The Best Revenge?

Three weeks ago I presented my music for Joe’s Game at Palomar College. Most of my fellows were nervous speaking on stage. I had rehearsed my speech. I made the audience laugh, telling them that if they felt nauseous, as though they were fighting their ways through a sewer, then I succeeded as a composer. The crowd loved the song. The mix was just right. Tom took my request for the E.Q. into consideration, lessening the bass so that the audience might hear the trebled frequencies. I didn’t hear a single word of criticism for it. Gabe’s Mom liked it. Tom liked it. Kouji liked it. Several people asked me when the game would come out. I told them I’d keep them up to date. Mom and Dad loved it; they were proud of me, for once, again. And they were happy with the illustration that my sister made for it. Though personally I wish that she’d made the hair less dirty blonde and closer to the platinum hue that I described. But she knew it would not be perfect.

Friday I came in to finish my lab hours for that class. There was only one guy there: the proctor. He was about nineteen years old. I showed him all the music that I’d made in Doctor Byrne’s class that semester. Gabriel joined us after some time. We rocked out to psychedelic classics by Air, by Pink Floyd, by Funkadelic, etc. At some point Gabe and I left for thirty minutes; I know because “Moon Safari” was paused twenty-nine minutes in. Our little session brought Z out of his shell. When we returned from our free lunch with food for the proctor, he was listening to Z’s most recent mix. The girl’s vocals weren’t up to par. But Z would fix that.

Saturday my parents came for the first time to see me play xylophone. It was the first time that I let them watch. They did not know I had a solo. My blood pressure spiked during the slow oboe solo leading into mine. But I nailed it. Tom again went out of his way, even in the midst of business, to commend me. Mom’s pride went through the roof.

Up on stage, I did not think of Kali. I did not think of MacKenzie. I might not have even thought of you.

I am still convinced that Kali loved me, though it’s easier for petty girls, however talented, to blame me for it. It was never I that knew she had a boyfriend. That was her cross to bear; she had simply to pretend that it was ME sending HER the “vibe” and not her projecting her own affections. Any projection by its nature comes with some degree of “creepiness”. The Personal Unconscious is one scary place. Why else would people neglect their dreams? At least my sister has the honesty to confess her fears of studying them.

Your letter helped me with the confidence. It all ways does.

Monday I hung out with Joe all day; we set a record for ourselves. I talked him down from his episode. I administered some herbal tea. He played Spyro the Dragon and then joined me upstairs for a musical consultation session. After we had our plans in order for the soundtrack, he drove me back to his house to play Doom. We had the fanfare we had written stuck in both our heads, even if it occupied different rooms within our brains.

I would have left his house after Doom drained me, but I chose to stay. He talked me through some dark forebodings. When he drove me home, I was refreshed. All though he fought off all my optimism and good graces, I told him that I saw good in him. I told him I saw good within myself, as well. I was a positive influence.

This was more or less what Ben told me time and again. He came down Tuesday, as planned, all the way from Oceanside. He was still working at the same restaurant. All the bartenders were fired because of a case of --------. George got promoted after sleeping with a new girl. The new girl got fired. She spilled the beans after the fact about the other bartenders. George moved back to Ohio. He plays with his old band again.

Christian joined us soon thereafter. I treated him to herbal tea and what remained of what my sister would call “oven pizza”. We hung out downstairs for about half an hour prior to rehearsal, getting acquainted. As Christian wrapped up his pizza I took both of his guitars upstairs. We jammed for two and a half hours. It was the longest recording I had ever made. We were all ecstatic and tired. Ben even left without his effects pedals, though my father noticed them just in time so that I might call Ben and return them to him. He appreciated that. I’d never let something like that just sit around in my home without making an effort to return it. Not if the man had a use for it outside of hoarding.

I still think of you each night. I tell myself what you told me. I guard it religiously against the World.

I have concluded that vengeance would be too easy. Even my successes cannot be considered acts of spite. Moments of joy are so complete and precious that our foes don’t cross my mind until they’ve run their course. External success is so fleeting that sometimes I forget I over had it, and when I’m disgusted by humanity I hear the voice of failure in my ears. Our foes want me to bear the burden for their failures. They’ve all ready figured out just how to blame me for them, arguing at the same moment that they blame me that it’s me that’s blaming them. I guess that this must be what snipers do when they take someone’s life for “being a threat” to their own lives. Joe called it “intimate”. For me, the distance is the very epitome of intimacy. Only a coward would stoop so low, even if he were firing from on high. At any rate, it only works if I forget what I’ve accomplished. I must make myself a target for the bullet to hit me. The moment I remember who I am and what I’ve done without them, I am sheltered from the sniping cowards.

