Non-fiction

Stuck Outside

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I have a lot of keys on my keychain. More than half of them I don’t know what to do with. Where did they come from? How did I ever receive them? All I know is I’m afraid to throw them away. What if they belong to something important? These keys I’ve kept for years. And yet, where did they come from? The only relevant ones, as far as I know, are for my car, which is my fob, my apartment, the gate to my apartment building, and my mail key. As for everything else, your guess is as good as mine. My worst fear is if I lose them. That could be as bad as losing my wallet. Maybe not as bad, but as close to it. I just want to unwind and not have to worry about them. I bought a thing, which I don’t know what to call it, that fastens to my belt loop for my keys so I won’t have to risk them falling out of my pocket. Why can’t I think of the word? I bought it on Amazon. I must’ve known the word back then. So what happened? Why did the word fall out of my brain? I guess I could call it my key fastener. The keys swing and jangle when I walk. I look like a janitor and have about as many keys as one. But at least a janitor knows what to do with them all. As for me, I’m at a loss.

I’m stuck outside. They kicked me out of the coffee shop because of a water issue. It’s already over eighty degrees, and the sun is barely even out yet. It’ll probably turn ninety in about a half hour, and I’ll be sweating in this chair. But that’s okay. It only adds to a long week.

Which leads me to birdwatching. One of them is hopping around on chairs and tables. I can’t tell what type of bird it is. I’m bad at that sort of thing. My mother is great at it. She can tell me what type of bird, what type of flower, what type of tree. I wish I could wear glasses that tell me because I have difficulty naming things. The answers would appear on my lenses like the words on the eyes of the Terminator (if you’ve seen that film).

Anyway, it’s funny watching people try to go inside the coffee shop after they’ve posted a note on the door that says they’re closed for repairs. People pull and pull the door as if it will magically come unlocked if they pull hard enough. They need the coffee so bad that their minds deny it’s true. And so they stand in disbelief and peek through the glass at the baristas inside as if that would make any sort of difference. But it’s the reality. We’re stuck out here in this heat. It feels humid, a rare thing in the desert. It’s usually just plain old heat. It’s supposed to be double-digits next week. That would be paradise, but still hot to most people. All I can do is complain about how hot it is and if my laptop can withstand the heat on this table.

The same old regulars sit outside with me. I don’t know any of them except one, an old man who introduced himself once. And I remember his name too. Every other face is familiar, but I know nothing about them. I’m staring at plants, just killing time this morning, and I’ll keep killing time this afternoon until night comes.

The baristas have brought a stand outside on the patio with a big green coffee dispenser, styrofoam cups, a jug of half-and-half on one table and pastries on another table. They’re giving everything away for free. I guess it’s an apology for making us sit outside. They’ve turned the misters on, which feels good but not great. It’s still hot out here. I don’t want to go home either because I’ll be home all day. I figure I could walk around until it’s time, but I still have two-and-a-half hours to kill. Oh, what a day so far.

Non-fiction

A Morning Person

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I’ve never been a morning person. At least that’s what I think. Sometimes the mornings are so lovely, but hardly do they show. It’s usually labor, getting out of bed and trying to find the shower. I take my daily meds and hope today is better than yesterday without much sleep at all. Insomnia loves to be my friend.

He was my friend last night. I woke up at half past midnight with a brutal headache that surged from the nape of my neck to the width of my forehead, most likely from the heat. I stumbled into the kitchen half awake and took four Ibuprofen, but they didn’t help much. I was stuck in bed with my thoughts and a case of tinnitus, so I got out of bed again around two in the morning and played a video game while watching YouTube on my MacBook Pro.

I’ve been stuck on a personality on there who talks about nothing but music and culture. I watched a video of his in which he explained and commented on hipster culture. Not until then did I realize that I might’ve been a hipster in my earlier years when I was in my twenties. It’s difficult to tell. I never wore an ironic mustache except for one week, and people complimented me on it. But after one time in the mirror I decided, “Nah, it ain’t gonna work.” So I shaved it off. I also wore ironic clothing like shirts that didn’t fit me with ironic phrases on them. One was coffee brown and too small for me, with a rodent on the front. It said, “I’m not a gopher, I’m an otter.” People loved the shirt, and so did I. That was about as hipster as I got, looks-wise. I’m not sure what happened to that shirt. I probably threw it away after realizing I was being a hipster, wearing corduroy pants and sneakers. My hair was emo and floppy to an extent. I had a little stubble on my face. And I listened only to indie rock bands and indie hip-hop because I detested anything mainstream. That included movies. So I watched only independent films and avoided the major studio motion pictures for the most part. I remember still watching the Batman films, but that was about it.

