“Do I have the right so far, big man? And best of all, for you at least, you finally have the moral authority you’ve craved, and have often exercised, ever since you were very young– you used to go around the playground chastising the other kids for swearing. You didn’t drink alcohol until you eighteen, never did drugs, because you had to be more pure, had to have something over the other people. And now your moral authority is doubled, tripled. And you use it any way you need to. That twenty-nine-year old, for instance, you’ll break up with her after a month because she smokes–“
“And the beret. The purple beret.”
“That’s not the reason you’ll give her.”
“Fine, but that’ll be justified. Please. For obvious reasons. Its incredibly hard, hearing those sounds, smelling the smells, watching the kissing of that paper, the sucking from those tubes–“
“Yes, but it’s the way you’ll tell her, the way you’ll sort of shame her, mentioning that not only did your parents die of cancer, your father of lung cancer, but that you don’t want the smoke around your little brother, blah blah, and its the way you’ll say it, you’ll want to make this poor woman feel like a leper, particularly because she rolls her own cigarettes, which even I admit is kinda doubly sad, but see, you want her to feel like a pariah, like a lower form of life, because that’s what, deep down, you feel she is, what you feel anyone tethered to an addiction is. And now you feel that you have the moral authority to pass judgment on these people, that because of your recent experiences, you can expound on anything, you can play the conquering victim, a role that gives you power drawn from sympathy and disadvantage– you can now play the dual role of product of privilege and disenfranchised Job. Because we get Social Security and live in a messy house with ants and holes in the floorboards you like to thing of us as lower class, that now you know the struggles of the poor– how dare you!– but you like that stance, that underdog stance, because it increases your leverage with other people. You can shoot from behind bulletproof glass.”
-Excpert from A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Uncanny, really. In elementary school, I chastised schoolmates for swearing. Hell, I even had bible verses to back me up. I didn’t touch alcohol until I was eighteen. No sex. No drugs. And I was more pure. And I passed judgment. Oh, did I pass judgment. Held myself above. Tethered to an addiction– weak, pathetic. The periah masses. I walked above– on top of, degenerate filth below. Resigned, all of them. Motiveless. Directionless. Purposeless. Did they even deserve to live? Probably not. Of course not. —- —-rs. —- —-. Rampant intellectualism. I understood. They did not. Their god crippled them– the crutch they needed to keep standing, lacking their own strength. Not me. I stood. Against the grain. Against the current. Above. I walked on the water. (thanks, chuck)
Or so was high school. Have I repented? Have I been forgiven?
But this is now.
But don’t let it go like this. Whence this mania, desperation? The concentric circles are collapsing around me. Eight. Drive. Night. Road. 90. Not fast enough. Push more. More open road. 95. Too slow to die. Ha– way to slow to die. 100. The wind, the rush. Cold and black. Wanting more. Wanting 120. Wanting 140. Wanting 160 and sudden explosion into flames and careening 160 fireball of burning, burning fire. Everything is consumed. Refined by fire. Action.
Sure, light my fire. Eight. It’s burning, glowing red in the night. I breath it in, suck it down, down, down. The death of a thousand lungs, a thousand burning fires. But I don’t feel the warmth. I feel a growing sick feeling in my stomach– revulsion. Confusion. Desperation. The fire still burns, burns cold.
sex, drugs, rock and roll
speed, weed, birth control
life’s a bitch, then you die
fuck the world, go get high -a.b.
Eight.
Live strong. Ha. That’s not strong enough. Sleep less. Push more. I’m not exhausted yet. So push more. I’m still standing. So push more. Push myself forward, push the stifling, dry death back. Push the helplessness back. Push the self-abasement back. A whole bottle of summer of two-thousand-five. Do I drink it? Of course I do. Every last drop, till my veins pulse and explode with mind-numbing intoxication, and I’ve pushed back summer.
Oh god, don’t let it end this way. Finish strong. Finish hopeful. Finish to run again.
God, Hope, sometimes 30 is such a long time away.
Eyes strain, body aches, clock ticks. Two twenty two. Two twenty two. Two twenty three. But I’m still standing, so I’ll just push harder.
if we possess our why of life,
we can put with almost any how.
–Man does not strive after happiness. (nietzsche)
So why, why, why.
A little exhaustion. Nonsense. Weakness. I’m still standing.
Eight more days. I’m still standing. And I’ll keep standing, until it’s impossible. Until I collapse. Until the sick feeling in my stomach wins over.
Eight.