Vengeance is too easy. Success does not satisfy it, for success is too great to be contained within it. And vengeance would not satisfy success. Yet it is comforting to know that if this project fails, and if I fail to do what you had TRULY wanted of me, the foundation of a local scene of artists, then I would be protected. There is nothing they can do to me. They’re cowards. Even if I had to go against the World in its entirety, I would have YOUR World to look forward to in death. Its fleeting intimations colour every day of productivity and wonder. And I know that if that world should fall from sight, and I am left only in agony and turmoil, there is nothing I need to keep secret from this fallen world. I can be ruthless to my heart’s content, for they that wronged us have no recourse. There is no authority they can appeal to without furthering their own exposure. I control entirely their image, which is all they have. And it is only out of that same mercy that you praised in me that I leave that image alone, confining it only to those small crevasses that only they would haunt repeatedly, when I could tell this tale on a much larger scale, met with applause. This is why their final words to me are weak and feeble, tugging at my pity. Joe is right; who ARE these people? It’s beneath a man.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

P.S.: According to Ben I’m thought of fondly by the servers at the restaurant. When I asked him if my return would be awkward at all, he was surprised to think I’d think that. When I asked him who it was that spoke so well of me, he mentioned Holly and, after a pause, MacKenzie. Maybe it is time to pay a visit. Maybe she will finally serve me.

Overstanding:

The first thing that you have to understand is that human beings are interdependent organisms. There is nothing you can do that does not depend upon some sort of support from others.

The narcissist has only one true “skill”: the ability to read the hopes and fears of others, coupled with the inability to care for them except as means towards ends. He can reinforce those hopes or fears in you at any moment, and if you pay close attention you will hear him condone this, since he cannot help but to brag about his conquests and accomplishments. By contending with his criticism you contend with yourself, at times perhaps overcompensating in confidence and then crashing into grief. Nonetheless, the careful cultivation of self-knowledge, even at the expense of self-sacrifice, will arm you against misguided vainglory or self-deprecation. It will render you immune to secondary criticism. You will all so be able to think critically of the narcissist without feeling like a hypocrite for rejecting his hypercritical and skewed lies. He will cease in absence to amplify the toxic and destructive voices in your mind. And you will cease to blame yourself for his victims, for where you might have reinforced those voices in their heads by accident, he will have done so on purpose.

The second thing that you must understand is that we are doomed to whatever society we find ourselves in, and a mature man might find himself in the company of children. Yet to blame him by denying these social facts, pretending towards independence of them, you simply establish yourself as one of the children.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

POST ONE THOUSAND: P.O.T.

This weblog is a work of fiction.

Any ssemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental and should not be inferred nor imbued with mystical significance.

All agents of action that can be called protagonists will receive retribution (their “comeuppance”) in due time.

R.G.

BREAK THROUGH:

I am a survivor of several abusive relationships with narcissistic women. The first of these was with a woman who learned the destructive behavior from her mother. As the result of this mother’s meddling my own family had me hospitalized long before I learned what Narcissistic Abuse Syndrome was. I was misdiagnosed as having Manic Depressive Disorder. I was put on experimental medications. To this day, I am struggling with the trauma. It is difficult for me to express sexual feelings in a “normal way”, in large part because the mother of my ex-girlfriend had such a repressive and incriminating attitude towards it, and in part because the girl herself, reacting to this attitude, used her precocious sexuality to dominate and emasculate men, hiding behind the veneer of Mother’s Perfect Girl so as to make all sexual confusion the man’s fault.

This is all so why I am not a feminist.

Dm.A.A.

APATHETIC LOVE:

Of COURSE I do not care what THEY feel. I LOVE them. Why would you EXPECT me to care what they feel about ME? Oh, right. You want to believe that that’s some sort of contradiction. Now I’m not playing by the “rules”, as though you ever said that there were rules in love. But if you’d think about it for a moment, if you’re capable, you have to admit this: if I love them and they hate me back, why should I acknowledge their hatred? I wouldn’t even NOTICE it. That’s what it means to love someone UNCONDITIONALLY. There IS no barrier between your feelings and her own. Hatred perceives that barrier; hatred thrives off of it. But love does not. So hatred cannot comprehend it, and Love can’t comprehend hatred. Hatred makes Love into another distant Other, whereas Love knows no Others. Love simply sees hatred in passing and looks right past it. It does not even perceive the SOURCE of hatred. It knows no Others.

But you see: that’s inconvenient to you. You WANT to believe that everyone who loves you has to feel all of the really base and negative things that YOU feel. You WANT to believe that you’re ENTITLED to that. And why? Because you don’t love people back. Because you don’t HAVE Unconditional Love. You all ways wanted something in exchange for everything. You never cared to have good intent, so good intent is without value to your mind. You never had to ignore abuse, so you could not tolerate abuse, even if to your mind “abuse” is simply the ignorance of negativity. *I* know how to ignore abuse. I know how to ignore negativity. But you absorb it and it BECOMES you because you FEAR people. Anything to get an outcome that will benefit you. If it doesn’t, then you shed all ties and act like you did something “tactful” and attractive. You didn’t. You just proved what we all knew deep down: that for all your preaching about the Feelings of Others, you gave up caring about all those feelings when you could afford to stop pretending. And then you were left only with your own emotions, just like all of us are, except that yours were based and uninformed by Love, Goodness, and Beauty.

