"Turns out things actually don't get better with time. They just get buried."
"Turns out shame is the most unbreakable of prisons."
"Go ahead. Say it," I urged.
"Ain't sayin' nothin'." He crossed his arms in futile defiance.
"I'm only asking you to agree with yourself!"
"Not gonna to do it so shut the hell up!"
"You just said you don't think the President is Jesus. Now you're telling me you can't say it. So that tells me you really do think that."
"I hate you."
She was not amused by my response. "I'm sorry, Mr. Homeless, you can't put down 'Grieving' as an occupation."
"OK. How about 'Hypocrite'?"
She was even less amused then.
Of him she said: "He just wants to use me, to make up for his deficiencies and inadequacies. I won't stand for it! He has to get his own life and stand on his own two feet. I can't be wasting my time!"
Of another she said: "He needs me and I have purpose. This is what true love is all about. My devotion is endless because it's so pure. I lead a righteous life and need never change."
The first one loved her, the second one used her.
"Film everything. Life is always happening - even when making a movie. John Lennon wrote 'Strawberry Fields' while waiting around the set of 'How I Won The War'. Would have been a much better use of film to have filmed that than the mediocre movie he was in."
"That boy gonna kill hisself. He got too many "hurrys" in his life."
"When you lie you die."
["I love you...and I don't."]
- The Lower Plateau
Every day I wake up trying to find a reason not to kill myself. And every day I fail.
"Alan Dershowitz is someone whom the minute he found out he had a soul couldn't wait to sell it."
"Mankind is never so terrifyingly chilling as when we call ourselves Just."
"It is known but not admitted: one can be factual but not truthful, and one can be truthful but not factual."
"There are no conservatives. Only repressed liberals."
"Hey, Harry, I hear you's running for office??"
"I is!"
"You got a slogan or sumpthin'?"
"I does! 'Fuck the niggers! Fuck the spics! No more welfare!'"
"Wow!! You should get a lotta votes with that!"
"Yep. I'll get the rural retards, the rednecks, the racists, and the religious right."
"That's pert near everyone in Texas! And here I thought you was a commie pinko faggot librul."
"Oh, but I am!"
"Wot?? Then what ya doin' with a slogan like that fer??"
"Like you said, I want all the Texas votes. Once elected, I plan on promoting justice, equity, and humanity above all."
"You bastard! You can't trick folks like that! What a nightmare that you is!"
"I don't know how life is supposed to have meaning when God doesn't stand up for the truth."
"In America, what people say about socialism is actually how they feel about capitalism."
"Bitter to the end, he is. Unbelievable."
"What do you expect? He's Russian."
"What do you mean 'He's Russian'? Like that explains anything."
"Russians equate trying with failure. That's how they turn failure into a virtue and Vodka into a national staple. To a Russian, to betray you is to 'save' you."
"Ah, that's horseshit."
"If it's horseshit then why ya complaining, ya fuckhead!"
"Trust me, there's no amount of military might that can make greedy hearts safe."
"That wot I been sayin! That wot I been sayin' all along, ya jack ass. Ya jess can't haves too big a military, no sir! We jess gotta keep makin' more. It life and death!"
"You're going to have to give up your beloved politics and realize the world is just so much chattel beneath your feet. To do otherwise is to engage in self-pity. The sky is darkening."
It was with mixed emotions she reacted to being touted as a "talented prostitute."
"Si! Si! Yo se! Yo se! It has to happen here and now. Sometimes you compare, sometimes you contrast.""But it's so jarring from everything up to that point in the film."
"Yes, exactly! That's the point. At the very moment his life is the most complicated and convoluted, the simplicity of his childhood kicks in. All your childhood dreams are real. 'What is too painful to remember we simply choose to forget.' But we can't forget. There's no way forward but through those dreams. However inconvenient, that's the law. That's the love."
Earlier that day she rebuked: "God, no! Get the hell away from me. I don't want to see you now or ever again. Do what you want, just don't do it around me. I don't want to see or hear anything about you. Just blow away and die! Please, somebody, help!"
Later that day he rebuked: "Hey, Harry, what you need is a woman of your own. You ain't never gonna be anything but miserable without one."
How to explain the nightmare of my life?
"She committed suicide."
"Who? That fat chick you told me about?"
"Yeah."
"Same one you sent that note to her parents asking why their daughter so fat?"
"Yeah..."
"Dude! What is wrong with you? You did nothing but dog her ass all them years. I can't believe what a shitfaced asshole you are."
"I don't understand it, either. I just couldn't stop myself."
"That no reason! No wonder you can't sleep no more."
"It was like, I just couldn't conceive how anyone could care so much about anything I had to say. I just kept pushing and pushing, figuring she'd wake up and move on. Never crossed my mind this could happen."
"Crossing or not, it did happen."
