Also, occasionally, as I think I might have mentioned, Jax and I would for some reason, find ourselves feeling somewhat destructive. Every once and awhile, more or less out of the blue, we would both get in this mood where we would just need to blow off steam or get our frustrations out or do something, anything, that would help ease our tension or stress or at least let us relax a little. Both of us just seemed to always get so tense and pent up and pissed off at times that we would need some type of release. To clear our heads. It would always be something we would come up with and enjoy doing together in private. That was important. For some reason, it had to be something that no one really knew about or had any clue of what we were up to whatsoever. That was honestly key. It absolutely had to be something we both shared and enjoyed and let us clear our heads and that no one else, anyone, would know about. It just had to be private. The things we did, like squeezing bread or any of it had to be completely and totally private. If people knew about it and started asking questions about it, or giving us advice or worse, offering to help us or join in, it would be ruined and we just couldnt enjoy ourselves with it anymore. So we had to keep it private. We couldnt tell a soul. No one. And if either one of us accidentally did say something and someone started asking questions or giving advice, then it was done. Over. See the problem with all these little, private destructive things we enjoyed so much doing was, that, most of them, after we did them for a few weeks, we would lose interest in them. At first we couldnt do them enough. Like we would just enjoy them so much and they would give us just so much of a release, that we would find ourselves getting more and more obsessed with whatever it was. Honestly, it would involve and occupy our thoughts pretty much twenty-four hours a day. Once we found something that we could do that would calm us down or let us feel a little less pissed off or pent up or annoyed or something, we would quickly, unfortunately, kill the fun of the damn thing. Pretty quickly if you want to know the truth. We never TRIED to kill it and make it less fun. We would just obsess about it and think about it and try to perfect the simple little nonsense type of things so much, that after a while, a very short while in some cases, doing what we had originally enjoyed, just didnt provide the release we needed. It wasnt fun anymore. And no matter how much we tried to just keep things simple and not over do it or obsess about it, we just couldnt help it. We couldnt help making it so complicated and involved and all, that we would eventually lose interest. Like if we like just simply squeezing the fuck out of white bread at the supermarket, it would start off simple enough but after a couple of weeks, we would find ourselves just thinking about it twenty-four hours a day. And we would get maps of all the supermarkets that were at a reasonable distance from our houses and call and ask carefully drawn up questions about all the bread distributors and delivery men they used and their delivery schedules and everything. The few stores that didnt immediately think we were some sort of screwballs or nut jobs, at first would try to answer helpfully such things as time tables and routes and such, before eventually slamming the phone down or calling us names or something.
And crouching down in the honestly pretty prickly weeds back behind the bread factory that we had taken a 45 or 50 minute train ride to, to better understand the way and the exact order the racks of loaves were loaded into the delivery trucks and generally getting our shit together with respect to distribution and shipping from what we knew was more or less the central hub for all the apparently independently licensed private contractor drivers, was probably a pretty good hint that it was time to move on. But when we sort of cornered whom we had determined was the major kind of king-pin figure bread deliver of our particular region or zone, and situated our easels and drawings and charts and all in a way that made it all but impossible for him to leave or move his truck, and tried to explain that according to our careful summations and pretty painstakingly-made observations, that it would help us tremendously, if he, along with the other drivers that he could count on to be on-board, worked across our town in more of a grid fashion rather than their current circular method, that when plotted out, which we had done, in an attention-grabbing bold graphics and text, appeared honestly more ellipsoid and was nowhere near as efficient, we should have got the, looking back, more than obvious hint from just his expression alone, let alone what he said as he sped off after pitching our presentation materials over the hedges and onto the post office lawn, that it was time to move on and that we had probably taken the whole thing absolutely and undeniably way too far. We would just work our way systemically through all the loaves at all the supermarkets that it seemed like he had trouble keeping up, but still. We honestly did know we had to at least give it a rest for a while and move on. We had taken the whole thing too far. We killed it. We took something so enjoyable and simple and private and had literally no strings attached to it whatsoever or any type of agenda and or planning and just ruined it. Unintentionally, of course. We didnt realize it until it was always way, way too late. We would just get so into things like that, that we would always end up fucking the whole thing up in a way and then having no other choice but to move on. Even when we were really young, like back when we first met, it could be something as simple and enjoyable and relaxing as rolling boulders down a hill, we would completely and unintentionally just enjoy it so much and get so into it and obsess over it, that we would end up ruining it. And we would never realize it and just say, Do you want to stop? until it was way too late and any hope of keeping it simple and fun and enjoyable was long gone. And if we tried to honestly and realistically make an intentional effort to keep the fucking simple little thing fun and nice and all, well that would just ruin it in a way also. We would be so concerned with and conscious of keeping the fucking actually pretty pointless and stupid and honestly usually totally waist of time thing fun and simple that we would end up fucking it all up THAT way. So we had to be careful. But if we were too careful and put too much thought into not over-analyzing it or even worrying or thinking about over-analyzing it and trying with all our might to just not ruin the damn thing, well, that would ruin it too. So usually we would move from thing to thing pretty quickly. But not too quickly. Then we couldnt get used to it or relax with it. Like if we started out just enjoying more or less tearing apart this seriously massive stone wall we found deep in the woods, on top of this insanely steep hill that led down to the old railroad tracks and eventually past that and the river, and rolling the pretty good television-sized boulders down the hill, letting them smash the fuck out of trees or anything in their paths, after a couple of weeks we would lose complete interest in it. Some of the rocks needed both of us to slide along and perch at the top of the hill because they were so fucking big. There was no way we could ever lift them. But when we gave one of them that final push, and unleashed serious mayhem down below it was just such a release and had an almost soothing effect. We never once thought about the fact that someone could be walking or fishing down by the river or even driving along the old dirt road at the bottom of the hill. We just enjoyed watching the boulders slam into trees and fall off the little cliff and into other boulders and tumble into the river. But when we started to bring all this equipment with us into the woods, pulleys and riggings, to get the seriously unmovable by hand huge fucking rocks and building this crude type of winch and block and tackle set-up and all and studying the honestly well-thought out and concise tables and corresponding charts of the different densities, biomasses, and specific gravitity calculations that Jax had thoughtfully converted out of metric and back into the much more workable, for our purposes, U.S. weights and measures, we knew, at some point, that we probably wouldnt be rolling boulders down the hill all that much longer. As I laid in bed one particular night, exhausted from all of the sorting and measuring and weighing of the pieces of that neat, curving, 200-yard section of the stone wall that we were working on and trying to get all rolled down by Thursday morning at the very latest, I began to realize that maybe it just was starting to not be all that fun and enjoyable and relaxing any more. It was time to move on. That's when we picked up our first spray can.