He made a valid point in his video that yesterday’s hipsters are today’s wokesters, meaning the hipsters of the 2000s–with their curly mustaches, their cans of PBR in the pseudo dive bars, and their expensive coffee houses in what used to be poor neighborhoods like Williamsburg in Brooklyn–have transformed into the same losers, except now they cancel people on Twitter (or X). Those people are of course more revolting. They’re today’s hipsters. I can’t say I’m one of them. There’s nothing more lame than hanging out on social media all day and attacking people’s character. It doesn’t sit right with me, but it feels good to be sanctimonious all the time, doesn’t it? People could make a career out of ruining others if they wanted to, and if they were so lucky.

But let’s call it for what it is: hipsters are young people who grew up in affluence but pretend to be poor to be part of a cause. They want to be different from who they really are. It took me years to become myself. I guess I really hated who I was. Now I’m indifferent. I hate myself for other reasons than my persona. I wear whatever now, mostly plain shirts and shorts with mocassins. I was never able to grow a man-bun because I’d lost too much hair by the time they were in fashion. But I did envy those hipsters with the man-buns. They obviously had something I didn’t to go with their scraggly beards. I can grow a beard easily in just four days, but there’s too much gray for me to be an appealing hipster.

And I hardly go to shows, which the YouTube personality explained hipsters loved to do. In fact the last concert I went to was a little under ten years ago at the Wiltern to see Faith No More. I invited an ex-girlfriend who stood me up. So I was there all alone. I guess that’s a hipster move too: being alone at a concert. And Faith No More was sort of hipsterish. They were an old band with a cult following. And I remember seeing a fair amount of man-buns and bangs on women because that was a popular look among hipster women. I dated a few with those bangs. I didn’t realize until the video last night that most of the women I dated were actually hipsters. The bangs told it all.

Is being a hipster the worst thing? Of course not. Except if you’re a wokester who ruins people’s lives on social media. I was a pacifist hipster if I was a hipster at all. I just left people alone so they would leave me alone. It didn’t always work. Some people would harass me no matter what I tried to say to them.

I used to hang out in trendy bars in Hollywood: places like the Powerhouse, which acutally is a real dive bar across from the Hollywood/Highland shopping mall. It smelled like week-old beer, and they served overpriced PBR in a can. I drank it, but the trust fund hipsters took advantage of its divey ambiance. I used to play cricket in there, and I took a lot of dates there when I was in my twenties. That was just one hipster bar out of hundreds in Hollywood and Silverlake, and I went to so many that I lost count. I can’t even think of another hipster bar I used to frequent.

There was a hipster coffee shop called the Bourgeois Pig, which served coffee even more expensive than Starbucks. Inside it was dimly lit, with bookshelves and a billiards table. I would sit in there and write like other hipster douche bags. One of them even brought a typewriter to go with his mustache. I’m surprised they’d let him in there but also I wasn’t. And I was surprised he didn’t light up a pipe in there, but they didn’t allow smoking anyway. In fact you couldn’t smoke anywhere near the entrance, not a very hipster rule. You would think they would’ve allowed smoking in that establishment like they did in the forties when the first hipster appeared (or so the video claimed).

So do I miss years as a hipster? Why not? They were simpler times in a way. I miss going to those bars and coffee shops. But if I go there now, it just wouldn’t be the same.

Non-fiction

Cereal Addict

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I went to clean my apartment yesterday and found there wasn’t much to do. Mostly everything looked clean already except for some stains on the floor. Other than that, there wasn’t much to do but vacuum and mop. I hate cleaning, but that’s normal.

The weather was too hot for any work around the home, a hundred and eleven degrees in the afternoon. My air-conditioner, which was brand new, was running all day and every day. I never turned the thing off, so my Edison bill for the past two months came to almost five hundred dollars. My parents received a bill for a little less than that, and they live in a big house–big for me at least, maybe small to some. I nearly fell down when I saw the price of the bill. The heat is supposed to drop to double digits next week, like ninety-nine degrees. Sounds like paradise. I can’t wait. I might actually wear pants, but I can’t guarantee I will. Just as long as the night is cooler, I won’t have to walk around sweating before the sun comes out and I’m drenched.