"So what does it mean someone took what I said so much to heart she kills herself? I'm nothing, a big zero. Far as I could tell she never wanted anything to do with me socially. I just can't figure it out."
"Sounds to me like you better figure something out or your ass'll be in even bigger sling than it is now!"
"Jose has hit the bottle, man."
"What?? You're kidding."
"Yeah, he's basically wasted half the time."
"You're supposed to be happy to get out of prison."
"What can I say? Says he doesn't know what to do with himself..."
"Yeah, well, I can see that. Just another invisible tragedy of the world."
"The advantage President Liar has is that there's no one as dedicated to telling the truth as he is to lying."
"Doesn't really matter how much we sanction, whitewash, or deify our greed, it's still fatal in the end. Lots of people are going to die and it's going to be way funny watching their capitalistic greed pried from their cold, dead hands."
"Everything outside of the truth is religion."
"I basically live my life in a state of controlled panic."
"Better stay away from that chick, man. She'll eat your eyeballs out."
"Yeah, I know. I've got it under control."
"Not with those legs you don't! Ouch!"
"Don't worry. Nothing's going to happen. She'll lose interest when she finds out I don't have what she wants."
"Money?"
"A lack of self-respect."
"Well, what did she say??"
"She asked me what I wanted."
"No shit!? You said she'd never talk to you again."
"The total tonnage of what I don't know would fill a library."
"So what did you answer?"
"I told her I wanted to dream with her."
Though fruitless in her efforts to date, she continued to waterboard him with silence.
She'd talk on warm summer nights of the dreams she'd lived, walking among the stars as only two can do. Her motives had been pure and her decisions directed by God. She spoke as one who'd surely suffered the wounds of envious beings who couldn't hope to scale the heights she so often visited. Many did she put under her spell with this. If only you could have been there!
Yes, yes. She loved weaving the tale of the way we weren't.
She stood with arms firmly folded in the living room of her house palace, the queen observing her disloyal subject: me. I was boiling in the blaze of her fury, melting, suffering unbearable internal itching to be free of her gaze but bound to her presence as one who had mortally sinned. Words were coming like exploding lava from a volcano. I could only hope against hope.
"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"
Oh, dear God Jesus, I was trapped. To say nothing was to get my head rightfully bitten off. To say something was to get my head rightfully bitten off. What do you say after committing an unspeakable act to someone who showed you overflowing kindness? Time to die.
Then I spotted a pen and paper on a coffee table. Maybe, just maybe. I walked over, eyeing her for approval as I went. Using the best handwriting I was able to muster, I wrote what I could and stepped back for her judgment.
I felt a softening as she put down the paper. She gave me her you-can-go-now look and I dutifully obeyed as one who owes more than can be repaid. I do not know if that was my final sentence or only a delay. I'll have to face that another day. As I departed through the front door I caught her glancing at the words once more:
"Lorem Ipsum Dolor"
I don't miss you. I miss what you were. That's the price of silence all those years."
Love is the only success.
"That was now, this is then."
This will become apparent when it's too late. Nobody faces anything.
"People can't wait to get all in your face about how the world works never once admitting how life works trumps everything in the end."
"Suddenly, being clever isn't so clever anymore." On a hill on the distant horizon, the pale horse whinnied as the rider looked my way.
"You're going to die anyway. Why not fly?"
Steve and Morty peered over the chasm of a thousand foot cliff. To make the leap was never to return. To make matters worse, as they hesitated in the mud, they sank ever deeper. Morty smiled. Then, with a triple somersault half pike twist, he leapt. He urged Steve to do the same with a wave of his arm.
"Are you nuts? I can't make that leap!"
"No, you can!"
Morty being his usual confounding self, Steve looked behind him at the countless crosses of the self-crucified. They cried out to him in dire warning.
"Don't believe him! There's no future over there! Life is only on the cross!"
"You must stay at all costs! Leap and your whole life is wasted! No decision could be more tragic."
"The one who speaks to you is the devil! He lives only to betray! Trust no one - especially yourself!"
The voices spoke with clear and present authority, doubtless of their words. But as Steve scanned their mud-streaked faces, he saw eternal fear in their eyes, inwardly dead. But when his eyes reached the final voice he saw something else: the devil himself, crucified and smiling. He winked to Steve. "Let me lead you to salvation."
"You're the kindest person I know. You're alone and you don't have to be. You can't blame that on the Trumptard."
"Oh, don't worry about him. He's not the first to mistake reality for philosophy and philosophy for reality."
"The world is doomed - but I am saved," I declared to the room. But when I looked around, every eye was staring at me with hate.
["Once you open your door to one person, anyone can come in."]
And the reverse is true too...
He spoke in what he thought was his 'smart ass' country voice. "See that guy in the corner overs there? He-uns thinks the sky is purple! Whatcha gotta say to that, huh??" He took my silence for vindication. "Yeah, that's right! Got nothin' to say, do ya? That cuz you knows he-uns is right! Haha, I knew it!"
