I want to write something. I want to lose myself in the letters and words as they scroll across the screen. But it's all been said before. Anything's better than nothing though, I guess. I just had a bite of a hot dog on a hamburger bun with ketchup. I don't really want it, but it's another stimulus that helps me to lose myself. Besides maybe that'll be interesting to me someday. Why does it have to be that I don't coalesce with the folds of humanity? Why is it that we all must be isolated utterly? I find myself saying the same things over and over. Of course it doesn't really matter because I'm just doing this to pass the time anyway. Another bite. Whenever I have nothing to say, I take another bite. It makes me feel a little sick, but I do it anyway. Are people who talk to themselves insane? Because that's all I'm doing right now. I don't have any purpose, just random babble. I just sit here waiting for something to happen, but nothing can because I've been through it all before. I'm a soul that's been spent. At the age of nineteen my fire has burned out. Everything I hoped for and dreamed of as a child has lost its lustre. The perfection I yearn for can't be achieved, and I just can't seem to content myself with anything less. As I write this I think to myself how I'd like to have someone read it. I don't find any merit in what I'm doing, so I look for someone else to tell me it's worthwhile. Another bite. I'm on my second dog now. It's cold, but I'm eating it anyway.

Maybe I should forget about myself and do things for everyone and everything that is outside of me. Would there be any meaning in that? No. I don't even know why, but there wouldn't.

Listen to me. Listen to the way I talk. This is the way I think, the way I feel. Is it any wonder that I feel disconnected? Why am I such a freak? Why doesn't anyone else think or do like I do? But would that make any difference? I'd have someone to wallow in this mire of ignorance and uncertainty with me. Boy, I bet that would make all the difference. Right.

I've been chewing this biteful of cold hot dog and hamburger bun for probably a minute now, but I don't want to swallow it because it'll make me feel worse. I just swallowed. I think of how pitiful it is that I want someone else to tell me I have some impact or meaning or contribution because I can't convince myself. I just got up and turned the music down because I heard a door shut, and I thought someone might be coming up here to tell me to turn it down. I don't even have the strength to deal with some fuck telling me to turn the music down, not even the rich, frumpy snatch that just moved in downstairs who listens to Howard Jones and has nice furniture. It's pathetic. I'm pathetic. I keep looking and looking and looking. All my life has been spent searching. Actually a lot of it was spent digging at the prospective treasure site. But after I dug thirty feet I finally accepted that there wasn't any treasure there. So now I'm following another treasure map. Photography, reading, knowledge, the betterment of myself as a person. What a load of shit. But I'm doing it anyway.

I couldn't stomach the other half of my last hot dog, so I took the plate and put it on the counter. I didn't wash it. I wanted to make the kitchen dirty. More and more I see how right Dostoevsky was.

I want to see my impact. I've followed the instructions on the package for nineteen years now. When do I see the impact? Maybe growing a garden would be enough for me, seeing the change, the development. Nothing I've done has made an impact. I want to stir something up. I can't even find a sick contentment in my own self-pity. All I can do is think how pathetic I am. Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Am I going to be pathetic because I say I am, or am I already pathetic?

I want to show this to someone, but no one else has any answers. I know they don't. I can tell by their own pathetic lives. It's just that everyone is too afraid to admit the truth. I think Clay might have admitted the truth, but that doesn't do anything for him. He's not any better than he was before. In fact he might be worse. Maybe before he could have lied to himself, but now he knows he's pathetic. There's nowhere to run. Just sit here and face the storm. But it grows so tiresome, so enervating until at last, crippled, I crumble to dust, not in death but in life. In my church story, the dried blue paint I flake off my hands isn't paint but my hands themselves. I slowly slough off pieces of myself until I have nothing left. I've already lost my desire and my tenderness, but I guess I haven't lost my idealism because I keep hoping I'll find someone who can give them back to me. I guess that's what I am, all I have left, a dying hope. And when that's finally extinguished, as it inevitably will be, I'm dead. My ember is already beginning to smolder cold, like in Joshua Brought White Lilies.

Yet it still gives off a feeble heat, for I hope that I will read this later and find some meaning or contentment in it. Because it means nothing to me now. I think I'm going to take a nap now, or maybe play Tetris. Or maybe play Tetris and then take a nap and then play pinball. Maybe I'll have a couple beers, by myself. Maybe I'm an alcoholic. That would be nice. I'm serious. Anything but nothing. Anything to escape. But there is no escape. I guess one can only die fighting for the cause, because there is no victory, no victors, only martyrs. But that's nice in a way. Martrydom has such a sweetness to it. Sweeter than anything this world has to offer. But this sweetness isn't victory. Martyrdom isn't victory, can't be. Only in loss can I feel vindicated, of this world and all its inhabitants.

Somewhere it resides
A stronghold against
His brightening tides --from Elegy for the Cherubim

No. Forever fleeing from the day will she be.

Back where you came from