I walked back from the coffee shop yesterday with my backpack on, and my back had soaked my shirt. I’d walked for only twenty minutes, about a mile from the coffee shop. I walk everywhere to get exercise and drive only when I need to, one or two days out of the week. I got in my car on Saturday and discovered that I’d left my light on, the little light right above my head near the windshield, and I worried about the battery being drained. I imagine not too much because of how small the light was. But for a whole week? That’s not good.

I wonder what today will bring. My gut tells me a long one. I sure hope not. I have to go grocery shopping tonight after work, something I’m not looking forward to. I’ve grown to hate the grocery store. Shopping there takes me about a half hour or more out of my day. The heat is too unbearable for me to walk back with all of those groceries. I bring my own bag to the store, one from Urban Outfitters, the size of a trash bag that can hold three weeks of groceries. I look like Santa Claus with a bunch of gifts after I leave the store. But because I live alone, I don’t have to carry too much, just a week’s worth of stuff that I’ll need. And then about eight days later, I’ll have to go back.

I also have to cook tonight, which I’m not looking forward to either. I cook about once or twice a week, and then I reheat the leftovers. Cooking isn’t my strong suit. I don’t know how to cook much. I used to try to with a meal program where the company delivered the food and sent me the recipes. And they were strange things like crab cake sandwiches. I had to be careful or else I would’ve ruined the whole meal. I cooked fish tacos and something with tarragon, maybe turkey but I’m not positive. The service was called Blue Apron, and I had them delivered for about six months before cooking burned me out and I went back to the microwave. Besides, I spent about fifty dollars a week on three meals. That was over fifteen dollars per meal if my math is correct. Couldn’t keep up anymore. Now I spend about eighty dollars a week on groceries. Some people spend over two hundred, but they have families to feed. I like to be simple. I stand behind people who fill their shopping carts with a lot of junk. I’m talking cereals and several boxes of canned sodas, cans of food, stuff I wouldn’t consume.

I haven’t eaten cereal in over two decades, but I used to be a cereal addict when I was a boy. The best was Fruity Pebbles, and the worst was Frosted Flakes. The milk would make the flakes too soggy. At least with Fruity Pebbles the milk would taste sweet after the pebbles were gone. The same with the chocolate pebbles. The milk would turn it into chocolate milk. But the time came when I realized how bad for me the cereals were, and I would overeat them, sometimes helping myself to a second bowl before I realized the box was empty, and I would have to beg Mom to buy some more, and she wouldn’t. Then I would get angry and slam my bedroom door and throw a fit. I wouldn’t talk to her until she bought me more. I could’ve lived off cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I chose.

Anyway, those simple days are gone. I eat eggs for breakfast. Now I skip lunch and eat dinner and dessert. Lunch isn’t necessary for me. It used to be in high school. I had the unhealthiest diet: cereal in the morning (usually the sugary kind), Frito boats for lunch–which was made of Fritos, chili, and cheese–before I had a driver’s license, so my friends and I would eat at different fast food joints like Taco Bell, Jack-In-The-Box, Wendy’s, and Carl’s Jr., and then whatever my mom made at night which was healthy, which I didn’t like, and she would feed me small portions. But two out of three meals weren’t bad.

Non-fiction

Interesting Delight

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In my twenty years in Los Angeles, I never visited LACMA, but I heard it was overrated anyway. I did make trips to Silverlake if that counts. When I lived in Hollywood, my friend who visited took me to the weidest museum–I guess you could call it that–where it was nothing but videotapes of the film Jerry Maguire starring Tom Cruise. It took me back to a better time. Many of you probably aren’t aware of that film. It came out in the nineties, and the nineties carries no relevance to Gen Z, which is a shame. Reality TV wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is these days, and the music and films were superior in my mind. I just believe that because I was a teenager then. Any teenager at a certain period would grow up to believe everything wasn’t what it used to be. Try convincing a Gen Z person that the nineties were better for instance.