I could only sigh and walk away. "Why the hell do I have to live with people like that?"
"No, no, you don't understand!" he said, waving away doubts with his smug cigar. "It's different for me. I only engage in ethical corruption."
"Hey, you! Think you're a real smart ass, don't you?"
I never know how to answer that question. My oversized neighbor was storming across his yard into mine. Apparently he did not care for my new yard sign stating, "We back the fuchsia" whereas his posted sign stated, "We back the blue."
"Oh, don't get your yard on," I unhelpfully replied.
"Listen," he demanded, finally reaching my space, "you make think it's funny mocking the police but we are here to support law and order. For disrespecting those who put their lives on the line for you each and every day I oughtta rip out that sign and tear it to shreds."
"Oh, I don't think you'll do that." I didn't really feel like explaining I wasn't mocking the police, only his subservient devotion. Regardless, he felt emboldened by my reply.
He hitched up his britches. "Oh, yeah? What makes you so sure of that!"
"Because I'll call the police..."
"Alright, jackass, laugh now - laugh all you want. But just you wait! Distant karma's gonna get you!"
The Man was on a rant. "The more I know the less I like it! So the answer must be..."
"To know less!"
UnReAliTy wins the day. "I keep having to pretend the meaningless is meaningful and the meaningful is meaningless."
After her horrified sight of me: "There's not much left of me. I was telling you... I hope one of us can forgive me."
Foxed News: "It's just terrible what those people are saying about those who do evil." We Report, You Deride.
The killer spoke on a day of his wreck-oning. "Staring at the chalk outline of our friendship, I'm wounded by the hugs we no longer share."
"She said I was caged by my own self-pity. So I did nothing."
"Literalism is just another way of avoiding the truth."
"Fiddlesticks and deviltry! I do NOT have to believe in anyone's idea of 'truth'. It only has to be true in my head."
Then he walked directly off a thousand foot cliff, the last of his species.
They looked back at me, eyes blinking in stunned silence. Then: "But we have to believe that - otherwise the whole world is a lie."
["Fairfax and Carter! Fairfax and Carter. They run the whole city."]
"Our only connection was the writing. She didn't want to be friends."
"How serious was she about writing, then?"
"I was too afraid to find out. I just assumed she was doing it as a lark like anyone who isn't a professional and at some point I'd lose all connection. I lived in constant fear."
"You got your blood money request. You think I don't know what's going on but I do. All you fuckers are going down. Distant karma's going to get you! You think your thieving hands are safe but they are not. You'll pay! You'll pay in the worst ways possible, you bastards!!!"
After he stormed off someone asked, "What the hell happened to him?"
"They shorted him a McNugget."
"Unfortunately, given the state of the world today, it's the people unable to speak that have the stories to tell."
"The opposite of being useful is being used. Not wanting to be used is the opposite of being lazy."
"Yeah, I could do that - I just don't think I could fake that much interest."
"The Love you take is equal to the love you fake."
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making liars think they're smart."
"People are angrier today than they were yesterday. Tomorrow, they'll be angrier still. There's a reason for that."
Redneck Rick stomped his foot and started to cry. "You gotta stop playin' that song. It's gay!" Then he hiked up his hula skirt and stormed off.
"There's lots of people in Hell with bridges and buildings and highways and statues named after them."
"Look, man, this is a serious story. I can't believe you're not interested in fixing it."
"I didn't say I wasn't interested in it. I just haven't figured out how to interject myself as the hero yet."
"Oh, OK, Elon."
"Hey...pssst...come over here. I want to smell your rot."
"Fuck off, asshole. Goddam, Jesus, I hate living on this planet."
Drinking is a point of pride with her. "Don't tell me you're tipsy again..."
"Noo - no...you must have me confusable with some one else's."
["Death is whimsical today."]
"Sez hear theirs mor an' mor corrupshun goin' on every day!"
"Aw, nobody gives a shit about that!"
"Dem peeples needs to bee put in jails!"
"Just don't get it, do ya? No one's going to do anything about it because we get more and more tired every day not facing that capitalism is corruption."
"I'm sorry, I don't see how Trump can be attacking Robert Mueller when Mueller even has a Purple Heart."
"That's nothing! If Trump had been in combat he'd have two or three Purple hearts - maybe more!"
"But Trump could have served. He just kept making up some excuse about bone spurs."
"He wanted to serve! The doctors wouldn't let him. They were holding him back no matter how hard he fought. He was bitter!"
"Oh, there's no way The Donald would ever let himself get wounded."
"Right! Getting wounded is for losers!"
"But you just said he'd have multiple Purple Hearts from getting wounded."
"There you go again, just like the lying media, using facts and logic to twist everything I say. Fucking bitch!"
