Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
I’ve been trying to channel someone with admirable traits lately, because I have none left. Not sure I ever did. Was I kind and forgiving at one time? Emotionally generous? Did I suffer fools gladly? Did I suckle baby iguanas at my teat of human kindness?
I am despicable. Self-despicable. I am very self-reliant in that one regard. I can definitely despise myself. All by myself.
I do have one consolation. At least I’m not a social climber. I lack the prehensile tail, much less the embouchure it takes to cling to someone else’s upwardly moving prehensile tail by my lips.
But the rest of you, oh my god, how did you all get like this? You’re worse than me! And I’m not the only one who thinks so. I say that without a shred of proof, just evidence gathered like one might gather crumbs on a table cloth and call them a cookie. Like Alex Jones does with fragments of lies.
Just think: Alex Jones exists. That alone ought to be enough to convince any objective observer that our species has outlived its redemptive potential.
I can’t figure out who I hate more: the left, the right, or the middle? Or the up? Or the down? There is an interlocking ecology of annoyances these days. I can’t stand the interrogation of the self that brings forth nothing but oversimplifications. The academics who can’t utter one comprehensible word, and the academics who CAN utter comprehensible words but they’re always reactionary words. I don’t know who’s more intolerable, the people I can’t stand or the people who can’t stand me or the ones who overlap into both categories.
The white people and the Chinese and the Persians and Greeks and Mongols and Tatars started it. Conquering. But even that idea is too complicated for a lot of you. I can’t even itemize what aggrieves me anymore. This is how bad it’s gotten. This is how bad YOU’VE all gotten.
It’s the white men, it’s the black men, it’s the straight men, it’s the gay men, it’s the women of color, it’s the white women, it’s the Jews it’s the gentiles it’s the god damn Buddhists. I’m just, I’m fed up. Not a single one of you has a decent idea about how to proceed. We’re just gonna run in place here. Just jog in place shouting one incomprehensible chant over and over while our spinning wheels wear out the turf and dig a hole underneath ourselves, a bottomless pit for us to fall into.
I’ve tried to be patient and gracious. A lot of good that did. You people lose respect for a gracious individual. You think just because you can walk all over someone that that’s all he’s good for. Well, in my case, you’re right, but it’s still very shallow of you.
It doesn’t make sense to make sense anymore. Ideologies have all become grotesque. They’ve swollen like some kind of leathery pumpkins, swollen with their own internal moisture festering with bacteria, like an obese blister growing on some eldritch garden vine.
I’ve tried being analytical. I’ve tried being emotional. I’ve tried being exuberant. I’ve tried being sober. None of these conditions appeals to me.
I heard someone call this an election year. It’s not. It’s still 2019. That’s nothing. That’s a nothing year. This is the year of grasping the fog. I got an idea, why don’t we all just take the fog, braid it into rope, and hang ourselves from the clouds. Huh? How about it? Why, what’s so great about what YOU’VE got planned?
I understand I’m not giving you a chance, with this vague Jeremiad. Super vague, I know. “What exactly are you upset about, Jeff? Can you be specific so we might at least pretend to care? Go through the motions of caring, like an NRA-beholden legislator after a mass school shooting?” No, I can’t. I’m just utterly, atomistically aggrieved. My agitation is Brownian, like molecules in broth. I just can’t, y’know? I just can’t. The prospect of receiving your insincere thoughts and prayers for my groping, blind aggravation is no incentive to focus.
Can’t you just feel it? Every ethnic, socio-economic, phenotypic, genotypic – every kind of person there is, each and all up in arms, everyone for themselves and God against all. I know you’ve got to have felt like this at some point recently. You haven’t? You might have but you’re not sure because I’m being so expansively inclusive it’s hard to tell?
I’m just trying to give voice to the desperate sensation that there is no way out of the mess. That’s all. And I am succeeding to my own satisfaction, although satisfied I am not.
I hate what’s going on these days. I hate the plot, the writing, everything. But I will admit, I’m interested. You have my attention. I’m invested. Not monetarily. Monetarily? Really? Me? You gotta be kidding. No, I’m bankrupt of every asset you could imagine. I have no interest but the honest one. I’m binging on Earth, and the human species. I’m hooked. I actually have real affection for this story I hate, the plot twists I can’t stomach, the characters I’d like to throttle. I can’t help it. You got me interested. I’m hooked.
This is why we’re doomed. I suspect the only reason we’re all participating in this sick nihilistic mumblecore charade, this existential doomsday soap opera, is because we want to know what happens next. Will Dick finally get down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow? We’re so weak.
This has been the Moment of Truth. Good day!