Does rock music even exist anymore? I’m stuck in the nineties, so all I listen to are bands from that era. I don’t remember the last rock star in the last twenty years. When I grew up, I had Kurt Cobain, Axl Rose, and Eddie Vedder among several other artists. But somewhere between now and then, all we were left with were a bunch of celebrities rapping and doing TikTok videos for fame. I don’t watch TV, so I can’t really confirm the truth. Who knows what MTV is showing these days? All I can say, as I don’t pay attention to contemporary music, is no one has approached me and said that so-and-so is the next great rock star. It’s further evidence that rock is dead, and I don’t think there will be a revival. The concept of a long-haired person with a guitar must not fly with today’s teenager.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s still rock music and metal buried beneath pop and hip-hop. It must not hold up to the rock music in the nineties, or else I would’ve known about them by now. I’ve tried listening to a few metal bands, but it was just misplaced yelling and growling over drums and guitars, creating hyperactive noise.

I heard that Hollywood is dead too. It wasn’t what it once was. I’ve turned my back on that as well, after living there for seventeen years and trying to be part of the scene. But it got worse and worse as major studios tried to recreate everything instead of making something original. They were too afraid of taking chances, so they stayed safe and did remakes of past films and bought the rights to comic books. I’m not a kid anymore, so I’m no longer the audience. They hardly make films for adults, so again I’m left out. Not to sound elitist, but I’m not into comic books or Star Wars. I must be left with whatever films were up for Best Picture at the Oscars. I tried to watch Oppenheimer a few weeks ago and couldn’t get past the first ten minutes. I forgot what other films were nominated. It was a lot of them, like ten of them. Couldn’t keep track. I’ll pay more attention to the next Oscars if I care enough. That’s the problem: my apathy.

Non-fiction

Destined to Fail

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How many of us walk around pretending things are alright when it couldn’t be more distant from the truth? I explore this cave without any pretense and can look quite gloomy. That’s fine. I’m a gloomy person. There’s no hiding from the fact that I wander wanting more, some of which I can’t have, actually most. Weird how life works that way.

Anyway, it’s hot outside. My father called me this morning and said the power went out in their neighborhood a little after eight. He also texted me about the problem as if I was able to fix it, asking if my power went out too. Nope. Everything was fine around here. I beg to ask why he was bothering me at that time when both he and my mother knew that the morning wasn’t a good time to get a hold of me unless a real tragedy had struck. This is the time of day when I’m trying to focus on my work, and I didn’t see a power outage as an emergency. I was disturbed by his message. It had pulled me out of my own thoughts. I was thinking about them and their problem. There was nothing I could do to fix it. I couldn’t turn their power back on, so why was he texting me? Furthermore, what did it matter if my power went out? There was nothing he could do to fix it either. Why message me? I’m gonna see them tomorrow anyway. It was just an annoyance this morning when I’d slept in. I wasn’t expecting to wake up so late at a quarter before nine. I slept right through my alarm at a half past four in the morning.

I handed my rent check to my apartment manager on Thursday. She squinted at it as if I’d written something wrong.

“Everything okay?” I said.

She looked up and smiled. “Yes, everything is fine,” she said.

I gave her the thumbs up and said “Good” before I left her office. There was an unsettling feeling that I’d done something wrong. I’ve felt that way for quite some time now.

But enough darkness on a Saturday. It’s time for optimism. How about the US in the Olympics winning all of these medals, eh? I’m proud of those athletes, but I’m not gonna lie. I didn’t think once about them this week. I did read about a man who pummeled a woman in a boxing match, and the woman started crying. It’s not right for a man to enter a woman’s competition. We can all agree on that. Point to a person who disagrees. That’s how it is now. I also saw a Turkish competitor in a gun event–whatever it was supposed to be called–who didn’t wear protective glasses or ear muffs and shot the targets with his other hand in his pocket. It was quite impressive to see a picture of him on social media. He ended up winning the silver, but he should’ve won the gold regardless of his score. After all, he’d shot the targets with his hand in his pocket. That degree of difficulty is as immense as shooting with his weak hand.

I called the court yesterday to find out about my speeding ticket and where it was in transit, but in the morning I had to wait behind eighteen other people to speak to an operator. And in the afternoon, they were already closed after two on a Friday. It’s gonna be more difficult than expected throughout this process of paying the fine if my ticket ends up at the wrong address. Then I would have to worry about more fees if I can’t pay it on time. It’s another thing to stress about. I wish it would’ve never happened. But what good is it to wish? What does wishing really do? Nothing as far as I can see. It’s useless.