And crouching down in the honestly pretty prickly weeds back behind the bread factory that we had taken a 45 or 50 minute train ride to, to better understand the way and the exact order the racks of loaves were loaded into the delivery trucks and generally getting our shit together with respect to distribution and shipping from what we knew was more or less the central hub for all the apparently independently licensed private contractor drivers, was probably a pretty good hint that it was time to move on. But when we sort of cornered whom we had determined was the major kind of king-pin figure bread deliver of our particular region or zone, and situated our easels and drawings and charts and all in a way that made it all but impossible for him to leave or move his truck, and tried to explain that according to our careful summations and pretty painstakingly-made observations, that it would help us tremendously, if he, along with the other drivers that he could count on to be on-board, worked across our town in more of a grid fashion rather than their current circular method, that when plotted out, which we had done, in an attention-grabbing bold graphics and text, appeared honestly more ellipsoid and was nowhere near as efficient, we should have got the, looking back, more than obvious hint from just his expression alone, let alone what he said as he sped off after pitching our presentation materials over the hedges and onto the post office lawn, that it was time to move on and that we had probably taken the whole thing absolutely and undeniably way too far. We would just work our way systemically through all the loaves at all the supermarkets that it seemed like he had trouble keeping up, but still. We honestly did know we had to at least give it a rest for a while and move on. We had taken the whole thing too far. We killed it. We took something so enjoyable and simple and private and had literally no strings attached to it whatsoever or any type of agenda and or planning and just ruined it. Unintentionally, of course. We didnt realize it until it was always way, way too late. We would just get so into things like that, that we would always end up fucking the whole thing up in a way and then having no other choice but to move on. Even when we were really young, like back when we first met, it could be something as simple and enjoyable and relaxing as rolling boulders down a hill, we would completely and unintentionally just enjoy it so much and get so into it and obsess over it, that we would end up ruining it. And we would never realize it and just say, Do you want to stop? until it was way too late and any hope of keeping it simple and fun and enjoyable was long gone. And if we tried to honestly and realistically make an intentional effort to keep the fucking simple little thing fun and nice and all, well that would just ruin it in a way also. We would be so concerned with and conscious of keeping the fucking actually pretty pointless and stupid and honestly usually totally waist of time thing fun and simple that we would end up fucking it all up THAT way. So we had to be careful. But if we were too careful and put too much thought into not over-analyzing it or even worrying or thinking about over-analyzing it and trying with all our might to just not ruin the damn thing, well, that would ruin it too. So usually we would move from thing to thing pretty quickly. But not too quickly. Then we couldnt get used to it or relax with it. Like if we started out just enjoying more or less tearing apart this seriously massive stone wall we found deep in the woods, on top of this insanely steep hill that led down to the old railroad tracks and eventually past that and the river, and rolling the pretty good television-sized boulders down the hill, letting them smash the fuck out of trees or anything in their paths, after a couple of weeks we would lose complete interest in it. Some of the rocks needed both of us to slide along and perch at the top of the hill because they were so fucking big. There was no way we could ever lift them. But when we gave one of them that final push, and unleashed serious mayhem down below it was just such a release and had an almost soothing effect. We never once thought about the fact that someone could be walking or fishing down by the river or even driving along the old dirt road at the bottom of the hill. We just enjoyed watching the boulders slam into trees and fall off the little cliff and into other boulders and tumble into the river. But when we started to bring all this equipment with us into the woods, pulleys and riggings, to get the seriously unmovable by hand huge fucking rocks and building this crude type of winch and block and tackle set-up and all and studying the honestly well-thought out and concise tables and corresponding charts of the different densities, biomasses, and specific gravitity calculations that Jax had thoughtfully converted out of metric and back into the much more workable, for our purposes, U.S. weights and measures, we knew, at some point, that we probably wouldnt be rolling boulders down the hill all that much longer. As I laid in bed one particular night, exhausted from all of the sorting and measuring and weighing of the pieces of that neat, curving, 200-yard section of the stone wall that we were working on and trying to get all rolled down by Thursday morning at the very latest, I began to realize that maybe it just was starting to not be all that fun and enjoyable and relaxing any more. It was time to move on. That's when we picked up our first spray can.
trixeeg:
Holy. We were almost on at the same time. hmm. I'm gonna try and patiently wait for your next entry. I have nothing to read right now and I look forward to checking for your stories.