The excitement! I'm just starting on the last remaining of Thomas Bernhard's approximately two dozen novels! What I love most about Bernhard is that every novel is the same novel, the novel before the novel you're reading will be the same as the novel you read after the novel you're reading, as will the novel after that novel and the novel after that novel and so on, and what I also love about Bernhard is he writes exactly like this, tiring you with repetition upon repetition upon you realize life is repetition after repetition, all tangled up in the head of a first-person narrator or a third-person narrator or who cares, he makes me happy especially now that I have in my hands The Lime Works, the last of his novels to pass through my hands, yes The Lime Works is the last of them, they've all passed through my hands but The Lime Works, which I had to find at the university library where I nearly expired with joy, at finally getting my hands on The Lime Works, which while not the last of his works is the last of his works I haven't read, and the thought of reading it, of reading the last of Bernhard's novels in the form of The Lime Works, is tremendously exciting. Tremendously!

Grandad's Disappointment

I remember coming home one day with my grandfather and he was very disappointed in me. Very disappointed. And not only did he send me to bed without my supper, he sat me down, put his big old age-spotted hands on my shoulders, and said, "It was definitely not polite to push your grandmother in front of a locomotive."

Inscrutable Time

Life is simultaneously too short and too long. It is this quality that lends time the aura of an enigma. It seems eons since I was a child; and yet it also seems as if my life has gone by in a flash. We are all the sons and daughters of the children we were once. We are all partaking in a miracle. I do not like life much, but you don't have to be a visionary to recognize its miraculous attributes. You just have to possess a heart, one that you're willing to see repeatedly broken.

My Friend the Grizzly

My friend the grizzly bear tore my arm off last night. I said, "What did you do that for?" He replied, "I dunno. I'm a grizzly bear, and seldom reflect beforehand on the consequences of my actions." Then he kindly made me a four-egg omelette.