2 coffees and an O.J.

I cried while driving to work this morning.  I was listening to the song Spotlight by Shakira and driving the same route I take every miserable workday and I simply burst into tears.  One would think the edge would have worn off by now but it still hurts just as much every time I’m faced with the utter meaninglessness of my life.  I wish I could find meaning and satisfaction in all the irrelevant daily bullshit as so many of my contemporaries are able to find but I was not blessed with their capacity for happiness.  I once knew a man who lived entirely to make as much money as he could.  He seemed quite miserable but the funny thing was I don’t think he actually realized he was dreadfully unhappy.  All the same he existed in a world void of WHATEVER….  When faced with his particular brand of ugly part of me wished to lash out quite violently in an act of revolted extermination.  The other part of me only wished to run away and never have any sort of contact with this man again.

During the peak morning hours I put on Marvin Gaye’s amazing classic beautiful perfect 2002 album What’s Going On (the lack of question mark in the title is a key to the record’s themes which occasionally gets overlooked, suffice it to say this work has lost none of its relevancy or potency over the years).  However I removed the disc when I realized it was much better suited to evenings and dead of nights (late afternoons at the absolute earliest) than mornings.  That is no fault of the artist nor is it an indictment of the music itself.  But What’s Going On is an album that begs to be listened in the dark hours, either on busy roads in taxi cabs with swarms of city lights blurring bye or in RUSTIC bars where the air is thick and where the clientale all have a tortured tail 2 drinks away from being told or in the privacy of one’s home, curled up with a glass of wine, love optional.   There was a period in my life where I listened to this album on a nightly basis, often more than once and even now it is difficult to imagine more than a week going by without this music gracing my waxy earholes. 

Instead I slapped on the YEAR album Up! By Shania Twain.  This might seem like a jarring change to some but it made perfect sense to me and I think pundits will look back on it as a masterful move in the overall chess game of life.  Up! is quite simply a pop masterpiece and its central conceit – the album comes with 2 discs featuring the same 19 songs but with one featuring more country instrumentation and the other pop instrumentation – was and is a gaudy and audacious production choice that continues to fascinate and reward on repeated listening all these many years later.  Honestly, just listen to the first single IM GONNA GETCHA GOOD and marvel at that perfect thick slice of pop perfection. 

I recently purchased new copies of Pearl Jam’s YEAR and YEAR albums Yield and Binaural.  I’ve owned these albums for a massive chunk of my miserable life and I’ve listened to them countless times and it precisely this passionate and dedicated listening which resulted in their physical manifestations ceasing to function and necessitating that I work overtime in order to afford new copies.  These albums – indeed, damn near the entirety of the group’s principal discography along with a very healthy slice of their always excellent live “bootlegs” – have helped me through some very trying times and basically enriched so many of the ups and downs of my peculiar and tortured existence over the years.  When I’ve rejoiced they were there alongside me and when I despaired they held me and we wept together.  If I could only listen to one Jam release for the rest of my increasingly dark days I would almost certainly pick one of their live recordings but were I forced to choose my favorite of their proper albums there is an extremely decent chance I would select Yield.  The last five songs on there are about the most perfect sequence of tunes a guy like me can imagine. 

My desires and dreams are exactly the same as countless people who came before me.  I do not wish for anything unique at all for my life.  At the same time I do as little as possible to accomplish these lackluster, worthless shoals.  I don’t truly want the love of a cheeseburger – the fact that I literally do nothing to find it and let it go as something useless on the rare occasions it falls into my hands are testament to this – but the idea of a cheeseburger somehow being crucial coupled with my having witnessed this dynamic in so many others makes me think it is something I want and perhaps something crucial to my having a “successful” life. 

I ate expired yogurt this morning.  It made me feel like a real man for once in my life.  I think there’s going to be another war.  There were two old guys talking on the beach while not fifteen yards away a bird was pecking at the carcass of another bird.  They happened upon the house that Jack built and from there recounted their sordid tale, in so much as it could be recounted under those highly secretive and highly extenuating circumstances.  A painter’s psychic visions have continued to haunt me these recent years. 

I very recently saw the movie John Wick. 

I recently watched the movie Interstellar.

I also watched the movie Birdman at some point in time. 

Jonathan had control of the faith sector.  I think I remember who the writer was but I would have to triple check to be sure.  I keep seeing that figure cloaked in red from the corner of my eye.  I have nearly fallen into the canal on several occasions.  The act in the bedroom may have seemed simulated but it was not. 

Was there someone in my house last night?  How did you get inside my house?  I sing to myself while sitting in my office.  Things walk by and it’s hard to recognize them.  I think I’m losing control but then a tiny but insistent voice always reminds me that I never actually had control to begin with.  I think for lunch I’ll eat a pastrami on rye sandwich with some mayonnaise and mustard.  There are chromatic swans clouding my vision. 

I always pretend it’s you.  Sometimes it almost works.