"Always looking for love, aren't ya, Harry?"
"Yup - only surefire way of avoiding it."
"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you're misinformed. If you read your heart you know the truth - and who's lying and who's not."
"Look, soldier, you don't have to tell me about suicide. I can't reverse any of the bad things I've done, either. Murder comes in many forms and after you've done it, you're horrified with yourself. You can't live with what you've become, you're constantly lying which is like being put in solitary confinement, and you can't imagine how anyone can ever love you. Even God can't stop the nightmares. So you see only one way out."
"Nothing I say, nothing I do, can bring those people back to life."
"I understand - completely. But here's the thing: if you want to die, then die. But you have to own it first. You have to tell the world those people died for no reason, you killed for no reason, and you were ordered to kill for no reason. You can't attach any meaning to it or any hope of meaning to it whatsoever."
"I can't do that..."
"And you have to tell mothers and fathers that their sons and daughters died not for their country, but for no reason. That's how you win, that's how you stop the waste, by coming clean."
["Just cuz you say it with conviction it don't mean shit to me!"]
"I don't want to hear your goddam commie shit, Harry. Say what you will, but Mankind is always going to be driven by the profit motive. That just human nature and not a damn thing you can do about it."
"I quite agree."
"Bullshit! All that 'greater good' crap is for the birds and will never happen ever."
"I never said the profit motive is going away. I'm only saying we're going to redefine the meaning of 'profit' - or rather, Nature will for us if we do not."
"Hey, lady, are you for real? Are you really a Trump supporter??"
"Yes. Not only that, I'm an absolute Trump supporter!"
"Awesome! Does that mean I get to grab your pussy?"
"I hear people questioning decisions like why are we enhancing the deficit to unsustainable levels? On the surface it doesn't seem rational but those who make (and agree and accept) those decisions do so because they believe there's no end game. It's all "Get and grab before it's gone". They are nihilists. They don't dare admit that, of course. They are too afraid everyone might wake up and the free ride will be over (while accusing everyone else of wanting a free ride!)."
He said right and wrong is only determined by what you can get away with. A true living monster.
"Life is what you make it!" scoffed the Republican woman to Jesus on the cross.
["But I am upset, Benjamin. Extremely upset."]
"Oh, him. Yes, he knows everything - he does nothing."
"What happened? Simple. She was hopelessly cool. I was hopelessly not."
"Fuck your god of compromising, holding yourself up with 'holier than thou' bullshit! "Oh, I'm a moderate, I'm reasonable, not like those crazy radicals untethered to reality." One extremist says kill all the Jews and another says kill none and you look to compromise? Now THAT'S fucking radical! Quit demonizing those who can think. It won't save you and makes life worse for everyone else, Mr. Obama."
I don't want to say he's bitter but he spent five hours last weekend driving to his parent's grave just to spit on it.
"it's hard to be sumthin' when you're nothin..."
"...and it's hard to be nothin' when you're sumthin'"
He done read him some books! He so smart! Him smart guy now!
"Look, I'm clean. I got a regular job, regular life, don't do anything wrong. You guys want to make me do something wrong then - "
"See here!"
"Wait, wait - let me finish. you're going to want to hear this. I got nothin' in my life, nothin' to lose at all. You want to fuck me, that's just fine. But that will be the end of you, you ethnic motherfucker. Cop or no cop, that's how it goes down. So you can sit there and laugh all you want but you got a choice just like everyone: you can protect your life or you can protect your bullshit."
"Yeah, I saw that article, all 20,000 words of it, wondering why people aren't boinking like they used to, giving 85 different fucking reasons, all of them true and all of them not true. Sex is about vulnerability. The world is getting harder every day. People feel less safe, that's all there is to it."
["News said it's raining in New York."]
"Let me see that!" she said grabbing the fortune cookie from my hand. "That's what I thought. It says 'Give love, get love', not 'Give love, get ignored'."
"I tried life with a man and that didn't work. I tried life with no man and that's no picnic, either. So you tell me what I'm supposed to do."
"Hey, sister, you're lyin' like no tomorrow. You were with the *wrong* man and it didn't work. Why you leavin' that part out?"
Sorry, but I cannot help you. I'm in no position to do that. I can't help you, you can't help me, she can't help him, he can't help her, nobody can help nobody! That's just the way it is and it can't be no other way. Otherwise, we'd all have to learn live together and you know that's not gonna happen.
Hate first. Make up a reason for it later. (facts need not apply)
There's a place for everyone in the universe. There's not a place for everyone in the world. That's why the world has no future.
I'm dying right before their eyes, but no one says a word.
Don't worry. I don't expect anyone, anywhere, anyhow not named Jesus to believe, understand or accept a single word I say.
At some point there's going to be nothing left to say: no point. We'll just be helplessly watching what's been set in motion to play out. Beware that day.
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