Emotions are fairly useless. They do not form ethics. You cannot predict them. You cannot control them. You can only ride them. Like a wave. But they are not imperatives. They’re not as strong as Love. They can only be as strong AS Love is, though they will never be as strong as Love Itself is. You can’t measure a finite feeling against an infinite Source. So how is it that you can expect me to care that my ex hated me? That’s on her for being a hypocrite. I had that love that she only pretended to. More power to me. That’s why I’m still here. Because I stayed true to my word, and my word was a Loving word. I wouldn’t want people to feel all that I feel; that’s not my goal. And I don’t care whether they love me back or not, except for just a few, and only because they’ve accepted that as their responsibility.

I welcome any feelings from a loving partner. Those I can allow; those I can manage. I offered her love and she returned her hatred. How can you accuse me of having been insensitive to her? It was she that ignored an opportunity for greater sensitivity. It was she that gave up. And if you still maintain that to love is to empathize, then know this: she never really cared for my feelings, either. They were clearly much too deep for her to understand. So be it. What she feels about me will haunt her. What I feel about her will only empower me now.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

L!FE:

If a Human Life is an inalienable value, and if this value is the basis for an ethic that preserves a Human Life, and if this ethic is to have any practical application whatsoever, resulting in the preservation of a Human Life, then all agents of action must be held to this standard. It becomes fruitless to speak of the “integrity of the individual will” once one begins to conceive of a situation wherein an Individual becomes aware of the danger posed to that Life but willfully abstains from its salvation. The same principle that is binding upon the man who discovers the danger and feels compelled by the entire force of dignity to redress it is therefore binding upon all other men, including those that left to their own devices would be unwilling, because to refuse such a service is to disadvantage not only the life in danger but all so the well-being of the conscientious actor who aspires to save such a Life. Because both Life and the means for preserving Life are inalienable values, these two individuals, as representatives of these two values, the respective ends and means, are of a superior value to any man’s will that is deviant from this binding ethic. It follows that ethics of any import must be Universal rather than relative to the actor. This is most noteworthy in situations wherein a Life is put in danger or remains in danger because it is taken out of the supervision of a conscientious man and put into the hands of an unconscientious agent with ulterior motives. Because it is human to demand justice in this situation, and because it is practical to do so, because all ethics strive towards a teleological goal, such as the preservation of Human Life, and because only the lesser part of human nature which does not serve this teleological goal can stand in opposition to it, the transgressor is all ways bound, whether by force of his own conscience or by force of external will, to act as a redresser for the grievances of all afflicted parties. Hence the critique that “being forced to do the right thing” is perverse becomes absolutely and unequivocally null and void, and upon recognition of this fact force is permissible, by extension, in silencing the question entirely, for it is of a lesser value than Human Life and all so stands in direct and parasitic opposition to it. Most human beings, furthermore, would gladly submit to Authority if they are convinced that the Authority is working towards the Common Good, whereas they grow dismissive of all pretenders to authority when those same agents falsely accuse them of seeking the depravity of self-interest. Exploitation can only be felt when one is falsely accused of working for one’s self rather than for the Greater Good, for only then is one forced into isolation and marginalized. Most people would sooner elect to be threatened by force to do the Right Thing than threatened by force to do the Wrong Thing, simply because the possibility of defying authority is only tempting if the “authority” in question is corrupt. It makes sense to defy a tyrant that tells you to kill your best friend, but it makes no sense to defy an authority that forces you to feed and house him, only because you would do so anyway and, in the authority’s position, you would do the same thing as the authority has done to you. There is nothing in the Human Soul that would die just to kill someone else; survival itself becomes absurd under such circumstances, and Human Life would have no meaning because it would itself have no value. Only SOME human beings would survive, left to fabricate artificial meanings instead of performing the only Intrinsic Human Duty: to preserve the lives of One Another, for by so doing the Individual transcends the illusion of his own isolation and vindicates his own existence by extension. There is no self-interest in this vindication, because it is simply consistent with the Absolute principle that that Individual upholds. This principle cannot be called arbitrary, simply because it is literally given by Nature and precedes all rational thought. Not only is it true that I think, therefore I am. It is all so true that I AM, therefore I think. Hence all values stem from Life Itself, and as such the negation of all values do so as well. Even if Death is regarded as a part of Life, to that same extent its contemplation must serve the will of the Whole of Life; hence Death cannot be cited as the source of Life’s negation, and professors of Death are still bound by Life to be agents of Life. Only the Death of the Ego can be conceived by the Rational Mind, because beyond the threshold of Death the Rational Mind cannot reach. And it is only the half-life of the ego that pretends that these facts are not so and that keeps the will in a state of perversion, to the detriment of All Beings.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

A GOODE MAN:

They all ways try to turn this into a morality play, sooner or later. The pretense is that had I simply stopped caring about my own being, directing my focus outwards, living for others, altruistically, then I would find a love and solidarity I’d never hitherto imagined. And the cycle then begins again. I find a company that I respect more than I can respect myself. I do not let it frighten me into submission; I simply fall in love with the idea that all its tenets are worthy ideals, even if I might laugh at just how great the margin is by which my fellows fall short of it. I begin to walk on eggshells, priding myself in my patience, following the rules with decorated awkwardness. When we first finished the New Hire Orientation (four hours of sensitivity training, basically) I all most forgot her name. She stood right there, beside me, waiting for the order, and it was not that I spaced on her name but rather I did not dare even to THINK it, lest the Boss heard me. And I reported to him promptly, submerging any suspicion. When I saw her outside again, I had to shake all suspicions about me. I had all so to rationalize, to myself, my own reserve earlier at the Back of the House. I had to believe she saw me, wanted just as desperately to say Hello as I did, but held her tongue for the same reason that she would prize me for holding my own. I went with the flow, letting them assign me to another table. I continued to do this, admiring her from afar each time, making my way about her friends. It all ways had to be this way. I all most had her table a few times. But just as I learned how to find my way around the Front of the House the consequences came. I’d hidden my tracks too well. One of her coworkers took less than kindly to my casual flirtation. The bramble that I used to hide as I approached the Grand Tree became my snare. So I only ever had her serve me once: when she brought me that glass of wine. I heard, in a timid child’s voice, “here is your Murphy, Good Sir.” It was only later that I discovered this to mean “here is your Murphy Goode, Sir.” Murphy Goode was the name of the wine. She was being exceedingly formal. It’s not impossible that she rushed in and out of that encounter owing more to recoil than to reticence. She might have not been shy at all, but rather I repelled her.

It all ways happens this way. I think that I’ve found Solidarity and Virtue. I believe at first that this is only a means to an end. Then just as pragmatism peaks I find myself a sudden martyr. I did not expect the late hours, the injury, both physical and psychological, nor the verbal abuse. It simply happened. So I ran with it, telling myself all the while that this is what a man MUST do for his Family. I never had any real extended family. I thought this must be what it feels like. I was one of the Clan, for lack of a better term.

It all ways follows this formula: you start with altruism, then you fall in love. At least, that’s how the cynics see it. What starts out as service to Others takes on an ulterior motive. Your craving for a taken woman colours everything that you perceive and do. It all becomes a Show for Her, a seemingly self-sacrificing venture that has a single, hidden goal for personal gain. Citing my virginity would not help; it would only serve to prove my desperation and thus set the old example for new critics to follow: the superstition that I am unlovable and would do everyone a service if I stopped trying to change that fact or to feign ignorance of it.

But that is not the whole of it. That’s just a symptom of abuse. Falsely accused of loving someone I was merely flirting with, no one even knowing that the flirtation (though not the person) was simply a means to an end, I internalized again the old notion that I’m forbidden to love. If I cannot love this decoy, a mere temptress to my eye, what can make me worthy of the Goddess?

But that is not the true formula. The true formula is thus: that you start with self-interest, fed up from having your kindness taken advantage of, time and time again. Then you fall in love, and She informs All That You Do. Inspired by her unassailable kindness, her unequivocal beauty and her indominable Spirit, you find a new Role Model. The patience with which you train yourself to wait for her (especially: to wait on you) becomes the pace at which you work. Your work becomes a form of karma yoga: a Service to Shiva. Every motion is imbibed with a tenderness you cultivate that she might one day feel your touch to be a home. And everyone, no matter how rotten, becomes your family so long as they speak well of her.

Can that be called a crime?

Whatever the formula, the outcome is the same. Whether they know the True Identity of your New Muse or not, your love is suspect, since your fellows celebrate self-love so much that any unrequited love is not perceived to be love at all. A narcissist can’t love a woman who will not return his love, so any one that loves him he pretends to love, regardless of his hollow heart, to spite the men who love her, even if they’re friends of his, and to dishonor love and friendship all in one he does nothing to save her from the self-destruction that loving a narcissist is heir to. This, too, seems to be an immutable pattern.

So here I am again: found guilty of self-interested love, falsely accused, for I am not a narcissist, and mine was not self-love but rather love that did not alter when it alteration found. What was that alteration? you might ask. I learned she had a boyfriend. It did not change how I felt at all, except that now I must remind myself that this same “man” laughed at her when she got a hook stuck in her sensitive skin. A gentle man would have removed that hook gently. And I think on her pale skin, which turned red at the slightest fluctuation of temperature. I think of how I asked about it and she spoke of its sensitivity, and I replied, “that’s Good.”

I wish she saw me to be Good as well. But I may never know whether she meant to make a pun on Murphy Goode or not. I’ll never know whether she saw the pattern in the whiteboards in the kitchen: how they all had something to say by allusion to HER, if anyone took the time to unriddle them.

You want gossipers to do their research. At least: you want to BELIEVE they do.

