WOW I AM SO EXCITED SOMEONE ACTUALLY READ MY JOURNAL - i pretty much gave up after that last entry...it's kind of hard to maintain any enthusiasm for the process of documenting your thoughts and daily intellectual meanderings if there's no one else around to see them. we can't all be world class diarists after all. anyway in that vein i was sort of setting this one down and i thought it might make an interesting entry here so i'll give it a shot -
I'd be lying if i described myself as anything other than bad news. Some people seem to carry with them a near constant aura of good faith and good feeling that permeates their surroundings and gives you the impression that if you hang around with them for long enough, things are going to be all right. I have the opposite of that. It's been my experience over several decades that people's fortunes don't seem to take a turn for the better when I'm involved in any significant way. Not that I take an active interest in wreaking havoc in the lives of those in my immediate sphere of influence - or even that it's that materially discernible. More often than not I find that the effects that we have on each other's lives are a lot more subtle and hard to point and and go "Look - you did that to me." Scars notwithstanding of course.
Anyway so looking back on things it's my conclusion that I've managed to whip up such a swirling mass of tangential nonsense over the course of my life that the people who have the bad judgment to cast their lots with mine for any significant amount of time end up getting sucked into it alongside me, and suffering as an end result of the whole thing. What starts out as percieved compassion or some sort of desire to "help" me (which has got to be the god damn dumbest thing I have ever fucking heard) ends up as this nice person with all these good intentions caught up in a situation that they couldn't possibly have wanted to involve themselves in, had they known beforehand the real nature of what they were getting into.
Which sort of gets at the central issue that makes it really hard for me to relate to a lot of other people at all, and i suppose what this mess is really all about - which is -
How much do you care? You have friends (most of us do anyway i hope) and these are supposedly the people that you really care about and would "do anything for," depending on how close you are - i'm talking about your real, lifelong, deep friends here i guess so just assume that part from now on. So anyway what I'm trying to get at in my usual roundabout way is this thought of "doing anything" for your friends, for the people you care about. Because what i realized a long time ago is that...there's a line. There's a point (and it's different for every different person, but it's there) where you just do not have it in you to care for someone any more. There are a million walking dead in this country, old people whose families have abandoned them to live out their last days surrounded by strangers in a "home" that's usually not much more than a furnished prison, to attest to this. But I don't want to bring illness into it, or even family really for that matter. I'm just talking about friendship here, that concept that the bond between two people can be somehow permanent or infinite in its strength and durability. I mean who can say that? Who can say "there is nothing you can do that will drive me away from you."
Friendship (and i suppose in a more complicated way romantic involvement as well) is this elastic band that two people hold between them, that usually doesn't take much stress but when it does just stretches a little and is usually back to slack in no time - what i would ask anyone who reads this to do is to consider stretching that band until it breaks. What would it take? Imagine your best friend, the person who you think cares the most about you in the world, would do the most for you. Maybe it's a family member or girl/boyfriend or whatever, but just look at it from a basic human to human point of view - where would their compassion and understanding and tolerance for you come to an end? When would they shut you out? Look hard enough and I bet you'll find a point for every single person you have ever known.
The initial feeling for all of this is that it somehow devalues human companionship or fellowship which I disagree with completely - that's the reaction a lot of people have when I try and put this whole business to them "Well then why do we have friends at all?" Which I think is a little ridiculous - who says all human relationships have to be absolute in their depths and breadths of allowance and acceptance? Some of my favorite people are my casual accquaintances at work. We talk at work, we hang out at work, but there's a very definite yes/no in/out boundary there and when work ends, we both go home and that's it. I like that honesty, that simplicity that "yeah we have a fun time talking and hanging out, but there's a point that we're not going to cross with each other, and we both know where that is" instead of this fake, kind of ambiguous "you can tell me anything" thing that most "friends" think they have with each other. Do this one for fun - call up any one of your friends at 3 or 4 in the morning and tell them you've got a body that you need to dispose of quickly and quietly, and that you need their help. Most people will suggest that you call the police, or a therapist, or perhaps just call them back in the morning. Your real friends are the ones who are ready to go with the hacksaws and the garbage bags, and know just the place to dig a couple nice deep holes with you.
By the way apologies if this is way too long and rambling and if i left things out and skipped words or whole sentences or thoughts...this scrolling journal setup makes it really hard to edit as you write. i might try writing these out and editing them in another program and then just pasting them in here instead cause this is a little frustrating...anyway, now that my faith in the idea that someone else somewhere out these might just read this shit someday i'd love to hear any thoughts or responses to all this mess and maybe i'll put some more pics up so look for those too okay i love you bye bye
I'd be lying if i described myself as anything other than bad news. Some people seem to carry with them a near constant aura of good faith and good feeling that permeates their surroundings and gives you the impression that if you hang around with them for long enough, things are going to be all right. I have the opposite of that. It's been my experience over several decades that people's fortunes don't seem to take a turn for the better when I'm involved in any significant way. Not that I take an active interest in wreaking havoc in the lives of those in my immediate sphere of influence - or even that it's that materially discernible. More often than not I find that the effects that we have on each other's lives are a lot more subtle and hard to point and and go "Look - you did that to me." Scars notwithstanding of course.
