And so I wandered in the silent aftermath of whatever hadn't happened. It sported a heavy silence, the kind you heard when you were diagnosed with inoperable cancer, when something snapped so soundly that sound was an insult.

This metaphoric Cold War was a cover-up, a facade, some splash of chambord to occlude a perfectly normal glass of orange juice. The broken and unpainted mingled with concrete and bedlum, tucked in tight, sleeping, dreaming. A finger snapped underfoot. The air was sweet and parched my throat. Bones whispered in the eaves and chantries below ground, between half-forgotten peach cobblers and the thorns used as spoons to paw at them.

There are occasional distractions: a can clink in the distance, some bereaved moaning, a sudden ploom of dust wrapped around something I thought I'd killed and buried, only to be resurrected by the Christ touch of someone else's emotional instability. These are obstacles, traps, set to detonate and impale--or reward if one smacks the grenade back into the homecourt. It is a game of maim or be maimed.

It is not for a cunt of sandpaper and breasts like cesspools; not a grand-standing phalus with a wink and a smile to accompany its gestures; not even the satisfaction of growing stronger by tearing someone else down. These are television commercials. These are attempts to make you buy the product: the person throwing up those obstacles. These are the games you play to prove yourself, as if you were a mathematical theory that demanded being discredited by any means necessary.

You can almost hear them in the distance, along the curving roads and patches of fog: voices pitched low, schizophrenic in berating themselves. They cannot accept you, but they wish to, but they can't, but they should, and so on. Words, body parts, money, and favors are exchanged as this debate goes back and forth.

In the dust I'd found a few ways to stop this ferris wheel. The most simple is the Path of the Asshole/Bitch: they maim first and turn one's demons on themselves, and they do it very well. I had not appreciated the simplicity and power of this Path. I have only a little experience with it, but apparently: it's actually good to treat someone you like badly, in some cases very badly, but only on occasional, arbitrarily chosen moments. It's actually good to leave them guessing about your true intentions, feelings, thoughts, sometimes even to say the opposite to make them wonder and worry. The Path of the Asshole/Bitch is alluring and corrupting because, I think, it plays on a universal part of humanity: our need to constantly find a rational explanation, even in an irrational situation. Having been on the receiving end of this one several times, it's good to see the patterns emerging early and get out.

A much more difficult path to follow, though, is the Path of Self. To my mind, many people play these games and indulge in delusions because they seek something. They want to find something that completes them. This idea of completion--and otherwise being empty or hollow--is poison to the mind. It's against the most fundamental tenant of human nature to achieve completeness. And rather than constantly trying to find more things to fill yourself up with--I think it's far more healthy to claim or court things that compliment you, instead. Being a very individualist-minded person, I believe that I begin and end with myself. Everything else that happens brings out different aspects of that self, and for the most part I can choose what happens to me--and by extension which parts of me I want to compliment and flesh out.

The bottom line of that philosophical twaddle is that you don't have to buy every product you see on TV, in the mindless hope that maybe it'll bring you one step closer to peace. Instead, sometimes, I think it's a good idea to walk away, read a book, stare at a lighting fixture.

Of course, writing all of that is more or less meaningless. What seems useful to me probably appears to be cliche or tripe. But sometimes, tripe is complimentary.

----

I am sick again with a mild cold. My throat had been on fire and laced with sproating stalagmite seeds. Right now it's just raw with an 'exposed in the sun' feel.

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