My Edison bill came to five hundred dollars because I left my air conditioner on and never turned it off. It has been well over a hundred degrees every day in the desert. What choice do I have? The AC is on auto. It’s supposed to turn off once the apartment turns a certain temperature, but it never reaches that low. Therefore the unit stays on. I even bumped it up to eighty five degrees, but still no success. I would rather pay the five hundred dollars than sweat in my apartment. It’s that important. It’s the difference between that and substandard living.

Non-fiction

Inertia

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I sit around and beg God to give me energy, but all I find is the will to go to sleep. But sleep is hard to find these days. I’ve always been a notorious insomniac. I awoke at two in the morning and couldn’t fall back asleep. Too much worry. I’m sure that most people live with the same affliction. Only the cruel sleep soundly. Their evil deeds keep the rest of us awake. What if I’m wrong?

People ask, “How do you sleep at night?” when someone does something dastardly, like he lives without a conscience. And I’m sure some people do. I’ve slept next to those who snore their little brains out, and I grow envy over their slumber. I want to plug their noses so they’ll awaken abruptly, and then I’ll say, “Join the club.”

Thoughts were whirling in a cave last night in my humid room. I remember sleepovers when I was just a boy. All the other kids would fall asleep, and I was the one boy up. What was wrong with me for being so nervous in the company of others when I was trying to sleep?

I rubbed the back of a white dog in the coffee shop. I feel half awake and adrenalized. The day has broken. The sun is out. Another relentless morning as I listen to people chatter behind me about something. I can’t tell. It’s so loud in here. They’re playing a country song above the people’s voices.

I go through writer’s block and feel inertia in my bones. What a splendid problem. My job has robbed me of my imagination. I can’t think of other things.

I’m staring at a fellow’s cowboy hat at the table ahead of me. It’s white and made of straw with a sticker on the back that says, I’m stuck on H2O. A water enthusiast. Good.

The dog wags its tail next to me and howls at his master on a lazy Friday. I have to work later and make phone calls all morning. I wish I only had to send emails because I can’t stand to talk to people over the phone. Don’t most people hate it? I can tell. Text and emails are much more simple, aren’t they?

But anyway, the August air is hot and humid. The heat won’t end until October. It’s impossible to bear another two months of this. But I’m made to complain about anything. That’s what I’m here for. I’m a complaint machine. I file my complaints here. I’m cantankerous by myself but show a smile to others passing by who wave at me, such as a guy from Marin County. He’s arguably homeless, but he wears a lot of different clothes and looks as if he showers. He wears a heavy backpack every day in the coffee shop. He goes to the same customer and chats him up. And the customer gives him money to buy more coffee. It’s like he’s his benefactor. What would he do without him? The man gives it to him like a human feeding bread to a pigeon. The pigeon comes back for more and wants more than yesterday. It only adds to the problem. I haven’t given him a dollar. I fear that he would start depending on me.

I sip my coffee and drink my water, thinking what a daunting day is ahead of me, so much to work to do and not enough time.

An old man had to pull his pants up because his underwear was showing.

“No one in the US wears hats,” a woman says behind me.

“I heard Joe Biden got criticized for wearing a hat.”

What kind of comment was that? Why would he be criticized?

“Simone took the gold.”

Yes, it was her second gold medal.

Now they’re talking about equestrian. I tried watching it last week. All it was was women on horseback, making their horses dance on the field. I thought she would make the horse jump hurdles, but the sport must’ve changed.

They’re playing Four Non Blondes here, that old song from the nineties. Now it’s another folk song, or what they usually play here.

Anyway, what am I gonna do this weekend but sit around and relax, play tennis, and write, look for new jobs? The job market is rough. I read that now is a good time to have a job but a bad time to look for one, which is awful news for me. I guess I’ll have to live with what I have for now.

Non-fiction

At Least We Can Agree Upon That

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A splash of evil crept into my soul one day this week when I was walking down the sidewalk. I didn’t know where it had come from. It appeared like an eclipse, totally unexpected, but it went away.

A man in the coffee shop line smiled at me and kept looking around himself, holding his iPad in both hands in front of his body. What does he want from me? What organization is he working for? I better hide.