Anyway so looking back on things it's my conclusion that I've managed to whip up such a swirling mass of tangential nonsense over the course of my life that the people who have the bad judgment to cast their lots with mine for any significant amount of time end up getting sucked into it alongside me, and suffering as an end result of the whole thing. What starts out as percieved compassion or some sort of desire to "help" me (which has got to be the god damn dumbest thing I have ever fucking heard) ends up as this nice person with all these good intentions caught up in a situation that they couldn't possibly have wanted to involve themselves in, had they known beforehand the real nature of what they were getting into.
Which sort of gets at the central issue that makes it really hard for me to relate to a lot of other people at all, and i suppose what this mess is really all about - which is -
How much do you care? You have friends (most of us do anyway i hope) and these are supposedly the people that you really care about and would "do anything for," depending on how close you are - i'm talking about your real, lifelong, deep friends here i guess so just assume that part from now on. So anyway what I'm trying to get at in my usual roundabout way is this thought of "doing anything" for your friends, for the people you care about. Because what i realized a long time ago is that...there's a line. There's a point (and it's different for every different person, but it's there) where you just do not have it in you to care for someone any more. There are a million walking dead in this country, old people whose families have abandoned them to live out their last days surrounded by strangers in a "home" that's usually not much more than a furnished prison, to attest to this. But I don't want to bring illness into it, or even family really for that matter. I'm just talking about friendship here, that concept that the bond between two people can be somehow permanent or infinite in its strength and durability. I mean who can say that? Who can say "there is nothing you can do that will drive me away from you."
Friendship (and i suppose in a more complicated way romantic involvement as well) is this elastic band that two people hold between them, that usually doesn't take much stress but when it does just stretches a little and is usually back to slack in no time - what i would ask anyone who reads this to do is to consider stretching that band until it breaks. What would it take? Imagine your best friend, the person who you think cares the most about you in the world, would do the most for you. Maybe it's a family member or girl/boyfriend or whatever, but just look at it from a basic human to human point of view - where would their compassion and understanding and tolerance for you come to an end? When would they shut you out? Look hard enough and I bet you'll find a point for every single person you have ever known.
The initial feeling for all of this is that it somehow devalues human companionship or fellowship which I disagree with completely - that's the reaction a lot of people have when I try and put this whole business to them "Well then why do we have friends at all?" Which I think is a little ridiculous - who says all human relationships have to be absolute in their depths and breadths of allowance and acceptance? Some of my favorite people are my casual accquaintances at work. We talk at work, we hang out at work, but there's a very definite yes/no in/out boundary there and when work ends, we both go home and that's it. I like that honesty, that simplicity that "yeah we have a fun time talking and hanging out, but there's a point that we're not going to cross with each other, and we both know where that is" instead of this fake, kind of ambiguous "you can tell me anything" thing that most "friends" think they have with each other. Do this one for fun - call up any one of your friends at 3 or 4 in the morning and tell them you've got a body that you need to dispose of quickly and quietly, and that you need their help. Most people will suggest that you call the police, or a therapist, or perhaps just call them back in the morning. Your real friends are the ones who are ready to go with the hacksaws and the garbage bags, and know just the place to dig a couple nice deep holes with you.
By the way apologies if this is way too long and rambling and if i left things out and skipped words or whole sentences or thoughts...this scrolling journal setup makes it really hard to edit as you write. i might try writing these out and editing them in another program and then just pasting them in here instead cause this is a little frustrating...anyway, now that my faith in the idea that someone else somewhere out these might just read this shit someday i'd love to hear any thoughts or responses to all this mess and maybe i'll put some more pics up so look for those too okay i love you bye bye
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
ayin:
Did ever think relationships-all human relationships, loving, hating, and any where in between-are simply a matter of "seeing yourself in other people"? I know that has a horribly ridiculous high-school-guidence-councilers-rolling-their-nuts-off sound to it...but think about it. Like, if you really hate someone, its just because you see the things you hate about yourself in that person. Like how Hitler's mother was a jew(who also beat him with a hair brush and sexually molested him as a small child), or the classic homophobe-latent homosexual relationship. The same is true for love. If you two people really love each other now because they are in either a very simplicitic or abstract (or both) way alike, but then change as they grow older so that they no longer "mirror each other emotionally", they will stop loving each other. It does not really matter, when you think of it like that, because then the number of people you love/who love you is simply discerned by the number of people who you convince self are "good" for the same reasons you've convinced yourself that you are "good". Or at least who you could learn about yourself from. For instance, I don't know if that helps you out at all, but I out come being "good" from the expierence of reading because I now know that if I'm ever desperate for money, I could just write a really obnoxious self-help book, and make millions of dollars!!! (J/K).
meempants:
Ah, so they're actually in production on League? I'd heard something about the script floating around and maybe happening; wasn't aware they'd started actually working on it. I think of all Moore's stuff that'd probably best be suited to a movie because it's fairly simple structurally; From Hell was a decent enough movie, but it was only remotely connected to the graphic novel, which was way too complex to actually turn into a two hour film. Any names I would recognize involved with League?