So now I have again to start anew, to feign forgetfulness of my lost love, to write it off as selfishness on my own part, for having had the NERVE to contest a “sacred pact” between her and her loving beau.

But I know that such high-minded thinking is too lofty for this place.

I know that he is probably an alcoholic and a narcissist. I know that she is probably too Murphy Goode for him herself.

And I know that I won’t fall out of love with her. I know that were she not too good for him she would not be with him.

And most importantly: I know now that she’s not too Goode for me.

That’s why I will continue on my path, knowing the true nature of the cycle:

You give all you can for a Love the likes of which men have so forgotten that they mock it. The weak of heart try to use the words of goodness and accountability against you. Laughing inwardly, you take your leave with a broken heart, but one that still bleeds love and sympathy and mercy, gushing adoration episodically.

You all ways were too Murphy Goode for them. May you not be remembered as a whiner, but rather a fine wine.

Dm.A.A.

The FUGUE:

Walter White was in a Fugue State. Knowing his true identity, if not his whereabouts, I had nonetheless to lead an investigation into the absurd theory (which I was prone to discredit) that he was having an affair with the tall, blonde single Witch Next Door. We could not gain any easy access to her room, but in the process of investigation I must have met her. She greeted me in a robe with considerable enthusiasm. If I have to come to think of it, she was not blonde, but brunette. At some point I must have actually worked with her to break into Walt’s Secret Bedroom, or perhaps something to that effect. I had hoped she might lean in close to me in that brown robe; I’d not expected she would lounge upon the bed naked and ready when I turned around. I guess this WAS her room, after all; she seemed very much at home in it. And I made myself at home inside of her, as well.

Walt had to escape the room somehow. He had to use his crawlspace. His family was content to simply break through the door, which was all ready shoddy any way, so it collapsed overhead as they made their exit. He had been found, but his secret remained just that: secret.

I spent a long time crashing at Doctor Byrne’s Place. When mom and dad left town they left me with a rental car I could not legally drive but that I parked in Doctor Byrne’s garage. At some point, seeing how it had been parked, I must have wondered if it was my own garage. At any rate: it certainly was my own car. The dream played with the theme that possessions are simply evaluations of objects rather than relationships with the Primordial Thou that is ubiquitous In All Beings.

The time came one day to take my leave of Doctor Byrne; I could no longer weigh upon her hospitality. I’d overstayed my welcome; she did not have to tell me that verbally for me to get the message. A stay that began on a Thursday (incidentally: when I last had her class) ended I think upon a Tuesday. It was time to return home. I can imagine why; my first Programming Midterm this semester happens this Wednesday. I want to spend the weekend in My Comfort Zone: in Music. But if time has past to face the Music, it is time to face the Math. In the same manner as I had to leave the Coffeehouse and came back last night to the Game Store, affect must yield to logic in order for them to come into Balance.

Dm.A.A.

HERMES: (2323 words.)

Lightning strikes twice where owls are concerned. I had set out to meet with Michael Hermes, (His Real Name) since I had told him about the New Game Store. I was running forty minutes late. There were two girls from Mount Carmel High School on the bus. One was still in school, apparently. She was the vapid, popular type, as much as it pains me to admit to this at the expense of what I could have learned about her had she not been so defensive. Her fellow had been out of high school for two years. She worked at a luxury soap shop at the Escondido mall off of Del Lago. She had gone so far as to do what Joe had never managed: she changed schools just because of interpersonal drama. Lo and behold! I have recently found myself leaving a lucrative but demeaning position in Oceanside for the same reasons.

Upon the bus I saw Josh. He was very happy to see me. Although I’m a bit too much for him at times, and it’s no mystery to him that his autism sets him a challenge in this regard, I remain one of his few (and thereby closest) friends. It’s quite unfortunate that closeness has a limit that I don’t encounter in most friends. But then again: I only have a few true friends myself.

Michael did not mind that I was late. Neither did Celia, his nurse. (Hermes has both Asperger’s Syndrome and Type II? Diabetes. Both he and Josh were in my Game Design class. That’s how I met Celia, as well.) Celia had enjoyed having found someone to talk to about her Latin Catholic heritage: the kindly owner of the Game Shop. I waited for Mike to finish his game and then played against him twice. The deck that I was waiting on for months failed twice, though the first time it seemed like it was working in my overwhelming failure. I suppose I ought not to construct decks based on spite. And it just goes to show how much my inspiration for the deck, the socially intolerable Marxist Aquarian writer with the suit jacket (that eerily reminded me of my own), was superficial and inflated. Still: it was a good start down a unique path.