The line is long. These people ought to know that they can place mobile orders on their phones. That’s what I do. I live half a mile from this coffee shop, and my cold brew and eggs are ready by the time I walk here. Yet these people didn’t get the memo.

The Adderall kicked in. It’s six in the morning, and I’m wide awake. The pharmacy didn’t have my medication until yesterday, so I’d been out of it since Saturday. How did I survive? I need it for attention. Some days I forget, which shows how ineffective the Adderall can be. But I take it anyway for my attention deficit disorder. I’m not ashamed to admit it because I believe that most people need the stuff. Too many people are plagued by a short attention span. Too much stimuli. I look out this dirty window with water stains on it and see a plethora of shops with letters on them, words and letters everywhere in town, and numbers too on signs and such. I have to get away to see nature, to avoid all this information.

Anyway, I still haven’t called the court to find out about my speeding ticket, which is supposed to come in the mail. The idiot cop had written my address from Hollywood on my citation, but I don’t live there anymore, and he’d pulled me over a few miles from home. My new address is on my insurance and registration card. No one ever said a cop is supposed to graduate from MIT, but he should’ve at least politely asked where I lived, and I would’ve told him the truth.

I still have post-traumatic stress from that night, which was less than a week ago. Why did I drive close to ninety miles per hour? Where was my head when I was driving? I was thinking a million thoughts other than how fast I was going. My foot kept pressing the pedal without my awareness. Now I have to pay the fine and attend traffic school. I’ve gone to comedy traffic school a few times. The people who instructed it were not funny. This was before COVID, long before COVID. I had to drive to an economy office building and sit for eight hours, where I studied all the different traffic laws. The instructors read jokes from their notes. They ordered pizza too. There were definitely coffee and donuts.

I can take traffic school online now in my apartment. I don’t know how the court will see that I attended. Nevertheless, I can’t have the points or my insurance will skyrocket, so I must endure the long, painful process. That’s the point, isn’t it? To keep me from speeding again. They press the issue. It’s on my conscience every time I sit behind the wheel.

Now I obey all traffic laws. I drove to my parents’ house on the day after the cop had pulled me over and kept my eyes on both the road and Google Maps on Apple Carplay. Google Maps helps because it tells me the speed limit on each road. If the limit was forty five I would drive that fast and nothing more. It’s hard because it’s tempting to drive over the limit, but that moment made me hypervigilant. I looked all around myself for cops lurking on the freeway shoulder or on main roads. I crept below twenty-five miles per hour in a school zone, even though school was out. It’s July, for chrissakes, but I still went as slow. I have nothing to fear. Speeding tickets come every ten years or so. The last time a cop pulled me over was in the past decade for speeding in a thirty-five-mile-her-hour zone. I was going fifty. The cop got irritated because I was playing music while he was trying to talk over it. I was so nervous that I forgot the music was even on.

I’m not counting the many parking tickets I received in Los Angeles County. Parking enforcers are the most efficient officers of all because the parking situation in that city is such a mess. There’s a parking meter in just about every space on just about every street. People can’t park anywhere for long because of the number of cars versus the number of streets. I spent two dollars to park for an hour.

I drive only a few days a week, so I don’t have to worry a lot about traffic and parking violations. But man, that last speeding ticket hit me hard. I don’t want to drive again.

Non-fiction

Inspiration

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I’ve read books about the muse. Steven Pressfield wrote a book called The War of Art. It’s over one hundred pages, and you can read it in a day. It fuels my inspiration, which is a subject of debate. Does the muse really exist, or is it some sort of construct we made up to procrastinate? I write every morning out of necessity, whether the muse wants to show up or not. It usually doesn’t because of its sensitivity. My stress chases it away. Only when there’s peace does the muse come, and even then it can fly away by the tug of the wind. Then I have to force words out that don’t match because I have to live with doubt inside.

Doubt and worry, those are two elements that defeat the muse. Do I believe in inspiration? Yes I do. I think it’s around. And people wait for it to come. But you can wait for years before it arrives. And it doesn’t stay. It’s here for a time that passes too quickly for even a thought to form.