I had to time my exit very carefully. I knew Something Would Happen Tonight, though I knew not what. Michael was overzealous in sharing his cards with me at the expense of secrecy. I made a point to take my leave of him so he retired to the Back Room to compete in the Friday Night Magic tournament. Celia was discontent, as I could tell, and I was relieved to know she was not discontent with me but rather anxious to know just how late she’d have to stay as Michael played. I did my best to assure her, in turn reassured that she did not question my intentions for being there. Earlier, I’d seen someone I recognized. At first, having seen her beside a tall, dark-haired man, I thought: “oh, great. There is that married couple again.” Thankfully, I soon realized that this woman, one of the few to grace the Game Shop, was considerably thinner and more pointed of face. Still: she loomed familiar. It dawned upon me when I saw the Scorpion tattooed upon her left arm. At about the same moment that I recognized her as a Scorpio I remembered first seeing her at Starbucks, shortly after having been hired in Oceanside, if not shortly before, and memories came back to me of my awkward attempts to introduce myself.

I overwrote those awkward memories quite well. The opportunity presented itself for me to saw “hi”, especially since the Shopkeeper, having introduced them to Warhammer, (that game that so many programmers played in my first C class) spoke to me with familiarity, most probably about the upcoming tournament. It became easy to remind her then of my identity, which she might have dimly recognized but exposed no knowledge of. She remembered me visibly after some formal reintroduction, and she was not at all unhappy to see me. I said that I should have pegged her for a gamer, really by way of relief that she was not just another girl at Starbucks. We reminisced upon our first meeting, within the confines provided by the situation, her tall attendant still standing at her side, attentively. I said that I’d mistaken the Scorpion for a Scarab Beetle, since I’d had a fleeting obsession with entomology. Then she showed me the Scarab tattooed upon her other arm, corroborating my memory of the first encounter by refining the finer details that my doubts had clouded. She all so reminded me of the Face Eater that lay on her forearm above the Scarab Beetle. I was amazed to learn that she not only was a Scorpio and had the tattoo but that she actually owned a Pet Scorpion.

I spent the remainder of that day on edge, but with excitement. Several questionable characters showed up at the Shop. One of them was a salesperson. Another was so rude and obnoxious that he could only have gotten away with it by being a regular. A third unnerved me from the moment that I heard his voice, since he was machismo incarnate, correcting his twenty-six-year-old sister on her texting and driving habits when he was himself only twenty-seven, superficially unembarrassed (but surely deeply insecure) to convey this story to the Shopkeeper.

As I walked up the street I saw Matt Rivers just outside of Pounders. I greeted him by taking off my glasses and waving them. He might have never seen me with them; I suppose that’s why I did that. We embraced and I was stoked to find that he had lost neither his charm nor his good will towards me. He’d been living in Portland for quite some time. It was his third day back in a long time; two days ago he had come back for two weeks. He was on his way to his Mother’s home. I promised to see him again before he left.

At the Café I saw another familiar ghost: Kit. My favourite comedian had all ways been one of the very few patrons of that Café that tolerated me, and I remember now that he was the first person to walk me back to it the first time that I’d left it in a rage and fearful of the bad press that Rafael Romasanta, that narcissistic imp, surely spread about me. Kit was happy to see me. He too had not seen me in over a year; I’d not been back at the Café for that long, in the wake of Fitz the Hawk. I’d all ways been one of his biggest fans, as much so as I’d loved Matt Rivers’ work from the first time I heard it, which was surely my first visit to the Café, back in 2014, four years ago.

The crowd was smaller than I’d feared. Everyone there was someone that I got along with; any one whom I could not feel comfortable speaking to I did not care for, and they only passed in and out like ghosts of a lesser dignity than Kit. It makes sense now as only writing can illuminate, I think: they lived off of the crowd. They were not Individuals in any sense. So they could handle a dead night as well as they could handle me.

Kit could handle me, and I more than handled his comedy routine. He had been living in Los Angeles for some time now; it just so happened that that night was his one night in town hosting the Open Mic. The City had not changed his style too much. He had some new observational humour about Y.G. and Coldplay. For the most part, though, the bulk of the material was too precious to provide him with recourse. He had to tell jokes about Holocaust museums and expensive suicide rates. I was in stitches in the front row, cheering wholeheartedly as I’d not done since I last saw Fair Fisher. Several people got up to leave, and he did not hesitate to take personal credit for their departure. His act was as self-deprecating, depraved, and honest as I remembered it. I was ecstatic.

Dan had gone on shortly prior to this. His new schtick for the season was a Skeleton mask that he had quickly to get rid of, shortly after having crashed into the glass behind the stage upon ascent. He had to silence me when I recited every line of the Leaf Blower Man in sync with him, for it was so timeless to me.

I did not offer Kit my contact information. I’d had my phone off since late Saturday last week. This night alone proved that I did not really need it, and when he expressed his wish that our paths would meet again, I did not have a single heartfelt doubt they would.

The guitarist who was playing Spanish guitar when I first came in finished the set by feigning trumpet as Anakin played guitar. I tried to make a makeshift gourd from a coffee holder, but it was much too soft and in the process I spilled tea upon my trousers. Kit was amused by the former but concerned about the latter. I suppose that that’s the test; they laugh with you and withhold their laughter at you. And considering that he’s an aspiring comedian who went all the way to the City of Angels in pursuit of his dream, pitching an incisive and brutal routine, his sympathy was peculiarly moving.