I waited for inspiration to come when I was in my twenties, and I hardly ever wrote like I do now. Steven Pressfield writes in The War of Art that resistance is the killer, and we all have to live with it. People resist the urge to create by taking drugs, drinking, partying, copulating, procrastinating, all because of fear. Fear is the basis of resistance. He says to fight it. Resistance is what we live with every day without fortune. I have to fight resistance that often. The blank page is a metaphor for thoughts that run away when we’re looking for content because we fear the content will be rejected, that people will berate us, or these days that people will expose us for something we created.

Social media excels as a tool for resistance. People are on it every day rather than getting work done. I browse it myself and recognize names of users who constantly write words that hurt other people. I see politicians on there who make lengthy statements defending themselves and their parties. And I see citizens castigating them rather than creating something of any merit. And those people are on it every day. It sickens me. It saddens me. We’re talking about tools for teenagers and young adults.

I remember Myspace way back when, over twenty years ago, was designed for young people to meet and hook up. That was what it was geared toward. And then older adults and professionals used platforms like Facebook and Twitter (or X) for marketing and voicing their political agendas, all when they could’ve spent their time creating something people could use instead. They wasted it on their hatred, which was really a reaction to their own fears.

Which brings me back to inspiration and how these people are waiting for it to strike. But they’re so inundated with fear that they constantly chase the muse away by wasting their time hurting other people. That’s most of us, while some of us choose to work every day despite our muse, despite our fears taking us over.

Non-fiction

Matching Clothes

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I look at the hole in my shorts and wonder how it got there. I blame my keys. I carry them on my belt loop, and the keys dangle and rub against my shorts, causing a grease stain, and the sharpness of those keys must’ve caused a rip in the shorts.

I’ve had these shorts for many years, so it’s time to buy a new pair. I’m sure no one notices the rip but me.

I don’t like shopping for clothes. I don’t like shopping. What is it about it that I hate so much? Is it the fact that I have to spend money or the fact that I hate driving to the mall and trying on clothes in the fitting rooms? I think it’s both. I used to love the mall. It was the place I used to hang out at when I was a kid all through high school just to get away from home. Now I’m like my father who hates the mall, the crowds that occupy the space in there. I don’t want to share the same air as them. I would rather be somewhere else than there, but I don’t know where I would be.

Shopping malls are abundant around here, shopping centers that is. I can close my eyes and point at one from wherever I stand. But I don’t want to go there. I step into fitting rooms with several clothes and try them on. They all fit so nicely. I’m not sure what they do to those mirrors that make the clothes look so good on me because when I get home, the clothes suddenly lose their luster. I want to throw them away and buy something else. But they still beat my old clothes, which turn to rags. I look at them and wonder how the hell I wore them in the first place. They’re old and wrinkled and dirty. Why didn’t anyone tell me the shape they were in? I didn’t realize it until it was too late.

And as for socks, I lose them far too often. Socks seem to have feet and run away. They end up somewhere somehow where I can’t find them, or they get holes because my toenails are too sharp. I go through socks too easily. As for shoes, I have about five pairs. I haven’t counted. I’m not a sneakerhead, but I know people who own closets full of shoes. I worked with a guy who wore a different pair just about every day. I lost count of them. They were usually Adidas, sometimes Nike. But they were always sneakers. Does anyone even use that word anymore? Sneakers. I just hear people call them shoes. Sneakers is like trousers. No one says trousers anymore. I’m not sure that I know what trousers are. It’s old school like supper instead of dinner.

I might have to go to a funeral, so I should keep a suit nearby somewhere. The truth is I don’t currently have a suit. My slacks ran off somewhere where my socks hang out, and I need to buy more nice black socks to go with my black loafers. I don’t have any ties either. And what happened to my coat? Where did those things go? I had them about five years ago, but they vanished. I don’t remember throwing them away. Did someone steal them from my closet? How would they do that? Who would steal my clothes? That’s impossible. No one wants my clothes.

All I wear now are shorts and shirts because it’s too damn hot like I said. It won’t cool down for another three months. I can’t wait for that to happen. Until it does, I’ll dress as if I’m at the beach, even though I never go to the beach. It would sure be nice though, after living in the desert for this long.