Celia let me use her phone to call my Father. Starbucks was open until eleven. I had four quarters left, having gathered all the change that I could find at home. Michael spotted me a dollar. The cock-eyed, worldly girl at the Starbucks spotted me fifteen cents, since the price of Blonde Roast changed. Before Father picked me up, I saw Sylvia, who works at the Sushi Restaurant next door, and I found every reason to walk in, spotting the sign that read “Dishwasher Needed”. I negotiated my terms with her in a manner I’d not seen my nervous system do before. She spoke frankly with me and on a level that enticed me. Some part of me was surely surprised that I remembered her name so easily. But then again: I’d never met a Sylvia I did not love.

As Father drove me home, I asked about his interview. I asked whether he would be teaching the introductory courses in Biology or the advanced ones. Hearing him expound upon the intricacies of education, in a commonplace tone that felt familiar to me, comforted me to see him in a new light. Only for a brief moment did I turn the radio on and begin to wander about all the things that might pop into my mind. As we pulled into Exit 23, I all most expected to see an owl again, swooping in on its Night Hunt. I told Father that I wanted to see an owl again. I all so expressed my longing for Pumpkin and my gratitude that Maria was home.

Mother was home as well, and I told her about my day. Pumpkin, of course, needed his late-night walk. The Lightning and Thunder outside was getting insane. I now remember standing at the crossroads earlier, waiting to find shelter in Starbucks, terrified for a brief moment that Lightning might strike me dead, wondering if I’d live, and picturing the game players recounting my mysterious survival, noting just how funny it was that I had been carrying so much change (owing to my bring broke) and thereby predisposing myself to electromagnetic conduction.

The neighbor whose business is walking dogs opened her ominous garage door just as Pumpkin and I stepped into the rain and he began his routine inspection of the neighbouring brush. The lurid light from that garage, reminiscent of the portly, overbearing woman within, filled me with dread that the Lightning only amplified. Still: I was not one to drag my dog through the rain in the opposite direction, and he was not one to be dragged. (Bless his Soul.) As Lightning struck decisively, within close quarters to her house, I looked up, all most looking for an excuse to evade her should she see me.

It was at that moment that I saw it. It must have flown over us moments ago, for now I saw it from behind. The wingspan was unmistakable. It was not swooping, for its motive was to maintain its steady altitude. Its wings simply wavered slightly, as though treading water. I had seen it countless time in Harry Potter movies, either captured on camera or rendered with impeccable digital accuracy. Only earlier I had been thinking about how campy those films felt by contrast to the literature, but now I feel a gratitude for them that perhaps until now only people who’d not owned the books or had the time to read them could have felt when watching them.

I was reminded to hold my course. Suki’s garage door closed, and my neighbor was nowhere to be seen. We walked up to the end of the street and I picked up Pumpkin and then brought him home. I whistled past the Nikravesh residence, selecting a tune of my own composition. I performed my usual and secret ritual in passing. I could barely wait to tell my parents the news, though I must have known, at that moment, that I had all ways had all the time in the World to do so, and there never was a reason to doubt my own Intuition, either to that end, nor as would pertain to any timeless subject.

I had friends in high places.

Dm.A.A.

F!SH!NG FOR AQUAR!US:

Early in my career in Oceanside, most probably after having returned from my first sick leave, and well after I had fallen in love with the Fair Fisher, I had a dream that alerted me that I was failing Dui Nguyen’s Video Game Programming class. The dream was set in what was all most unmistakably an Aquarium, and the record may still show that to be the case. This morning I came to the same realization, and by that I mean the same location. Going off the beaten course (let it be called the Curriculum) I overheard a group of Popular Kids (let them be called my recent coworkers, Front of House) speaking of an elite party in a Group Bubble Bath Tank. (or whatever its formal name had been.)

The remainder of the dream saw me descending the ranks, as it were, of the enormous Aquarium building, taking stairs and escalators and various conveyors of the like to find this seemingly mythic Bubble Bath. I had never heard or seen it before; somehow it had all ways evaded my gaze.

At some point within the main shopping area outside I passed Alexa Arenz. I thought that perhaps I could evade her recognition but then thought myself silly for hoping it, either because it was so futile or so fruitless of a motive, and upon some level I must have presumed that anything this difficult to do would not be expected of me, hence the point in trying would be lost alongside the point in succeeding.

She recognized me, and she smiled, not even awkwardly but listlessly. I guess I never made her list, either. She acted as though nothing had transpired between us, but she could not hide her urgency in disappearing.

For some reason, if you’re not expected to care for her, and if caring could be misconstrued as creepy, then you’re not expected to care when she vanishes.

11:50 A.M.

10/12/2018.

Day of Venus.

(Friday; Viernes/Vendredi.)

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

The Rena!ssance Man:

This is a test to see if Word will print extra plus signs.

It does not. The test is a success.

I thought it might be Joe because I saw an art student in the Programming Building: a rare occurrence. It turns out that it was neither Joe nor, apparently, an Art Student. I had simply been so eager to see Joe there, working on his Art, that my mind had filled in the details before its rational part could analyze them.

I was raised to value hard work, education, and the ideal of the “well-rounded Individual”. I supposed that, if my lot in life is a reflection of my efforts, then my efforts would be recognized as equal to my virtues. In other words, taking four classes as a full-time employee would in itself be a success, simply because anyone who endeavors down such a path is committing himself to an incredible workload, and of course it is often fear of this same exertion that prevents otherwise qualified young men from even trying. I have learned bitterly that it is not the fear of work itself, however, that is singular in discouraging my fellows, but rather the fear of “failure”. But what failure can there be in a man who has expended his last heroic efforts and asked for little in exchange, even surrendering a great deal of his basic needs? The very description of it appears to be the definition of success; here is the man who gave his all. Surely that is enough, for we are all finite beings, and our expectations ought not to transcend our abilities. Yet time and time again I am reminded that when the expectations of others transcend my own abilities, I am blamed by them, for I fell short of my own expectations, for both myself and them. I expected them to care and to recognize my effort. But as it turns out, my coworkers seem to care very little about my education, my classmates seem to regard my job as a means towards my OWN ends, and all of them feel inconvenienced BY me because I cannot meet their expectations in the way I USED to. All the while my fellows who’ve committed themselves to a relatively easy life seem to enjoy all the rewards, and I am forever excluded from their company as if on principle. I used to feel them to be my allies, but all of my efforts to make friends with them have not only backfired but been systematically discouraged. When I finished my first semester this year I took this job in a state of wonder, and my self-esteem was rather high; I’d gotten straight A’s (for the first time in over a decade) and in several notoriously difficult classes. I felt proud, and I knew I’d earned that pride, though for some reason strangers whom I told this to seemed apathetic to my achievement. And this dawns upon me too: for some bizarre reason, people only seem to care about what you do so long as it affects what THEY do, even though they’re all theoretically equal, so there’s no reason, for instance, for my Chef to compete with my Conductor for my time; both the Culinary Arts and Music are theoretically noble in their separate but equal ways. Now that I’ve surrendered my success this second semester to a demanding paid workload and the false promise that it would abate as I’d improve, all I have to show for it is an empty bank account and a few artistic investments. These should render me content, but the deeper situation renders me apprehensive. I had all ways imagined that both my classmates and my coworkers would encourage my artistic endeavors; after all, why should they pay me or reward me with good grades if I have no skill by which to USE these “rewards”? OBVIOUSLY the ultimate goal is to blossom as an Artist, for that is the primary distinguishing feature (and therefore the central virtue) of the Human Being from all other animals. Comrades along this Quest would do well to treat me with respect so that I can conscientiously reciprocate the same respect in my Art, especially should I feel moved to depict the situations (and as such the people) I have found myself involved in.

People are incredibly self-entitled. They do not care that you have Life Outside of their own lives; they only seem to want results to serve their own ends. If I can present my schedule to any man or woman and be met with recognition for my social involvement, then being involved in society makes sense. If, however, all of my efforts amount only to “my own business”, then they are all pointless, for they only hold social value insofar as I am present, and as social functions that may be the only value that they hold, unless I give them personal value as memories in my absence. (In that case: an artist requires all property rights to all of his sensory stimuli, lest he be exploited by the sources of those stimuli.)

All I ever wanted was to be part of something Greater Than Myself. But it was too great. NO question can be made now of my intentions. If I only wanted what everyone else wanted, then I was entitled to it insofar as they continue to pursue it. When they renounce it, then I shall call it sin, and only then.

We are social beings, after all, and I have NOT been antisocial.

This one irony looms like the sore from a discarded bee-sting: should fortune favour a man in my position, he finds himself attaining recognition in the form of Soft Power and Status. Apparently, most of my problems are the result of other men and women having “attained” this, at the expense of, or by contrast to, my own Status.

There is no singular, Absolute, objective and sensible, permanent and immutable means of measuring this phantom called Status. It is purely fantastical.

If getting lucky in a gamble makes one respected, why not the inevitable failure that accompanies the miserliness of fortune? If all of the Great Men whom I must answer to were simply in my shoes and managed to pull it off (the task, if not the shoes) then why is it that I, having taken shoes too big to fill, or having been given them by men with even bigger shoes, am suspected not of simply falling short, but of having poor intentions? If status is not rewarded for the means, how and why does it accompany the ends? If trying is a sin, or leastwise I’ll be treated like a selfish sinner, by all of my leaders, for making the attempt, then why should I answer to those leaders if they had to try to get to where they are? Is their own Kingdom not built upon Sin? Is Power not reserved for the well-meaning and well-rounded, but rather for the self-serving, privileged, and one-pointed fanatics who must all ways compete with one an other for human resources, with our lives all ways caught in the crossfire?

Dm.A.A.