Another thing that I do is I don’t wear shirts with any sort of label on them or any statements. I just wear plain shirts. Right now I’m wearing a wine-colored shirt that’s blank because it’s Tuesday. Tomorrow I’ll wear a gray shirt that’s also blank. I schedule what clothes to wear on what days so that I can keep track of which days of the week it is. On Mondays, it’s a navy blue shirt; Tuesdays, it’s a wine-colored shirt; on Wednesdays, it’s a gray shirt; Thursdays, it’s a blue flower shirt; Fridays, a white paisley shirt; Saturdays is a gray buttoned-down short sleeve shirt; and Sunday is old man flower shirt day.

I have two pairs of shorts: one red and the aforementioned blue. Why do they call them pairs of shorts? There aren’t two shorts, just one. Just call them shorts or short. I wore my blue short today.

At least I know how to match. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to match. Some people are blind when they put on clothes, like my father. You couldn’t show him that striped shirts don’t go with plaid pants, or that a flannel doesn’t go with slacks. So he carries on. I know exactly what to do. I couldn’t tell you where I learned it. It’s just a gift of mine.

Non-fiction

A Blog That Has Nothing To Do With a Black-and-White Picture of a Dilapidated House.

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I find it hard to believe that anyone can appreciate a Monday morning, but the weather is cooler today, which comes as a surprise. It’s usually too hot to tolerate at this time of day. I don’t know what it is.

But anyway, I anticipate the week will be long with a lot of work to do, hard work, not easy. Each day is glued to my feet. I can’t stomach the beginning, but the beginning shall end at some point, just not now. What can I do to remedy the situation?

This dog is sniffing my feet in the coffee shop. How did we get to the point where they’ve allowed dogs everywhere? I remember 1982 when you could only bring your dog outside where they can shit in the grass. Now I see baristas petting dogs with the same hands that are pouring coffee for beloved customers. That’s a health violation, not that I’ll turn him in. I’m just saying… I’ve never owned a dog and probably never will–too much maintenance.

The old lady is doing rounds in here, going up to just about every table and shooting the breeze with other customers while her white dog wags its tail and looks at every person who walks by. Watching his tail wag is like following a metronome. It’s mesmerizing.

It smells like cafeteria food here as another customer once commented. I can’t take credit but I’ll agree anyway.

I ate at a Hungarian restaurant last night with my parents and their friends to celebrate one of their birthdays, and had the lobster mac and cheese. It was decent, but I still can’t understand the combination of seafood with pasta, especially this. But I still ate it all because I love food too much.

I observed what everyone else was eating. The man who sat across from me ordered the New England clam chowder for an appetizer and crab cakes for dinner, although they didn’t have crab cakes on the menu, so I was a little bit confused.

I asked him, “How did you order the crab cakes? They’re not even on the menu.”

He smiled at me (as he always smiles) and said, “Yes they are.”

I didn’t want to argue with him but I was right. There were no crab cakes on the menu. He must’ve misread it.

When they brought his clam chowder it looked nothing like it. It was yellow and watery, but he sipped it and insisted it was clam chowder even though it looked more like corn chowder, which I’d never eaten before. He sipped the whole thing before his crab cakes arrived, and I was right. He was wrong. They weren’t crab cakes. They were crab raviolis in a mysterious yellow sauce. Only two of them, and they were normal-size raviolis. I never order those for that exact reason. Restaurants always cheat you with crab cakes or raviolis. I expect at least six pieces. Anything less is a cheat. He ate them in a few bites, and it took me about ten minutes or more to finish my bowl of lobster mac and cheese.

My father, who has always had a strange palette, ordered the lobster chopped salad with balsamic vinaigrette and blue cheese crumbles, which weren’t on the menu either, but they had it anyway. He enjoyed what he ate. But I had to question his decision to order those things with the salad. Furthermore I had to wonder about his decision period to order salad with lobster on it. Then again I’d ordered mac and cheese with lobster, but it looked like the only decent item on the strangest menu I’ve seen in months. I’m not a huge fan of duck or fried chicken with chimichurri salsa–whatever that is. Why couldn’t they have served something normal there? Call me simple, but don’t overcomplicate things on the menu.

I looked at the decor. It was a plain restaurant, like a Panera Bread, except for the art. Someone had painted a portrait of the Mona Lisa with dogs and cats wearing glasses and ballcaps, and another framed picture of the Girl With A Pearl Earring smoking a cigarette on a tree stump, with more dogs and cats wearing glasses and ballcaps. I couldn’t get a handle on the place, but every Hungarian restaurant I’ve been to has been a little strange.